Tag: Android

Moto Z

Moto Z Force Droid Edition

A friend of mine, Steve, puts the durability of his cellphone screens to the test. It doesn’t take him very long to break the screen and he has consistently broken screens of pretty much every phone that he has bought. So, when I saw the Droid Turbo 2 come out with ShatterShield I suggested that he should try it out.

He decided to try it out. To test out Motorola’s claim of the durability of the screen, he has intentionally thrown it a few times in front of me. The first time that he threw it I gasped, and, surprisingly, it survived the drop. It has now been almost eight months and the screen is still in one piece and working! During this time he also bought a Galaxy S7 (work vs. personal phones) and broke its screen fairly quickly 🙂 Suffice it to say ShatterShield works.

I wasn’t impressed by the specs of the Droid Turbo 2 so I was hoping that Motorola would release another phone with better specs and ShatterSheild. Even better make it water proof. Well, two weeks ago Motorola released the Moto Z Force that has most of what I was looking for. ShatterShield, latest processor, 5.5” AMOLED screen, and large battery (3,500 mAh).

Unfortunately, the battery isn’t as big as I had hoped, especially when the Galaxy S7 has a 3,600 mAh battery for the same screen size. It’s also not water resistant like the S7, but the Moto Z has ShatterShield, which I feel is way more important than water resistance.

The other highlighted feature of the Moto Z is the ability to add on the Moto Mods. Honestly, LG came out with their “Friend Devices” for the G5, but it’s hard to see these one-off, vendor-specific add-on modules getting much adoption to really excited about them. It needs to be a standard that multiple vendors support.

I am ready to pull the trigger and get the Moto Z, but Motorola needs to hurry up. Otherwise, we will start hearing rumors about the next generation of Nexus phones and I might just end up waiting for those to come out!

One place where Apple is blowing Google/Android out of the water

With the recent iPhone 5 release we are seeing quite a few comparisons between Apple and Google, Samsung, Nokia among others. All the technical specs aside, there is one thing where Apple is literally blowing all the other competition out of the water. And that is, with their control over the cellphone providers (AT&T, Verizon, etc.). Let me explain what I mean.

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Nice, cellphone manufacturers are finally starting to pay attention to battery

Droid Razr Maxx

I just read that Tech Crunch had a post showing the Motorola Droid Razr HD pictures. Most of the specs aren’t something that we haven’t seen already, but what did catch my eye was the battery size. The rumor is that it will have a 3,300mAh battery! Compare that to the 2,100mAh battery that the current Samsung Galaxy S3 has.

According to this post if the S3 with it’s screen set to 50% brightness lasts about 8h:26m then this phone should last about 13h:15m (3300/2100 * 8.43 = 13.25). That’s generally the most that I can get out of my S2 (1,650mAh batterY) with it’s screen off!

I hate the fact that whenever I use my phone to it’s fullest (e.g. using GPS) my first concern ends up being the battery life. So, I am very happy to see that manufacturers are finally starting to pay attention to the battery life.

“The Next Bing Thing Is Here,” but please be aware (especially Sprint customers)

TLDR; If you care about Android OS updates don’t get the Samsung S3, especially on Sprint. You will get Jelly Bean in a few months, but you can forget about whatever the next version is going be. You will have to shell out full price for whatever “The Next Big Samsung Thing” will be at the time.

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Stock Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch USB cable & charger mess with its screen

The stock USB cable and charger

I bought Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch about two weeks ago and was noticing that whenever I had the stock USB cable/charger plugged in the screen would become very unresponsive and behave erratically. So, I decided to take it to a Sprint store today and get it checked out. The rep tried a few different combinations and found out that the problem was only with the stock USB cable and the stock charge combination. The phone would work OK with USB cable plugged into another charger, and the charger with another USB cable.

So, if you are seeing the screen on your Galaxy S II behave erratically when plugged in then try either a different USB cable or a different charger.

Getting Samsung Update to work on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Tablet showing an update being applied

I recently bought the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The very first thing that I generally do with my devices is to check for any firmware/software updates. So, that’s what I did with the tablet… Settings > About > System Updates > Update…and to my surprise I got an error claiming “Wrong Password.” So, I went to the Samsung website and was able to login to my account there with the same password. I still reset my password and tried again with the same result. Afterwards, I tried a few different passwords and finally found one where I started getting another error “Processing failed.”

After some searching I found out that the tab connects to a service that has a separate account than the online account, and further searching revealed that I have to manually add the Samsung account before this will start working.

So, here is what you have to do.

Settings > Accounts & Sync > Add Account > Samsung account

Once you add the Samsung account through the above menu then go back and try updating. It should work now. Enjoy!

Apple iPhone or the Palm Pre? Maybe the HTC Hero (T-Mobile MyTouch)?

I have been using the HTC Tytn for almost two years and my contract with my current carrier, T-mobile, expired in December. At the time the main options that I was considering were the Apple iPhone, T-mobile G1 or the HTC Touch Diamond. The HTC Touch phones run Windows Mobile (WinMo) and I wasn’t particularly excited because I have been using a WinMo 6 phone for a while. It gets the job done, but isn’t pretty or “finger-friendly.” The G1’s operating system was new, but the hardware wasn’t particularly exciting. Just when I was starting to seriously explore the iPhone, Palm announced the Pre. Looking at the initial videos of the Pre I decided to wait for it. Well, finally the Pre has been out for a month and it is about time for me to decide.

Palm Pre iPhone 3GS

Here is what I am looking for in my next phone…

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