Tag Archives | Smartphones

HTC Evo 3D Review: Average Phone, Cheap Trick

Posted by Jared Newman on June 29, 2011 at 7:06 am

If you’re thinking about buying the HTC Evo 3D on Sprint, the first thing you should do is ignore the 3D.

The phone’s namesake features — a glasses-free 3D display and dual cameras to shoot your own 3D content — amount to little more than a cheap party trick. And with a dearth of 3D movies and games to enjoy on the smartphone, the Evo 3D’s design and performance in two dimensions is far more important.

Strip away the gimmicks, and the Evo 3D is just average among high-end Android handsets. It’s a phone that provides lots of power through a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, but falters on design.

Compared to the graceful curves and smooth materials of HTC’s newly-launched Sensation 4G, the Evo 3D’s figure is no triumph. It’s not uncomfortably large despite a 4.3-inch, 960-by-540 resolution display, but its boxy shape and considerable weight lack elegance.

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For Wi-Fi, PCs and Macs are Now a Minority

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 23, 2011 at 12:16 pm

It’s a big week for interesting stats relating to Internet usage breakdowns by device. Comscore has released numbers that say that the iPad accounts for 97 percent of tablet usage on the Web–no shocker there. And cloud networking company Meraki has published some data based on device usage numbers from its customers networks:

Whenever I look at numbers like these, I try to remind myself that we don’t know how precisely they map to the world at large. But they’re still fun to ponder.

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Pogoplug Goes Software Only (and 200 Technologizer Readers Get the Premium Version for Free)

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 22, 2011 at 11:08 am

Pogoplug is a clever $99 gizmo that lets you plug USB hard drives into your home network, so you can access their contents–photos, music, movies, and more–across the Internet. As anyone who’s used it knows, much of the cleverness lies in the nicely-done Web-based interface (and mobile apps) you use to connect to the drives and get at the stuff on them. And today, Pogoplug is releasing a software-only version for Windows and Macs that lets you experience that cleverness without investing in the gizmo.

Pogoplug’s software-based version works just like the hardware device, except the drive it’s putting on the Web is the one inside the Windows PC or Mac the software is running on. Once you installed the application on a computer and let it index your files, they’re available to you from any Web browser and from PogoPlug’s iPhone/iPad and Android apps.

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Nokia’s N9 Video

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 21, 2011 at 3:47 pm

Once upon a time, Nokia’s future–or part of it, at least–rested on an operating system called Meego. The company has released information on the N9, an upcoming phone that originated in that era.

Here’s a very Apple-style video showing it off:

It’s always a bad idea to form any firm conclusions about a gizmo based on a video demo, but…it looks pretty good! But with Nokia’s plans to emphasize Windows Phone 7 moving forward, it’s less of a sign of things to come and more of a freeze frame of an era that ended before it began.

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Mobile Data Usage Nearly Doubles

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 17, 2011 at 2:17 pm

In case you hadn’t heard, we’re using more and more mobile data these days. With apps becoming ever more connected, the need to use our wireless data connections has also increased–and we’re increasingly going mobile instead of sitting in front of the computer screen.

Research firm Nielsen has numbers out today that show an 89 percent increase in data usage from the first quarter of last year to the same period this year. Where we were using about 230MB on average a year ago, that has jumped to about 435MB now.

This puts into question the need by mobile carriers to rethink their bargain data offerings. While a lot cap those cheap plans at around 250MB, it’s now evident that a large majority of us need more data than that.

Want some even crazier statistics?

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Am I the Only One Who Likes Physical Android Buttons?

Posted by Jared Newman on June 15, 2011 at 4:04 pm

Boy Genius Report has posted some thorough alleged specs for Google’s next unannounced Nexus phone, possibly dubbed the Nexus 4G. Many of the specs are what you’d expect from a flagship Google phone, such as a dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 1080p video capture and LTE connectivity.

But what’s most intriguing about this rumor is the possibility that Google will completely do away with hardware buttons on the next version of Android, called “Ice Cream Sandwich” or Android 4.0. The home, menu, back and search buttons will presumably become part of the software.

It wouldn’t be an unexpected change. Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the software version optimized for tablets, already lacks physical buttons, and Google has made clear its intentions to merge smartphones and tablets onto a single software version with Ice Cream Sandwich. But it’s harder to picture how Android tablets’ button-free concept would work on Android phones.

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Unlocked iPhones. A Great Idea. In Theory!

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 14, 2011 at 12:16 am

When rumors surfaced yesterday about Apple beginning to sell unlocked iPhones in the U.S. this week, I said I was intrigued by the idea of an unlocked iPhone 5. But I didn’t elaborate. And the scuttlebutt persists.

So here’s a little more detail: my interest is more emotional than rational. I can pull together enough money to pay for a phone in one large chunk. I don’t particularly want to be sign a contract with a wireless carrier if I don’t have to do so. I sometimes travel overseas. So the notion of owning a phone outright, avoiding obligation, and being able to use it outside the U.S.  with a local carrier rather than via pricey AT&T roaming is appealing. It’s what I’ve done several times in the past. (I’ve also bought locked-but-unsubsidized phones that weren’t iPhones from AT&T, which has cheerfully unlocked them for me a few months after purchase.)

Except…

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