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.
Latest Articles
Xiaomi was traded publicly for the first time today on Hong Kong's Hang Seng index (symbol: 1810-HK), with the market having since closed for the day. Xiaomi's target price for its initial public offering was $17HK per share, an expectation it failed to meet.
The Nokia X6 may have been the first Nokia smartphone with a notched display under HMD Global, but if a leak today is any indicator, it won't be the last. In what Twitter leaker @OnLeaks is calling the Nokia 5.1 Plus, we see much of that X6 design language coming to what will presumably be a more affordable handset.
If you're an AT&T customer and you've ever read your wireless service bill in detail, you may have noticed something called an "Administrative Fee" featured as one of the line items. Up until early this year, that "fee" was typically assessed at $0.76 per postpaid line - not nothing, but over the course of two years of service, it ends up being a little over $18.
Back in April, Google announced that it was pausing work on its Allo chat client to focus more on its RCS-enabled texting app, Android Messages. News of an upcoming web client for Messages was released alongside the announcement (something we’d known about for months), making it seem like Google was all-in on its SMS and RCS platform going forward. Now, that web client has arrived, and RCS continues its rollout around the world. The one, slight wrinkle? Google’s branded carrier, Project Fi, doesn’t even support RCS. And there’s still no timeline as to when it will.
Speaking to a source familiar with the company's plans, we've learned that LG is working on a successor to its V30 handset, tentatively known as the V40 - and it will feature five cameras. It's not clear exactly what all of them will do, but at least one of the two on the front (and possibly both) will allow you to unlock the phone with your face. Based on the setup process described to us, it seems this could be a stereo configuration allowing a 3D map of the face to be recorded - but we're not certain.
When Apple released the first iPhone without a headphone jack two years ago, many - critics, consumers, and competitors alike - were quick to cry foul. The decision was widely derided arrogant and unfriendly, and CMO Phil Schiller took a well-deserved beating in the court of public opinion for calling the removal of the 3.5mm jack “courageous.”
The U12+ is the latest high-end smartphone from HTC, and while the ‘+’ moniker may have you wondering where the “regular” version is - this is it: HTC is, for the time being, only launching a large premium phone in 2018. It packs the latest Snapdragon 845 processor from Qualcomm, a large 6.0” Quad HD LCD display, and four cameras. It also costs a whopping $800, and you can only buy it direct from HTC or Amazon in the US.
You might be sharing private events on Google Calendar without realizing it - here's how to fix that
Everybody uses Google Calendar (well, most people), and it's a tool many of us probably rely on every day to manage our lives, our work, and all the things we'd forget if our phones didn't remind us to do them.
Verizon announced not a second, but its third "unlimited" smartphone plan yesterday, and it goes to show just how meaningless the term has become in the US wireless industry. Verizon's new "above" unlimited plan (the tiers are "go," "beyond," and "above" for those of you playing aspirational-marketing-nonsense-vocabulary at home) is basically America's Most Red Carrier deciding it can cash in on heavy data users to the tune of an extra ten bucks, making it $95 a month.
For all the traction China’s many smartphone brands have gained globally in the past decade, it’s in China itself where they remain most popular. And for good reason: because Chinese consumers don’t have access to many Western products or services. Xiaomi is one of the most popular smartphone brands in China, and while the unique market in that country has encouraged the company to think differently than its more global rivals in some ways, its latest smartphone strikes me as one built by China, for China. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it makes me question just what Xiaomi’s pitch to the rest of the world will be, or if the company’s phones will ever matter outside a few, select regions.
Recently, we were contacted by a reader about a months-long ordeal with HTC attempting to get a U11’s defective USB port repaired, only to have it sent back to him four months later - badly reassembled with glue leaked all over the frame. That person sent the phone back in and, at the time we received the email, had been waiting three months for the second claim to go through.
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Did Google's next smartphone just get outed on a random XDA Forums post? Because that's sure what it looks like just happened. Two images were posted on XDA last night, and well, they do line up with what we know about the Pixel 3 XL so far. The front is a pretty dead-on match for that screen protector leak, and the rear definitely looks like a subtle evolution of the existing phone's design. There appears to be a new sensor to the right of the rear camera module, and the flash has been pushed out slightly to accommodate it.
Qualcomm has announced what is technically a new chipset today in the upcoming Snapdragon 850 - and it's probably not what you think. While it could power your next laptop (maybe), you almost certainly won't be seeing the Snapdragon 850 in your next phone.
It’s no secret that HTC, as a smartphone company, is hard up. And while the relative success of its Vive VR unit has warded off active ‘death watch’ speculation to date, there’s little doubt that HTC’s days as a smartphone maker are winding down. The company’s release schedule has become haphazard: it announced a “U Ultra” smartphone in early 2017 seemingly out of nowhere - that ended up being a complete flop. Six months later it revealed the U11 to largely positive reviews, but little in the way of consumer response. The “light” version of that phone, the U11 Life, wasn’t even worth a second glance, and now it seems HTC won’t even release a proper mainstream premium phone in 2018 at all.
ARM unveiled its brand-new A76 CPU design at an event in San Francisco today, and while it may not be in your next smartphone, there's a good chance it'll be in the one after that. And it's going to make it a fair bit faster - around 35% faster than ARM's current top-of-the-line core.
OnePlus is a company that, historically, hasn’t been known for adventurous smartphone designs. And while much of the OnePlus 6 merely iterates on the same rather staid, minimal hardware language, there is one part that stands out: this is the first Android phone with a screen notch I haven’t felt repulsed by.
OnePlus is one of the very few Android phonemakers incorporating a physical volume mode toggle on its devices. Well, at least it sort of was - as of the OnePlus 3, the vibrate mode was replaced with “Do Not Disturb” (DND) on the three-position switch, and changes to DND in later versions of Android really messed with that. Eventually, it seemed most people just wanted the switch to go back to its basic behavior of loud, vibrate, and silent (everything except alarms).
Alarms and timers are probably two of the things I use the Google Assistant for most often. Voice commands make setting them dead simple (especially important for the kitchen, when my hands are often covered in food), and I can use them on my phone, my Pixelbook, or one of my Google Homes.
Announced yesterday at I/O, custom routines for Google Assistant are going live now. Custom routines allow you to set a command word or phrase and choose from a range of actions and outputs from the Assistant, including the ability to set custom voice feedback from the Assistant, which should make for all kinds of fun. You'll also be able to send the Assistant any command you want - just type it into the "Add action" field.
When I used the iPhone X for a month, one of the things I most loved about the experience was Apple's gesture navigation model. It was simple and, once I'd become accustomed to it, extremely quick and natural to use. The bonus to Apple's approach is that it completely obviated the need for anything like software navigation keys, opening up more of the screen for content. The iPhone X also looks striking as a result - the edge-to-edge screen displays content from top to bottom - and it allowed Apple to keep the phone a more manageable size.