Category: Android Oreo

Today’s Deal is on the powerful, 5.2″ Sony Xperia XZs.  The XZs is a revamped version of last year’s XZ and has, as you would expect from Sony, some pretty impressive specs.  Today, the XZs has dropped in price down to $399 on Amazon.  This is the same price Sony was selling the phone for during the holidays.

The Xperia XZs is powered by the Snapdragon 820 processor clocked at 2.2GHz, has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded and additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  The XZs is IP68 rated against water and dust intrusion and, a not-so-common thing here in the US, it is a dual-SIM phone.  The display is a 5.2″ FHD and all of this is powered by a 2900mAh battery that is charged via a USB-C port and it supports Quick Charge 3.0 technology.

Today’s Deal is on the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact, the company’s 4.6″ Android phone that was launched in September of last year.  The XZ1 Compact is the follow up to the popular Xperia X Compact from 2016 and has some mighty impressive specs for its small size.  Right now on Amazon you can pick up the phone in Midnight Blue for $505, a savings of $94 off the normal price.  If blue isn’t your thing, you can get it in White Silver for a little more, $539.  If  Twilight Pink is your color, you can pick up the XZ1 Compact in that color for just $499.

The  Xperia XZ1 Compact has a 4.6″ full HD display (1920 x 1080) and is powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC and coupled with the Adreno 540 GPU.  It has 4GB of RAM and has 32GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

As for cameras, the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact follows up last year’s X Compact well.  It has a 19MP rear camera that uses Sony’s SteadyShot for image stabilization.  The front facing camera is an 8MP shooter that has 120° wide-angle to capture the most in your selfies.

After releasing the Android Oreo based OxygenOS 5.0 build last week for the OnePlus 3 and 3T, OnePlus as rolled out a minor update to address some bugs that cropped up in that build along with a few new features.  The new build is 5.0.1 and, as is always the case with OnePlus, they are slow rolling the update out to users.

The bug fixes are a key part of this update to OxygenOS as well as some performance improvements.  This 5.0.1 build also has the December 2017 Android Security Update patch.  According to the change log, here is the full rundown of features & improvements:

• Added support for aptX HD
• Added Wi-Fi hotspot device manager
• Added “adaptive mode” screen calibration
• Updated Android security patch to December
• General bug fixes and stability improvements

If you are already running the 5.0 build, the OTA incremental update is just shy of 145MB in size.

Nokia deserves a lot of credit for their efforts to keep their devices on the most current version of Android.  The company has already indicated that their current line up of the phones will get the Android Oreo update and yesterday, even the budget friendly Nokia 2 was confirmed to be on the list.

HMD Global’s Juho Sarvikas, the company’s Chief Product Officer, took to Twitter to answer a Nokia 2 owners question of if the phone would be upgraded to Android Oreo.

Hi! It will receive Android Oreo. 1GB RAM devices will be supported on 8.1 release where many of the Android Go memory management improvements will be integrated. Nokia 2 performance will only get better over time!

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) December 28, 2017

While we don’t have any sort of time frame on when this update will actually roll out, the fact that a $99 phone is going to be updated to the latest build of Android is, well, almost unheard of.

Today’s deal is on the compact, 4.6″ display Sony Xperia X Compact.  The 2016 phone packs a lot of punch and is down to $319 today on Amazon.  This is $180 less than the cost of the new-for-2017 Xperia XZ1 Compact and you will still be getting Android Oreo at some point in early 2018.  The price on the Xperia X Compact is for the phone in black, blue or white colors and all versions are sold unlocked.

I reviewed the Xperia X Compact in November of last year and it remains one of my favorite phones of the past year.  It’s compact size is great but the overall performance and camera quality is excellent.

The Xperia X Compact is powered by the Snapdragon 650 hexa-core processor.  It has four 1.4 GHz Cortex-A53 cores &  two 1.8 GHz Cortex-A72 cores.  The processor is coupled with the Adreno 510 GPU which provides good graphics performance.  The X Compact has 3GB of RAM onboard and has 32GB of built-in storage.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 256GB thanks to the Micro SD slot that is built into the SIM tray of the phone.  With the smaller screen size, as you would expect, the X Compact is a pretty small device.  It measures 129 x 65 x 9.5 mm or 5.08 x 2.56 x 0.37″ in old money.  Weight wise it is 136g or 4.76 ounces.  The phone is comfortable to hold and very easy to slip into any pocket.

For readers who have their Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus in the company’s Android Oreo beta program, you have a second beta build coming your way.  The new beta is build R16NW.G955FXXU1ZQLE and is just over 600MB in size.  The updated beta has been released but it could take a few days before all beta testers see it on their phone.

This new build contains a significant number of bug fixes and performance improvements over the first beta and seemingly nothing on the device was left untouched.  The new beta addresses issues with Bluetooth connectivity, smart device connectivity, Bixby issues, profile issues… it goes on.  This update should also address general unresponsiveness of the device in all situations and uses.  It isn’t uncommon for manufactures to offer a lot of updates to things in their 2nd beta builds and this one certainly is no exception.