Author: Clinton

To say that BLU had a miserable summer would be an understatement.  The Miami based company was hit with several privacy concerns and malware issues on their phones which, at one point, was so bad that Amazon removed their products from their site.

Yeah, it was bad.

But BLU has rebounded with a vengeance.  They have patched up all of their issues, committed to more scrutiny of their firmware build and have even come out with a few new phones.  The latest, the BLU VIVO 8L, was released yesterday and it is Today’s Deal.

The 5.3″ VIVO 8L is on an introductory price of $149.99 on their Amazon storefront and will work with GSM carriers here in the US.  Here is what you get for that price.

The phone is powered by the MediaTek 6753 octa-core processor that is clocked at 1.2GHz.  It is coupled with the Mali-T720 GPU for graphics performance.  Onboard is a healthy 3GB of RAM and it comes with 32GB of Storage built in but that can be expanded up to an additional 64GB thanks the the MicroSD slot.   Powering all of this is a 4000mAh battery that supports Quick Charge technology.

As for cameras, the main camera is a 13MP shooter with Sony optics while the front facing selfie camera is a whooping 20MP shooter with screen flash.

Nokia has opened up a beta program for Nokia 8 owners to give the upcoming Android Oreo build a test drive.  The news came via Twitter from HMD Global’s Juho Sarvikas.  Mr. Sarvikas is the company’s Chief Product Officer.

Announcing Nokia phones beta labs! Be the first to test #AndroidOreo on #Nokia8 (physical Oreos not included!) https://t.co/91uhqstnnm pic.twitter.com/GNiNrK31B0

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) October 25, 2017

As a general rule, once these types of major updates hit the public beta realm, they are pretty well baked. But, the keyword here is “beta”.  There are likely still bugs to be found and other issues so if you are not comfortable with that, don’t download the update.  For those that do and find it unstable to the point of needing to revert back to Nougat 7.1.1, Nokia has confirmed that you will be able to do it.

Full details on how to join the beta can be found on the Nokia Beta Labs site.

Microsoft’s Skype for Android has hit a rare benchmark.  The communications app has hit the 1 billion downloads mark, something that few apps have reached, especially those outside of Google itself.  The messaging, calling and video app has been around in various names for years and is one of the linking apps between phones and PCs for Windows users.  It may have taken it a while to hit one billion downloads but it did it and many others have never come close.  Indeed, even Microsoft’s other apps are mostly in the 100 million download range.

Like many of their other Android apps, Microsoft has continued to update the features of Skype and that continues today.  There is a small update that is rolling out in the Play Store that bring messaging improvements.  The update is version 8.9.0.64295 for those keeping score at home and should be rolling out to users over the course of the next few days.

Sony has begun the process of rolling out a firmware update to four of their Xperia phones to address a photo distortion issue with them.  The issue in question is caused when the wide angle lens is used and Sony has managed to address it through a firmware update.

The first phone to get this update has been the Xperia XZ Premium, also the Japanese company’s first phone to be upgraded to Android Oreo.  The camera fix is part of that update.  In that release, owners will find a new “Correct for image distortion” feature in the camera settings.

In addition to the XZ Premium, the XZs, the XZ1 and XZ1 Compact will all be getting the patch to address the same issue.  That patch should roll out by the end of November according to Sony.

Through a blog post made this morning, Sony has announced that Android Oreo has begun rolling out to the Xperia XZ Premium.  The update was released to unlocked devices today and it could take several days before everyone sees it.  It also makes Sony one of the first manufactures to get an Oreo update out to a device.

As you would expect, the update is big at over 1GB in size so you will want to make sure you have your phone connected to WiFi to download and that you have at least 70% battery life available (if not connected to AC).

In addition to Oreo itself, Sony has added several new features to the Xperia XZ Premium with this update.  There is a new 3D Creator app that lets you scan any object and render it as a 3D avatar or free form image.  The app can do this in less than a minute and can share it with friends, on social networks or even send it to a 3D printer.

T-Mobile has announced their 3rd quarter financials which saw them hit the $10 billion mark, up 8% over the same period last year,  in revenue while continuing to add new customers.  The report is for the three month period ending September 30th and also saw the company state a free cash flow of $921 million (up 59%)  and $7.6 billion in service related revenue.  That put the company’s earnings at $2.8 billion before EBITDA.

In the quarter, the “uncarrier” net additions were 1.3 million with 595,000 braded postpaid phone adds and 226,000 prepaid.  The carriers churn rate was down to 1.23%, a significant drop over the same quarter from 2016.