Tag: Android

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.

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.

Google Maps has long had the ability for users to attach photos to locations like hotels and restaurants.  The idea is to give your fellow Maps user an idea of what that particular place looks like before they book it.  Now there is an improvement to this around hotels that users will find quite handy.  The latest update brings a dedicated photos gallery of rooms at a particular hotel.  Now you don’t have to go through all of the photos for a particular property.  You can just select the Rooms tab and it will show you pictures of the rooms.

The updated build is version 9.41.1 for those keeping score at home and the OTA update is rolling out now.  You should see it hit your device over the course of the next few days.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the powerful ASUS ZenFone Zoom.  This 5.5″ display device with a 13MP rear camera, 64GB of storage and unlocked phone is on sale today for $247.  That’s a savings of just over $150 from the normal $399 price.  For that price, this is a well spec’d phone.  It has an Intel 64-bit Quad-Core processoring running at 2.3GHz and coupled with 4GB of RAM.  Storage wise it has 64GB of storage built-in but can be expanded an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

The ZenFone Zoom, as the name suggests, has a 13MP camera with a 3x optical zoom on the rear camera.  Optical zooms are not completely unique but they aren’t found often on phones.  Having an Optical zoom provides much crisper images over software zooming.  The front camera on the Zoom is a 5MP shooter.

With the announcement of the OnePlus 3T yesterday, a whole new set of outstanding wallpapers also were made known.  OnePlus has always had pretty awesome wallpapers, created by artist Hampus Olsson for them (he also does the wallpapers for Paranoid Android).  The set of 5 wallpapers are all beautifully done and fit well with the theme that OnePlus has had on the wallpapers for all of their devices.

I’ve posted all five of the wallpapers after the break for those who are interested.  If you aren’t, no problem and I’ve saved you a bit of loading time.  I do encourage everyone however to check out the Wallpaper page here on the site as there are nearly 100 there for your devices.