LG’s new V20 wants to be the all-in-one flagship the G5 wasn’t
When LG unveiled its hardy V10 last year, it was… well, it was a little weird. With a beefy body, a double-selfie camera and a tiny second screen, the V10 was the result of LG being a little weird. Lo and behold, the phone did surprisingly well around here. Then the G5 happened. Being the first modular smartphone to sell at massive scale, the G5 represented LG fully embracing that weirdness. It was also gutsy, ambitious and ultimately disappointing — the company even admitted the device “failed to generate sales” after replacing some high-level mobile execs. Ouch. Now, though, LG has revealed the V20, and it might succeed where the G5 failed because it isn’t nearly as imaginative.
Put another way, the V20 is not modular. The leaked renders that made the rounds before today were spot on, but people (including us) misinterpreted what that button on the phone’s right side was. It’s for popping V20’s metal back plate off so you can swap out its 3,200mAh. It’s a lot like opening a powder compact, an analogy LG couldn’t get enough of.
The V20’s foundation is mostly the same high-powered stuff we got with the G5 — there’s the usual Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM, not to mention the same two-camera setup that pairs an 8-megapixel wide-angle sensor and a 16-megapixel standard sensor around back. LG also decided to release the V20 with a 5.7-inch Quad HD screen, 64GB of storage (up from the G5’s 32GB) and a shiny new build of Android 7.0 Nougat, all squeezed into a sturdy, aluminum alloy frame. Two potential issues right off the bat: the phone’s removable back means it can’t be waterproof, and its face is highly reminiscent of the BlackBerry Z10. Surely LG could have drawn inspiration from a more successful phone. Still, the V20 feels much, much more premium than the G5 did.
So, what else is new here? Well, the second, smaller display picked up a few new features along the way, the like the ability to display longer signatures. The screen itself is also brighter than the V10’s, and you can enlarge notifications that roll in, but there’s a good chance you won’t love it now if you didn’t before. On the software side, the V20 is the first Nougat phone with the ability to search deep in apps you’ve installed instead of just pre-loaded Google apps. It’s one of those things that should’ve been part of core Android for a while now — too bad LG announced the feature after we played with the phone.
Beyond that, there are a lot of audio and video improvements. LG updated its Steady Record feature to make on-the-go footage come out much crisper, thanks in large part to Qualcomm’s gyro-based electronic stabilization. The phone’s dual camera array is also helped by three forms of autofocus — laser, phase detection and contrast — to identify targets even faster in both photos and video. Video effects that ape traditional film and some impressive Hi-Fi audio recording chops make it clear the V20 is trying to be a real production powerhouse.
And while you had to buy extra hardware to coax the G5 into playing high-quality audio — hardware that wasn’t even available everywhere — the V20 does it just fine out of the box. LG representatives didn’t go into a ton of detail about how the V20’s “Quad” DAC works, short of mentioning how it cranks up volume, minimizes distortion and supports lossless music files. Still, the effect was clear: I tried running some tracks downloaded from the Google Play Store through the V20 and a pair of someone else’s expensive Audeze headphones and the difference in volume and punchiness was a pleasant surprise.
As first impressions go, the V20 leaves a pretty good one. It’s a solidly-built device that took parts of what made the G5 special and mashed it up with features that improve things people do every day. At the same time, it feels as though every decision LG made here was the safe choice. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s true that Innovative products — even ones that, like the G5, weren’t properly polished — influence our expectations for the future. In the meantime, though, safe bets can still pay off big, and LG has done some good work here. Stay tuned for our full review soon.
Apple Music for Android Surpasses 10 Million Downloads
Apple Music for Android today surpassed 10 million downloads on the Google Play store, nearly ten months after it was released on the platform. Specifically, the app’s total number of installs is now between 10 million and 50 million, up from between 5 million and 10 million, as of some point in the past day.
Apple Music expanded to Android in November 2015, around four months after the streaming music service debuted on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The app, which is no longer in beta as of August, has a similar design and features as its iOS counterpart, including the same three-month trial and prices.
Apple’s streaming music service had 15 million paying subscribers as of WWDC 2016 in June. Industry leader Spotify, by comparison, had 30 million paying subscribers at around the same time period. On iOS 10, Apple has completely revamped the app with improved organization and a new design centered upon bold, large text.
Apple Music for Android is available as a free download on Google Play for devices running Android 4.3 or later.
Tags: Android, Google Play, Apple Music
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Sony’s run out of ideas for its smartphones
If the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then someone needs to check in on Sony. Every six months, the company announces a handset in the hope of making some tiny level of impact on the mobile industry. And every six months, those same devices are rated as being generally fine, but not as compelling or cheap as alternatives from rival companies. You’d think that, after a couple of years of this crushingly predictable cycle, someone would have suggested a change. Well, you’d have hoped so, because the Xperia XZ just feels like more of the same.
The new Xperia XZ isn’t a bad phone, by any means, but it’s little more than a glorified polish job on the Xperia X Performance. That was Sony’s early-2016 flagship and when we reviewed it, our Chris Velazco called it “$700 worth of disappointment.” But this isn’t just a one-off, it’s the latest in a series of conservative, underwhelming handsets that have failed to click with buyers across the world. Technology purchases like smartphones are meant to excite you — especially if you’re spending the better part of a grand on one — and Sony simply can’t do that.
In order to illustrate Sony’s malaise, it’s worth looking at the list of flagship-level handsets that it’s launched since the start of 2013. This list of devices covers three eras of Sony, immediately before and during Kaz Hirai’s much vaunted “One Sony” turnaround strategy, as well as his subsequent U-turn when it came to mobile. At the start of 2015, Hirai said that the mobile division would now simply produce a handful of devices each year in the hope of keeping skilled employees and facilities around just in case future technologies needed them.
- Xperia Z – (January 13)
- Xperia ZR – (January 13)
- Xperia ZL – (January 13)
- Xperia Z1 – (September 13)
- Xperia Z1s – (September 13)
- Xperia Z1 compact – (January 14)
- Xperia Z2 – (February 14)
- Xperia Z3 – (September 14)
- Xperia Z3 compact – (September 14)
- Xperia Z3+ – (April 15)
- Xperia Z5 – (September 15)
- Xpera Z5 compact – (September 15)
- Xperia Z5 premium – (September 15)
- Xperia X – (February 16)
- Xperia XA – (February 16)
- Xperia X performance – (February 16)
Sony’s defenders would point to Samsung and say that both companies have a similar Spring-to-Fall release cycle. But Samsung caters to two distinct user groups with two very different products in the form of the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note handsets. There’s also the fact that Samsung is happy burning billions on advertising to support its devices, in stark contrast to Sony’s relatively empty pockets.
If Sony can’t compete with Samsung’s financial muscle, then it should probably attempt to innovate its way out of trouble. Except that’s going to be a problem too, since — right now — there are no new technological worlds to conquer in smartphones. Last year, Sony added 4K displays to its flagship Z5 Premium with predictably beautiful, but otherwise pointless, results. The fact that the Xperia XZ ships with a 1080p screen shows that wiser heads prevailed this year.
That doesn’t leave Sony with many places to go, and there’s not much it can do in hardware, despite its legendary expertise. After all, LG couldn’t make a big impact with the “friends” ecosystem that surrounded the G5 and Motorola doesn’t appear to have set the world on fire with its own version. So that just leaves software, an area where Sony notoriously lags behind its Android rivals.
Then there’s the fact that the smartphone world is slowly beginning to crunch and, much like the tablet space, it won’t be long before several manufacturers pull out of the market. We’ve reported on this problem a few times, but everyone who can afford a smartphone already has one, and fewer people feel the need to replace them once every two years. In that vacuum, it’s price, rather than quality, that has become a big driver for people’s purchases — which is why low-or-no-margin companies like Huawei and OnePlus have become so huge. Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Samsung is targeting Japan for its next big growth opportunity: parking its tanks directly on Sony’s lawn.
Given that Sony has very few places that it can turn, I asked my colleagues what they would do in its place. The most repeated answer was “Vita Phone,” a device that would combine the company’s (under-loved) gaming handheld with a smartphone. Of course, Sony’s been there already with the Xperia Play and other companies have tried to blend gaming with smartphones — wave hello, Nokia’s N-Gage, with no success. Then again, Sony is now at the point where it’s got so little to lose that maybe a little bit of left-field alchemy is exactly what it needs.
Omate Rise 3G smartwatch slaps Amazon Alexa on your wrist
Exactly nine months ago, Omate launched its Rise smartwatch with 3G radio, circular display, carbon fiber bezel and full Android 5.1 (not Android Wear) for a mere $199 (it’ll be $349 when it hits retail next year). If you missed out on it, here’s your chance again. The company is now back on Indiegogo with a new Limited Edition run of another 999 units for the same base price point, and this time, it’ll be bundled with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. While the CoWatch was the absolute first smartwatch to integrate Alexa, the Rise is still the first 3G standalone smartwatch to achieve this. Omate CEO Laurent Le Pen also pointed out that unlike the CoWatch, his product will actually be certified by Amazon by the time it ships in December.
There are no changes in terms of hardware. You’ll still be getting a 1.3-inch, 360 x 360 round LCD, a MediaTek MT2601 chipset (dual-1.2GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, Mali-400 GPU), 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, a 580mAh battery and a Nano SIM slot — the first 499 units will come with a free Ting SIM card for the US. The 3.5G HSDPA radio will support either 1900MHz for the US or 2100MHz for elsewhere, and the same ol’ Bluetooth 4.1 plus 802.11b/g/n WiFi are here to stay. As before, the 22mm strap can be easily detached from the splash-resistant (1 ATM) polycarbonate body, should you wish to try other straps to suit your mood.
On the software side, even though the Rise works as a standalone Android device, it can also be set up to receive push notifications from phones running on either iOS 9 or Android 4.4 and above. Just note that the Rise doesn’t come with Google Play services, but it isn’t hard to get that fixed. Of course, the biggest selling point here is Alexa which now has over 2,000 skills from a variety of services such as Lyft, SmartThings, Capital One and Amazon (duh). On top of the usual commands for the likes of media playback, shopping lists, schedules, exchange rates, calculations and weather forecast, one Rise beta tester also linked his smartwatch to his Logitech Harmony hub via IFTTT, thus allowing him to use his voice to turn his entire TV set — including his Hi-Fi, PlayStation and Philips Hue lights — on and off, as shown in the above video.
It’s obviously exciting times for both Omate and Amazon, and as time passes, Alexa will become smarter and more practical. “With Alexa, we are just showing a glimpse of the future,” Le Pen added. But for now, if all goes well, the Rise Limited Edition will start shipping to backers in December.
Source: Indiegogo
Philips’ new OLED TV has built-in, super colorful ambient lighting
If you’ve been waiting your whole life for a TV that offers a 4K resolution, an OLED panel and Philips’ funky Ambilight technology, you’re going to love TP Vision’s newest 55-inch set.
The company is well-known for making Philips-branded TVs, and has gone a step further for its first model by integrating the ambient color-changing technology into the set too.
By using the “Philips Perfect Pixel Ultra HD engine” in combination with OLED pixels that have the ability to completely switch off, TP-Vision says the catchily named 901F delivers deeper, more accurate black levels.
Combine this with the Ambilight back-lighting effect on three sides of the TV and colors should look even more vibrant. It’s also trying to side-step the achilles heel of many slim, Smart TVs by providing a 30W 6.1 sound bar that integrates into the unit.
Keeping it all ticking along nicely, hopefully, is Android for TVs, which offers up the usual Google services and apps that you’d expect from any other Android device.
While TP Vision could win a TV buzzword bingo prize for this announcement, it neglected to say when the set will be released, where it’ll go on sale or how much it will cost.
ZTE’s Axon 7 Mini smartphone won’t wow you, but it’s cheap
ZTE’s Axon 7 was a surprisingly good phone which proved that the Chinese company is capable of delivering on its “affordable premium” promise. In order to capitalize on that success, ZTE is offering a cheaper, more petite version. The Axon 7 Mini will arrive stateside in October, and while US pricing hasn’t been announced, it will retail in Europe for EUR299. That’s about US$330, which is $70 less than the original, as well as the OnePlus 3 and Alcatel Idol 4S.
I briefly played with the Axon 7 Mini and found it to be a capable variant for the price, but altogether unexciting.
Like a fun-sized candy bar, the Mini resembles a compressed version of the original Axon 7. They both have the same handsome design and feel equally solid and smooth. The new phone also has dual stereo speakers that ZTE said are actually louder.
The similarities end there, though. The Mini has a 5.2-inch full HD display compared to its big brother’s 5.5-inch 2K screen, leaving it with a lower pixel density (424 ppi). That’s still pretty decent, and I didn’t notice a huge difference between the two device’s panels.
ZTE didn’t just shrink the Axon 7’s display and price; you’ll also find a smaller battery (2,705mAh vs 3,250mAh) and less-sharp rear camera. Despite the loss of megapixels, the Mini’s 16-MP camera still took decent pictures that looked crisp and vibrant. The camera up front retains the same 8-MP resolution, and delivered selfies that were clear and bright. In low light, though, the Mini’s single-tone LED flash may lead to less accurate colors than the Axon 7’s dual-tone light.
The biggest trade-off ZTE had to make to bring the Mini’s price down was in the processor. Instead of the premium Snapdragon 820 that powers the Axon 7, the smaller phone is equipped with a lower-end Snapdragon 617 chip. It also offers less RAM and storage (3GB and 32GB respectively), but I didn’t notice any lag during my time with the phone.
The Mini will also take a longer time to recharge than the original, since it supports Quick Charge 2.0 instead of the newer 3.0. This means it’ll get to 46 percent in 30 mins of charging versus 83 percent in the same time on its larger counterpart.
Overall, the Axon 7 Mini is an affordable phone worth considering, especially for those who don’t want a hefty handset. And at about $330, it could be the best phone for the price. But ZTE isn’t really surprising anyone here. Releasing two sizes of a flagship is basically an industry standard at this point. We’re far more interested to see what ZTE will produce out of its attempt to crowdsource a mobile device through its Project CSX campaign, where the company will let the public submit and vote on ideas for a mobile device that it will produce by 2017.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
Microsoft’s Sunrise calendar app gets a stay of execution
When Microsoft made a final appointment to terminate Sunrise on August 31st, fans of the app were discouraged. Not only were they losing their favorite calendar program, but Redmond has not integrated very many features into Outlook as it promised when it purchased the app last year. However, it has now decided to delay Sunrise’s shut down. “We have chosen to wait a little longer in order to deliver a few more Sunrise-inspired features in Outlook,” a spokesperson told PC World .
Last year, Microsoft promised to leave Sunrise on the market “until its features are full integrated into Outlook.” However, a lot of the coolest functions, like integration with social media and productivity apps, and “interesting calendars,” have yet to appear in Outlook. The app was supposed to be shut down yesterday, but if you already have it on iOS or Android, you can continue using it for now. However, “once [the extra] features are released, the Sunrise app will officially be shut down,” it said.
Source: PC World
The Xperia XZ is the 2016 flagship phone Sony should’ve made first
Let’s not mince words: Sony’s smartphone might be on the upswing, but the company still needs a hit. With any luck, the new, unlocked Xperia XZ can change all that. It runs with the same Snapdragon 820 and 3GB of RAM as the earlier Xperia X Performance, but Sony squeezed that horsepower into a new beautiful new body and added a few tricks for good measure.
I have to hand it to Sony — the XZ feels incredible. It retains the sort of monolithic look and water resistance of other Xperia smartphones, but the edges of its metal-and-glass body are much rounder. The design is almost reminiscent of Nokia’s old Lumias, which is one of the highest compliments for a phone’s design I’ve got. If nothing else, I hope this take on the Xperia design language sticks around for a long time. The rest of the XZ is a little more prosaic: familiar chipset aside, it has a 5.2-inch 1080p display that looks just as good as Sony’s screens usually do, along with a 2,900mAh battery that Sony says is “optimized for all day use”. Throw in 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a microSD card slot and a USB Type-C port and you’ve got the Xperia XZ in a nutshell.
Exactly how interesting people will find that nutshell is the big question. If there’s a standout feature here, Sony is convinced it’s the camera. The XZ is fitted with a 23-megapixel Exmor RS sensor, not unlike the one in the X Performance. Rather than just transplant that camera from one device to another, though, Sony added a laser autofocus system to help the XZ find its targets faster and a sensor that simultaneously captures RGB and infrared images to make sure we’re getting consistently accurate colors and white balance. Meanwhile, there’s a 13-megapixel camera sitting above the display, which captured frankly great-looking selfies even in a room with bad lighting.
The improvements don’t end there, either. The camera now shoots 4K video, a feature that was conspicuously absent from the X Performance. Sony’s mobile team also worked with the people behind the company’s Alpha SLRs to improve the image stabilization here too, though we’ll see how well those claims bear out soon.
At the end of it all, I’m still pretty skeptical. Sony basically made the phone the X Performance should have been, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. This new industrial design is amazing. The camera is shaping up to be pretty impressive. Sony’s software is… well, that hasn’t changed much, but it has its fans. There’s a lot to like here, but whether or not lots will like the XZ is up in the air. (Hopefully its price tag isn’t quite as absurd — the X Performance was a fine phone but a terrible deal.)
What really concerns me is that with the XZ, Sony’s philosophy seems more focused on fixing oversights than pushing envelopes. For what it’s worth, the Sony staffers I spoke to while playing with the XZ seemed scrappy and bullish on their work — they know it’s going to be an uphill climb, but there was no indication that anyone had given up the fight. Between that and the XZ’s overall quality, Sony fans should feel (very) cautiously optimistic.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
Sony’s mid-range Xperia X gets a smaller spin-off
The new Xperia XZ might be the flagship phone Sony loyalists have been waiting for, but Sony’s still hasn’t given up on making small smartphones. That’s where the Xperia X Compact comes in — it’s more enticing a package than you might think given the company’s recent batch of love-em-or-hate-em devices, and it’s set to land the United States on September 25.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ll have forgotten what it was like to hold a phone this small. The X Compact packs a 4.6-inch 720p display, and the rounded body that surrounds it is, in a word, charming. Adorable, even. Holding one of these things is sort of like holding a thinner, longer iPod mini, which I’m certainly not complaining about. It even has a satisfying sort of density to it, thanks in part to the 2,700mAh battery tucked away inside. The rest of the hardware tour will sound familiar: this pint-sized device has 32GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a USB Type-C port and a water-resistant chassis, just like the XZ.
As it turns out, the display is a real pro in bright daylight too — it’s bright and vivid without seeming oversaturated, and I never really found myself missing the added resolution of a 1080p screen. Performance seemed just as respectable during our brief bit of playtime. The X Compact runs with one of Qualcomm’s hexa-core Snapdragon 650 chipsets, 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 510 GPU. That’s the same setup as — what else? — the original Xperia X, and for the most part, it seemed just as responsive. I was half-hoping to see even smoother performance because of Sony’s modified software and because the phone has doesn’t have to drive as many pixels on that smaller display, but we’ll see how things pan out when final hardware makes the rounds.
Around the back, you’ll find the same 23-megapixel, “triple-sensing” camera Sony built into the high-end XZ. Basically, in addition to the predictive autofocus that came as part of each Xperia X series smartphone, the XZ and Compact also have laser autofocus modules and an RGB/IR sensor for more accurate white balance. I was surprised for a moment to see that Sony didn’t skimp on the camera here, but that was silly of me. If nothing else, Sony gets credit for not dramatically watering down their more compact devices. That dedication to a very specific subset of smartphones is part of what I like about Sony’s mobile operation so much, and the Xperia X Compact leaves a great first impression.
We’re still not sure how much it’ll cost when it starts shipping later this month, but stick around — we’ll give this thing the full review treatment as soon as we can.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
HTC One A9s dons a familiar metallic design and cheaper tag
Last year we were left impressed with HTC’s premium mid-range One A9 smartphone: It was a good-looking phone with great build quality and great battery life, plus it was one of the first to ship with Android Marshmallow. It was apparently so “well received” that HTC decided to release a follow-up model. The new and supposedly more affordable One A9s features a near-identical metallic design plus the same fingerprint sensor on the front, with the main aesthetic changes being the earpiece is now shorter, the proximity sensor is in the middle and the front HTC logo is gone. Eagle-eyed folks will notice that the old 5-inch 1080p AMOLED display is now just a 720p Super LCD, so it better be a noticeable price drop.
The cost-cutting doesn’t stop there. The 13-megapixel main camera here has gone from f/2.0 to a slower f/2.2 (it’s likely no longer using the same nice Sony sensor) but still comes with RAW support, whereas the old UltraPixel front camera is now just an ordinary 5-megapixel imager. The old Snapdragon 617 has been replaced with MediaTek’s octa-core Helio P10 (8x Cortex-A53), but it’s hard to tell whether this is an upgrade or a downgrade just yet. At least we know that we’ll still be getting Cat 6 LTE and NFC here, just no 802.11ac WiFi.
Depending on where you’re buying the A9s, you may get either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage plus 2GB or 3GB of RAM, and you can expand storage space via microSD (up to 2TB). The built-in battery has been gently bumped up to 2,300mAh but there’s no fast charging feature this time, so here’s hoping the A9s has at least inherited the same impressive battery life optimization from its predecessor. What we do wish HTC had changed was the USB port: We’re already entering the last quarter of 2016 and HTC is still using micro-USB instead of USB-C; but then again, we’re not exactly short in micro-USB accessories, and it’s probably the least of HTC’s target audience’s worries in this price segment.
Speaking of, we’re still left in the dark in terms of actual price points: We’re only told that the A9s “will be very competitively priced at the mid-tier,” which doesn’t mean much given HTC’s track record. If priced right, the A9s’ fancy metallic design may still be compelling enough to help drive sales before the year ends.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
AIVAnet 