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This battery case for the Samsung Galaxy S8 also adds a 360-degree camera

Alexandra Arici
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These days, smartphone cases often incorporate additional features and capabilities in a bid to make them more attractive to buyers.

It’s the case of the new ION360 U which is a special accessory designed the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. On top of providing protection for the case, the case also attaches a 360-degree camera to the phone.

Using a 360-degree camera is the way to go if you want to take your videography game to the next level. It allows you to capture your entire surroundings rather than just a part of it and offers viewers a rich, immersive experience.

The camera on board the ION360 U includes two 7.4MP cameras with 200-degree views, 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) recording at 30fps, and offers live streaming support for Facebook and YouTube. Content is captured using the accompanying ION360 U app for Android.

But wait that’s not all, the ION360 U also doubles as a battery case as it bundles a 1,260 mAh additional power source which can be used to charge your Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ on the go, as well as power the camera.

The only drawback here is that the case will make your sleek Galaxy S8 pretty bulky. But if you don’t have a problem with that, you can head on the official ION360 website and place an order for one of these cases for $299 a pop.

Lenovo’s Moto G lineup in 2018 said to include a Moto G6 Play

Alexandra Arici
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For those who missed seeing a Moto G5 Play version this year, we have some good news. According to reliable leakster, Evan Blass (known as @evleaks) Lenovo will be offering a Moto G6 Play model next year, alongside the standard Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus.

Generally, the Moto G Play versions usually sit at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of specs. Two years ago we had the Moto G4 Play which lacked the marquee features of the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus like water-repellant coating or fingerprint scanner.

Even so, in our review of the phone, we found it to a surprisingly good phone offering “speedy performance that almost matches flagship devices, incredible day-and-a-half to two-day battery life, and a solid build.”

The 2016 Moto G4 Play

The Moto G4 Play had a substantial fanbase, so it’s no wonder that a lot of folks want to see the G Play moniker revived. This year Motorola and Lenovo launched the Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus – two upper middle-rangers with great specs. But a Moto G5 Play never came. A few months later the Moto G5S and Moto G5S Plus made a debut into the word, but the Play version remained absent from the show.

Well, fortunately it now seems a Moto G6 Play is indeed in the cards for next year. What do you think? Are you excited about the prospect of a new ultra-cheap Moto G phone?

Best Android zombie games to get you in the mood for Halloween

Alexandra Arici
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Are you super excited about the new season of AMC’s The Walking Dead which is scheduled to begin on October 22? Well, while you wait on that, you might want to quench your thirst for the apocalypse with a few cool exciting zombie games you can play on your Android smartphone.

In what follows you’ll find some of the best zombie titles you can install on your handset right now. Halloween is around the corner as well, so all the more reason to try out one of these apps to get into the holiday spirit.

Into the Dead

We’re going to start with this one because it truly captures the dark essence of a plague-infested world that has succumbed into chaos. Anyone who’s ever seen “The Road” will recognize that acute feeling of hopelessness as you try and navigate through dark landscapes trying to survive for another day.

Combined with a grim soundtrack, Into the Dead brings the bleak, despondent experience of the zombie-infested world to your Android device.

Last day on Earth: Survival

A relatively dark and atmospheric game in which you roam the deserted earth with your only target being to survive.

To do you’ll be able to join clans with other survivors, but remember you can only trust yourself if you want to live another day in this God-forsaken world.

Dead Trigger 2: Zombie Shooter

An interactive first shooter zombie killing game, which lets players choose from a wide arsenal of combat weapons. The game is also geographically quite nice, on top of being extremely bloody and gory.

It’s more action-focused that Into the Dead and the sentiment of unease characteristic of true dread is absent from this title, but if you’re more into action that soaking in the ambiance, this game might be all you’re looking for.

Zombie Anarchy: Survival Game

An action-strategy survival game which has you finding and recruiting the last humans left on earth. Gamers are also tasked to defend the camp, wipe out the zombie-infested camps and eventually overcome the apocalypse. Do you think you have what it takes to lead the post-zombie revolution?

Day R Survival

This game has you survive in a world that has been destroyed by nuclear war and is now amass in radiation. Your goal is to go across the entire USSR moving from town to town in an attempt to save your family from nuclear war. But radiation, hunger, and disease are everywhere. Not to mention you will have to fight zombies along the way.

Stupid Zombies 2

Moving on into the territory of more light zombie games here’s Stupid Zombies 2 – a game in which you use a shotgun to take out as many zombies as possible with the least amounts of bullets as you go through the levels. You can play as the crazed green eyed macho man or tank top wearing lady, and with 600 levels to play, you’ll soon find yourself immersed in this cartoonish world where zombies roam free.

Plants vs Zombies 2

Plants vs Zombies 2 is a hilarious, action-fueled shooter, where zombie leader Dr. Zomboss has strengthened his horde and rebuild suburbia as a zombie utopia. But hope remains, as plants decide to retaliate against the malevolence of Dr. Zomboss and claim back their world. You can play both as zombies or as plants.

Buried Town

Nostalgic about interactive fiction? You know, those types of games which allowed players to use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. While these games were quite popular in the 80s and 90s, the good news is that they haven’t gone extinct in the modern era.

Buried Town is a unique hybrid of zombie survival games and text adventure game where you, as the player and your trusty dog companion have to survive until the very last day on the battleground.

Flat Zombies

In this basic zombie game, gamers are tasked to clean up buildings infested by crowds of zombies. Just touch the screen to aim and shoot. Graphics are pretty rudimentary with this title, but you’ll be able to try different weapons and kill different types of zombies as you advance through the levels.

Special mention:

The Walking Dead: First Chapter

Of course, you can play the Android game which was inspired by the popular show. You are Lee Everett, a convicted criminal who is given a second chance when the world falls into chaos as the zombie outbreaks threaten to eradicate the human species.

FYI: Google offers 25 media volume controls on the Pixel 2

Alexandra Arici
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If you use your phone to listen to music on a daily basis, you probably know that Android has only 15 steps for media volume control. Which is often not enough to tailor the perfect listening experience for some users.

Well, Google has taken a small step to change that. As revealed by the xda-developers, the Mountain View-based company has introduced media volume controls with 25 steps in stock Android on the Pixel 2.

Surely, there’s no shortage of apps which offer users additional steps for controlling various volumes on their devices, but none of them are integrated with the stock volume slider. Hence, this is a welcome improvement.

This year the Pixel 2 also brings front-facing speakers, another welcome addition in terms of audio experience. However, Google ditched the 3.5 mm headphone jack, a decision which might put a lot of customers off from buying the device. Fortunately, there are many alternatives out there for audiophiles.

For example, people who crave even more control over their audio experience can consider the LG V30 which brings 75 steps of volume control or the OnePlus 5 which has 30.

But if your heart is still set out on the Pixel 2, then you should know the handset is expected to start shipping towards the end of the week, while its larger brother, the Pixel 2 XL will hit the market next month.

Survival Arena: Tower defense in bite-sized servings (Review)

Gerson Noboa
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Back in 2012 when I played Kingdom Rush for the first time on my iPad, I really got into tower defense games. I really liked the general idea behind them, but I always had to make sure that I had enough time for a session, since I didn’t like leaving a session midway.

Since then, a lot of games have come and revolutionized the way we play on mobile devices, focusing primarily on making levels short enough so that we could always enjoy them on the go without worrying about times. This is the main idea behind Survival Arena: a tower defense that doesn’t ask for half an hour of your life, but instead offers bite-sized levels that can be played at any moment.

Developer: Game Insight
Price: Free

Setup

Being a complicated game, it’s no surprise that the game features a very lengthy tutorial. From the moment you start it, the game guides you into a short, easy battlefield where you can test out the controls and get to know the mechanics of the game. From turrets to skyshards to chests, the game covers basically everything there is to know about your battles.

However, when the tutorial ends and you are dropped into the game’s main interface, you might be overwhelmed. There’s SO much stuff going on that it’s a bit daunting at first. As you get used to it, navigation becomes easier, but the cluttered interface is definitely one of the low points of the game.

Overview

I don’t know about you, but when I think about tower defense, I picture waves of enemies going through paths while I’m frenetically trying to stop them from getting to my base by scattering turrets, upgrades, and special attacks throughout the battlefield. These can be a bit long as waves get more complicated but, at the same time, I get more resources and thus have a powerful arsenal under my control.

Survival Arena is similar in the sense that you still have to defend your base, called an extractor. However, games are not long at all. You will find yourself repeating the levels as you complete tasks, which in turn give you chests that yield upgrades and skyshards.

Also, the game focuses heavily on high scores, counted by the amount of enemies you kill in each run. It even compares your scores to players all over the world. Since levels don’t have a clear ending, then the scores reflect who deployed the best strategies in order to survive as much as they could.

In order to destroy said enemies, the game gives you different turrets. These include cannons, ice towers, mortars, and similar. In a lot of tower defense games, these turrets can be upgraded in the battlefield so that they are useful on later waves. However, Survival Arena also lets you upgrade your arsenal between battles.

This is a smart move since battles are short, so you might not play for enough time to get the necessary resources to upgrade. To upgrade them, you need to get cards specific to every weapon in the game, and then spend skyshards to complete the transaction.

To add a multiplayer aspect to the game, Survival Arena also includes a clan mode. Here players from all over the world can join and obtain valor together to rank higher on the leaderboards and earn loot in the process. What is valor, you say? It’s something like a reputation level, which you can only earn by playing duels against other players.

These duels are online battles against other players in which you have to defend your base, but you also need to attack your rival in order to win. These play exactly the same as normal duels, but, apart from worrying about enemies, you also have to think about your own units in order to succeed.

General Impressions

For the most part, the game manages to pull off effectively the short tower defense mechanic. Battles are very fast-paced since you know that sooner or later, your base will fall, so you need to move very quickly to delay is as much as you can.

However, if you think that this game is like other freemium games, in which you can do stuff without paying (you just have to wait a long time to do so), you are going to have a bad time. Survival Arena does a really, really good job in halting your free progress in almost every possible way.

Actions such as the opening time of chests, the high amount of cards needed to upgrade armor, and tickets needed for some events are just a few examples of how the game stops your progress on purpose. All of these events have one thing in common: they can be eliminated by giving up your skyshards. And, of course, there’s a very nice and flashy shop to buy skyshards in exchange for your beautiful dollars.

Thus, even though you can download Survival Arena for free, and there are some other shortcuts (like watching ads for opening chests quicker), you cannot get that far without opening up your wallet. If you are comfortable with that, though, then you are in for a treat.

Graphics and Sound

As previously said, the interface has a lot going on at the same time, which makes it confusing and intimidating at first. Once you figure it out, things become a bit easier, but it is customary for Survival Arena to show you a lot at the same time, so you have to get used to it in order to enjoy it.

For the rest of the game, Survival Arena uses a 3D, cartoonish, colorful look for their sprites, very similar to what Supercell did with Clash of Clans, and, to a lesser extent, to what Ironhide made with Kingdom Rush. It works really well for this kind of game, and it doesn’t tax the device as much as other more graphically-intensive games.

Regarding sound, the developer has made sure that almost every action has a unique sound effect accompanying it, which makes the game feel very polished. Also, there’s background music at all times, with a very dramatic tone to it. You know, exactly the kind of music that you would expect from a game that deals with battles and war.

Conclusion

Survival Arena combines tower defense with a Clash of Clans-like progression to create a game that can be enjoyed in short bursts. Since microtransactions are a big part of the game, several of the main actions that you can do in this game rely on skyshards, which can be bought for real money. However, you start with a healthy amount of them, which should be enough to decide if you want to invest yourself in the Survival Arena world. If you do, the frantic gameplay and impressive amount of options and modes will keep you entertained for a long time.

Download and install Survival Arena from the Google Play Store.

ARCHOS really wants you to consider its Samsung Galaxy S8 alternative

Alexandra Arici
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French manufacturer ARCHOS has taken the wraps off a new flagship phone called the Diamond Omega which is another proof that phones with all screen fronts have gone mainstream.

The phone complies with modern smartphone design trends since it boasts really slim bezels all around and a 17:9 aspect ratio. On top of that, the device is among the few products available on the market to boast a dual camera setup on the front.

The ARCHOS Diamond Omega is a surprisingly powerful phone which includes a Snapdragon 835 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage (but no microSD card slot available). The product also boasts a 5.73-inch display with 2160 x 1080 resolution.

Moving on to photography, the primary camera is comprised of two 23-megapixel (with f/2.0 lens and 2x zoom) + 12-megapixel sensors (f/1.8). And like we mentioned above, the selfie camera is also of dual variety and pairs two 5-megapixel sensors.

A 3,100 mAh battery is in charge of keeping the lights on. There’s also a fingerprint scanner located on the back in the center. The phone runs Android 7.1 Nougat with Nubia 5.0 skin on top.

ARCHOS’ latest flagship isn’t available for purchase yet, but it’s expected to arrive with a $589 price tag in Black or Blue. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be available outside Europe.

Sprint now offers a BOGO deal on the LG V30+

Alexandra Arici
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A few days ago T-Mobile announced it was hosting a promotion on the newly released LG V30. Customers who were willing to grab two LG V30s were given a $500 discount on this double purchase.

Now, Sprint – the only major carrier offering the LG V30+ – also announced a BOGO deal on the 128GB smartphone.

Unlike T-Mobile, Sprint is offering a free LG V30+ when you buy a V30+ smartphone on a qualified plan provided you are a customer in good standing. You’ll also have to activate two new lines of service or upgrade a current one and add a new line. Within two billing cycles, the carrier will start reimbursing the $38 monthly payments.

It seems that this deal also includes the free Daydream View VR headset, so the two phones will ship with Google’s latest virtual reality accessory. The BOGO promotion is available for a limited period of time, while supplies last.

The LG V30+ will cost you a hefty $912 at Sprint, so the extra free LG V30+ makes this deal especially appealing. We should remind you that the only difference between the LG V30 and its plus version is that the former comes with 128GB of storage on board rather than just 64GB.

OnePlus 5 too expensive? Check out this $180 BLU lookalike

Alexandra Arici
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Like the OnePlus 5, but you’re not really sure you want to spend $479+ on the device? Even if you would, the OnePlus 5 is out of stock on the company’s official website in the United States, which means the OnePlus 5T is probably incoming in a few weeks and it’s probably going to be a bit more expensive.

Well, fortunately, there’s a more affordable alternative you could try. Budget US smartphone manufacturer BLU has unveiled a OnePlus 5 lookalike called the S1. However, there’s one major aspect differentiating the BLU S1 and the OnePlus 5 – which in turn, took its design cues from the iPhone 7 Plus – the former does not have a dual camera setup, but relies on a primary single lens for photography.

Other than that, the two devices look very similar on the outside. How about on the inside? Well, the BLU S1 is a low-end smartphone which launches with a 5.2-inch display with 1280 x 720 resolution and an octa-core MediaTek 6750 processor breathing life from under the hood, aided by 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.

The handset takes advantage of a 13-megapixel main snapper, as well as a 5-megapixel selfie shooter living in front. The BLU S1 also has a fingerprint scanner embedded into the home button and runs Android 7.0 Nougat out the box. It relies on a decent 2,800 mAh battery, so it should be able to last you sufficiently.

The BLU S1 is currently available for purchase through Amazon in its unlocked form for only $179.99. Note that the model is compatible with most major carriers in the US including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. However, Verizon users are out of luck with this one.

Ulefone announces the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition with 6GB RAM and 128GB base storage

AndroidGuys
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Ulefone announced the Ulefone Armor 2 in June, Ulefone T1 in July, and the all-screen Ulefone MIX on October 5th, and some would think that two smartphone announcements in the summertime is sufficient for the remainder of the year.

Well, in the Android smartphone market, one can never rest for a few months, as competitors are churning out newer and better devices all the time. Ulefone wants to take advantage of every opportunity, which explains its rationale behind announcing the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition.

The Ulefone T1 Premium Edition features a 5.5-inch, Full HD (1,920 x 1,080p) display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 for tough glass protection, MediaTek’s octa-core Helio P25 processor, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage with a microSD card slot for an additional 256GB of storage.

An 8MP (f/2.0) front camera that can be interpolated to 13MP, 16MP+5MP (f/2.0) dual rear camera combo, USB Type-C charging, 3.5mm headphone jack, dual nano-SIM slots, and a 3,680mAh battery with Android 7.0 Nougat pre-installed round out the specs. The rear camera contains a Samsung S5K3P3 camera sensor, the same rear camera sensor found in the Vernee Apollo Lite.

With both the Ulefone T1 and the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition available, some desire to know the differences between both models. Both models have 5.5-inch, 1080p displays, Corning Gorilla Glass 3, the octa-core MediaTek Helio P25 processor, 6GB of RAM (the Ulefone Armor 2 and Ulefone T1 also have matching RAM capacity), the same single front camera/dual rear camera combo, USB Type-C charging, front-mounted fingerprint sensor (Touch ID).

Both phones also have the headphone jack, 3,680mAh battery, and Android Nougat pre-installed. An AR/VR-compatible gyroscope is included so that you’ll be able to engage augmented reality and virtual reality (both are growing trends in the mobile space). Ulefone has promised Google Assistant integration for the Ulefone T1; we imagine the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition will get AI integration, too.

There are two differences between the T1 and the T1 Premium Edition. First, the Ulefone T1 offers only 64GB of base storage while the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition offers 128GB of base storage (double the storage in the T1 Premium Edition).

Next, whereas the Ulefone T1 comes in both solid Black and Red colors, the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition features a Red-and-Blue hybrid color design, akin to the Panda (Black/White) color design of the Google Pixel 2. A golden line between the two colors creates something of a regal look; Red and Blue are already royalty colors, and the golden line gives off a majestic aesthetic. Add in the dual rear cameras, 6GB of RAM, and large 3,680mAh battery, and the Ulefone T1 Premium Edition has specs that live up to its name.

The Ulefone T1 Premium Edition is expected to retail at $300 and pre-orders are expected to begin soon. The Ulefone T1 is currently selling for $199.99.

Take a look at the video below, then head over to Ulefone’s website for more details.

Android 8.0 Oreo Beta now available for OnePlus 3/3T

Dan Bartram
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If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on the latest version of Android then you’re in luck. OnePlus has just issued Android 8.0 into its Open Beta program for users to test before official rollout later this year.

The latest version of Android 8.0 Oreo has been issued for the OnePlus 3 and 3T allowing users to grab the version for their device as part of the Beta program OnePlus run. The Open Beta program allows OnePlus to release the latest software in a controlled manner to test it on a wide audience before releasing it officially.

If you choose to download the latest version for your device, there are a few known issues with the build:

  • Fingerprint actions may be slower than you are used to.
  • Shortcut to access Google Photos is unavailable
  • Some stability issues with NFC and Bluetooth
  • Performance and compatibility of 3rd party apps will continue to be optimized

In addition to the update, OnePlus has also updated the device to the September 2017 security patch.

If you’re not in the Open Beta program then you can follow these instructions to enroll. If you’re already enrolled then you should see a notification shortly to download Android Oreo.

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