Following the new financial options by Apple and Google, starting today, OnePlus is offering customers the ability to pay in installments any order over $99. The main benefit is not being locked into a carrier contract; OnePlus customers can switch carriers whenever they want. While customers can still pay the full price of their phone, having installments will be a big incentive for prospective buyers.
In order to pay in installments, you’ll need to select PayPal Credit during checkout. This is, unfortunately, the only option customers can use when purchasing a new OnePlus phone. With a handy calculator tool during checkout, you’ll know exactly how month your monthly payment will be in advance.
Now that the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X have been removed from the invite-only system, customers have more options to select from. The OnePlus 2 starts at $22.60/month, and the OnePlus X starts at $16.12/month.
Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile on Monday confirmed the upcoming launch details for the Samsung Galaxy S7.
The pair of Sprint prepaid brands will pick up the call for this year’s flagship phone starting later this week, on March 11. Boost is the first of the two prepaid carriers to offer the Samsung smartphone, tapping it with a $650 price tag. Virgin Mobile dials up its own version of the phone one week later, starting on March 18. Pricing is the same at $650 with no long-term contract.
It’s worth noting that the two carriers are only selling the 32GB Onxy Black models. If you are in the market for one of these phones, you should check out our growing list of accessories worth looking into.
Part of the reason for the growth of the private Chinese company is its ability to offer high quality phones at low prices. While Samsung and Apple do have success in other parts of the world, companies that focus on these value phones are having a ton of success. Today, we’re going to take a look at one of these devices, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, to see how much value it brings to the table
As we can see, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 has quite respectable specs. The octa-core MediaTek MT6795 processor is clocked at 2.0 GHz to power through intensive tasks and the 4,000 mAh battery is simply huge. On first glance, one of the first things that stood out was the paltry 2 GB of RAM. We’re used to seeing 3 GB standard nowadays, so my interest was piqued.
Physical overview & Build Quality
The tactile feeling of your phone matters. When you pick it up, you don’t want it to feel cheap. You want it to feel like something you paid hundreds of dollars for, because you probably have. The Redmi Note 3 delivers surprisingly well here. It feels great in the hand, like a phone that costs three times as much.
The body of the phone is metal. My silver unit’s back is a curved slab of beautiful metal, dotted with a fingerprint scanner, flash, and camera at the top. Near the bottom you’ll find a logo and a speaker grill that makes the speaker seem much more impressive than it is. Below the speaker grill and above the camera are silver plastic bands that allow the antennas to work more efficiently.
The metal just feels right in the hand. It never gets cold, but it does feel cool, in the best possible way. The rounded edges remind of the Apple iPhone 6 and 6S, but something is different. Those phones always felt slippery to me. Even though the Redmi Note 3 is similar in size, it doesn’t feel slippery at all.
There are little things in this phone that even the biggest manufactures are leaving out these days.
The weight of the phone (5.78 oz) is something I really love. There’s a constant battle of making phones thin and light, but if you go too far, they feel like toys. The Redmi Note 3 strikes a perfect balance of build quality and weight. It feels heavier than my daily driver, the Nexus 6P(6.28 oz), but it isn’t.
Both the volume rocker and power button reside on the right side. The volume buttons reside higher, which may throw some that are used to a different placement. Volume and power provide excellent tactile feedback. You can feel, and hear, exactly when you’ve triggered the buttons.
There are little things in this phone that even the biggest manufactures are leaving out these days. I would love to see the return of IR blasters to flagship phones. The Redmi Note 3 has one and I love it. The included app is missing some television manufactures, but this is remedied by downloading any third party remote app in the Play Store.
The fingerprint scanner on the rear of the phone is also excellent. It reminds me almost exactly of the Nexus Imprint fingerprint readers on the back of the LG Nexus 5X and Huawei Nexus 6P. They’re similar in both size and location, while being blazingly fast. Nothing seems to beat the Apple iPhone 6S in fingerprint scanning speed, but the Redmi Note 3 is excellent in both speed and accuracy.
Screen
Today’s flagships are in a constant battle for more pixels. I don’t blame them. Samsung’s QHD screens look great. Not only that, but it gives OEM’s a marketing tool. Hey, look at this phone. It has more pixels packed in 5.5″ than your television does!
Honestly, I’m glad Xiaomi skipped the QHD screen and stuck with a 1080p screen. There a couple advantages to using a lower resolution screen that I think people tend to overlook, like better battery life, but a lower resolution screen doesn’t have to mean worse.
As I noted, my daily-driver is a Nexus 6P. It has a current generation Samsung QHD panel in it. Its top of the line. The Redmi Note 3’s screen still blows me away. It gets SO bright. I don’t have a tool to measure the maximum brightness of the screen, so I can only bring you anecdotal evidence, but on the brightest of days I have no problem seeing everything on the screen of this phone.
The 1080p IPS LCD display has excellent viewing angles. This is somewhat expected due to the screen technology, and it delivers. Text on the screen is still readable until the phone is completely turned. I would love it if the contrast was a bit better, but that may be the Nexus 6P’s AMOLED screen spoiling me to other technologies.
Minimum brightness is just fine, nothing spectacular. If you read in bed a lot, you may need a third party app to lower the brightness a little bit more, but I got by fine. Adaptive brightness does a great job of keeping the phone within acceptable limits, not to bright, not to dark.
Whats noticably missing from the screen are on-screen buttons. Xiaomi has opted to go with hardware buttons that reside under the screen a-la Samsung, instead of on-screen buttons we see in phones like the Nexus devices, LG G5 and Sony Xperia Z5.
Battery
When going down the list of things that are important to you, where does battery life place? It’s probably in the top 3, right? The quality of a phone goes out the window if you’re never able to use it. Xiaomi listened to consumers and put a huge battery in this phone (4,000 mAh), and it translates to excellent battery life.
The 4,000 mAh battery is a champ. I was getting 2 days of regular use (about 6-7 hours of screen on time) with the Redmi Note 3 at about 50% brightness. I had previously mentioned that Xiaomi chose a 1080P screen for the Redmi Note 3, and this is one of the areas where it pays off. The fewer pixels the phone has to power, the better the battery life.
It would be nice if you could swap it out with a spare, but very rarely are you going to run down a 4,000 mAh battery. And if you do, it has quick charging technology. 4,000 mAh is one of the biggest batteries you can buy in a phone today.
Software
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 comes with Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with the MIUI skin atop. This obviously isn’t the latest version of Android, and MIUI is one of the heaviest skins for Android. It’s not quite it’s own software, but you could be forgiven if you thought it was.
MIUI is most notable for its lack of an app drawer. I’m sure Xiaomi has its reasons for removing the app drawer in MIUI, but I can’t understand it. I don’t want all of apps cluttering up my screens, and I don’t want them all in folders trying to hide. My apps are harder to locate and my phone looks like a mess.
MIUI does get a few things right. The notification shade is still here. I don’t like that you can’t act on the notification (like marking mail done), but I do like that quick toggles are a swipe to the right, instead of an extra swipe down like in stock Android.
The Settings app can be confusing. Important settings buried deep within it and difficult to locate. Battery life is important to people, and Android has built in battery stats. Buring this information three levels deep in the settings app is just silly. Splitting up Software and Hardware values on two different screens is equally silly.
MIUI does have built in support for themes. The theme store opens up your device to a wealth of new designs that you can purchase as you see fit. I personally never found one I liked more than the theme that came on the phone (it comes with four included), so I didn’t buy any, but there are a ton of choices if you’re willing to dig a little bit.
I don’t know exactly what the reason was, but I could never get my Mi account to work. During the phone’s setup process, you have to verify your account before you move on. At first, I chose the SMS option. It sent the SMS to me, but I couldn’t view it because setup wasn’t complete. You can’t pull down the notification shade during setup.
Eventually I went with email verification with… strange results. I’ve never owned a Xiaomi device, but it said I already had a phone number associated with my account. It’s not my phone number. It’s not a number I recognize, or one from anywhere I’ve lived. These sort of quirks are common with MIUI and imported phones.
Performance
Performance on this phone is great. There are some small snags and stutters here or there, but I never ran into a big slow down during my testing. I could easily scroll through long menus and apps like Twitter with ease.
The biggest difference between devices like this and the Nexus 6P is fluidity. On the Redmi Note 3, sometimes you had to wait an extra half a second for something to load or sat on a splash screen for a bit longer than expected, but you still got there. Occasionally I’d see a dropped frame or two, but it was few and far between.
Not everything is perfect, of course. We are still talking about a sub-$200 phone. 2 GB of RAM is really the bare minimum I’d want to go with these days. The phone does an excellent job with what it has, though. I never had an issue with it knocking programs out of their suspended state due to needing more memory.
16 GB of storage is less than ideal, but workable. If you don’t save a ton of video or music on your phone, it can definitely get you by. In an increasingly on-demand world, most people can make it work.
Little quirks abound with this phone. I often times had issues with the phone and the bluetooth in my car. Dropped calls were frequent, and for some reason, it just wouldn’t read my contacts. I never got a prompt to allow access to my call logs and contacts, and there is no option the bluetooth menu. I can still receive calls, but making them is a bit of a pain.
One of the biggest irksome things about the Redmi Note 3 is the lack of supported cellular bands. At no time did I ever get LTE with this phone on T-Mobile’s network in southern and central Ohio. We have great coverage, and all the T-Mobile bands lit up here but the phone just simply doesn’t support them. I bounced between 3G and HSPA+ for the entirety of the review period. While speeds were still very good, I wonder how much better my battery life would have been without it constantly bouncing back and forth.
Camera
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 sports a 13 MP, f/2.2 camera with phase detection auto-focus, and dual LED flash. The software supports geotagging of photos, touch-to-focus, smile detection, HDR and panorama modes. The front facing camera is a rather standard 5 MP f/2.0 camera that can record in 1080p video.
The best way to describe the pictures you’re going to get out of the camera is average. Sometimes you’re going to get great pictures. Sometimes you’re not. The camera seems to do great in decent lighting conditions and produce reliably good pictures. Where it struggles is in dimly lit conditions or decently lit conditions with one strong lighting source as you can see below.
The saturation isn’t the best even in well lit situations which holds back the camera from really being a strong point of this phone. I don’t know if the issue is in the processing of the pictures or not, but the end product can be a bit underexposed and dull. A more true to life picture would push this phone into another category of value.
One thing that I was reliable able to re-create was shutter lag. This is by no means a fast camera. When you’re using HDR, the camera takes anywhere between 2 and 5 seconds to capture what you’re seeing in the view-finder. In auto mode, you’re still going to get a delay, but not as severe.
Are you going to get everything in a sub-$200 phone? No, you’re not. But, I do think the camera is definitely punching above it’s price-point here. You’re not going to reliable beat a flagship phone’s pictures, but you will (most of the time) come close.
Value
The biggest selling point of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is its value. At the time of publishing, the phone sits at $182 on Gearbest. That’s a great price for an unlocked phone, regardless of specs. Then you start looking deeper at the package you’re getting. Two day battery, great screen, fast processor, all metal build.
It’s one of, if not the best values on the market.
I’m really optimistic about where the mobile industry is headed. On the carrier side, we’re seeing the death of two year contracts. Combine that with the expansion of ultra-fast LTE and you have a recipe for choice. Customers who choose to purchase unlocked phones like the Redmi Note 3 can move carriers pretty much at will.
On the hardware side, inexpensive phones are getting really good. You can always go out and spend $650+ on a flagship phone with great results, but phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 prove you can spend a third of that and get a really good phone.
Don’t like what you bought? Buy a new phone next year and you’re still likely to have spent less money than if you had bought a flagship.
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is simply a great phone at a great price. You’re never going to find a phone that’s perfect, but this phone ticks a lot of the boxes without taking a chunk out of your bank account.
Special thanks to the folks over at Gearbest for making this review possible!
Like the legendary original that came before it, Fly Worm Fly is simple, yet difficult, tap-to-live flying game, available on the Play Store. The game combines good graphics, decent sound, interesting level design, and simple mechanics into a “how long can you last” contest. But this time instead of playing a hapless hero bird, you assume the role of a hapless hero…..worm. OK?
Setup
Simple enough: Download from the Play Store, and open. You’ll be asked to connect to your Google Play Games account, which is up to you.
Gameplay
Again, simple enough: Across a total of 18 missions, you play a mighty flying worm superhero, and you do it by navigating him (ok: or her) left-to-right by repeatedly tapping on your screen. Every tap gives your worm avatar a bit of a momentary flight lift, and you control the amount of lift by the speed and timing of your taps.
The timing of your taps is critical, as tapping makes your worm jump a bit. This is important as contact with ANY surface other than coins or other goodies results in immediate death and re-spawn from your last milestone crossing. Each level does provide a nice level of variety in how you must navigate to their endings. Knives, explosives, mountainsides….anything and everything that can be touched is fatal, and it’s up to you to fly above, below, and around all of it.
You are scored by how far you get in a given level, in addition to the value of any coins you collect along the way.
Summary
Honestly, I did enjoy Fly Worm Fly. It has decent-enough graphics, sound, and level design to make one want to do better next time. It can be simultaneously fun, aggravating, and addictive. Which isn’t, in the end, what any of us want of our games anyway?
The major discount to it is that mechanically it’s not much different from a lot of other very similar games currently available. That said, I do encourage you to download give it a try!
Have a device that is compatible with USB Type-C? One of the biggest annoyances you have to deal with is having two types of cables. MicroUSB and Type-C are the latest standards in charging among Android devices, and the manufacturers are not in agreement on a single charger yet.
Google’s latest devices, the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X support USB Type-C while Samsung’s latest Galaxy S7 and S7 edge only support microUSB with Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 even though the Snapdragon 820 supports Quick Charge 3.0.
Yeah it is all really confusing. It’s even a bit annoying that no one can agree on what charging standard to use. The ones who suffer are the consumers like you and me. What’s even more confusing is that there are complications with Type-C chargers and cables. Incompatible cables and chargers can fry your devices.
Leave it to Tronsmart, a fully Qualcomm certified manufacturer of chargers, to save the day with its latest dual USB Type-C and USB Type-A Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 charger to simplify matters. I had a chance to review it and realized it is the last charger I need until these manufacturers sort out what standard they’re going to use.
Design
Tronsmart is one of the few third party manufacturers of chargers I trust with my devices. They have always made high quality products with the certifications to back its products.
The latest USB Type-C and USB Type-A dual port wall charger follows the lines of its heritage and is another well built device. It is a small power cube made from high quality plastic, that has foldable metal prongs that can be hidden away when traveling. It has two USB ports:
USB Type A with Volt IQ – Output:5V/3A (Max). Smart detect technology patented by Tronsmart, offers the fastest charging speed for non-Type C devices. This will not “fast charge” devices with Type-C.
USB Type-C port – Supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 5-6.5V/3.0A, 6.5-9V/2.0A, 12V/1.5A(Max).
Take note that USB Type A to USB Type-C does not support fast charging. Only USB Type-C to USB Type-C supports the latest in fast charging technology. This charger is perfect if you have devices with both MicroUSB as well as Type-C. You can grow with this charger when you upgrade your device as it has the latest in charging technology.
Usage
The Tronsmart dual USB charger is impressive. It’s extremely well built and is perfect for those who bring chargers with them on the go. I am definitely a suer who swaps between USB Type-C and microUSB as I am constantly switching phones. Having to go back and forth is actually really annoying. And needing to bring two chargers with me at all times gets old fast.
There has been much news surrounding Type-C third party chargers and cables not being compatible with current devices. Naturally it concerns me to use chargers that could fry my phones and I avoid them to the best of my ability. Tronsmart is one of the few third party manufacturers I trust to charge my devices and they have never let me down. Its latest charger is fully compatible with my Nexus 5X and 6P, LG V10 and will be the goto charger I use for my Samsung S7 edge I have on pre-order.
Being a charger there isn’t much excitement over how I use it, but I do use it for everything and have been for over a month now. I haven’t run into one single issue with it and Tronsmart delivered on every level.
Tronsmart is fully certified by Qualcomm as a trusted partner and is a great alternative to more pricey chargers made by Samsung, LG, and Huawei. It is fully compatible with the latest smartphones – the LG G5, LG V10, Nexus 6P and 5X, and the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.
When the wireless earphone scene really kicked off, you could say that Jaybird popped in and showed ‘um how its done. The company quickly pegged themselves in a good spot in the now crowded market, by nailing thought-out design and exceptional sound. The originals, Jaybird BlueBuds X, were recently one-upped with a sequel, and we were interested to see what the new hotness brings.
Jaybird was kind enough to oblige us with a review unit of its newest X2. Let’s find out if they continue the manufacturer’s winning streak and if they’re the wireless earbuds for you!
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Design
Some folks may be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the X2 and its predecessor. Jaybird’s approach is that of refinement, and that’s okay. If it ain’t broken, you don’t have to fix it.
The design is still as simple as ever. Two earpieces are bridged by a flat cable (21″ in length). The weight of the whole thing is merely 13 grams.
The earpieces also keep their cylindrical shape, but the aesthetics are a little different. The plastic’s shiny gloss is completely replaced by a matte finish. It’s still not the most premium look, but I think that most would agree that it’s a refinement.
The base color is now uniformly covers the chassis, and speaking of which, there’s now colorful choices:
It’s really easy to slip off the eartip. Underneath, you’ll see a pretty basic-looking plastic stem with a foam wax guard.
The cable is really nice. The material is rubbery and thin, and coupled with its flat shape, you won’t get those annoying tangles. A 3-button remote/mic is in-line just under the right earpiece.
The packaging includes rubbery, pod-shaped case. You pop off the top to get inside. It’s unique and cool-looking, but I’m not convinced on the robustness. The case’s flexibility allows the top to slip off pretty easily.
Inside is a short USB to microUSB cord and three of Jaybird’s signature earpiece fins. The fins are meant to hug within your ear and provide a more secure fit. The X2 are supposed to work with rigorous active use, so Jaybird additionally designed them to be sweatproof.
Usability
Standardly, the stock eartips are silicone and come in three different sizes. However, Jaybird additionally threw in a set of Comply foam tip (Sport series). Foam tips isolate a lot better, so it’s generous that users are provided a choice.
I must mention that the earpieces are larger than conventional, wired earphones. That should be expected because of the wireless-enabling technology built in. So the earpieces will stick out of the ear more than usual. That said, I didn’t find any issue with ergonomics. The fit was great in my experience, and the eartips and seal stay in place nicely.
It’s easy to install the ear fins. They snugly slide over the earpiece. Getting the orientation right and donning take a little playing around with, but once you’re up and running, the benefit makes sense.
When I went to put the earphones on for the first time, I frustratingly couldn’t find the “L” (left) and “R” (right) labels on the earpieces. A quick look at the manual tells that you figure it out by the angle of the eartip. I don’t think it would have been hard for Jaybird to just etch on the labels anyways. You shouldn’t have to look this kind of thing up.
The microUSB charging port is covertly located under the right earpiece’s end cap. When you plug it in, you’ll also notice that there’s an LED indicator nearby (red for charging, green for charged).
From an empty battery, it takes just over 2 hours to a full charge. Jaybird rates the battery at 8 hours of playback, but of course that can vary with different volumes. The Bluetooth range will go up to 30 feet, assuming that nothing comes between it.
The 3-button remote and mic is nifty as always. To turn the X2 on and off, hold down the middle button for 4 seconds. There’s a bunch of other functions built into different presses.
Sound
These are the first pair of Jaybird’s that I’ve sampled, but through word of mouth, I kind of already knew that they’d pump out great sound. I’ve tried a variety of Bluetooth headphones, and many are uninspiring. Fortunately, JayBird makes a strong effort to maintain audio quality in today’s wireless movement.
The two biggest areas that the X2 excel at are treble and soundstage. The treble range is pushed more forward than usual. This makes higher-pitched detail (i.e. cymbals) more in-your-face, in a good way. Too many times, headphones don’t have a strong treble presence, and it’s a shame. The mid-range is right behind it too. Vocals feel like they’re right on your ear and sound natural.
The encompassing sound blew me away from the bat. An immersive soundstage is typically something that doesn’t make it into earphones in lower price ranges. The X2’s sounds don’t just go wide but all around, simulating a 3D environment. Jaybird did a great job here.
Alas, we get to the low-end. While bass is delivered finely, I wasn’t as impressed as with other aspects. It’s just not full enough. The music loses some impact as a result. It could be the excellent treble and mids that are slightly drowning it; I don’t know. I feel like the bass wants to extend further (the definition is there), but it can’t for some reason. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend the X2 to bassheads (unless you don’t mind EQ’ing it up).
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Final Thoughts
The good reception that Jaybird’s get had me expecting a lot for the X2, and I would say that they delivered. At least, I would agree that the quality justifies the asking price. The build is solid and the simple design effortlessly works. The fit and functionality are all as should be, and there’s some nice extras, like ear fins and Comply foam tips.
The sound quality is impressive for the price range and when considering the wireless technology that needed to be crammed in. The reproduction has details that aim for audiophile-grade acoustics. However, if you’re big on bass, this may not be the wireless earphone for you.
The X2 retails for $179, but check out other outlets, like Amazon, which can knock off like $50.
Zombies have a huge role in our current pop culture. Therefore, it is no surprise that most of the games on the Google Play Store are related to shooting up the brain-seeking undead.
However, since there is a myriad of zombie-based games, there can only exist a few good ones that are actually, well, good.
Watch out, zombies! (great title, by the way) is one of those typical zombie games, with a twist in gameplay. Long story short, it’s kind of like Frogger (NES nostalgia ensues) with a few more added elements.
Setting up Watch Out, Zombies! doesn’t require any more effort than tapping on your smartphone’s screen a couple of times. It is basically like installing any other typical application.
You install the game through the Google Play Store, and you run it. That’s all there is to it.
Since I was a tad bit curious, I decided to check out the permissions this game requires for comfortable gameplay, and to no surprise, I found all the usual ones a game needs. (You really don’t want the NSA spying on you)
Of course, you can deny the game any of the permissions that make you feel uncomfortable. That is, if you’re running Android Marshmallow.
First Impressions
When I started the game, it had a good impression on me. It seems that the developers really did put a lot of effort into this game.
After the splash screen, you’re greeted with the main menu. A thing I noticed is that the main menu takes advantage of your smartphone’s gyroscope, and the background moves as you move your smartphone around.
Not really a game changer (pun totally intended) but a sweet addition.
The menu seems easy to navigate through and is quite user friendly.
Gameplay
The game is really well-built. You just tap on screen to start the game, and you’re in!
In the main menu, you can switch between 2 characters. Namely, a boy and a girl. As you progress in the game, you earn coins, which you can spend on in-game upgrades like your speed, and coin frequency.
There also exists in-app purchases, where you can spend real-life money on coins.
Let me just take a moment to point out the sass on that boy. This kid’s got sass for days!
Well, back to topic. The entire game is in gray-scale, while you’re the only thing that’s in color. It gives you quite the contrast between the living and the dead.
You hop along, evading zombies, and crossing lanes making sure will not be run over by the passing cars. Did I mention you’ll be able to run over zombies by using the cars to your advantage?
Controls
This is the sector where the game falls back a little. If you remember Frogger as well as I do, the control system only consisted of four buttons.
Watch Out, Zombies! utilizes the same control system, which is a serious caveat. You swipe up to go forward, down to go back, left to move left, and right to move right.
But, this control system is quite slow and poses a hindrance to the overall smoothness of the game. However, judging by the developer’s comments, they’re working on a new control system,which I hope will come soon.
The good
Watch Out, Zombies! is a well-designed game. The interface is user friendly, and the gameplay is excellent.
It is somewhat visually aesthetic, because there’s nothing graceful in watching zombies eat brains. You also have the choice to choose your character, and also purchase various upgrades to help you with the game.
The bad
A word of caution: This game is graphically demanding. In the sense, that the game must need a mid-range smartphone to run comfortably.
Also, the control system is also a serious issue. An analog system would be lots better, in my opinion. Hopefully, they get that fixed.
Also, the advertising at this point is quite annoying. You can purchase the No Ads version, though.
Conclusion
This game is unique in the sense that it is the only one of its kind (at the time of writing). Long story short, you can say that Watch Out, Zombies! is pretty killer.
No setup. Download and play – doesn’t even support Google Play, disappointingly.
Impressions –
While I’m not a Rugby guy, personally, I found this game to be pretty cute. The retro graphics, music and sound effects are charming, and the simplistic gameplay is fun at first, though it grows to be repetitive the more you play.
It’s all very simple; your goal is to run a single player to the goal-line, often past defensemen. You don’t ever play defense yourself, and there are various “extra point” markers you can run your man into in order to score extra points. You only have a certain amount of time for each run, so reading the defense and calculating your move in a timely manner is important.
Unfortunately for the fun factor in this game, that’s all there is to it. It’s the same sequence every single time, with no variation or randomness to it; once you’ve played it a single time, you’ve played all there is to offer. Your journey from levels 1 to 10 will be the same every time, with your only goal each time you play to progress a step farther than before. This can really affect how fun the game is, making it more frustrating than enjoyable. Since there’s no Google Play support, you can’t even gun for achievements.
In all, a charming, promising, but ultimately disappointing experience. You’ve nothing to lose by downloading this little game, for it’s completely free, but don’t expect to keep it around for too terribly long.
After its release of the not-very-successful HTC One M9 and Desire series, we may have glimpse of what is expected to be the HTC One M10. Or rather, the HTC 10. Leakster @onLeaks tweeted to be what appears to be HTC’s next flagship, the HTC 10. Interesting to note how the bulky ‘One M’ moniker has been dropped:
We noticed a couple of striking design changes as compared to what we have been seeing on previous iterations. Firstly, there is no BoomSound™ speakers on the top and bottom bezels. Secondly, the navigation buttons are now capacitive and no longer built into the software. Thirdly, the connection port is USB Type-C. While these changes may be despised by some, they are likely for the better of the phone in the long run, although we’ll still have to wait quite a while to get some impressions of the device.
Specifications wise, we aren’t surprised to see HTC packing in the latest and greatest. A Snapdragon 820 CPU and 4GB of RAM are expected to run the show alongside an Adreno 530 GPU, while a 5.1″ 1440X2560 screen adorns the front.
We have a mediocore 12-megapixel shooter on the back, complimented by a fingerprint scanner on the front home button.
There’s nothing on the phone that quite shouts “sexy” or “amazing” , but it doesn’t seem a bad Android device overall.
Tuesday, April 19th, is when we expect the HTC 10 to be revealed.
One of Alcatel’s latest Android phones, the Alcatel Go Play, is now available for purchase through their website. The waterproof mid-ranger comes with a your color option of a free ruggedized case and free shipping for a very reasonable $200. Buyers can choose between a dark gray, green, blue, or dark red case
The Alcatel OneTouch Go Play is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 alongside 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, expandable with a MicroSD card. A 5″ HD screen is present with a 8-megapixel back shooter.
Android Lollipop runs the show with a non-removable 2,500mAh battery.
The IP67 rating means the phone is dust and shock resistant and waterproof up to three feet of water.
The Go Play is an excellent choice for budget-conscience smartphone buyers looking for a durable and capable daily driver.
The pair of Sprint prepaid brands will pick up the call for this year’s flagship phone starting later this week, on March 11. Boost is the first of the two prepaid carriers to offer the Samsung smartphone, tapping it with a $650 price tag. Virgin Mobile dials up its own version of the phone one week later, starting on March 18. Pricing is the same at $650 with no long-term contract.
Today’s flagships are in a constant battle for more pixels. I don’t blame them. Samsung’s QHD screens look great. Not only that, but it gives OEM’s a marketing tool. Hey, look at this phone. It has more pixels packed in 5.5″ than your television does!
Specifications wise, we aren’t surprised to see HTC packing in the latest and greatest. A Snapdragon 820 CPU and 4GB of RAM are expected to run the show alongside an Adreno 530 GPU, while a 5.1″ 1440X2560 screen adorns the front.
One of Alcatel’s latest Android phones, the Alcatel Go Play, is now available for 
