David Ruddock
Contributing since June, 2010
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3358articles
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About David Ruddock
David is the former Editor-in-Chief of Android Police and now the EIC of Esper.io. He's been an Android user since the early days - his first smartphone was a Google Nexus One! David graduated from the University of California, Davis where he received his bachelor's degree, and also attended the Pepperdine University School of Law.
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During my briefing at Google's hardware division last week, I learned a fair bit about the new Pixel 3a from the team behind it. One message that team wants to send: Pixel 3a and 3a XL are not "one-off" devices. Google is committing - at least for the foreseeable future - to releasing affordable versions of its Pixel smartphones, presumably on an annual basis.
The Pixel 3a and 3a XL are finally official, and many of you will likely be asking the same question: what's different? Given they come in at just half the price of their premium forebears - $399 and $479, respectively - Google's obviously nipped and tucked a few features, materials, and components in order to shave four-hundred-plus dollars off these phones. So, let's get to it.
Android Automotive as a platform has, technically, existed for years. The problem is that, compared to a smartphone, it takes a long time to design and build a car, so Google's had to wait those years to give the system a proper introduction. After spending some time seeing it demonstrated in the upcoming Polestar 2 (an all-electric vehicle), I think the wait was worth it: this looks legit.
While we're not usually fans of "cash back" discount schemes as stand-ins for real sales, when making a big ticket purchase, they can be huge motivators to get products off shelves. Today is definitely such an occasion, with TCL's well-reviewed and range-topping R617 55" 4K HDR TV available for effectively 0 after rewards are taken into account when you using a qualifying Amazon credit card to make your purchase.The TV is already on sale for its lowest price on Amazon ever ($530), but Amazon is offering an additional 10% in rewards cash back (on top of the standard 5% for the Prime Visa) on this specific model, meaning once those rewards points hit your account, you'll get back nearly $80 in Amazon Rewards. While points aren't real money, Amazon points are about as close as you can get to them - you can even use them to buy yourself an Amazon Prime gift subscription to underwrite the cost of your next membership renewal. So, they really are as close to real money as you can get. And without a doubt, you're probably spending $80 on Amazon in the next couple of years regardless, so we consider this a real versus imagined savings.
For all the fanfare ultra wide angle cameras receive on the internet, it’s getting closer that has long presented the greatest frustration in smartphone photography. Digital zoom has been the stuff of tech-savvy humor for years, a feature reserved for those so illiterate in their usage of cameras as to not understand that it achieves the same end effect as cropping an un-zoomed photo with a simple editor. Why zoom at all, we say, when the camera isn’t able to gather any more data, but instead actually destroys it, and all for the sake of a noisy, blurry photo? While this has a strong ring of “technically true,” I also believe it fundamentally ignores and misunderstands why people use zoom in the first place - and also why I believe optical superzoom systems are the future of smartphone cameras.
Samsung has forced popular repair advocates and DIY repair solutions store iFixit to remove their teardown of the Samsung Galaxy Fold. iFixit says it was pressured into taking down the post because Samsung discovered who supplied iFixit the handset, and that supplier then requested the takedown. While not stated outright, the obvious thought bubble here is that Samsung may have been threatening repercussions for that supplier - repercussions that could have destroyed or seriously harmed its business with Samsung. iFixit keeps it all pretty vague, but the good news is you can still read their teardown, thanks to the Streisand Effect The Internet Archive.
10x zoom seems to be a new benchmark for smartphone camera performance these days, and the latest company to offer a high-powered optical-hybrid zoom solution is Oppo, with its new Reno 10x flagship. The 10x refers to 10x zoom, which on the Reno is achieved by combining a 6x optical zoom 13MP "periscope" camera with output from the super high-res 48MP primary sensor on the phone for what Oppo calls a 10x "hybrid" zoom experience. The only other major smartphone offering similar optics is Huawei's P30 Pro, which starts at over $800 in the Chinese market. The Oppo Reno 10x will cost under $600 (3999CNY) for the base 6GB/128GB configuration in China - putting a very significant price gap between the two.
Four Samsung Galaxy Fold review units in the hands of major US tech journalists all experienced device-breaking display failures today. Steve Kovach of CNBC, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, and Dieter Bohn of The Verge have reported major failures of their phones' display panels, just two days after receiving them. To say this is a disaster for Samsung is probably underselling it. Well-known YouTuber MKBHD claims to be having similar problems, but hasn't posted any images (update: he has, see below). Bohn and Kovach claim their displays failed without removing the panel's protective film (Samsung says not to take it off), but both Gurman and Brownlee did remove it and hypothesized that it led or contributed to the failures.
Following a report from 9to5Google this morning, we were able to independently corroborate that T-Mobile plans to sell Google's current Pixel 3 and 3 XL smartphones, as well as add that the upcoming (and still unannounced) Pixel 3a and 3a XL will also be available in T-Mobile stores. The exact sale date is unclear, but my guess is that it will be timed against the launch of the new 3a devices, which we're expecting on May 7th. T-Mobile being added to the Pixel roster isn't just news in the sense of T-Mobile, though - it's a pretty big deal in regard to the larger strategy with the Pixel brand and what the end of Verizon exclusivity means, as well.
Qualcomm announced a trio - sort of! - of new chips at its AI Day event in San Francisco this morning, and one of them is being aimed directly at the mobile gaming audience. The Snapdragon 730G, as it's called (the 'G' is for Gaming), will offer some nebulous 'Elite Gaming Features' and an overclocked version of the Adreno 618 GPU. There's also a standard 730 chip, and aside from the boosted GPU and those gaming features, it's exactly the same as the 730G.
The watchful folks over at 9to5Google have been keeping an eye on one of Google's least-loved products in recent memory, the Pixel Slate, and have noticed something a bit odd: the Celeron models are nowhere to be seen. They've been out of stock on the Google Store - the only place these models were very briefly available - since shortly after launch, four months ago.
I reviewed the Galaxy S10+, and I had a lot of positive things to say about it. Epic battery life, an outstanding display, and performance that blew away almost anything coming out of 2018 set a new bar for smartphones this year, and I still think all that's true. But it's a phone with drawbacks: a fairly terrible fingerprint scanner, a very high price, and a bunch of secondary cameras that really aren't all that great, making them feel like afterthoughts. The standard Galaxy S10 doesn't really do much to redeem those faults - it's a bit cheaper, sure, but you take such a substantial hit on battery life that it's hard to say it comes with no tradeoffs.The Galaxy S10e has emerged as the "other option" as far as most critical analysis this year is concerned as a result. Why? The $750 price point. The much better side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The lack of several lackluster and largely unnecessary cameras. And performance that should be indistinguishable from its bigger, more expensive siblings. As such, the S10e is the obvious 'looks good on paper' option for someone wanting to save some money on their Galaxy smartphone purchase this year, and the questions you might have probably come down to whether there are any unexpected land mines to this phone - things that may not be immediately obvious until you use it.I've spent the last week or so doing just that, and my verdict is that what you see on paper is largely what you get in practice. The S10e's one real "but" is the battery life, which isn't bad, just very average. That makes it pretty easy to recommend: you're getting 90% of the Galaxy S10+ experience for 75% of the price. And some people may find the diminutive size an advantage versus the admittedly gargantuan S10+.This review is sponsored by TopGreener, manufacturer of awesome power outlets featuring a built in USB Type A QC 3.0 and USB Type C Power delivery ports. Check out the conclusion to learn more about TopGreener's great products.
A phone with no charging port, no speaker grilles, and made completely of glass probably sounds a bit like satire from The Onion, but I can assure that’s exactly what Chinese smartphone maker Vivo showed us this week with its new - and fully functional - Apex 2019 concept phone.
Huawei has now tried passing off DSLR photos as smartphone shots three times - it should know better
A few days back, stories broke that Huawei had tried to pass off not just one, but at least two photos as part of teaser images for the upcoming P30's telescopic optical zoom. Both were professional DSLR shots, one of which was easily reverse-searched as being from a stock image repository on the web, the other outed as shot by someone back in 2009. The facts came to light quickly and without much effort: Huawei was caught red-handed, and its later attempts to sidestep an apology seemed half-hearted at best (which, no: Huawei has not apologized - its statement admits no fault of any kind). Huawei claims, of course, that it never intended to deceive, and so why would it apologize? Even if that were the case - which I find hard to believe - Huawei's "history" with this sort of thing means it full well should have known better.
Android Q has a dark theme - but you wouldn't know it reading any of Google's posts about the newest version of its latest mobile OS. There's not even a deeply-buried way to enable it inside Android - the only access point is via command line over ADB. It's the sort of thing you might have expected in the Android of 10 years ago, but that is hardly consistent with the highly polished image of the operating system Google tries to communicate today. It is, in a word, janky.
The Galaxy S10+ has the largest display, biggest battery, and the most base storage and RAM Samsung has ever fitted to a mainline Galaxy S handset. Its screen is the best and brightest of any phone on the planet, its processor the most advanced in any Android device, it has five cameras, and, oh: it’s really expensive.
Every year, Samsung unleashes a new lineup of Galaxy S smartphones, and 2019 is no different. The Galaxy S10 family is here (you can buy them direct from Samsung, by the way). This isn't a review, and it isn't a list of specifications compared in a table: it's just about helping you (or, for our AP die-hards, maybe a friend or family member) decide which of Samsung's three newest phones is the best choice for you - and making it relatively simple to do so. So, what are the key differences that you should consider when deciding between the Galaxy S10+, S10, and S10e?
A little over a month ago, Meizu announced that its portless "concept" phone, the Zero, would be available to actually buy via an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. At a price of $1300, it was certainly expensive, but not obscenely so - after all, mass produced devices from Samsung and Apple now easily exceed such a price. And for that $1300, you'd get a low-volume production handset that arguably was the first of its kind - just the sort of thing you'd think would get the attention of enough smartphone enthusiasts to justify what was pretty clearly a marketing campaign first, R&D effort second.
"It's the first generation." I heard it over and over during Mobile World Congress whenever the topic of foldable smartphones inevitably arose. Everyone is talking about foldables (which yes, that's not a word, except now it is), and everyone has a take. They're the game-changing future our ever-expanding screens require. They're going to be huge with [insert demographic/region/niche here]. They're expensive now, but they won't always be. They're not going to be very good now, either, but just wait - this is only the first generation.
I've been using the Galaxy S10 for the last few days here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and I thought I'd share some of the photos I've captured thus far in a little gallery below. You can see photos in this gallery from both the standard and telephoto (zoom/portrait) lens here - I've not had a good opportunity to use the ultra-wide camera just yet. Take a look.