Posts by Michael Fisher
Michael Fisher has followed the world of mobile technology for over ten years as hobbyist, retailer, and reviewer. A lengthy stint as a Sprint Nextel employee and a long-time devotion to webOS have cemented his love for the underdog platforms of the world. In addition to serving as Pocketnow's Editorial Director, Michael is a stage, screen, and voice actor, as well as co-founder of a profitable YouTube-based business. He lives in Boston, MA.
-
by Michael Fisher | April 24, 2013 12:01 AMThere are a lot of things the fourth smartphone in Samsung's halo Galaxy S series is not. It's not a reinvention, or a revolution. If it were a movie, the Galaxy S 4 wouldn't be the blockbuster revival of a flagging film franchise: the reboot that kicks a sagging series back into high gear. That's because the Galaxy S line has never been a disappointing one. For years, Samsung's flagship smartphone series has dominated the Android landscape, making the word "Galaxy" synonymous with Google's platform in much of the public vernacular. Last year's Galaxy S III accelerated that trend, ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 18, 2013 2:01 PMWe didn't expect to run the Weekly with a skeleton crew two weeks in a row - and it's a good thing we didn't have to. Mere minutes into this week's Tony-and-Michael-only podcast, Taylor Martin arrives to save us from the spectre of a fun, but low-energy, two-man show. In its place: jokes, laughs, and a lot of industry insight you're gonna wanna put your ears on. We talk phone batteries that can jump-start your car, what place Twitter has in music, whether we should be excited about Motorola's X phone or Nokia's aluminum Catwalk, and the strengths and weaknesses of Windows Phone, Facebook ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 15, 2013 2:54 PMIt seems Android smartphone superstar Samsung won't be happy until it offers a Galaxy device at every possible screen size and price point. That's a trend we've been commenting on for a while, but we're not talking about brand dilution or new product categories today. The Galaxy product line seems in no danger of foundering under the weight of its wide selection, and the latest products out of Seoul aren't exactly blazing a new trail in form factor. They're phablets -phone/tablet hybrids- through and through. We're talking about the new behemoths on the Android playground, natch: the duo ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 15, 2013 11:03 AMI was driving from Canada to Boston several months back, about halfway back from the BlackBerry 10 unveiling in Toronto, when an unfriendly darkness crept up over the horizon ahead. Talking to my father on the phone, I mentioned that I was somewhere in eastern New York State, and he asked if I was driving into any weather; apparently he'd seen mention on TV of a storm in the region. My eyes flashed to my other phone, the BlackBerry Z10 review unit I'd just picked up, which was propped up on the dashboard with its GPS navigation app directing me back home. The display showed nothing ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 12, 2013 2:18 PMI've been using Facebook's new Chat Heads feature on my HTC One for a grand total of two hours. In that time, I've become convinced that the concept behind it is bigger than Facebook Home, Facebook Messenger, and could become bigger than even Facebook itself - at least insofar as it relates to smartphone UI design. The quick rundown for those not yet indoctrinated into the new club of bubble-tappers: Chat Heads are floating overlays on your smartphone's home screen. They're circular icons containing avatars of friends you're currently talking to via Facebook Messenger, and they can be ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 11, 2013 4:55 PMThe world of mobile technology is one of the fiercest competitive markets ever. In the quest to stand out from the pack, some companies make bold moves and succeed brilliantly. Others are more meek and fade into the unexceptional background. Still others fill the space between, innovating once, then endlessly iterating over and over again. Then there are those that just screw it all up. Thanks to choices that are either too bold, too meek, or just plain-old absolutely insane, these are the products that fall flat on their face. They’re not to be mocked, but the lessons they teach should ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 10, 2013 7:08 PMStuff comes up, folks. Sometimes you've got a pressing appointment in Romania, or a meeting scheduled in Media, PA. Sometimes you're at the day job, other times you're off the grid somewhere in the country. Other times you're buying a car. These things happen. Fortunately for us, these things don't usually happen all at once, which means the Pocketnow Weekly podcast usually features more than two people on the air. But today, listeners, Lady Luck was not with us. Today, Sam the Scheduler was out sick, because every member of the Pocketnow team was otherwise engaged when it came time to ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 10, 2013 3:41 PMI bought my first mobile phone in 2001. It was a Samsung SCH-3500, and it featured a carrier logo printed square in the center of the flip, its red-and-black insignia proclaiming to all and sundry that the device was beholden to one company for its connectivity: Sprint. No matter that the SCH-3500 was exclusive to Sprint in the U.S. and couldn't possibly have operated on any other carrier; the logo was there, and as I was unwilling to embark on some acetone-fueled adventures to remove it, there it remained for the duration of my time with the device. And almost every mobile phone I've ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 10, 2013 1:37 PMIt's a little early for us to post our full impressions of the HTC First, but while we're waiting to put the device through its paces, let's briefly talk about what the new "Facebook phone" means in terms of screen size. Longtime readers will be familiar with the display-dimensions discussion, which we've had a few times before. Before manufacturers honed the art of slimming bezels and trimming casing fat, smartphones sporting large displays also invariably required large hardware. HTC's HD2 and Evo 4G were early victims of the oversized-panel effect, but the trend continues in more modern ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 9, 2013 3:22 PMPhotos are good. Videos are even better. Zoes are ... weird, but also awesome. But without a nice way to present and share it, it’s just a big ugly pile of media, right? That’s HTC’s position, and the company has done something about it with the Sense 5 skin on its new One smartphone. It's built a custom movie-maker, similar to that found on last year's One X, but much more powerful. Additionally, rather than just leaving the gallery as-is, or sprinkling some chrome on the stock Android version, the company has crafted a portal to new and exciting ways to share media taken on the ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 9, 2013 7:01 AMWe've put the HTC One through its paces, comparing it against nearly every smartphone -or at least, nearly every flagship- in the modern landscape, but there was a straggler left behind: the tenacious BlackBerry Z10. Today, we set about to rectify that omission. Tune in to the video below to watch us compare HTC's newest -and almost certainly best- Android offering with the slab of black soft-touch that BlackBerry has bet the company on. We'll be comparing build quality, UI, test notes, the camera, and the all-important ecosystem in this showdown, though not necessarily in that order - and ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 8, 2013 12:08 PMThe newest and finest in the Android collection versus the not-so-newest ... but still finest ... in the Windows Phone category. How does the HTC One's UltraPixel shooter match up against the Nokia Lumia 920's PureView camera? Moreover, how does that unibody aluminum casing from Taiwan fare placed up against the solid polycarbonate from Finland? And how involved are the similarities between Sense 5 and Windows Phone, anyway? It's all covered in our latest comparison, so dive on in and check it out as we put the HTC One (Sprint) head-to-head with the Nokia Lumia 920 (AT&T)!
-
by Michael Fisher | April 8, 2013 12:00 PMIn America, wireless carriers continue to exert a stranglehold on much of the smartphone experience. The features a device brings to the table often matter less than which ones your wireless provider allows you to use. Too often, a flagship smartphone arrives on retail shelves mangled beyond recognition, bearing a customized (read: ugly) casing and an enhanced (read: bloat-filled) software load, "proudly" flying the colors of its host carrier in the form of one or more overbearing logos silk-screened to its shell. Fortunately, the landscape has shifted in recent years thanks to devices ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 4, 2013 12:50 PMSometimes you just have to schedule a podcast a few hours before a major news event, and as a result you've got to scramble to come up with some valid-sounding speculation about just how useful a Facebook Phone could really be. It's not like we haven't tossed this notion around before, but doing it on the air, off-the-cuff, imbues our lives with a certain energy, a certain je ne sais quoi, if you will. Or even if you won't. Whatever; we have a good time riffing. You'll listen and like it! Ahem. All that, plus some chat on just how big a copycat LG's Optimus G Pro is - and how well it does ...
-
by Michael Fisher | April 3, 2013 6:46 PMIf you followed our coverage from MWC in Barcelona, you might remember a demo by Jeff Nestel-Patt of GT Advanced Technologies, showcasing a smartphone display 2.5 times stronger than Gorilla Glass that was, for all intents and purposes, impervious to scratches. If you missed that video, maybe you caught our article from last week discussing sapphire's importance to the future of the mobile industry. If you missed both of those, then you're still in luck - because this piece right here trumps them both. You see, it turns out that the GT Crystal Systems facility at which much of the ...