As you might recall, Nokia showed off its first “Android” phones at MWC this year. Why the “air quotes”, you ask? Because the Nokia X family aren’t real Androids, at least not in the traditional sense. If you disagree with that statement, you’re not alone. Over 150 comments were left on that article either telling us we’re spot on, or that we’re totally ...
The post Hacking a Nokia X can turn it into a real Android appeared first on Pocketnow.
With March now upon us, the early year expo season has drawn to a close, as first CES and then MWC delivered their one-two punch of new hardware, services, accessories, and as much mobile news as we could handle. With Anton D. Nagy and Jaime Rivera on the floor in Barcelona, we had dozens of great opportunities to check out all the new Mobile World Congress gear for ourselves, while our team back in the States brought you word of the latest product announcements as they ...
The post MWC 2014: everything we got to see appeared first on Pocketnow.
When it comes to getting content from our phones onto our TVs, we have plenty of options. Maybe your phone has a physical HDMI output (though those seem to be getting increasingly rare). Maybe you do things wirelessly, using Miracast or an accessory like Chromecast. A lot of smartphone users connect to their televisions using MHL though their phones’ micro USB port, which not only carries the ...
The post First MHL 3.0 compatible phones and tablets are on their way appeared first on Pocketnow.
Why would you want a “black phone”, one that’s not susceptible to the privacy holes found in all of today’s smartphones? That’s a question that Jaime Rivera touched on at this year’s MWC. The answer is fairly simple, given today’s circumstances and situations. But let’s jump back a few years before we get to that. Looking back even three or four years, if someone had told you that various ...
The post How secure could Blackphone really be? appeared first on Pocketnow.
Not a show goes by without a lot of extra footage for the videos we do. Despite hands-on videos, and comparisons, being about three-to-five minutes long, we don’t get everything right from the first take; hence, the videos are much longer than what you guys see. However, you’re missing a huge opportunity to see how we’re having fun while saying stupid things on camera. This is why we’re continuing our series with MWC 2014 bloopers. Compiled from all the extra footage we have, for your viewing pleasure. And, since this MWC was covered by Anton D. Nagy and Jaime ...
The post Pocketnow Bloopers – episode 6, MWC 2014 bloopers edition (Video) appeared first on Pocketnow.
Sony makes some very attractive smartphones; there’s no denying it has a recognizable design language, resulting in some very sleek, smart-looking hardware. Its flagship Xperia models have delivered top-notch specs, and all the pieces have seemed like they’ve been in place for Sony to be a really strong competitor in the market… but then there are those screens. Perhaps the most recurring complaints we hear about Sony smartphones have targeted disappointing display performance. Luckily, it ...
The post Has Sony learned its lesson? Early analysis praises Xperia Z2 display quality appeared first on Pocketnow.
Anton D. Nagy chasing a taxi on foot. Jaime Rivera almost burning down a building with a power strip. A Honduran drinking palinca and a Romanian doing a Mexican accent. The tales from our leather-clad Barcelona duo are intense – but their intensity is matched by the hot mobile news that burst forth from this week’s Mobile World Congress, the most epic in recent memory. To wit, that news includes an MWC 2014 Samsung Unpacked event that gave the world the latest Galaxy; a Sony unveiling of similar proportions that built on the Xperia legacy; a press conference that saw the ...
The post Pocketnow Weekly 085: MWC 2014 wrap-up from Team Barcelona appeared first on Pocketnow.
Sadly, Mobile World Congress is now over. This year’s mobile show in Barcelona, Spain was one of the busiest, device-driven shows in recent years. We saw a boatload of handsets, a few tablets, some wearables, and a lot of future products that won’t be available for a while. Needless to say, there was plenty for just about everyone to be excited about at least something: a new Galaxy S smartphone, three new wrist-mounted Gear devices, a new Sony flagship, new additions to the HTC Desire lineup, new Huawei ...
The post The best of MWC 2014, from afar appeared first on Pocketnow.
Technically speaking, the ZTE Nubia Z5S Mini is already getting a little old, having first gone official all the way back in November. Just because it was available in China, though, didn’t mean that we had enjoyed the opportunity to get familiar with it yet, so at the MWC this week we tracked down one of the handsets, looking to finally get some first-hand experiences with the mid-range Android. Sure, mid-range can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but the Z5S Mini is thankfully towards the top of that class, with ...
The post ZTE Nubia Z5S Mini hands-on (Video) appeared first on Pocketnow.
If anyone ever tells you that smartphones are all the same these days, that every manufacturer is copying everyone else to the point where all our phone are homogeneous, uninspiring slabs, you just point them on over to the YotaPhone, the handset that just has to do things a little differently. We saw the first YotaPhone debut last year, marrying a rear-mounted electronic ink to a typical full-color smartphone display, offering a persistent output, low power consumption, and great daylight readability.
The post YotaPhone 2014 hands-on (Video) appeared first on Pocketnow.
Although the “wearables” category is somewhat new to Pocketnow, devices that are meant to be worn, rather than carried, have been around for quite some time. In the very early days they were called pocket watches. Eventually they evolved into timekeepers that we wore around our wrists. Original versions just kept track of time, but other features were added in: day of the week, day of the month, and even moon phases eventually came to wrist watches. Some got barometers, stopwatches, countdown times, calculators, even simple calendars. When Microsoft released its SPOT ...
The post Is fitness the future of wearables? appeared first on Pocketnow.
“We are inspired by taking risks and innovating mobile communications to bring value to users. We are a start-up company that had a big idea and we’ve executed on that idea. We looked at the smartphone from another side, literally, and created YotaPhone.” I love this quote. It’s a little heavy on the corporate buzzwords for my taste, but the idea of a small group of dedicated individuals banding together to will a dream into reality -particularly a dream as unconventional as YotaPhone- is an inspiring tale even to those who don’t share my love for the underdog. And Yota ...
The post The YotaPhone 2 is awesome, but it won’t be forever appeared first on Pocketnow.
It’s all too easy to dismiss the extremely low-priced smartphone: surely, it must be unimpressive if it’s so cheap; wouldn’t any serious smartphone shopper just pay a little extra for something more respectable? But for whatever stigma such models may carry with them, there’s one undeniable fact: they sell. They sell like hotcakes. Yesterday we heard the GSMA announce the Lumia 520 as its best low-cost smartphone of the year, and for good reason – despite awesome feature-packed models ...
The post This is why budget smartphones matter: Moto G is Motorola’s “most successful” model to date appeared first on Pocketnow.
The Samsung Unpacked event on Monday brought us news of the company’s latest flagship smartphone, as well as some new wearables, but in spite of everything we saw, we were still looking for more. After all, remember that “Exynos Infinity” teaser Samsung distributed a week ago? Where was our new silicon? Good things come to those who wait, and today Samsung took the lid off two new Exynos chips, as well as some camera sensors and other components. Bad news ...
The post Samsung announces new Exynos chips, camera sensors, more appeared first on Pocketnow.
HTC makes great devices, you’ll get no argument on that from me. Where opinions begin to vary is whether or not the HTC Desire series really lives up to their name: are they really all that desirable? If you’d have asked me that just a week ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated: no, they’re not desirable. That said, I do respect the role that the HTC Desire family has played over the years. They’ve all been fairly decent devices for the average smartphone user. What’s more, ...
The post HTC’s new Desires finally live up to the name appeared first on Pocketnow.