Don’t look now, but we’ve got little more than one month left in the year. As such, this is one of the best times to switch carriers or pick up a new phone. Just about everywhere you look you will find some sort of promotion or discount. Not just phones, but rate plans and accessories, too! Here’s a list of what each of the top five carriers are doing this week.
Something a bit different this time around, AndroidGuys – rather than comparing last year’s model to this year’s, I’m going to pit two high-end juggernauts against one another.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m biased in this particular Showdown. I think the Edge’s curved screen and edge gestures are over hyped and faddy, like 3DTV and Pogs, and will pass as swiftly as it arrived. I like the V20’s adorable little second screen, despite it being ill-placed and underutilized.
I mean, wouldn’t it be more useful at the bottom of the screen, where it can be easily reached with even the Megan Foxiest of thumbs? Wouldn’t a long, thin bar of a screen be better utilized if it doubled as the navbar for Android? When the main screen is off, it could be used a notification ticker. When on, it could be used as the navbar, or a horizontal swipe could take you to the app dock. Hell, they could even have made it AMOLED to make it more battery efficient.
BUT. THEY. DIDN’T.
And I’ve gotten sidetracked again. Anyway. Here’s the Showdown.
Build
5.54oz vs 6.14oz
Glass Body vs Aluminum Body
Not exactly Apples to Apples, here; the S7 Edge is smaller and lighter with a glass body and aluminum frame, while the V20 is larger and heavier with an aluminum body. Rest assured, being flagships of two of the biggest, baddest manufacturers around, both are gof solid build quality.
Screen
Gotta admit – it sure is pretty.
5.5″ vs 5.7″ (with a 2.1″ secondary LCD)
534ppi vs 513ppi
Super AMOLED Curved vs IPS LCD
This is kind of a toss-up for me. On the one hand, I love AMOLED screens. Those deep blacks are gorgeous, and the battery life is really improved. On the other, I deeply dislike the Edge’s curved screen and love the V20’s secondary display; so I’m gonna call this a draw, because I’m indecisive. Objectively, however, the S7 Edge has a denser screen with a more unique technology associated with it – it’s also a bit smaller, for those of you with smaller hands.
Internals
Exynos 8890 (2.3GHz) vs Snapdragon 820 (2.15GHz)
4GB RAM
32GB vs 64GB Internal Storage (Expandable)
Relatively comparable, here; though the S7 Edge technically has an advantage in the processor department, the V20 actually comes in with a slightly higher AnTuTu score (135k vs the Edge’s 128k). The V20 comes with 64GB stock internal storage, though both devices have a microSD slot – so storage should never be a problem.
Internal Features
Bluetooth 4.2
802.11ac WiFi
MicroUSB vs USB-C
Curved Display vs Second Screen
Let’s be honest – that last one is the one that matters. Both features use a gimmicky technology to display relevant information with the primary display off, though they use very different functionalities to deliver said information. The Edge makes great use of its AMOLED screen by ensuring that only the pixels that are being used are turned on, and the curved screen means that even if the phone is face down, the notification will be visible. In addition, Edge gestures allow a variety of functionalities – that, honestly, can be accomplished with a traditional flat display.
LG’s solution is a little more…hamfisted. It uses a secondary display to show relevant information and notifications when the primary display is off, as well as providing a place for app shortcuts – kinda like a permanent App Dock you’d find on your homescreen. This second screen, however, is not AMOLED, meaning that whenever it’s on, it’s draining battery – even with a solid black background. In addition, it’s not viewable when the phone is face down.
It really comes down to technology preference – I prefer the second display over the gimmicky, hyped-up curved screen, but I wouldn’t fault you for reversing the adjectives there if you so wished.
Battery Life
3600mAh vs 3200mAh
While PhoneArena doesn’t have specific talk times for the S7 Edge – the V20 is rated for 8 hours of talk time – I’m inclined to believe that with a smaller, more efficient screen and a more diversified CPU, the Edge is likely to get more out of a comparable size battery – let alone one that’s 400mAh larger. It should also be noted that the S7 Edge supports Wireless Charging (including the Qi standard), while the V20 does not.
Camera
As I noted in my last Showdown, the V20’s camera is (well, are) a beast. Even at first glance (12mp vs 16mp, 1.7 vs 1.8/2.4 aperture) the V20 tramples all over the S7 Edge, and that’s without taking into account that the V20 has two separate lenses, a near-human FoV, and a camcorder that’s specifically intended to record crystal clear video and sound. LG really outdid itself here (to be fair, the S7 Edge also came out 6 months earlier than did the V20).
Value
$608 vs $799
I was honestly a bit surprised by this; I thought for sure that after six months the S7 Edge would be a bit cheaper, but I guess I should have expected that it’d retain value well – and probably will continue to do so until the S8 is released. Given the obvious camera advantage, larger stock storage, Type C charging port, and second display, I actually think the V20 might be worth a buy over the S7 Edge – at least for the next few months.
Time to purchase a new smartphone? Is this an upgrade from an existing device? We want to help you out either way.
To save you money, we’ve gathered up all of the promotions we could find from T-Mobile. Regardless of where you’re thinking of going for service, or what phone you are looking to pick up, you owe it to yourself to check below.
What follows is a mix of phone, rate plan, and accessory promotions worth checking out. It might not be an exhaustive list, but it’s a good collection of what’s currently offered through T-Mobile.
Although we’ve listed known expiration dates, we have no idea how long some of these other deals will last.
Time to purchase a new smartphone? Is this an upgrade from an existing device? We want to help you out either way.
To save you money, we’ve gathered up all of the promotions we could find from AT&T. Regardless of where you’re thinking of going for service, or what phone you are looking to pick up, you owe it to yourself to check below.
What follows is a mix of phone, rate plan, and accessory promotions worth checking out. It might not be an exhaustive list, but it’s a good collection of what’s currently offered through AT&T.
Although we’ve listed known expiration dates, we have no idea how long some of these other deals will last.
Escape the Room games were a hugely popular genre of puzzle games back in the day when Flash games were all the rage on computers. Your goal was to find clues and items scattered around the area that allowed you to solve puzzles to ultimately escape from a room or collect a treasure of some sort.
There are still several popular games in this genre available on mobile devices (The Room, 100 Doors) and several developers that are devoted to still making some great escape puzzles. Unfortunately, an Android game we’re reviewing, Adventures of J, is overloaded by ads and is plagued by some serious issues that prevent it from being a great game.
Adventures of J is a story that starts off with a boy trying to rescue his kidnapped dog, which then turns into preventing a bank heist, a treasure hunt, and many other adventures across the 12 chapters of the game. You’ll find yourself exploring every nook and cranny of the game world to figure out how to advance through the many puzzles in this surprisingly long game.
The Setup
To start off, in order to play Adventures of J, there is a mandatory install of Adobe AIR from the Play Store. After the installation of AIR, you relaunch the app to be greeted by a loading screen, followed by a second loading screen specifically for an unskippable, full-screen ad.
Once you’re in the game, it starts out with a painfully choppy cut scene. I’m running this game on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, so there isn’t any reason why it should stutter as much as it does aside from a serious lack of optimization from the developer.
The cut scenes themselves are riddled with many grammatical errors. The animation is stiff and dated, showing just how far we’ve come since the days of heavy reliance on Flash. Characters have awkward movements, gliding across the floor on legs that are perpetually straight and move at various speeds. There is a plot, but it doesn’t matter heavily to the playing of the game, which is good because it’s fairly nonsensical.
The Gameplay
The gameplay is what you would expect from a game of this style. You navigate to different screens tapping on objects that will either display some part of a code that needs to be entered somewhere, or that will give you an item, such as keys or wrenches, that allow you to open desk drawers, chests, and doors to more rooms.
One of the better puzzles in Adventures of J
As for the puzzles themselves, most of them are pretty straight forward. You might find a playing card that has four different colored circles arranged on the back, and somewhere nearby you’ll find a computer screen with four colored circles that you’ll have to arrange to match the card.
Most of the puzzles are this easy, but there are a few that had me scratching my head, particularly the more elaborate sliding puzzles, where you’re given a grid full of images and you have to slide them one-by-one into place, being careful to not mess up other parts of the puzzle.
The Rough Spots
The most difficult parts of Adventures of J are the lack of saving progress and the advertisements. J has 12 chapters and allows you to start at the beginning of each chapter, but every chapter is between 30-45 minutes long. This could be remedy easily with a few checkpoints throughout each chapter or a quick save feature, but as it stands now, even if you were just minutes from the end of a chapter, you’ll have to start at the beginning of it if you don’t finish. It happened to me once or twice and is very frustrating.
To add insult to injury, there is an ad banner that runs at the top of the screen constantly and every 5-10 minutes there is a full-screen ad that pops up, forcing you to pause the action for a minute to sit through a video.
There is a walkthrough button conveniently placed at the bottom left of the screen at all times which leads you to a website that has a video walkthrough. On this page are links to other games from the developer and a few ads, but the kicker is there is a 10-second timer that counts down before the walkthrough video is displayed.
Between this, and the constant ads running on the top of the app at all times, and the full-screen unskippable ads that run every few minutes, it becomes quite clear this app is mainly just a money grab disguised as a mediocre game with dated visuals and gameplay.
Conclusion
If you are a die hard escape game fan, then maybe you will get some entertainment out of this. With 12 chapters each about 30 minutes long, you’ve got a lot of content, but with easy to solve puzzles and a sea of constant ads, Adventures of J is more annoying that it is fun. If you’re looking for a fun puzzle game, you should look elsewhere.
For a company that has been nicknamed China’s Apple, you’d think Xiaomi is making tons of money from smartphone sales. It turns out, it’s not.
According to a fresh report published by Reuters, Xiaomi has actually seen its smartphone sales plummet. For example, last year the company missed its global smartphones targets by 12%. In its home country things were even worse, as smartphone sales declined with a 45%.
Admits these news, Xiaomi seems quite untroubled. The company’s global vice-president Hugo Barra explained that Xiaomi’s business model wasn’t designed to make money from handset sales anyway. Actually China’s Apple relies on revenue coming from its home connected devices and software ecosystem.
Back in April, Xiaomi Vice President Liu De said the firm expects to see smart device revenue to double (up to $1.5 billion) this year.
Hugo Barra went as far as to say:
“Basically we’re giving them to you without making any money… we care about the recurring revenue streams over many years. We could sell 10 billion smartphones and we wouldn’t make a single dime in profits.”
But the future is full of promises for Xiaomi. The company just unveiled a gorgeous new device the Mi MIX and the Mi Note 2 which is compatible with US LTE bands and a cheap Mi5c handset – the first to take advantage of the company’s home grown chip – so sales might pick up again soon.
China’s Apple also announced its first time CES presence scheduled for January 2017. The company might (emphasis on the might) unveil an all-new global product on the grounds in Las Vegas, but this remains to be seen.
Unlike other Chinese competitors like LeEco which have taken the market by storm quite recklessly (given the amount of debit LeEco finds itself in), Xiaomi is planning its next step very carefully, not rushing things into a direction it might later regret. It’s seems like a pretty wise choice.
When looking to acquire a budget smartphone, most of us probably look towards Chinese manufacturers. But there are some US-based companies that also offer handsets at a bargain. Like BLU.
The handset maker is relatively well known for its affordable products which rarely exceed $200. The phones seem like a good deal for those don’t want to spend a fortune on mobile technology, but are they really worth it?
US security firm, Kyptowire discovered that some BLU smartphone house a so called “backdoor” which allows copies of users’ texts, contacts lists and related to be sent every 72 hours to a software firm based in Shanghai, going by the name AdUps Technologies. What’s more, info about location and app usage was also beamed out every 24 hours.
Apparently the Shanghai firm collected the data for advertising reasons, but it did so without users’ knowledge or consent
BLU apparently had no clue this is happening. The fault was found in the third-party software BLU utilizes to send out over-the-air (OTA) updates to its products, which was provided by AdUps. For its part the Chinese firm claims the software wasn’t even meant for the US market, but somehow made it through.
Apparently in June, BLU employed a version of the AdUps firmware app on its devices that “inadvertently” included a function designed to flag junk texts and calls.
To build up more credibility, AdUps claimed Android OEMs ZTE and Huawei are part of its client list, although both companies denied having anything to do with the Chinese software provider.
In the meanwhile, BLU has acknowledged 120,000 of its devices have been affected by the vulnerability. BLU said it has sent out a software update to block the “backdoor” from sending any more sensitive data to China.
Sensing an opportunity, class action lawsuit firm, Rosen Legal has also entered the equation. The firm is inviting customers who have purchased BLU products to file legal action against the smartphone company.
The scandal seems far from over, although BLU has assured its customers that the data picked up by AdUps has been destroyed.
This raises concerns whether extremely cheap handsets are actually safe to use, although bigger companies like HTC have had their shares of security woes A few years back the Taiwanese device maker was accused that its HTC Logger and Carrier IQ tools left the door open to hijacking of personal data.
It’s here! Black Friday is finally upon us and the deals are coming at you from every angle. If you’re in the hunt for a smartphone, wearable, or mobile-related gadget, you’ll want to check out this big list of deals. We’ve compiled pretty much every carrier, OEM, and mobile brand we can find.
Chinese technology giant LeEco has recently extended its presence in the United States by announcing with bells and whistles a bunch of “disruptive smartphones”, among other things. During the US launch, LeEco exuded enthusiasm and confidence in relation to the future, but in reality things aren’t so rosy for the company.
According to recent information, the Chinese device maker which sells anything from handsets, electric cars and bicycles to smart TVs, is facing some severe cash flow problems.
The core problem is that LeEco has branched into so many directions so fast, that it essentially ran out of money. Earlier this year the company announced it was planning to make a substantial investment in Faraday Future and Aston Martin. Shortly after LeEco even showcased its first electric car dubbed LeSEE.
What’s more LeEco spend a whopping $1.5 billion on the LeSee car concept, an all-electric car concept meant to compete with Tesla’s Model S.
Back in July, LeEco announced it was buying US TV marker Vizio for the hefty sum of $2 billion. It also envisioned a future where their $1.8 billion worth EV factory would be capable of releasing 400,000 electric cars per year.
With so many threads spreading out into the world, LeEco appears to be in over its head. The company’s co-founder Jia Yueting sent an extensive letter to company employees in which he admitted candidly that the company has ran out of cash. The letter which was obtained by Bloomberg reads:
“We blindly sped ahead, and our cash demand ballooned. We got over-extended in our global strategy. At the same time, our capital and resources were in fact limited.”
In a bid to gain his employees’ forgiveness, Jia has pledged to slash his salary to only 1 yaun / 15 cents. Jia’s estimated net worth is around $6 billion, so that won’t be a problem for him. The same can’t be said for LeEco employees, who are probably praying they won’t end up without a job.
Jia’s letter doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Investors have already started to question whether LeEco will manage to maintain itself afloat. For example’s LeEco smart TV’s subsidiary Leshi Internet Information & Technology shares decreased with 7.5% due to rumors that the company was unable to pay its suppliers. Stock further slumped to 4.7% after Jia’s letter was sent out.
Not only LeEco is affected, but also its collaborators. LeEco partner, Coolpad which is in charge of assembling its phones saw its shares tumble with 17%, thus reaching a three-year low.
In order to reverse the collapse, LeEco is looking to enforce some drastic measures in order to facilitate as much cost-cutting as possible. On top of that, the company aims to regroup and refocus on existing product lines like phones and TVs, which will hopefully produce enough cash flow to keep the company from going bankrupt.
In a recent article we pointed out that while some Chinese device makers are already paving the way for their high-end devices to get Android 7.0 Nougat, iconic Android OEM are taking their sweet time with the update.
Well it seems that things have started taking off finally. In recent days we told you the LG G5 from Sprint was getting updated and the Motorola Moto Z and Moto Z Force were also blessed with Android’s latest version.
Well now it’s the turn of the unlocked HTC 10 to get a taste of the Nougat experience. HTC officially alerted users in a Tweet, it will start offering the new build start today (November 25).
The Unlocked #HTC10 is getting Android Nougat — We've just passed TA testing, so you can expect a rollout to begin on Friday. pic.twitter.com/tmEnc0lyQq
What about those who don’t have an unlocked version? HTC says that carrier versions will get the bump up to Nougat early next year. We certainly hope that’s the case, because as we all know carrier-bound phones are a bit tricky when it comes to updates.
HTC plans to update the One M9 and One A9 next, so if you have one these phones at home keep your eyes on them.
Anyway if you haven’t received a notification yet, don’t worry. The update might hit some devices sooner than others. Some Reddit users already got it, the the Nougat build for HTC 10 is definitely live.
With the new update rolling out, it’s the perfect time to purchase a HTC 10. Starting from November 21 all the way through November 30 at 3:00 AM EST, the HTC 10 is $200 off. So hurry up if you want to the device. You still have 5 days to go.
We’re taking a moment to remind you of HTC’s other Android 7.0 Nougat smartphone, the Bolt which is exclusively sold by Sprint.
HTC is currently offering a promo for owners of the smartphone, which are invited to register for a free USB-C to 3.5 mm adapter.
Once you’re in the game, it starts out with a painfully choppy cut scene. I’m running this game on a 
Admits these news, 
Back in April, Xiaomi Vice President Liu De said the firm expects to see smart device revenue to double (up to $1.5 billion) this year.
China’s Apple also announced its first time 
Apparently the Shanghai firm collected the data for advertising reasons, but it did so without users’ knowledge or consent
To build up more credibility, AdUps claimed Android OEMs 
The scandal seems far from over, although BLU has assured its customers that the data picked up by AdUps has been destroyed.
What’s more LeEco spend a whopping $1.5 billion on the LeSee car concept, an all-electric car concept meant to compete with Tesla’s Model S.
Jia’s letter doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Investors have already started to question whether LeEco will manage to maintain itself afloat. For example’s LeEco smart TV’s subsidiary Leshi Internet Information & Technology shares decreased with 7.5% due to rumors that the company was unable to pay its suppliers. Stock further slumped to 4.7% after Jia’s letter was sent out.
In order to reverse the collapse, LeEco is looking to enforce some drastic measures in order to facilitate as much cost-cutting as possible. On top of that, the company aims to regroup and refocus on existing product lines like 
HTC is currently offering a promo for owners of the smartphone, which are invited to register for a free