Confession time: I’ve destroyed a review unit or two in my day. I lost a brand-new LG flagship in the back of a cab once. During a durability test late last year, I did enough damage to an LG G Flex that we ended up having to buy the thing from Negri Electronics. And just a couple weeks back, you all saw me
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Sometimes there’s so much news you need to call in the Reserves just to handle it all, and that’s just what we’ve done this week. Between Google’s surprise announcement of an unlikely pair of additions to the Google Play Store; Microsoft’s rumored offer to pay Samsung to keep making Windows Phones; and a boatload of reviews, we’re in over our heads this week – so we’ve brought in four team members to do the news justice. Sorry, no listener mail this week – but in its place you get a consolation prize: you get to know what curious fate ...
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Samsung is milking the Galaxy S 4 for everything that phone is worth – and why not? It’s easily one of the most popular phones of the year, and Samsung has been taking full advantage of the handset’s name recognition to put out a whole bunch of hardware variants. At first, that meant devices like the GS4 Zoom, Mini, and Active, but later we saw Samsung’s attention turn to the chipset powering the GS4 itself, upgrading from the Snapdragon 600 at the heart of many LTE editions of the Galaxy S 4 to a ...
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Samsung has not been shy in the least about churning out plenty of Galaxy-S-4-series hardware. Beyond the base phone and its carrier variants, we’ve seen the GS4 Zoom, Active, and Mini. Today, we’re looking to keep on building that lineup out by taking a couple of those existing models and crossing them together, giving us what sure seems to be a Galaxy S 4 Active Mini. Spotted on China’s TENAA, the phone looks like a more squared-off version of the full-size ...
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You’d wonder how smart a smartwatch really is if you really can’t pair it with more devices than just one, and ever since Samsung launched the Galaxy Gear, one of our biggest complaints was that we simply couldn’t use it on most of the existing and popular Galaxy smartphones in the market. Android 4.3 is required for the Galaxy Gear to work, and that’s rather unfortunate since Samsung hasn’t really been famous for timely updates in the last two years. If you wanted to use that Galaxy Gear, you were really forced to buy a Galaxy Note 3 along with it, and some ...
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How many of you went out and snatched-up the Galaxy S 4 as soon as you had the opportunity, only to end up kicking yourself a little when the waterproof Galaxy S 4 Active showed its face just a few months later? While other OEMs had been embracing waterproofing for their flagships, this was a new development for Samsung, and from the sounds of it, it’s one we can hope to see repeated in the company’s future. A report out of South Korea says that Samsung’s seen a favorable response to the GS4 Active, and as a result ...
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I’ve learned that there are two things about being a smartphone-and-tablet reviewer. The first thing: you get to handle awesome gadgetry days or weeks ahead of its official release date, and you’re not just allowed to use the heck out of it; you need to, in order to do your job. That’s the awesome thing. The other, less-awesome thing: you eventually have to give it all back. Empty Nest is a recurring column discussing what I miss -and what I don’t- about the devices I’ve had to return. • I was chest-deep in ...
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Pretty much the only reason the Galaxy S 4 Active exists is to give Samsung a waterproof option to compete with phones like the Sony Xperia Z. That’s why it sounded so crazy last month when we learned that the phone’s warranty specifically didn’t cover damage due to water. While that does make a small degree of sense in retrospect (seeing as there’s no easy way to confirm that the phone was kept within its one meter depth and ...
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Watch today’s Pocketnow Daily as we talk about Microsoft Office reaching Android, and why we’re not celebrating. The iPad mini 2 is up next as new reports have the device with the same pixelated display that we currently know. Verizon makes the news next as recent leaks mention the launch dates for the HTC One, Moto X and even the Droid Ultra series. The Moto X and its magic glass, which is supposed to make the display unique. We end today’s show talking about how people are complaining about the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Active, and how it drowns for many. All this and more ...
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Remember the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active? That’s the ruggedized version of the S4 that Samsung introduced in London. Needless to remind you of the ads that are encouraging people to use the phone underwater. We’ll just tell you that both on stage in London, and behind it, in the demo area, the key feature of the phone emphasized was its ability to take pictures under water. They even had a tank filled with water, and S4 Active devices. We
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Nobody likes a cheapskate. It’s why we have fun derogatory labels like “tightwad” and “skinflint” for those friends of ours who insist on dividing the bar bill by how many mozzarella sticks they actually consumed, rather than by the cost of the plate. Whatever other merits they might have, penny-pinchers just aren’t fun to have around. That’s no less true in the case of huge multinational corporations than with people. But where a cheap social friend is pretty easy to jettison when he gets annoying, it’s a little harder to make up for the ...
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Just because we’re not reviewing the CAT B15 doesn’t mean we’re not trying to squeeze some knowledge from its unyielding aluminum-and-plastic chassis. We’ve already shown you what comes in the box alongside the $349 Android smartphone; now it’s time to see how the oddball from Caterpillar stacks up against the competition in the U.S. waterproof-smartphone space. That means we’re putting it head-to-head with the Galaxy S 4 Active from Samsung, whose
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Update 2: We have us a winner! Please join us in congratulating Julian Brecevic of Australia, who’ll be taking home this giveaway’s LG Optimus G! Thanks to all those who helped propel our review count to stratospheric levels, almost tripling it from 29 to 89! We know some of you were upset about the iTunes-only qualifier, but we’ll have more giveaways in the future, and some of them will be broader. Again, thanks so much for listening – and stay tuned for much more in the weeks and months ahead. Update: We’re still waiting to hear back from our prospective ...
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Growing up on sailboats gives you a few useful skills. You learn to stand on wobbly ground a little better than your friends, to duck quickly without asking questions, and you learn to appreciate beer from a can, rather than a fragile and unwieldy bottle. You also develop a heightened affinity for electronics that can withstand the occasional sea spray or temporary dunk: on a boat, a waterproof phone can be a real lifesaver – particularly if it’s not saddled with the added ...
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We’ve handled it at its official London debut, even dropping it into a tank of water. We’ve unboxed our very own demo unit, graciously provided to us by the exclusive launch partner, AT&T. And we’ve given that demo unit the
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