Category: News

Posted on

Motorola Announces Trio of Phones: Moto X Style, Moto X Play, New Moto G

motorola moto x style pure play moto gIt’s NEW Motorola time!

Rumors have been swirling about what the company will reveal now that they’re owned by Lenovo, and it’s not a single phone, but a trio of new gadgets.

The New Moto G

Gaining a water resistant build, Gorilla Glass, more color options in Moto Maker, this is the phone that bolstered Moto’s market share. It was an inexpensive, entry-level handset which brought a higher quality of performance to the budget crowd, one of the first Android’s to fight Nokia at “cheap” price points.

This Moto G will come in two flavors, 1GB RAM and 8GB of storage for $179, or 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage for $219. Both come with a 13MP camera, a 5″ 720p Screen, and an “all day” battery powered by a Qualcomm 410 series processor. Recently we’ve seen more companies like Asus and Alcatel’s Idol 3 delivering inexpensive options near this price, and Moto’s offering looks to be pushing the boundaries even further.

Moto X Style

This is our new flagship! Taking some of the lessons learned from building the Nexus 6, you can now get a similar phablet build with some of Motorola’s fun customizations.

Moto X Style has a 5.7″ QHD display. Happily they opted for the Qualcomm 808, the same processor powering the LG G4, instead of the more powerful, but hotter and slower Qualcomm 810. X Style will have 3GB of RAM, and if its build of Android 5.1 is anything like last year’s Moto X, it should smoke the Galaxy S6 in multi-tasking performance.  Plus we’ll see the addition of a Micro SD card slot for storage expansion. The whole affair will be powered by a 3000mAh battery, which based on these specs, should be good for all day run time.

Continue reading “Motorola Announces Trio of Phones: Moto X Style, Moto X Play, New Moto G”

Posted on

AT&T First to Offer Surface 3 with LTE

surface 3 attServices are becoming ubiquitous. It matters less which glowing rectangle we reach for, we want access to our data and our favorite programs. Including LTE in tablets is already gaining in popularity, and Microsoft is now building it into their newest version of their Surface tablet PC.

The Surface 3 is a mid-range solution, which for many folks can handily replace both a laptop and a tablet. It’s a smart play for adding cell phone data, as it’s focused on portable productivity, which Microsoft has been pushing with recent updates to Office and OneDrive.

It also fills a serious gap in Microsoft’s lineup, as there haven’t been many slates sporting LTE and running Windows.

AT&T will be the first carrier to launch the Surface 3 LTE, and they’ll kick off with a sale. You can snag a Surface 3 for $399 with the purchase of any Lumia phone on AT&T Next. You can read the full pres release below.

Continue reading “AT&T First to Offer Surface 3 with LTE”

Posted on

Ellen Pao Steps Down as Reddit Interim CEO, Which Probably Won’t Change Much…

ellen pao steps down as Reddit ceoIt’s been an interesting couple of weeks at Reddit. The self-proclaimed “Front Page of the Internet” has been in a state of transition, as admins and investors work towards better monetizing the service.

Ellen Pao’s brief trek as CEO was peppered with controversy. Redditors questioned her policy regarding “safe places” after the admin team banned sub-reddits like Fat People Hate, but left racist haven Coon Town intact. Reddit’s community places a fairly high value on “authenticity”, and Pao’s personal life seemed to rub many the wrong way. High profile lawsuits regarding gender discrimination, and a husband accused of millions of dollars worth of investment fraud, fed an unending examination of her actions, policy, and whether she was the right fit for CEO of a social news aggregate built on volunteer labor.

Recently, the firing of a high profile community admin, responsible for coordinating the wildly popular AMA question and answer sessions, threw more fuel on a smoldering fire. Moderators, volunteers in charge of managing individual sub-reddits, protested by blocking access to their specific forums.

Ellen Pao took to traditional media to apologize for missteps and miscommunications, but this only added to the ire, for many it was further illustration of how out of touch Pao was with the Reddit brand and community. A petition calling for her removal as CEO quickly topped 200,000 signatures. Continue reading “Ellen Pao Steps Down as Reddit Interim CEO, Which Probably Won’t Change Much…”

Posted on

Microsoft Laying off 7800 Employees, Streamlining Phone Portfolio

Rumors have been swirling that a Microsoft phone shakeup was in the works. Recently sparked by internal discussion of “touch choices” facing Microsoft, and how the CEO Satya Nadella might completely scrap the Windows Phone line of products to focus on moving Microsoft apps to iOS and Android.

For fans of Live Tiles, thankfully that doesn’t seem to be the case in light of a new employee memo from Nadella.

Microsoft will be moving forward with new phone hardware, but will be reducing the number of offerings. The Lumia line is kind of a mess leading up to the release of Windows 10. Currently consumers can pick from 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1300, and 1500 series phones made within the last year. It’s a confusing collection with lots of product overlap.

In the near term, we will run a more effective phone portfolio, with better products and speed to market given the recently formed Windows and Devices Group. We plan to narrow our focus to three customer segments where we can make unique contributions and where we can differentiate through the combination of our hardware and software. We’ll bring business customers the best management, security and productivity experiences they need; value phone buyers the communications services they want; and Windows fans the flagship devices they’ll love.
-CEO Satya Nadella

This year we got an early glimpse at the future of this strategy with the entry level Lumia 640 and 640XL. Now it seems very likely we’ll see Microsoft whittle down this collection to six individual phones. Entry level, mid-range, and flagship. At each of those three tiers we’ll probably see a “normal” sized phone and a “phablet” with the XL designation.

Though industry layoffs are always  a sad story, fans of the platform can certainly benefit from more focus. You can read Nadella’s full email below.

Continue reading “Microsoft Laying off 7800 Employees, Streamlining Phone Portfolio”

Posted on

Waze Unveils Ride Sharing Service “RideWith” in Limited BETA

Fullscreen capture 762015 10536 PMServices like Lyft and Uber have been disrupting the market for traditional taxi and town car service in a number of cities, thanks to lower prices and timely notifications through apps.

Today Waze took the wraps off of their solution for ride sharing named “RideWith”.  Focused on reducing business commuter traffic, RideWith seeks to pair up drivers and riders who are already traveling in the same direction at the same times. It’s a 21st century version of the bulletin board a company might use for coordinating an employee carpool.

This is not a spur of the moment service, as Waze recommends passengers book a trip at least a day in advance, and the app will help calculate and pay drivers for fuel costs per ride. As Google now owns Waze, it’s no surprise that the service is launching first on Android, with iOS “coming soon”.

If you were hoping to try this out, you might have a bit of a wait. RideWith is currently in very limited BETA, only servicing Israel at the time this article was posted. You can pull up more info and an FAQ by heading to the RideWith website.

Is this the solution for alleviating traffic congestion during rush hour? Leave a comment below.

Posted on

Microsoft Rebrands ‘XBox Music’, Now ‘Groove Music’

microsoft groove musicGoogle and Apple recently made some noise about their streaming radio offerings, and now it’s Microsoft’s turn. While their core XBox Music Pass service wont be changing radically, it will be getting a Windows 10 face lift, with some more intuitive controls, better integration with OneDrive for storing your music collection in the cloud, and eventually an updated app will be released for iOS and Android devices.

Plus it’ll get a new name, moving forward as “Groove”. You can catch the full details and pricing below, or sign up now by installing the Windows 10 Insider Preview.

Continue reading “Microsoft Rebrands ‘XBox Music’, Now ‘Groove Music’”

Posted on

Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure Has Twitter Melt Down, Calls Out T-Mobile CEO John Legere Publicly

Oof. Even if you’re right, calling out someone publicly might not be the best way to win hearts and minds.

We’ve covered the war of words often fought between fourth place carrier Sprint and third place carrier T-Mobile. Usually reserved for press releases, those digs can be a fun way to shake up otherwise dry industry news. It’s rare though that the public face of a company takes the gloves off on a platform like Twitter.

Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, after responding to a somewhat snotty question about T-Mobile’s yearly phone upgrades, decided he needed to call out Lil Magenta’s CEO directly over what he considers to be a deceptive pricing scheme.

sprint ceo twitter meltdownIt is super frustrating when there’s a market perception of a product or service which isn’t quite, though we don’t often see figures like these lose their cool. T-Mobile set the standard for making headlines by calling out Verizon and AT&T. Could this be a new era of tough talk for Sprint?

Posted on

Youtube Rolling Out 60 FPS Playback on Android & iOS Apps

Smoother streaming video is coming to phones and tablets near you!

We’ve had 60 frame per second video on the desktop version of Youtube for some time now, and this improvement is finally making its way to mobile devices through the Youtube app. High frame rate video looks almost unnaturally smooth and fluid, and we’ve been producing most of our reviews on this channel in 60FPS for the last year. It’s a great way to show off gadgets.

We can expect that this move is also coming in advance of Youtube Gaming, where having a 60fps stream is very beneficial for showing off in game footage.

Now while watching on a mobile device, hit your menu, go to your quality settings, and you should see options for 720p60 and 1080p60. Hit one of those and feed your eyeballs some prettier video. If you’re not sure which video to check out first, might we recommend our new review of the Galaxy S6 Active?

Proudly powered by WordPress