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Fast charging can be a difficult topic to wrap your head around. There are a lot of competing standards, all with different cables and power adapters, but one of the most popular is Qualcomm's 'Quick Charge' technology. There are different versions with different charging speeds, but QC 2.0 and 3.0 are still common to find in today's phones and tablets.
Sony Mobile, despite its lackluster presence here for the past few years, is gradually re-entering the US market. The Japanese company's latest flagship, the Xperia XZ, went up for pre-order a little over a week ago, and it's now available for purchase. Unfortunately, at $700, I don't see the XZ helping Sony's dwindling smartphone business much.For your seven Benjamins, you'll get a handsome metal build, a Gorilla Glass 4-covered 5.2" 1080p display, a Snapdragon 820, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage with microSD expansion, a 23MP camera, USB Type-C, and IP65/68 water resistance. However, there's no fingerprint sensor on the US model, which is a big no-no for a late 2016 flagship.Oddly, the Forest Blue color that showed up during the pre-order phase is no longer available on Amazon. B&H, which still has the XZ in pre-order phase, still lists blue as being available. Maybe Sony decided to ax that option for us 'Muricans? That leaves Graphite Black and Platinum (Sony's naming, not mine), both of which still look pretty decent.As of the writing of this article, Amazon has 20 black and 6 silver XZs in stock. Is this because people are grabbing them up, or because Sony, knowing the phone wouldn't sell well, only allotted a few units? We may never know.Source: Amazon
After more than a few leaks, the LG V20 is now official. Revealed less than an hour ago in San Francisco, the V10 successor maintains the G5's design and many of its specs while adding several touches that make LG's V series devices unique.
There are a TON of Android phone manufactures in the world. Yet, here in the US, only three have wide enough appeal to have their flagship devices sold by all 4 major US carriers (well, in HTC's case 3 out of 4). Those manufacturers are, of course, Samsung, LG, and HTC. Now that their 2016 flagships, the Galaxy S7/S7 Edge, LG G5, & HTC 10 have all been announced, many of you will be tasked with the unenviable mission of deciding which of these three devices will be your next phone.
The HTC family welcomed a new member yesterday – the HTC 10. From our initial impressions, it's a pretty sweet phone that packs some impressive hardware and software. However, the 10 isn't the only phone HTC makes, and it can be difficult to keep track of changes from one product generation to the next. With that in mind, I've put together a handy-dandy chart for you, our dear readers, so you can compare HTC's last three flagships spec by spec*.
Out of this year's Mobile World Congress flagship announcements, the LG G5 has been one of the most leaked and just as equally intriguing. Now the smartphone has been officially unveiled at the company's press conference in Barcelona and it's not coming alone. Instead, the modular approach to the G5 has allowed LG to introduce a slew of extensions and accessories for the phone. There's a lot to go through, so let's get right to it.
Right before it announces its new device in the Galaxy S line, Samsung always hypes things up by unveiling bits and pieces of the phone's internals. Late last year, we learned that the Exynos 8 Octa was ready for mass production and for inclusion in the newest S flagship. Today, Samsung has let loose a few more details regarding the actual process of building this new processor.
The Letv Max Pro is the world's first Snapdragon 820 phone. And yes, I know: many of you have no freaking clue what Letv is, and until recently, I was just like you. Letv is a Chinese consumer electronics and software company, kind of similar in some ways (though very different in others) to Xiaomi. They've built smartphones before, but the Letv Max Pro is easily the most internationally paid-attention-to device they've produced.
Qualcomm gave a brief reveal of the upcoming Letv Max Pro smartphone, the first announced device equipped with the company's Snapdragon 820 processor. Few details about the phone were provided - basically none - but we know it has an 820, Qualcomm's nifty ultrasonic fingerprint authentication system (it's on the back of the phone), and WiFi 802.11ad, also known as WiGig.
After several faux-pas with its previous flagship processor, the Snapdragon 810, Qualcomm has been plotting its redemption scheme with a worthy successor, the 820. The chipset was announced at MWC 2015, but not much was known back then except the 64-bit CPU architecture, the FinFET design, and a slew of potential multimedia capabilities. We later learned that the Snapdragon 820 will have a new Adreno 530 GPU, which is 40% faster and 40% less power hungry than the Adreno 430 GPU included in the 810.
For the past few years, we have been struggling against the limits of battery technology in our devices. The more powerful they become, the more we want to use them, but battery capacity never caught up with our demands, so we keep finding ourselves with smartphones that mostly just barely make it through the day. To remedy this, Qualcomm introduced Quick Charge, a faster way to charge your device's battery so that you can get back to using it as soon as possible and with as little interruption as necessary.
Qualcomm's new Adreno 530 GPU won't be something you'll find in any phone until next year, but nonetheless the newer, better, faster GPU powering the upcoming Snapdragon 820 chipset was detailed (well, lightly detailed) at SIGGRAPH 2015 this week. Qualcomm also confirmed that Snapdragon 820 devices will be available starting in the first half of 2016 - all but ruling out the chip in rumored Nexus devices launching this fall (unless, of course, they're not launching until next year).
You are probably familiar with the issues surrounding the Snapdragon 810 by now, but a new chip is right around the corner that could get Qualcomm back on track. I speak of course of the fabled Snapdragon 820 (MSM8996). Details of this chip have allegedly been leaked in China, and while we can't know for sure that they're accurate, the slides sure look legit.
Qualcomm's current top processor is the Snapdragon 810, which is only shipping in the LG G Flex 2 and set to appear in upcoming flagships like the HTC One M9. But at Mobile World Congress the chip manufacturer is already taking the wraps off of its next-gen design, the predictably-named Snapdragon 820. Details on the exact capabilities of the new chip are scarce, but Qualcomm says it should be ready to ship to mobile manufacturers sometime in the second half of this year.