Android Phone Fans
Android Phone Fans |
- Kyocera Brigadier Review: a tough one-trick pony
- [Update: on second thought...] “Android M” references begin showing up in AOSP comments
- Google Play will soon display in-app purchase prices before downloading
- LG Wine Smart is a smart flip phone that runs Android
- Samsung Galaxy Alpha launches exclusively on AT&T September 26th
- Android L spotted being used on Nexus 4 by Googlers
- Let the terrible iPhone 6 clones (with Android) begin [VIDEO]
- Report: HTC and Google still going strong on Nexus 9 efforts
| Kyocera Brigadier Review: a tough one-trick pony Posted: 22 Sep 2014 03:58 PM PDT It’s happened to all of us. You bring home your shiny new phone, and at first you are very careful with it. You take care to set it down gently, and maybe even buy a case for it. As time goes on you become increasingly rough with the device. Then it happens. It slips out of your hand as you pull it from your pocket. You hold your breathe as it lands face down on the pavement. The screen is cracked. The details of this story may be different for you, but chances are we’ve all broke a phone or two in our day. It’s inevitable with the way most smartphones are built. They’re made with plastic or aluminum, and a large part of the device is a big pieced of glass. Plus we take these devices everywhere. It’s amazing we don’t break them more often. So what can you do about it? The most popular solution is to buy a big, bulky case to put on it. That works pretty well, but it will cost you an arm and a leg if you want true protection from all elements. A better solution is to buy a device that was built specifically to withstand tons of abuse. Enter the Kyocera Brigadier. It’s certainly not the first rugged device on the market, but it has some new tricks up its sleeve. DesignThe design of all rugged devices usually follow the same formula. Manufacturers figure that the people buying a rugged device are men that don’t care about design. The devices are usually very masculine, with sharp edges and lots of black and red. The Kyocera Brigadier follows this script to the T. It’s shaped like a shield, with visible screws, covered in matte black, and topped off with red accents. Every port is covered with a plastic flap to keep water out. The Brigadier is certainly not the ugliest device I’ve ever seen on the outside. Software design is another story. Kyocera, of course, has their own Android skin. It’s all glossy metal textures and bright teal highlights. The included widgets are very handy, but some of the uglier ones I’ve seen. It always boggles my mind when a mid-range device is so heavily skinned. They’re wasting their time on something that ultimately slows down the device even more, but more on that later. DurabilityObviously durability is the main selling point of this device. Kyocera has made sure that every reviewer has ample materials to put this device to the test. Included with our review unit was a brand new pocket knife, rubber glove for water submersion, and a box of rocks. The reason for these items is to put the “Sapphire Shield” display to the test. It’s easy to make the body of a phone durable, but the weak spot is always the big glass display. Kyocera has developed a proprietary display made out of sapphire, which is second only to diamonds in mineral hardness. This means the display is virtually scratch-proof and unbreakable. Of course we had to put this to the test ourselves. This phone can take a beating. I dropped it on cement from five feet up several times, dumped rocks on it, submerged it in water (including flushing it in a toilet), attempted to scratch the display with a brand new pocket knife, and much more. The result? A bunch of scuffs and dings in the plastic/rubber case, but not a scratch on the display. Pretty impressive results, but durability is more than just skin deep. We tortured the Brigadier much more than most people would with regular use. Chances are you’re not going to drop it, drown it, flush it, feed it to a dog, scratch it, and stab it all within the span of a couple of hours. How could we resist? Kyocera practically dared us to break this phone, and we may have succeeded. After all of our testing the device seemed to work fine…at first. Then the charging indicator was stuck on, and it started randomly rebooting. Now after a few days the touchscreen doesn’t recognize touches, and the power button thinks everything is a long-press. In regular every-day disasters the Brigadier can take a punch like the best of them. However, if you’re a sadistic phone abuser like me you might run into some trouble. Performance & BatteryIt’s no surprise that durability is top-notch in the Kyocera Brigadier, but performance and camera quality is usually where these devices suffer. Putting time and money into awesome things like a sapphire display means other parts of the device won’t receive as much attention. The Brigadier is not a slow device, but it does suffer from good ol’ Android Lag. It’s especially noticeable when using Kyocera’s custom launcher or when you get a bunch of apps running at the same time. Battery life is very important for rugged devices. The people who buy these devices demand a lot, especially when it comes to battery life. The Brigadier is packing a 3100mAh batter and even has Qi wireless charging. The good news is you won’t have to worry about charging it very often. I was able to get a day and a half of use before I plopped it on the charging pad. it has enough juice to keep up with your rugged lifestyle. CameraCamera quality is what you would expect from a mid-range device with a 8MP camera. Decent in well-lit situations, sub-par in low light. There’s really not much to say about it, but that is probably a good thing. Chances are if you’re buying this phone the camera is not a huge concern. You want to get quick photos when you’re on a hike or at the job site. The good news is it’s perfectly capable, but it lacks the “wow factor” of cameras on flagship devices. The benefit of this camera is it’s attached to a device that will allow you to still upload to Instagram if you drop it on the sidewalk.     ConclusionThe question I always ask myself when rating a device is “would I recommend this phone to someone?” The answer to that question is tricky for the Kyocera Brigadier. On one hand it’s an excellent device for people who need something durable. But on the other hand it’s nothing more than a decent mid-range device with a killer gimmick. Ultimately I think the people who look for rugged devices like this will be happy with the Brigadier. The sapphire display truly is an amazing piece of technology, but I wish it was connected to a slightly better device.
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| [Update: on second thought...] “Android M” references begin showing up in AOSP comments Posted: 22 Sep 2014 12:29 PM PDT We haven’t even gotten a full taste of Android L (or a final treat name for that matter) and Google engineers are already looking ahead to M. A comment about “Android M” appeared in an Android Open Source Project thread. The comment was in relation to obscure developer stuff that you or I may never understand, and there’s no telling what, exactly, they’re talking about. It’s not odd to learn Google is already thinking about Android M. In fact, we’d be worried if they weren’t. Android L is likely in a state of fine tuning and bug crushing more than packing in more features. Anyone using the Android L developer preview knows that there certainly are a lot of things to take care of ahead of the final build. Google shouldn’t be adding much more than the goods they’ve already shown off at Google I/O earlier this year. One thing we’re curious about — what will the “M” treat be? Marshmallow? Mint? Moon pie? Maybe even Milky Way? It’s tough to guess when we don’t even know what to call Android L yet. Google probably doesn’t even know what they want M to be, but it’s something to ponder while we await the latest round of goodness coming out of the Googleplex. [via MYCE] [Update]: Whoops! Looks like our excitement got the best of us — apparently “M” doesn’t refer to the next major version of Android, but instead an internal milestone release. Nevertheless, we know Android L is their top and only priority right now, and it was fun to come up with some possible names for whatever “M” turns out to be. |
| Google Play will soon display in-app purchase prices before downloading Posted: 22 Sep 2014 12:02 PM PDT It seems adding a notice about in-app purchases for apps that have them isn’t enough — Google’s looking to give you even more information about in-app purchase prices before you download it. The company has recently confirmed via the Google Play developers’ back end that an upcoming update to Google Play will show price ranges for games and apps with in-app purchases. The change will go into effect starting September 30th, according to Google. For instance, A game with an item for as low as $1 and an item as high as $99 would show you $1 – $99. You don’t get the specifics of everything in between, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect ahead of the download. This comes at a time where in-app purchases have been the source of much controversy. Earlier this year, Apple was forced to pay a settlement for folks who claimed it was too easy to purchase in-app content (with many claiming their kids were purchasing that content without authorization or permission). Google was eventually forced to do the same. The incidents have caused Apple and Google to update their digital marketplaces with proper notices, frequent prompts for passwords and other changes that will ensure no one can “accidentally” purchase anything. This is yet another step to make sure people know what they’re getting into before they download an app, even if that app’s initial download is free of charge. We’ll be on the lookout for the change at some point next week. |
| LG Wine Smart is a smart flip phone that runs Android Posted: 22 Sep 2014 10:48 AM PDT LG has just announced an interesting Android phone that most of us will probably never use. It’s the LG Wine Smart, a flip phone that runs Android. The concept isn’t new — we’ve seen Samsung make a few of these for Asian territories already — but it’s no less cool.     The LG Wine Smart sports a 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 display, 4GB of internal storage, an 8 megapixel camera and a 1,700mAh battery. That’s not the most exciting line of specs we’ve ever seen, though it should be enough to provide a decent experience that other phones in this form factor don’t often provide. For software it’s running a scaled down version of Android 4.4 KitKat. The device isn’t expected to provide enough of a punch for any power users, so LG is targeting it to the elderly and handicapped, and anyone who may not want to forego traditional form factors for one reason or another. The Korean press release likely means it won’t be traveling far out of their own territory so you’ll probably need to resort to importing if you happen to want one. It’ll be launching in South Korea this Friday. |
| Samsung Galaxy Alpha launches exclusively on AT&T September 26th Posted: 22 Sep 2014 09:39 AM PDT Ready for yet another AT&T exclusive? This time, the company teamed up with the biggest manufacturer in the Android phone space — Samsung — to offer the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. It’ll go on sale starting September 26th, and can be had for several different pricing levels:
No other US carrier will be seeing the device (not right away, anyway) so unless you’re willing to do your bidding with Ma Bell you can feel free to pass on this one. The Samsung Galaxy Alpha was the first handset from the company to revamp the Galaxy design language and introduce a fair bit of metal into the mix. The Samsung Galaxy Alpha features a pocketable 4.7-inch form factor (HD resolution) and has a 2.5GHz quad-core processor. It also features 2GB of RAM, a 12 megapixel camera, 32GB of internal storage and more. Of course, you can expect Android 4.4 with a helping of TouchWiz on top (which emphasizes health and battery saving improvements above all else). Let us know if you’ll be looking to grab one of these once it lands later this week. [via AT&T] |
| Android L spotted being used on Nexus 4 by Googlers Posted: 22 Sep 2014 08:32 AM PDT Well, isn’t this interesting. It appears the Nexus 4 won’t be left behind when Android L makes its way to handsets later this year. A recent bug report entry in Google’s issue tracker mentions a Nexus 4 running a build of Android L. The entry doesn’t tell us much about anything — just that Google definitely is testing the update out on 2012′s flagship Nexus handset. We weren’t worried that the Nexus 4 wouldn’t get the upgrade. It’s still a fairly recent smartphone with hardware powerful enough to champion any Android release down the line. With Google emphasizing better performance on entry level hardware we imagine the Nexus 4′s shelf life will be much higher than that of the Galaxy Nexus or Nexus S (especially considering some of the low cost Android One phones launching next month are already poised to receive the upgrades). The only question yet to be answered is when Google is actually planning to release Android L. Many have their fingers crossed in hopes of an October debut, though we wouldn’t be surprised if it takes them a bit longer. In any case, there are only about three months left to go before the “later this year” deadline expires, so it shan’t be long. |
| Let the terrible iPhone 6 clones (with Android) begin [VIDEO] Posted: 22 Sep 2014 06:56 AM PDT The iPhone 6′s launch this past weekend proved people are still excited about Apple, so you can imagine the countless shameless manufacturers out there looking to cash in on its success. It didn’t take long, but the first iPhone 6 clone has arrived. The device you see in the video above is the “Sophone i6,” which totally sounds legit. The device is built to look just like an iPhone 6, though obviously not with the same build quality that you’d get from the real deal out of Cupertino. It also won’t be loaded with nearly as good specs:
Jokes aside, though, this may not be a bad smartphone for its price — $140 as of the time of this writing. It could get the job done for someone who doesn’t have hundreds to spend on a legit iPhone or a high quality Android, though we’d just as soon suggest they go with something like the Moto G. You can watch a pretty full hands-on video from the retailer above.
[via Redmond Pie] |
| Report: HTC and Google still going strong on Nexus 9 efforts Posted: 22 Sep 2014 05:50 AM PDT HTC’s name has been in the wind as one of the manufacturers responsible for making the next Nexus Tablet, though with little to go on since the initial rumor it’s understandable if there’s still doubt of that happening. It looks like those plans could still be on as a report from the Wall Street Journal suggests Google and HTC have been hard at work on the next Nexus tablet (known as the Nexus 9) for the past few months. The report suggests HTC engineers have been flying out to Google’s headquarters on a frequent basis to ease the collaboration process (which certainly isn’t that hard to believe considering how important of a device this is). HTC hasn’t had success in the tablet space. It all began with the untimely launch of the HTC Flyer, and continued through an uninspiring HTC Jetstream. It felt like just yesterday that HTC threw in the towel and decided to focus on smartphones alone, but being tapped as the manufacturer of the next Nexus tablet seems to be a good reason to jump back into the fold. The report touched on Google’s decision to go with HTC over more seasoned veterans such as Samsung and ASUS. According to it, Google doesn’t want any one or two manufacturers having a “monopoly,” of sorts, over the Nexus-making duties. It’s a move that’s consistent with how the line has operated so far, with manufacturers usually getting the honor of working on two different devices. We’re hoping this launch will inspire HTC to step back into the tablet game and challenge LG, Samsung and ASUS to a game they’ve all gotten quite good at. For now, though, we’re just hoping to get our first glimpse of the thing ahead of its glorious debut. |
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