Posts by Stephen Schenck
Stephen has been writing about electronics since 2008, which only serves to frustrate him that he waited so long to combine his love of gadgets and his degree in writing. In his spare time, he collects console and arcade game hardware, is a motorcycle enthusiast, and enjoys trapping blue crabs. Stephen's first mobile device was a 624 MHz Dell Axim X30, which he's convinced is still a viable platform. Stephen longs for a market where phones are sold independently of service, and bandwidth is cheap and plentiful; he's not holding his breath. In the meantime, he devours smartphone news and tries to sort out the juicy bits
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 8:08 PMWhile Facebook continues to try and make things work with new updates, it's hardly controversial to suggest that its Facebook Home is something between a slow-burner that hasn't quite found its success yet, and an abject failure. The one ray of sunshine that really managed to shine through the whole thing has been the idea of Chat Heads, which Facebook was smart enough to separately build into Messenger. We even saw the idea capture the imagination of the custom ROM community, and Paranoid Android introduced its own Halo feature inspired by Chat Heads. We've shown you just how Halo works, ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 7:21 PMSmartphone RAM is a funny thing: for most users, the thought of how much memory their phones have never enters their mind, and it only ever becomes a problem when one day they suddenly don't have enough – up until that point, though, everything's gravy. Phones are getting better and better at multitasking, so hitting that limit through regular app use isn't a big concern, but it can play a role when it comes to compatibility with future platform updates. The day will eventually come when 1GB is seen as the minimum acceptable level, and 2GB will seem less and less like a safe, ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 5:29 PMBack in late May, we caught wind of curious goings-on happening over at the Bluetooth SIG. While it's no oddity to see devices get their Bluetooth certification published as they prepare for launch, last month we looked at a brand new certification just filed for the Nexus 7. While there's no good reason for the SIG to be doing that, as far as what info was publicly available, it all might make sense if this was somehow tied to the upcoming release of Android 4.3, which could bring the platform new Bluetooth functionality (4.0 LE mode, to be specific). We've yet to see that happen (despite ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 4:52 PMSometimes, a purported render of a new smartphone really leaves us scratching our heads. Maybe it's totally legit, but the design is so off-kilter that we can't help but wonder if it's a fake – like what happened when we got an early look at the HTC One. Other times it's a really well-done fake that hits enough of the right notes that we can't quite tell if it's real or not. And then there are those times when we're just left wondering how anyone could think a sloppy fake is anything even approaching a real image – that's the boat we find ourselves in today, with a supposed HTC Tiara ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 2:19 PMToday's WWDC 2013 keynote kicked off much how we were expecting it to, and after Apple spent a few minutes talking about the state of iOS/OS X union, as it were, it jumped right in to the new OS X, which it's calling Mavericks. While there was some very cool stuff there, we're just a smidge more interested in the mobile side of things. Luckily for us, after it got done showing-off a slew of its new computers, Apple officially announced iOS 7. Tim Cook started by bringing us up to speed with some iOS stats. Apple's sold 600 million devices running the platform since its inception, and ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 12:49 PMThe HTC First, in spite of its inability to make a commercial impact, interests us for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its 4.3-inch 720p display. Even though we continue to see higher resolutions and greater pixel densities brought to the largest smartphones, progress seems to have left more petite handsets behind, so outfitting a smaller phone with an HD screen felt like a great move. The phone we're talking about today does things one step better, bringing a 720p display to a handset with a 3.7-inch screen. This display could arrive on the Oppo Find 5 Mini, following in ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 11:59 AMLast week, we fielded a rumor that HTC wasn't quite done with its Butterfly line of Androids, and was planning to release a new Butterfly S as soon as sometime later this month. That's already looking like it could be confirmed, as HTC has apparently begun distributing invitations to a Taiwan launch event scheduled for June 19, a week from Wednesday. It's nice to know that we'll soon get the full story on this phone, because for the moment it's really just one big mystery. At least, from what little we've heard about the hardware, it doesn't sound all that different from the original ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 10, 2013 11:00 AMOf all the major manufacturers, Samsung pretty clearly has the most variety to offer users when it comes to a selection of tablets. You can choose between a number of sizes, and the arrival of tablet-sized Notes gives users the choice between different feature sets, as well. Now a new rumor suggests that Samsung could be looking to push beyond its own boundaries a little bit, and could be preparing to launch its largest tablet ever. Korea's ET News claims that "industry sources" have indicated that Samsung will release a 12.2-inch tablet during the third quarter of the year. While there's ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 7:51 PMWe sure are hearing a lot of nay-saying form analysts lately. This morning we were talking about perceived issues with demand for the Galaxy S 4 and the effect this was having on Samsung's stock price, but now we're going to switch gears and take a look at HTC, with assessments coming in that suggest the best days of the HTC One are already in the company's past. You might remember our coverage of some HTC earnings reports from the other day, which indicated that a recent upswing continued through the month of May and had the company nearly performing as strongly as it had this time last ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 6:36 PMThere's plenty of last-minute debate over just what will and won't show up at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week, but the one product that hardly anyone's strongly campaigning for is the iPhone 5S. It's not that we don't expect a new iPhone sometime this year, but the rumors have made an announcement at this point sound a bit premature. Some had talked about the idea of a launch in September, but today we get another assessment of when Apple could finally pull the curtain back on the successor to the iPhone 5, as well as looks at a few more components attributed to the ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 4:56 PMEvidence sure seems to point to HTC working on something called the T6, and if we're to believe the rumors, this guy could be a 5.9-inch Android phablet. We've heard it attached to some pretty impressive specs, like a Snapdragon 800 SoC, 1080p display, and an optically-stabilized UltraPixel camera. Today we learn what might be the name by which the T6 arrives, and get a look at how the handset could appear. Supposedly, HTC could launch the T6 as its One Max - we know, there are some serious shades of Motorola there, but at least it seems to be sticking with a single "x." It may not be the ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 4:18 PMWe've been talking about the Galaxy S 4 family of phones for weeks, and now the GS4, the GS4 Active, and the GS4 mini are all official. The one that continues to remain unannounced is still the biggest mystery of them all, the Galaxy S 4 Zoom. From the start, we've struggled to positively ID the device as a smartphone or an Android-running camera, and though we've been strongly leading towards the "phone" side in recent weeks, rumors continued to play both sides. Today, we may be able to put that business to rest, getting our first look at what just might be the GS4 Zoom. As you can see, ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 3:46 PMThe rumored HTC Tiara Windows Phone handset first popped-up back in February. Later, we heard from Sprint that it would get a late start on Windows Phone 8 with a pair of smartphones, and a rumor suggested one would be the Tiara. Eventually, we caught wind of a phone identifying itself as "HTCP0881_Sprint" and wondered if it this was the Tiara we were looking at. Now that same model's back, getting its FCC certification and preparing to launch on Sprint. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to match up the HTC model PO88100 which just saw its FCC paperwork go public with that HTCP0881_Sprint ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 3:06 PMWhile we still have plenty of questions about what we'll hear announced during next week's WWDC 2013, the one certainty has been news of iOS 7. As if all the rumors and leaks weren't enough, we've heard confirmation from Apple's Tim Cook himself that iOS 7 would be on the agenda. Still, they say a picture's worth a thousand words, and as Apple starts setting things up for the conference, a banner has been revealed that sure seems to confirm everything we've heard about an iOS 7 announcement. The lack of any apparent "iOS" wording is itself very interesting - could this stark, featureless ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 7, 2013 1:24 PMWe've been wondering a lot lately about just how this new program of stock-Android-running "Google Edition" smartphones would play out. We've seen the GS4 and One confirmed, but have plenty of questions about which additional manufacturers and phones might get involved. Today, we get to hear a source share some supposed insider information on the project, as well as efforts to launch the Moto X. According to this source, Google is planning to release three and only three of these Google Edition phones this year. With the first two out of the way, that leaves us wondering about the third. ...
