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 13, 2013 2:33 PMYesterday, waterproof phones were all over the news, and part of that was due to a teaser video AT&T produced showing what sure looked like it might be a Samsung Galaxy S 4 Active, along with the promise that the carrier would have more news for us today. Sure enough, this morning AT&T came through with its announcement, revealing plans to start selling the GS4 Active on June 21. AT&T will get the phone in Urban Gray and Dive Blue (none of that Metallic Orange) and sell the handset for just about $200 on-contract. Pre-orders for the handset will begin tomorrow. The carrier ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 13, 2013 1:10 PMFollowing months of rumors, the arrival of June has really seen the floodgates open when it comes to leaks of the so-called EOS, Nokia's first 41-megapixel PureView Windows Phone handset. All those leaks should clue you in that this puppy's ramping up for its launch, and a new invitation Nokia just began distributing sure does look like it's talking about the EOS. As anyone who's used the PureView 808 can tell you, one of the big benefits of snapping pics with a smartphone packing a huge camera sensor like that is that the need for an optical zoom is mitigated by the ability to just ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 13, 2013 12:29 PMSo far, if you've wanted a Samsung Galaxy S 4, that's meant the choice between a phone running an Exynos 5 Octa and a Snapdragon 600. That Exynos chip may still be the top dog in Samsung's SoC family, but the 600 is about to give way to the Snapdragon 800 this summer. Rather than letting that new chip only power brand new phones, we're wondering if Samsung could be planning to release new GS4 models with Snapdragon 800s at their core, after seeing a few phones with that chip get their DLNA certifications. Three SHV-E330 variants – the SHV-E330L, K, and S – show up in DLNA paperwork ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 13, 2013 11:31 AMWith last year's Galaxy Camera, Samsung managed to marry the guts from one of its Galaxy-series Androids with the hardware from a stand-alone digital camera. The result, while interesting, ended up falling in an odd middle ground, where it wasn't extremely useful as a smartphone, nor as capable as more traditional digital cameras. This year, Samsung's hoping to do things a little better, and we've already learned of the Galaxy S 4 Zoom, which looks to be a more phone-focused version of the Galaxy Camera. What about going the other direction? Samsung's J.K. Shin has been talking about a ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 13, 2013 10:53 AMWe just wrapped-up talking about the upcoming phablets from HTC and Sony, looking at what effect their launches might have on the Galaxy Note lineup. With neither device yet official, that meant relying on a lot of rumors and leaks. Already, though, we're starting to close in on a formal launch for at least one of these guys, with what sure looks like the Xperia ZU showing up on a new invitation Sony's been distributing. Sony promises a "big surprise" for July 4, and the combination of that tall, slim device profile and the impossible-to-ignore presence of a stylus (writing that we should ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 13, 2013 7:03 AMThe Android phablet landscape is about to get very interesting. So far we've seen it dominated by Samsung's Galaxy Note, and more recently, the Note II. Sure, smartphones themselves have gotten larger sine the first Note arrived, but this mid-five-inch-and-up range is still the domain of the phablet. Now we're looking to add a couple new members to that club, and from where I stand it looks like Samsung just might have a fight on its hands; will the upcoming phablets from Sony and HTC be the ones to snatch phablet domination away from the Note series? Following the Note's surprise success ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 5:11 PMJune is well upon us, and as those of us in the northern hemisphere get ready to start easing our way into summer, that's going to mean beating the heat anyway we can. If your plans include trips to the ocean, lake, or pool, you might want to think about keeping your smartphone safe from all that water. To that end, waterproof phones are more popular than ever this year, and carriers are starting to get excited about selling them. We just saw a video from AT&T that sure seemed to suggest it could reveal its plans for the Galaxy S 4 Active tomorrow, and now T-Mobile has a similar clip ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 4:17 PMIn a perfect world, we wouldn't need to have websites cater specifically to mobile users – browsers on smartphones would be fast, robust, and render content pixel-for-pixel the same as you'd see on your desktop. For a lot of reasons, that's not happening, and instead we have to prepare special smartphone-friendly versions of pages in order to optimize the mobile experience. Google's noticed that not everyone's managing to do a very good job at that, and announced plans this week to adjust its ranking for sites that really fail hard at making things easy for smartphone users. Let's be ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 3:40 PMOne week ago, Samsung finally confirmed rumors about the ruggedized version of the GS4 we had heard it was working on, and announced the Galaxy S 4 Active. While there were a few sacrifices made (like an eight-megapixel camera and LCD screen) the Active stayed remarkably close to matching its namesake's hardware. That answered all our questions about the device itself, but we still needed to learn just how it would arrive. A new teaser video from AT&T now has us thinking that we could begin getting those answers tomorrow. The "New Smartphone Teaser" doesn't name the GS4 Active ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 2:51 PMWe only got finished telling you about the latest rumors concerning the HTC One Mini's launch schedule, when a whole bunch of new One Mini info has crossed our desk, delivering a new photo of the handset and touching back on a number of the phone's supposed specs. After Bloomberg was hesitant to refer to the One Mini as such, we began to have reservations about the phone's name. Well, Engadget's source seems far more confident, and clearly identifies this as the once-M4, now-One-Mini. As for its specs, this source wasn't able to confirm some key aspects like the 4.3-inch display's ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 1:10 PMNo one can claim that HTC isn't doing its part to keep the 4.3-inch smartphone screen size alive, offering a 720p 4.3-inch display on models like its First and the rumored One Mini. We've managed to check out the latter in quite a few leaked pics, and have heard rumors that claimed the Android could launch this summer, possibly in August. While nothing's yet to go official, some new sources are talking about the Mini, and reiterating that idea of an August launch. This time, it was Bloomberg speaking to a pair of sources, and both relayed that HTC is preparing to start selling the phone in ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 12:36 PMWaterproofing is definitely one of the hotter smartphone features around in 2013, and we're seeing it come to an increasing number of models. Today we may get a new handset to add to the ranks of the GS4 Active and the Xperia Z, as the new teaser image Huawei posted to one of its Facebook accounts sure seems to imply that the company has a waterproof Windows Phone handset nearly ready to launch. While Huawei doesn't name the phone, we're almost certainly talking about the Ascend W2, which we've seen in a number of leaks over the past several weeks. Specs for the handset have already ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 11:53 AMIt was an inevitability: with Samsung's Galaxy S 4 firmly arrived, rumors are already beginning to show up for next year's flagship, the Galaxy S 5. Now, it may seem premature to start talking about things like SoC choice quite this far out, when we don't really even have a strong sense of what the options will be, but today's rumor has very different focus, looking at the GS5's design, instead. If we're to believe this source, Samsung could be taking a page from HTC and the One, and deliver a fully-aluminum Galaxy S 5. This tidbit comes from an anonymous "trusted source close to the South ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 11:19 AMRemember when Apple first introduced its Lightning cable last year? Sure, it was dual-sided and compact, but all of a sudden your old 30-pin accessories were useless, and the specter of an in-cable authentication chip had us seriously concerned. Early tear-downs revealed the presence of that chip in official Apple Lightning cables, which could let system software verify whether or not any Lightning accessory was graced by Apple's blessings. We were all ready to see Apple use this tool to lock-down control over the iPhone accessory market... but that didn't come to pass. Perhaps we just ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 10:33 AMWho's the person responsible when a smartphone company really nails a handset launch? Who do we blame when a product bombs? While there are any number of engineers, designers, marketing folk, and executives involved with the release of a new device or service, when it comes to giving one of these corporate entities a face, more often than not we look to the company's CEO. Sure, up on this same level we can find all matter of presidents, board members, and chairpeople (persons?) overseeing a company's business, but in the end it's the Chief Executive Officer making the managerial decisions ...