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by Taylor Martin | May 20, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnThe HTC One may be one of the fastest clocked smartphones on the market. It's powered by a 1.7Ghz quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipset that puts last year's chips to shame. But for some, fast simply isn't enough. Some need more power, more speed, more gigahertz. Some need an overclocked HTC One. Fortunately, that's not out of the question, and enabling it is quite simple. All you need is the right kernel, a little know-how and a custom recovery. Flash away and reap the benefits of a processor clock speed faster than the factory settings will allow. Beware, though. Turn up the dial too much ...
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by Joe Levi | May 14, 2013 12:15 PMRead OnWe've shown off the Paranoid Android Custom ROM before. This is the ROM that enables phone, phablet, and tablet mode regardless of whether you're using a phone, phablet, or tablet -- and you can change the way your device displays any app. Paranoid Android also includes a very functional Pie-shaped control and notification area that we've shown you as well. Recent builds of Paranoid Android include a Halo-styled notification system. When a new notification comes in, it's presented to you in a small circle that floats above whatever app you're in. Once you've seen it, it slides out of the ...
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by Taylor Martin | May 14, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnDespite initial disappointment, we found Samsung's predecessor to the Galaxy S III to be a fair upgrade. The Galaxy S 4 boasts more software features than just about any phone on the market, and its specifications are top notch. Samsung is pressing forward, and the Galaxy S 4 is a perfect testament to that. Just as any other phone, however, the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is not perfect. Performance dips can be blamed on the cumbersome and heavily customized software. Even individual features directly impact the responsiveness of the operating system. By disabling some of the stock features and ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 9, 2013 3:56 PMRead OnNorth America, Summer 2006: Talladega Nights is at the top of the box office; Nickelback and Hinder battle it out for butt-rock band of the year; and an acting student named Michael Fisher grows a pretty sweet mustache in an otherwise-sedate corner of Southeastern Virginia. But more importantly, a hotly anticipated and long-delayed mobile phone finally lands on Verizon Wireless retail shelves. It's a device poised to challenge RIM’s BlackBerry family in the QWERTY keyboard arena. A new Windows Mobile smartphone unlike any other. That device’s name: the Motorola Q. The Q changed the ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 9, 2013 8:01 AMRead OnAbout this time last year, we shot a video called How To Take Great Photos with the Samsung Galaxy S III. It's very much an artifact of yesteryear, with a fifty-second intro, hazy interlacing, and one the worst haircuts in my personal history, but people seemed to enjoy it. So much so that when the Galaxy S III's successor dropped just a few weeks back, we followed up our full review with a similar tutorial on its 13-MP camera titled Galaxy S 4 Camera: Everything You Need To Know. The comments on the latter video convinced us that, even though we're now quite a few weeks past its review ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 9, 2013 7:01 AMRead OnMost new-device launches go the same way: usually the press gets review units before they’re widely available, and we get to use them for a few days -or a week if we’re lucky- as we work on our review. Then press day arrives. The embargo on media coverage lifts, and everyone posts their reviews and videos at the same time. It’s a huge frenzy, commenters go nuts, and it’s a giant explosion of frantic opinion-sharing activity. For about … a day. And then it all goes away. Sure, there’s followup coverage as people find bugs and hidden features, but after that initial blast, not ...
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by Taylor Martin | May 7, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnInfrared (IR) has been used in various consumer electronics since the 1980s. It was even used in smartphones and PDAs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But IR abruptly died off in light of newer smartphones, mobile operating systems and better methods of transferring data between two mobile devices. This year, several OEMs have come forward with flagships bearing IR blasters along their top edges. The HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4, for example, both come with infrared capabilities. And using the respective applications on each, you can point towards your entertainment system and control ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 3, 2013 7:01 AMRead OnThe Galaxy S 4 ships with more sensors than it knows what to do with. As we described in our full review, the new Samsung superphone boasts a thermometer, barometer, and even a hygrometer beneath its glazed polycarbonate shell, making the device almost as much tricorder as communicator. But sensors are only as good as the apps that can make use of their data. Realizing this, one talented developer has emerged to provide a software companion for Samsung's sensors, an app to give voice to these less-celebrated Galaxy S4 features. That app is called Weather Station. And while it won't win any ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 2, 2013 7:36 AMRead On"This barbecue grill has seventy bazillion BTUs; you better learn to work it." "This car engine has forty-two million horsepower. You better learn to park it." "Your smartphone camera has 13 megapixels and a hundred features and settings; you better learn to use it." Those first two examples may have some figures skewed, but the third sentence applies almost perfectly to the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S 4. It's not the first 13MP smartphone shooter we've come across, but it's definitely the one that offers the most features. Without knowing how to use it, though, it's just another hunk ...
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by Taylor Martin | May 2, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnThe HTC One is just a few weeks old (officially), but there is a handful of developers hard at work on HTC's 2013 flagship. As expected, the ROM support is paltry at this point, and the mods are few and far between. But make no mistake, the development and support for this device is showing positive signs early-on. By rooting your HTC One, you can apply these much-needed mods to the interface, remove bloatware and make other changes. Make sure the mods you download and apply are for your device, however, because there are various models available (i.e.: Sprint HTC One) that differ. Well, ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 1, 2013 7:01 AMRead OnYou've been asking for it: a head-to-head matchup of the best of Windows Phone with (one of) the best of Android. We had to get the hotter comparisons out of the way first, but here for your viewing enjoyment is the latest piece of Nokia versus Samsung hotness to come out of Pocketnow. Why the delay? Funny you should ask. We've been churning out quad-vs-octa, Samsung-vs-HTC, and Galaxy-vs-Galaxy comparisons first because, at the moment, they're the more apt head-to-heads. Nokia's Lumia 920 is a half-year old at this point, and the truth is, putting it up against the newest Samsung ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 30, 2013 7:02 AM
Read OnThe Galaxy S 4. It's a name that commands respect: one that strikes fear into the hearts of other smartphones, and incites envy in the eyes of would-be buyers. As our full review reinforces, it's a name that represents one of the best Android smartphones you can buy today. But the Galaxy S 4 isn't just one phone: it's a device family comprised of many globally-specific variants. The SPH-L720 we reviewed last week was built especially for the American carrier Sprint, and while it's functionally identical to the other American operator variants, it has significantly less in common with its ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 26, 2013 8:08 PMRead OnYes, yes: we know the official English-language prefix for "eight" is "octo," but you have to agree that octa just sounds -and looks- a whole lot better. And based on Samsung's choice of spelling on the box that just rolled into our office, the company agrees with us. Besides, admit it: after a week spent watching us dissect the quad-core American variant of the Galaxy S 4, you're hankering for a peek at its Exynos-powered eight-core sibling, no matter how we spell it. Behold: the phone we Yankees call the "international version" of Samsung's latest Android flagship, known to its friends ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 25, 2013 7:04 AMRead OnThe Galaxy S 4 comes packing a wide array of features. Some, like its flip-to-mute functionality, are minor but useful. Others, like the Smart Pause function that promises to interrupt playback when you look away from a playing video, are great ideas sullied by lackluster execution. And between those two extremes lies a dense field of additional functions. We tried to squeeze as much feature coverage as we could into our full review of the Galaxy S 4, but there's only so much room in even the densest Pocketnow review articles. Here, then, is a video walkthrough of the Galaxy S 4's unique ...
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by Taylor Martin | April 24, 2013 5:13 PMRead OnSince the iPhone 4, iPhones in general are regarded as having some of the best, if not the best, smartphone cameras around. Sure, the Lumia 920 from Nokia has optical image stabilization, so it performs better in low-light. And some newer phones have 13-megapixel sensors, meaning they produce larger images. But the iPhone has a way of almost always capturing great, balanced photos. But some photos simply need some touching-up, some post-processing to turn an okay photo into something much more dramatic or moving. The built-in Photos application has some lightweight tools for editing ...
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