Cameron Summerson
Contributing since March, 2011
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About Cameron Summerson
Cameron is a self-made geek, Android enthusiast, horror movie fanatic, musician, and cyclist. When he's not pounding keys here at AP, you can find him spending time with his wife and kids, plucking away on the 6-string, spinning on the streets, or watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on repeat.
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You know what drives me crazy? Trying to hold my phone and use it for navigation while driving. Or putting it in my lap and glancing down every few seconds. Or trying to put it in whatever car dock I'm using at the time. Or getting the "perfect" car dock, then getting a different phone that no longer fits said car dock.Ugh. You'd think we have this stuff figured out by now.And honestly, I think Spigen actually may have with its new Stealth Car Mount. It fits phones up to six inches — with or without cases — at two different viewing angles, is easy to drop the phone into with one hand, and has an adhesive on the bottom that adheres it to basically any dash.Really, it just makes sense.
Yesterday, NVIDIA announced GeForce Now, the company's new game streaming service. Today, that service is available on all SHIELD Android TV devices as part of a massive new OTA that's chock-full of stuff.
Let's get this out of the way right up front: I'm not a PC gamer. I'm not really a gamer at all; while I of course love to kick back with the occasional game, I don't consider myself a member of the "hardcore" gaming community by any measure. I've had every Playstation since the original (and, in fact, still have the 2, 3, and 4), but even then I'm an enthusiast at best. My favorite games of all time are basically anything from the Metal Gear series, Red Dead Redemption, and The Last of Us. You can probably already tell from that list what kind of stuff I like to play — I'm a third-person action gamer all the way.
It's no secret that NVIDIA has been working on a game streaming service for quite a while — it's called GRID, and anyone with a SHIELD device has been able to test it out for the past several months. Today, the company is announcing the result of all that testing: GeForce Now.
So, if you haven't heard, Google announced some stuff today. Some of it was Nexus stuff. Some of it was Pixel stuff. Some of it was Android stuff. And some of it was Chromecast stuff.
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Yesterday, we broke news of the Pixel C, an upcoming premium tablet from Google that would run Android and carry the company's high-end Pixel name. Today, the company has made that device official. Meet the Pixel C.
So there you are, pining hard over one of the new Nexus phones so you can get your hands on the latest stuff Google has to offer. The anticipation must be excruciating. But fret not, dear friends, because good news is afoot: Marshmallow will begin making its way to the Nexus 5, 6, 7 (2013), 9, and Player starting "next week" — most likely on October 5th like we heard yesterday. That's also the day that we expect 6.0 to start hitting AOSP.
When it comes to streaming services, family plans are where it's at for many users — no one wants to pay a monthly fee for each user in their household. This is especially true for music streaming services, which is why things like Spotify's family plans and Apple Music's family options are popular options. And it's really the one thing missing from Google Play Music All Access in order to make it a great service.
When it comes to Bluetooth speakers, there are a few brands that I find to be consistently awesome. After spending a few weeks with the Xtreme ($299) and Flip 3 ($99), I think JBL may have made itself a mainstay on that shortlist of manufacturers that make great speakers, because these are two of the most impressive pieces of Bluetooth audio equipment I’ve ever laid, um, ears on.Seriously — I was not expecting either of these speakers to be as awesome as they are. Let's start with the big one.
We've talked about Blu phones a lot in the past, and I've personally gone hands-on with essentially every phone the company has released over the last couple of years. I've seen everything from the cheapest of the cheap to the higher-end stuff from Blu, but never anything like the 2015 Pure XL. Sure, it carries the same name as one of the higher-end devices that the company put out last year, but trust me when I say this one is nothing like that phone. This is on a whole different level. This is easily the highest-end, most flagship-quality phone the company has ever done. It's an impressive beast in its own right, but when you take into consideration its $350 price tag, it becomes something else entirely.
Guys, when Amazon announces stuff, they announce the hell out of some stuff. Like, who cares about subtlety? Not the folks at Amazon - they'll just go crazy on a Thursday morning and announce like nine new products all at once. I like their zeal.Not only did they take the wraps off of a few new Fire tablets, but they also announced the recently-rumored Fire TV with 4K playback for $99, a new "gaming edition" bundle of said Fire TV for $140, and an updated Fire TV Stick with voice controls for $50. That's a lot of stuff. Let's dig in.
For the past two years, the Ultimate Ears BOOM has been, in my opinion, the benchmark Bluetooth speaker. It was the first one to come out that really and truly changed the way I personally thought about BT speakers, because it was the first one that didn't sound like a tiny, ultra-portable speaker. Since then, we've seen a lot of really nice speakers step the game up, but despite being two years old, the BOOM has been able to hold its own against basically all of them.
When it comes to wireless charging, TYLT is generally the first name that comes to my mind, as the VU has been my primary charger for Qi-enabled devices since...well, for a long time. I prefer the stand-like design of the VU over that of chargers that lie flat, as it just makes it easier to look over and see my phone without having to actually pick it up (does that make me lazy?).When I saw the new F300 Wireless Charger from Spigen ($50, $27 on Amazon) - which shares a lot of the same design elements that I love about the VU - I knew I had to check it out. I've generally been impressed with pretty much every Spigen product I've used, so I had high expectations for the company's first wireless charger.To put it simply, I haven't been disappointed. In fact, it may be time to retire my old VU.
If you've got a Sony Smartwatch 3, then you probably already know about this issue: the watch gets hot, and the battery plummets. If you happen to not notice that the watch is in fact overheating, then the battery can easily go dead within a couple of hours, which is ridiculously annoying. As an owner of said smartwatch, I hate that some days I can hit the bed with 68% of my watch's battery life left, and others it's at 13% before 2:00PM.
If you've got NVIDIA's flagship tablet (hopefully you've already swapped yours in for a replacement with a non-explodable battery), then it's time to hit that settings menu and pull the latest update the SHIELD team is pushing out to devices now.
Play Newsstand is one of those apps that I really like, but I don't find myself launching nearly as often as I probably "should." Not sure why, but I really only use it for magazines, and I often forget that it even does the news thing. Oops.
Man, this Twitch thing - I still find it intriguing that people like to watch other people play video games instead of actually playing themselves. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it (I'm actually guilty of getting caught up in watching other people's games when I open the app, too), it's just something I never thought would be a thing, you know?
Earlier this year, Blu released what would end up being my favorite phone from the manufacturer today: the Vivo Air. It was super sleek and thin, had a beautiful display, and was a generally great phone for just $199. Today, Blu announced the Air's successor, the Vivo Air LTE.This phone basically corrects the weaknesses found in the original Air by bumping the RAM up to 2GB and adding LTE. This, of course, means the processor has also changed, and Blu has chosen to go with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 this time around. Otherwise, most of the other specs are the same:
In May of last year, Blu released the Life Pure XL, its first large-screen device made to compete with some of the affordable flagships of the time (like the OnePlus One). Today, the company has announced the Life Pure XL's successor, simply called the Pure XL. This new flagship model is the most powerful phone Blu has ever produced, and it comes in at a price that makes it hard to ignore.
Chrome Beta seems to be that sweet spot between reliability and new features - not quite as bleeding edge as the Dev build, but still packed with new stuff earlier than the Stable build. It's generally my personal favorite browser to use as primary, because checking out the new stuff once it's basically no longer buggy is always fun.