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by Joe Levi | March 20, 2014 7:25 AMRead OnOver the last little while we've heard that various devices (typically tablets) may be released that have the ability to dual-boot into your choice of operating systems. Some may know what dual-booting is, and others may not. The majority are probably scratching their heads and asking, what is dual-booting, and what are the pros and cons. What is dual-booting? Let's start with something basics. What is "booting" when it comes to smartphones, tablets, and even computers? The basic explanation is "turning on" or "starting up". In more detail, "booting" is loading a set of instructions ...
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by Adam Doud | March 20, 2014 7:00 AMRead OnI received my Nexus 5 just a couple weeks ago and one thing I completely forgot about was the fact that this sucker has a notification light. Woo hoo! That’s something that I’ve totes been missing from the Windows Phone experience and it’s awesome (or maybe not, read on…)! It takes me back to the good old days of webOS. Almost too much so since I often find myself pressing the notification light to turn on the phone (If you don’t get that, I’m sad for you). Not surprisingly, it’s not supposed to work that way. I haven’t dug deeply into the features here. I’ve noticed the ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 19, 2014 5:57 PMRead OnLove or hate them, tablets are rather fun little machines. Android tablets and iPads, at the core, are actually little more than scaled-up smartphones. They come with roughly the same class of specifications as their high-end smartphone counterparts, run the same software, and have access to virtually all the same applications. Those who only look at that side of the equation, however, totally miss the point of tablets. Those are the people who say, "A tablet doesn't do anything more or better than my phone. I don't need a tablet." There's a fair argument in there that no one needs a ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 19, 2014 2:20 PMRead OnThis time last year, both Samsung's and HTC's flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S 4 and One, respectively, were the two phones most of us were eyeing as our next smartphones. The Galaxy S 4 was the least attractive of the pair, but it was packed to the brim with features, for better or worse. The premise of the multiple award-winning HTC One was more soulful and rootsy. As such, while the One had the same specifications, give or take, it had fewer features and seemingly less value, but a markedly better design and build quality. Naturally, this rivalry between Samsung and HTC, paired with ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 18, 2014 7:47 PMRead OnWhen you think of Google these days, you think of a lot of things: search, Android, Chrome, and even a digital content store, aptly named Google Play. The last thing you would likely ever tie Google directly to is a physical retail location, a brick and mortar store. No less, a report surfaced late last week suggesting Google was about to do just that … again. Currently, Google has Android stores in Australia, which go by the name Androidland. This time, Google is looking for a physical retail location for all things Google in New York City, according to Crain's NY. It's looking at an ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 18, 2014 1:41 PMRead OnMy preorder of the original Pebble came after a lot of pause and skepticism. I explained in the prelude to my Pebble Steel review that I was a backer of the immensely successful Pebble Kickstarter campaign, but I had my doubts about the company after learning it was essentially round two from the Allerta team, which didn't have the best time releasing its first smartwatch, the inPulse. While promising, inPulse suffered a handful of timely delays and only arrived in the hands of buyers upwards of a year after it was supposed to arrive. Alas, I gave Pebble the benefit of a doubt. I figured ...
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by Joe Levi | March 18, 2014 7:18 AMRead OnThe original Nexus 7 was quite a piece of work when it was originally released back in 2012. Pocketnow's own Brandon Miniman even rated the device an 8.7 out of 10 in his review. Not bad for a tablet that cost less than US$200. What starts to happen almost immediately after we get our fancy new devices? They start to slow down. At least that's what it feels like, right? Usually this perception is caused by installing a whole bunch of apps that take up more space in the system's RAM, apps getting bigger and slower, and updates to the operating system taking up more space. All of these are ...
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by Adam Doud | March 18, 2014 7:00 AMRead OnSpoiler alert. If you haven’t watched The Walking Dead yet, go do so and come back. We’ll wait. Recently, Microsoft reportedly struck deals with a couple of future Windows Phone friends in which Microsoft dropped their licensing fees for their operating system to the low, low price of…free. This wasn’t really a surprise as rumors about it doing so went back several months. But it did raise questions. How can Microsoft do this? It’s just crazy talk. Like, blonde girls on The Walking Dead crazy. Does this spell the end? For blonde girls on The Walking Dead, yes. But for Microsoft, ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 17, 2014 8:21 PMRead OnApple has a handful of devices rumored to launch this year, such as the wrist-mounted iWatch and the notably larger version of its popular iPad brand, the so-called iPad Pro. Reportedly, the iPad Pro will be a scaled-up version of the existing iPad Air with a 12.9-inch display. It's rumored to come in two models: one 2K and the other 4K. There is also some speculation as to which of Apple's operating systems the Pro tablet would run – Mac OS, iOS, or some crazy hybrid of both. The tablet was expected to launch in the fall of 2014. But a more recent report from DigiTimes suggests the ...
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by Michael Fisher | March 17, 2014 8:07 PMRead OnAs we've mentioned on countless episodes of the Pocketnow Weekly, the HTC One is one of the most widely-leaked devices in history. Thanks to an explosion of prematurely-released info, including a lengthy and rather strange hands-on video and a photo of the retail packaging, we know many secrets concerning the device that's come to be known, around these parts, as the #ANHO. But with the official announcement still more than a week away, there are a few details surrounding the All New HTC One specs that remain hidden to us. Personally, I'm enjoying being none the wiser (I always prefer to ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 17, 2014 2:15 PMRead OnI just wrapped up my review of the Galaxy TabPRO 8.4 on Friday. When I was told I'd be reviewing yet another Samsung tablet, my head cocked back, shoulders dropped, and I let out a breathy sigh. Honestly, I can't say I've actually reviewed all that many Samsung tablets in my day. But each model, despite the minute changes along the way, have been to the same effect: a promising tablet that could be so much more with a little additional effort. For example, the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition I reviewed last year, on paper, looked fantastic. Sure, like all other Samsung devices, its plastic ...
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by Joe Levi | March 17, 2014 7:16 AMRead OnBack when I started working for Pocketnow, I brought my own HTC-made T-Mobile G1 with me. Shortly thereafter I was sent the Nexus One (also made by HTC) and used that as my daily driver until I replaced it with another HTC device. Over the years I've had long-term experience with every single Nexus out there, which is fitting for the type of user that I am: I'm a power user and a developer. Even for tech journalists, devices in the Nexus family were (and arguably still are) the best by which to reference all the different OEM "flavors" of Android. The Nexus program worked well. Devices ...
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by Joe Levi | March 14, 2014 7:26 AMRead OnFinally, after years of you and I telling them so, mainstream carriers are starting to offer "unlimited" plans. Why the "air quotes"? Because even though we're told they're "unlimited", these plans still have "limits". We had unlimited mobile to mobile minutes (but not to land lines or to people on other carriers), then unlimited talk time (but only on the weekends and after 7pm). Eventually we got unlimited texting (which we really should have had all along, but that's another article entirely). The odd-ball has always been data. Some plans offered a few hundred megabytes of data, others ...
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by Joe Levi | March 13, 2014 7:09 AMRead OnCurved screens are nothing new to Google's Nexus family of smartphones -- or are they? The second iteration of Google's flagship phone was made by Samsung. It was called the Nexus S. It's successor was the Galaxy Nexus. Both had curved screens. But that's not entirely true, is it? Both the Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus had curved glass, but that glass covered flat screens, thereby providing only the illusion of a curved screen. Perhaps that's just semantics, and it's all in the past anyway. When you jump forward to today we have a very different situation: both the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 5 ...
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by Adam Doud | March 13, 2014 7:00 AMRead OnLast week was a pretty leaky week here on Pocketnow. I say that, not because of the number of leaks that came out, but because of what happened in the leaky world. First, we had an amateur video released about the All New HTC One (HashtagANHO) by a 14 year old whose mommy or daddy had some ‘splaining to do the next day at work. Then the leak wizard himself, Evan Blass a.k.a. @evleaks came on to the Pocketnow Weekly and dove into the depths of what it’s like to be a leak-master extraordinaire. A set of questions that arose from that interview was how legal and how moral was Evan’s ...
Posts tagged with: Editorial