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by Juan Carlos Bagnell | June 28, 2016 3:48 PMRead OnWhen we produced our full review of the OnePlus 3, we decided to focus more on price than on comparing it against more expensive flagships. OnePlus still maintains the "Never Settle" branding, but the company's PR has walked away from some of the bolder "flagship killer" comments of the past. Still, we received NUMEROUS comments from viewers and readers wondering how the OP3 might fare against more expensive options. A showdown was in order. In picking which phone to compare, we decided to stay in the Android ecosystem, and opted for the most popular handset of the first half of 2016. If ...
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by Jules Wang | May 9, 2016 1:45 PMRead OnGimme a break, gimme a break, gimme a piece of that Android version that still has about a third of distribution. Cheesy joke, we know. But Micromax subsidiary Yu wants another break. After it sent us to Yutopia late last year, we're being promised another phone that is poised to break flagships. Breaking apart a model flagship to tease a flagship model smartphone. Sounds good to us. Yu CEO Rahul Sharma said in a forums post that the company has been "working at a different clock speed and momentum to break all that's conventional and boring." Sharma also to expect it within the month. ...
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by Adam Doud | April 21, 2016 10:30 AMRead OnYesterday, we talked about specifications and how, at least in the current three flagships that are on the market, specifications really don’t matter any more. Today, we’re going to talk about price, and what comes along with that price tag you pay for the top tier phones of today. We decided to look back over the last 366 days and see what phones had been released and what their prices were. Then we looked at what each had to offer for that price you paid. Our recent review of the iPhone SE left us in a bit of a tizzy – what is this phone, anyway? Is it a flagship? Is it a ...
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by Hayato Huseman | August 12, 2015 6:01 AMRead OnRemember when the first Galaxy Note was announced to the world? Samsung took to the stage at its annual Unpacked event back in 2011, and showed off a big honking device with a 5.2" display and a stylus, and it was one of the most bizarre smartphones we'd ever seen. Hell, it even created a new category of smartphone altogether — the phablet was born! The Galaxy Note launched with top-of-the-line specs, matching Samsung's tablets of the time, and though I didn't buy one at launch, I traded my Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 10.1 for a white model (in retrospect, I may have overpaid in that ...
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by Hayato Huseman | June 16, 2015 12:07 AMRead On2015 has been a great year so far for the budget handset market. Phones like the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 and the ASUS Zenfone 2 have set a very high bar for the rest of the low-cost smartphone industry, and they give even some of the best phones a run for their money. But while $300 can buy you either of these phones right now, it can also buy you a used HTC One M8 or LG G3, some of last year's very best handsets. $300 can get you a lot of phone right now, and while they're all great options, there's one thing to consider before spending any of your hard-earned cash ... are you ...
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by Taylor Martin | October 7, 2014 2:11 PMRead OnIn the last two years or so, one word in particular has become increasingly popular in this industry: flagship. Samsung’s new flagship this or that. What’s the best flagship of 2013? Is this new phone Company X's flagship? It gets tossed around endlessly, and practically every new high-end smartphone is considered a “flagship”. But what is a flagship, exactly? What does the term actually mean? Are we using it improperly and, thusly, altering its meaning in the mobile realm? According to Wikipedia, a flagship is "the best or most important thing owned or produced by a particular ...
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by Joe Levi | June 17, 2014 10:01 AMRead OnEach year almost every manufacturer releases a flagship device. It's got the latest and greatest hardware, the best specs, and all the latest bells and whistles in the software it's running. Samsung released the Galaxy S 5, Apple released the iPhone 5S, HTC released the One M8, LG released the G3, and so on. Sure, a few corners may be cut along the way, but essentially, it's the device that particular manufacturer wants you think of when its name comes to mind. The downside to flagships are their relative expense. High-end components come with a high-end price tag, as does limited supply ...
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by Joe Levi | December 5, 2013 3:23 PMRead OnMake no mistake, I'm a Nexus fan. I've owned every Nexus smartphone to date. I've passed up many of the "flagship" models from other OEMs, opting instead to stick with "older" technology. Put another way, I'm usually 6-months out-of-date when it comes to the "latest and greatest" smartphone because I'm not jumping to LG, HTC, Samsung, or Sony's newest phone. With the typical contract cycle being two years in these United States, I thought using a phone for one year would be the norm. Imagine my surprise when I learned that many of you are abandoning your flagship phone so you can switch to ...
