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Facebook, that company that is constantly trying to confuse you by naming its own branded apps after system apps, may launch another app it would now like to confuse you with, and it's called - wait for it - Phone. At least, that's what screenshots from a couple of folks who tipped us seem to say.
It's that time again, everyone: time for a trip down Terrible Smartphone Advertising Lane. Sometimes it's about the weird ads, or the cringe-y ones, or the ones that straight up suck. Let me give you some hints as to which direction we're heading today with Lenovo's new P90 smartphone ads, which feature:
With Android 5.1, Google revealed that it was releasing a new feature for handsets called Device Protection. This anti-theft feature makes it basically impossible for a thief to use your phone in the event it is stolen and wiped. First things first, though: how do you get this feature?
Listen, I'm against #brandbaiting as much as the next curmudgeonly person who writes words on the internet, but sometimes, companies do things so remarkably dumb that it's fun to watch other companies (generally equally devoid of any real moral compass) then proceed to tell them that they are, in fact, doing something really dumb. It's sort of like watching reality TV: no one actually likes any of the characters as human beings, but it's good fun to watch them drive one another insane.
Android 5.1 is finally here, at least according to Google (they'd know, right?). The company just posted on the official Android blog that the 5.1 Lollipop update begins rolling out today, though they didn't quite specify which devices will be getting it. Granted, if it's a Nexus or GPE phone and it already has Android 5.0, you can probably count yourself in for the 5.1 party - this release is mostly bug fixes with a few features rolled in (see our feature spotlights for 5.1 here for some of them).
Nexus update documents on T-Mobile's website have just been updated to reflect the newest release of Android is coming: 5.1. Build LMY47D has been spotted in the wild in the past week or so numerous times, but T-Mobile's document is saying that rollout should be happening today for the Nexus 4, 5, and 7 (2013). Whether or not it's right is another question entirely.
HTC made a name for itself in the smartphone design game with the One M7 in 2013, and a year later in 2014, the One M8 kept on bringing in the accolades - an evolved aesthetic showed more maturity (and slippery-ness), a bit less plastic, and a greater level of overall fit and finish than its predecessor. Still, while the M8 was certainly a pretty phone, you can't deny the One look is aging a bit, and there were high expectations for the phone's successor in the design department. Those hopes didn't exactly pan out here at MWC, as you're by now well aware.
This year at MWC, there's little in the way of room for the notion that Samsung failed to deliver on the hype. The Galaxy S6 is the most dramatic redesign the Galaxy S has ever seen, and is more Samsung than ever before. Down to the NAND storage and Exynos chipset, the S6 takes Samsung's larger corporate vision of vertical integration seriously, and that should have Samsung's competitors on edge (no pun intended).
This week at MWC, Intel revealed its 2015 and 2016 mobile chipset lineup, as well as the fact that the company is adopting a similar naming scheme to its Core line of processors with these new chips. They've been dubbed x3, x5, and x7, and as with the Core processors, bigger is generally better.
If there's ever been a persistent comment on Android Police in the last couple of years, it's that powerful smartphones are just too damn big these days. The Nexus 6 is gigantic, and 5.2"+ is quickly becoming standard smartphone size. Finding a good, inexpensive phone that isn't too large isn't impossible, but it's probably not as easy as it should be.
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- The Galaxy Core Prime, with all of its quad-core and 8GB goodness is now available on Verizon. You'll be disappointed to see that there aren't any explosions on the official order page.