Posts by Brandon Miniman
Brandon is a graduate from the Villanova School of Business, located near Philadelphia, PA. He's been a technology writer since 2002, and, in 2005, became Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow, a then Windows Mobile-focused website. He has since helped to transition Pocketnow into a top-tier smartphone and tablet publication. He's so obsessed with technology that he once entered a candle store and asked if they had a "new electronics" scent. They didn't.
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by Brandon Miniman | May 14, 2013 9:07 AMThe new Lumia 925 will be offered in black and silver. Sometimes when devices are offered in different colors you only get small accents of the color. In the case of the 925, your choice of black or silver will determine the color of the soft-touch backing as well as the aluminum edges, which can be seen from the front of the device, so you'll definitely be able to tell the difference between the two. As is usually the case, silver is the color to get if you want to hide fingerprints, but the black looks stealthy and clean. Which would you choose?
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by Brandon Miniman | May 14, 2013 8:57 AMWe're live in London taking a look at Nokia's newest flagship Windows Phone, the Lumia 925. The 925 is an improvement over the 920 in terms of weight and depth (in fact, it's an amazing 50 grams lighter than the 920). It features aluminum edges and a soft-touch backing. The camera is similar to what is found in the 920, so expect great low light-performance, but the addition of a sixth lens means that optical image stabilization is improved further. The display is a 4.5" AMOLED panel with 1280x768 resolution. In terms of other specs, the 925 is nearly identical to the 920 with a 1.5GHz ...
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by Brandon Miniman | March 25, 2013 10:26 AMHTC really, really needs the One to be a success. Their flagship One X of last year was nice on paper, but was plagued by a sub-par camera and software lag, not to mention lackluster and insufficient marketing. The new HTC One is truly different, though, even as the Galaxy S 4 is on its way out. The combination of new lofty camera claims, hardware that is undeniably beautiful and unique, and innovative features like BoomSound gets us excited about HTC's future and their chance at getting back to financial health. Read on for our full review of the HTC One! Video Review · Specs ...
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by Brandon Miniman | March 19, 2013 12:36 PMAs we work to bring you our full review of the HTC One, we wanted to step back and show you one of the most unique features of the phone: BoomSound, which is what HTC calls their front-firing speaker array on the front of the device. Does this make a difference? Yes, heck yes. Whether it's using the loud, distortion-free speakerphone while on a call, getting more volume from your ringer, watching a YouTube video at a comfortable volume, or using the music player act as a boombox, louder (and clearer) sound from a phone is a feature that really changes the way you use the phone. While the ...
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by Brandon Miniman | February 25, 2013 9:03 AMThe LG Optimus L7 II is a budget/midrange Android 4.1 device that was shown at MWC. Inside it has a dual-core 1GHz CPU with 768MB of RAM. The display is a modest 4.3" and WVGA resolution, and the camera on the back takes photos at 8MP and video at 1080p. The design is typical-LG with rounded edges and an elongated home button. Powering everything is a 2460mAh battery, which is a nice capacity for a phone of this type.
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by Brandon Miniman | February 25, 2013 8:44 AMThe Lumia 520, announced at MWC, is a Windows Phone 8 device intended for budget-conscious consumers. It'll be selling for just under $200 in Q1, which makes it the least expensive Lumia you can buy. It'll be available on T-Mobile as the Lumia 521 starting in the spring/summer. In terms of specs it's got a 4.0" WVGA display and a 5MP camera on the rear capable of shooting 720p video. The battery is rather generous for a smaller phone, at 1430mAh. While the Lumia 520 only has 8GB of onboard storage, you can expand the memory with a microSD card. In terms of power, it has what looks to be a ...
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by Brandon Miniman | February 24, 2013 3:56 PMHP is getting back into tablets, this time with Android (and not with webOS with the ill-fated Touchpad). Their first device in this category is a budget device that reminds us a lot of the Nexus 7 but with worse specs and a low price. It has a 7" 1024x600 LCD display and is powered by an A9 Cortex CPU with 1GB of RAM. It's running on Android 4.1 and comes without a skin on top of Android. Interestingly, it has Beats Audio, making it the first non-HTC device to bring this audio-enhancing technology since the aforementioned TouchPad. It also has 8GB of storage, but unlike the Nexus 7, you ...
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by Brandon Miniman | February 20, 2013 12:54 PMYesterday we witnessed what very well could be a turning point for HTC: the announcement of their new One flagship. With it, they announced a new UltraPixel Camera technology that uses two 4MP camera sensors to take shots that have vastly improved lightning exposure, according to the company. We have yet to test the camera on the One on our own, but one thing is for sure: 4MP is just not enough, despite HTC's claim that "Megapixels don't matter." Of course they matter. Consider this. The Nexus 10's screen is a full 4.0 MP (at 2560x1600). If you pull up a full-resolution photo you've taken ...
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by Brandon Miniman | February 18, 2013 11:40 AMYou might have heard of Mailbox: an iPhone-only app that claims to change the way we use email. Even if you want to use it right now, you can't, unless you were among the first to reserve your spot in line. If you download the app today, you're looking at an 800,000 person line. Orchestra (parent company of Mailbox) is doing this to ensure that their servers can handle the processing of millions of emails; Mailbox does some server-side action to compress your emails, strip out unnecessary stuff, and push it to your phone in an attempt to provide a fast email experience. And boy, does it ...
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by Brandon Miniman | February 11, 2013 9:50 AMSomething that has always bothered me about iOS is that there are heavy animations throughout the operating system. Whether you're moving between items in a list, going back to the homescreen, launching apps, opening folders, or emailing a photo, there are long, slow animations at every turn. This gives the appearance of smoothness and fluidity, but it's also tremendously ineffecient. Android lets you turn off animations in Developer Options out of the box, but in iOS, you can't doing anything about it. Unless, that is, you jailbreak and download the free app Accelerate. It lets you set a ...
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by Brandon Miniman | February 7, 2013 10:35 AMIt's been over four months since we've reviewed the iPhone 5. Since then, I've been using it on and off, but mostly on. I haven't kept in a case (where's the fun in that?), but I've treated it relatively well by keeping it away from keys and other sharp objects when in my pocket, and by making sure that the iPhone 5 has never taken a fall to a hard surface. So with a medium/average level of care, how has the iPhone 5 stood up to the test of life? Is it durable? The answer is: not really. In fact, if we were to give the iPhone 5 a durability rating, it would be C. As you can see in the ...
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by Brandon Miniman | January 15, 2013 1:57 PMAround here we do video--lots of video, because we think video is an ideal medium to show you details that text and photo alone cannot provide when it comes to showing you the latest mobile devices. And so we put a lot of time and energy into YouTube, developing shows such as Worst Gadget Ever, After the Buzz, Pocketnow Daily, and more. Today, we're excited to announce that we've hit a huge milestone: 200,000 subscribers! And we just want to thank everyone that has hit the little "subscribe" button on our channel to get an always-updated stream of our latest video content. If you haven't ...
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by Brandon Miniman | December 25, 2012 9:16 AMIf you want a colorful Apple product, you're out of luck unless you're springing for an iPod. Fortunately, if you have an iPhone 5 or iPad Mini, you can change the color of your device with an aftermarket anodization process. I recently sent my black iPad Mini to the folks at Anostyle to get my Mini colored bronze, which is a nice orangy-copperish-brown. The result is impressive: their by-hand anodization process ensures that your iPad Mine or iPhone 5 comes back looking like it came from the factory with the new color. The way it works is that you order through Anostyle's website (where ...
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by Brandon Miniman | December 13, 2012 8:35 AMFor the iPhone owners among you: the Apple Maps ordeal is over with the release of Google Maps for iPhone. No longer will you search for a restaurant in your area and be taken to a place that is hundreds of miles away. No longer will you be subject to the limitations of Apple Maps and wish you could see a street view or public transit information. Our first impressions of Google Maps are very positive, and we've found a handful of hidden gestures that we show you in the below video. As a recap of the gestures, you can: double tap to initiate a single-finger zoom, use two fingers to ...
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by Brandon Miniman | December 11, 2012 10:54 AMThe most popular tablet in the world recently got an untimely update. At the iPad Mini event in October, Apple surprised most by updating the 9.7" iPad to a fourth-generation version which includes a faster CPU, a new connector, and a better front-facing camera. Many third-generation iPad owners and those that are considering the iPad wonder if now is a good time to buy. Well, we've spent the last several months with the iPad 4, and now that the buzz of its newness has worn off, we wanted to circle back and talk about how the newest 9.7" iPad has stood the test of time. First, be sure to ...