They don’t really want you to use them (as evidenced by the lack of support for them) all of the carriers have been improving their prepaid plan offerings lately with the hopes that you’ll abandon your MVNO in favor of the real deal. Friday, AT&T jumped on the “me too” bandwagon by improving the data buckets that they offer with their pre-paid plans.
Here are the changes: The $45 per month plan will increase high-speed data to 2GB (previously 1.5 GB) and the $60 per month plan will increase high-speed data to 5GB (previously 4GB) and supports roaming in U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Additionally, both of these plans (the only ones that actually offer monthly data packages) also include rollover data (whatever you didn’t use last month will be added to this month) and can be $5 cheaper respectively if you sign up for auto-pay.
These plans still aren’t particularly competitive with even their own pre-paid service, Cricket, which offers 2.5 GB per month for $35 after $5 aut0pay credit and the same $60 gets you 10GB and the same benefits to and from Mexico and Canada. The biggest differences would be the rollover data and the fact that Cricket is throttled to 8mb/s whereas presumably AT&T’s branded GoPhone service would go as fast as the technology allows.
The new prepaid plans are available now, so if you want to give it a try, just hop on over to AT&T’s website!
If you’re a V10 user and love that LG baked in Hi-Fi audio output, it’s likely that you’re bothered by the fact that the dedicated Hi-Fi DAC (digital-to-analog converter) only activates for select music apps. We knew that LG’s stock music app was one of those, and we were glad to find out in our V10 review that that TIDAL is supported, but there are plenty of other excluded services (Spotify, Play Music, Pandora, etc.).
When the Hi-Fi DAC setting is toggled, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s working. The user has to listen for the switch (turning the setting off and on during audio playback) to really know. LG screwed this up in my opinion.
Fortunately, there are folks out there that don’t take this kind of thing sitting down. An XDA user, Phascinate, has figured out a surprisingly simple way to enable the Hi-Fi setting in the V10 across the board. The best part is that the phone doesn’t need to be rooted. The workaround was therefore put into an app, called “DAC Fix for LG V10”.
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The functionality is simplistic. You just have toggles to turn the feature on, have it start up automatically on boot, and notify you on its status. Oh, and the developer was kind enough to explain how it works.
[blockquote author=”XDA user, Phascinate”]The concept is actually quite simple! Immediately when music starts playing, it plays some completely (and I mean completely! We don’t want any background noise, do we?) silent media which tricks the phone into turning the DAC on.[/blockquote]
You might have suspicions (I definitely did), because it sounds a little too good to be true. However, after giving the app a good run through, I can contend for you guys that it works as advertised (and it’s free!). I tried it on both Play Music and YouTube. When I turn on/off the V10’s DAC setting, I can hear it switch. And, of course, the audio sounds richer.
Hit up the Play Store app link below. Happy Hi-Fi listening!
Android Auto doesn’t often show up in the slew of Android news we regularly digest. That’s a pity, because it is neat technology, especially if you spend a lot of time in your car. Fortunately, Kenwood (known for making multimedia consoles for the car) has shown at CES 2016 that it’s all in for smartphone support and Android Auto.
The new top-end car receiver that Kenwood is boasting is the eXcelon DNX893S. It brings all the bells and whistles you’d want from a multimedia receiver today, and yes, Android Auto.
So why should you drop the dough and jump in? Kenwood claims that it has “redesigned this unit inside and out”. It has a 7″ capacitive touch screen and a dual-core processor for speed and a pack of features.
[blockquote author=”Kenwood”]The double-DIN, touch friendly unit is the company’s most complete entertainment and information center to date, receiving a completely new processing infrastructure, enhanced smartphone integration, improved safety features and support for high-resolution audio.[/blockquote]
Via the Android Auto interface, users have access to navigation, streaming, messaging, and voice control. There are two USB ports, thoughtfully with fast charging.
The built-in apps interface with the corresponding smartphone apps, letting the user access and control services like Spotify and Pandora (communicated through Bluetooth). What’s more, the DNX893S has MHL support over HDMI. This means that you can mirror your phone’s screen on the receiver’s larger display and control your features that way.
Audiophiles should also be satisfied with the DNX893S. The receiver supports high-resolution audio playback, with the ability to decode 192KHz and 24-bit FLAC (lossless audio). HD Radio is on-board as well.
Check out Kenwood’s press release on the link below for more details. If you spend a great deal of time commuting, it should definitely be a consideration.
As it is with many of the upcoming unlocked Android phone manufacturers, you probably haven’t heard of their phones before. Many consumers are weary of such, because that can mean an unproven, cheap, and problematic-prone device that we put so much reliance on.
However, I’ll argue that we should be more open about the idea of a no-name manufacturer. Even if it’s just to be a well-rounded, knowledgeable Android fan. Phone standards have gone up as of late, and there are now so many great value Android phones to choose from.
One such offering comes from KPhone. In the slew of CES 2016 news, you might have missed that KPhone introduced two new promising models: the K5+ and K6. Let’s check out what KPhone’s latest effort brings to the table.
K5+ 5.5
KPhone’s latest pair of phones both bring sleek metal builds. These phones aren’t necessarily aiming at the budget side of the mobile market, “unlocked” doesn’t always insinuate that.
Our own, Derrick Miyao, visited them at CES and he backs that KPhone’s latest offerings feel great and well-built.
At an asking price of $449, the specs also hold up. We have a 5.5″ AMOLED QHD display, Snapdragon 617 (octa-core) SoC, 3GB of RAM, dual-rear cameras (13MP + 2MP, which we assume is for depth/focus control in image post-processing), 16GB internal storage (expandable up to 32GB via microSD), and a 2,900mAh battery.
KPhone also included a differentiating trick in the K5+, a featured dubbed MiraVision. Said to be a “videographer’s best friend”, MiraVision is a video feature that smooth out video playback (similar to that the motion enhanced playback on HD TV’s).
K6 6.0
The K6 ups the K5+ in some ways but not in others. It has a larger 6″ display (which uses IPS as opposed to AMOLED on the K5+). It is powered by a slightly inferior Snapdragon 615 SoC, but has a much larger battery – 4,100mAh.
Also, there’s one 13MP camera on the rear. We’re looking a 16GB of internal storage as well (expandable up to 32GB via microSD). The K6 comes travel-ready, with dual SIM slots.
KPhone created a unique sharing technology to compliment the K6. It is called HotKnot and supposedly makes sharing data/information very simple (wirelessly). KPhone says that “With its HotKnot data-and-file technology, K6ers can easily exchange web addresses, contact data, photos, videos, and device-capability data. It even simplifies mobile payments.”
You’ve probably seen the weather cards while using Google Now before. You also probably noticed that they were simple and didn’t have much body. Not for much longer, though, by the looks of things, as some users have reported seeing an entirely different layout. Colorful, large and really good looking, they are a welcome change. Prepare to see something like this on your phone soon:
It’s a clear improvement over the last version. You can now view either a detailed “Today” pane, “Tomorrow” pane or a bigger “10 Days’ pane. With the new cards you also get access to more detailed weather information which you’d expect to find from more fully-fledged native weather apps. Details like pressure, UV index and visibility are shown, as is air quality. With the air quality screen, the new view offers health advice based on how good the air is, and what specific pollutants are floating around. You also get to see sunrise and sunset times.
The status bar and overall theme seems to be determined by the weather conditions.
Quite a big improvement, eh?
The problem is, you may not have access to it for a while. Only a few select users have reported the change, and Google may not even roll it out in the end (although it is very likely to be).
It also doesn’t really comply with Google’s Material Design. Strange to see them deviating from it, but it seems pretty decent nevertheless.
I quite like the change, especially the cartoonish wallpapers that are used.
In case you haven’t heard, Project Tango is all about incorporating 3D space and area into your smartphone. As Google’s website says, “The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion.”.
Project Tango is an exciting venture designed for virtual reality. Using computer vision, image processing, and vision sensors it enables us to move forward in the path of VR and how we use it. It’s no coincidence that virtual reality is expected to be a $120 billion market by 2020. And it really is as awesome as it sounds:
At CES 2016, Lenovo announced that this summer would see them being the first company to commercially showcase the full utility of Google’s Project Tango with a mobile phone. Don’t get confused by ‘commercially’, as the product is not yet ready for public use and is only meant for developers.
So what does this thing look like? Well, we don’t exactly know much about it and its specs. What we do know, is that the screen will be less than 6.5″, at least according to a Lenovo spokesperson. We also know that over 5000 developers are already actively contributing to it, a good indicator at how much work Google has actually put into it. All these developers are slowly improving the software and building software on which Project Tango runs.
In the world of technology, everything has the ability to change the world, and VR is no different. We can only guess at what it will bring.
US Cellular today announced a whole host of new deals and promotional plans to kick off 2016. Beginning today
in stores and online, customers can receive 6 GB of data for only $40 per month, and all new lines of service are eligible for a $150 promotional card at the point of sale. Customers who port in their number and trade in their device will receive an additional $150 promotional card by mail.
[blockquote author=”Joe Settimi, vice president of marketing for U.S. Cellular.”]To kick off 2016 in style, we wanted to offer customers a unique and value-packed plan so they can get the most out of their smartphones, tablets and other connected devices[/blockquote]
They are also offering fifty percent off the monthly device connection charges on select connected devices. With this discount, tablets can be added to a Shared Connect plan for only $5 per month, Home Phone for $10 per month, and the Router + Home Phone for $15 per month, making it easy to share data on multiple devices. This should make it easier for customers to access important information quickly and easily.
In addition to the deals mentioned above, if a current customer refers a friend to U.S. Cellular, and the friend chooses to activate a smartphone on a Shared Connect plan, they both will receive $50.
The days where we walk into a carrier store to purchase a subsidized smartphone are fading. This trend, bundled with the aggressive prices that we’re beginning to see in unlocked phones, makes purchasing a phone full price a more viable option in the market.
Amazon is where a majority of us go to find the best prices of merchandise, therefore, we’ve complied a list of great unlocked smartphone deals you can find there today. Let’s check out what you can save on!
Bear in mind that these particular prices are at the time of writing. Amazon changes its prices frequently. Also, different smartphone colors often have different prices, and there may be limited quantities.
We learned on Thursday at CES 2016 that Lenovo, one of the largest electronics companies in the world and owner of Motorola, would be shuttering the Motorola name. Lenovo bought Motorola Mobility in early 2014 from Google and ever since, fans have wondered what the future of the brand would be. Lenovo currently already makes phones and owns about 5% of the global market (Motorola accounted for about a third of their sales).
But, where would Motorola’s current line-up of phones fit in? Would Lenovo continue two different brands that make phones in the same price ranges? Would Motorola remain autonomous? When you really start pondering those questions, the decision to drop the Motorola name makes more sense. We’ve seen a lot of reactions in the first few hours since this announcement. Almost all of them negative and almost all of those emotional reactions.
To see the whole picture, we need to start at the beginning.
History of Motorola
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Motorola started in 1928 in Chicago. The first products it produced were called battery eliminators, which allowed battery powered radios to run on home electricity. Its beginnings were humble. It started with only 5 employees and a weekly payroll of $63. After radio eliminators became obsolete, Motorola moved into making some of the first car radios. The ‘Motorola’ branded radio became so popular that the company changed its name from the previously named Galvin Manufacturing Corporation to Motorola Inc.
From there, Motorola began a long string of inventing technology that we still use today. In 1940, it invented the walkie-talkie; in 1946 it was the first company to carry a call over Illinois Bell telephone company’s new car radiotelephone service. Beginning in 1958, they produced radio equipment for NASA which ended up being used in the Apollo 11 mission that brought the first men to the moon. Neil Armstrong spoke his famous “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” speech using a Motorola transceiver.
In the 70’s, Motorola showed off the first portable, handheld telephone, and debuted its first 8 bit microprocessor for automobiles, computing and video games. In the 80’s, Motorola released their 32 bit microprocessor. That processor happened to be one of the biggest reasons for the computer revolution of the 80’s and powered computers from Apple, Atari and Hewlett Packard, among others.
1983 was one of the biggest years in Motorola’s history. This was the year that brought us the first cell phone. In September of ’83, the United States FCC approved the DynaTAC 8000X. Just six years later, cellular devices accounted for two-thirds of Motorola’s gross revenue.
1990 brought the Bravo Numeric Pager which became the highest selling pager in the world. A year later Motorola made a huge jump forward when it debuted the prototype for their cell phones that utilized the GSM standard that we still use today. The rest of the 90’s were busy with acquisitions and further leaps forward.
Motorola Razr V3
By 2000, Motorola had over 150,000 employees world-wide. In 2003, it introduced the first phone to combine a Linux operating system and Java to create the first real PDA. 2004 brought us one of the most infamous phones of all time, the Motorola Razr. Unfortunately, all was not rosy for Motorola. In 2007, Motorola saw a 1.2 billion dollar loss in the fourth quarter alone. A brain drain at the company saw boring and un-inventive designs come to the marketplace. Motorola fell from 18.4% market share in 2007 to 6% in the first quarter of 2009.
By 2010, Motorola had split into two. Motorola Solutions focused on police radio technologies as well as commercial needs. Motorola Mobility is the company we know today that has produced products like the Moto X and the Moto 360.
Purchase By Google
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In 2011, Motorola Mobility was in trouble. After a series of misses and terrible phone designs, the company was lagging behind companies that were innovating. No longer could it keep up with companies like Samsung and HTC that were dominating the Android space. Google stepped in in 2011 and bought the faltering giant for a little over 12 billion dollars.
Rumors flew at the time about Google’s true motivation behind the purchase. Would Google use Motorola to produce their own hardware for the first time? Were they gearing up for a war with Samsung? With Apple? It turns out that Google wanted Motorola for its patents and their experimental projects like Project Ara. Google soon sold off what remained of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for only 2.91 billion, almost 10 billion less than they purchased for, two years later.
In an interview with CNET, COO Rick Osterloh said “We’ll slowly phase out Motorola and focus on Moto”. Motorola hasn’t used the ‘Motorola’ name on their phones since the 2013 Moto X. Motorola Mobility will continue to exist as an arm within a greater Lenovo company. They will continue to be the “engineering and design engine for all mobile products”, according to a statement by the company.
Still, Lenovo retiring Motorola’s name hurts. The emotional reaction was immediate and strong. Motorola was a strong American company that helped the US win World War IIÂ and put a man on the moon. To have it go away at the hands of a Beijing backed company stings.
But Lenovo is doing the right thing.
Lenovo’s stated intent with the Moto purchase was to get into the United States market. They’re already big in computers and now it wants to dominate phones in the same way. There are few more efficient ways to enter a market than buy an established player at a bargain price to use their business connections, purchasing power and established business relationships to leverage their own brand. If all Lenovo wanted to do was make a few bucks, they make have kept the Motorola name, but they’re in it for the long haul.
You don’t become a Samsung or Apple by selling someone else’s name.
So, where do we go from here? Lenovo will continue to sell the premium Moto X line and call it ‘Moto X by Lenovo’. It will also enter their Vibe line into the market in a larger way. The Vibe line of phones are budget phones normally around the one hundred dollar price point. You’ll see a lot of these unlocked and on sale straight from Lenovo or through carriers like Boost Mobile.
What’s unclear now are what happens to products that overlap. It seems silly to kill the ultra-popular Moto E and G lines so we’ll most likely see at least one more generation of Moto E by Lenovo and Moto G by Lenovo, but after that, it’s anyone’s guess. We’ll almost definitely see the Moto 360 continue and improve. It leads the Android Wear market currently, and the only Lenovo smartwatch has been a prototype. Lenovo has stated it wants to cover every segment of the market with its products. Whether that’s with a Lenovo or Moto branded product is yet to be seen.
What is clear, however, is that Lenovo has a lot of work to do. Android enthusiasts are pretty smart and a large part of the Moto X buyers. They pay attention to things like Superfish. If that name rings a bell, it’s because Lenovo got slammed in the press for installing Superfish onto their computers. It has been described as adware by some. Things like this have undoubtedly damaged their reputation with consumers. Can we trust them not to install software like this on Motorola phones?
Losing a company name that has been around for almost a hundred years is never a positive thing. Some, if not most, develop emotional attachments to their products and the companies that make them. To see something you care about going away frankly sucks. What you have to realize is that the Motorola you thought you knew hasn’t existed in a long time. The electronics powerhouse that innovated everything from radios, to television diodes, to mobile phones has been gone for years. The only way for Motorola to survive is within Lenovo. Living in Motorola’s shadow doesn’t help Lenovo at all.
Use the comment section down below to voice your opinion. Do you agree with this article? Disagree with it? Tell us and add in your favorite Motorola device or memory.
Following up on a promise made by Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure in early August, we are seeing some evidence that the carrier is finally doing away with 2-year contracts for smartphones. A leaked internal document indicates that Sprint customers activating a new account will no longer have the option to purchase a smartphone on a 2-year contract. Since no official announcement has been made yet, Sprint is technically the last of the four major carriers to ditch the contract model (AT&T stopped offering contracts as of today).
According to the document, sales reps are being encouraged to promote Sprint’s leasing and Easy Pay plans as alternatives to subsidized on-contract phone prices. The change does not affect tablets, which helped bolster Sprint’s numbers last year as its phone subscriber base shrunk. It is unclear if the 2-year contract change will eventually apply to tablets as well, but we suspect that’s something Sprint executives want to decide after seeing the figures on tablet sales.
  
