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Google appears to be tired of the endless cycle of leaks and speculation when it comes to the Pixel 4. The company today has published a blog post and video showing off the upcoming phone's facial recognition tech, as well as gesture controls. We also get a tearaway view of the top of the Pixel 4 (pictured above) showing what that gap in previous leaks was for — a lot of things, it turns out.
Everyone's been talking about the clever wallpapers that are the product of the Galaxy S10's hole-punch front-facing camera setup, but it turns out that the front-facing camera itself is having some issues. In third-party apps, the S10 selfie cam's view is a lot more zoomed in than the camera's actual field-of-view.
In the last few years, bezels have gone from a generally ignored necessity to one of industrial design's contemporary sins. That extra chonk housed, among other things, a phone's front-facing camera. But now we have notches, sliding designs, the "hole-punch" cutout, and even phones that eschew front-facing cameras entirely. So I'm curious to hear which style of camera placement you prefer.
Look, Chinese phone manufacturers, we need to have a talk. I know trademarks, copyrights, patents, and all manner of intellectual property are played kind of fast and loose over there. But when even your legitimate companies follow Apple like a bunch of multi-million-dollar ducklings, it's not poking any holes in the old "iPhone clone" argument. Case in point: OPPO's shiny new F1 Plus, a phone that has some fantastic design and hardware and could certainly stand on its own merits... that just happens to look like someone took an iPhone 6 Plus and put it through a photocopier a few dozen times.
Sometimes you've just got to sit back and marvel at the ingenuity of some Android developers. While Motorola was busy putting expensive infrared sensors all over the front of the new Moto X to enable a few gesture controls, developer OnTheGo Platforms was adding it in with something that just about every smartphone already has. Behold, BrainWave, an app that lets you play, pause, and navigate your music like a frickin' Jedi.
HTC is set to unveil some new hardware at a New York City event on Wednesday. The company itself has already given us some clues to a GoPro-style sports camera (including a couple of unintended product images), and a few less reliable sources claim there will be a phone with a 13-megapixel Duo camera. This weekend the Twitter leak account @Upleaks showed some images of an alleged "HTC Desire Eye," a phone that embraces the selfie craze (ugh) in a big way.
Everyone's favorite novelty camera app that hasn't been bought for a billion dollars, Paper Camera, saw an update to version 3 today. Among the new features, the app has added support for the front-facing camera, the ability to share to a variety of sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The app also allows users to buy extra controls via an in-app purchase that add even more customization controls to the already impressive filters.
Not much was known for a fact about the next crown jewel in the Droid line of Android phones that played a such a crucial part in the growth of the OS in the past 2 years. We had a suspicion that it would have a 4" screen, lose "the lip," and gain a dual-core CPU and a front-facing camera, all while bearing the name Droid 3, but no concrete proof of any of those.
The reincarnation of the Sidekick brand didn't quite come as a complete surprise after T-Mobile teased its return back in January, followed by a nice photo leak that showed the latest thumb-killer, this time made by Samsung, in its full glory. However, it's always nice to get official confirmations and specs from the carrier itself, and that's exactly what T-Mobile is gracing us with today.
CES hasn't even started yet, but we're already getting word of a newly announced Android tablet - as well as a handset - from television manufacturer Vizio. The specs are nothing to scoff at, either, as the VIA Phone can certainly hold its own against any phone on the market today:
Next up in the seemingly endless line of future Android phones we know almost nothing about: one of Verizon and LG's future LTE devices.
Just in time for the discontinuation of the original myTouch, the rumored myTouch HD has been made official, albeit with a slight name change (HD has been dropped). And the device is rocking some pretty impressive specs, which may just be enough to draw people away from the G2:
All of Samsung's Galaxy S family have the same 4.0" Super-AMOLED screen, share a common iPhone-esque UI, and ... well, that's about it. The disparity between features in the SGS line has certainly caused some frustration with users; two have a flash, one has a keyboard and 4G, one has Bing (not really a feature worth crowing about), and two have front-facing cameras. Those two are the appropriately-named Epic 4G and the mothership, the Galaxy S i9000, which is mainly sold in Europe and Korea.