Reversible cameras: genius or gimmick? (TL/DR)

Most phones these days have at least one camera – or more. The one that faces you is referred to as the “selfie-camera”, and the other is usually called the “main camera”. The one on the back is usually pretty high-end: several megapixels, image stabilization, LED flash, and oodles of more features. The one of the front usually is lower-end: fewer megapixels, no image stabilization, and an LED flash is all but non-existent.Part of the reason for all this is space – camera modules are fairly bulky and take up quite a bit of space inside a phone. The other ...

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Six years later we’re still writing about webOS

webOS is a funny creature. There are a lot of analogies that could describe its perseverance, but the two I usually default to are the scrappy little kid that keeps throwing himself against a bully despite numerous beat-downs, or the cockroach that just won’t go away even in nuclear winter. Neither of those two are particularly flattering comparisons, so instead we just call it the Chicago Cubs of the mobile world. Every year is “Wait ‘til next year.”And yet, we still keep writing about this mostly defunct operating system. Last week, two pieces of news came up in the feeds. The ...

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TLDR: I’m not impressed by material design

Sorry Matias Duarte. I’m not buying it. I know you came on stage months ago and all the geeks got all googley like preteens at a One Direction meet and greet, but what really did you bring to the table? It’s just a new UI for cripes sake. I’m just not buying material design.I don’t know. I guess it’s pretty. But Duarte went out of his way to show how everything was layered in material design. My first instinct then is still my reaction today – didn’t we want everything flat just a couple of years ago? Didn’t we criticize this UI and that UI for having layers and drop ...

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Can HERE Maps compete with the likes of Google?

HERE Maps has sort of been the salvation for navigation for Windows Phone users, especially offline navigation. The praises of this feature are sang across the internet almost any time the service is mentioned. Many prefer Nokia’s take on mapping over the baked-in Bing Maps on Microsoft’s mobile platform and understandably so. Although Nokia’s mapping services, such as navigation or transit directions, are divided across multiple applications, it’s typically a more reliable and renowned service.HERE Maps is one of the ...

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Apple should have waited to release the iPhone 6 Plus

Two weeks ago Friday, I was sitting up in bed at 2:50 AM waiting on the flood gates to open. The iPhone 6 pre-orders were about to begin and I needed to make sure I ordered an iPhone 6 Plus before the dreaded backorder prompt appeared.Turns out, I was pretty lucky. After refreshing the Apple Store webpage at least four hundred times, I grabbed my iPad mini and opened up the Apple Store app. I added a 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6 Plus to my cart and finally checked out around 3:40 AM. According to Twitter at the time, ...

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OEMs, just forget about the capacitive stylus already

The stylus has had a pretty traumatic life. It was a necessary tool back in the beginning of the smartphone and PDA era, as mobile operating systems weren’t designed with stubby fingertips in mind. Rather, buttons, soft keyboards, and entire UIs were fixated beneath resistive touch screens, which didn’t discriminate between a user’s fleshy digits or retractable pen tips.Quite literally, you could use just about any ol’ object as a stylus, so long as it was strong enough to squeeze the protective plastic coating and digitizer together. The finer the point, the ...

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OEMs: If you’re going to mod that far, give us a path back to stock

My mother-in-law isn’t exactly what you’d call “technologically savvy”, but that doesn’t stop her from upgrading to the latest and greatest Android-powered smartphones every chance she gets. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I’ll give you three guesses who gets to support those devices. It wouldn’t be such an issue except at her age — how can I put this lightly — she’s a bit “set in her ways”.Don’t get me wrong, she can whip out her phone and call anyone in her extremely wide social network faster ...

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How do you secure your smartphone? (Poll)

By their very nature, smartphones have always been fairly private devices. The conversations we have, the pictures we take, and the other various types of data we store on our smartphones are likely very private and often very sensitive.While I don’t personally keep anything compromising – pictures, text, or otherwise – on my smartphone, private conversations I wouldn’t want other people to read abound. My smartphone also has access to my bank account, my LastPass account, which holds the passwords to all my online accounts, and cloud access to all my photos, documents, and ...

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If “Prime” smartphones are truly better, they should come out first

Remember how excited you were? Think back. Think way back to February in the year two thousand fourteen – seems like ages ago doesn’t it – and how exciting it was for Samsung to be launching its newest flagship device, just under a year after the GS4 hit the stage. Are you harkening? Do you feel the thrill? The excitement?You don’t?Well good, you shouldn’t. Because it all meant absolutely zero, zip, zilch. That’s right, it’s ‘Prime’ time people. No, not the time when your favorite show – Dancing with the American Ninja ...

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Microsoft’s app ‘Files’. What took you so long?

Microsoft pushed out this nifty little app recently which does what I’ve been wanting to do for years. It’s called ‘Files’ appropriately, because it manages files on your phone. Android’s been doing this for eons via third party apps and Apple will probably never do it. But I had hoped that Microsoft might someday allow users to dig into the file system a bit and get some stuff done.Finally, we can do it. Actually, in all fairness, it looks like there’s been ...

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Android’s back button is still a ball of confusion and inconsistency

Buttons on Android-powered devices have long been a source of confusion and frustration. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes the back button is on the left, sometimes it’s not.They may be physical buttons, capacitive buttons, on-screen buttons, or some combination of two or three. Even the graphics for back, home, and running apps vary between devices made by different OEMs.Apparently, the only thing consistent about these buttons is inconsistency.We’ve talked about why the ...

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64-bit SoCs for Android aren’t even out, have you already stopped caring? (Poll)

After Apple took the stage to announce the iPhone 5s last year, the market was left in a bit of a panic. Its latest A7 chipset, made of a 1.3GHz dual-core Cyclone CPU and quad-core PowerVR G6430 GPU, had something no other smartphone chip came with at the time: 64-bit architecture. Thanks to this 64-bit computing, Apple’s iPhone 5s is able to “crunch numbers more efficiently“, thanks to extra registers, explains The Verge‘s Aaron ...

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There can be only one….One

Something has been bothering me in the smartphone world lately. It’s something that started off slowly and enjoyed a little ribbing. Then it got silly. Now it’s just plain old dumb. There are too many “One” smartphones today. Already we see the HTC One, the OnePlus One, and the rumored Moto X plus One. So let’s run through those ones again shall we? Moto X Plus One, One, and OnePlus One. Did I miss anyone? Or should I say, “Did I miss any One?” Confused yet? You should be. I think those three companies should get together and run a promotion – “Say all of these names 5 ...

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