Category: Android

Honor, the budget conscious subsidiary of Huawei, has announced their arrive into the US market in a big way.  Their first phone to launch here, the Honor 5X, is a 5.5″ unibody design and is only $199.99 right now at Amazon.  The phone will start shipping on January 31st but pre-orders are being taken now.  For the price, you get an impressive phone.

To start, the Honor 5X has a 5.5″ 1920 x 1080 Full HD display that is powered by 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 615 Octa-Core processor.  It has 2GB of RAM, 16GB of Storage and can be expanded up to 128GB thanks to a MicroSD card slot.  It has a 3000 mAh battery, a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front camera.  Here in the US it will support LTE Bands 2, 4, 5, 12 and 17 and WCDMA bands 1,2,4,5 which means that it will work on any carrier here at some level.  Be sure to refer to my guide on LTE bands for more details on carriers here in the US and their LTE bands.

Honor 5X – Available January 31, 2016 – Pre-Order for $199.99 from Amazon

Android Marshmallow continues to roll out to a wide range of devices with even more expected in this quarter but to suggest the adoption is setting the world alight would be an great overstatement.  In their latest report on Android versions that have hit the Google Play Store, Google has posted that devices running the latest version of the mobile OS accounts for 0.7%.  While that is up .2% from December, it is a far cry from rapid adoption.  Worse, Android Lollipop, the previous version, continues to hold steady with about 32% of the market.  While the information is not 100% accurate, it does give developers a good idea of users who are coming to the store which in turn gives us as users a good idea too.

By far the two most dominant version of Android remain Lollipop at 32.6% and KitKat at 36.1%.  KitKat has seen a slow drop in usage as more people move to newer devices with a newer version of Android but it gives you a good idea of the challenge Google faces in getting consumers and manufactures to move up to the latest version of their mobile OS.

It was widely expected that today would be the day that Google dropped the January security update for Nexus devices and that appears to be the case.  Google has updated the Factory Images page on their developer site, bringing the latest build of Android Marshmallow to a range of devices.  With the release of the images, users can expect the OTA updates to being shortly to the latest build of 6.0.1 while manufactures and carriers can start doing their testing to get updates out quickly.  It is likely we will see an update from HTC and T-Mobile drop for the One A9 and Nexus 6 respectively in the next two weeks.

The updated images are for all of the devices that were upgraded or released with Android Marshmallow.  Here is the list and the newest build number for each Nexus device.

• Pixel C:  6.0.1 (MXB48K)
• Nexus 6P:  6.0.1 (MMB29P)
• Nexus 5X:  6.0.1 (MMB29P)
• Nexus 6:  6.0.1 (MMB29S)
• Nexus Player: 6.0.1 (MMB29T)
• Nexus 9 LTE:  6.0.1 (MMB29S)
• Nexus 9 Wi-Fi:  6.0.1 (MMB29S)
• Nexus 5:  6.0.1 (MMB29S)
• Nexus 7 (2013) Wi-Fi: 6.0.1 (MMB29O)
• Nexus 7 (2013) LTE: 6.0.1 (MMB29O)

If you are comfortable with flashing your devices then you can download the files today and update immediately.  Otherwise you will need to wait for the OTA update.

One of the more confusing elements of LTE/4G coverage here in North America is which carrier is using which band. It is something that carriers themselves don’t exactly come out and share readily for the most part and for consumers, if you are looking at a phone on Amazon or Ebay, you just want to make sure that it will give you the LTE speeds you want while on-the-go.  To that end, I’ve put together this post listing all of the carriers that support LTE and the bands that they use.  The idea here is to give you a simple primer to look and see if the phone you may be looking at purchasing is going to support 4G with your carrier.

To start, I’m only going to list those carriers in Canada, Mexico and the United States that support LTE.  If the carrier doesn’t support LTE (or they didn’t list it at least in their documentation) then they are not listed in this post.  I have also listed parenthetically the 3G(UMTS) and 3.5G(HSPDA+) frequencies for each carrier in the list below.  As these things go, this will be a living document of sorts and as more carriers pick up more bands, I’ll update the article.

Canada LTE Supported Carriers

• Bell Canada: (850/1900) LTE: 4/7/17
• MTS: (850/1900) LTE: 4
• Rogers Wireless:  (850/1900) LTE: 4/7/17
• Sask Tel: (850/1900) LTE: 4/38
• Telus Mobility: (850/1900) LTE:  4
• Videotron: (850/1900) LTE: 4

Keep reading after the break for Mexico and the United States.

While the concept of Project Fi is to provide users with the option of two carriers, T-Mobile and Sprint, there could be a time and place in the US where neither carrier has sufficient coverage. It is rare but it could happen. In that case, what happens to your Nexus phone on Fi? The news is actually really good both from a coverage and price perspective.

Keep in mind that if you are connected to Wi-Fi and it is strong enough, you can still take and make calls.  Last month I posted an article on how to tell if your calls are happening over Wi-Fi so you can refer to that for more details.  But assuming that you don’t even have that available, Fi kicks in to “Domestic Roaming”.  That means that it will use whatever carrier is available to get you connected to make those calls.  In my research of this topic, there have been multiple Fi users who have reported that when T-Mobile or Sprint was not available, their Nexus devices connected to AT&T or Verizon for coverage.  This happened automatically for those users who had roaming enabled (Settings>More>Cellular Networks on your device).

I should be clear that I personally have not experienced or used Domestic Roaming.  In all of my travels I have always had T-Mobile or Sprint available to me.

So what does that cost you as a Project Fi users if you happen to go onto the AT&T or Verizon network?  Absolutely nothing.

2015 was a breakout year for ClintonFitch.com and I have you to thank. Thank you for reading the posts, commenting here, on Twitter and Google+ and for following. Without you, there really would be no point to the site.

I have been running this site since 2004 and while it has gone through many iterations, every year I look back to see what caught your eye over the course of a year. 2015 is no exception.  I like looking back as it gives me an idea of what you want to see out of the site and the content you find most valuable.  Ultimately that is want I want to provide to readers.  With that then, here are the top 10 most read articles from 2015.

#10 Most Read Article in 2015: Real Racing 3 Gets A Massive Porsche Update And New Daily Rewards (July)

Just a month after its big Le Mans update, Real Racing 3 has received another massive update that brings a host of new features, cars and tracks.  If you are a Porsche fan, you will just love this update!  Even if you aren’t, the new daily reward system is much improved for those who play the racing sim daily and want to race against your friends?  It’s easy now with the Android Party Play functionality built into the game.

#9 Most Read Article in 2015: Real Racing 3 Gets a Massive NASCAR Update (June)

You peeps like your Real Racing! 🙂

Arguably one of the best mobile racing simulators available today is Real Racing 3. It has outstanding graphics and game controls and the FireMonkey team over at EA Sports are continually adding to the game, bringing more tracks and more cars. Now, finally, it has NASCAR.