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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 ...
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by Adam Doud | March 12, 2014 7:00 AMRead OnAcross the pond at MWC, Microsoft had a few things to say about its upcoming and much anticipated Windows Phone 8.1 update. In addition to nine new hardware partners all taking a bite of the Windows Phone pie, and Android dual-booting goodness, it was also announced that Microsoft would no longer be requiring hardware buttons on their phones, including the much loved camera button. I get it. I really do. When you’re attacking the low-end market, pennies count, and the fewer pennies you have to spend on a handset, the better. A lot of OEMs may take this as a real bonus, but I hope not all ...
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by Joe Levi | March 11, 2014 7:10 AM
Read OnAs you might recall, Nokia showed off its first "Android" phones at MWC this year. Why the "air quotes", you ask? Because the Nokia X family aren't real Androids, at least not in the traditional sense. If you disagree with that statement, you're not alone. Over 150 comments were left on that article either telling us we're spot on, or that we're totally wrong. The TL/dr summation: the Nokia X family all run Android, but since they've got their own Windows Phone-esque launcher, none run Google's apps, and they come with their own Nokia app store (rather than Google's Play Store), calling ...
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by Michael Fisher | March 10, 2014 5:58 PMRead OnOf all the rumored improvements Windows Phone 8.1 will bring, perhaps none is as important as Cortana. Not that a fully-featured voice assistant is a make-or-break qualification for a platform's success; rather, Cortana symbolizes a more important shift in Microsoft's priorities. With its leaked "Notebook" functionality, the new Windows Phone companion may bring the ability to catalog your personal information for later reference – an important component for any modern "digital assistant." But we've seen that kind of information mining put to good use before, in applications like ...
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by Michael Fisher | March 10, 2014 4:04 PMRead OnI've had some wonderful experiences with Android tablets. Loading CyanogenMod on the HP TouchPad, an activity I documented in my first-ever video for Pocketnow, filled in some crucial capability gaps left open by the TouchPad's native OS. Carrying a first-gen Nexus 7 for a week in 2012 taught me just how compelling Jelly Bean in the 7-inch form factor could be. And spending some time last year with the Sony Xperia Tablet Z convinced me that "elegance" and "Android tablet" were no longer mutually-exclusive terms. We've come a long way from the days of Honeycomb and the XYBOARD. But five ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 7, 2014 6:12 PMRead OnHTC is in an interesting spot. Last year, it launched a flagship, which bore its all new, consolidated branding: One. The phone was the recipient of tons of praise and some of the most positive reviews of a smartphone … potentially ever. It raised the bar in build quality and design in the Android space, and to this day, it's still winning awards. Yet the Taiwan-based company is continuing to hemorrhage more money each quarter. Our own Stephen Schenck spilled the beans on HTC's latest earnings report earlier this week. Essentially, revenue is down 37.2 percent for January and February ...
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by Joe Levi | March 7, 2014 7:13 AMRead OnHow do you like that "unlimited" data plan of yours? Whether it's on your phone or to your home, "unlimited" has some pretty major pitfalls. Oh sure, for folks like you and I it's pretty great! All the data that we want for one "low" price. That's really good if you have LTE or HSPA+ and a good signal! In many cases your phone's data plan is faster than your home's Internet connection -- or close enough that you don't care. Back in the day, that wasn't much of a problem. Other than downloading music, pretty much all we did was surf the web and get email. Today, however, we have podcasts, ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 6, 2014 7:31 PMRead OnThe push for better vehicle infotainment has begun, and it's being spearheaded by none other than the mobile industry's two leading companies: Google and Apple. Apple's CarPlay, announced earlier this week at the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland, was shown off in detail by Volvo. The other major partners are Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari, but you can also expect CarPlay to be present in vehicles from BMW, GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Subaru, Land Rover, Kia, Mitsubishi, and more. Google's push into your commute starts with Audi Smart Display, powered by Android, of course. This is part of ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 6, 2014 4:46 PMRead On"I wish Nokia would make an Android phone!" Well, that one didn't turn out quite like we expected, did it? Nokia X is not at all the mashup of Windows Phone hardware and Android we wanted. Obviously, enthusiasts wanted something more along the lines of a Lumia 1020 or Icon running a pure Android, not a barebones, entry-level phone with Android hacked up beyond all recognition. But the hopes of a lovely mixture of the gorgeous hardware of Windows Phone and considerably more developed Android OS isn't totally dead in the water. A report out of The Times of India on Monday suggested some OEMs ...
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by Joe Levi | March 6, 2014 7:13 AMRead OnSmartwatches are great. I was in a meeting with several other people last night. Sporadically a smartphone would sound off, interrupting all of us. Each time two or three would pull their phone out of their pocket or purse, check their notifications, and all but one would put it back away. Since I was wearing a Pebble smartwatch, it was easy to tell when the alert was for me: my wrist would vibrate and the alert was displayed on the watch face. It felt good knowing that I was so much more technologically advanced than all the others. But that got me thinking... Smartwatches are super ...
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by Adam Doud | March 6, 2014 7:00 AMRead OnIn the Doud household, there is an ongoing debate. Those of us who are mobile technology enthusiasts are trying to trim an extra $50 of fat off of our monthly bills, and those of us who are...well, my wife is adamantly refusing to tell AT&T where it can go shove its landlines. Don’t get me wrong, she has some solid points (which I’m going to call “cons” but I love you, honey – as if you’ll ever read this.) But there are some real pros to the issue as well. So let’s break them down here, M.C. Hammer style. First of all it should be mentioned that your mileage may vary with ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 5, 2014 7:46 PMRead OnLast week, I wrote a reaction piece to Samsung's announcement of its fifth-generation Galaxy S smartphone. I, like many of you, were unimpressed with Samsung's latest and greatest, so I called it "more of the same." A quick stroll through the comments of that piece will uncover a great divide. Some people love it, others hate it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Differing opinions are a great thing that forces companies to diversify and push forward. By all means, Samsung has diversified. It has created a globally recognized brand with a visually unique design language that has ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 5, 2014 4:03 PMRead OnIn a nutshell, the all new HTC One is no longer a mystery, so long as the controversial leak from earlier this week is to be believed. A preproduction model found its way into the hands of 14-year-old Roshan Jamkatel, who created a lengthy (and rather shaky) walkthrough video of the M8. While Jamkatel didn't necessarily talk specs, he did confirm quite a few of the most recent rumors, such as the introduction of on-screen navigation buttons, the dual-camera setup, and a new face for BlinkFeed. The video also unveiled unexpected details, like a microSD card slot. What we didn’t need the ...
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