Articles about Smartphone

Samsung opens unlocked Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ pre-orders in US

samsung-galaxy-s8

Samsung today announces that pre-orders for the unlocked Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are now finally open in the US. The South Korean maker officially released its latest flagships last month on all the major carriers. It unveiled the devices at a special event in late-March, offering the carrier models for pre-order shortly after.

Samsung is making the unlocked Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ available to pre-order through its online store and Best Buy. Customers who buy one now can get their unit on May 30. Both flagships will be readily available in an unlocked trim on May 31.

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OnePlus 3T no longer has 128GB storage option in every market [Update]

OnePlus 3T

If you are planning to buy a OnePlus 3T, you should know that, at least in some markets, there will only be one storage option available in the foreseeable future. OnePlus has dropped the 128GB model from the line, leaving only the 64GB version on the table for prospective buyers in some markets.

The 64GB OnePlus 3T continues to be available in both Gunmetal and Soft Gold, so you at least have two color options to choose from -- just like before. The 128GB OnePlus 3T was only launched in Gunmetal -- as well as black, if you count the limited editions announced this year.

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Google just made offline browsing a whole lot easier in Chrome for Android

chrome-android-offline

Offline web browsing is a useful feature, particularly on a smartphone, so it was little surprise when Google added website downloading to the Android version of Chrome. Today the company launches a number of improvements to make the whole process even easier.

The latest update to the app introduces a couple of new ways to download pages for offline viewing. It also provides easier access to the content you have earmarked for offline reading, encouraging more people to make use of the feature.

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OnePlus confirms the OnePlus 5 will be released this summer

oneplus-never-settle

OnePlus has confirmed that the successor to the OnePlus 3T is due for release soon. The OnePlus 5 has been rumored and hinted at for a while, but now it is official.

In a slightly unusual move, rather than making a direct announcement about the upcoming flagship killer, OnePlus instead chose to reveal the future launch to the Verge. Beyond "summer," we know nothing about the specifics of the launch but there are plenty of leaks and rumors to go on for the time being.

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The Galaxy S7 is the most-popular Samsung smartphone in the world

Samsung Galaxy S7

Samsung is the biggest smartphone vendor in the world, thanks in no small part to the huge success that the Galaxy S series enjoys. Those flagships generate the most sales, and that is expected to continue this year as the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ leave their mark in the consumer space.

But which Galaxy S device is the most popular with smartphone buyers? That is a question that may be tough to answer, as it's rare that the likes of IDC and Gartner reveal anything other than total shipments, but thanks to a ScientiaMobile report we now know that it is the Galaxy S7 that has attracted the most users.

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Watching users fail is key to building a good product

Smartphone annoyed

Just 40 hours of engineering work to go live with a state-of-the-art smartphone application? It’s only possible if you have the right framework and if you forget perfectionism in favor of real user feedback. At Spreadshirt, we want it to be easy for our users to buy, sell, create and share ideas on over 200 products on our ecommerce platform. Whether they use a desktop, tablet or smartphone, we want our users to have a great experience.

Back in 2014 we had created a t-shirt designer for tablets, to reflect the rise of the touch screen. It worked on smartphones, but that was a rare use case back then. This web app has been perfected through many iterations. But the mobile times changed. And exactly as we had already envisioned in 2016 smartphone traffic was up 22 percent and tablet traffic was down at less than 10 percent. We needed a new design tool to focus on the experience for our visitors from smartphones and find out what their specific needs and issues were. Watching users fail holds the greatest learnings when you develop complex applications, such as our smartphone t-shirt designer.

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The Banana Phone is a phone with very limited appeal

Banana Phone talking

The Banana Phone is a device that was clearly conceived during an evening in which far too many alcoholic beverages were consumed.

It is, essentially, a phone shaped like a banana. So you can call friends and family members on what appears to be a piece of yellow fruit. It’s an amusing idea made real. But it’s also a device with a big problem.

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iPhone sales continue to fall ahead of iPhone 8 launch

broken-iphone

Yesterday we debated whether interest in the Apple Watch is falling, but Tim Cook says that sales have doubled over the last year. This is an easy claim to make when you don’t reveal the actual sales figures, but the story is definitely less rosy when we look at the iPhone. For the second quarter ever, sales of Apple's smartphone fell.

This was not only a drop in sales, but an unexpected one. While analysts had been predicting sales in the region of 52.27 million, the reality is that the company shipped just 50.2 million in the quarter ending April 1, 2017. It might not seem like a big difference, but the sustained fall in sales saw Apple's stock to follow suit to the tune of 1.5 percent.

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The OnePlus 5 is coming soon

OnePlus 5

Nearly a year has passed since the OnePlus 3 was introduced, and even though it received an unexpected mid-cycle refresh in the form of the OnePlus 3T, consumers are expecting a new flagship killer to be announced soon. OnePlus is well aware of this, so it has kicked off the teasing game to build up hype ahead of the big unveiling.

OnePlus is among those smartphone makers that lets official information trickle down in the months before a new smartphone is released, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to see the company and its CEO hinting at a new flagship killer on its Weibo social media page.

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AVG AntiVirus for Android review

AVG AntiVirus

For many of us, there is no device more important than our smartphone. There is so much valuable data on it -- contacts, business emails, private messages, personal photos and videos, sensitive files and so on -- that you really do not want it to fall into the wrong hands. Some believe it would be impossible to replace, which is why they'd rather have their wallet stolen instead of lose their data.

However, when using a smartphone, security is often an afterthought, which is why so many users fall victim to malware. And that's a shame, because covering your bases is not all that difficult. You can set up a PIN, password or configure the fingerprint sensor and use a dedicated security app to keep your smartphone and the data on it safe. AVG's AntiVirus is a very popular option on Android, thanks to its robust feature set and ease of use.

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NuAns ditches Windows 10 Mobile, new Neo Reloaded smartphone runs Android

NuAns Neo Reloaded

Without trying to sound like a broken record, there's really no future in Windows 10 Mobile. If it wasn't clear years ago, it is crystal clear now. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a new manufacturer embracing the platform last year, and a niche one at that. That was NuAns with its Neo handset, which is probably the last memorable smartphone released with Windows on board.

A year later the company is unsurprisingly admitting defeat. NuAns is replacing the Neo with the Neo Reloaded, which, you guessed it, runs Android this time around. The smartphone just hit Indiegogo, and you can get one for as little as $355.

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FalseGuide malware infects millions of Android users via Google Play

mobile-skull-crossbones

Malware is something of a recurring problem for Android users, and it seems as though Google is fighting a never-ending battle to keep the blight out of the Play Store. The latest large-scale batch to be discovered takes the form of adware known as FalseGuide.

As you may have guessed from the name -- and your own experience of Google Play -- this malware spreads by fooling people into installing apps purporting to be guides to popular games. The apps themselves are fairly innocuous -- and often are guides as they claim to be -- but they then download additional modules which can be used to bombard users with ads.

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Xiaomi's smartphones aren't coming to the US or EU anytime soon

Xiaomi

When we write about a new Xiaomi smartphone there's never any talk about US or EU availability. That's because the Chinese maker doesn't sell its handsets in these markets, as it chooses to focus on developing markets instead, leaving its fans to source their favorite devices from unofficial sellers. That's a shame, but it's not going to change anytime soon.

Speaking of a potential entry in the US and Europe, Xiaomi's new SVP Wang Xiang (who replaces Hugo Barra) admits that the company isn't "serving [customers in those markets] well" but, at the same time, it is "in no hurry to serve the developed markets."

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How to access your OnePlus 3/3T's secret diagnostic tools

oneplus 3t midnight black

If you're using a desktop or a laptop, there are a number of diagnostic tools built into your operating system that you can use to check various components of your computer. When you're using your smartphone, however, you might feel as though you have to install a bunch of apps to do the same job.

But this is not the case. There are a large number of tools built into your OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 3T -- you just need to know how to find them. As you'll probably have guessed from the headline, these are not utilities you're going to find by browsing through the list of installed apps -- you need a special code.

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Consumer Reports confirms Galaxy S8 red tint problem as Samsung promises an update to fix it

red-keyrings

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ launched last week, and has received many positive reviews. However, the smartphone has a problem. The screen -- which has been widely praised -- has an issue which means some suffer with a red tint. This has been confirmed by Consumer Reports in its tests of the phone.

Officials have pointed out that tweaking color calibration settings is all it takes to fix the problem, but Samsung has also said that it will push out an update to address the issue. But how much of a problem is the red tint?

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