techcrunch: Samsung reveals the new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. A...

The BlackBerry Priv: Like Churning Butter

The BlackBerry Priv: Like Churning Butter:

parislemon:

Joanna Stern:

The sculpted plastic keys were great when I had to write a lengthy email and make edits to a story. The keyboard also doubles as a touch-sensitive trackpad, allowing you to move the cursor. But even I, a former physical keyboard addict, ended up using the on-screen keyboard most of the time. It’s more convenient and easier to use one-handed. Our broad on-screen keyboards with smart predictive text have rendered BlackBerry’s classic keyboard the smartphone equivalent of a Colonial butter churn.

My, how the times change.

It’s hard to believe that a company released a phone in 2015 with a physical keyboard.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1P2KnT8

AT&T Customers Can Make Calls Over Wi-Fi on Select Devices Running iOS 9 Beginning Oct. 8

AT&T Customers Can Make Calls Over Wi-Fi on Select Devices Running iOS 9 Beginning Oct. 8:

The key with this too is that they can still do handoff/continuity calling features with wifi calling enabled.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1GXDKQ7

Art.

Art.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1OlTpvd

Why Phone Fraud Starts With A Silent Call

Why Phone Fraud Starts With A Silent Call:

So this is a bit nerve wracking.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1gXSkdN

Samsung Galaxy S6 Reactions

I just published this story on Medium. Please check it out. There are all sorts of photos and cool formatting things on the original post, which is why I've just chosen to embed it, rather than copy the content over.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Reactions

Let me know what you think in the comments, and please leave a recommendation on the Medium post if you liked it.

Thoughts on Galaxy S6 Rumors

Rumors are finally rampant regarding Samsung's next flagship phone. The three main rumors are that it will have (some varying degree of) a special, curved display, cleaner software, and a housebuilt processor. Here are my thoughts about it.

Lots of people are pointing to the Galaxy S6 coming in an edge variant, not unlike the Note Edge that was released in the fall. Some suggest that the main S6 will have two curves on it, covering both the left and right sides. Others, however, are suggesting that Samsung will look to mimic YotaPhone and put a screen on the back of the phone as well as a curve on the side.

If Samsung decides to put curved displays on the Galaxy S6, I will not be terribly impressed. It'd be yet another use impaired gimmick from the king of gimmicks, which is exactly what they don't need right now. But, if they do decide to go the way of the YotaPhone, they could create a really compelling success. The dual screen display could be useful, if implemented well, and Samsung is probably the only major company that could actually succeed in the implementation of this idea.

Will Samsung drop TouchWiz in the Galaxy S6? If so, would their phone be compelling? There is certainly a huge market for stock Android on more phones, particularly Samsung phones, but I'm not sure that I believe Samsung would be willing to do this. Also, most mainstream users actually like Samsung's TouchWiz, so I'm not entirely sure that it's a good idea to get rid of it.

Samsung is rumored to be using a home brewed processor instead of a Snapdragon. This would essentially knock us back to the pre-2013 Android roots of a dysfunctional app store where nothing was universal. This is a bad thing. Snapdragon is the reason for so much success in Android recently.

I remember the days when Android apps weren't universal in any definition of the term. Trying to download anything was a nightmare, because it was almost always guaranteed to not support my processor. The beauty of the dominance of Snapdragon processors is that recently, apps have run basically universally on all ~2013 and later devices. This is one of the biggest advantages of competing platforms: if you can download it, it runs. Dividing the ecosystem is a bad move, even if Samsung has the biggest market share in US Android.

In the end, I think the Galaxy S6 is going to be a really telling device for Android going forward. It may start a trend, and change the entire mobile industry, or it may create division within Android, rotting away the ecosystem, or it could totally flop and kill Samsung. We'll see what happens.

OnePlus has another new product that you can't buy yet

OnePlus is the OEM behind the One, which is a relatively cheap off contract phone running Cyanogenmod 11s on flagship level specs that has been a huge hit in the Android geek community recently. The phone started sales on an invite system, meaning that not everyone who wanted the phone were able to purchase it. There have been other issues associated with the phone, but that's another post for another day.

The first bit of good news is that the OnePlus One will be available for purchase by anyone, with or without an invite, "while supplies last" according to OnePlus' official website. This is about 5 months too late, but at least they've finally gotten around to letting people buy their phone. Do note, though, that this is clearly stated as "while supplies last" so I recommend buying a device as soon as you can if you're interested. I have a feeling that the supply isn't huge.

The thing about OnePlus and the OnePlus One is that the phone is being sold for so cheap ($300 for the base model off contract, which is less than half of the average flagship phone off contract) that OnePlus is essentially making no money on the sales of their devices (although, I mean, I'm sure they're making some money...). This is problematic for a business, since the whole point of a business is to make money, and it needs money to survive.

Part of OnePlus' strategy to make money, then, is to sell themes and other software to OnePlus One owners. But that can only take in so much money at $1-2 per download on an extremely limited user base.

OnePlus had initially planned to sell back cover replacements for the phone, but it now appears that that plan has been scrapped, and that the company is focusing on back covers for the next generation of their phone.

So how else is OnePlus going to make money, you ask? Well, we're seeing the strategy unfold now, and it looks like accessory sales are the name of the game.

As reported by AndroidAndMe.com, OnePlus announced today a portable external battery pack made to match the two existing OnePlus One models, those being the "silk white" and "sandstone black" models. They appropriately call the product the OnePlus Power Bank. The battery pack carries a charge of 10,000 mAh, which is more than enough to give any modern smartphone at least two charges.

Now, battery packs aren't new by any means, and while I am a sucker for matching items, I wouldn't buy a new battery pack just to match my phone. But the real beauty of this battery pack is that it's dirt cheap compared to the competition. OnePlus has announced the price as $14.99. That's an incredible deal if you've ever looked into purchasing external rechargeable battery packs on Amazon.

But, of course, the usual OnePlus comes back, and this product isn't yet available for purchase. AndroidAndMe.com reports that OnePlus will have the power banks available "soon." However, as we've seen with the One, "soon" might mean a couple months.

Are you excited for this ultra cheap battery pack? Are you buying the OnePlus One as you read this? Do you hate OnePlus as a company? Personally, I'm really looking forward to this battery pack actually hitting the market, but I'm not buying a One, because it isn't supported by my carrier.
 Let me know what you think in the comments.

Large Screen Optimizations

It's interesting to see Apple finally battle Android OEM's in the giant phone space.

To my perceptions, Apple's strategy to justifying the larger screen is to fit *more* of whatever content you're working with on the screen at once. This can be seen in the two columned landscape view. This can also be seen in the Messages app, for example, where contacts' photos are displayed. This is really smart, especially considering that the brain can't actually multitask. There is some argument for more than one window, but I'm not convinced of the user experience of that on a phone screen: A laptop, yes, a tablet, maybe, but not a phone.

On the other hand, Samsung and LG have opted for putting more apps on one screen as the justification. Samsung has opted for windowed apps on their Note devices, which are their truly "large" screen devices. This "true multitasking" is more reminiscent of traditional desktop operating systems, and thus sits better with the "windows types" as I refer to them. Sony and LG support certain apps working in small windows, but they are not nearly as well developed as Samsung's offering, and honestly I'm okay with that. LG and Samsung also support a split screen function, which I actually think works okay, though I argue that given proper app store support a la Apple, this split screen wouldn't be necessary.

Google, in partnership with Motorola, on the other hand (yes, I have three hands) seems to have made no justifications for the big screen. Stock Android 5.0 is as Lollipop on the Nexus 6 as it is on, say, the Nexus 4, 5, or 7. This is not the right strategy for a truly consumer device, but the argument could be made that the Nexus program has always, and still is, about developers and OEM's not consumers.

How do you want your large screen to be used? Do you even want a large screen phone? Let me know in the comments.

Big phone, small tablet

I whipped this post up real quick as part of my daily journaling. Give it a read, and tell me how you like it.

iPad Mini 3 is barely an upgrade. Apple seems to know that the small tablet is giving way to the large phone, just like Google acknowledged at their Nexus announcement.

Then again, Google switching from the the Nexus 7 to the Nexus 9 could just be that the Nexus 6 isn't different enough from the Nexus 7 to still be able to sell them both.

That being said, I think that's a trend in the market overall, and we will see that reflected in sales numbers and new product announcements. Tablets are useful, but people won't use them if their phone is "good enough" for the task.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

The perfect phone

Wireless charging and a good camera. That's it. That's all that's holding me back from buying the HTC One M8. It's a great phone - stylish, all day battery, unobtrusive software, and solid build quality - but it's missing those two absolutely killer features.

Better software and wireless charging is all that holding me back from buying an iPhone 6/6+.

I would put up with the LG G3's lesser build quality and would almost put up with their downright ugly software just to gain wireless charging and a less bad camera. Even though the HTC One M8's camera isn't that bad, and the LG G3's camera isn't that good.

That's how convenient and important wireless charging is to me.

I guess I am also really waiting for Google to provide a legitimate iMessage competitor. Google Voice is close, and so is Hangouts, so it's time that those merge.

All New HTC One (M8) Water Test - Water Resistant?

Turns out that the HTC One is pretty water resistant. Samsung might really be pushing their IP67 certification that they achieved with flaps and rubber, but HTC has achieved essentially the same thing with quality engineering. Yet another reason to be impressed with the HTC One. Now if they could just improve their camera...