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by Joe Levi | April 10, 2013 1:18 PMRead OnGoogle's Android OS has morphed and adapted in the years since it was originally released. Some of those changes have been "under the hood", while others have been more cosmetic in nature. We suspect the next version of Android, Key Lime Pie, will include some pretty significant UI changes. Could some of those changes be "pie-esque"? We've recently talked about the possibility of a gesture-based UI in the upcoming version of the operating system. We've even shown off a pie-like launcher that you can install on your Android today. Various custom ROMs have pie-based launchers and controls ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 9, 2013 3:22 PMRead OnPhotos are good. Videos are even better. Zoes are ... weird, but also awesome. But without a nice way to present and share it, it’s just a big ugly pile of media, right? That’s HTC’s position, and the company has done something about it with the Sense 5 skin on its new One smartphone. It's built a custom movie-maker, similar to that found on last year's One X, but much more powerful. Additionally, rather than just leaving the gallery as-is, or sprinkling some chrome on the stock Android version, the company has crafted a portal to new and exciting ways to share media taken on the ...
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by Joe Levi | April 9, 2013 1:43 PMRead OnUsers and OEMs alike are fighting a battle between better performance and longer battery life. Battery life, it seems, is losing. OEMs have turned to software to help their devices know when it's okay to turn the back-light and the screen off -- and when it's not. Samsung's Smart Stay (and various copy-cat apps) take an interesting approach by looking at your eyes with your front-facing camera. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There's got to be a better way, at least that's what one developer thought. Take a look at Keep Screen ON Lite, and how it tackles the problem of knowing ...
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by Taylor Martin | April 9, 2013 9:00 AMRead OnAt Mobile World Congress in February, Samsung announced the latest addition to its expansive tablet lineup, the Galaxy Note 8.0. Tony and Michael had some hands-on with the GSM model (with the controversial earpiece speaker and Phone functionalities in tow) in Barcelona. But we've been waiting to get our hands on the WiFi-only model. Needless to say, it arrived late last week. And as per usual, we gave it the unboxing treatment with all the ums, uhs and other inaudible mumblings you can shake a stick at! Don't forget to click the play button below!
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by Michael Fisher | April 9, 2013 7:01 AMRead OnWe've put the HTC One through its paces, comparing it against nearly every smartphone -or at least, nearly every flagship- in the modern landscape, but there was a straggler left behind: the tenacious BlackBerry Z10. Today, we set about to rectify that omission. Tune in to the video below to watch us compare HTC's newest -and almost certainly best- Android offering with the slab of black soft-touch that BlackBerry has bet the company on. We'll be comparing build quality, UI, test notes, the camera, and the all-important ecosystem in this showdown, though not necessarily in that order - and ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 8, 2013 12:08 PMRead OnThe newest and finest in the Android collection versus the not-so-newest ... but still finest ... in the Windows Phone category. How does the HTC One's UltraPixel shooter match up against the Nokia Lumia 920's PureView camera? Moreover, how does that unibody aluminum casing from Taiwan fare placed up against the solid polycarbonate from Finland? And how involved are the similarities between Sense 5 and Windows Phone, anyway? It's all covered in our latest comparison, so dive on in and check it out as we put the HTC One (Sprint) head-to-head with the Nokia Lumia 920 (AT&T)!
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by Taylor Martin | April 5, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnThe LG Optimus G Pro was announced just as many were arriving in Barcelona, Spain for Mobile World Congress. And it confirmed all suspicions about the device and LG's direction in the mobile space. The device looks remarkably similar to Samsung's flagship phablet. LG had been on a kick of making extremely high-quality devices, such as the Optimus G and Nexus 4, so seeing a device made almost entirely of plastic was a surprise. Everything else about the device, however, seemed impressive. Seeing as the Nexus 4 and Optimus G Pro, both manufactured by LG, are virtually nothing alike, a ...
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by Taylor Martin | April 4, 2013 6:00 AMRead OnJust before Mobile World Congress, we got our first peek at the LG Optimus G Pro. Immediately, everyone knew exactly where LG's inspiration for a 5.5-inch smartphone came from. On the face, and even the backside, the Optimus G Pro borrows design cues from Samsung's two most popular smartphones, the Galaxy Note II, primarily, and the Galaxy S III. It shares a similar physical Home button with adjacent capacitive buttons for Back and Menu, it incorporates a similar faux-brushed metal trim made of plastic and even shares a ton of similar software features. A comparison between the Galaxy Note ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 3, 2013 6:46 PMRead OnIf you followed our coverage from MWC in Barcelona, you might remember a demo by Jeff Nestel-Patt of GT Advanced Technologies, showcasing a smartphone display 2.5 times stronger than Gorilla Glass that was, for all intents and purposes, impervious to scratches. If you missed that video, maybe you caught our article from last week discussing sapphire's importance to the future of the mobile industry. If you missed both of those, then you're still in luck - because this piece right here trumps them both. You see, it turns out that the GT Crystal Systems facility at which much of the ...
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by Taylor Martin | April 3, 2013 12:49 PMRead OnWhile LG may not have the weight Samsung has in the market for extra large phones, it's no stranger to phone-tablet hybrids. LG released the Optimus Vu last year, as well as the Optimus Vu II. But the less common 4:3 aspect ratio made the 5-inch devices look and feel much larger than they truly were, resulting in a rather unwieldy experience. Enter the LG Optimus G Pro. On the outside, it may be a Galaxy Note II look-alike, but LG's model has some notable improvements over Samsung's gargantuan phone. But there are also some things about the Optimus G Pro that are off-putting. Either way, ...
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by Taylor Martin | April 2, 2013 7:02 PMRead OnNo matter what generation you're from, what year you were born, we all learned to type practically the same way – on some variant of the keyboard that stemmed from the original, spaced keys of the typewriter. Ever since, that original layout has been twisted, turned and conformed but never truly lost. It's the design that inspires the key layout on the software keyboards on practically every smartphone in the world. Modern software keyboards are practically flattened versions of their hardware peripheral counterparts, with the same QWERTY and regional-specific key layouts, give or take a ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 1, 2013 3:59 PMRead OnThe standard-issue Starfleet communicator of the 2260s is a marvel of Federation technology. The flip-top device is ruggedized for adverse interplanetary environments, outfitted with a transponder for transporter lock-on, and it's capable of transmitting voice and data over thousands of kilometers -even through solid rock- without the aid of a cellular network. Sadly, it is also completely fictitious. The communicator, a product of the keen imagination and amazing design talents of Desilu model-maker Wah Chang, burst into the public consciousness as a prop on the original Star Trek ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 29, 2013 7:12 PMRead OnWe all use our smartphones to snap pictures left and right. Whether we're capturing our family and other sentimental moments, unusual sights or … even what we're about to eat, not every picture turns out the way it should, or how you were expecting. Fortunately, post-processing applications are aplenty. In the Google Play Store, there are literally hundreds of photo editing apps – maybe even thousands. And sifting through them all can be quite difficult, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. Some only offer simply filters, others are rather complex with a significant ...
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by Michael Fisher | March 29, 2013 7:01 AMRead OnAt the halfway mark of the last decade, the Motorola i930 was a beast. It packed a 180MHz processor, 32MB of RAM, a VGA camera, and Windows Mobile 2003 into a 167g casing more than 30mm thick. It was a hard-core, ruggedized device built at a time when rugged feature phones still commanded a premium, and durable smartphones were practically unheard-of. It also packed the fastest walkie-talkie in the industry, and a carrier label that, at the time of the phone's release in 2005, was among the most-respected brands in the United States: NEXTEL. The i930 wasn't all sunshine and polish, though: ...
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by Taylor Martin | March 28, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnAs applications and games are updated to support 1080p graphics (and beyond), file sizes have increased exponentially over the last year, making inbuilt storage worth its weight in gold. Just two years ago, 2GB and 4GB was not uncommon for built-in storage. Now the standard – or minimum, rather – is 16GB, yet that still is not enough for every scenario. It forces users to have to choose between what applications, games, music, pictures and videos they store on their device. What's worse is microSD card support, or expandable storage, is becoming a rarity for some OEMs. Until 32GB ...
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