Tag: smartphones

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PSA: Unlocked Nokia Lumia 520 for AT&T on sale at RadioShack for $80 – No contract!

nokia lumia 521 review hands on somegadgetguy smartphoneJust a heads up for all you frugal smartphone shoppers out there. Nokia’s littlest smartphone is on sale at Radioshack!

The Lumia 520 is a handy entry level phone, basic specs, but Windows Phone runs very smoothly, and it’s one of the few Windows Phones with an SD card slot to expand the storage. On it’s own, it’s not going to “wow” anybody…

Until you look at it’s price.

If you shop it at Radioshack you can walk out the door with a perfectly capable dual-core phone with a decent screen, good battery life, and a 5MP camera all for $80. I know what you’re thinking. That’s NOT $80 on a two year contract. $80 out the door and you own it. Outright. It’s yours.

You could even shop a phone like this as a “weekender” if you didn’t want to take your nicer phone out for fear it might get messed up out at the beach or on a hike.

If you’re just looking for the basics, phone calls, email, some social networking, it’ll be hard to top this bang for buck player.

Lumia 520 on sale at RadioShack

Related:
Real Person Video Review: Tom Costello chats about his Nokia Lumia 521

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Delta and Jet Blue first to announce electronics may be used during take off and landing

airline travel technology airplane cabin somegadgetguyIt’s happening!

The same day the FAA announced it no longer was bothered by devices being used in airplane mode during all stages of flight, we have two companies vying for our mobile electronics affections.

Delta and Jet Blue rushed out to let us know they’ll be allowing us to use all of our mobile glowing rectangles from the moment our butt is in a seat to the moment we’re throwing elbows to get off the flight. We can be sure the rest of the airlines are looking to make the same play soon. Most of my credit card points are tied up with United, so they better make the jump PDQ…

Bloomberg has a great write up detailing all the business concerns, and I’d just like to take this moment to remind all of my readers that just because this rule has opened up, it doesn’t mean you get to be a douche bag about your tech. Listen to the flight attendants, follow instructions from the pilots, fly safe.

Be a good tech citizen.

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Nokia Now Fourth Highest Shipping Smartphone Manufacturer in United States

Q3-2013-USA-Market-Share-Counterpoint-Research2[Golf clap] Well done Nokia.

Counterpoint Technology Market Research did a tally of shipped phones for Q3 2013, and the numbers were somewhat surprising. Behind Apple (33.7%), Samsung (33.6%), and LG (8.6%), Nokia has clawed its way up to number four with 4.1% of the USA smartphone market. Not bad at all considering how slow the consumer response has been in warming up to Windows Phone. Great news for a company which had less than one percent of the market’s share this time period last year, as it even manages to unseat Google owned Motorola.

We can probably count on the $100 Lumia 520 for a good chunk of those sales, but mind share in general is up for the brand as people have praised Nokia’s cameras. With the entry-level market healthy, we might see even more growth for the brand at the premier level as they prep the Lumia 1520 for a holiday release. Plus the Microsoft ecosystem is improving, with apps like Vine and Instagram joining the fold later this year.

Even more startling however is the continued slide of HTC, as the brand falls to ninth behind companies like ZTE and Huawei. Its likely that Apple and Samsung will continue occupying the top two spots for a while to come, but that last 30% of the pie is completely up for grabs this holiday buying season.

(via Reddit)

 

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Google FOR REAL Announces Nexus 5 and Android 4.4 KitKat

Nexus 5This has been exhausting.  Trolling leaks and rumors, but it’s finally here and it’s finally real. Though I still don’t understand Google’s plan here, rolling out a device and a new OS without any kind of proper Keynote or event.

The Nexus 5 is now officially up on Google Play for your smartphone purchasing enjoyment. Pretty much all the rumors about this thing were true, which kinda takes some of the fun out of talking about smartphones.

nexus 5 - 2The $349 sports a 5″ 1080p screen, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a Qualcomm 800 series quad core processor, an 8MP rear camera with OIS, wireless charging, and should play nice on T-Mobile or Sprint’s networks. Add $50 and you can double the storage.

So continues the price disruption of the Nexus line. $349 for an unlocked premier handset rocking bleeding edge internals is entirely unheard of. This is not an “On contract” price. It’s $349 out the door. You own it.

Plus they also released this nifty video:

So there you have it folks. Was there any better day to unveil a phone running an OS called KitKat than on Halloween?  The wait was exasperating, I honestly didn’t know if we’d survive it, but we did.

More details on the Google Plus Devices Page.

Full PR after the jump:

Continue reading “Google FOR REAL Announces Nexus 5 and Android 4.4 KitKat”

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Motorola Intros Phonebloks-Style Modular Phone – Project Ara – UPDATED with new Phonebloks Video!

ara2blogpostI WANT THIS!

I posted a little while back about Phonebloks, a Lego-like phone concept allowing smartphone users to customize exactly the kind of phone hardware they want. I thought it was exciting as it would allow people to upgrade over time, while hopefully preventing a significant amount of e-waste. When one piece of your phone becomes obsolete or breaks, just swap it out for an upgrade. You don’t have to throw the whole phone out.

I got A LOT of cynicism on social media from a BUNCH of people who said it could never work, further reinforcing the notion that people online don’t really want actual NEW things.

Well wouldn’t you know it, today Motorola announces that they’ve been working on this very idea for over a year now! It doesn’t get much more legitimate as a concept device than that. Dubbed Project Ara, Moto is trying to push an open hardware standard which would compliment software like Android. In an age where increasingly our magic glowing rectangles are often glued shut, this would be a refreshing change of pace, especially for someone like me who still prefers building his own workstations.

Best of all Moto knows that they aren’t first in pushing this concept out to the masses, and they’ve reach out to Phonebloks to do some community building and partnerships, while moving forward during the development process. Really classy move.

ara1blogpost

Get the full scoop at Moto’s blog!

***UPDATE***

Now there’s a video showing Phonebloks and Moto working together!

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The iPhone 5S in Action! Testing the Speakers and Camera of Apple’s Newest Phone!

apple iphone 5s gold camera lens sensor dual LED flash review somegadgetguyI’m almost wrapped up with my full long term review of the 5S, but I thought I’d tease some of the videos we’ll be using to showcase the performance of Apple’s newest handset.

Starting off with the most comprehensive camera test you’ll find on this phone online, shooting in a variety of scenarios including bright outdoor scenes, low light, indoor, night time, tracking movement, and we played with slow motion video. If you’ve been curious to see how this new image sensor stacks up against Nokias and Androids, we have a ton of samples to show off!

apple iphone 5s gold speakers headphone jack audio quality review somegadgetguyAlso, no discussion of a multimedia phone would be complete without some speaker tests. The iPhone is a svelte slab of phone. I was really curious to see if Apple could cram in a speaker which would be able to compete against recent outings from Nokia and HTC. I was very surprised by the results of our speaker test, and you can hear the iPhone playback movie clips and music in our video below.

Be on the lookout for our full long-term review in the coming days!

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Hands on with Nokia’s Lumia 2520 Tablet, 1520 & 1320 Phablets

WP_20131024_19_19_31_ProNokia is looking really hot right now. I think we’re hitting a Windows Phone tipping point where Live Tiles are starting to be taken seriously as a third place alternative to iOS and Android. This has been built pretty much solely on Nokia’s back as they’ve been making the most compelling hardware for the ecosystem.

Taking that up a notch, we’ve got some footage to share of the up coming Lumia 2520 tablet, and two large screened phones, the Lumia 1520 and 1320. Enjoy!

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Nokia Finally Officially Unveils the Lumia 1520 For Real, Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 Tablet Unveiled at $499

lumia 2520 22I’m a little exhausted by Lumia 1520 leaks and rumor posts. Thankfully Nokia has made this thing real, so now we can talk about it again.

Soon-to-be-Microsoft-Employee (CEO perhaps?) Stephen Elop took the stage at Nokia World this morning in Abu Dhabi to show off Nokia’s new wares. The worst kept secret in tech made it’s appearance, and we all finally got to confirm what the rumors and leaks have been feeding us for a couple months now. Nokia is making a phablet, and the Lumia 1520 looks like it’ll be a formidable piece of gear.

lumia 1520 02The 1520 will sport a 1080p six inch display, the highest resolution screen ever put into a Nokia or a Windows Phone. The Qualcomm 800 is unsurprisingly confirmed as well, boosting Windows Phone into more current quad-core processors. Along with the GDR3 software update (now called Nokia Black), the screen size has allowed Nokia to add a third column of Live Tiles to the home screen. lumia 1520 03It’ll have 32GB of storage on board and will be the first premier Lumia to finally include a MicroSD card slot for expanded storage (up to 64GB). Nothing like walking around with almost 100GB of flash storage in your pocket to make you feel powerful. The purchase of a 1520 will also include an additional 7GB of Skydrive storage free.

lumia 1520 04The Lumia 1520 sports a new 20MP Pureview camera, something of a halfway point between the Lumia 9xx series and the monster 41MP Lumia 1020. It’ll sport optical image stabilization and oversampling software tech, which means we’ll probably get some of the zoom and crop capability from the 1020, and photos downsampled to 5MP for uploading online should look pretty good. Also of note, the camera app is getting a refresh. Dubbed ‘Nokia Camera’, most of the features from the separate Nokia Pro Camera, Smart Camera, and Video camera apps are getting rolled into one interface. I would expect the horsepower of the Qualcomm 800 to improve on the auto-focus and white balance speed of the sometimes pokey dual-core in the Lumia 1020.

lumia 1520 05

Continue reading “Nokia Finally Officially Unveils the Lumia 1520 For Real, Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 Tablet Unveiled at $499”

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