How would you use a 320GB smartphone?

Posted on by Joe Levi

We live in a world where everything is available “on the cloud”. We have more online storage options that I can count. Streaming radio is not only so widespread, the majority of online radio stations even stream for free on the T-Mobile “uncarrier” network. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and others offer streaming video with HD resolutions, even up to 4K.We have LTE that provides data speeds in the dozens of Mbps, HSPA+ picks up the slack when we wander outside of LTE coverage, and we’re almost always within range of someone’s WiFi bubble.Even with all those ...

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Panasonic Lumix CM1: hands-on (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

It was all the way back in September when we first heard about the Panasonic Lumix CM1, days when the launches of IFA were still fresh on our minds. Months later, we’re knee-deep in CES, but the CM1 is along for the ride with us, popping back up on the expo floor in Las Vegas. We went hands-on with the hardware this time, hoping to find out a little more about its impressive-looking imaging capabilities.Is the Lumix CM1 a camera or a smartphone? Panasonic may call it a camera, but with a Snapdragon 801, ...

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YotaPhone 2 unboxing: two screens are better than one (Video)

Posted on by Rithvik Rao

Last MWC, we had our first look at the YotaPhone, a unique smartphone with two displays – one was a regular smartphone display, while the other was an e-ink display, perfect for both outdoor visibility and power management. Now we’re here at CES 2015, having just acquired the sequel to review in our offices. But first, to begin our coverage, here’s a YotaPhone 2 unboxing.Spoiler alert: the YotaPhone 2 box is beyond cool. There’s a whole lot of attention to detail that’s obvious, and we’re hoping that translates to the phone itself when we give it a test ...

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Polaroid Selfie phone with rotating camera draws Oppo’s wrath

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Kodak wasn’t the only brand more typically associated with photography that’s been showing off smartphones at CES this year, and Polaroid had a few handsets of its own up for display. While it did launch some new connected cameras and tablets, we didn’t hear a formal announcement for any of the straight-up phones. In spite of that, the hardware still managed to catch a few eyes, especially due to how closely one of these models, ...

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HTC Re YouTube live streaming coming to Android, iOS

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

HTC’s next flagship, the rumoured Hima (aka the One M9) didn’t make an appearance at the ongoing CES 2015 (and we’re not at all surprised), but there were enough news from the Taiwanese company to get us excited: the Desire 320 (though not a CES device per se), the Under Armour partnership bit, as well as the

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BLU Life One and BLU Life One XL hands-on: a mid-tier flagship (video)

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

Yes, these are two different phones from BLU (the makers of the Vivo Air and Studio Energy), but they difference lies in the screen sizes. One is a five-incher, and the other one packs a slightly larger screen, at 5.5-inches, both with 720p resolution. The rest of the specs are pretty much the same, and the design is also common to both.Behind the Gorilla Glass 3 there’s a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 ...

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BLU Studio Energy hands-on: 5,000 mAh says it all (Video)

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

While manufacturers are racing for the title given away to the one manufacturing the thinnest smartphone (including BLU, and its Vivo Air), there’s a significant part of the market that couldn’t care less about how thin a phone is; these users don’t want to sacrifice battery life, even if that means having to carry a beefier device.Check out the BLU Studio Energy, the smartphone that rocks a 5,000mAh battery, which will surely last you a couple of days, and some more. The specs aren’t ...

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BLU Vivo Air: hands-on (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Every year, it seems like we say, “OK, our smartphones are thin enough. Let’s give this race to the bottom a rest and focus on something else.” And every year, manufacturers still manage to release some super-thin models that, despite our protestations, end up leaving us wowed at these feats of engineering. Now the latest push is towards hardware that skirts the 5mm-boundary, and at CES 2015 we got to check out one of these devices in the flesh, the 5.1mm-thick BLU Vivo Air.The Vivo Air may not ...

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Saygus V2 superphone: hands-on (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

“My god, it’s full of gigabytes!” This past year, we’ve seen smartphones reach for higher and higher storage capacities. We’re not talking just the open door that is microSD expansion, either, but the launch of phones that skip 16GB options altogether, as well as even higher capacities coming to models like the 128GB iPhone 6. But at CES 2015 in Las Vegas, Saygus has managed to put nearly everyone else to shame, announcing the V2 (that’s V-squared), its Android ...

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Lenovo Vibe Xtension Selfie Flash: hands-on (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Smartphone camera performance has made huge leaps and bounds since its early days, and much more than simply taking higher-resolution pics than in years past, today’s phones deliver images with more accurate colors, lower noise, and support for fancy focus tricks. While the lion’s share of those improvements are due to better hardware in our phones themselves, other benefits have come from external accessories: everything from pop-on lens extensions to full-on external cameras. This year at CES we saw ...

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Hands-on with the Lenovo Vibe X2 Pro (Video)

Posted on by Rithvik Rao

Lenovo has been relatively quiet here in the United States, and CES is one of the few occasions throughout the year that the company makes it into the American news cycle with a new smartphone announcements. This year it chose to debut the successor to its Vibe X2, and we visited the Lenovo booth in Las Vegas to create the below Lenovo Vibe X2 Pro hands-on video.The phone is decidedly mid-range (but not terribly so), flanked by specifications such as a 5.3-inch FHD display, a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 615, 2GB of RAM, and other such specs that aren’t all that bad when put into ...

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YotaPhone 2: hands-on (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

We first met the YotaPhone 2 the better part of a year ago: the one-of-a-kind smartphone that paired a traditional screen with a low-power persistent e-ink display first popped up on our radar all the way back at MWC 2014, and we took that opportunity to go hands-on with the model. In the months since, Yota Devices has been preparing for the handset’s retail launch, with nations around the globe set to see the handset land ...

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Flagship prototypes from Samsung and Sony secretly shown off at CES 2015?

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

CES is not always about announcing devices or showing them off at the Convention Center or at special events. As the first show of the year (which also happens to be in the US, one of the largest markets in the world), smartphone manufacturers often show off prototypes of upcoming devices to heads of carriers or retailers.Last year, there was a rumor according to which the Galaxy S 5 (announced later, at MWC), was shown off at CES behind closed doors, and, similarly, this year, there’s a report claiming that Samsung has shown off prototypes of the Galaxy S 6 to select few, behind ...

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LG Active Bending display panel wraps completely around smartphone

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

The G Flex 2 was not the only device LG came prepared with to CES 2015 (and it wasn’t even the only one with a curved display); however, it was the only one that was publicly shown off, as there was also some behind-closed-doors action going on. According to this Korean report, on the 5th, when LG introduced the G Flex 2, LG Display unveiled a technology which would allow a smartphone screen to wrap around both edges. Think of it as the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, on steroids.Called “Active Bending” technology, ...

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Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy A5 (Video)

Posted on by Rithvik Rao

We were hoping that Samsung would use the CES stage in Las Vegas to unveil something grand in mobile, be it a tablet or a new smartphone, but we were left waiting out in the cold with no new announcements. That doesn’t mean that Samsung’s booth at CES was empty as far as phones go, however – the company took the opportunity to highlight two of its recent smartphone unveils, one of them being this one. So here’s our Samsung Galaxy A5 hands-on video straight from the show floor in sunny Nevada.Now, this isn’t quite a flagship smartphone – so don’t expect it ...

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