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ZUK Mobile will be no more, Lenovo plans to absorb it

Alexandra Arici
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Earlier this year, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing admitted in an interview that turning Motorola around proved to be a harder task than initially predicted. Despite the Moto brand remaining fairy popular with consumers, two years after the acquisition, Lenovo had was forced to axe more than 2,000 jobs in the US and fell to eight place in the global smartphone market.

Lenovo already announced that its strategy for the future includes rebranding all its upcoming phones under the Motorola brand, but now it seems ZUK will also be part of this joint endeavor. According to well-known analyst Pan Jiutang, Lenovo plans to shut down the ZUK Mobile in the near future – which is unexpected given the brand’s independent status.

ZUK Mobile is the most recent addition to the Lenovo Group, but as it appears at this point its existence will be cut short after only 23 months of life. ZUK won’t completely cease to exist – right now it seems the merger’s sole survivor will be the company’s ZUI custom interface which according to a now-deleted post by Lenovo’s VP Alex Chen Yu will make an appearance on future Moto products, but probably only in China.

ZUK Z2

Analyst Pan Jiutang calls ZUK Mobile a successful brand that managed to attract a lot of fans during its brief time as a phone manufacturer. The company introduced a total of five devices including the Z1, Z2, Z2 Pro, Z2 Rio Edition and ZUK Edge, which were fairly well received in Lenovo’s home country. Now it seems ZUK will be absorbed into Lenovo.

In the meanwhile, Motorola and Lenovo are preparing an entire slew of new Moto smartphones which are expected to arrive in the following months including the Moto C/Moto C Plus, Moto E4/Moto E4 Plus, Moto X (2017) and Moto Z2 and related devices.

Samsung’s In-Traffic Reply app aims to combat distracted driving

Alexandra Arici
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Yesterday, Google rolled out a new feature in Maps to help users where they parked their car. Now Samsung is also targeting drivers with a new application called In-Traffic Reply – but for a totally different reason.

In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in car accidents caused by drivers who used their smartphones while in-traffic. In order to prevent these kinds of incidents, the Korean tech giant announced the new “In-Traffic Reply” initiative.

Using the phone’s sensors, the app gets automatically activated when it detects the user is driving or riding. In the eventuality of a call or message, the app will send the person on the other end an automated response like “I’m driving, so I cannot answer at the moment”. Users can customize the default message to say anything they want. The app works with a selection of popular messaging apps including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, not just SMS and calls.

No more texting and driving with Samsung’s new app

In-Traffic Reply is developed by Samsung Netherlands and is currently still in beta. We can expect the app to become available for download from the Google Play Store sometime in mid-May.

In recent years, smartphones have been increasingly blamed for the rising of traffic deaths and injuries. Insurance companies say they can’t raise premiums fast enough to keep up with the cost of replacing sheet metal and paying those killed and injured in accidents caused by distracted drivers.  Will Samsung’s new app be able to put a stop to this worrisome rising trend?

NuAns NEO Reloaded is an Android 7.1 Nougat smartphone that can change colors

Alexandra Arici
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Had enough of black, gray or white smartphones? Want your next handset to a bit more unique while coloring is concerned? Well then you might want to take a look at this Indiegogo page.

Japanese company Trinity has set up a crowdfunding campaign for their NuAns NEO Reloaded smartphone which comes with removable back plates. The idea is to allow customers to mix and match the tops and bottoms of the phone and create the combination truly suited to their taste.

You might remember the same company attempted to crowdfund its NuAns NEO design last year. The product ran Windows 10 out of the box, but the campaign eventually failed to reach its goal. Now Trinity is back with a new proposal – the NuAns NEO Reloaded with Android 7.1.1 Nougat on top. Will the new product have a better chance at succeeding?

From the start we can tell you the NuAns NEO Reloaded’s specs aren’t mind-blowing, but more characteristic of a middle-range device. However, Trinity bets on users’ fondness for aesthetic customization. The company hopes to gather $370,000 in funds in order to start producing the handset, which is quite an ambitious goal if you ask us.

The NuAns NEO Reloaded comes packing a 5.2-inch display with fullHD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) and a Snapdragon 625 processor under the hood. Trinity also offers 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage (with a microSD card slot that supports up to 1TB of additional storage).

The product also carries a 13-megapixel main camera and front-facing 8-megapixel selfie shooter. It’s completed by a fingerprint scanner located on the front and a nice 3,450 mAh battery. We should also note the NuAns NEO Reloaded is dust-proof and water-resistant up to IP54 standard. The specs remind us of the ZTE Blade V8 Pro sans the dual-camera setup and with a more expensive price-tag attached to it.

The NuAns NEO Reloaded sells for $355 without any of the custom back plates. Add $5 more and you can get the phone with a set of back plate or one of its Flip cases. Assuming Infinity’s campaign reaches its goal, the phone should start shipping out to backers in September 2017. What do you think of the NuAns NEO Reloaded?

Grab the LG K3 2017 for only $20 from US Cellular

Alexandra Arici
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Looking for a new smartphone, but you can only afford to spend the bare minimum on it? US Cellular might just have exactly what you need. Only a few days ago we told you that the ZTE Blade Max 3 landed on the virtual shelves of the carrier for $199 outright, but that’s too much for your budget, you should look towards the new LG K3 2017 instead.

Even if the phone normally costs $90, US Cellular is offering it with an online discount so customers can grab it for the super affordable price tag of $19.99. In order to use the phone, customers will have to jump onboard of a Simple Connect plan, which starts at $35/month. But given that the phone is available on pre-pay, no long term contracts will be involved with its purchase.

When it comes to specs you shouldn’t be expecting anything too mind-blowing. The LG K3 2017 arrives with a 4.5-inch display with 480 x 854 resolution and a Snapdragon 210 processor tucked under the hood. LG also bundles 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a 5-megapixel/2-megapixel camera combo.

There’s also LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS and a 2,100 mAh battery onboard. The phone runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and will probably never get Nougat.

As you can see, the LG K3 2017 is nothing to write home about. Even so, it’s a device capable of satisfying you basic technology needs and given that it costs only 20 bucks, we expect it to be quite successful.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 home button moves around to prevent burn-in

Dan Bartram
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Samsung decided to ditch the physical home button on the Galaxy S8 in favor of a virtual one, but does that introduce burn-in issues?

Pixels that are always lit up in the same place naturally results in the image being retained and eventually burnt into the OLED display. However, it seems the Samsung thought of this already as it turns out the virtual home button actually moves around slightly.

Don’t Miss: Samsung rolling out software update to fix Galaxy S8 reddish hue issues

The team over at Galaxy Club used tape to surround the image to demonstrate that the virtual home button icon on Galaxy S8 devices actually moves around very slightly.

As you can see from the above image, the home button ever so slightly shifts as to change the pixels that are lit up and therefore avoid any burn-in problems.

So rest assured that using the always on display virtual home button won’t ruin your brand new Galaxy S8.

Linux Launcher brings CLI to your Android Smartphone

Dan Bartram
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Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) aren’t for everyone and if you fall into this category then you might like the new Linux Launcher to bring CLI to your device.

Linux Launcher is an unusual app that will bring a command line interface to your device for those who like that kind of thing, or if you just want people to stop messing around with your phone.

Don’t Miss: Some users experiencing a broken Bixby button on the Galaxy S8

Most Android users are used to seeing a row of icons and widgets on the homescreen but Linux Launcher will replace this with a command line interface just like you’d find in an Operating System like Linux.

It supports the Android commands as well as a number of shortcuts that can be customized to perform quick actions.

Here are some of the commands that work with the launcher:

  • uninstall [app]
  • sms [contact] [text]
  • call [contact]
  • calc [expression]
  • search [google, playstore, youtube, files]
  • wifi
  • flash
  • share [file]
  • mv / cp [file] [dest]

Linux Launcher might not be for everyone and you might just want to use it to mess with your friends, but it’s worth checking out. You can grab Linux Launcher here.

iFrogz Summit Wireless earphones review

AndroidGuys
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The Summit Wireless are an affordable pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds that promise 10 hours of battery life and a rugged, sweat-resistant design. Priced approximately $35, they’re positioned as the sort of headphones you’d want for running or working out.

The Summit Wireless feature three different sizes of ear tips as well as two sizes of wing adjustment pieces. In other words, you’ve got a wide variety of fits to ensure the earbuds sit comfortably in the ear and don’t fall out when moving about.

The iFrogz peg the headphones with “up to 10 hours battery life” but that is based on five hours of playback at average levels and five hours of standby time. We found that we could get to the five hours of play with no real problems, but they would not have another five hours of standby. After a few times, we found them dying after five hours of listening and around 2-3 hours of standby.

There’s something a little wonky about the standby in general; ours seemed to lose a fair amount of charge if we let them sit for a few days. After a week of not using them, instead of getting the normal amount of playback, we ended up with roughly half of that.

The iFrogz earphones were built well and seem to hold up to moderate wear and tear. Toss them in a bag, throw them on the counter, or stuff them in your pocket; you can be more that a little bit rough with them. The same goes for sweat and perspiration. The Summit Wireless showed no signs of breaking down and performance never suffered.

The battery is found away from the earbuds and is also where you’ll find the controls for taking calls and managing music. Buttons are somewhat limited, but you do have the ability to adjust volume as well as pause and resume playback.

There’s also a clip on the back of the battery and control unit. This lets you fasten the earphones to your shirt sleeve or collar. Do note that there’s not a ton of slack here. It doesn’t allow for much range so don’t put it too far from your ears. On the other hand, it never dangles or gets in your way when bending over or running at a decent stride.

Given the Summit Wireless’s $35 price tag, we didn’t expect too much for sound quality. The 8mm drivers put out an acceptable volume level, but the overall experience left much to be desired.

You won’t find too much range so don’t pick these up if you plan on really diving into your music. But, if you’re running or working out, you likely aren’t paying close attention to the sound. Pretty much everything we tried music-wise ended up sounding very average. The highs and treble didn’t differentiate itself from the bass and low end. It’s almost as if the audio was smooshed together.

If you’re in the market for headphones that sound great, you’ll spend at least twice what these cost. What you’re getting here is convenience, portability, and resistance to sweat.

The iFrogz Summit Wireless are affordable and well built; however, they’re definitely not music-first. If you’re generally rough on your earphones, you’ll like that these can withstand moderate abuse. Moreover, the Earbud Tips for Life limited lifetime warranty gives you free replacements of earbud tips should they get worn or damaged.

Pick up a pair of the Summit Wireless earphones for about $35 from iFrogz; several online retailers offer them for about the same price, if not a few bucks cheaper. Amazon was selling them for $31.99 at the time of publication of this review.

Carezone will help keep your medical info on-track (review)

AndroidGuys
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0

If you are a person who has multiple medications and/or supplements to deal with on a regular basis, you know that managing doses, refills, and prescription appointment cycles can be a real hassle. And sometimes you can get into a rut where you consistently miss on these, causing potentially real effects on your body.

Enter CareZone, a free app downloadable on the Google Play Store (link here). CareZone is a utility app designed to help you organize your medical life; everything from medication dosing, to appointments, to emergency contacts, and important documents.

The appeal of CareZone is the all-inclusiveness of the app. This isn’t just a medication reminder tool. CareZone has the ability to tie together all aspects of you medical life. Let’s take a quick tour to see everything it can do!

Setup

Now when I say “has the ability”, please read that there is some front-loaded effort required by you the user to get the app truly to the point where it can be of the most use.
The first step is simple enough: download the free app from the Play Store. Then the small amount of work begins. CareZone will ask you to fill out several pages of information; as stated earlier, the more info you put in the more useful the app becomes.

You are given the opportunity to fill out several areas of you medical life, including current medications and supplements (you can also scan photos of the bottles into the app), physician’s contact info, emergency contact info, and health documents (insurance card, driver’s license). You can also add your appointments into the built-in calendar, vitals metrics (such as blood glucose and blood pressure), and to-do lists.

Once you have all this info input, you can then also share you info with family members and close friends, so they can help as much as possible in the event you aren’t able to access it for any reason.

The medication scanning tool is particularly useful, as it asks that you take 4 consecutive photos of each medication vessel (1 per side, presumably). This ensures you have all the information needed by a doctor or pharmacist. I can see someone going to the Pharmacy, only to realize they didn’t have all the needed information to get their question answered. This could help avoid those embarrassing and time-consuming scenarios.

App Use

Using the app itself is very simple. Actually, one of the biggest draws I see to it is that in addition to tracking the medical info on yourself, you can also input and track the medical information of another person, presumably a family member or friend who may have difficulty in maintaining this themselves. This allows a several advantages:

  1. All info is in one place; no more post-it notes strewn everywhere as new info is gleaned.
  2. Their schedule can be in one place and maintained, but without cluttering up your personal or base schedule already on your phone/tablet.
  3. The information is completely shareable with your loved one, so they don’t have to feel like they’ve lost control.

There is one area where the app can be a bit intrusive, and that is in the way of ads for you to use their medication ordering and delivery service. While it may be a darn good service, it does seem like you trip over these integral adds (not pop-ups or splash pages) more often than you’d like, if you’re not interested in this service.

Conclusion

That said, CareZone is a clean, well-designed application, that allows individuals and/or their loved ones to curate an essential medical file for use when dealing with care professionals or emergency staff. It will take a nominal amount of upkeep, but the benefits make CareZone a recommended app for those who can benefit from its mission.

For more information, visit the CareZone website.

Google Maps now shows you where you parked your car

Alexandra Arici
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Remember that Seinfeld episode when Jerry and his crew get lost in a shopping mall’s parking lot trying to find where they left their car? Most of us have been in the situation of not remembering where we parked, but now Google comes to our aid.

The search giant is rolling a new feature in Google Maps which will help drivers identify the location of their car. The new option is available for both Android and iOS users, but can be access in different ways.

In Android, car owners need to tap the blue dot that shows their location on the map and then tap on the “Save your parking”. Once the saving is successful, a label will appear on the map showing the location of their vehicle.

Taping on the label opens up a parking card that can be populated with more info about the parking spot. Back to our Seinfeld example, you can add info like “level 3, spot 35” if you parked in a shopping mall’s multi-floor parking lot. What’s more drivers can add a reminder alert or even an image of the parking spot.

To make it even more simple, if you connect to your car via USB audio or Bluetooth, the parking spot will automatically be added to the map when the phone is disconnected and the user exits the vehicle.

The feature is currently available for use, provided you have updated Google Maps to the latest version.

 

What’s the difference: ZTE Blade Max 3 vs ZTE Blade V8 Pro

Alexandra Arici
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0

Dual cameras on smartphones are becoming the standard this year, not only in flagships like the LG G6 but also in middle-range devices. Back at CES 2017, ZTE unveiled the Blade V8 Pro – a handset destined for customers who wanted a dual camera phone on the cheap.

Well yesterday, ZTE unveiled another dual-camera phone, the Blade Max 3 which will be sold by US Cellular in the country. Apart from the similarities in the photography department, the two phones bear a sameness in the spec department as well. So in what follows, we’ll discover the differences between the two, in an attempt to help you differentiate between the two models.

Display

6-inch with fullHD resolution vs 5.5-inch fullHD resolution

367ppi vs 401ppi

Customers looking for a phablet-sized phone will probably prefer the 6-inch display of the new ZTE Blade Max 3. By contrast, the ZTE Blade V8 Pro has a smaller – albeit big enough by most standards – 5.5-inch screen. Both models enjoy fullHD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels).

Note that the ZTE Blade Max 3 has three navigation on-screen buttons, while the ZTE Blade V8 Pro features a physical home button, which also doubles as a fingerprint scanner. The Blade Max 3’s fingerprint sensor is located on the back.

Computing power

Snapdragon 625 vs Snapdragon 625

!? RAM vs 3GB of RAM

16GB vs 32GB of internal storage

When it comes to processing power, both phones take advantage of the Snapdragon 625 SoC which is an octa-core affair made up of eight Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.0GHz and Adreno 506 GPU.

US Cellular does not specify how much RAM is onboard of the new ZTE Blade Max 3, but we suspect the phone bundles at least 2GB. The ZTE Blade V8 Pro brings forth 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, while the phablet only takes advantage of 16GB out of the box.

Luckily, the Blade Max 3 has a microSD card slot which allows for memory expansion up to 128GB. But so does the ZTE Blade V8 Pro – actually the phone uses a SIM 2 slot which houses microSD card slot which allows for memory increase up to 256GB.

Cameras

Dual 13MP+13MP vs 13MP+13MP

5MP vs 8MP

The dual camera setup on both phones appears to be similar. The ZTE Blade Max 3’s main camera consists of a 13-megapixel sensor with PDAF (phase detection autofocus) plus a 13-megapixel mono sensor. As for the ZTE Blade V8 Pro, it offers a main camera pretty much along the same lines.

As for selfies, the ZTE Blade V8 Pro boasts an improved 8-megapixel self-portrait snapper, while the Blade Max 3 only has 5-megapixel one.

Software

Android 6.0 Marshmallow vs Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Despite launching only a few days ago, the ZTE Blade Max 3 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, just like the ZTE Blade V8 Pro which was announced five months ago. We don’t know whether either models will get Android 7.0 Nougat further down the line, but we certainly hope this will be the case. Last month, the ZTE Blade V8 Pro received its first software update, but Android 7.0 Nougat wasn’t included. Disappointing!

Battery

4,000 mAh vs 3,140 mAh battery

Given that the ZTE Blade Max 3 has a larger 6-inch display, it’s natural the phone boasts a larger 4,000 mAh battery (of the non-removable sort), while the ZTE Blade V8 Pro takes advantage of only a 3,140 mAh battery.

Value

$199 vs $229

The new ZTE Blade Max 3 is available from US Cellular for $199 a pop. Customers can also grab it for $12.5/month for the next 24 months. We should also note that the phone comes with a DAC (digital-to-analog convertor) for high quality audio – something with audiophiles will certainly appreciate.

The ZTE Blade V8 Pro on the other hand costs $229. At this point it seems the Blade V8 Pro offers more RAM and standard storage option than the Blade Max 3, which justifies the price increase.

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