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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- An astute commenter points out a much more compelling reason for Meizu not being a GMS partner: The company, in addition to its FlymeOS phones, also sells phones powered by YunOS. YunOS was formerly known as Aliyun, and is an incompatible fork of the Android operating system that Google - to put it mildly - has something of a history with. Meizu announced new phones running YunOS as recently as August.
The budget smartphone segment in America seems to be a shrinking one of late (well, at least of good options), but we've rounded up the best we think the market has to offer consumers right now in the $250-and-under segment. The selected phones are presented in no particular order.
Hello! If you've arrived at this post, it may be because you're considering buying a Google Pixel and are wondering if it works on your wireless carrier. This is a fair question, as many smartphones only work on certain carriers here in the US. You may also be wondering what the deal is with the Verizon version of the Google Pixel, versus one you buy from the Google Store, Project Fi, or Best Buy. The good news is that there actually isn't much to know: every version of the Google Pixel sold in the United States is SIM unlocked and works on every major carrier, including Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
According to sources familiar with T-Mobile's plans, the company will announce either today or tomorrow that the Google Pixel will be displayed in some T-Mobile retail locations. The device will not be sold at T-Mobile retail locations (or T-Mobile's website). Instead, store employees will direct customers to the Google Store (and help them with the process) or Best Buy to complete their transaction. The "carrot" for T-Mobile here is obviously that it hopes to gain subscribers, and sales reps will be pushing the provider's current Pixel promotion as part of the pitch to customers. It is unclear if T-Mobile eventually plans to sell the phone directly.
One of the most common source of inquiries or complaints we receive from readers is a phenomenon known in the world of smartphones as "boot-looping." After installing an update or patch to a smartphone, the phone then proceeds to attempt to restart itself over and over, endlessly refusing to actually boot up. Phones with "boot loop" problems will attempt to restart endlessly, often until the battery is completely drained. In the event of such a problem, there are a few things you can do, but do note that the "boot loop" is often a fatal condition for a device when common remedies fail to resolve it.
LeEco can't seem to catch a break. Last month, its CEO Jia Yueting sent out a memo days after the company's US launch claiming it was over-extended and suffering from "big company disease," which seemed a clear euphemism for incoming job cuts. A month later, and things aren't any better.
I'm reviewing Google Wifi because my apartment sucks. Well, specifically: my apartment's walls suck. And the placement of my router is far from ideal. You see, because I need a hardline to my desktop PC in my office, that means keeping the router in the office, too, or snaking around fifty feet of unsightly ethernet from my living room along the wall (in-wall cabling is not an option for me). This presents a conundrum, because it means that if I want my apartment to have well-distributed Wi-Fi, I need a big, ugly, long cable running the length of the place. If I don't want to run the cable, it means lopsided Wi-Fi coverage.
Android tablets are dying. There are signals that bear this out: sales estimates, web traffic, an utter absence of meaningful innovation or even competitive products in the segment. We've watched Android tablets struggle from day one: when Samsung's Galaxy Tab was utterly panned for its subpar performance and pricing, to the years of Honeycomb suffering under the yoke of underpowered chipsets and endless bugs, and finally to the unspoken abandonment of Android tablets by Google's own app teams over the past few years. Android tablets have never been particularly lively, but in 2016, I think we've finally watched the market's pulse near flat-line. When the most exciting thing to happen to tablets in a year is Huawei's unlovable MediaPad brand, it's safe to say we're scraping the bottom of the barrel.