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by Joe Levi | June 14, 2013 7:30 AMRead OnThere's more to a smartphone or tablet than a specs list and its construction quality. Sometimes we get lost in how fast a device is, how much RAM it's got tucked under the hood, and how sharp its screen may be. Something equally as important as all that is timing -- and Sony can't seem to get it right. Before we get into Sony's problems with its release scheduling let's look at its other product offerings. Sony has its hand in almost every pot. Sony makes music players, gaming systems, televisions, home audio, video games, cameras, smartphones, tablets, and it even makes movies and ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 13, 2013 6:05 PMRead OnWhen Anton didn't immediately scowl at the thought of using an 8-inch tablet as a phone replacement, I called him crazy. I literally thought he'd lost it. The point of a cell phone – for portable communication – is completely negated by substituting it with a device that doesn't fit in your pocket. And when he got the Fonepad by ASUS, actually liked it and didn't change his mind like I thought he would, and scored it as an impressive (for a tablet) eight out of 10 in the review, I was fully convinced Tony had gone off the deep end. Exactly one week ago, I received an email from ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 13, 2013 7:03 AMRead OnThe 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 Joe Levi | June 12, 2013 5:18 PMRead OnIt should come as no surprise, smartphones are getting thinner. Just when you thought they couldn't get any skinnier, manufacturers will shave a millimeter or two off their next device, just so they can claim the title of having the "thinnest phone on the market" -- even if they don't. Some manufacturers make their claims when measuring the thinnest part of the phone, but conveniently leave out the fact that the "camera hump" doubles or even triples the thickness. That doesn't count, does it? Thin phones don't feel good I'm through with it! Thin phones seem more fragile than "thicker" ...
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by Adam Doud | June 12, 2013 12:00 PMRead OnHere's a thing I don't get. Restrictions. Restrictions are, as a rule, kinda bad. There is little in this world more frustrating than the absolute declaration of “This shall not be done”. It's rather like those memos you get at work. You know the ones. The ones that say “From now on you can only use these two phrases to end a phone call – blah and blah” (Bear with me. I work in a call center). But when the phone call ends, that awkward moment comes when your customer says some type of good bye, and you're forced to utter, “Thank you for calling [wherever], and don't forget ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 12, 2013 10:33 AMRead OnWho'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 ...
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by Adam Doud | June 12, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnThe other day, I was using Windows Phone's “Baby-Siri” to text a friend of mine after a frustrating experience. “Nevermind”, I said “Turns out the guy is a &^!^^@&”, only I didn't say “&^!^^@&” I said...well, this is a family friendly site. But it sort of drove me nuts. I wasn't just angry, I was …...&^!^^@&.....gar! Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but listen up, phone. Stop &^!^^@& bleeping my &^!^^@& texts. If that &^!^^@& is coming out of of my &^!^^@& mouth, it better &^!^^@& go onto my ...
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by Joe Levi | June 11, 2013 7:18 PMRead OnMotorola CEO Dennis Woodside recently confirmed that the Motorola "X Phone" is not a figment of our imagination, nor a wishful hope. "It's going to be called the Moto X (and) it's going to be broadly distributed" later this year. There you have it: it's not the "Motorola X Phone", it's not the "Motorola Nexus X". The new phone, when it's released, will be called the "Moto X", and I want one. Hello Moto! GeoLocation & Situational Awareness The letter X is often associated with location. "X marks the spot" and "You are here -> X" come to mind. This holds true with the aptly named Moto ...
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by Michael Fisher | June 11, 2013 1:56 PMRead OnIn the past six months, I've handled some of the world's most advanced mobile technology, including BlackBerry's new Z10 flagship, Nokia's one-of-a-kind N9 smartphone, and Sony's super-portable Xperia Tablet Z. And the thing I value most from these experiences isn't the Z10's unified messaging hub, or the N9's one-of-a-kind interface, or even the Tablet Z's water-resistant nature. Rather, the aspect I love most about these three products is that they all offer a variation on a buttonless unlock. This revelation might force you to question my priorities, and I acknowledge that idolizing ...
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by Brandon Miniman | June 11, 2013 10:51 AMRead OnAt long last, iOS has been made different. It seems that since 2007, we've complained about being frustrated by sameness. Well, that sameness is now a thing of the past because iOS 7 is a deep change. It touches every toggle, every app, every menu of iOS, and it represents a dramatic modernization of the mobile operating system that propelled the smartphone industry forward six years ago. We got a hold of the developer preview, which seems to be quite stable, in our iOS 7 hands-on. Battery life seems worse than the latest stable version of iOS 6, but overall stability and performance ...
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by Joe Levi | June 10, 2013 11:15 PMRead OnWe got an early peak at iOS 7 earlier today. Love it or hate it, it's finally a change from the same old boring grid of icons. For some this will be considered too extreme a change. For others it won't have been significant enough. Oh well, I supposed you can't please everyone all of the time. Once you look past all the glitz and glamour, what does iOS 7 mean for the future of Android? Multitasking is in! One of the more technological differences between Android and iOS has been the way each platform handles multitasking. Android handles running apps much like your desktop computer, ...
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by Jaime Rivera | June 10, 2013 8:49 PMRead OnHas it ever happened to you that you walk into a department store; you see a shirt that you like and you immediately want it, and most likely even buy it? When Google announced the Nexus 7, I felt exactly the same way about it. It was gorgeously designed, well thought out and really inexpensive. It was the first time I had ever had an impulsive buy in tech, since hey, most of the shirts that I buy are much less expensive than a new tablet. Another one of the reasons why I really wanted the Nexus 7 was because I simply loved everything that was presented to me that same day about Android ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 10, 2013 8:44 PMRead OnNow that it's all said and done, we know iOS 7 is pretty light on new features. Siri has a few new parlor tricks; Control Center now allows users to quickly toggle settings without navigating to the Settings app; Notification Center sports a less cluttered, more useful interface; multitasking is smart and learns which apps you use most; and Safari handles tabs better than ever. And, yes, we have a few complaints about the update – like how it's still closed down and, despite the giant app ecosystem, doesn't allow third-party sharing or user-defined default apps. Feature-light or not, ...
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by Joe Levi | June 10, 2013 7:50 PMRead OniOS 7 isn't going to ship until later this fall, but we did get to peek into the future and see what we should expect, and it's not perfect. Based on what we've seen so far, here are five things that iOS 7 can still learn from Android. Too colorful The iOS 7 homescreen reminds me of a bag of Skittles. It's an explosion of unrelated color -- everywhere. Color in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but it's got to be done right. The color pallet that Apple has chosen with its new iteration of iOS is "too pastel" and washed out. This gives the phone -- what we've seen of it so far -- too much ...
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by Jaime Rivera | June 10, 2013 6:40 PMRead OnAs Tim Cook, Jony Ive and Craig Federighi revealed iOS 7 today, a lot of things crossed my mind. iOS in a way is very different to every other operating system. In the case of Android, it doesn't matter how much thought Google puts into their OS, OEMs have all decided to change it and enhance their experiences on top of it. In the case of Windows Phone, even though the design is unified, the approach each OEM has given to design and software enhancements defines your choice for the product. In the case of iOS, Apple approaches the product differently. Company executives have always said ...
