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by Adam Doud | June 26, 2014 10:00 AMRead OnToday’s Google I/O Keynote left me a bit on the disappointed side. Sure, Android L looks pretty cool. Somehow the 3D interface is back after a two-year hiatus since everything needs to have depth, apparently. I must have missed that memo, but anyway. There were no new tablets and no new phones but there was an Android Wear smartwatch or three, which brings me to the point of this article. One of the bright spots of the keynote was the official presentation of Android Wear and a real solid walkthrough of the interface and its capabilities. There weren’t a whole lot of surprises there. ...
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by Joe Levi | June 25, 2014 9:28 PMRead OnAs we've had the opportunity to review devices manufactured by various OEMs, an interesting trend has begun to surface: OEM skins are getting lighter-weight, and a distinctive and bold color scheme has been evolving. We've reviewed the HTC One M8, the One mini 2, and the Desire 816. All of them run modern versions of HTC's Sense UI, and all feature very similar distinctive and bold color theming. We just spent a week with the ASUS PadFone X which runs its own "skin" on top of Android. It too features distinctive and bold colors inside its apps. LG's devices, despite having their own ...
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by Jaime Rivera | June 25, 2014 8:50 PMRead OnGoogle I/O 2014 is happening right this moment, and even though we had a ton of expectations for this event, it's hard to say that Google disappointed anyone. Surely there was little hardware announced, but we can't say that what we did get, which is the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live, weren't all great offerings anyway. We also got a lot of great enhancements for the future of Android, and that's really want we focused on our next video. Android L is the future of Android. Yes, we still don't know if it's Android 4.5 or Android 5.0, nor if it'll have a pastry name either. What we do ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 25, 2014 7:36 PMRead OnIn the last month, both Apple and Google have unveiled their upcoming versions of their respective mobile platforms, iOS 8 and Android "L" as it shall be called for now. It's in our nature to want to compare the two opposing operating systems and divide out which OS had which features first, but that's a fruitless battle that is never-ending. Both updates come with some very important features in tow which help performance, future-proofing, appearance, fluidity, and usability. Below, you will find a comparison of the two updates – what each will bring, how they look, and more. ...
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by Joe Levi | June 25, 2014 7:31 PMRead OnComing in right before Google I/O 2014 kicked off, search-engine giant Yahoo! got into the Android launcher game by releasing its app - Aviate Launcher - out of beta and into the Play Store - no special invitation needed. In the past, launchers focused on widgets, wallpapers, and making icons for your apps look good, with slick transitions between homescreens. Recently, however, that seems to be shifting. We just saw Nokia's new launcher (which is in a very limited pre-beta and won't run on rooted phones). It promises to learn how you use your device and show you the apps that are relevant ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 25, 2014 3:21 PMRead OnIf you're anything like me, you've been drooling over the idea of Android Wear since the middle of March. I was a few minutes from publishing an article about how the Google smartwatch could make me regret my Pebble Steel order, Google made its smartwatch platform, Android Wear, official. A handful of hardware manufacturers also announced they would be partners in Google's new wearable venture – Asus, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Samsung. There were some demonstration videos which showed some basic functions of Android Wear, and Google released a developer preview of the new Android Wear SDK. ...
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by Adam Doud | June 25, 2014 10:00 AMRead OnYou can go back a long way and see that I have been on board the “Amazon making a phone” train from the start. I was an early adopter before there was anything to adopt. I was genuinely excited to see the Amazon event. I was genuinely disappointed when Amazon decided not to stream their event. But that’s not the only thing that genuinely disappointed me, as you’ll soon see. Amazon was making some very interesting strides into the mobile field. Firefly was surely cool – snap a photo of something to buy it. It was very Amazon. Carousel not only apps, but also books and websites. ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 24, 2014 2:35 PMRead OnBy their very nature, smartphones have always been fairly private devices. The conversations we have, the pictures we take, and the other various types of data we store on our smartphones are likely very private and often very sensitive. While I don't personally keep anything compromising – pictures, text, or otherwise – on my smartphone, private conversations I wouldn't want other people to read abound. My smartphone also has access to my bank account, my LastPass account, which holds the passwords to all my online accounts, and cloud access to all my photos, documents, and other ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 24, 2014 10:33 AMRead OnNokia X2 is a device name we've become vaguely familiar with of late. Rumors of the next-generation Nokia X began popping up just a few weeks ago, when the name and a different swath of specifications popped up in a benchmarking application. Unlike the Nokia X, X+, or XL, all announced at Mobile World Congress, the Nokia X2 was rumored to come with slight improvements across the board – a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 SoC, 1GB RAM, and 4GB storage. The rumors were met with a lot of skepticism, though. Some thought it was too soon for yet another Nokia X phone. Others felt Microsoft ...
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by Joe Levi | June 24, 2014 1:57 AMRead OnNot long ago we had the opportunity to share our experiences with a unique device: the Asus PadFone X. If you haven't checked out our full review, make sure you find out why we call it "a beginner's flagship with a tablet in the box". Just like most of our reviews, we get our hands on the device, we run it through its paces, we write up our thoughts, and move on to the next device. This one was "different" and we wanted to give it a little bit more than just a normal review, because it's anything but a "normal" device. The PadFone X is a smartphone. It's also a tablet. Add on it's ...
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by Michael Fisher | June 23, 2014 2:19 PMRead OnWe have it on good authority that the focus of this week's Google I/O 2014 event will be Android Wear. The company's new smartwatch platform looks poised to bring us some of the most compelling wearable offerings ever, with devices to satisfy desires both subtle and gross. While I can't wait to see what Google has cooked up for the wrists of the world, I also can't help hoping that Wednesday's announcements will bring us more news from the smartphone side of Mountain View's portfolio. Specifically, news of the (possibly) forthcoming Nexus 6. You'd be right in calling this expectation ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 23, 2014 12:49 PMRead OnGoogle's in-house Nexus brand of affordable developer smartphones has garnered a small, dedicated group of enthusiasts since the first handset, the HTC-made Nexus One, launched in early 2010. Since then, Google has partnered with Samsung and LG two times each to make the Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5, all of which have been fan favorite Android handsets each year. The venture was never about making money or inflating profits. Instead, it was about sticking it to the U.S. wireless providers and letting consumers choose their phone first, then choose a provider – something ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 19, 2014 3:13 PMRead OnWith all the smartphones available, picking your next phone can be a serious challenge. Each month, multiple new phones are added to the mix, all with varying levels of specifications, different software, new features, different degrees of build quality, and designs. To make it worse, a lot of the newer – and sometimes older – phones overlap one another. For instance, some of HTC's newest smartphones (the Desire 610 and One mini 2, for instance), while slightly different, cover the exact same ground and target the same demographics. The other factor to consider is your carrier of ...
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by Joe Levi | June 19, 2014 10:03 AMRead OnOnePlus is the Cinderella story that wasn't. A company poised to break all the rules launched a marketing campaign that encouraged everyone to "Never Settle". With a tagline like that, expectations ran high - but it didn't stop there. OnePlus took an interesting approach, making end-users like you and I feel like the device was being crafted just for us. In the end, it looks like this was based more in marketing spin than in reality. Nonetheless, it bootstrapped the genesis of the company and its premier device. Next, apparently wanting to avoid any opening-day rushes (and the associated ...
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by Taylor Martin | June 18, 2014 6:05 PMRead OnFor literally years now, rumors of an Amazon-built smartphone have spread around the web, making the occasional headline along the way. No matter how many times Amazon denied the rumors of an in-house smartphone, the rumors continued to surface. And in recent months, word and more specific details picked up. Today, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos took the stage in Seattle, Washington to make the e-commerce site's smartphone official. Dubbed the Fire phone, as rumors suggested, it brings some new innovation to the wireless space in the form of a 3D interface which the company calls ...
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