Smartphones
LG debuted the G7 ThinQ in early May and certainly turned some heads with the promise of a 1000 nits capable display, an AI-powered camera, and its Boombox Speaker features. On the surface, if you consider some of the salient features consumers are looking for in a modern smartphone, the marketing folks at LG had their ears to the ground, so to speak. The new LG G7 ThinQ checks many of the key feature boxes consumers look for in a handset, and it strikes a nice size balance as well, in a thin-bezel 6.1-inch form factor. However, what makes true smartphone success is practical...
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In most major sports, there are a handful of teams that dominate the competition and garner the lion's share of attention from fans. The same is true in the smartphone market where there are relatively few established players at the top. Every so often, however, a contender comes along to potentially disrupt the hierarchy, and that is what Huawei hopes to accomplish with its newest flagship phone, the Mate 10 Pro. Who exactly is Huawei, you ask? While not as recognizable in the US market as Apple and Samsung, Huawei is no Johnny-come-lately to the land of mobile. Huawei is a major player in China...
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Mobile device makers have made a concerted effort to improve camera performance on each new generation of smartphone. While there is still a gap between a handset and a Digital SLR (DSLR), today's phones are capable of taking excellent photos. It's become a point of focus, and with the advances in imaging, like Bokeh effects, armchair photographers can snap some truly remarkable looking shots. Two recent flagships, Samsung's Galaxy S9+ and Google's Pixel 2 XL, both have been praised for their photo taking capabilities. Is one appreciably better than the other? The only way to find out is through...
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One of the biggest unveils at this year's Mobile World Congress was the new and highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, which we were lucky enough to get some hands-on preview time with for you here late last month. Samsung's Galaxy S9 series doesn't look a whole lot different than the previous generation Galaxy S8 and 8+ line. And though the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ are ever so slightly smaller than their older siblings, with slightly thinner top and bottom bezels, these new Galaxy S devices have been upgraded and re-engineered in a number of ways with some impressive new features...
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After months of leaks and weeks of teasers, Samsung has finally officially pulled the wraps off its next generation flagship smartphones: the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. If you're familiar with the current generation Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, the designs of the refreshed models should be immediately familiar. However, there is plenty going on under the surface that make these new flagship Android phones worthy of attention. First of all, let's talk about the new, state-of-the-art camera that is featured on both the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. The primary rear shooter features a Super Speed, Dual Pixel...
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Though the company has been evangelizing its next generation Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform for a while now, Qualcomm is lifting the veil today on the new SoC's benchmark performance profile. As we showed you back in December, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 is based on a bleeding-edge 10nm LPP FinFET manufacturing process with Samsung, and an entirely new architecture that promises significant gains in power efficiency and performance. Snapdragon 845 is a grounds-up silicon redesign from Qualcomm, targeted at a new breed of flagship smartphones and other premium mobile devices. At the heart of the Snapdragon...
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Yesterday, Qualcomm gave us a sneak peek at its next generation mobile processor: the Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform. Like its Snapdragon 835 predecessor, the Snapdragon 845 will be used in countless flagship Android smartphones arriving in 2018, and will also likely end up in future "Always Connected" Windows 10 mobile PCs. Today, Qualcomm is spilling the beans on some of the components that makeup the Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform, which now includes a Kyro 385 CPU. This revamped CPU features four high-performance cores operating at 2.8GHz (a 25 percent uplift over the Snapdragon 835) and four...
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If there's a sleeper phone that's been on our radar for a while here, it's the LG V30. LG has been teasing this phone for what seems like an eternity. We actually got our first hands-on time with it a couple of months ago in August. However, LG has been conservative with its last couple of handset roll-outs, taking the same preview tease approach with the LG G6, where we got an early look prototype unit and firm rules of engagement with it before final production units arrived. The G6 was one of the first generation thin bezel phones on the market at the time and LG wanted to make doubly sure it...
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Google has been designing and building premium Android smartphones for many years, co-branding with various hardware partners since back in the days of the company's Nexus devices. More recently with its first generation Pixel series, the Mountain View team has taken more prominent ownership of the brand, with devices specifically underscored as "Made By Google." And indeed the design signatures of the first generation Pixel and Pixel XL were distinctly different from any other handset on the market, as are the latest Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL that Google is launching today, along with a redesigned...
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Lenovo introduced their Moto Z family last year with high hopes of being something different. The evolution of smartphone design has been more iterative than innovate in recent years from most manufacturers. The Moto Z smartphones, however, offered modularity to allow the phones to adapt to a user’s in-the-moment needs. The Moto Mods concept is an intriguing one, but was ultimately met with mixed reviews. It is certainly the best execution we have seen to date with a growing selection of mods and simple plug-and-play operation, but many users are put off by needing to keep the phone-sized mods...
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The Galaxy Note 8 is an important product for Samsung. Not only because the Note 8 is the company’s newest, flagship, large-screen smartphone, but because it also carries the additional burden of righting all of the wrongs associated with the company's Note 7 snafu. For some people, there is a certain stigma attached to the Note series now that could be erased if the Note 8 is a success and resonates well with consumers. We can tell you this up front -- all of the right technology seems to be in place. And from a design standpoint, the Note 8 sure is a looker. But good looks and the right...
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Owners of the ASUS ZenFone AR may be tempted to ask their friends and co-workers, "Do you even AR, bro?". Asking that question is a surefire way to solicit puzzled (and perhaps annoyed) looks, but once they see what the ZenFone AR is capable of, those dirty glances and quizzical faces will quickly morph into ones of excited curiosity, and maybe even jealously. That's because this whole augmented reality business is rather new, and the ZenFone AR is one of only two smartphones to support Google's Tango (formerly Project Tango) AR platform (Lenovo's Phab 2 Pro being the other). The ZenFone AR also...
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Here's the long and short. Huawei’s Mate 9 may no longer hit all the high notes on the cutting-edge smartphone release circuit, but it still remains more than competitive on performance and stocked with impressive base-level features, including rear dual-camera capabilities.In his fascinating book The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley discusses the propensity of millionaires to buy their cars used rather than new. The reasoning is as obvious as it is practical: You get nearly all the benefits from buying used at a fraction of the cost, and the money saved can be invested with compound interest,...
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If you keep a pulse on the premium smartphone arena, you probably have a line on the fact that there might be something special about the forthcoming LG V30. Set for an official IFA 2017 unveiling, the new handset has been leaked, rumored and even teased by LG itself. LG in fact has been on a consistent marketing blitz, releasing bits and pieces of LG V30 features to keep the buzz factor and discussion of its new device at peak volume. Regardless, with a complement of features that may not be earth-shattering, but when combined add up to what could be handset nirvana for many, it's beginning...
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