Saygus tweetstorms on the V2’s Snapdragon 801 and an unreliable ODM

Posted on by Jules Wang

Saygus had the uberphone of 2015 at CES — both at last year’s show and this year’s.After a two-month lapse in tweets, Saygus confirmed its CES 2016 projection that shipping will begin within Q1 — another setback from internal sentiment as a February shipping target didn’t account for Chinese factories taking off for the upcoming new year. The Utah-based manufacturer hopes to show off version 3 of its PCB for

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Can Android TV succeed where Google TV already failed?

Posted on by Joe Levi

About four years ago (has it really been that long?!), Google teamed up with some partners (Toshiba being the most notable among them) to deliver a set-top box to consumers, powered by Android – sort of. The specs didn’t look that great and seeing the product in action didn’t instill much confidence, but the concept… the concept was amazing!The same Google that housed all the videos on YouTube, brought paid movies and TV through its Play Movies library, and enabled services like Netflix and Hulu to run on our smartphones and tablets was tucked inside a box that ...

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From Buff to Blogger: My CES 2015 Adventure (Pocketnow Insider)

Posted on by Hayato Huseman

Every year at the Consumer Electronics Show, thousands of people fly into Las Vegas to get a firsthand look at all of the amazing new technology that the rest of us can only dream of seeing. Thankfully for those who can’t make it, Pocketnow makes it their mission to bring some of the best mobile tech coverage from the show straight to your feeds – and this year, I got the opportunity to be a part of it at CES 2015.Jaime and Michael showed me the ...

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CES 2015: Everything we got to see at this year’s show

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Another year, another International Consumer Electronics Show behind us. Was 2015’s one that will go down as a banner year in the annals of history? We didn’t see any huge show-stopping announcements, nor surprise reveals of everyone’s-talking-about-it hardware, but the show we did see unfold over the course of last week was still a totally solid offering, packed with lots of great phones, tablets, wearables, and accessories that all came together to place us on some solid footing as we get ready for the rest of this quarter’s launches. As we start thinking about

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CES 2015 bloopers: Agh! It’s like sex!

Posted on by Jaime Rivera

Covering one of the biggest trade shows of the planet can be tough, and CES 2015 was no exception. From long flight hours, to long walks every day, to long lines to get parking, coffee, or even to go to the bathroom, we could tell you so many stories of how the most basic things can become stressful. An example is how we do video in a show like CES. You’d think that after uploading an average of 1,000 videos a year, we’d already have this video thing figured out, right? Well, you’re wrong, and we’ve got nearly 7 ...

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Life on two screens: using the YotaPhone 2 (Video)

Posted on by Michael Fisher

The YotaPhone 2 packs a lot of features that set it apart from the typical smartphone. It’s got more curves than we usually see these days, a volume rocker that does double-duty as a SIM card tray, and it comes to us from Russia. Oh, and it’s got a second screen around back.The YotaPhone 2’s E-Paper Display (EPD) is a 4.7″ 960×540 E-Ink panel that dominates the rear cover of the device. With no backlight, just 16 levels of greyscale and a pixel density of only 235ppi, it’s not all that impressive on paper – but YotaPhone nonetheless manages to squeeze ...

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ZTE Grand X Max+ hands-on: more specs, less price (video)

Posted on by Jaime Rivera

Companies are clearly not fighting the same spec race we saw a few years ago. Instead, we’ve noticed a dramatic surge in phablets of all shapes, sizes, and even price points. Of all these, the mid-tier phablet seems to be the most popular, where many emerging markets use these products as an only source for computing, and where the size and the price tag do matter. ZTE has done a great job at blending phablets at affordable price tags, with very competitive price points as a marketing strategy to enter the US market, and today we see another product.Make sure you watch our hands-on ...

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ZTE Spro 2 hands-on: the digital projector, as it should be (video)

Posted on by Jaime Rivera

Pico projectors aren’t new, and we’ve seen a couple of companies trying to use this technology in order to allow mobile users to enhance their displays on the go. Sadly the concept hasn’t really taken off, and that’s mainly an implementation problem, as Pico projectors aren’t really bright, and smartphones aren’t really powerful enough to keep the light active for very long. Now, what happens when a company does things the ...

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Aukey CES 2015 booth tour: a plethora of mobile accessories (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

CES 2015 brought the Pocketnow team to the displays of countless manufacturers in our search for the latest and greatest in mobile tech. Last week you may have noticed some of the CES 2015 videos we were able to produce thanks to the sponsorship of Aukey: products like that GoldKey (no relation to Aukey) cell-enabled smartwatch. Well, who are these Aukey cats and what do they make that you should be interested in? We swung by the Aukey booth before leaving CES 2015 to have a look.For Aukey, the ...

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5 cool things we missed at CES 2015

Posted on by Michael Fisher

For us, every trade show starts with the same goal: we want to cover everything. Whether it’s the newest smartphone or the latest Bluetooth accessory, from the thinnest tablet to the chunkiest smartwatch – if it’s a piece of mobile gadgetry, we want to see it, film it, and share it with you.But at a show the size of CES 2015 (or “the 2015 International CES” if you want to be prissy about it) that’s not possible. Not even with a team of a hundred – and certainly not with a team of three. 

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ASUS ZenFone 2 hands-on: big on features, small on price (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Of all the manufacturers who might give us the first commercial Android smartphone with 4GB of RAM, who did you think it might be? LG has a history of being a spec leader. Or maybe Sony? Heck, why not Samsung? But of all the names you might have offered, did you ever think ASUS would be among them? Nevertheless, ASUS came to CES ready to impress, and in addition to its optical-zooming ZenFone Zoom, the company introduced the ZenFone 2 ...

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CES 2015 Wrap-Up: the best and worst of mobile tech from Las Vegas | Pocketnow Weekly 130 (Podcast)

Posted on by Michael Fisher

An echo-filled hotel room, hosts with cracked voices and stuffy noses, and a rundown full of the hottest new mobile technology in the world. Those ingredients can spell only one thing: a CES 2015 wrap-up podcast straight from the heart of Las Vegas, hosted by your very own Pocketnow pixel pirates.And we’re not alone! Joining us on this two-hour mission to tame the wild ramparts of the mobile tech scene are two podcast guests near and dear to our hearts: Nicole Scott of MobileGeeks and Joshua Vergara of Android Authority. Together with our CES video host/producer Hayato Huseman, it ...

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Remix “ultra-tablet” is an Android-running Surface look-alike

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

With as many products that show up at trade events like CES, it’s inevitable that some will resemble others to an extent. Of course, there are devices that have a thing or two in common, and then there are those that veer much closer to outright copycat territory, a situation we looked at earlier today after Oppo started speaking out about the Polaroid Selfie phone and its unmistakably N1-clone of a design. We find ourselves back in look-alike territory this evening as we hear about the Remix ...

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Samsung spicing up the S Pen experience with new “Penvatars”

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

If the only interaction you’ve had with a stylus on a smartphone is through a generic capacitive wand, you don’t know what you’re missing when it comes to a device with dedicated stylus digitizer hardware. That’s the type of setup Samsung uses in its Galaxy Note series, allowing these phablets and tablets to track their S Pen styluses with incredible precision, support button input on the pens themselves, and recognize varying levels of pressure. In recent models, Note ...

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GoldKey Secure Communicator: hands-on (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Round up ten of the biggest smartwatch enthusiasts you can find, and while they may agree about the importance of aesthetics, a UI crafted with that tiny screen in mind, and convenient charging options, there’s one issue that’s still pretty contentious: cellular connectivity. For some, a smartwatch is always an accessory, and loses much of its appeal when you remove the full-sized phone from the equation. Others will fret over power concerns and cellular service agreements. Still, there are those who have learned to embrace the extra flexibility such connectivity offers – the ...

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