Author: Clinton

Today’s Deal is on a well appointed new tablet from Huawei.  The MediaPad M3 is their latest offering and the 8.4″ tablet sports 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a 2560 x 1600 pixel IPS display for $299.  To make this an even sweeter deal, the M3 has Harmon Kardon tuned sound so you should have a great media experience with it on top of the great overall specs.  The new tablet from Huawei was announced last month and hit the Amazon digital shelves yesterday.  If you are an Amazon Prime customer, shipping is free.

The MediaPad M3 is powered by the Octa-Core Kirin 950 processor running at 2.3GHz and it is coupled with the Mali-T880 MP4 GPU.  This combination should do great for everyday use and you have plenty of RAM to support the processor which always helps.

As 2016 starts to wind down, It is always interesting to go back and look at how things progressed throughout the year.  To be sure, there have been a huge number of phones launched this year from a wide range of manufactures.  One of the new kids on the block, Nextbit, launched their first phone in mid-2015 and started shipping it in February of this year.  Originally priced at $399 and having more than a few teething problems (mostly related to a really sluggish camera), the phone has slowly and steadily been updated, fixing issues and improving performance as time has gone by.  At the same time, the price kept dropping.  Mid-way through the year it hit $299 from Nextbit with Amazon dropping the price for a few weeks here-and-there to $199.  Now it is available for $169, a price which makes this solid performing phone a no-brainer.  Seriously, I would challenge readers to find an equally equipped phone for this price.

What I’m not going to do here is rehash my review of the Robin.  You can read that and get the specs and my initial thoughts.  But I will make the case for this phone being the unsung hero of the year based on its specs for the price, the update cycle that Nextbit has been keeping and the open and supported nature the company has taken with the Robin.  Let’s start with the specs.  It is powered by the Snapdragon 808 processor running at 2GHz and coupled with the Adreno 418 GPU.  It has 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM coupled with the processor which gives a nice, snappy feel to the Robin during use.  Storage wise you have 32GB available on the device along with 100GB in the Nextbit Smart Storage

The Display of the Robin is a 5.2″ renders at 1080 x 1920 Full HD resolution which gives you approximately 423 PPI.  That makes the flat screen of the phone easy on the eyes when viewing for a long period of time.  The display is protected by Gorilla glass 4.  Camera wise, the main camera is a 13MP unit with phase detection auto focus and a dual-tone flash.  On the front you have a 5MP camera that is wide angled to give you a good selfie image.

In the market today, there are a handful of phones that run the Snapdragon 808 processor.  Those phones are all substantially more than the Robin.

• Blackberry Priv:  $399
• LG V10:  $368
• Nexus 5X:  $299
• Moto X Pure:  $299
• Lumia 959 (Windows 10):  $369

All of these phones have 32GB or less in storage so from a price point alone, even at $299, the Robin starts to make a lot of sense.

Nearly 200 Google users have found themselves banned and suspended from Google after making a clear violation of their terms of service.  The users purchased a Google Pixel through Project Fi and then had those phones shipped to a 3rd party in New Hampshire.  Those phones were then resold and the profits split between the 3rd party company and the original buyer of the phone.  While it is perfectly legal for you to resell your phone, it is equally clear in the Project Fi and Google Store terms that you cannot do this or you will have your account suspended.  That is exactly what has happened and this is no small deal.  A suspended Google account means you can’t access anything associated with that account:  Gmail, Calendar, Google Photos, Google Docs, etc.  It is a complete shutdown.

At the time of this post, none of the accounts that have been suspended have been re-enabled.  While owners of these accounts can appeal to Google, it is a question if they will ever get back into those accounts.  So the question is this:  Is this too draconian by Google?

Microsoft is rolling out a nice update to their lock screen app, Next Lock Screen, that brings a lot of improvements to the app.  The biggest new feature in the app, which is now up to version 3.10.3 for those keeping score, is the expansion of fingerprint scanner support to a much wider range of Android phones.  The support for fingerprint scanners has been in the app for a few months now but it was very limited on the number of devices that it would work on.  Indeed most people didn’t even know it was there in the app.  This update greatly expands the number of devices that can now use the scanner to unlock the phone.  In testing it this morning, it works on my Nexus 6P and my Nextbit Robin, two devices that were not supported in the previous release.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on a handy accessory for home or when you are traveling.  The Anker dual-port USB wall charger allows you to charge two devices at once and works worldwide so it can be the once travel charger you carry with you.  Normally it is $19.99 but right now it is only $10.99 and they work with any Android device or an iPhone.  The charger has Anker’s PowerIQ and VoltageBoost maximize charging speed up to 2.4 amps per port.  It does not support Quick Charge but it will be efficient about charging your devices.

The Chrome OS team has pushed out a small but important update out for the platform.  Build 54.0.2840.101 (Platform version: 8743.85.0) is available for all devices running the OS and should be hitting your Chromebook or other device over the course of the next few days.  You can, of course, always force the issue by typing in chrome://help in the browser bar and it will automatically go and look for the update for you.

As is very often the case, the Chromium team did not disclose exactly what was addressed or fixed in this update to the platform.  They usually limit the amount of information released to assure that hackers don’t know about it and exploit it until a large swath of devices are updated.  In this case, no information was released.  That either means this was truly a minor update and there was nothing worth mentioning or there was a major flaw and they will be mum about it until updates are complete.  Given that there is no indication further notes will be released later, I tend to think it is the former.