One day removed from its announcement, the Blu Life One X has taken the top spot in Amazon’s best-selling unlocked smartphones. And for good reason – the limited-time $100 price tag makes it damn near impossible to resist.
The benefit of an unlocked smartphone, for those who aren’t aware, is that it can be used on a variety of wireless service providers. Moreover, going this route ensures you don’t have to worry about contracts or long-term obligations. Want to hop from T-Mobile to AT&T or vice-versa? That’s no problem when you’re using an unlocked GSM phone.
We’ve gathered up the 10 best-selling unlocked Android smartphones from Amazon so you can get a sense for what’s available. Indeed, you’ll see a nice mix of big-name vendors and devices from other, scrappy players. Note that we’ve omitted color variations; you might find other colors available. Yes, you’ll also find some iPhones in the mix, too, but that’s not our bag.
So, the next time you need to replace your existing phone, consider scooping up one of these. It’s often a heck of a lot cheaper than going through your carrier in the long run.
Verizon has always had a close relationship with Lucasfilm – the name of their famed DROID series of smartphones has been licensed from them since the original Motorola DROID was unveiled in 2009. Later came the DROID R2D2edition of the DROID 2 and the rest, as they say, is history. Today Verizon and Lucasfilm (Read: Disney) unveil another Star Wars themed DROID smartphone, the special edition Force Awakens DROID Turbo 2 (Say that five times fast).
What this actually means is that now on MotoMaker (which you can access online or in Verizon stores) there are pre-built DROID Turbo 2 designs that include custom color palates and backing materials based on characters from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The characters in question are Poe Dameron, Rey, BB-8, a First Order Stormtrooper, and Kylo Ren. My personal favorite is the BB-8 style:
Once you’ve gotten your custom Droided up DROID Turbo 2 you can download “Star Wars Wallpapers for Droid Turbo 2” app from the Google Play store for a set of custom wallpapers to make your setup complete. The Star Wars edition of the DROID Turbo 2 is virtually the same as any other DROID Turbo 2, so be on the lookout for my review of this indestructible phone sometime later this month. If you can’t wait that long, go ahead and pick one up now from Verizon Wireless or MotoMaker
If you’re familiar with TIDAL’s streaming service, you’re probably also familiar with the frequent cold shoulder that it receives. I would argue that a lot of that stems just from the fact that people choose a service and stick with it, seeing no reason to switch. It also doesn’t help TIDAL’s case that it’s not the cheapest service out there.
But TIDAL does have something that no other music service has – HiFi streaming. “So what?” I can see most people saying. That makes me chuckle a bit because of the fact that pricey headphones are mainstream now. Okay, maybe the extra fidelity isn’t as apparent as lower quality content on a HD TV, but I can argue (from experience) that it can be discernible over time if we start to listen to the music instead of just hear it.
So in the respect of the extra enjoyment that TIDAL can provide to our ears, we’re gonna check out all that the Android app has to offer and if everything about TIDAL is as refined as it should be for its top-dollar subscription cost.
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Design
If you’ve visited TIDAL’s website then I’d say you got a glimpse of what the app looks like. It follows a similar, dark theme throughout. Upon launching, you’re greeted with “What’s New” in TIDAL’s world.
You’ll see featured content at the very top and then newest videos, playlists, and albums (in that order) as you scroll downward. Nothing too mind-blowing here. I think it’s a bit odd that videos are shown first, but I figure it’s so the company makes sure you know that there is other content offered than just music.
At the very bottom is the current list of most popular tracks. You can just click the first track and it’ll play through them all. I think it’s a pretty good idea to have this list front and center, as it changes everyday.
What I particularly like in the UI of the app is that it honors Google’s slider menu method. Swiping from the left side presents you all the navigation options in the app.
Features
There are a few unique features here that helps TIDAL stand out from the crowd. Two of these are TIDAL Rising and TIDAL Discovery. Cleverly, these services benefit both the listeners and artists:
In case you don’t know much about TIDAL’s background, it has a strong stance to provide artists with the royalties that they’ve rightfully earned – something that other music streaming services are said to sidestep. Therefore, seeing these two programs in place makes me glad that TIDAL is thinking about the little guys as well as the big-name artists. Regardless, for the end-user, it means a chance to discover new music that you may have not otherwise – which is fantastic.
The Playlists feature is also a great option when you don’t know what specifically to listen to. The categories cover moods, activities, classics, holidays, or a tie-in with current events. Within each category, there are tons of relevant, pre-made playlists. You’ll never feel like there aren’t enough options.
There is of course a menu for music genres with all the categories you’d expect. When you choose one, the top of the page shows the genre you’re in and a Play button to start playing TIDAL’s compiled list of new tracks for that genre. The rest of the presented content follows the app’s launch page layout, albeit a slightly different order (playlists, videos, and then albums).
Continuing down the line, we have a dedicated areas for just music videos. TIDAL doesn’t just want to be an audio source; it has tons of relevant videos to share. The layout of the video section displays New, Recommended, Top 20, or Exclusive (to TIDAL) content.
Lastly, we get to the meat of the service – the music library. In the My Music section, you can organize your favorite content by Playlists, Artists, Albums, or Tracks. To get content in here, TIDAL uses a Favorite system (signified by a star within content you find). Click something as a Favorite and it’ll populate in this area.
Additionally, TIDAL allows you to save selected music in Offline Mode. Within the settings, you chose what fidelity you want the downloaded music to be. Only, when saving HiFi tracks, be conscious of how much storage space your device have.
Usability
As I’ve implied, navigating through the app is pretty intuitive. However, there are some particulars that need to be discussed when you go in to tailor the app specifically for you. One of these has to do with setting up playlists in the My Music section.
Being that TIDAL refers to its pre-made music sets as Playlists, it kind of interferes with the traditional definition of a “Playlist” – a user-built music compilation. Fortunately in TIDAL, you can throw in both kinds into that Playlists area under My Music. However, because there is a discrepancy between them, there is a toggle to allow the user to filter what’s displayed (All, Own, or Favorites).
Adding in TIDAL’s playlists are just like how you add in albums, by favoriting them. However, creating a self-built playlist is not as obvious. You have to long-press on content, then you’ll be shown a menu to add it to an existing playlist or create a new one for it. This is no problem once you realize it, but it’s a potential frustration for new users.
Another peculiar thing on the subject is from the fact that you can Favorite the playlists you create (so that they’re the only ones displayed when you filter the section to “Favorites” only). However, this creates an interference with saved TIDAL-made playlists, because you have to Favorite them to save them. In other words, you cannot separately display your own favorite playlists apart from the TIDAL-made playlists you’ve saved.
You can bypass this by long-clicking on a TIDAL playlist and selecting “Add to Playlist”, then creating a playlist with the same name. However, that playlist will then show up as your “Own” playlist when you go in to filter what’s displayed. In my opinion, TIDAL needs to either re-think the Playlist system or call its own mixes something else…like “Mixes”!
Once you realize the long-press options, the rest of the sections in My Music work just fine. This is how you place favorite Albums and Tracks in their respective spots. To build your personalized Artist list, just mark them as a favorite when you find them.
In case you were wondering, there is in fact a Radio function in TIDAL. You can initiate it via the popup menu when long-pressing on content. Alternatively, there’s a Radio button on the launch pages of artists.
Next up is the Player controls. Music that is currently playing is always shown on the bottom of the app. This is a standard affair, which shows the relevant song details (artist and album) and buttons to play/pause or move to the next track.
Clicking it pops up the full player. You’ll see the album art front and center and buttons for the previous track, play/pause, and next track.
Pressing on a space in the player will drop down a menu with shortcuts to that artist’s page, to that album, or to initiate the radio based on that track. Here, you can also set the Shuffle or Repeat functions, as well as favorite the track, share, or add to a playlist. For some reason there is no way to like/dislike music from what I can see.
On the top right corner, you’ll see another menu button. This takes you to your music queue. From here you can long-press on a track for interactions (remove track from queue, add to favorites or a playlist, start radio, etc.). Alternatively, you can add stuff into the queue via the popup menu when you long-press on content. Something to know is that the queue doesn’t restart when you select something else to play. It compounds everything you play. I don’t particularly like this, as the queue list grows lengthy with no purpose.
There’s a three-dot menu in the queue which lets you turn the queue into a playlist, empty the queue, or edit the queue. The queue editor is pretty nifty – where you can move the order of tracks around or trash them. But I’ll argue that this functionality should just be a part of the queue. Menu options like these are often unrealized because of their hidden-nature.
On last thing about the player is that there is a little “HIFI” light on the bottom right corner. Not to forget that one of TIDAL’s big selling points is HiFi streaming, this notification tells the user if they’re actually streaming the extra fidelity or not.
I’m really glad that TIDAL added this notification. By default, HiFi streaming isn’t toggled on in the settings, and the grayed out “HiFi” notification helped me realize this.
Also, in the settings, there’s a way to make the stream adaptive to the network connection. Therefore, if you don’t see “HiFi” lit, then you’ll know to go assess the problem with the connection. However, I must mention that there were a couple times that I didn’t see it lit when I had a great, reliable connection. It looked stuck, and I wasn’t sure if the bug meant that I wasn’t streaming HiFi or if the notification wasn’t working. Restarting the app fixed the issue. But this has only occurred a handful of times.
Saving content to use offline is pretty straightforward. You can either save playlists or albums for offline use. Within each playlist or album you’ll see a toggle to start downloading it. Alternatively, you can long-press on content and request to “Add to Offline”. And because you’ll potentially be storing loads to high-res data, TIDAL was kind enough to throw in a setting to offload the downloads to an SD card.
Practicality
I felt the need to create this section to discuss something very important when it comes talking about HiFi on a mobile device. We must understand that the practicality of using TIDAL at all highly depends on our hardware. In other words, you cannot use TIDAL with stock equipment, such as a phone’s DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for sound processing or inexpensive headphones, and expect results worth the price of paying extra for more detailed music samples.
Fortunately, phones with thoughtful DACs are beginning to surface (like the LG V10 and HTC A9), but they are still too few. Therefore, in order to really benefit from TIDAL on a mobile device, you’ll need an external DAC.
There a multitude of portable DAC solutions, of which the functionality is made possible by Android’s ability to audio out via OTG of the microUSB port. But the reality behind TIDAL is that the user must be willing to put forth the cost and inconvenience of extra gear.
If you’re cool with all this, then the benefit of the service is unrivaled. No other streaming service even gets close to offering this amount of audio detail. With the right gear, the experience of 1411 kbps audio data is staggering in comparison to the compressed rate that other music streaming services max out at – 320 kbps. HiFi music is richer, fuller, and more impactful and engaging.
Also, if you’re like me and don’t have a collection of Lossless audio files (and love the convenience of streaming), then that makes TIDAL your only option for getting the most out of your gear.
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Final Thoughts
I hope that this review served as good insight into TIDAL’s world. The app itself is laid out well and has the asthetics and functionality to back the high-end image that the service conveys. You get all the features you’d expect from a music streaming service and some nice extras (videos, tons of pre-made playlists, and a great artist-discovery system).
Only, I emphasize the importance of having the right gear to make the experience worth the extra cost – a fact that’s stressed even further when speaking about a mobile version of the service. Phone DACs are generally not yet good enough to output the extra detail. But if the hardware is addressed appropriately, then outstanding capability should be recognized. As a music streamer, it is because of TIDAL that I can be an audiophile.
Google has updated both the iOS and Android versions of their Google Wallet app and have added in a really cool feature in my opinion. That feature is that you can now send money to most anyone by a simple text message. Yes, that’s right. Just like with Gmail where you can send money via an attachment to your best friend or your favorite family member, you can now send a text message to someone and it can include cold, hard cash. Not literally, but they will of course get paid.
For me this is pretty huge because I do a lot of payment stuff via Google Wallet, both sending and receiving. Most of the time I do this from home, as it’s just a bit easier to do it on the PC. But now, I can simply send a text message to one of my contacts and they will get money. This means while I’m sitting at my favorite restaurant, I can just send my best friend money who is dining with me and he can pay for our meal before we leave.
Google announced this earlier and while it’s not available for everyone right now, they are rolling it out slowly over the next several days. Unfortunately, I’m still on the waiting list so I don’t have the option/feature yet, but hopefully I will and then I’m going to be sending money via text messages like crazy.
No email? No problem! Now you can send money to anyone in your contact list using just a phone number.
When you send money to a phone number, the recipient will get a text message with a secure link. They can simply enter their debit card to claim the money and it will be available in their bank account within minutes.
To start using this feature, look for a new version of the Google Wallet app on Google Play or in the App Store in the next few days.
So now that this new little feature is rolling out to Google Wallet, what’s next? A lot of people thought Google Wallet wasn’t going to survive and was possibly going away soon’ish. Are you one of those that thought that or not? Regardless, tell us your thoughts on this new feature in the comments section below and let us know if you’ll be sending us some money via a text message so we can keep an eye open for that!
HTC has finally revealed the price of its latest mid-ranger beast, the Desire 828, which will be available for sale via Indian online retailer Flipkart for Rs. 19,990 (roughly USD 299). The 4G LTE-capable handset comes preloaded with Sense 7 UI based on Android 5.1 Lollipop.
The Taiwanese company had recently announced the One A9 in India, which will be available exclusively on Snapdeal for Rs. 29,990 (an equivalent of USD 434).
Going on sale from December 14, the latest Desire device features a 5.5-inch IPS display with 1080p resolution and a respectable pixel density of 401 ppi. It is powered by an 1.5GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6753 processor and 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB internal memory.
The USP of the device, however, could be its 13-megapixel rear-facing snapper that comes with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), BSI sensor, autofocus and LED flash. It even has a 4-UltraPixel front facing camera to take those high-quality selfies and video calls. The HTC Desire 828 has two 4G LTE-compatible SIM card slots. It houses a 2,800 mAh battery and is available in Dark Grey and Pearl White colors.
I think Google secretly worked through the Thanksgiving holiday to bring us these updates before Christmas.
Shared albums allow friends and family to add their own photos and videos to your collection making it a shared story. There’s no setup, all you have to do is select photos, make an album, and share the link with whomever you’d like. It doesn’t matter if that friend is using a tablet, desktop, laptop or smartphone running Android or iOS – everyone can add to the shared album if they are included through the link you provide. Try it out.
Create an album
Mobile app
Open the Google Photos app .
At the top right, touch Create .
Select Album.
Select the photos and videos you want to include.
Touch DONE.
Share
Open the Google Photos app .
To share individual photos or videos: Tap and hold an item to select it > select any other items
To share an album, story, or movie: Open the album, story, or movie.
At the top right, touch Share:
Android:
iOS:
Choose how you want to share:
To an app.
Copy link or Create link to send someone a link.
Shared album to create an album that you can allow anyone to add to.
Google announced yesterday that they would be expanding the search capabilities of their Google Drive platform. You can now search all of your files at the same time without regard to which device the files were uploaded from.
Other new features include:
Narrow your search to a file type from the search box on Android, iOS, and the web.
Open advanced search instantly from the search box.
Access recent files or search Drive from the home screen using 3D Touch on iOS.
Search Drive using the iOS search bar without opening the Drive app.
Search for shared files by file owner using their name or email address.
Use advanced search options like the date a file was modified, words it contains, or who it was shared with.
If you’re like me and you don’t organize your files within Google Drive, this will make finding the files you need extremely easy. Gmail, of course, has had this type of search functionality for a long time. It kind of makes me wonder, what took them so long? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
Blu’s latest Android smartphone, the Life One X, plays in the Motorola Moto G sandbox. In other words, it’s an unlocked handset that delivers respectable hardware with a budget-friendly cost.
Running Android 5.1 Lollipop, the Life One X offers up a 5.2-inch 1080 pixel display and a 13-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front-facing camera combo. The 1.3GHz MediaTek octa-core processor is bolstered by 2GB RAM; storage is 16GB internally with microSD expansion for up to 64GB.
The Life One X is sold like all other Blu models, unlocked and direct to consumer via Amazon. Normally, the phone will carry a $150 price tag, however a limited-time promotion sees the cost dropped by $50. That’s right, through December 12 you can grab the Life One X for a mere $100.
The Life One X is unlocked and supports dual-SIM cards, meaning it works with T-Mobile, AT&T, Cricket, MetroPCS, and other GSM carriers.
Samsung Pay is the most widely accepted mobile payment platform on the planet, and now they’re stepping up their game even further. Samsung Pay will now support the purchase, storing, use and sharing of 50 of the most popular gift cards on the market, just in time for Christmas. Samsung also announced a gift card store where users can purchase gift cards for themselves or others right on their phone within the Samsung Pay app.
Samsung is making a major push to be the king of the mountain in the mobile payment game. The biggest advantage they have is being able to use the mobile payment platform with older style magnetic strip detectors with their Magnetic Secure Transmission technology. This technology lets Samsung Pay emulate magnetic strips and expands the ability to pay at many more stores and shops with older hardware.
[blockquote author=”Injong Rhee, EVP of Samsung Electronics, Global Head of Samsung Pay”]With the support of more than 50 major retail gift cards and the launch of the in-app gift card store, Samsung Pay is bringing consumers an easier way to use gift cards[/blockquote]
The mobile payment industry is right now in a race to the most convenient. Samsung has a challenge because they’re only on Samsung devices, which to be fair dominate the Android landscape. But, now that you don’t have to carry multiple credit cards and multiple gift cards with you it’s easy to envision leaving the house with just your phone and ID and being fine.
Here is a list of all the gift cards Samsung Pay will now support:
One of the best things about buying a product from Google is you know you’re going to get updates. Google’s most recent Chromecast addition, the Chromecast Audio just got support for Hi-Res audio playback and synchronous music.
The Chromecast Audio is an affordable device($35) designed to enable streaming to existing speakers from a phone, tablet or laptop. The device enables WiFi streaming for speakers with RCA, 3.5mm, or optical inputs. It is much easier than traditional Bluetooth pairing, because you can simply tap the Cast button from within music apps if both devices are on the same network.
Hi-Res audio support
Much of today’s streamed music is digitally compressed to minimize data usage. The resolution suffers when audio files are compressed, and there are many who find that unacceptable. HiFi audio is what differentiates Tidal from standard music streaming services, as it has up to 10 times more detail than traditional music streaming services. Today, Google is rolling out high-resolution audio support, which gives you even higher quality music playback using Chromecast Audio. With support of up to 96KHz/24bit lossless audio playback, you can enjoy higher-than-CD-quality audio on your existing high fidelity audio equipment.
The “S” word(streaming) is no longer unmentionable to audiophiles with Chromecast’s latest Hi-Res audio support.
Synchronous Music
At $35 the Chromecast Audio is a great way to stream music to multiple rooms. Before today, if you had more than one Chromecast Audio, you could not stream to more than one room at a time. Now wherever you have a Chromecast connected, Multi-room support allows for synchronous music across your entire household.
Google products are constantly evolving with new features and helps you get more value from your product. If you haven’t checked out the Chromecast Audio, I highly recommend it.
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Being that TIDAL refers to its pre-made music sets as Playlists, it kind of interferes with the traditional definition of a “Playlist” – a user-built music compilation. Fortunately in TIDAL, you can throw in both kinds into that Playlists area under My Music. However, because there is a discrepancy between them, there is a toggle to allow the user to filter what’s displayed (All, Own, or Favorites).
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