Motorola Moto G vs. Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3: The Tale of the Tape

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Things are looking up for smartphone shoppers on a budget. While many expensive flagships continue to progress on an iterative basis, the affordable end of the market is starting to fill up with more and more values. Perhaps the most recognizable of those values is Motorola’s Moto G, which gives a virtually unhindered version of Android for $180 unlocked. The newest of them is Alcatel OneTouch’s Idol 3, which gives a brilliant 1080p display and a long-lasting battery for $250 unlocked.

Motorola Moto G vs Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3

These are two great devices in their own right, but being as inexpensive as they are makes them killer. They give a side of the market that’s often starved of quality a means of not being frustrated with something they use all the time. They both avoid the inflexibility of a carrier contract, too. They’re both models for future budget devices to follow.

So, naturally, it’s time to pit them against each other. Per usual, we’re not here to tell you which one is better, because that $70 difference may mean more to some buyers than others. Instead, we’ll do a quick rundown of what you’re getting with each device, hopefully clarifying which option is right for you along the way. Here’s the tale of the tape between the Motorola Moto G and the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3.

Design

Value phones like these have greatly improved display and internal performance at the budget side of the market, but one area that invariably gets sacrificed to keep costs low is build quality. Neither the Moto G nor the Idol 3 buck that trend, but neither feels outright cheap. You’re getting straight plastic either way, but both Motorola and Alcatel have done a good job of making their designs comfortable to use.

Motorola Moto G vs Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 side

If you’ve at all familiar with the original Moto G, you’ll know what the latest model looks and feels like. Motorola rolls out virtually the same design language across its family of smartphones, so the Moto G is either a chunkier Moto X or a taller Moto E, depending on how you want to spin it. It’s clean and minimalist, with a rounded back, metallic buttons, a slim pair of speaker grilles on its front, and a little dimple placed underneath its modest camera lens. Its matte plastic coat isn’t slimy in the slightest, and features a marginal amount of splash resistance, which is always better than none at all.

The Idol 3 has few frills as well. It comes in a flatter, more rectangular shape, but its brand of plastic is similarly pleasant to the touch. A couple of inoffensive logos adorn its back, while a pair of tiny speakers sit on its front, sunken below the top and bottom of the display. Otherwise, there’s little here to shout about. The only potential misstep is the metallic plastic on its edges, which comes off a bit greasy, but even then it keeps the phone from slipping through your fingers.

Motorola Moto G

Where the Idol 3’s design most impresses is in its dimensions. It’s taller than the Moto G (152.7 mm vs. 141.5 mm) due to its more sizable screen, but it wastes less space around that display, and it’s significantly thinner (7.4mm vs. 11mm), too. It’s also a smidge lighter (141 g vs. 149 g), despite being a larger device. Neither of these phones are likely to wow you, but the Moto G has a bigger issue with ergonomics. It feels taller than it should be, whereas the Idol 3 is less of a hassle relative to most phablets.

Display

The main reason the second-gen Moto G is harder to handle than its predecessor is because it sacrifices the convenience of the original’s 4.5-inch IPS LCD display in favor of a spacious 5-inch panel. Size issues aside, it replicates many of the things Motorola got right with the first G’s display. Its colors skew a tad warm, and can’t match the fullness of a better OLED screen, but remain generally accurate. Its viewing angles are fine, as is its visibility in direct sunlight. It can get sufficiently bright, and the whole thing is as responsive as it needs to be. This is a far cry from the brilliance of a Galaxy S6, but it’s hard to expect that quality at this price anyways. It’s great for a sub-$200 phone.

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3

The only noteworthy problem with it is its resolution, which remains at 720p despite going up half an inch in screen size. That puts its pixel density at 294 pixels per inch, which isn’t low enough to bother you for most tasks, but does make for at least some jaggedness during certain animations or when you have the panel close enough to your face.

The Idol 3’s 5.5-inch 1080p screen, meanwhile, is about as good as we’ve seen on a budget phone. Again, you can’t expect the world here, but it wouldn’t look out of place on a phone twice as expensive. Virtually everything about it is at least good — it’s bright, it’s vivid, it’s roomy, and it’s visible in irregular settings. With 401 pixels crammed into each inch of its space, it has no worthwhile issues with sharpness either. It’s another LCD panel, so the deep black tones just aren’t there, but it’s a pleasure to behold all the same.

Internals

Powerful chipsets, especially those taken from a major manufacturer like Qualcomm, are expensive. Much like the design sacrifices mentioned above, just about all of these value phones (OnePlus One notwithstanding) hit their price points by using an older processor. Again, the Moto G and Idol 3 are no exception. The good news, though, is that these older SoCs are still beyond serviceable for just about everything you’re likely to do with your phone.

Motorola Moto G vs Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 top

Specifically, the Moto G deploys a Snapdragon 400, which consists of a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU and an Adreno 305 GPU. A sole GB of RAM accompanies that. These are actually the same specs Motorola used in the first-gen G, which is somewhat underwhelming as a business decision, but keeps the phone strong enough to get through everyday tasks without too much trouble. You’ll see some framerate drops when playing graphically demanding games, and you’re more likely to see a small delay in opening apps and menus, but nothing is ever sluggish enough to be unusable. At its worst, it’s a minor distraction. Most of the time, it’s a marked improvement over most sub-$200 devices. Having a near-stock version of Android allows older SoCs like this to run cleaner than they would with a skinned OS.

The Idol 3 uses a Snapdragon 615 SoC, which is made up of two quad-core Cortex-A53 processors (one clocked at 1.5 GHz, the other at 1.0 GHz) and an Adreno 405 GPU. It’s technically a 64-bit chip, and includes 2 GB of RAM as well. All of that sounds much more formidable than what the Moto G’s packing, but in practice the performance leap isn’t that large. It’s a little more adept at running multiple apps and more demanding games, but push it beyond ordinary use and you’re still liable to see some slowdown and feel the rear of the phone get hot. It isn’t head and shoulders above other devices in this price range the way the display is, but it’s a step up regardless. Alcatel’s Android skin is relatively light, but it’s still a skin, and that slightly levels the playing field between these two phones. There are very few, if any things you can’t do here that you could do on a $650 flagship. It just shows its effort a bit more.

Motorola Moto G vs Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 back

Both devices are formidable in the battery life department, too, though the Idol 3 generally goes longer. Despite having a higher-res display, its 2910 mAh battery can easily last more than a day with average use. Don’t go overboard with it and you can push that to two full days. The Moto G’s 2070 mAh pack can get beyond a day as well, but getting more than that requires a little more conservation. That’s not a glaring negative, though — if a phone can reliably get from sunrise to sundown without needing a charge, it’s fine, and both of these two fit the bill. The only issue is that both packs at virtually non-removable: The Moto G simply can’t be opened up, while the Idol 3 requires more handiwork than the trouble’s worth.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to praise the Idol 3’s audio, too. It lifts the dual front-facing speaker setup from HTC’s One series, and while it doesn’t quite reach the fullness of those devices, it’s capable of getting very loud while remaining crisp and clear. It’s another aspect of the device that punches well beyond what the phone’s price normally suggests. The Moto G puts its driver on the front of the device as well, but it’s more prone to muddier sounds by comparison. It’s just okay on the whole.

Storage wise, the Idol 3 again has a small advantage. It comes with either 16 or 32 GB of space by default, but that’s expandable up to 128 GB through a microSD card. The Moto G, meanwhile, features 8 or 16 GB of room, with up to 32 GB of additional space through microSD support. The fact that both of these phones support storage expansion at a time where many flagships are stripping it away is a major plus.

Software

The same sentiment applies for the Moto G and Idol 3’s software — whereas most Android flagships bog down the OS with thick, marginally helpful skins, these two stick closer to the spirit of Google’s default interface, providing cleaner and smoother experiences as a result.

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 home screen

The Moto G is especially commendable in this regard. Like the rest of Moto lineup, it runs what’s effectively a stock version of Lollipop, with all the same menus, animations, and icons you’d find in one of Google’s own Nexus devices (camera app aside). Since the phone comes unlocked, it also doesn’t come with any unwanted bloat either. Google has made its mobile OS much more welcoming to new users over the past few years, and Lollipop only adds to that by making the whole thing friendlier to look at. The only potential negative is that the G doesn’t have the processing power to pull off some of the nifty features that come on the Moto X, like its always-on voice controls. Still, you’re getting a better UI here than most flagships for a fraction of the cost, and that’s hard to complain about.

The Alcatel take on Android is farther-reaching, but not nearly as intrusive as the worst skins. It changes up the icons of the Idol 3’s core apps and uses its own camera interface, but those alterations are mostly just different, not necessarily worse. (They will look out of place next to stock Google icons if you’re coming from a purer version of the OS, however.) There’s also a small amount of pre-loaded bloatware, though all of it can be deleted from the phone without too much trouble.

Alcatel bakes in a few of its own features, too, including an eye scanner for locking the phone and a series of app shortcuts that can be plastered onto the lock screen, but those are mostly gimmicks that can easily be ignored or shut off entirely in the settings menu. Otherwise, actually navigating the Idol 3 is much like navigating regular ol’ Android. The nav buttons and menus all look the same, the card-based multitasking menu is still there, and there aren’t any redundant first-party apps or marketplaces looking to compete with Google’s own options. It looks a little different, though, and will likely require you to ignore a few extra features.

Camera

Motorola Moto G vs Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 cameras

Remember what we said about budget phones skimping on processing power to save cash? The same idea applies for their cameras, too, and it’s the same story with the Moto G and Idol 3. Suffice it to say that you won’t be buying either of these devices for their shooters. That said, neither one is as embarrassing as most of the cameras that litter this side of the market.

The Moto G’s 8-megapixel sensor is a major improvement over its predecessor’s 5-megapixel unit, but since the latter was pure garbage, that only results in something that’s merely respectable. It can take some decently exposed and detailed shots in well-lit settings, and it shoots much faster than the original G, but it’s never totally consistent. Low-light performance is predictably rough, but at least passable. There’s a halfway decent HDR mode in here, too. Motorola’s camera UI is eminently usable, with the only quirk being that you have to drag your focus point rather than tapping it to a specific point. It all makes for photos that are, if nothing else, good enough to be shared on social media. On the back, at least — the 2-megapixel front-facing cam is still shoddy.

Motorola Moto G

The Idol 3 is mostly the same story, though its 13-megapixel sensor allows for slightly sharper shots. It’s another mid-range cam that’s going to live and die by the lighting of your surroundings — go out during the day and it’s going to be fine, head into the dark and you might be reaching for the delete button before long. Much of the time, it offers good color and detail, and it’s never particularly laggy in shooting. Alcatel’s camera app gives some relatively granular controls for adjusting white balance, ISO, and the like if you feel like tinkering, but none of that ever gets in your way if you just want to open and shoot. The quality of the 8-megapixel camera on the Idol’s front stands out a bit more, especially in this price range.

Ultimately, camera quality is one of the last remaining things that today’s smartphone market really holds at a premium. There’s a tangible, obvious difference between the top-tier cameras and the mid-range ones, and to get the best you still need to shell out the cash for something like an iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6. These two value phones don’t change that.

Pricing and Availability

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 back

Neither the Moto G nor the Idol 3 are available through any carriers in the US, so you’ll have to buy them unlocked, either from the manufacturers themselves or a third-party retailer like Amazon. You’ll then have to supply them with their own SIM cards and set them up on either T-Mobile or AT&T, since both phones only support GSM networks at the moment. The Moto G is available for $180 unlocked, while the Idol 3 is out for $250. It should be clear by now that both are tremendous values, especially without the hidden costs of any carrier device plans.

The last thing to note here is a big one: As of this writing, the latest iteration of the Moto G sold in the US doesn’t support LTE. You’ll have to make do with HSPA+ speeds on T-Mobile and AT&T, which are reliable enough if you’re in the right coverage area, but not as zippy as their successor. (It’s also worth mentioning that the device doesn’t support T-Mobile’s faster HSPA+ 42 network.) An LTE-capable Moto G is available overseas — and includes a slightly larger battery — but for now that model hasn’t arrived Stateside. The Idol 3, meanwhile, has supported the quicker networks since its release earlier this month.

The post Motorola Moto G vs. Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3: The Tale of the Tape appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 Review: More of This, Please

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Good smartphones are too expensive. With the claws of the annual release cycle entrenched in the mobile market, the upgrades today’s high-end devices receive over their predecessors have become less and less significant. You can’t see the difference between a 5-inch 1080p display and a 5-inch 1440p one. The Snapdragon 810 isn’t letting you run anything the Snapdragon 801 couldn’t. There are only so many ways to show square icons in a grid, all performing similar tricks. You now get to charge your battery at 11am tomorrow instead of 11pm tonight. You can have your screen curved, because why not. The best smartphones are still miraculous things, and their yearly changes still make things better (usually), but the extent to which they do is shrinking. For that nebulous list of requirements we call “most people’s needs,” flagships have long since hit the point of diminishing returns.

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3

Yet their costs remain the same. Year after year, the public is sold something incremental under the guise of something revolutionary, the phone makers collect their $650, and the carriers get their fresh batch of contract signees. The slightly older phones are left behind, despite being plenty capable. The upgrades are staggered: This year the build gets improved, but wait until next year for the software to be cleaned up. Crucially, most affordable alternatives are designed to be subpar, neglecting the excess of quality materials in order to push you towards that higher tier. The milk keeps churning, with few exceptions willing to try something legitimately different. Most people just accept this, because overkill can still be effective, and having something deemed “the best” feels nice. The geekier among us will find the value in a slight spec bump or design refinement–and more power to them–but those who just want something good enough are usually paying for more than they need.

Which makes phones like the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 all the more essential. The finest handset the often irrelevant OEM has ever produced, the Idol 3 follows in the footsteps of the Moto G, OnePlus One, and Google’s Nexus phones by providing a refined experience at a price that doesn’t inflate its worth. For $250 unlocked, it brings a 5.5-inch 1080p display, a still useful Snapdragon 615 chipset, a beefy 2910 mAh battery, a light build with two powerful speakers, Android 5.0, and LTE connectivity. It’s a device that’s realistic about how far phones have progressed–nothing is world-class, but that doesn’t mean it’s incompetent. Instead, it’s another encouraging step towards lessening the gap between the contrived haves and have-nots of the smartphone world.

Let’s take a closer look at the device, which goes on sale later this month through Amazon and Alcatel itself. Please note that we’re reviewing the 5.5-inch version of the device–there’s also 4.7-inch model that will come with lesser specs across the board.

Build and Design

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 back

The Idol 3 isn’t the kind of phone that constantly reminds you that it’s inexpensive, but its design isn’t ever going to touch the classier digs of a Galaxy S6, One M9, or iPhone 6. Higher-quality build materials are most of what you’re paying for with those upper-tier devices; with something as affordable as the Idol 3, you’re still going to have a hard time avoiding plastic.

The good news is that this specific plastic doesn’t feel explicitly cheap. It’s smooth and understated, with a faint brushed pattern that comes off like it was crafted with care. For a point of comparison, it’s reminiscent of the comfortable material that made up the rear of the LG G3. The 13-megapixel camera on its back is neatly flattened and tucked away in the top left corner, while a pair of logos underneath that similarly avoids ostentatiousness. The slimy chrome trim that hugs around the phone’s edges is really the only thing that screams budget, but even then it looks fine, and it covers a quartet of comfortable, softly rounded edges. In general, the whole phone is tightly fused together, with no real creakiness or give to the materials involved.

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 camera

Per usual, one benefit of deploying all this plastic is that it keeps the phone light–at 141 grams, the Idol 3 isn’t nearly as hefty as most phablets. It’s also thin (officially measuring 152.7 x 75.1 x 7.4 mm), and for a phone with a 5.5-inch screen, it isn’t particularly unwieldy either. It’s inherently going to be too big for most to use easily with one hand, but with its reasonably sized bezels and small front-facing speakers, it doesn’t waste much of the space it’s already taken up. The fact that its power key and volume rocker (the only physical buttons here) sit in a more natural resting position near the top of its edges also helps make it a little more inviting to grasp.

It isn’t something with a distinct aesthetic, but the Idol 3 avoids the common budget phone trap of being another bland box. It’s the modest yet pleasant sort of design that we should expect out of most phones in this price range.

Display

Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 side

The aforementioned 5.5-inch, 1080p IPS LCD display is the Idol 3’s main attraction. In a vacuum, it’s good. In context, it’s phenomenal. Virtually everything required of a good smartphone screen is checked off here: Its colors are lively and accurate; its darker tones are fairly deep; its viewing angles are wide and don’t wash out objects on screen; it’s capable of intense brightness; it stays visible in sunlight; and with a pixel density of 401 ppi, it has no real issues with sharpness.

It can’t match the brilliant contrast of a top-tier OLED panel like the Galaxy S6’s, and it’s somewhat prone to smudges, but very few people would bat an eyelash if this screen was on a phone twice as expensive. It’s more evidence that the rung below the highest-end mobile tech is still beyond serviceable.

The post Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 Review: More of This, Please appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Logitech’s Keys-To-Go Is a Better Touch Cover for Android, iOS, and Windows

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard

How do you make something as inherently portable as a Bluetooth keyboard even more convenient? According to Logitech’s Keys-To-Go, you detach it from any burdensome covers, give it an spill-resistant and easily cleanable finish, add a bunch of nifty device shortcuts, and make the whole thing really, really thin.

Indeed, the $70 board—which launched late last year as an iOS-tailored accessory but is now available in Android/Windows form—nails much of what it’s going for, but it also presents a few problems that naturally arise when a keyboard prioritizes portability above all else. We’ve been using the Keys-To-Go with a handful of phones and tablets for the past few weeks, so let’s explain what we mean.

The basic premise of the Keys-To-Go is to replicate the compactness of something like a Surface ‘Touch Cover’ without spoiling the tactile feedback of a traditional typing experience. If you judge it by that vision, it’s a success. It measures a tight 5.39 x 9.53 x 0.24 inches, and at 6.35 ounces, it never feels like something you’re lugging around.

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard

That 0.24-inch mark is the key here—that’s an exceptionally slight number for an accessory like this. The whole thing isn’t full-size, but it’s wide enough to give each key a comfortable amount of room; we never found ourselves hitting too many buttons by accident. It looks most natural next to a full-size iPad or 10-inch Android tablet, but its wireless nature makes it work with smaller phone screens as well.

To obtain that level of thinness, the Keys-To-Go uses flattened keys that barely rise above the board’s surface. Again, it’s very much similar to the look of Microsoft’s Touch Covers—look at the device from the bottom edge and you’ll barely see anything jut out.

The difference is that these keys are, well, actual keys, not touchpads. There’s a give to them, and you don’t completely lose the fleeting sense of satisfaction that comes with physically clicking a button. There’s a pleasantly surprising feeling that comes with using this for the first time. If nothing else, it’s an impressive feat of engineering. It’s also extremely quiet, making it a little more useful for late-night or office sessions.

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard

All of this is aided by the soft, felt-like material that covers the front of the device. Logitech calls it “FabricSkin,” and, goofy branding or not, it feels more pleasing against your fingers than typical hard plastic. It’s the kind of thing you’ll find yourself absentmindedly rubbing your hand across when you’re not using it, something that isn’t usually said when describing a keyboard. Our unit came in black, but red, teal, and navy blue options are also available, depending on which model you buy.

The fabric also comes with the big benefit of being spill-resistant, so you won’t have to worry about any liquid-related mishaps sending your text into a tailspin. Drop some water on the keys and it’ll just sit there in a blob until you wipe it off. Having pressed-down keys makes cleaning the Keys-To-Go a breeze, too—without any crevices between the buttons, there’s no room for random gunk to burrow into.

As mentioned above, the Keys-To-Go doesn’t come connected to a full-on cover, so you can use it wherever without having to sacrifice any phone or tablet stand you may already own and enjoy. It does come with an attachable one of its own, and that’s serviceable enough, although it can’t hold a phone or tablet in place as sturdily as a more dedicated contraption.

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard

The front of the board is a familiar, no-frills affair, with the usual QWERTY setup joined by a number of shortcut keys tailored for either iOS or a combination of Android and Windows. We used the latter, which has buttons for returning to the home screen, bringing up the recent apps menu, opening your preferred email app, controlling music playback and volume, taking a screenshot, and checking the status of the keyboard’s battery and Bluetooth connection (via a small LED on the top bezel) in a row above the number keys. Towards the bottom of the device is a dedicated Windows key—which serves as a Google Search shortcut on Android but still looks awkward—and an in-app search key, along with quick options for copy, cut, and paste.

These shortcuts work as expected, save for the recent apps key, which automatically takes you to your last used app instead of displaying the usual list of open apps together. Most of them take up the spots typically occupied by the Fn keys, but the only worthwhile casualty there is the lack of a refresh button, which we missed while web browsing.

They also make it possible to navigate a fair amount of your phone or tablet without ever touching it, but since most apps are (naturally) tailored for touch, you’ll still wind up reaching out to access a particular menu every so often. That’s a strike against wireless mobile keyboards in general, but a minor one here, as you can largely use a browser, word processor, or email app (the things for which you’d want a keyboard in the first place) without having to move back and forth repeatedly.

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard

The back of the Keys-To-Go is made up of unicolor matte rubber, which has enough grip to keep the device from wobbling around on a flat surface. It’s a little less stable in your lap, however: We ran into a consistent, albeit minor, bit of shaking when using it on our person. It’s not severe enough to ruin things, but it’s an annoyance worth noting, especially since Logitech is selling the device on its portability. Cosmetically, it’s just as simplistic as the front, with only a faint Logitech logo at its center.

The sides of the device are almost entirely barren, with just a small on/off switch and a micro-USB port near the top of its right edge. Don’t expect to use the latter too often: Logitech claims that the Keys-To-Go’s battery can last up to three months on a single charge. We didn’t have our test unit long enough to verify that claim, but we can say that the device showed no signs of slowing down after being used off and on for three and a half weeks.

Almost everything we’ve described thus far—the thin and wireless build, the flat yet clickable keys, the water-resistant fabric, the built-in shortcuts—exists to make the Keys-To-Go supremely portable. All these features serve their purpose well, and they all allow the device to bypass many of the annoyances typically involved with Bluetooth keyboards.

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard

The problem is that “being supremely portable” shouldn’t be the primary goal of a keyboard in the first place. At least, it shouldn’t be to the extent that it is here. The softened keys have their benefits, but they come at the expense of truly comfortable travel and feedback. The fact that Logitech’s managed to give them some amount of give makes everything manageable, but they’re still an abridged version of the real thing. There’s a sense of uneasiness that comes with using the Keys-To-Go as a result, and it makes typing feel less like second nature. Too often we had to look down at our hands while typing in a way that’d be instinctual anywhere else.

The point of a keyboard is still to be something that easily facilitates typing—if you sacrifice too much in that direction to improve secondary concerns, those improvements are going to feel moot. In other words, using a keyboard this thin is great until you realize how little room it leaves to press things. The shallowness of the Keys-To-Go means that you have to hit everything with some solidity; hit the edges of certain keys in an attempt to type quickly and you’re likely to end up with a few missing letters. It’s something you can get used to over time, but applying a learning curve to something as basic as a keyboard feels like a step backwards, regardless of how nice that FabricSkin may feel.

Logitech Keys-to-Go Bluetooth keyboard menu

These issues would be more digestible if the Keys-To-Go was any cheaper, but with a current retail price of $70, it’s a much harder sell. There are alternatives with far superior action that cost anywhere from $10 to $40 less, and while many of those come attached to a case, we don’t think that lack of flexibility is more annoying that the lessened typing experience here. It’s not like the majority of them are outright thick either.

The Keys-To-Go is a worthwhile choice for people who don’t necessarily use their mobile device to get work done, but still want something more responsive than a virtual keyboard when browsing the web or typing out the occasional email. It’s low-maintenance and convenient in many ways, and ultimately, whether or not you’ll like it will depend on what you want out of device like this. For us, it sacrifices too much typing comfort to get to those conveniences, and it costs too much to have that sort of problem. It’s a higher class of Touch Cover, but that’s only worth so much.

The post Logitech’s Keys-To-Go Is a Better Touch Cover for Android, iOS, and Windows appeared first on Brighthand.com.

One Year Later, the OnePlus One is Still a Fantastic Value

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

In hindsight, the OnePlus One was a no-brainer. There are very few things people enjoy more than good products that are also cheap, and there are even fewer things that fit such a description in the world of smartphones. Google’s Nexus series had proven that there was a not insignificant amount of people willing to gobble up phones that were mostly high-end but sold on affordability, but the way in which the One came about seemed to catch people off guard.

OnePlus One

Here you had this Shenzhen-based startup, with its first ever phone (a device it called a “flagship killer”), barging its way into conversations usually dominated by the same five or six manufacturers. Even for a group whose roots are in an established company the way OnePlus is with fellow Chinese firm Oppo, this doesn’t happen often. But it did, despite naming its device after a basic math equation, despite running a strange and occasionally tone-deaf marketing campaign, and despite selling the phone through a truly convoluted “invite system” that prevented many people interested in the One from actually buying it.

OnePlus could get away with all of that, though, because the One’s price was so right. For $300, you got a genuine flagship, with a new chipset and big fancy screen and the works. It’s a simple pitch, but one that’s difficult for a market conditioned on a few familiar brands and that $600-700 high-end price point to trust. If you have a weirdly-named phone, from a company you’ve never heard of, at a price that’s half as expensive as the devices most similar to it, you’d think there has to be some sort of catch to it. But there isn’t, at least once you have the phone in your hands—there’s just a tremendous value.

It’s been just over a year since the One launched, and with a successor on the horizon, OnePlus has dropped the aforementioned invite system and made its current flagship available in the traditional way. Even with a new crop of flagships out and about, it’s still very much a phone worth grabbing. Here’s why.

The Specs Remain Strong

OnePlus One back

As has been the trend for a few years now, the annual spec boost between last year’s higher-end phones and those of this year isn’t terribly great. For most people’s needs, the One’s Snapdragon 801 SoC and 3 GB of RAM will keep any performance-related problems to a minimum. The phone can get a little hot if you push it with heavier tasks for an extended period of time, but we couldn’t say it has an overheating issue the way the newer Snapdragon 810 chipset does. In that sense, some of the One’s internals are arguably preferable to those within the LG G Flex 2, HTC One M9, and other 810 devices. For navigating the UI, opening up apps, gaming, and the vast majority of other tasks, it still flies. Although it can’t reach the peaks of newer SoCs, there’s still nothing here that you won’t be able to run with some speed.

The One’s 5.5-inch, 1080p LCD display seems a little more dated now that the Galaxy S6, Nexus 6, and LG G3 have started making 1440p panels the norm, but as we’ve argued in the past, that jump in resolution doesn’t bring many added benefits in and of itself. With a pixel density of 401 ppi, the One’s screen is still plenty sharp. Everything else about it is still fantastic, too. Colors can’t get as surreal as they can on a good OLED screen like the Galaxy S6’s, but they’re about as accurate as you can get on an LCD panel. Contrast is also beyond fine, and both the viewing angles and brightness levels here are fantastic. Again, it’s difficult to see many people complaining over something that’s consistently well above-average.

CyanogenMod 12S is Generally Excellent

Besides its price point, the other notable oddity about the One is the fact that it runs CyanogenMod—basically a lightly modified version of stock Android—instead of a custom skin or stock Android itself. Although OnePlus has experimented with a light skin of its own in recent months, CyanogenMod is still the default, and its latest 12S update started rolling out to One devices a couple of weeks ago.

OnePlus One CyanogenMod theme store

For the week or so we’ve been using it, it’s been great. The KitKat-based fork that shipped with the One was prone to bugs and other sketchy moments—our unit had a habit of turning on its flashlight uncontrollably, for instance, or preventing us from ever using the power button—but thus far the 12S experience has been noticeably smoother. Past iterations often wouldn’t let you forget that you were using a third-party mod, but, for now at least, the whole thing just comes off as a little more refined.

It’s better looking, too. CyanogenMod is essentially stock Android with a chunk of extra options thrown in, so using the One isn’t too different from using a Nexus device at its core. Really, it’s like the budget Nexus phone that never came last year. The icons, animations, and Material Design influences of stock Lollipop are all onboard, with no redundant apps or TouchWiz-style aesthetic clashes to confuse things. All of its own functions are well camouflaged within the standard interface. It’s Moto-like in its consistency, because it wisely doesn’t mess with the good things Google has created. There aren’t many phones that can claim that.

Where CyanogenMod shines is in all the extras it has on top of those good things. If you can think of any nifty addition a third-party Android OEM has baked into its custom skin, chances are in it’s in here too. There’s a suite of handy gesture controls, including a double tap to wake function and easy shortcuts for accessing the camera, flashlight, and music playback options. There’s an “ambient display” option that puts notification on the home screen in a low-power state. There’s an “adaptive brightness” one that does exactly what its name suggests. There’s a more granular level of security and privacy control, including a built-in number blocker and a “Privacy Guard” menu that lets you manage how much personal data various apps can access. There’s a fairly expansive theme store, and the ability to change themes on a per-app basis instead of messing with the entire UI. You can change the look of the info in the status bar. You can customize the layout of the notifications menu. You can create multiple user profiles—a feature that was in CyanogenMod before Lollipop included it.

You get the idea. All of these bonuses can be overwhelming if you dive too deep into them, but Cyanogen does a good job of neatly tucking them away and making them all optional. If you want to really mess around and customize your phone, you can, and that’s rewarding in its own way. It saves you some time, and lets you feel like you’re making this weird phone you ordered from China your own. But if you just want to put your apps on the home screen and end it there, the OS never feels like it’s pushing its tricks down your throat. Some of CyanogenMod’s extras aren’t always functional—its take on voice controls has a hard time picking up commands, for one—but most of them are, or at least can be useful. Now that it runs a little more crisply, it’s easier to recommend.

The Competition is Still Pricey

OnePlus One bottom

Beyond the fact that it’s just a good phone, the One continues to be viable a year after launch simply because it’s still more affordable than most of its peers. It’s $300-350 cheaper than this year’s flagships, which mostly offsets any drop-offs in power and build quality, but even compared to the high-end phones from last year, it remains bargain.

The Galaxy S5, One M8, LG G3, Moto X, and others go for around $500 unsubsidized these days, which is a definite step down, but isn’t really close to the mid-range tier that the One hangs around in. There just isn’t any other recent phone providing this kind of ability at this kind of price point. The only comparable competitor is the Moto G—that’s $120 cheaper, but also brings a decided decline from the high-end power of the One.

Now, There are Undeniable Issues…

OnePlus One camera

Lest we make it sound like everything about the One is sunshine and roses, it’s worth noting that it does have some faults that gradually reveal themselves as you use it more often. It’s still a top-tier purchase, but as a phone it has clear imperfections.

Battery life is the primary concern: Even after applying the CyanogenMod 12S update, we’ve been lucky to get through a single day with any juice leftover. With average use, we’re usually in need of a charge by the time the evening rolls around. You can see percentage points drop off in real time just by browsing the web or checking Twitter—play a session of a graphics-heavy game like Hitman Go and bigger chunks will be chopped off by the time you’re done. It’s something that gets worse as time goes on, and the fact that the 3,100mAh pack is non-removable makes things that much more troubling. The one plus (!) here is that the One’s proprietary charger is quick to fill the device back up.

The rest of the device isn’t shabby at all, but looks a little worse for wear as the past year has gone by. The 13-megapixel main camera wasn’t a world-beater when the One first launched, but now it’s especially meh in light of the spectacular efforts put out by the Galaxy S6 and most recent iPhones. Like most mediocre Android cameras, it’s capable of taking some detailed, accurately colored shots in good lighting conditions, but struggles with noise and softness in darker surroundings. Its autofocus is quick, and its camera app is simple, but you can get higher quality shots on most of its competitors.

OnePlus One side

The One’s design also feels somewhat dated after the general uptick in build quality that’s infiltrated Android phones over the past few months. The “sandstone” texture that makes up its rear is legitimately unique, but it doesn’t evoke the kind of high-end feel that a good aluminum, glass, or even wood (in the Moto X’s case) back can provide. It’s an odd material more than anything, and while it’s not cheap, it comes off as one of the areas where OnePlus compromised to meet its price point. It also scratches easily, though the fabric is such that those can be wiped away without much trouble. It does deserve credit for being more than your everyday black rectangle, at least.

Most everything else is just a heap of minor quibbles, the kind of things that don’t mean much individually but add up to remind you that this is still a $300 phone. Call quality is rough. The speakers are loud but not full. There’s no microSD support (though for $50 more you can get 64 GB of storage by default). The phone’s body is light enough, thin enough, and curved enough to feel comfortable in the hand, but it’s a smidge too tall, making one-handed use more difficult than it is on other phablets of a similar size. CyanogenMod is solid, but it’s not from Google, so OS updates like the recent 12S one take much longer to roll out here than they would on a Nexus or Moto device. Then there’s the fact that you’re buying directly from a Chinese startup, which brings up a host of potential warranty and support service issues.

…But More Phones Like This Need to Exist

OnePlus One

Still, this is a $300 phone in a $500 phone’s body. Smartphones today have gotten boring, because they’ve hit somewhere close to the peak of most of the things that matter. Annual spec boosts can only push them so far. Annual design revamps can only come so often before they start to feel like change for change’s sake. The phone makers want to innovate, because that can sell, but there isn’t much more they can do with a formula most users have grown comfortable with.

So how can we liven all of this up? With more phones like the OnePlus One, and more devices that make the good stuff affordable for more people. You’re not making a statement by buying a smartphone, but fostering the growth of devices like this (and the Moto G, and the Moto E) can at least make it feasible for people who aren’t rolling in it to enjoy similar pleasures as the people who are. Inexpensive doesn’t have to be a bad word. The margins are thinning at the top of the market, but devices like the One allow more love to be shared in the middle. It did this a year ago, and it still does it today.

The post One Year Later, the OnePlus One is Still a Fantastic Value appeared first on Brighthand.com.

HTC One M9 vs. Apple iPhone 6: The Tale of the Tape

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Want a smartphone that looks good and feels like it’s worth the price of admission? If you dig Android, you have plenty of options, but your best bet probably still comes from HTC, this year in the form of its smooth, all-aluminum One M9. If you dig the iPhone, you have, well, the iPhone, which is still heavy on the metal and arguably as comfortable in the hand as it’s ever been. (You also have the big iPhone, which is bigger and stronger but a bit unwieldy by comparison.)

HTC One M9 vs. Apple iPhone 6

The One M9 and iPhone 6 have their failings, but in terms of giving off that pure, “Wow, I’m happy to be holding this” kind of feeling, they are two of the best. So which one might be right for you? Well, to help you better understand what you’re looking at, let’s run down what each flagship brings to the table. Here’s another tale of the tape.

Design

As noted above, these are two phones that really accentuate professional feeling build quality and a clean, consistent aesthetic. They’re both primarily made of metal, meaning that they’re more solid, more sturdily put together, and cooler to the touch than any plastic counterparts.

Having aluminum on your phone doesn’t change how you use it—you’re still texting and browsing and gaming the same way—but because so many of today’s flagships are effectively identical on the spec sheet, it’s one way to feel like you’re getting a better value for your dollar. It makes each device more susceptible to scratches, and it prevents both from being water-resistant, but ultimately we think the improved feel outweighs any functionality-related cons here.

All of this goes out the window if the phones aren’t comfortable to hold, but thankfully neither device comes up short in that regard. The One M9 is really just an incremental deviation from last year’s One M8, which itself was an incremental deviation from the original One, so it keeps the same curved back that made phones fit snugly in the hand. It also sharpens the edges of its predecessor, making that metal finish a little less slippery, and relocates its power button from the top of the phone to a more convenient position on the right edge.

The changes do make for a slightly unseemly gap where the rear coat of aluminum ends, but it hardly makes the phone look sloppy. Less acceptable is the return of the “HTC bar” across its front, which has no discernible purpose other than chewing up unnecessary screen space and making the One taller than it needs to be. Outside of that, the One M9 takes the same cues as the Ones before it. It’s not the most exciting look for mobile industry diehards, but then again most people don’t buy a new flagship every year. We’ll take an improved version of something that doesn’t need much work over an unnecessary risk that could crash and burn—for one more year, at least.

Apple iPhone 6

The iPhone 6, meanwhile, is a more drastic evolution. It’s taller and heavier than its predecessor, the iPhone 5s, and it features more rounded edges that slide nicely into your palms. It too moves its power button from the top to the side. It’s still very much an iPhone, however, and so it features a similar design language most everywhere else. Its back is totally flat, and its front includes a lone home button, which is equipped with another highly responsive fingerprint scanner. The One doesn’t have one of those, but it’s not exactly a crucial omission, and it might not be such a huge loss given HTC’s past struggles with such tech on the One Max.

If you want something compact, neither device is outright “small,” but the iPhone is the more diminutive of the two. Even after boosting the 5s’ dimensions, it’s still wonderfully light (at 129g) and even thinner (at 6.9mm, compared to 7.6mm) than before. Much of that comes down to the fact that it has a smaller screen, but it’s still the rare high-end phone that’s actually usable with one hand almost all the time.

The One M9, on the other hand, isn’t what we’d call “chunky,” but it’s slightly heavier (157g) and thicker (9.6mm) than some of its top-tier Android competitors. We could see the One M9 being too tall (at 144.6mm) for certain smaller hands, but it’s not cumbersome for its size.

Display

Neither display can match the brilliance of the Samsung’s Galaxy S6’s, but they’re still high-quality enough to belong on an expensive flagship. The One M9 sports a 5-inch, 1080p panel that’s very much similar to that of the One M8, while the iPhone 6 carries a 4.7-inch, 750 x 1334 resolution display that’s a big major leap in size from the its predecessor’s 4-inch equivalent.

HTC One M9

Both are somewhat conservative in light of the 1440p panels put out by the Galaxy S6, Nexus 6, LG G3, and others, but between the two, the One M9 is both bigger and more pixel dense. The extra 0.3 inches of space doesn’t sound like much on paper, but spend a long enough time perusing YouTube or Netflix on a 5-inch screen before shrinking down again and the difference is noticeable. Media consumption is just more enjoyable on a bigger screen.

And at 441 ppi, you have less chance of finding the odd lapse in sharpness on the One; the iPhone 6’s pixel density of 326 ppi—the same as the 5s—is closer to Android flagships from a couple of years ago. Even still, that difference is imperceptible to the naked eye more often than not.

Both screens are of the IPS LCD variety—technically, HTC uses a variant called Super LCD3—so you won’t get quite the same level of deep colors and contrast you’d get on a good OLED display, but again, they’re plenty rich in their own right. If we had to nitpick, the iPhone gets you deeper black tones and is generally calibrated better, as the One projects a slight greenish tint that can be distracting if you hone in on it. Other than that, both displays can get plenty bright and remain visible under sunlight.

These two could be more efficient in their display-to-body ratios, however. The One makes more out of its available space—its screen takes up 68.5% of its front, while the iPhone’s takes up 65.8% —but we’ve seen thinner bezels on competing devices for some time now. The tops and bottom ones in particular could stand to be diminished on both phones.

Internals

Apple iPhone 6

Here’s another area where the apparent discrepancy between the One and iPhone’s spec sheets doesn’t do their real-world experiences justice. On paper, common thinking would suggest that the One M9’s Snapdragon 810 chipset—made up of four high-performance 2 GHz Cortex-A57 cores, four low-power 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 cores, and an Adreno 430 graphics processor—and 3 GB would run circles around the iPhone’s Apple A8 SoC, with its dual-core 1.4 GHz CPU, quad-core GPU, and lone GB of RAM.

In practice, the greater level of harmony between the iPhone 6’s hardware and software makes it nearly as fast, and in some cases faster, than many of its Android rivals, the One M9 included. This has been the case for a while now, but because iOS is made by Apple, for Apple devices, the iPhone is consistently capable of zipping through games, apps, web pages, and the like with minimal delays or stuttering. There are very few, if any, things that both ordinary and power users won’t be able to run comfortably on the iPhone 6.

HTC, meanwhile, has to throw stronger and stronger chips at its heavier Android skin each year to keep up with the Joneses, and for the most part that works out fine. The One M9, like the One M8 and One M7 before it, is undoubtedly fast and capable—especially for everyday tasks, it loads up and runs most things without much of any issue.

Push it a little bit harder, though, and you can actually notice slight drop-offs from last year’s model. Those issues largely fall at the feet of Qualcomm, unfortunately: The Snapdragon 810 has some well-publicized issues with overheating, and certain functions can take longer to get going with prolonged use as a result. As we’ve said before, this isn’t enough to really ruin most people’s experience—it’s likely faster than nine out of ten Android devices even with the 810’s shortcomings—but it prevents you from going on auto-pilot with the One M9 the way you can with something like the Galaxy S6. The heat and subsequent delays can get in the way of whatever you’re doing, and we’re at a point now where the highest-end phones are moving beyond that.

HTC One M9

As far as battery life is concerned, the One M9 and iPhone 6 are just okay, at least next to their flagship counterparts. Whereas today’s top-of-the-line devices get you close to a day and a half of power with everyday use, both the One and the iPhone usually top out before the average day is done. It’s not uncommon for either to die out even before then. Technically, the One’s 2840 mAh pack is beefier than the iPhone’s 1810 mAh unit, but in both cases you’ll pay for forgetting to charge your device before bedtime. That’s not the end of the world, but it’s another annoyance many other flagships have overcome. The fact that neither battery is removable doesn’t help either.

One phone does have the advantage in storage, however. The One M9 comes with 32 GB of space by default, which is about average for a modern flagship but still twice as much as the entry-level iPhone. More importantly, it also supports microSD cards, allowing you to add up to an extra 128 GB of room whenever you see fit. Additional iPhone models come with 64 GB and 128 GB of storage built in, but those are $100 and $200 more expensive, respectively. Simply adding microSD support would make Apple’s devices a better bargain, but we wouldn’t hold our breath for that happening anytime soon.

Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the One M9’s pair of front-facing “BoomSound” speakers. They’ve spawned some excellent clones on competing devices, but listening to media without headphones is still superb on the originator of the trend. Apple’s single-output speaker isn’t shoddy at all, but it provides the kind of audio that’s good for a smartphone. The One M9’s are just solid speakers in general—full, loud, and capable of covering the low and high ends properly.

Software

Apple iPhone 6 bottom

Telling you Android is better than iOS or vice versa is a fruitless endeavor at this point—there was a time years ago where you could argue iOS’ app advantage was too overwhelming for Google to overcome, but, on phones at least, that difference has largely shrunk, and the latest Lollipop update has made Android just as pretty as it is functional. Any concerns about Android’s general security or sloppiness have mostly been tidied up as well.

The lines have been clearly drawn by now: iOS is generally easier to grasp (though navigating the basics of Android is decidedly not rocket science) and usually the default platform for app developers, while Android is more flexible, customizable, and integrated with Google’s various services. The latter puts its apps in a drawer, the former doesn’t. They’re both not Windows Phone. For people who just want to do the basics, they won’t feel too different.

The thing to note here is that HTC doesn’t run “Android” in the purest sense, unlike how iPhone only runs iOS the way Apple intended. Instead, it runs the latest iteration of Sense UI, an HTC-made skin plastered on top of Lollipop. This doesn’t carry the same charm or smoothness as the stock OS, but actually using it isn’t much different than the genuine article. It’s got some nifty features of its own, too, like the ability to double-tap the display to wake it, a theme store for added visual customization, and a (totally optional) “BlinkFeed” homescreen that aggregates content from your various social media feeds and preferred news sources. iOS isn’t capable of anything like that.

HTC One M9 side

Then again, iOS also doesn’t have to deal with a bunch of redundant pre-loaded apps the way Sense UI does. It also runs faster and carries a more consistent, understated aesthetic. You’ll never go through a four-month delay waiting for the next version of iOS when you own an iPhone, either, because Apple makes the phone and the software it runs on. You do run that risk when you buy an Android phone from a third-party manufacturer like HTC. Ultimately, it’ll come down to how much you want to get out of your device.

Camera

This is the one area where we can’t talk about these two as if they’re equals: The iPhone 6’s camera is better than the One M9’s, and really it’s not that close. HTC has made a few smart moves with the One M9’s camera setup—ditching the gimmicky (albeit fun) Duo Camera depth sensor of the One M8, moving its 4-megapixel “UltraPixel” shooter to the front, and beefing the main unit up to 20.7-megapixels—but the actual quality of its photos hasn’t improved as much as all of that suggests.

For selfies, that repurposed cam on the front holds up alright. Goofy branding aside, HTC’s UltraPixel tech is designed to work well in low-light surroundings, so it plays nice with any spontaneous bar or concert shots you and your pals may want to take. Four megapixels is sharp enough for a front-facing shooter, too. It doesn’t touch the 13-megapixel unit on the face of HTC’s own Desire Eye, but it’s at least a class above the iPhone’s grainy 1.2-megapixel equivalent.

On the back is where it matters most, though, and it’s mostly no contest around there. The One M9 is capable of some great shots in sunlight, and the megapixel boost makes it so sharpness is never too much of an issue. In fact, it can pack more detail at its best than the iPhone 6’s 8-megapixel shooter.

Apple iPhone 6 side

That’s the case with many Android cameras, though. In less-than-ideal surroundings, the One M9 has an affinity for overexposure, and sometimes leads colors to bleed into each other. Its low-light performance is especially rough, often plagued by mushy textures and a lack of brightness. It can also suffer from some shutter lag. It isn’t outright bad, but it isn’t flagship-level either.

The iPhone’s camera, meanwhile, continues to be one of the best on the market. What it lacks in resolution it more than makes up for in consistency—in daytime, low-light, and most settings in between, it presents accurate colors, minimal noise, and precise exposure. And it’s not like having just eight megapixels presents it from capturing enough detail either. It doesn’t come with optical image stabilization, which is unfortunate, but the digital autofocus system that is onboard is suitable enough. All of this comes in an easy-to-comprehend UI, though the One M9 can largely claim the same.

Price

HTC One M9

These are two flagships, and as such they both come at flagship prices. The One M9 is available on all four of the “big” US carriers—Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile—for anywhere between $600 and $700 unlocked, or $200 with a two-year contract.

The iPhone 6 is out on those same four, along with US Cellular and Boost Mobile, for $650 unlocked or the same $200 with a two-year agreement.

One last thing to note is that the iPhone has been out for close to seven months at this point, so it has a shorter period of time before the inevitable iPhone 6s makes it “dated” later this fall. The One M9, on the other hand, only arrived in early April, giving you at least another 11 months to wave it around as a shiny new toy.

The post HTC One M9 vs. Apple iPhone 6: The Tale of the Tape appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Windows Phone Home: Breaking Down Microsoft’s App Problem

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Windows Phone has been plagued with many problems over the years—its lack of an obvious flagship like the iPhone or Galaxy S, its miniscule third-party OEM support, or just the fact that it tried joining the market after the Android-iOS reign had already begun to take shape—but the most immediate issue facing any user of Microsoft’s mobile OS remains the general shoddiness of its app selection.

Windows Phone 8.1 home screen

It’s a strange world where Microsoft—with various antitrust cases not far off in its rearview—can be considered an underdog, but such is the state of a smartphone industry where close to 95% of people are centralized in two controlling powers. Regardless of how comfortable we may be without our smartphones today, there is danger in getting too comfortable with a duopoly, and Microsoft still stands in the best position to provide some sort of competition.

Its OS, Windows Phone 8.1, is genuinely unique, with a clean, easy-to-use interface and a growing feature set that’s at least competitive with its two larger rivals. Many of those who use it like it. Many of those who’d give it a chance probably would like it. It just needs the apps to convince anyone to give it that chance.

Still, saying “it just needs the apps” sells the extent of Windows Phone’s dilemma short. Microsoft has made strides to get more developers onto its system, but sheer numbers have only been a minor part of its problem. Things could all change with the forthcoming Windows 10 update and its “universal apps” initiative, but for now, the issue is more multi-faceted.

To show you what we mean, let’s take a look at five of the most recognizable apps that Windows Phone still lacks. With each one, we’ll glean a different angle to the app woes that are helping to keep Microsoft from being a competitive alternative to the dual kingdoms currently in place.

Snapchat and the Chicken/Egg Problem

The saga of Snapchat and Windows Phone has been well-documented, but it probably best exemplifies the basic chicken and egg problem at the heart of the Microsoft’s mobile endeavors. The video/picture messaging app is one of the highest-profile programs to outright ignore Microsoft’s platform, mostly because it doesn’t feel like it has to, thanks to Windows Phone’s small market share (roughly 3% worldwide, per IDC). This is a case where Microsoft really isn’t even at fault—it’d probably love to have Snapchat onboard, but it doesn’t have enough leverage when developers don’t need it to succeed.

So we get a situation where a big company doesn’t want to build for Windows Phone because it’s unpopular, which in turn keeps Windows Phone unpopular, which in turn helps keep some developers from building for it, and on and on and on. Snapchat’s version of that cycle is particularly stinging for Windows Phone users, because it’s blocked any third-party alternatives (including WP developer Rudy Huyn’s popular 6Snap) for apparent security issues.

YouTube and the Third-Party Alternative Problem

Windows Phone 8.1 app store

Speaking of third-party alternatives to culturally significant apps you can use without a hassle on Android and iOS, YouTube is another app that isn’t available on Windows Phone. At least, not officially. Forget for a second that YouTube is run by Google—we’ll get to that bag of worms in a bit. The more pressing problem highlighted by YouTube’s absence is the number of shoddy, sometimes barely functional clones that have spawned in its wake.

The lack of key partnerships has led Windows Phone to rely on these sort of alternatives to widely-used programs, and while it’s not impossible for them to be great (the aforementioned Huyn is an example of someone who usually gets them right), more often than not they’re inferior by comparison, and come with a higher risk of breaking or losing support down the road. How could they not be?

It’s not just one or two of these things either—searching for something like YouTube on the OS returns a flood of knock-offs, all vaguely described in the hopes of being downloaded, each one more bumbling than the last. Android can have this problem too, but it usually winds up giving you the app you want. Windows Phone is not a minor league OS, but it certainly feels like one when you see some of the messes its lacking app store has caused.

Twitter and the Dead App Problem

Windows Phone has a Twitter app, which you can download and use and delete as you see fit. But it doesn’t have the Twitter app, the updated, more heavily-featured one that Android and iOS users have been treated to for the past few months. That version is more consistent with the full-on Twitter website, supports GIFs, lets you create and check lists, comes with dedicated sections for certain special events, and generally runs smoother than its Windows Phone counterpart.

This is the “dead app” problem, in which developers put updating the Windows Phone versions of their apps on the tail end of the backburner because they figure not enough people are using them. Twitter is far from the only popular app to do this, too—Bank of America, for instance, recently killed off any support for its Windows Phone variant, outright telling users to “just go to” its mobile website instead. Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn, and others have had their moments as well.

Windows Phone 8.1 Twitter app

This is one issue that could feasibly be solved by Windows 10’s universal apps solution, because Windows PCs are treated with more respect than their mobile counterparts. For now, though, it demonstrates how Windows Phone’s apps conundrum doesn’t solely come down to what it doesn’t have.

The Gaming Problem

Instead of naming one particular hit game Windows Phone is missing, it’s more accurate to just cite the category as a whole. Few companies have had the kind of success in the living room that Microsoft has had with its Xbox consoles, but when it comes to mobile gaming, Windows Phone is a wasteland.

You’re just not going to find things like Threes!, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery, or Kim Kardashian: Hollywood on Microsoft’s OS; if you do, it’s usually going to come months or possibly years after they launch for Android and iOS. These kinds of games routinely top the “most downloaded” charts on Google Play and the App Store, so it goes without saying that their absence here is a big loss, both for Windows Phone users and Windows Phone itself.

More importantly, you’re far less likely to find the next hit game on Windows Phone—similar to how you’re far less likely to find the next Tinder or Uber or Meerkat or any other would-be hit from a smaller startup. We single out gaming here because it’s particularly flush with independent studios, but if the companies with cash can find little incentive to create for Microsoft, it’s hard to imagine the ones without it doing any different. There’s a feeling of hopelessness that permeates the experience of owning a Windows Phone in that sense, and it’s strong enough to keep people from ever wanting to jump onboard.

Microsoft has taken some steps towards making developing for Windows Phone less of an involved process, but it must continue to realize that very few people will go out of their way to make something specifically for its struggling platform. It needs to try to level the playing field, then use Windows Phone to accentuate its particular reach and strengths.

Windows Phone 8.1 app store games

For all intents and purposes, the Redmond company understands this. And again, its universal apps strategy could prove especially fruitful when it comes to gaming, since it doesn’t need to do nearly as much convincing to get studios to create for Windows PCs or the Xbox One. Earlier this year, the company noted that Windows 10 would allow for Xbox One games to be streamed on Windows 10 computers or tablets, but if it can get those sort of console experiences over to phones (or get developers to carry them over smoothly), it could give Windows Phone a noticeable boost with the game-loving crowd.

Gmail and the Google Problem

Because this is Windows Phone, we’re not going to end on hope and promise. Instead, we’ll turn to something that doesn’t have a possible resolution on the horizon: Windows Phone’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Google.

It’s the simplest of all the issues here, and it’s another one that’s been plenty harped on by now: There are no official Google apps on Microsoft’s mobile OS. Gmail is the most used email service in the world, Chrome is its most popular browser, YouTube provides the fodder for so much of popular culture’s conversations, Google Maps guides millions every day—and they’re all nowhere to be found. This is despite the fact that they’re all on iOS, and the fact that Microsoft has ported a handful of its big-name programs over to Android.

It’s that last thing that gives off the greatest sense that, at the very least, it might be a long time before Windows Phone has a chance of ever getting on the same level as Android or iOS. It’s not dumb of Microsoft to say, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” but it’s the kind of thing that can alienate the people who’ve already committed themselves to the company’s OS. Microsoft has gained some momentum in recent months, and Windows 10 may spark a rejuvenation of its mobile efforts, but as it stands today, we’re entrenched in a system where your choices are effectively limited.

The post Windows Phone Home: Breaking Down Microsoft’s App Problem appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge vs. LG G Flex 2: The Tale of the Tape

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Nobody needs a curved smartphone. For all the breathless praise that’s surrounded devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and LG G Flex 2, for all the marketing hype that’s pimped them and will continue to pimp their successors going forward, slightly bending part of a smartphone has yet to make that phone more useful.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge vs. LG G Flex 2

This isn’t a step forward for mobile computing—it’s a gimmick, a thing whose highest aim is to attract glances on the subway. It’s innovation for kicks, mostly purposeless but distinct enough to justify a higher-than-normal price tag. Software made to utilize curved hardware is virtually non-existent, and the phones themselves aren’t any more comfortable to hold than a standard phone with rounded edges. Any benefits they bring in day-to-day use—like, say, the way the G Flex 2 puts the loudspeaker closer to your ear during a call—are marginal at best. They just look cool.

But here’s the thing: That’s totally fine. The tech world is filled with ostensibly pointless creations that only exist because they look nice and feel like they point to the future; just look at every smartwatch that’s launched in the past two years. What’s more, things like that need to exist, if only because it allows us to figure out if they have any practical value. Weirdness and experimentation (and money) is what makes consumer technology breathe.

So if you can afford it and you’re interested, please, buy a Galaxy S6 Edge or G Flex 2. Neither does much of anything with their respective curves, but they’re high-quality devices regardless, and proving that there’s an audience for these things may make their inevitable follow-ups more than just eye candy. If nothing else, they’ll always look cool. Maybe that’s enough.

Before you run off to pick one up, though, it’s worth taking a look at what each device brings to the table. We’ve done this kind of thing before, but today we’re stacking the S6 Edge and G Flex 2 side by side. Just like last time, our goal isn’t to tell you which device is better, because different users will always have different tastes. Instead, we’re using the spec sheets and our own experiences with the devices to help you better understand what you’re looking at, just in case you ever find yourself choosing between the two. Here’s the tale of the tape for these two bent wonders.

Design

As noted above, even if neither the S6 Edge nor the G Flex 2 takes full advantage of their curves, they’re both stunning to look at. They’re also sequels to less successful stabs at modified displays—the Galaxy Note Edge and G Flex (1), respectively—but both phones improve on their predecessors’ designs.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

The Galaxy S6 Edge makes the most dramatic gains. We’ve told you how much we enjoy the reworked build and finish of the Galaxy S6 in the past, and the S6 Edge shares almost the exact same build. It’s got the same smooth aluminum trim and glass back, it’s only a hair thicker (at 7mm, compared to 6.8mm on the regular S6), and at 132 grams, it’s wonderfully light, even more so than its sibling. It also has Samsung’s traditionally blasé design language on its front and a camera that juts too far out of its back, but as with the S6, the rest of the build’s quality makes those annoyances easy enough to look past.

The only difference is that the sides of the S6’s display are gently curved downwards. The effect is much less jarring than the one-sided bend of the Note Edge, and it comes off as more natural-feeling as a result. It’s a little more awkward in the hand than the standard S6, but it’s far from unusable—and again, it’s distinct.

The G Flex 2 is largely made of plastic, which is smooth to the touch but still feels a fair bit cheaper than the finishes of most modern high-end handsets. It’s both heavier (152g) and thicker (9.4mm) than the S6 Edge, but it also has a larger display, and relative to its size it isn’t a burden to hold. It’s sturdily put together in spite of its plastic, and like other recent LG phones, all of its physical keys are placed on the rear of the device, which remains more comfortable to use than stretching your fingers around the sides.

LG G Flex 2

Its back also features the same “self-healing” properties of the original G Flex, which gives you a small amount of resistance to light scratches and dings. In fact, the G Flex 2’s damage resistance is probably the best thing it has going for it—the whole phone can be pushed straight but is exceedingly difficult to break, allowing you to accidentally drop or sit on it without fear of busting it apart.

Of course, what makes the G Flex 2 stand out the most is just how curved it is. Unlike the S6 Edge, it warps the entirety of the device, bending the whole phone inward like a futuristic banana. It leaves a greater impression, but once again, it doesn’t make the phone as awkward to hold as it might first appear. It takes some getting used to, sure, but it isn’t much of a leap from using something like the LG G3—it just bulges out of your pocket a little bit more.

Display

Both phones come with excellent displays, but the 5.1-inch Super AMOLED screen on the S6 Edge is well above average. Like the S6’s panel, it has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, which is normally reserved for phablets. It’s good for a crazy high pixel density of 577 pixels per inch, which is mostly overkill, but prohibits any momentary lapses in sharpness unless you view your phone under a microscope. It also excels with the kind of lively colors and deep black tones that only top-notch OLED tech can provide. Viewing angles, brightness levels, and outdoor visibility are all above-average too.

The G Flex 2 isn’t quite as overpowered, but its 5.5-inch P-OLED screen still belongs on a flagship device.. It’s a 1080p panel that equates to a pixel density of 403 ppi, which is plenty crisp for everyday use. It too does a great job with coloring and contrast, viewing angles, and brightness. It generally isn’t as eye-popping as the S6 Edge’s display, but it’s more spacious, and it has a slightly higher screen-to-body ratio (about 74% to the Edge’s 71%).

Internals

The S6 Edge runs on the same guts as the regular S6: an Exynos 7420 chipset courtesy of Samsung itself, which is made up of a quad-core 2.1GHz Cortex-A57 processor for more intensive tasks and a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 processor for the basics. That’s joined by a Mali-T760MP8 GPU and 3 GB of RAM.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge top

The G Flex 2, meanwhile, sticks with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 810 SoC, which carries nearly the same big.LITTLE setup save for a Cortex-A57 CPU that’s clocked at 2GHz. It features an Adreno 430 GPU and either 2 GB or 3 GB of RAM depending on which model you purchase. (We used the 3 GB model in our testing.)

In a vacuum, both phones are more than strong enough to handle anything you throw at it. Games, movies, heavy webpages, opening and loading multiple apps—the Exynos and the Snapdragon can run fast and smooth them all. Casual, ordinary use with these two is a breeze.

It’s when you ramp things up over a longer period of time that you start to see some differences. Samsung, long one of Qualcomm’s biggest partners in the US, opted to use its traditionally overseas-only Exynos chip in its highest-profile phones this year in large part because the 810 has a tendency to overheat when pushed too hard.

This doesn’t cripple the G Flex 2’s performance, but it does produce some tangible warmth, and it makes the device more likely to see choppiness under duress than a high-end phone should be. The Exynos is more consistent and energy-efficient by comparison, aided in part by its use of the Universal Flash Storage 2.0 standard to get faster read and write speeds. Along with the regular S6, it is likely the fastest Android phone on the market today.

Outside of pure performance, the entry-level S6 Edge carries 32 GB of storage space, twice as much as the entry-level G Flex 2. The former comes in 64 GB and 128 GB variants at a higher cost, while the latter maxes out at 32 GB by default. However, in its attempt to tighten up its flagship design, the S6 Edge does lacks microSD support, meaning that the space you get out of the box is what you’re stuck with. The G Flex 2, on the other hand, does support microSD expansion for up to 128 GB of additional room.

LG G Flex 2 side

Battery-wise, the G Flex 2 fits a 3,000mAh pack into its curvy frame, a good deal larger than the 2,600mAh battery in the S6 Edge. In practice, however, we were able to get about a day and a half of average use out of both phones—despite the fact that the S6 Edge is powering many more pixels.

Unfortunately, neither battery is removable, so if these early tests are deceiving, there’ll be no way to upgrade them. Both do support fast charging technology, however, allowing you to regain a significant portion of juice in less than an hour.

Software

Both the S6 Edge and G Flex comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box, but neither Samsung nor LG are on our favorites list when it comes to Android skins. TouchWiz and Optimus UI are still thick and bloated, filled with a number of programs that are either redundant or of little value to the user experience.

Neither is particularly good looking too, with icons and animations that just seem a bit bland next to the liveliness of stock Lollipop. It’s good that both devices are running Lollipop in the first place, but the pieces of Google’s Material Design aesthetic that have been implemented look out of place next to each skin. It’s tough to imagine many scenarios where we’d opt for either of these over the stock interface.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge side

All that said, both of these skins have improved as the years have gone on. In the S6 Edge’s case, TouchWiz now turns off or hides a good chunk of its bloat by default, and still includes nifty features such as the ability to run two apps side by side and a genuinely responsive fingerprint reader for additional security. It’ll also support Samsung’s new mobile payment system, Samsung Pay, in the coming months. And while it doesn’t try to make much use out of its bent sides the way the Galaxy Note Edge did, it still gives them a modicum of functionality in the form of news and (heavily simplified) notification alerts.

Optimus UI on the G Flex 2 is more or less than same as it is on the G3—we expect an updated version to be unveiled with the LG G4 later this month—but getting around it is still mostly straightforward. It now has a “Glance View” option that lets you quickly check the notification bar just by swiping down on the sleeping screen, in addition to the same multitasking capabilities and various gesture controls that let you lock your device with a custom tapping pattern or take a selfie by making a fist in front of the camera, among other things.

Camera

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge camera

Comparing the cameras on these two devices is much like comparing their displays: Both are generally great, but Samsung’s is among the best on the market. Officially, the S6 Edges features a 16-megapixel unit with optical image stabilization and LED flash. It excels in nearly every area you’d want a smartphone camera to excel, producing sharp, detailed, and well-exposed shots with a lens that shoots fast. Colors are consistently accurate, noise is kept to a minimum, and its performance in low-light settings is admirable. The only negatives here are its slight troubles in nailing down moving objects, and Samsung’s overloaded camera interface. It, like the S6 Edge’s display, is likely the best camera on an Android phone to date.

The G Flex 2 borrows the same 13-megapixel camera (with OIS and dual-LED flash) that was on the G3, and while it’s not as powerful as the S6 Edge’s unit, it’s still no slouch. LG’s most touted feature is an infrared-aided autofocus system that finds and focuses on a given object almost immediately as you press the onscreen shutter button. (Most flagships are quick to focus nowadays, but the minor boost is still appreciated.) It’s also above-average when it comes to coloring, detail, and low-light performance—not as consistent as Samsung’s unit, but hard to gripe about all the same. LG’s UI is also less stuffed up than Samsung’s.

Neither phone puts the same effort into the front-facing camera, however. The S6 Edge’s 5-megapixel selfie cam is superior to the G Flex 2’s 2.1-megapixel, noise-heavy equivalent, but that’s not saying much.

Price

LG G Flex 2 back

The Galaxy S6 Edge is more widely available than the G Flex 2, but it’s also pricier: You can get it at Verizon for $700 unsubsidized, Sprint for $770 unsubsidized, or AT&T for a whopping $815 unsubsidized, with all three also offering the phone for $300 with a two-year contract. T-Mobile, meanwhile, sells it for $32.50 per month for two years, or $780 outright.

The G Flex 2 is only out for Sprint and U.S. Cellular at the moment. At the former, it retails for fairly affordable $504 outright or $200 with a two-year contract. At the latter, it goes for $630 on a prepaid plan or $150 on a two-year contract. An AT&T release has been scheduled for the near future. There’s been no word of a potential Verizon and T-Mobile launch as of this writing.

The post Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge vs. LG G Flex 2: The Tale of the Tape appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Waiting for Lollipop: How Quickly Have OEMs Updated to Android 5.0?

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Android 5.0 is old news. Lollipop, as the latest update to Google’s mobile OS is called, has been available since the Nexus 6 arrived in early November. That’s about five months now, which is more or less an eternity in the mobile tech world. It’s been thoroughly reviewed, torn down, critiqued, and even fine-tuned with version 5.1 coming out more than a month ago. It’s a fresh makeover for a highly capable OS.

Android 5.0 Lollipop home screen

And yet, a not insignificant amount of Android users haven’t been able to use it. Yes, the only f-word in Android circles is fragmentation, and the period after a major update releases always indicates that it’s alive and well. Google has taken strides to lessen the blow of its phones updating on a staggeringly asymmetrical schedule, but the blessing and curse of Android is that it covers a wide (ahem) nexus of devices from a variety of manufacturers on multiple carriers. There can be various reasons why a particular phone is slow to progress, but any OS that has its code in so many places in so many different forms is almost inherently going to run into this problem. It’s one of the main reasons why millions of people are peacefully enjoying their up-to-date iPhones right now.

Some Android manufacturers are faster than others, however, and that’s what we’re looking at today. Now that Lollipop has been available for some time, we’ve pored over dozens of reports, tweets, blog posts, and update pages to figure out how long it’s taken the major Android OEMs to get Lollipop onto their devices. We’ve examined how each carrier has affected the release for a given device, and looked at how clearly certain parties have conveyed their update plans to public. Delays are easier to accept when you know the other end is trying, after all.

A Few Things to Know

Before we start, a couple of caveats. First, we’re calculating the wait for each update from the first week of November, when the Nexus 6 started shipping, to the first day we could find an official acknowledgment that Lollipop had arrived on a device. As anyone who’s owned an Android phone can tell you, an announcement doesn’t mean the update will arrive that day, but it’s the simplest way to quantify all of this while still being reasonably accurate.

Second, we’re primarily focusing on last year’s flagships. This is for a few reasons: One, new phones like the Galaxy S6 and G Flex 2 come with Lollipop out of the box. Two, trying to juggle data for every single phone these companies launched in the last couple of years isn’t feasible. And three, these are ostensibly the phones these OEMs care about the most; if they aren’t getting Lollipop in a timely manner, you can generally expect the more affordable devices underneath them to have even slower update tracks—if they have one at all.

Now, you don’t need Lollipop to enjoy your smartphone. It’s magic in your hands regardless, and Lollipop has its share of things worth fixing. But it’s nice to have new things, yeah? It can be annoying to know that something new and better is out there, waiting to liven up your increasingly familiar device, but that you won’t have it because some companies either don’t care enough or can’t sort out their own issues. So let’s take a look at who has and hasn’t done well to relieve you of such delays.

Google: It’s Google

Google Nexus 4

This should come as no surprise, but the quickest and most reliable company when it comes to Android updates is still the one that actually makes the updates. As noted above, Google’s latest Nexus device came with Lollipop by default, but its two predecessors weren’t far behind. The Nexus 5’s rollout began around November 12, right around the day many Nexus 6s found their way into consumers’ hands for the first time.

The Nexus 4’s update came a little bit later, which is understandable given the extra work needed to ensure Lollipop would play nice with the older hardware, but even then it was only by a few more days. A factory image showed up around November 14, with an over-the-air update coming soon after that.

The lesson here is one we’ve known for a while: If you want new Android fast, buy from the people who release Android in the first place. Google’s take on the OS isn’t a “take” at all—it’s the default, and as such it touts minimal update delays as the major selling point for the Nexus line. It’s the cleanest, fastest, and best looking Android there is, and the wait times here were either minimal or non-existent. We’re not counting the Google Play Editions of various flagships, but those have generally followed the same idea.

Motorola: The Model to Follow

There was only one OEM that actually competed with Google on update speed, and fittingly it was the company that was once owned by Google itself. Motorola started rolling Lollipop out to its latest phones as if they were Nexus devices, with the update first arriving on the unlocked, first-party versions of the second-gen Moto X and Moto G around November 12. That’s superb, and as we’ll continue to see, the general rule is that unlocked devices update before their carrier equivalents—sometimes significantly so.

Motorola Droid Turbo

As far as carrier support goes, the Verizon version of the Moto X was also updated quickly, with rollout beginning on November 24. The only other major carrier to outright sell the flagship is AT&T, but its model wasn’t updated until the tail end of February. Although it isn’t quite a national competitor, US Cellular sells the phone as well, and it got its update about a week before that. T-Mobile users, meanwhile, can use the unlocked (and updated) version mentioned above. Sprint doesn’t support the device whatsoever.

The current Moto G isn’t sold directly from the major carriers, but that unlocked version updated quickly on T-Mobile and AT&T.

The one other flagship-level phone to monitor is the Verizon-exclusive Droid Turbo, which is still stuck on KitKat. It’s the only significant blemish on Motorola’s record here, but we’re inclined to think Verizon hasn’t helped matters, since a Motorola engineer said in a since-deleted Google+ post that the device was skipping to Android 5.1 in order to better support Verizon’s high-definition VoLTE calling. It’s been a few weeks since then, however, so exactly when that update will come is still unknown.

Regardless, Motorola has been the fastest of the major Android manufacturers to update, and it’s really not that close. Coming under Lenovo’s wing hasn’t changed much. We’ve extolled the virtues of the company’s don’t-mess-with-a-good-thing approach to Android many times before, and one of the big reasons for that is because it presents the company with very few obstacles for adjusting to a new release. Beyond that, Motorola’s been relatively clear about its updates’ ETAs, providing steady blog posts, social media alerts, and a helpful (albeit dated in some spots) upgrade tracker page for the especially anxious.

HTC: Commendable Honesty, Okay Updating

The pace slows down from here on out. HTC has built something of a tradition for that same kind of transparency over the past couple of years—for software upgrades, at least—and it continued that trend in the wake of Lollipop’s launch, with its own tracking page and regular Twitter updates.

HTC One M8

This year, however, its promises ended up making it look a tad silly. Back around the time when Lollipop was first announced, the Korean firm publicly set a 90-day deadline to get its highest-profile device up to speed. It then proceeded to miss its own date for a few carrier models of its last two flagships, the One (M8) and One (M7).

Embarrassing, sure, but part of the delay can likely be attributed to the carriers themselves. The company was at least able to hit its goal with its own unlocked version of the One (M8), which was updated in early-to-mid-January. That’s not bad at all considering that HTC employs a fairly involved skin in Sense UI.

Regardless of why it was the case, the carrier versions of the One (M8) were a different story. T-Mobile and Sprint’s versions were upgraded at nearly the same time, with the former starting its roll out on February 10, and the latter on February 12. Verizon was next, but took nearly another month before beginning its upgrade in the first week of March. AT&T then took another month on top of that, getting Lollipop on its model just last week, around April 7. A wait pushing three months isn’t good, but tacking two more on top of that has likely tested more than a few AT&T users’ patience.

The One (M7), for what it’s worth, followed a mostly similar track. The unlocked version’s update came in the first week of February, while Sprint’s version joined in around the same time. The rest of the carrier models have been more disappointing, though: T-Mobile’s was pushed back until the first week of March, while AT&T’s started in the first week of April. Verizon has been the worst in this case, however, as its M7 is still listed as being in the certification stage, and thus is still on KitKat.

All told, HTC’s openness should be encouraged—and the way it’s thinned down both its device line and Sense UI has helped it move more nimbly in recent years—but the results have been mixed, and in some cases painful.

Samsung: Some Good, Mostly Bad

Samsung is far and away the most widely-used Android OEM, but it modifies the OS more than anyone else. It’s improved this with the Galaxy S6, but the company’s TouchWiz skin wraps its tentacles around most aspects of the OS, from included apps to the framework itself. As a result, implementing any widespread changes like the ones in Lollipop is more of an involved process than it would be elsewhere. Samsung also has the widest lineup of phones scheduled for Lollipop, which is good in some sense but again makes releasing an update of this magnitude a rather herculean task. As you might expect, all of this has made for some fairly significant wait times, which continues to be unfortunate for Android as a whole given the size of Samsung’s audience. That the company hasn’t been especially open about its upgrade plans hasn’t helped either.

Samsung Galaxy S5

The Korean giant’s been through this dance before, however, and this year it attempted to mitigate the expected annoyances by going double-time with the 5.0 update for the Galaxy S5. That phone received Lollipop as early as December in certain European countries, but Verizon (traditionally the largest purveyor of carrier red tape) was surprisingly the first to offer it here in the States. Its update arrived in the first few days of February. Sprint was once again (relatively) quick to the punch, with its version coming that same week. T-Mobile’s followed about a week and half later.

None of those are particularly fast launch times, but they’re still miles ahead of AT&T and US Cellular, who just recently flipped the switch on their S5 updates last week. A portion of that was due to the bevy of user complaints about various bugs in software—though those problems weren’t entirely specific to the S5—but even still, having people wait almost a quarter of their service contracts only furthers the notion that most carriers and OEMs are incapable of rolling this stuff out smoothly.

Just about every other major Galaxy phone from 2014 has been slow to update in the US. The Galaxy Note 4’s update, for instance, is still in the “carrier testing” phase for T-Mobile, while Verizon began its rollout at the beginning of April, and both AT&T and US Cellular started theirs just this week. Sprint was the fastest of the bunch here too, but that’s not saying much considering its update began in mid-March.

It’s the same plodding story for the handful of Galaxy S5 variants and one-offs Samsung launched last year. The Sprint-exclusive Galaxy S5 Sport only updated at the beginning of April, while AT&T’s Galaxy S5 Active and Galaxy Alpha got their upgrades earlier this week.

LG: Just Kind of There

While the G Flex 2 is an off-beat little experiment, LG’s core lineup continues to churn out a string of solid-yet-forgettable handsets (relatively speaking, at least). Last year’s G3 did almost everything well, but wasn’t particularly spectacular at anything. The company’s profile has been slowly rising as of late, but a faster update cycle could be just the thing to push Android users in LG’s direction. But alas, its update schedule has brought about the same mixed, largely slow results as most of its peers.

LG G3

Again, part of that is carrier lethargy, as the company was reasonably quick to update its unlocked G3 in mid-January for some markets, and hinted towards the end of that month that it was ready to roll out the update in the US. Another part of the problem is the company’s not unsubstantial skin, which isn’t quite at TouchWiz’s level of intrusiveness but still makes over a great deal of Android. Either way, not much has been done to make LG stand out from the pack.

Neither the original G Flex nor the G2 Mini appear to even be getting Lollipop—which isn’t surprising but still disappointing—so the only major phone from last year in this case is the aforementioned G3. (For what it’s worth, 2013’s LG G2 has largely followed the same schedule.) AT&T was first here, starting its update out on February 10. Next, Sprint continued to be the most consistent of the group by launching soon after, on February 16.

Those are both reasonable enough, but then came a significant delay for both T-Mobile and Verizon—the magenta carrier’s update has only been rolling out since April 7, while Big Red’s began on April 13. There isn’t much to say here that we haven’t said already: That’s a long wait for a top-dollar purchase.

Sony: American Dreaming

Sony doesn’t sell smartphones in America. Well, it does, technically, but only a few pockets of people here actually buy them. It would seem to make little sense, considering the past few Xperia handsets have been nothing short of excellent—especially in the case of the Xperia Z3 Compact, which we still consider the only Android phone under five inches. They’ve been powerful, well-built, and equipped with the kind of standout cameras Sony’s earned a reputation for making. Yet, a dearth of marketing, combined with almost zero carrier support and—you guessed it—slow update times, have kept them from having any sort of success here in the US.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

That being the case, Lollipop updates for Sony’s most recent flagships, the Xperia Z3 and aforementioned Z3 Compact, have been virtually non-existent in America. Only two of the major carriers supported the Z3 in the US: T-Mobile, who recently stopped selling the device and lists its Lollipop update as still being in “carrier development,” and Verizon, who sold an exclusive version of the device called the Xperia Z3v and hasn’t issued any statements on when (or if) it’ll be upgraded. The Z3 Compact, meanwhile, isn’t sold through any carriers.

So, at the moment you’ll have to buy an unlocked model directly from Sony in order to get the Lollipop update. Those devices only began their Android 5.0 rollouts in mid-March, first going to a handful of European nations. That’s a relatively lengthy wait given the general lightness of Sony’s Android skin. Either way, Sony tweeted a couple of weeks later saying that the updates started popping up globally. (Like HTC and Motorola, Sony has largely been open about when its moves were coming. It’s also been good at including the majority of its sizeable lineup in its Lollipop plans.)

At the moment, though, there’s been no specific word of a North American launch for either device, and we’re still hearing reports of US-based users without an update. We contacted Sony for clarification on the situation, but did not receive a response prior to publishing this article. We’ll update if we hear anything new.

OnePlus: One Phone, Two Late Updates

OnePlus One

We’re guessing most OnePlus One owners bought the device for its combination of high-powered specs and affordability rather than its software, which uses the Android-based CyanogenMod OS instead of Android itself. Nevertheless, we’re including the value device here because it just recently received two different ways to get into Lollipop.

The traditional over-the-air update for the device comes in the form of the Lollipop-based CyanogenMod 12S, which just launched this week and is in the process of rolling out to the One today. The other option, dubbed OxygenOS, is from OnePlus itself, and became available at the beginning of April. It isn’t a typical update, though: It’s more a preview of what to expect from future OnePlus phones, and the only way to get it is by installing the ROM onto the phone manually. Once it’s on, though, it’s a light, almost Moto-like (and buggy) version of the stock OS.

Still, it’s telling that even companies as isolated from carriers as OnePlus and CyanogenMod have been taking their sweet time upgrading their slice of Google’s OS. If you haven’t noticed by now, it’s a common occurrence. Things have gotten better as the market has matured and public pressure has grown, but if Lollipop is any indication, waiting is still a natural part of the Android world.

The post Waiting for Lollipop: How Quickly Have OEMs Updated to Android 5.0? appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. HTC One M9: The Tale of the Tape

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 are proof of how quickly perceptions can change in the Android world. One year ago, these phones’ predecessors were looked at in nearly exact opposite lights: The Galaxy S5 stubbornly stood by Samsung’s affinity for plastic and bloatware, while the One M8 felt like a refined version of an already top-notch device. Fast forward to today and the roles are reversed: Whereas the Galaxy S6 and its wholesale design revamp feel like a major leap forward for the entire Galaxy series, the One M9 and its incremental tune-ups feel almost stagnant.

Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9

Samsung’s brand recognition and marketing muscle all but ensure that the S6 will outsell the M9 when all is said and done—the Galaxy series competes more with the iPhone than any other Google partner at this point. But because these are two of the biggest fish in the Android sea, and because they’re launching directly against each other today, we’re going to put these flagships under the same microscope.

As was the case with our last tale of the tape, we won’t try to hold these phones to some arbitrary standard of success and tell you which one is better. We don’t know how either device will hold up over time, or which one is more suited to your preferences. Instead, we’ll stick to the facts, using the spec sheets and our own experiences to help you understand what you’re looking at if you’re considering one or the other. With that mouthful out of the way, let’s take a look at how Samsung and HTC’s latest and greatest stack up.

Design

As noted above, the Galaxy S6 is a radical shift from the look and feel of previous Galaxy phones. Instead of the slimy plastic or “faux leather” of Samsung’s past flagships, the Galaxy S6 uses a classier mix of Gorilla Glass 4 on its front and back with aluminum on its sides. It’s a distinctly more professional, mature looking device, yet it isn’t any less comfortable in the hand than its predecessors. The only major knocks against it are its protruding camera, the inherent slipperiness of its glass back, and, well, the fact that it apes the iPhone’s style.

Samsung Galaxy S6

The One M9, meanwhile, doesn’t mess with a good thing. The One M8’s brushed, aluminum body already hit the heights Samsung is aiming for with the Galaxy S6, so instead of fixing what isn’t broken, HTC’s didn’t change for change’s sake. The result is a fine-tuning of last year’s model: slightly smaller than before, with sharper edges and a relocation of the power button from the top of the phone to the right edge. It’s just as handsome and solid as it was last year—though now there’s an unseemly gap where the aluminum ends and the screen begins—but all of the above makes it more comfortable to use with one hand.

One area where both phones may fall short, however, is in protection; neither aluminum nor glass (even Gorilla Glass) is immune to cracks if they’re dropped hard enough. That kind of sacrifice is usually made when you emphasize beauty over utility. HTC has been somewhat proactive in this regard, as it’s introduced an “Uh Oh Protection” program that’ll replace one busted HTC phone for you at no cost.

Dimensions

Smaller doesn’t necessarily mean better, but if you’re looking for something that’s more comfortable in your pockets, the Galaxy S6 is the more compact device of the two. It’s a bit boxier than the One M9, but it’s noticeably slimmer, not as tall, and a fair bit lighter. Officially, the Galaxy S6 measures 143.4 x 70.5 x 6.8mm and weighs 138 grams, while the One M9 measures 144.6 x 69.7 x 9.61mm and weighs 157 grams.

Colors

HTC One M9

Both devices come in a handful of different colors. The Galaxy S6 has a few livelier looking finishes, coming in black, white, gold, or blue. The One M9 stands by its professional aesthetic by coming in dark grey, silver, or, eventually, gold.

Display

Size

The screens of the Galaxy S5 and there One M8 were almost uniformly praised for their excellence, so neither HTC nor Samsung have changed much here (save for one major difference that we’ll get to in a second). As a result, both phones retain the same screen sizes as their predecessors, with the Galaxy S6 sporting a 5.1-inch display and the One M9 packing a 5-inch one.

Samsung makes slightly better use of the room around that display, however. Its side bezels are slimmer, and roughly 71% of its front side is made up of its screen. The One M9’s front, meanwhile, is still 68% screen, but is again saddled with the infamous “HTC bar” that sits in between the capacitive buttons and the phone’s bottom speaker.

Resolution

Samsung Galaxy S6

The “major difference” we mentioned above is in the Galaxy S6’s display resolution, which has gone from the standard 1080p to the quad HD setting of 1440 x 2560 pixels. That equates a whopping 577 pixels per inch. The One M9, meanwhile, sticks with a still sharp 1080p panel, which is good for 441 pixels per inch. It’s just as crisp as the One M8’s display, which isn’t exciting, but is still beyond serviceable.

The natural inclination is to assume that more is always better, but that’s not really the case. As we’ve said before, there’s a scientifically proven point where the human eye can no longer discern individual pixels, and a screen like the Galaxy S6’s flies well over it for everyone who doesn’t examine use their phone under a literal microscope.

It’s nice to never have to worry about sharpness, and all those pixels will surely come in handy if you hook the handset up to Samsung’s Gear VR headset, but there isn’t a significant practical difference between 1440p and 1080p on displays this small. In fact, you could argue the higher res may have a negative effect: As we’ve seen on older quad HD phones like the LG G3, all those pixels can tax a phone’s performance and drain its battery faster than usual. Time will tell if that’s the case here.

Tech

HTC One M9

None of this is to say that the Galaxy S6’s display is overrated. It doesn’t have to go in on the pixel count as hard as it does, but its Super AMOLED screen is gorgeous either way, with luscious colors and dark tones as black as night. OLED tech also excels outdoors, making the S6 more visible in daylight.

That the One M9 rehashes its predecessor’s LCD panel is fine, as we said, but its color reproduction won‘t be as accurate given its technical limitations. It does a great job with what it’s got, but we’re ready to accept OLED as the superior display technology, at least when it’s as fine-tuned as it is on the Galaxy S6.

Really, though, talk like this will only matter to display nerds. For most cases, you can’t go wrong with either screen—they’re both sharp, bright, and make whatever you’re looking at pretty. The Galaxy S6 just holds up better under harsher scrutiny.

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Motorola Moto E (2015) Review: Budget Buster

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

The Moto E is a phone for the people. Whereas most budget smartphones are content with merely being a smartphone, the E gives those shopping at the lower end of the market something they won’t feel embarrassed about.

Motorola Moto E

Like Motorola’s other inexpensive showcase, the Moto G, it’s proof that you don’t need to make a sizable investment to enjoy the luxuries of a modern mobile device. It largely did this when it debuted last year, but a handful of refinements to this year’s model only cements the sentiment.

For $120—the price of two video games, or a couple of trips to the grocery store—you get a compact and comfortable build, performance comparable to a phone three times as expensive, and truly superb battery life. For $30 more, you get LTE connectivity. You also get myriad reminders that you’ve paid less than $200 for your phone. But taken as a whole, the Moto E continues to disassociate “cheap” from “affordable.”

We’ve been using Boost Mobile’s LTE variant of the device, which retails for $100 unlocked, for the past couple of weeks, so let’s take a deeper look at why that’s the case.

Build and Design

Motorola has crafted a specific design language for all its premier phones over the past couple of years, and the new Moto E doesn’t stray from it. It looks like a smaller Moto G, which looks like a smaller Moto X, which looks like a smaller Nexus 6. It emphasizes comfort and ease of use over visual flair and bonus functionality, with a subtle, minimalist chassis that does indeed fit snugly in the hand. It’s chunkier (12.3mm) than its more expensive brethren, as you’d expect from something this cheap, but it’s compact enough to never feel unwieldy.

Moto E back

The feel here is very much similar to that of the Moto G. Like that device, the Moto E features a smooth matte plastic finish, gentle curves around the back, rounded edges, with a little dimple on its rear cover that’s naturally inviting for your index finger to rest on and rub. A plastic yet tight volume rocker and power button are its only buttons, with a distinguishable ridged pattern on the latter. The front is coated in Gorilla Glass 3—which is dated at this point but tough enough—and is almost entirely barren save for a couple of small sensors and a thin (and again, plastic) sound bar across the top.

Really, there are only a couple of differences between the two budget Motos. One is simply that the E, with its 4.5-inch display, is smaller—though it’s a smidge taller (129.9mm) and wider (66.8mm) than last year’s 4.3-inch model. The other is the ridged plastic material that makes up the phone’s border, which comes off as a little too budget (even for this phone), but is nevertheless easy to ignore. It’s one of the few parts of the device that’s customizable, too, as it can be swapped out for a variety of different colored frames. The bulk of the device will always be black or white, however.

Other than that, the song remains the same. It’s immediately obvious that this is the lowest-end Moto phone, but, similar to how the Moto G laps the field in its price range, the Moto E’s build quality is just about unparalleled for phone this affordable. Its lines are clean, its mix of plastic and glass is tightly fused together, and its chassis is legitimately solid. There’s no feeling of looseness or creakiness when you’re using it.

Moto E side

It isn’t particularly eye-catching without the metal edges and high-end finish(es) of the Moto X, but there’s a certain charm to the Moto E. It’s chubby, but comfortable—its contours aren’t as dramatic as they are on other Motos, but they naturally slide into your hand, and the phone as a whole is neither too tall nor too wide. It’s weighty (at 145g), but well-balanced—it has a presence in the hand without feeling like a burden.

It courts utility over beauty, but there are still distinct bits of personality here—the slope around the top of the back, the solitary speaker bar, the way the dimple and main camera sit on top of each other like a couple of coins. Motorola just refuses to beat you over the head with them. Perhaps best of all, it’s genuinely useable with one hand, all the time.

Basically, it looks and feels like a modern smartphone. Not a striking or high-end one, but emphatically not a toy. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s rare to see a handset this cheap that respects the people buying it.

Display

The Moto E’s 4.5-inch display isn’t as obviously above its pay grade. It’s an IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 540 x 960, which equates to about 245 pixels per inch. That’s a decided step down from the Moto G’s 5-inch 720p panel, and as such there’s a consistent hint of fuzziness to text, graphics, and animations. Individual pixels can be spotted if you look closely enough, and zooming in on photos yields some blurriness.

Motorola Moto E

Some of the other expected pitfalls of a budget display are here too—it can’t get particularly bright, dark tones aren’t as dark as they could be, and it’s more or less useless in direct sunlight. For $60 more–$30 if you count our test model—the Moto G’s screen is noticeably superior in just about every way.

Still, the panel is at least comparable to those on more expensive devices, which is an achievement in and of itself. For people who aren’t spec fiends—i.e., most people—it’s perfectly usable. It handles colors accurately, it’s responsive to the touch, and that aforementioned fuzziness isn’t so dramatic that it’ll bother you unless you go looking for it. The bezels that surround it are adequately thin (save for the top), and its viewing angles are fine as long as you don’t overdo it.

There are definite flaws here, but they’re easy enough to look past when you remember the price tag. The problem is that Motorola cannibalized it before it even hit the streets.

The post Motorola Moto E (2015) Review: Budget Buster appeared first on Brighthand.com.

5 Ways Android M Can Improve Upon Lollipop

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Android 5.0 is still rolling out to phones across various carriers, but that hasn’t stopped us from carrying on a tried-and-true tech industry tradition: thinking too far ahead. Despite the fact that Lollipop is currently on less than 4% of all Android devices, we can’t help but think about how it could be better, and what should come next.

Android 5.0 Lollipop home screen

Namely, while the update does wonders to freshen up the look and feel of Google’s OS, it still carries a number of gaps in functionality that, in some cases, leave it behind the curve next to iOS and Windows Phone. Lollipop has planted the aesthetic seeds for Android’s future, in other words, so the next iteration should focus on growing the OS into something more capable and convenient. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a few specific ways the inevitable Android M update can go about doing that.

To be clear, these are all very much first world problems. Lollipop is a fantastic update on the whole, and it still allows your phone to do amazing, previously unheard of things. But when easily solvable problems are afoot, you solve them. If you’re paying hundreds of dollars on something that promises to make your life easier, you want to that thing to be as helpful as possible, right? Right. Here are a few things Android M can do to ensure that’s the case.

1. Add Some Gesture Controls

This is one of the few areas where stock Android is actually outclassed by the UI skins from Google’s hardware partners. Motorola, LG, HTC, and others have all figured out that Android’s bag of tricks doesn’t have to end when your phone is asleep, adding on a number of gesture controls that make getting around the OS faster than usual.

For example, today’s Moto phones let you twist your wrist twice to quick launch the camera. Recent HTC One devices let you swipe the sleeping screen in various directions to directly open a handful of apps. LG’s latest flagships allow you to open up the device with a quick double tap, as well as peek at your notifications bar to see if you’ve missed any messages. The Android-based CyanogenMod OS packs simple commands for skipping or pausing music and turning on the flashlight, among other things.

Shortcuts like these look neat, for one, but more importantly, they all reduce the number of steps you have to take to do something. Having something like a “double tap to wake” shortcut can be a lifesaver if your device has a faulty power button. They make things easier without getting in the way, and that’s exactly the kind of sentiment we’d like to see Android M follow.

2. Enhance Privacy Settings

CyanogenMod Privacy Guard

For all the strides Android has taken to improve its take on privacy over the years, it can still feel disinterested in keeping you free from spammy callers and over-intrusive apps. Its security settings menu is a little too broad for our liking, undercutting the level of customizable protection that’s attainable with the OS.

You don’t have to look further than CyanogenMod to see how things could be better, as features like “Privacy Guard” and “Blacklist” from that OS would be more than welcome on Google’s platform. The former lets you more closely manage the permissions you give your apps. Instead of the zero-sum game that’s common to regular Android—where you either let an app access the various functions of your phone or lose a good deal of its functionality—Privacy Guard gives you more granular control.

So if you’d like to use an app like Facebook but also want to know when it’s trying to access your camera, current location, and the like, you can make it so the app always has to request permission to do so (or deny it entirely). You can even determine when it’s allowed to vibrate or ring your device. With the continued tensions over how tech companies manage user data, this added level of nuance, where people are allowed to more accurately define the level of intrusion their comfortable with, would be welcome.

Incorporating something like Blacklist, meanwhile, seems like a no-brainer. That lets you automatically block calls and/or messages from a specific number just by adding it to the eponymous list. There are apps in Google Play that do this already, but again, having such functionality baked into the OS would go a long way towards making it a standard. This would put the clamps on annoying telemarketers and those spam calls you’re just going to ignore anyways. It can also greatly diminish the power of a personal abuser right from the offset; harassment is real, unfortunately, so Android M should seize the opportunity to lessen it.

3. Play Nicer with Multiple Devices

Remember Pushbullet, the app that lets you view and respond to phone notifications on your desktop? We’ve extolled the virtues of it in the past, but now it’s time to make its abilities the norm. Trying to get work done on your PC only to have your attention dragged away by a constantly buzzing phone is a pain, but apps like Pushbullet—or Motorola Connect, or BlackBerry Blend, or the Continuity features of iOS 8—centralize everything onto one screen. You can respond to texts right from your computer, quickly send files between the two devices, and, in Apple’s case, even take calls when they’re on the same network.

Android 5.0 Lollipop notifications

Integrating devices like this helps you stay focused, and makes it so you don’t have to log into your cloud storage locker or email just to send a quick file or URL link. Considering how many devices Android manufacturers try to sell you, it’s stunning how few of them have seriously tried to make them work together harmoniously. Pushbullet is an efficient solution for Android today, but it can still be prone to the occasional crash and syncing error. Google, with its vast cache of resources, would be in a better position to smoothen the idea out. Here’s hoping it does.

4. Further Improve Notifications

While Lollipop makes notifications more accessible than they were on KitKat (by planting them on the lock screen), there are still a few steps Google could take to make interacting with them less of a nuisance. This is another instance where it can rip a page out of Apple’s book, because iOS 8 gives you the supremely useful ability to reply to notifications right from the notification shade. If someone shoots you a text on the iPhone, you don’t have to back out of whatever app you have open and jump into the messaging app—instead, you just pull down the shade, type your reply right there, and fire away. Again, nobody’s ever died from being pulled away from Instagram from 10 seconds to open Google Hangouts (hopefully), but Android still has extra steps that don’t need to be there.

All of this doesn’t have to begin and end with messaging either—being able to favorite a reply on Twitter or send a news alert to Pocket would save time as well. Alternatively, we’d welcome more “floating” notification widgets similar to what Facebook does with its Messenger app, since those also keep you from unnecessarily jumping between programs. Either way, simplifying the way we respond to notifications would help make Android as friendly to use as it is to look at.

Finally, this is a good place to note that notification syncing between Android devices can still be a bit rough. If you swipe away 20 Facebook alerts on a Nexus 6, you shouldn’t have to do the same thing as soon as you turn on a Nexus 9. As it is now, only a few of Google’s first-party apps are responsible in this regard. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s tiresome, and it’s the kind of tidying up that Android M should seek to work on.Tying them to a single Google account, rather than a single device, may do the trick.

5. Cut the Bloat

Android 5.0 Lollipop bloatware

This one isn’t complex, but it’s been around for years. Just about every Android device, including those with Lollipop, still finds itself saddled with apps that cannot be removed whatsoever. These are often lesser versions of popular programs, only there because a carrier and/or manufacturer wants to coerce you into using its service (and thus adding to their revenue). Android usually gives you the ability to “disable” such bloatware, but not always, and it’s not the same as erasing it either way. Some people just don’t want NFL Mobile, Verizon.

All of this means that the amount of storage space you’re paying for isn’t the same you’re actually getting. There may only be so much that Google can do to get its partners (especially the carriers) to cut back on the needless apps, but if somebody doesn’t want a piece of software on something they bought, it shouldn’t be there. It builds complacency in the developers of the bloaty apps themselves, takes away room that could be used to support developers of better apps in Google Play, and in certain cases puts at least some damper on a device’s performance.

Lollipop took some steps towards fixing the problem, but it didn’t go as far as it could. Google effectively gave carriers the option of making their nonsense removable–naturally, most have declined. Android devices in general have gotten better about reducing bloat as public pressure has ramped up, but it’s still there, and it’s still much worse on Android than on iOS or Windows Phone. The iPhone gets onto the market largely unscathed, while Microsoft lets you fully uninstall anything your carrier or device maker may pester you about. Now, Android covers many more devices than those two, but any control Google can exert over the guilty parties here would be worth exerting with Android M. If nothing else, it’d make Android’s user base feel more like their devices were fully theirs.

Anything Else?

There are plenty other things we’d like to see from the next Android update—a split-screen view for easier multitasking (a la Samsung’s Galaxy Note series, except smoother), a landscape view for phablets, a centralized hub for all forms of text messaging (a la BlackBerry Hub, except better looking), anything more Google can do to lessen the OS’s drain on battery life, the return of the damn mute function—but we’ll leave any further suggestions up to you. Oh, and before you ask, we think the M will stand for Milky Way. Or M&M. Mississippi Mud Pie?

The post 5 Ways Android M Can Improve Upon Lollipop appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. Apple iPhone 6: The Tale of the Tape

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

The Samsung Galaxy S versus the Apple iPhone. It’s a battle as old as time itself, as long as you don’t count every year before 2010. These the two highest-end phones from by far the two most popular phone makers in the world, and despite the many outstanding competitors that arrive each year, millions of shoppers end up whittling their choices down to one or the other. For better or worse, Samsung and Apple’s respective flagships are largely going to be judged in light of each other, and oftentimes only each other.

Apple iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6

At the risk of contributing to this borderline duopoly, we’re going to compare these two rivals again. Apple’s iPhone 6 juggernaut has been out and about for almost seven months, but with Samsung’s newest attraction, the Galaxy S6, now approaching its usual spring release date, we’re finally able to stack the two side by side. And thanks to the drastic changes to the latest Galaxy’s hardware, various gaps in quality that used to exist between the two now appear to have been closed, making any choice between the two that much more difficult.

Still, we’re not going to tell you which one is better here – the Galaxy S6 only just launched, and in general that’s an argument that usually comes down to personal preference. But we can present some info, based on the phones’ spec sheets and things we’ve found in our own testing, that’ll make any choice you’re facing a better understood one. So with one last futile reminder that these aren’t the only two phones in the world, here’s the tale of the tape for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Apple iPhone 6.

Design

Up until a couple of months ago, build quality was a box you could dependably check in Apple’s favor. Every year a new Galaxy S would arrive, and every year Samsung would aim for function over fashion. Its phones have long been powerful, well-proportioned, and relatively lightweight, but in the process they’ve often turned up as boring rectangles made of cheap-feeling (and occasionally silly) plastic. The iPhone, with its cleaner lines and affinity for aluminum, has always come off as the statelier, more mature device.

Apple iPhone 6 back

That’s no longer the case. Or at least, the once obvious chasm between the two has been reduced to a few small cracks. The iPhone 6 is an evolution from its predecessors, jumping up in overall size, rounding out its sides, and coating itself entirely in aluminum. It still has that innate look and feel of an iPhone, though, which is to say that it’s still a gorgeous piece of hardware.

The Galaxy S6, meanwhile, is a wholesale revamp of any Galaxy S device that’s come before it. There were hints of Samsung’s aesthetic alterations in its Galaxy Alpha offshoot, but the S6 is an even bigger leap than that phone suggested. While the design language of its front isn’t much changed, all the plastic that plagued past Galaxy devices has been erased, replaced by aluminum sides and a plate of Gorilla Glass 4 on its back. It’s nothing revolutionary in the wider smartphone market, but it’s a landmark moment for Samsung, and the first flagship it’s made in years that doesn’t come off as cheaper than its asking price.

It also looks kind of sort of looks like the iPhone. Most major smartphones share similar design points these days, but the overall shape of the Galaxy S6—along with little details like its speaker grilles, antennas, and port placement—make the device resemble its biggest competitor more than anything else. It’to claim that Samsung has “copied” Apple here, but all of this is say that anyone who once favored the iPhone 6 for its design may not feel too out of place with the Galaxy S6.

Dimensions

Samsung Galaxy S6 bottom

These two share plenty of traits that aren’t as curious, though. Both are exceptionally thin, for instance, with the Galaxy S6 measuring 6.8mm at its slimmest, and the iPhone 6 coming in just a hair thicker at 6.9mm. The S6 is larger than the iPhone on the whole–the former is 143mm tall and 71mm wide, while the latter is 138mm tall and 67mm wide–but that’s only due to its more spacious display (which we’ll get to in a sec). Similarly, the S6 (at 138g) is a tad heavier than the iPhone (at 129g). We have to judge these phones relative to their respective sizes, though, and in that sense both devices get a great deal out of their available space without burdening your hands.

Colors

Finally, both the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 come in a variety of colors. For those who want their S6 to feel slightly more personalized, Samsung will offer the device in black, white, gold, and blue. Apple, on the other hands, offers the iPhone 6 in its usual slate of silver, “space gray,” and gold. One minor thing to note here is that these colors only apply to the back of each iPhone—the front will always be black or white–whereas the Galaxy S6’s paint jobs take effect on both sides.

Display

Size

Apple iPhone 6 front

As previously mentioned, this year’s Galaxy S continues to dwarf the iPhone in terms of display size. The iPhone 6’s 4.7-inch panel is a marked jump from the iPhone 5s’ 4-inch counterpart—largely because Apple wanted to keep up with the big screen craze Samsung helped popularize—but it’s not as roomy as the Galaxy S6’s 5.1-inch screen. Bigger doesn’t mean better when it comes to smartphone displays, but the S6 provides more room for texting, gaming, and viewing media.

Resolution

Both screens are sharp, but the S6’s super high 1440 x 2560 (or “Quad HD”) resolution equates to a comically large pixel density of 577 pixels per inch. That keeps the panel eternally crisp—and it should make the S6 play nicer with Samsung’s Gear VR virtual reality headset—but it also goes well beyond the point where the human eye can discern individual pixels on a screen this size. Still, there’s a certain comfort in having this sort of overkill.

The 750 x 1334 resolution of the iPhone 6’s display sounds much more modest by comparison, and with a pixel density of 326 ppi—the same as 2010’s iPhone 4—it’s never going to be as crisp as the S6’s screen. Again, though, the spec sheet can be deceiving. You’ll be able to see pixels here if you strain your eyes hard enough, but with ordinary use, you’ll have a hard time finding any obvious dips in sharpness. Apple’s been efficient in this regard.

Tech

Samsung Galaxy S6 front

Samsung and Apple continue to employ different types of display technology, which both have their unique benefits and deficiencies. The Galaxy S6’s Super AMOLED panel should bring especially luscious colors, while the iPhone 6’s IPS LCD display should have a slight advantage in brightness.

In all honesty, it’ll be hard to go wrong with either screen here: The S6 will be sharper, sure, but display quality has been one trait that both of these manufacturers have excelled in over the years, and so far we’ve seen nothing to suggest that’ll be any different going forward. Viewing angles, contrast ratios, touch sensitivity, outdoor visibility, general color accuracy—it’s all fantastic on the iPhone 6, and it looks like it’ll largely be the same on the Galaxy S6. We’ll confirm or deny these hunches once our Galaxy S6 review goes live in the coming days.

The post Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. Apple iPhone 6: The Tale of the Tape appeared first on Brighthand.com.

The Best Compact Phones Available Now

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Sharp Aquos Crystal

We’ve spent a good chunk of space extolling the virtues of phablets lately, telling you which ones to grab and why they aren’t as intimidating as they might appear. In some cases, though, big is always going to be just a little too big. The smartphone world continues to trend towards the supersized, but if you’re dead set on something you can always use with one hand, we’ve rounded up our favorite compact phones currently on the market.

A few notes: For the sake of this article, we’re considering “compact” to be any phone with a screen smaller than 5 inches, as that’s become the general cutoff point for most top-tier devices. A 4.7-inch screen is the most common size here; although that’s far from tiny, most recent phones with more diminutive panels are too cheaply made for us to recommend in good faith. A few of our choices aren’t totally new either, but that’s what you get when so many manufacturers refuse to build high-end features into phones of this size. Nevertheless, the lot of them are still more than capable for most needs. More importantly, they’re some of the only phones that are both reliable and easy to fit in your pocket.

But First, A Few (Dis)Honorable Mentions

As we said, most smartphone manufacturers have become convinced that there isn’t much money to be made in a high-quality handset with a sub-5 inch screen. The area between 5 and 5.5-inches is now the comfort zone for most modern flagships, with those big screens featuring high resolutions, the most recent software, and generally overpowered internals. They’re marketed the most, they’re updated the most, and they sell the most.

HTC One remix

That doesn’t mean that these OEMs have completely forgotten the small — or smallish, a 4.7-inch screen is still considerably bigger than what was commonplace as recently as 2011 – phone sector,. For the most part, the smaller phones we get nowadays can be broken down into two types. The first are those that are dubbed “mini” versions of existing flagships, even though they usually aren’t close to what such branding would suggest in terms of power, features, and general togetherness.

There’ve been many examples of these over the past few months: LG’s G2 Mini, for one, is a decent enough mid-range phone in its own right, but its low-res display and bland build make it a far cry from the tricks you’d from a genuine flagship like the LG G3. The HTC One Remix is more or less the same thing, providing an alright imitation of the superior One (M8), but downgrading nearly every aspect of it. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 Mini is a little more egregious, taking an already disappointing phone and diminishing the one thing (its spec sheet) it had going for it. Devices like these aren’t as expensive as their flashier siblings, but directly further the unfair perception that “smaller” equals “weaker.”

Amazon Fire Phone

The second group that’s emerged consists of devices from companies that aren’t quite bathing in smartphone pedigree, and see the sub-5 inch arena as an open market. These include the Sharp Aquos Crystal and Amazon Fire Phone, which carry plenty of interesting ideas but are ultimately as good as you’d expect from a manufacturer’s first real moonshot. (The former is mediocre in everything besides its stunning design; the latter is saddled with aimless gimmicks and ugly software.) Then you’ve got something like the BlackBerry Classic, which comes from a recovering OEM and is generally solid, but is considerably tailored towards a particular niche of users. (In this case, anyone who still swears by BlackBerry.)

So the field of non-huge handsets isn’t at its strongest, but that doesn’t mean small phone shoppers are totally devoid of viable options. Here are five of them, which are either helping to reverse this troubling trend or are simply aging well.

5. Samsung Galaxy Alpha

Samsung Galaxy Alpha

The Galaxy Alpha is far from perfect, but with the pickings this slim it does just enough right to warrant a spot on the tail end of our favorites. Like the aforementioned Galaxy S5 Mini, it brings a few too many of the things that made the flagship Galaxy S5 so underwhelming – namely, Samsung’s sloppy and bloated TouchWiz interface. The AT&T exclusive also suffers from a display marred by color reproduction issues.

However, when looked at purely as an alternative for the millions of existing Galaxy phone owners, the Alpha is one of the better handsets Samsung has produced over the last couple of years. It’s certainly one of the best built – for now, at least; the Galaxy S6 is just around the corner – it takes high-end photos, and it’s packed with internals befitting a phone a half-inch bigger. AT&T’s also cut its price since launch, so those weaker areas a little bit easier to gloss over than were before. If you’ve always been able to live with the Galaxy line’s shortcomings, you could do worse than this.

4. Moto X (2013)

Moto X (2013)

We know, we know – that says 2013. We weren’t kidding about the whole “all the attention goes to the big phones” idea. Buying a two-year old phone on contract isn’t smart if you want something futureproof, but if you need compactness and can buy unsubsidized, the device that started Motorola’s renaissance is worth picking up.

Yes, the original Moto X was underwhelming on the spec sheet even when it launched, so its 720p display and Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset look even more dated today, but the differences aren’t as bad as they might seem in practice. It’ll never be blazing fast, but it’s not like it’ll be outright slow either.

The main reason you’d want this Moto X, though, is its software. Motorola produces the best Android skin in the business, letting Google do its thing while adding genuine enhancements like enhanced voice control and a faster camera app. It’s also among in line to receive an upgrade to Android 5.0, making it a great and not-huge way to get a pure version of Google’s newest UI. The latest Moto X is almost universally superior, but it’s bigger, so the original remains a good choice for Android loyalists looking for something easier on the pockets (and the wallet).

3. HTC One (M7)

HTC One (M7)

The One (M7) is another phone that will be two generations old in the near future, but it’s aged much more gracefully than its Motorola counterpart above. It’s still gorgeous, for one – although we adored the added metal on its successor, this is still the phone that helped push the phone world towards actually caring about design quality.

The visual differences between it and the 5-inch One (M8) aren’t dramatic in the slightest – in fact, its smaller frame and polycarbonate edges actually make it easier to grip. It’s still powerful, too, with a gorgeous 1080p display (the sharpest of any phone on this list) and a Snapdragon 600 chipset that more than holds up today. HTC’s also worked hard to upgrade its Sense UI skin over the past few years, so the One (M7)’s software today is much less cluttered than it was at launch. Again, we wouldn’t recommend tying yourself down to a two-year old phone for too long, but given that it only goes for a couple hundred bucks today, the One (M7) still provides good value in a small (enough) package.

2. Apple iPhone 6

Apple iPhone 6

There isn’t much we can say about Apple’s iPhones that hasn’t already been said. They’ve done good by millions upon millions of users for close to a decade now, and the iPhone 6 doesn’t do much to stop the juggernaut. Apple’s latest flagship is a leap forward for the iPhone line’s design, as it increases the metal, rounds out the edges, and slims the sides of the series’ old look, all while dramatically boosting the screen size from the (still excellent) iPhone 5s.

But even with its new (and pretty) 4.7-inch panel, the extreme growth on the Android side of the market means that this comparatively compact among other high-end devices. The iPhone 6 isn’t without faults – lacking storage space, an underwhelming and non-removable battery, and a display that could maybe be a little sharper – but it’s an upgrade over the 5s all the same, with the kind of reliable performance and superb camera we’ve come to expect from an Apple phone. It’s the top choice for any iOS user interested in a one-handed phone.

1. Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

It’s a shame that Sony’s had such a hard time getting its Xperia series off the ground, as it’s really the only Android manufacturer willing to treat its “mini” flagship like, well, a flagship. Much like the Xperia Z1 Compact before it, the Xperia Z3 Compact simply doesn’t skimp in any notable way. Just like the standard Xperia Z3, its quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset is supremely strong, it carries a superb 20.7-megapixel camera, and its build is stylish, well-proportioned, and heavily water-resistant. It also takes the idea of being “compact” seriously, as it’s thin and light in addition to having a smaller, 4.6-inch screen.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

As with the iPhone 6, the 720p display would benefit from a resolution bump, but it’s a plus panel on the whole. Unlike the iPhone 6, its 16 GB of included storage is upgradable through microSD. And while Sony’s Android skin is a little bit heavier than Motorola’s, the changes aren’t thick – good news considering that, like the Moto X, the Z3 Compact is one of the first non-Google phones to get upgraded to Android 5.0 Lollipop. Oh, and it also comes cheaper (now around $500) than most other flagships, iPhone 6 included.

Really, the only major negatives here are a non-removable (but still solid) battery and some quirks with the display’s viewing angles. Other than that, the Xperia Z3 Compact is a top-notch, up-to-date phone that just happens to be small. It’s an example worth following for other OEMs, and a reason to hope that the small-handed among us won’t be forgotten after all.

The post The Best Compact Phones Available Now appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Kodak IM5 Hands-on Preview: Keeping It Simple

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Kodak, with the help of UK phone manufacturer Bullitt, is trying to make a smartphone for people who don’t use smartphones. The Kodak Instamatic 5 won’t be the first device with that ambition, but it will be one of the first to wear the name of a brand many smartphone neophytes recognize from their youth. In other words, Kodak is aiming for older folk – and the young children they may watch over – who presumably still use feature phones, by giving them a device that lets them jump into the smartphone world without dealing with the perceived complexities of a modern smartphone UI. We took it for a spin at CES last week.

Kodak IM5

Kodak’s philosophy manifests itself in the IM5 in two core ways, neither of which will be appealing to those who follow the mobile industry. First, its launcher is dead simple, more or less looking like a blown-up version of your typical dumbphone’s UI. The 12 icons that make up the lone home screen are huge, as are the various programs in its app drawer. Ordinary tasks like texting, emailing, and using the camera are front and center, along with other basics like the flashlight, magnifier, and shortcut to use Kodak’s printing service. If you need any more evidence that the IM5 isn’t made for the tech savvy, look no further.

All of this runs over Android 4.4.2 at the moment, but Bullitt says it’ll be upgraded to Android 5.0 Lollipop when the IM5 launches. Full access to the Google Play store is included, but is stuck within the app drawer. Instead, the home screen points you to a Kodak-made app store that Bullitt reps weren’t willing to detail other than saying that it’ll include “apps tailored to your interests.” (Its icon took us to Google Play on our early demo unit.) Whether that means Kodak will curate the store itself or that it’ll give more personalized recommendations based on your usage still isn’t clear.

This interface isn’t pretty, and not nearly as flexible as regular Android – we weren’t able to move an app from the app drawer to the home screen on our demo unit, for instance – but it’s painfully simple to read, which is the point. Its lock screen can display a pretty looking collage of your gallery’s photos, and Bullitt reps detailed an ability to have a friend remotely control the device on a PC or tablet if you’re having trouble (like a more personal version of Amazon’s “Mayday” feature), but extra software tricks are otherwise kept to a minimum. The stock camera app is particularly sparse, only auto-focusing on its own and offering very few editing options after you take a shot. It does, however, offer another shortcut to print your photos.

Kodak IM5

The one complaint we have about all of this is that its simplification pretty much begins and ends with the reworked launcher. The settings menu and notification shade are the same as they are on any other KitKat device, and most of the apps on the home screen are the same stock Google programs you could find anywhere else. The latter issue is likely contractually obligated given that this is an Android phone, but it means that anyone who’d be confused about using such software on a regular Android phone will probably still be puzzled here. It also makes the UI aesthetically inconsistent.

Bullitt says that you’ll be able to use the stock Lollipop launcher when the IM5 hits the market, but you probably won’t want to given how underpowered the phone appears to be. We’re still a couple months away from launch, so we can’t critique the general sluggishness of our demo unit too harshly. We can say that the IM5 will run on an octa-core 1.7 GHz MediaTek MT6592 chipset and 1 GB of RAM, though, a combo that doesn’t sound very promising on paper. The same goes for its 2150 mAh battery and 8 GB of included storage, though Kodak says the latter can be upgraded by 32 GB through microSD.

This worry applies to the IM5’s display and camera as well. The former is a 5-inch, 720p panel that came off as too grainy on our demo unit. It was just okay, with average coloring and unspectacular viewing angles. As for the device’s 13-megapixel main camera and 5-megapixel front shooter, both were serviceable, but neither were anything beyond decent. Moving objects blurred a bit, and brighter colors washed out more easily than they should. Despite the name on its backside, Bullitt reps were clear that this is not a “camera phone,” and that’s true.

Kodak IM5

The IM5’s build isn’t anything to drool over, but it is wonderfully light at 120 grams. It’s a plain black rectangle, for the most part, unimaginative yet not garish. Its bezels are nicely slim, the logo and camera on its back are understated, and the chrome trim around its edges lends a smidge of liveliness to the whole thing. It’s handsome for a budget device, but it still feels like its price when held in the hand. It’s made of flimsy plastic all the way around, with cheapish buttons and not-so-thin sides. Bullitt’s also put the power button on the top of the phone, which is always inconvenient. But it’s easy enough to hold.

Kodak and Bullitt say that they’re aiming to launch the IM5 in Europe sometime during the first quarter. It’ll make its way to the US sometime after that. As its specs and build materials would suggest, it’s going to be inexpensive: €229 or $250 without a contract. There’s no word yet on carrier involvement, but the IM5 does support dual-SIM, and Bullitt reps say that it should work on CDMA networks. (It isn’t likely to feature LTE, though.) They also tell us that this is meant to be a start for these sorts of devices, with a Kodak-branded tablet planned for later in the year.

While we like the idea of a super user-friendly smartphone designed for anyone who can’t get their head around today’s tech, we’re not yet sure if the IM5 will provide enough incentive for baby boomers to leave their dumbphones behind. Either way, it shouldn’t be one for the phone geeks. We’ll save any other final judgments for our full review.

The post Kodak IM5 Hands-on Preview: Keeping It Simple appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Kodak IM5 Hands-on Preview: Keeping It Simple

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Jeff Dunn

Kodak IM5

The post Kodak IM5 Hands-on Preview: Keeping It Simple appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Author: Jeff Dunn

Design

Display

Internals

Software

Camera

Pricing and Availability

Build and Design

Display

The Specs Remain Strong

CyanogenMod 12S is Generally Excellent

The Competition is Still Pricey

Now, There are Undeniable Issues…

…But More Phones Like This Need to Exist

Design

Display

Internals

Software

Camera

Price

Snapchat and the Chicken/Egg Problem

YouTube and the Third-Party Alternative Problem

Twitter and the Dead App Problem

The Gaming Problem

Gmail and the Google Problem

Design

Display

Internals

Software

Camera

Price

A Few Things to Know

Google: It’s Google

Motorola: The Model to Follow

HTC: Commendable Honesty, Okay Updating

Samsung: Some Good, Mostly Bad

LG: Just Kind of There

Sony: American Dreaming

OnePlus: One Phone, Two Late Updates

Design

Dimensions

Colors

Display

Size

Resolution

Tech

Build and Design

Display

1. Add Some Gesture Controls

2. Enhance Privacy Settings

3. Play Nicer with Multiple Devices

4. Further Improve Notifications

5. Cut the Bloat

Anything Else?

Design

Dimensions

Colors

Display

Size

Resolution

Tech

But First, A Few (Dis)Honorable Mentions

5. Samsung Galaxy Alpha

4. Moto X (2013)

3. HTC One (M7)

2. Apple iPhone 6

1. Sony Xperia Z3 Compact