OnePlus 2 is a $329+ metallic upgrade with a beefed-up camera
Almost exactly 15 months ago, the OnePlus One made its debut as a $299 flagship smartphone to wow the geeks; and it’s even been lowered to $249 as of last month. That, of course, is to make way for the company’s next act, the OnePlus 2 (we were asked to stick with “2” instead of “Two”). This update is actually not all that secretive no thanks to the teasers and a recent leak, but that’s not to say you should lose interest in it, especially given the improved camera, better display, extra RAM and the switch from plastic to a more resilient magnesium alloy frame. Not to mention that the 2 also comes with a USB Type-C port, a fingerprint reader, dual Nano SIM slots and a special “alert” slider. As for the OnePlus 2’s price: the 64GB version will retail for $389 while the 16GB version will cost you $329. Let’s break it down.
It’s interesting to see OnePlus adopting metal in favor of the cheaper plastic for its latest flagship, which explains why this new phone will cost a tad more than when its predecessor launched last year. That said, it’s been well over a year for the first lot of OnePlus One users, so perhaps they won’t mind the little extra cost for the much anticipated update. And it’s not just the change of material, either; take a closer look and you’ll notice the subtle curve — from the screen to the back side — on the magnesium alloy frame. It’s a bit like how Motorola crafted the latest Moto X, not as apparent but still a nice touch. There are also stainless steel accents throughout that add a bit more of a premium feel compared to the original.
Speaking of the back, yes, you can still swap the cover, but with much ease this time: just pop it off from the bottom left corner (after which you’ll have access to the dual Nano SIM tray underneath). At launch, OnePlus will be offering four alternative covers — Kevlar, bamboo, rosewood and black apricot — should you wish to try something other than the black sandstone that comes with the phone. Bear in mind, however, that one of these StyleSwap covers will cost you around $26.99 each.
One notable addition to the OnePlus 2 is a special “alert slider” on the phone’s left spine. Unlike the usual mute switch you would find on an iPhone, this one actually toggles between three different notification profiles: “None,” which disables all notifications, “Priority,” which only enables notifications from your priority contacts and “All,” which, you guessed it, enables all of them. Funnily enough, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said this idea actually came from a Reddit user, who wants to solve small pain point: the “Do Not Disturb” button isn’t always easy to find on Android. CEO Pete Lau doesn’t want to stop there, though, because to him, disabling all notifications means you want total focus, so he’s even considering some sort of lockdown mode that forbids you from using your OnePlus 2 until you flip the switch to either “Priority” or “All.”
As with many other recent top-tier smartphones, the OnePlus 2 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810, a chipset consisting of a 1.8GHz octa-core 64-bit processor and an Adreno 430 GPU. In light of said chip’s overheating rumors from earlier this year, OnePlus specifically pointed out that it’s using the cooler 810 v2.1 which, in combination with the thermal gel and graphite stuffed into the body, should keep the phone palm-friendly in most cases (Qualcomm tells us that “virtually all OEMs who have announced devices based on the Snapdragon 810 processor are currently using version 2.1″). We didn’t feel the phone getting too warm in our brief hands-on, but we’d need more extensive testing to see if this is truly the case.
Other specs are as you’d expect on a flagship phone today: 3GB or 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 16GB or 64GB of internal storage (no microSD expansion due to risk of hindering performance), a 3,300 mAh fixed battery and a near-native Android 5.1 in the form of OnePlus’ OxygenOS. The latter offers a handful of innovative features beyond the default Lollipop interface. For one thing, it lets you toggle on-screen nav buttons on in case you dislike the capacitive hardware controls. You can also rearrange the order of those buttons and customize the look of the menu with “dark mode” and different accent colors.
The latest version of OxygenOS also introduces a beta feature called “Shelf,” which you can access by swiping right on the home screen. It basically consists of a couple of default widgets of your frequently accessed apps and contacts, though a OnePlus spokesperson tells us that the company hopes to open up the Shelf API so that it can be customized further by developers.
What may appear to be a slight let-down would be the screen. On paper, it’s the same 5.5-inch LCD with a 1080p resolution, rather than a sharper 2K option. Lau told me that he’s not into the resolution war because 1080p is sufficient for most people; instead, he focused on improving the screen’s clarity and brightness this time, because he found out that that’s how the iPhone 6 Plus won over so many people. So if you place the One and 2 side by side, you should notice the improvement.
Beneath that display, you’ll find another addition: a fingerprint reader. Unlike the TouchID button on the iPhone, this particular version is entirely capacitive and is not “clickable” like other home buttons. On either side of it are the aforementioned capacitive navigation buttons which light up when they’re in use. Another upside is that USB Type-C port: few other smartphones have it, and even those are rarely available outside of Asia. The OnePlus 2 could very well be the first globally available handset to ship with it. Bonus: the USB cable it comes with is dual-reversible at both ends and promises to be tangle-free.
Camera-wise, don’t be fooled by the same 13-megapixel and f/2.0 specs, because the real upgrade lies within the pixel density: a generous 1.3um instead of the common but smaller 1.12um for this resolution, meaning it’s more capable in dark environments and therefore fewer blurry shots. In addition to that, the new camera is assisted by optical image stabilization, laser focus plus dual-LED flash. It’s no wonder the OnePlus 2 is almost 1mm thicker and 0.46 ounces heavier; but who cares, right? Admittedly, the lowering of the camera looks funny and will take some getting used to, but it’s designed that way so that your fingers are less likely to block the lens. On the other side of the phone, there’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for those who seek to satisfy their selfie needs.
As nice as the OnePlus 2 is, we regret to bring you the sad news that it’ll be launched with an invitation-based system on August 11th (Only the 64GB version will be available at launch; the 16GB version will come later). Yes, that does mean you’ll have to keep an eye on OnePlus’ forum, or ask around in the gym for some spare invites.
Additional reporting by Nicole Lee.
Filed under: Cellphones
For OnePlus, China is no longer its biggest market
OnePlus, a 900-strong company that’s sold 1.5 million smartphones since its debut 15 months ago, is doing surprisingly well outside its home country, China. As we sat in OnePlus’ funky recreational room, CEO Pete Lau revealed that about 60 to 70 percent of the sales come from overseas, which is a significant change from the 50/50 ratio back in November. One could argue that this is partly to do with the dip in China’s smartphone market growth, but Lau isn’t concerned, as he and co-founder Carl Pei set their eyes on the Western world and, more recently, India.
“Our biggest influence right now comes from Europe and the US. India has a big following because of US influence,” the CEO said. His company also has the stats to prove it.
Pei, the Head of Global at OnePlus, has recently spent most of his time in India to help build up his company’s presence there. The OnePlus One now makes up about 40 percent of the Indian smartphone market in that price tier, according to the exec. More interestingly, while other brands continued to slash prices there, the One stood its ground and still maintains a “satisfactory” sales performance. Pei gives credit to Indian users for their thorough research before making rational purchase decisions; and on his end, his team actively gets feedback via forums, Facebook and even Reddit.
Today, Lau hosted the main launch event for the OnePlus 2 in Beijing, whereas Pei was at remote event in San Francisco; but OnePlus didn’t want to leave its fans out, so for the first time in history, it also did a product launch in virtual reality, using a pre-recorded footage taken with a special camera at its headquarter. The company will also be opening pop-up stores in ten key cities on July 31st, two of which are in India, four in Europe, two in the US, one in Indonesia and one in Beijing.
Even though OnePlus did sell some Cardboard VR goggles (it sold 30,000 of these in India) ahead of today’s event, Lau confirmed that his company is not developing any VR hardware; nor is it working on any smart home product, though it is paying attention to this space. What OnePlus did attempt to make was a smartband to go with the OnePlus 2, and even though it apparently had a nice design, the team eventually canned it because it just wasn’t good enough.
OnePlus isn’t just about hardware, obviously. Since its break-up with Cyanogen, the company’s set up a team dedicated to developing two versions of in-house Android ROM: OxygenOS for worldwide users who tend to prefer the near-native experience, and H2OS for China users who like the extra dose of MSG plus localization. This, according to Lau, was actually the biggest challenge he faced in the past year or so, as it proved to be difficult to recruit the best talents for ROM development. Nowadays, Lau makes frequent trips to Taipei to visit his core software team; he finds it easier to sign people up outside of mainland China, which is just as well given his company’s need to expand globally.
As a smartphone maker who has almost zero existence in brick and mortar stores, it would make sense for OnePlus to seek partnership with carriers around the world. In fact, the company ran a small trial with Malaysia’s Maxis in the first half of this year, but it was more for experience rather than scale. Lau is in no hurry, because he wants to focus on just the main product for now. “Once we’ve done our part, they’ll come find us.”
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Samsung teases an August 13th event with a big, curvy Galaxy
That rumor of Samsung holding a phone event in August to beat Apple to the punch? At least some of it is true. The Korean tech giant has announced a second Galaxy Unpacked event that will take place in New York City on August 13th. It’s not saying much about what’s in store, but the curvy, imposing profile in the teaser image hints at the upsized Galaxy S6 Edge+ that we’ve seen in leaks — and of course, the Galaxy Note line is nearly due for its yearly refresh. Whatever shows up, you can be sure that we’ll be there to give you a closer look.
Join us for the next Galaxy Unpacked #nextisnow #GalaxyUnpacked #nextisnow http://t.co/kXVRe2WxAg pic.twitter.com/AKflqEPnzd
– Samsung Electronics (@SamsungTMRW) July 27, 2015
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Source: Samsung Tomorrow
Rhapsody for Android gets prettier, more powerful music controls
Don’t worry, Rhapsody isn’t sitting idly by as it faces both fresh competition and renewed rivals. The streaming music service has rolled out a redesigned Android app (as well as a Napster counterpart) that brings some needed boosts to both the looks and features. The highlight is the new mini player, which lets you change and favorite tracks without losing your place, but you’ll also get a simpler, flashier full-size player that looks right at home next to what you find in other modern apps. You’ll also get more personalized album launches to make sure that you catch releases when they show up. No, this won’t make you ditch Spotify, but you’ll probably feel better about sticking with Rhapsody if you’re happy with what it offers. And if you’re an iOS listener, don’t fret — you should get a matching update soon.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Source: Rhapsody, Google Play
Microsoft’s working on an Android launcher of its own
Microsoft hasn’t been shy to create miscellaneous software for Android. In the past, the company’s released a smart lock screen and even made a keyboard designed to be used with Excel. Now Microsoft is working on its own Android launcher, currently dubbed Arrow Launcher Beta. As the name reveals, this is an early version of the product, and you can only get access to it by signing up for an invite to the testing program. So how does it work? The Arrow Launcher is sleek and straightforward, offering a quick view of three main pages: People, Apps and Notes & Reminders. Those pages, according to Microsoft News, can’t be removed or have others added to them — likely to keep things concise. You can give it a try by downloading the APK, but you’ll need to request a proper invite to receive updates after the install.
[Image credit: Microsoft News]
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Microsoft
Via: Android Community
Source: Microsoft News
ZTE Axon review: a powerhouse that punches above its weight
A few weeks ago, I got a look at a curious kind of mobile marketing head-fake: A new company called “Axon” no one had ever heard of promised the moon and stars in the form of a shiny, seemingly impressive $450 smartphone. As it turned out, Axon wasn’t an upstart smartphone maker taking on stodgy giants — it was a sub-brand of Chinese OEM ZTE trying to make something cooler than it’s normally known for. The ruse worked in that it got a bunch of jaded nerd journalists to an event in the middle of Manhattan in the rain, but is the phone itself actually worth that trouble? Did ZTE finally figure out how to make a phone that wary US consumers might flock to? The answer might surprise you.
Hardware
The model we’re working with has a full-on champagne finish, and despite the color, it feels a little less ostentatious than the blingy black-and-gold version I played with a few weeks back. It’s a dense, solid-feeling little handset since the body is crafted out of metal but isn’t hewn from a single slab. The main section of the Axon’s back is one plate, flanked on the top and bottom by metallic caps that form the phone’s edges. Turns out they’re a potential point of failure, too. I — ever the klutz — dropped the Axon from about two and a half feet up onto hard bathroom tile, and while it survived the drop, the corner of one of those edges popped out of place and had to be snapped back into position. I don’t think this thing will take a beating; just know that less than a week’s worth of jamming it in and out of my trusty blogger bag left the gold Axon with a lengthy vertical scuff I can’t rub away. Minor mishaps aside, the Axon’s thicker 9.3mm waistline is offset by a gently arching back that settles comfortably into the hand. I get the stylistic reasons why other companies (here’s looking at you, Sony) don’t make contoured phones, but man: curves make a world of difference.
As is often the case, that metal construction also means there’s no way to remove the 3,000mAh battery, and you’ll need a paperclip to pry the nano-SIM card out of the slot on the side. This might take a little more effort than you’d think since the tray has a nasty habit of sticking sometimes when I tried to pull it out. That’s really it as far as slots go, too, so you’d better know for sure you can squeeze the entirety — or at least all the really important bits — of your stuff into the 32GB of built-in storage, especially since only about 24GB of that space is available to you out of the gate. Speaking of what’s inside, the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 clocked at up to 2GHz. Throw in a whopping 4GB of RAM and you’ve got a spec sheet that’s primed to take on the Axon’s pricier rivals.
Before you notice any of that stuff, though, your eyes will likely lock onto one of two things: the 5.5-inch Quad HD screen sitting front and center, or all the tiny little triangles festooning the phone. We’ll dig into the screen in greater detail shortly, but its spacious dimensions mean the Axon will be a little too big for everyone to comfortably use. Just south of the display lives a trio of capacitive buttons that’ll sit just fine with some of you and drive the rest up a wall. I’m not terribly miffed by the lack of on-screen buttons; my only gripe is that the “Back” and “Recent apps” keys are denoted by dots instead of more informative icons. At least you can swap those two options in the Settings menu. Meanwhile, it turns out the grid of triangles above and below the screen are a little misleading.
Given the Axon’s audio chops, you’d be forgiven for thinking they covered a pair of front-facing stereo speakers, but there’s only one, tiny speaker lodged in the phone’s bottom grille — the details are mostly just for show. The triangular motif got plenty of play around the rest of the phone too, as it adds a bit of texture to the shutter button and volume rocker. There’s a teensy patch of triangles separating the main 13-megapixel camera from the 2-megapixel secondary shooter above it, but it’s basically just a decal under some protective plastic. All told, it’s a neat little visual flourish that helps the Axon stand out from the crowd of conservative-looking flagships.
Display and sound
The jury’s still out on whether our phones really need super high-resolution screens (our eyes certainly can’t tell the difference past a certain point), but you won’t hear me complain about how tightly packed the Axon’s 5.5-inch screen is. ZTE chose an LCD panel that uses what it calls Continuous Grain Silicon (CGS) tech, which, in a nutshell, makes for a thinner high-density display… not that it made much of a difference for the Axon’s waistline.
Anyway, the whole thing is punchy and saturated, but not quite as overblown as what you’d experience with Samsung’s Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge. In fact, it’s not too far off from the screen packed into LG’s G4 (which strives for more accurate colors than impactful ones). The biggest difference is a slightly warmer, almost redder undertone. I’m the sort of guy who prefers some extra oomph in my screens and the Axon strikes a solid balance here. Brightness and viewing angles were mostly great too, the former being especially important under the pounding summer sun. Thankfully, the auto-brightness setting kept things nice and legible throughout my week of testing. Seeing as we all have our own persnickety screen preferences, I can’t guarantee everyone will be as fond of this as I was, but for what it’s worth, I haven’t spotted any outright dealbreakers.
ZTE apparently tapped the wisdom of the crowds to figure out what it had to nail with the Axon, and high-quality sound was near the top of the wishlist. As such, the company squeezed a digital-to-analog converter that lends the phone the ability to play 32-bit audio; rival smartphones like the Galaxy S6 only support up to 24-bit files. That might sound pretty impressive, but c’mon: Is your music collection filled with 32-bit audio files? Yeah, didn’t think so. Factor in where people tend to listen to music on their phones — traipsing down streets, on subways and so on — and it feels this 32-bit audio push is more an academic achievement than a practical one. However! There’s a bit of preloaded software that will actually change up how your audio sounds.
The Dolby Audio is installed and on by default, which computationally tweaks your tunes in the hope they’ll sound deeper and more powerful than they normally would. After throwing my usual slew of test tracks at the Axon, my natural urge to disable anything that wasn’t stock Android quickly evaporated. The meandering synth intro of Capital Cities’ “Kangaroo Court” sounded brighter and more expansive on the Axon and the included pair of JBL earbuds than it did on the G4 and the iPhone 6. As the album wore on, “Farrah Fawcett Hair” took on a more spacious feel and highlighted little bits of aural texture I never noticed before. The thing is, Dolby’s solution won’t be perfect for everyone from the get-go. The default equalizer settings try to punch up the mids a little too much, leaving those highs and lows a little wimpier than I’d like. It still makes songs meatier and more satisfying than they would be otherwise, though, and if you’re really picky, you can jump into the Dolby settings and tweak things exactly the way you’d like. What’s really depressing is the lack of stereo speakers à la the One M9 — it seems like an odd decision considering how important good audio is to the Axon, but we’ve got the laws of gadget economics to blame for that omission. At least that lone speaker is plenty loud.
Software
The Axon comes loaded with Android 5.1.1, and thankfully ZTE didn’t feel the need to paint over it too much. Aside from some different icons and a custom time/weather widget that greets you upon first boot, you might even mistake this for a stock Android phone. Not quite. First, the interface has some other personalities if the stock-ish default isn’t your thing. Long-pressing the screen brings up two alternate themes to load up, called Fancy and Sports. I honestly couldn’t tell you what’s so fancy about the Fancy look; it changes the default wallpaper to some red feather and axes the app launcher entirely; all your software lives on your home screens instead. And Sports? I don’t get why this needs to be here. It makes your icon set round and… that’s really it. If you’re anything like me, you’re better off just ignoring these other options. Unlike other flagships — the S6 twins and the One M9, for example — there’s no theme store here, which is fine with me. Thankfully, all of Android Lollipop’s most important features are just where you’d expect to find them, and there are a few comforting flashes of Material Design peppered throughout the mix.
Since the ZTE isn’t coming to you thanks to an arcane carrier agreement, there’s hardly any bloatware. In fact, I almost hesitate to call the apps here “bloatware” since most of it is genuinely useful. There’s Dolby Audio, for one, and a bunch of apps dedicated to sports and fitness. Yahoo Sports is the most inexplicable addition, but it’s handy if you want to keep tabs on certain pro teams. Beyond that, an app called RockMyRun offers curated playlists for those marathon-training sessions, along with an activity tracker called Argus that’s more solid than you might expect. It nags you to create an account to squeeze the most use out of it, but it’ll still track and display your day’s steps in what ZTE calls the Z-Tray. When the phone is locked, a little arrow icon will appear at the bottom of the screen — tapping on that brings up music controls and a quick rundown of your activity so far. Most of the time, the Z-Tray is a useful thing to have, but when the notification shade is full, it’s all too easy to open that when you mean to swipe to unlock. Oh, and speaking of the notifications on the lock screen, it hides all but the topmost one, so it requires an extra two taps to see what’s been going on. Sort of defeats the purpose, no?
Camera
I’ll be real with you: I wasn’t expecting much out of the Axon’s rear-facing camera duo. The novelty of using a second sensor for kooky post-production effects on phones like the One M8 never worked for me; it just seemed like a way to distract from the hit-or-miss quality of the primary shooter. My worries were mostly misplaced. The 13-megapixel camera lodged in the Axon’s back is a capable performer, and the Camera app doesn’t lean on that secondary sensor for very much at all. There’s a Bokeh mode available by swiping to the left of the main camera view (spoiler alert: The results are sometimes cool, but often screwy), and that’s really it.
So, that main camera. You don’t need me to remind you that most phone cameras live and die by the light they’re used in, so I’m not blowing any minds by saying the Axon’s daytime photos were sharp and nicely detailed. Color reproduction could’ve been better, though; sample shots were often washed out, undersaturated and lacked the punch you’d see in photos taken with the LG G4 or Samsung Galaxy S6 series. HDR mode mitigates the issue a bit, but man, I hate the idea of requiring HDR for nicely saturated photos (the fact that you’ve got to physically freeze for it to work well stinks too). The same saturation issues plague the Axon in video recordings, even when shooting in 4K; the camera picks up a respectable amount of detail, but colors often seemed a touch blander than in real life. Things naturally take a turn for the worse when it’s dark out; shots were flat and smudgy at best. While I’m griping, I wish holding down the shutter button while the phone is locked would automatically fire up the camera. I guess we can’t have everything for $450.
On the upside, ZTE’s Camera app strikes a fine balance between simplicity and feature bloat. Remember that Bokeh mode? It lets you fiddle with depth of field (down to faux-apertures of f/1.0) and play with the focus after you’ve already taken the photo. Once you’re done there, a quick tap brings up a slew of funky picture modes like multi-exposure to spice things up for an eventual upload to Instagram. My favorite bit? There’s an exposure-control slider that appears when you tap to focus on a subject, just in case the camera doesn’t adapt as fast as you’d like. Throw in a full manual mode that lets you control ISO, white balance and shutter speed and you’ve got a well-designed system that only provides as much control as you want it to. If you’re a straight-up camera buff, there are better phones out there for you, but most people won’t mind the Axon’s photo chops.
Performance and battery life
Right, it’s no surprise that the Axon has plenty of power to play with — we’ve got the Snapdragon 810 and the Adreno 430 GPU to thank for that. That combination (along with 4GB of RAM) catapults it into the upper echelons of mobile computing along with phones that cost considerably more, so let’s just turn to the tale of the synthetic benchmark tape:
| ZTE Axon | Samsung Galaxy S6 | HTC One M9 | LG G4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AndEBench Pro | 7,961 | 10,552 | 7,404 | 8,352 |
| Vellamo 3.0 | 3,086 | 3,677 | 2,874 | 4,065 |
| 3DMark IS Unlimited | 24,802 | 21,632 | 21,409 | 18,572 |
| SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms) | 1,489 | 674 | 706 | 725 |
| GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps) | 25 | 25 | 22 | 15 |
| CF-Bench | 62,117 | 62,257 | 53,579 | 71,260 |
| SunSpider 1.0.2: Android devices tested in Chrome; lower scores are better. | ||||
Hardly any surprises here: The Axon’s Qualcomm silicon usually performed a little better than the 810 seen in HTC’s One M9, but still left room for Samsung’s custom chipset to pull ahead. The Axon’s SunSpider performance and Vellamo scores are the biggest question marks since they lag behind some of the others, but benchmarks only tell part of the story. Indeed, the Axon is more complex than the numbers might let on. When it came to graphical performance, it was right on par with other big-name flagships on the market. Games like Dead Trigger 2, Asphalt 8 and my new favorite, The Talos Principle, ran like a charm, even with graphical settings maxed out. The combination of a Snapdragon 810 and a metal body does mean that the Axon gets noticeably warm when you start pushing it.
More concerning than the warmth were some unnerving moments of flakiness I experienced during my week of testing. Opening a folder of apps took slightly longer than it ought to, even if the folder was relatively empty. Swiping through pages of apps was mostly fluid, except for moments of stuttering when I was in a rush to find something. Once, while shutting down all my running apps, the screen went dark for about five seconds and refused to heed my touch for a few seconds even after it came back to life. Bizarre. I eventually had to restart the phone to get everything running normally again. It’s these annoying little bits — in fairness, things that could probably be fixed through software updates — that ultimately dull some of the Axon’s shine. ZTE tried to keep things light with its custom approach to Android, but the experience of using it doesn’t always feel as fluid as it should.
Of course, pure power doesn’t mean much without the juice to make everything go. The Axon’s sealed, 3,000mAh battery performed worse than I thought it would in our standard Engadget rundown test. (We loop a 720p video with the screen at 50 percent brightness with the phone connected to WiFi). The official numbers: The Axon lasted for eight hours and 23 minutes before finally dying on me. That might not sound too bad (it’s better than the eight hours and 19 minutes I squeezed out of the One M9), but the G4 and its Quad HD screen stuck around for just over 11 hours. Good thing the Axon packs Qualcomm’s quick-charging tech. Thankfully, that battery fared fine with my daily grind, including email and Slack messages, the occasional YouTube video and an odd game or two. All told, it managed 13 hours before needing a top-up. If you’re the sort of person who isn’t glued to your phone, this thing will hang in there for nearly two days without much trouble.
The competition
The top of the smartphone heap is already a war zone, and if you’re in the market for high-end hardware, be sure to keep these other choices in mind. The HTC One M9 immediately leaps to mind because it too runs a Snapdragon 810 and manages to squeeze a memory card slot into its slim, handsome, all-metal chassis. It also has a nifty after-care angle in the form of Uh-Oh Protection, under which the company promises to swap your busted M9 for a replacement. ZTE’s own complimentary Passport program is a little different: It comes with a two-year warranty and a 30-day return policy. The icing on the M9’s cake is its impeccable build quality (the BoomSound speakers are a nice get, too), but it’ll set you back $649 unlocked — $200 more than the Axon.
Then there’s LG’s G4, which also features a 5.5-inch Quad HD display, albeit one that’s more restrained and color-balanced than the Axon’s. Performance can be pretty close between these things, but the G4 has some crucial benefits: a microSD card slot and one of the best cameras in its class. It’s available with a beautiful leather finish, too, and it won’t weigh down your pockets nearly as much as the Axon. I’d choose the G4 over the Axon if money weren’t an option, but it’ll still cost extra depending on where you look; eBay recently had a European version of the phone for $499, and prices online still hover around $550 for a new-in-box model.
And then we’ve got that other high-end smartphone that’s expected to go easy on our wallets: The OnePlus Two. The Two is expected to make its debut very soon, and it’s said to feature similar specs as the Axon, from the same Snapdragon 810 to the 4GB of RAM to what some rumors suggest is a 5.5-inch Quad HD screen. The kicker: OnePlus CEO Pete Lau already confirmed that it’ll cost less than the $450 the Axon sells for. Resist the temptation to be an alarmist: The OnePlus Two just might stop Axon sales cold, but we’ll see how quickly the Oppo spinoff can churn those things out.
Wrap-up
I’ve got to hand it to ZTE: The Axon is the sort of powerful, budget-friendly phone I never thought the company would, or could, make. It’s got gobs of power. It’s mostly well-built. The camera isn’t half-bad. And that tantalizing $450 price tag currently represents the floor — the least amount of money you could spend on a phone as well-specced as this. So why won’t I buy one? First, the software isn’t as polished as it should be. Secondly, I need memory. I need room for files and photos and tracks and videos, and the widespread availability of cloud storage just doesn’t cut it for me. The fact that ZTE made an actual contender of a phone, stuck it with only 32GB of storage and left out any expandable memory options is ridiculous. Samsung offers the Galaxy S6 line with more storage (for a pretty penny, but still). The Axon, then, isn’t a perfect handset. It is, however, a mostly great smartphone that makes me strangely excited for a sequel.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Android flaw lets attackers into your phone through MMS videos
If you’re an Android user, you’d better hope that a stranger doesn’t send you a video message in the near future — it might compromise your phone. Security researchers at Zimperium have discovered an exploit that lets attackers take control if they send a malware-laden MMS video. The kicker is that you may not even need to do anything to trigger the payload, depending on your text messaging app of choice. While the stock Messenger app won’t do anything until you see the message, Hangouts’ pre-processing for media attachments could put you at risk before you’re even aware that there’s a message waiting.
Google is already on top of the flaw, and has pushed out a fix to its hardware partners. However, whether or not you’ll get that fix will depend on your phone’s manufacturer. Zimperium tells Forbes that the Nexus 6 and Blackphone are already safe against some of the related flaws (other Nexus devices are likely in a similar boat), but more common third-party phones from Samsung, HTC and others are typically still vulnerable. It’s also unclear as to whether or not these companies will deliver fixes to their relatively recent devices in a timely manner, or at all. Depending on when you got your handset, it might remain exposed.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google
Via: Forbes
Source: NPR
Epic App Battles of Android: Pandora vs. Slacker
Welcome to the firsts installment of Epic App Battles of Android: Music Edition! Here is our first epic match up!
In the blue corner, we have Pandora, founded in 2000 with 100 Million Downloads and a user rating of 4.4
In the red corner, we have Slacker, founded in 2006 with 10 Million Downloads and a user rating of 4.2
Who will win this epic battle between the legendary titans? Read on and find out.
Round 1: App design
Pandora brings to the table a clean, white, high-resolution user interface that is present when searching for stations, viewing your feed, profile, and adjusting the applications settings menu. At first glance, the interface is overwhelming due to the multiple tabs and shortcut menus.
Once you take the time to create stations, which is very simple to do, all of your stations will be listed under the stations tab. The stations tab is probably the most important aspect of Pandora because it allows you to choose the station you want to listen to. It also gives you the option to select multiple stations and shuffle them together into one station. After a station is selected the user interface changes to a gradient hue of navy blue and displays cover art of the song as the song plays.
The ability to switch from the now playing screen back to the Pandora homepage to view your profile which is Pandora’s version of a Timeline, the Feed, and Settings tab creates a comfortable user experience and is very easy to use.
Rating: 7.5
Slacker takes a totally different approach to its user interface. The homepage of Slacker has a mix between white and variations of gray triangles creating a high-resolution wallpaper background. The header and footer menus of the app are deep blacks that, when viewed against the wallpaper background, gives the application a beautiful and monochromatic design.
Slacker’s ‘Now Playing’ menu is simply gorgeous. The menu displays the current song’s album art while behind the album art is a background of the same cover art just with a low opacity giving a sleek appearance. That combined with the creatively designed play, skip, and back icon buttons creates an ascetically appealing. Switching between Slacker’s menus are hidden gems. The ‘gems’ are creative transitions that flip, flop, and fly around like slides of a PowerPoint presentation. The snappy transitions, intuitive menus, and crisp, rock-star like graphics allow Slacker to have a bit of swagger.
Rating: 9.5
Round 1:
Pandora – 7.5
Slacker – 9.5
Round 2: Features
Pandora, which is pegged as a music discovery app, takes a simplistic approach to music-streaming. Pandora attempts to create an intimate music experience for you, based on the songs and artists that you love. Search for Lecrae or maybe Justin Timberlake, and Pandora’s algorithm engine built off the Music Genome Project creates a playlist loaded with comparable artists from a library of nearly a million songs.
What this does is allow you to listen to the artist you like and discover an artist that you might have never heard of but creates similar music. The free version of Pandora is limited to 6 skips per hour and has ads and commercials throughout your listening experience. Upgrading to Pandora One, the subscription service, enables fewer interruptions and removes ads as well as other perks like more daily skips.
What We Like about Pandora
- Ability to get introduced to new music
- Sleeper Time – Set a timer for how long you would like to listen from 15, 30, or 60 minutes. This is great for listening before going to bed.
- Alarm Clock – Set an alarm time, and you can wake up to your favorite artist station instead of a pesky rooster or alarm tone.
What We Don’t Like about Pandora
- The lack of control over music content. You only have the ability to pick the artist station not actually listen to that particular artist music.
- As an Android app, Pandora for Android has a good design, but it doesn’t feel like an Android application it feels like an iPhone app placed into the Android ecosystem. We would like to see them actually create Pandora for Android using Google’s Material Design guidelines.
- When you find a song you like you can’t save it to a playlist, replay it, or save it for offline playback like a lot of other streaming music apps.
- The free version only allows 6 skips per hour.
Rating: 8.5
Slacker is a Discovery and On Demand service which, for the most part, is relatively unknown compared to other heavyweights in the streaming music category like Pandora, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. Although Slacker seeks to change that by giving you everything, including the kitchen sink.
Slacker is a hands-on music experience for those seeking more control. The free version of Slacker is quite limited compared to what you can unlock with the paid versions. The free version of Slacker allows you to search for your favorite artist, but only allows you to play similar titles, not the actual artist. Also in the free version you are limited to 6 skips per hour. Much like what Pandora offers.
You do have the ability to listen to curated playlist from genres, moods, seasons, etc. Although Slacker Plus and Premium boasts a music library of over 2.5 million songs and gives you control over creating a playlist, and saving songs offline to listen to when there is no available internet connection. One more amazing feature is the ability to listen to entire albums and searching for song titles.
What We Like about Slacker
- Beautifully designed user interface, crispy sleek graphics
- Ability to save songs to favorite playlist and even save to your device with no internet connection available
- Search for songs of an artist by demand
- Ability to listen to entire Albums playback songs
- Ability to stop, fast forward, rewind, and even repeat songs
What We Don’t Like about Slacker
- Free version is plagued by constant on screen Advertisements
- Can only skip 6 songs per hour on the free version
- Doesn’t have the option to set a timer to allow the app to turn off by itself
Rating: 8.5
Round 2:
Pandora – 8.5
Slacker – 8.5
Round 3: Price
Pandora’s Free Version: Ads, commercials, and limited to 6 skips per hour
Pandora’s Pandora One Subscription: $4.99 per month or $36 for the year upgrades you to no ads and fewer interruptions
Rating: 8
Slacker’s Free Version: Ads, commercials, limited listening time, and 6 skips per hour per station
Slacker’s Radio Plus: $3.99 per month, ad-free listening, unlimited song skips, offline stations for data-free listening
Slacker’s Premium: $9.99 per month, play songs and albums on demand, create custom playlists, listen to offline playlists and albums, unlimited skips, ad-free listening
Rating: 9
Round 3:
Pandora – 8
Slacker – 9
After 3 rounds of head to head action between Pandora and Slacker, we have to take it to the judges score cards. It was a close fight but Slacker prevailed with a score of 27 points compared to Pandora’s 24.
Final Score:
Slacker – 27
Pandora – 24
Summary
It seems that Pandora, being a veteran, got too comfortable in its place in the streaming audio market, allowing other apps to encroach on its territory. Now we have other services that offer the same features as Pandora and more.
Before this battle I had never used Slacker, and I really felt no needed to because I have been a loyal fan of Spotify for the last 2 years and have paid my monthly dues faithfully. Slacker is an extremely well designed app that offers an array of interesting and useful features. It is also easy to use and created a fun user experience.
Tell us what you thought about the battle by leaving comments below. Which streaming music app do you use?
The post Epic App Battles of Android: Pandora vs. Slacker appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 reaches the Google Play Store
Night has come and you are home alone… or at least you think you are. There’s no such thing as a peaceful rest when you are playing the Five Nights at Freddy’s games. The fourth iteration of the series has just been released on the Google Play Store, so get ready to spend all night trying to survive this horrifying nightmare.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 drops you in an house full of unworldly beasts. The main character is a kid, and these monsters are out to hunt you. All you have to defend yourself is a flashlight, which you can flash at their faces to scare them away. Your goal? To survive until 6 AM.
You will need to watch the doors, under the bed, the closet and every corner. They can go anywhere, and if they get close enough it may be too late for you to flash these monsters out of your way. Creepy, right?
These games are good enough to have made it to multiple of our best games lists, including the 13 Best Android Horror Games and 13 Best Android Survival Games, among others. These titles will get you hooked, but they come with a price. You have to pay $2.99 for the game, but it’s very well worth it if you are a horror buff.
Not sure you want to spend that much on this title? You can also download the demo for free. Get a scare or two, and then figure out if you want to go all in. Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 already has a 4.7-star review, with about 900 reviews. We are almost sure you will like it!
Are you downloading Five Nights at Freddy’s 4? Hit the comments and let us know how you like this game!
Buy Five Nights at Freddy’s 4
Download Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 Demo
Instagram tries a faster, sleeker Android photo editor
Not happy with having to wade through filters and other editing tools just to post your Instagram shots? You might have a much simpler solution in the near future. Droid-Life has noticed that Instagram is trying out a new photo editor on Android that squeezes things into a single, simpler page that lets you add comments, tag people and apply filters. You only have to jump to another screen if you’re eager to make in-depth tweaks.
Don’t expect to try this editor just yet. You need to be running Instagram 7.3 (which isn’t automatically rolling out to everyone), and the new interface only appears to be available to a handful of people — we couldn’t get it to show up on 7.3 despite following instructions to the letter. For now, this is more of an experiment than a full-fledged upgrade.
[Image credit: Droid-Life]
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Source: Droid-Life
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