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Look, Butterscotch Shenanigans makes some pretty nifty looking games. They're all crazy over-the-top, vibrant, and brilliantly scripted pieces of art, even. You know, stuff like Quadropus Rampage and Towelfight 2: Monocle of Destiny. Or Flop Rocket. How can you not like something called Flop Rocket? (Disclaimer: I've never played Flop Rocket.)
In 2012, we started a series called "What We Use," where we, the AP staff, talked about the stuff that we can't live without. It started off as something where we just discussed our Android devices and computers, but last year we took that a step further (at Artem's request, no less) and discussed a lot more than that, basically covering everything that we love in our lives. The most important stuff to us, as people.It's been over a year since my last WWU post, and you probably know what that means: time for a new one. I actually really enjoy writing these posts, and I hope you enjoy reading it. As always, if you have any questions about my gear, feel free to ask 'em below.
I've long been an advocate for the usefulness of Android tablets, but even I've been questioning my own words over the past year or so. After switching to a Chromebook Flip as my main laptop and tablet, I rarely even use my Android tablets for anything more than reading in bed or playing a quick game.
It's been about a year since Amazon released the first Fire TV Stick (give or take a couple of months), which was probably the best streaming stick at the time—arguably better than both Chromecast and Roku Streaming Stick. Naturally, the company didn't want to wait too long before updating both the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, though I'm not sure that I'd call what the FTV Stick got an actual "upgrade." Really, it's the same stick as last year, but now there's an option to bundle it with the voice remote for just $10 more than the normal price of $40 (making it $50). Still, it's basically the best streaming stick that you can get today, especially if you're looking for something a little more "full featured" than a Chromecast.
I feel like the new Life One X was somewhat of a turning point for Blu—they've always offered good phones for the price, but the LOX is a truly great phone for the money. It launched at just $99 for the first three days, which was an absolute steal; even now at $149, it's still a great deal for a phone that performs much, much better than its price suggests.
Look, I know that we do the Samsung vs. Apple comparisons a lot, but it's not that often we get to talk about what would happen if Samsung and Apple got together for a little late-night action and popped out a co-designed device. If you've ever wondered what that might look like, the Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 is probably a pretty accurate representation. And just for good measure, it has something that looks like a Surface Pen to go along with it. Pretty much every base has been covered here—at least Huawei isn't showing any bias.
Look, if you want a phone that won't break the bank, there are a lot of options worse than the Blu Vivo Air LTE. It's an upgrade over the original Vivo Air in many ways—the addition of LTE, more RAM, and on-screen buttons easily make the shortlist. I was kind of disappointed in the Snapdragon 410's performance overall when I reviewed it, but it's not atrocious by any standard.For a very limited time—about five and a half hours at the time of publication, in fact—you can score the Vivo Air LTE for just $150. That's $50 off the normal price of $199, so it's a pretty solid deal. Of course, with the recent launch of the Life One X, which is also $150, it's not as nice as it would've been in a world where that phone doesn't exist. But if you're not into the LOX, the VALTE is probably the next best option in the budget world.
I love Christmas. It's easily my favorite holiday of the year—just looking at the lights and festive decorations fills me with so much glee I could explode. A sparkly explosion of glee and joy all over the place. It would be the most loving explosion of all time.
Remember Andrew Bell's Android Propaganda Posters ? Can you believe it's been over two years since he released those? I can't. But you know what? Now there are new ones. I was pretty stoked when he pinged us about these—and believe it or not—I think they're better than the originals. Look at them!
Back in January of 2014, Blu released what I then called my "favorite Blu phone to date"—the Life One X. At the time, it was a solid budget phone, but affordable smartphones have come so far since then. The last year or so has been great for the budget phone scene, and we've watched devices get more and more powerful while prices kept dropping.Today, Blu announced the new version of the Life One X, and guess what? It's probably the best budget device I've ever used. One might even say it's probably "my favorite Blu phone to date," save for maybe the new Pure XL. But we're also talking about a phone that costs less than half of what the PXL costs, too.Here's a look at what's under the One X's hood:
It's officially the Christmas season, and you know what that means: holiday meals with family, fruit cake, and terrible gifts. I mean, there are probably (hopefully?) going to be some good gifts, too, but there will almost definitely be some terrible ones. Whether it's that out-of-touch aunt who thinks you're still 12, or that one relative who always buys you something even though they know nothing about you, there will definitely be some crap gifts this holiday season. I can't wait.
We live in a world where more and more things are being done digitally — take us here at AP for example. None of us live in the same state (hell, a couple of us are even in different countries), and we do everything digitally. The days of teams working exclusively through email are also over, with new services combining the best of email and instant message into once service.
Choetech Aluminum And Fast Charge Wireless Chargers Review: The Chargers Are Good, The Names Are Not
You know what I love about the Nexus 4, 5, 6, and 7? Wireless charging. In fact, that's the primary reason I haven't moved to the Nexus 6P or 5X yet — I just can't stand the idea of having it plug in every time I need to charge my phone. I realize that some people don't care about it either way, but it's been a game changer for me. I have a few wireless chargers around the house, and when I need to power up, I just toss my phone on one of them. Done. Every phone should have this.A few weeks ago, we featured a deal on an aluminum wireless charger from a company called Choetech. I wasn't familiar with the company at the time, but the charger looked good and I like metal stuff, so I snagged a review unit. I also ended up getting the smaller, more portable fast charge model, too. Spoiler: they're neat.
There are two things that are staples in the bag that I carry basically everywhere I go: an external battery pack and charger, because sometimes I'm near a wall, and sometimes I'm not. At least one USB cable comes into the equation somewhere too, because what good is a charger without a cable. None, I'd say. None good.
I like smartwatches. I also like fitness trackers. Somehow, neither one is very good at what the other can do (and no one has figured out a way to fix that yet), so generally people in my position are stuck choosing one or the other. While I've chosen the smartwatch side, I still have a soft spot for both activity trackers and traditional watches. When Runtastic announced the Moment, it really just made sense to check it out — regardless of what I wear on my wrist from day-to-day, I've always been a fan of Runtastic's stuff.The Moment, however, just misses the mark. It's simple on the surface, and most of the real information is found within the app. To me, this kind of defeats the purpose of an activity tracker — if I can't see the info on the screen of the thing I'm wearing, why bother wearing it?
Back in July, we went hands on with some Tronsmart Quick Charge 2.0 chargers, which turned out to provide some of the best value in third-party chargers on the market today. We also gave away 50 units back then, so several of you guys got to see what these chargers were all about for yourselves.
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Up until now, there have only been two gestures on Android Wear (both of which I use constantly): scroll up by flicking the wrist in, and scroll down by flicking the wrist out. I've found these to be quick and easy ways of interacting with Android Wear, especially when I'm busy with other things or my hands are full. Since these were introduced, I've often hoped for more gestures, especially for things like exiting apps or going to the next screen.
In my personal opinion, NVIDIA's SHIELD Tablet has been one of the better Android tablets on the market for the last year and a half (give or take). Sure, it's had its ups and downs — a mandatory recall due to battery issues back in August probably hurt it more than anything, but NVIDIA did what was right and replaced all affected units.Around that same time, SHIELD Tablet as we knew it was EOL'd. Initially we kind of assumed that this was because NVIDIA was prepping to release SHIELD Tablet 2, but we haven't seen nor heard anything about that. Now the company is bringing back the original SHIELD Tablet, albeit with a few changes and a nice new price tag.First off, let's talk about what's different. The basic hardware is the same — eight-inch 1080p display, 2 GB RAM, Tegra K1 processor. It's currently running Android 5.1.1, but NVIDIA already plans to push Marshmallow to it (along with existing SHIELD Tablet units) by the end of the year. The primary change on the hardware front is that the stylus has been removed (even the bay is gone). The display technology is still there for users who wants to pick up a stylus of their own and use it, so they didn't kill it completely — it's just not part of the package now. The DirectStylus options are also missing from settings, which makes sense since most of that was controlling what happens when the stylus is removed from the bay. No stylus bay, no need for options. I miss the screenshot tools and stylus-only mode on this model.