We tend to throw around a lot of names when talking about the pricing categories for phones, and the market has changed a lot in the last five years. Back then, a thousand-dollar smartphone would have been obscene, and here we are in 2020 talking about phones that cost twice that. With prices for flagships trending upwards, I'm wondering if that's also changed what our readers consider a "budget" phone.
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Back in the day, most phones had only one or two rear cameras — "the day," of course, being just a few years ago and almost a millennium in smartphone terms. But the number has positively exploded over recent years with flagship devices getting telephoto, wide-angle, macro, and dedicated "portrait mode" cameras. With so many different and varied cameras available in phones now, which ones do you actually care about or want?
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Over the summer, Google debuted a new "feature" for Gmail that integrated Meet into a dedicated tab in the app, rolling out with wide availability earlier this month. The change takes up around 10-20% of the vertical space in the Gmail app to give you what amounts to a dedicated shortcut to the company's videoconferencing service. It's part of an overall plan to foist Meet on us whether we want it or not, and I'm curious to hear if you actually appreciate the change or not.
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Microsoft's Surface Duo was finally revealed after almost a year of teasing just earlier this week, and our readers seem pretty polarized about it — and the whole category of folding phones in general. To be fair, there are a lot of disadvantages, like sky-high price tags and durability concerns. In my mind, we've reached the second generation of foldables, and some of those issues are starting to be resolved (outside price, anyway). With the development made so far, I'm curious to know if you'd consider a foldable for your next phone.
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This last week was pretty busy for smartphones. We got two major announcements almost back-to-back with Google's Pixel 4a and Samsung's new Note20 series. It's quite a spread, from midrange to literal "Ultra" flagship. While you can't zip down to the store and get one today, we're curious of any of our readers have pre-ordered either.
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Earlier this week, Google sent out emails to some folks that had previously purchased the company's Pixel hardware products, inviting its fans to take a survey to join the "Pixel Superfans Program." Google admits that it has only reached out to "a small group of Pixel owners," but we're curious if that included you — and if not, if you consider yourself a "Pixel Superfan" anyway.
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This week we learned that both AT&T and T-Mobile plan to make VoLTE a hard requirement for their networks in the next couple years. Folks using older phones that don't support the technology will be left behind if they don't upgrade. Most recent phones do support VoLTE, though some enthusiasts running custom ROMs or using imported devices might be in trouble. We're curious how many of our readers might be affected by this change, so: Does your phone support VoLTE (HD Voice) on your carrier?
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Smartphones are nothing without apps, and there are a whole lot of them out there on the Play Store. Of course, the quality there... let's say "varies" thanks to Google's rather lax administration and curation efforts. But there are piles of apps we depend on every day, others we use maybe a couple times a month, and yet more we uninstalled, never to use them again. With Google's convenient account Dashboard tool to refer to: How many apps do you have tied to your Google Play account?
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I know, we're the Android Police, but the highlight of this week's news when it comes to phones is clearly Apple's WWDC and iOS 14. Not all of our readers stick to Android, plenty of you may be reading these very words from an iPad or iPhone. We're not here to judge, but we're curious to know how many of you use iOS devices — whether that's in addition to an Android device or not.
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Over the last few months, the popularity of videoconferencing services like Zoom has exploded. With so many of us working at home and unable to visit friends or family, video calls are a close (or distant) second when it comes to both work meetings and general human contact. Now that Google is stepping up its own competition against Zoom, we're curious to know which video call or conferencing services you might use.
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