All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

Android apps get new global age-rating system on Google Play store

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/17/android-apps-age-rating-system-google-play

John.

 

I'm starting to get tired of all the bloat on my S4. anyone running a custom rom? what do you suggest?

 

Not sure how it is on the S4, but CyanogenMod has always been great on my GS3. Only complaint is that stock Android doesn't provide as powerful of camera tools as the stock Samsung camera app.

 

Just hope it isn't on Verizon and you haven't updated lately. My SG3 got a Verizon update onto it and it made it so I couldn't do CM Roms anymore. It was a ton of work just getting it so I could do a de-bloated touch-wiz stockish Rom on dual boot.

/hate-verizon

 

Ouch. I've been on CM for about a year and a half, so no more carrier updates. I'm on AT&T though.

 

That sucks, I really like the stock camera app.
Looking at Cyanogenmod's website, all they have for the S4 are snapshots, and nightly - no "stable" listed. I'm not sure which one I would even pick to install.

 

The HTC One M9 got panned in Android Police's review. And rightly so, it would seem... camera performance with HTC's software and the new Toshiba 20MP sensor looks to be absolutely dreadful for a 2015 flagship.

CyanogenMod changed the way they do versions; they no longer release "stable" builds, as the "M" snapshots have effectively taken their place. As long as you're not running the nightly versions, you're getting a stable build. The latest I see for The GS4 (jflte) is CM 11 M12, which is basically the same version as I have on my GS3 (Kit Kat, not Lollipop).

 

How does everyone feel about the 64-bit Android race so far? Underwhelmed?

With the Exynos 7420 and Snapdragon 810 both using off-the-shelf big.LITTLE designs, there's not a whole lot to be said about differences in CPU optimisations, and Samsung does have the better node. MediaTek's MT6795T is more unorthodox with its true, A53 octa-core design, lending it a somewhat meager victory over the 810 in multi-core benchmarks, while unsurprisingly falling short in single-core applications due to the lack of A57 grunt. The GPU front adds a bit more colour, without making the battle too complex. The Mali T-760 in Samsung's 14nm FinFET champion is more than just a strong contender, as it generally bests Qualcomm's Adreno 430 in tasks that don't rely on absolute compute performance. MediaTek, although not completely irrelevant, is left playing second fiddle with its last generation PowerVR G6200. Painting a bleaker image for performance enthusiasts craving diversity is Samsung's UFS 2.0 NAND, since the Exynos 7420 will be paired with no less due to in-house exclusivity.

But, and a big but, these are interesting times in the smartphone space when it comes to performance, as the ~20% lead the 7420 enjoys may not make it the clear choice for those wanting a powerhouse if they're unable to percieve or make use of what it has to offer over the 810, or even MediaTek's flagship SoC. Android's hardware base is mixed to say the least, without game engines being pushed to hit the best balance between framerate and graphics for one device family. Emulators and heavier video encodes should render at full speed with all these SoCs, and, in theory, they all offer what it takes to run whichever UI a manufacturer feels is a superior interpretation of Android fluidly. Battery life, on the other hand, is something most users are concerned about. At times it would seem like this new breed of SoCs still needs a bit of taming to run efficiently enough for battery life not to take a step backwards. That's why you don't want to see Samsung shave off 250 mAh worth of battery capacity in their latest Galaxy S phone, and you may even be disappointed to see the M9's not grow to more than 2840 mAh compared to its predecessor's 2600 mAh. Sony's, LG's, Xiaomi's, and Asus' last-gen all made it to the 3000+ mAh mark and the relay we'll see this year is unlikely to change that.

Let's give in to vanity and ask instead which is the prettiest. What do you all think?

Spoiler

Samsung Galaxy S6

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

HTC One M9

HTC One M9+

Sony Xperia Z4

Asus ZenFone 2

LG G4

Xiaomi Mi5 (alt. Mi5 Note / Note Pro)

Huawei P8

ZTE Nubia Z9 Mini

Meizu MX5

Oppo Find 9

Sharp Aquos Crystal X
Lenovo Vibe Shot

 

Well, phooey!

I' won't feel so bad passing up the M9 if its camera sucks something awful as well.

 

ArsTechnica tore into the M9 as well...in part because it's actually slower than the M8 thanks to the throttling related to the Snapdragon 810's thermal issues.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/03/htc-one-m9-review-htcs-flagship-feels-like-an-afterthought/

 

Some follow-up articles claim HTC has fixed the thermal issues with a software update. Reading between the lines, software update = throttling to keep the SoC cool.

 

Galaxy S6: Samsung replaced Qualcomm's modem, power management chip with its own

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...nt-chip-with-its-own/articleshow/46792105.cms

John.

 

I'm underwhelmed by everything this year. I got spoiled with front facing speakers by my M7, M8, and now the N6 so moving to a device that doesn't have them isn't going to happen. The practical applications of front facing speakers are insane and they make a huge difference in user experience.

As far as processors go, my snapdragon 805 gets toasty enough - the 810 hitting a shocking 132F in the M9 before the update that throttled the chip from 2GHz down to 1.6GHz is just... Wow. My 805 has room for overclocking without thermal throttle (unless it's charging, particularly when using the turbo charger which puts the battery up to 119F and makes the phone uncomfortable front to back), it is fully unlocked, I have the 64GB model so storage isn't a concern, the camera isn't the worst (although I miss my M8 at times - I found the camera to be very nice if you tweaked the settings and I don't have any use for full crops)...

I lost all trust in Samsung after they pushed the KNOX bootloader to my S3 almost a year after I bought the thing. Sorry but if you want to include some bogus security crap, it needs to come with the device, not be forced later.

The way it's looking is that the N6 will be my phone for the rest of the year. The G Flex 2 and the Z4 both use the 810 so that's a no go. The G4 will have the 808 which offers no benefit over the 805 (in fact the GPU is slower than the 805 and the 805 struggles with some apps in 1440p) and the Note 5 will likely be an Exynos variant with Samsung's garbage radio tech and undoubtedly wouldn't have front facing speakers either.

Serious bummer... I have the original Jump program with T-Mobile so I get two phones in a rolling twelve month period, just have to pay the monthly installments continuously which is fine with me to have the latest and greatest. Looks like the latest isn't going to be the greatest and since I have T-Mobile, I need LTE band 2, 4, and 12 so Chinese phones are out of the question.

 

I'm sorry you have the best damn Android phone on the market and will have to use it for the rest of the year. That totally sucks.

 

The app in the link below is for Samsung Devices with fingerprint sensors, it allows you to lock any apps on your device, eg "setting" so you have to provide a fingerprint before you can gain access, this app was created for the Samung Galaxy Tab S Tablets, but you can try it on other samung devices.

The link below that is to the Xda page where you can find more details

Thanks to the creator "Rick Clephas" for an excellent app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rickclephas.fingersecurity

http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-tab-s/themes-apps/app-fingersecurity-t2821142

John.

 

Well the Note really does eclipse the N6 in most ways, undoubtedly the Note 5 will stomp it. Everyone I know who has a Note won't switch to anything else because of the functionality added with the S-Pen. The Nexus is definitely one of the best devices but its got issues for sure... I miss a lot of notifications because the speakers don't always switch to blast right off the bat and vibrate is hit or miss. And don't get me started in Google messing up the sound options... No silent mode that's easily accessible (there's an option to turn off all notifications of any kind but doing so blocks alarms too and the customizable profile that will let calls from people you know ring still lets new mail notifications go off and 3rd party app notifications - this is basic stuff here, my old Nokia 3390 had sound profiles that worked perfectly)!

And they got rid of Miracast! I used that all the time on my Nexus 7 to shoot my display to my TV.

 

Here we go again.

http://www.xda-developers.com/is-your-galaxy-s6-edge-pre-scratched/

John.

 

Lol. Reminds of the M8 slam on busted camera covers... Its funny the whole time I had my M8 I didn't even scratch the lens on my camera and I put it in my pocket with my keys and it fell, got thrown... Thing was a tank.

I love how a few people have an issue and it blows up like it affects every person when the first person who reported it likely damaged it and blamed Samsung

Oh and I got Miracast back. Apparently Google disabled it but the hardware is there. Added a line to my build.prop and rebooted and bam, my phone is on my 55" TV!

 

I have the M7 and the broken glass/plastic was a problem for a few people when it came out, if that is what you are taking about, but mine has always been fine, touch wood.

I love the lcd display it`s one of the best i have ever seen and i have seen a lot of lcd and oled screens.

John.

 

I was one of the first people to have both the M7 and the M8 and found no issues with either except for the gap in the speaker grills on the M7 everyone complained about. It wasn't even something I would have noticed if people didn't point it out.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/06/samsung-fights-galaxy-s6-bend-scandal/?ncid=rss_truncated

John.

 

SquareTrade just wants people to buy warranty packages. They ran similar tests with the M8 and gave it a poor score yet that phone was extremely durable. I'd take anything a company that sells third party warranties says with a mountain of salt.

 

http://www.xda-developers.com/is-your-galaxy-s6-flash-always-on/

John.

 

Wow... Is this a joke? So glad I didn't pick one of these up!

 

Well guys it's been awhile since I posted here. I now no longer have an iPhone nor a Nexus 7, but a Sony Xperia Z3V and a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition tablet.

2 weeks ago my iPhone 5 suddenly after going into airplane mode (and subsequently back out) it wouldn't connect back to Verizon network. Tried network reset, wiped the phone. Eventually brought it to the Apple store as I was 3 months away from my contract from expiring. Turns out my iPhone went kaput after 21 months and it was a common problem. So I went to the Verizon store and traded my non-working iPhone 5 in to go to Verizon EDGE early, and traded up to the Sony Xperia Z3V. Been using it for 2 weeks, and I love it. I'm glad to be back on Android for my phone. The phone has ALOT of preinstalled apps, but the factory Sony image seems to be holding up fine. No lag, very clean experience. I'm averaging ~1.5-2 days with battery saver off, and 2.5-3 days with battery saver on which is fantastic. I am now a believer than 5" phones are okay, though mine has an Otterbox case on it and it is fairly thick.

I've been wanting a larger tablet for quite sometime now. Don't get me wrong, I love the Nexus 7. The overall package (screen size, portability, battery life, performance, software experience, price), makes it the best small 7" tablet you can get, and CHEAP. But I really wanted a larger screen. When my 2nd Nexus 7 was returned, I was browsing for a larger tablet. Nexus 9 reviews were horrible (flexing back, light leakage, poorly designed power button/volume rocker, overheats, poor battery life, stutters in Android 5.0). I had initially looked at the Note 10.1 2014 edition, but at the end of 2014, it was still nearly 600 dollars everywhere. So I started browsing at the Tab S 10.5, and the Tab Pro 10.1. But I kinda wanted the S-Pen functionality. So I ended up finding a Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition on Ebay for 350 shipped that was new. I haven't looked back since, the battery life is extremely good (on average 7.5+ hours of screen on time with Netflix). Touchwiz is a little bloated, but not as bad as I remember on 2.3 and 4.0. It helps it has the 5420 SoC with 3 GB of RAM. Screen is amazing quality. It also had a ginormous battery. Yes it is ginormous and over the top, but I like it. I usually get it to last about 4-6 days without charging it with 1-2 hours screen on time with Netflix running. It was running 4.4.2 out of the box, and even if Samsung doesn't migrate Lollipop to it, I'm still happy with it.

 

In-Boxing? , more like Reverse-Teardown

John.

 

LG inadvertently puts up its Korean micro-site for the G4 early. I got a chance to look through the site before they took it down. The phone has a pleasing shape, very "we're not trying to be the iPhone" (unlike a certain new Samsung model), vaguely reminiscent in shape of the OnePlus One, though with a subtle curvature to it. It comes with six different leather backings and three textured plastic backings. The phone has both a removable battery and microSD expansion, and has a Quad HD 5.5" screen.

Here's an image that Engadget grabbed before the site went down:



http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/11/lg-g4-leak/

At least so far, it's my favorite next-gen phone.

 

I want to like the G4 but if they end up going with the Snapdragon 808 as rumored, the G4 will have slower graphics than my Nexus 6 does which is an issue because my Adreno 420 on my 805 has noticeable lag trying to pump the 1440p display and the 808 uses a slightly slower Adreno 418.

If they go with the 810, it will overheat and throttle which means that again, the 805 will beat it. HTC dropped the clock on the A57 cores in the 810 down from 2GHz to 1.6GHz because of how hot the chip was getting which essentially negates any performance increase and a lot of reviews have noted that it actually is slower than the older 801-based M8 as a result. As much as I hate Samsung, their new Exynos chip is an absolute beast so if Qualcomm doesn't get their act together, I'm either keeping my Nexus all year or I'm getting an Exynos-equipped Note 5.

 

This wouldn't be the first LG phone with a Snapdragon 810; the GFlex 2 has one too. I haven't heard the same complaints about execution that I have with the One M9, and I wonder what LG did decently than HTC.

 

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/lg-g4-has-lg-ditched-the-snapdragon-810-too

The 810 likely has more breathing room in the G Flex 2. It's not exactly a compact phone.

 

Not digging that leather backing, and though I did just get a Z3V, I do prefer the glass backing of smartphones, maybe I'm one of the few smartphone buyers who actually does.

In all honesty, does a phone having the most powerful processor out really make that big of a difference? The 801 in my Z3V is more than sufficient for me. No, I don't do "hardcore" gaming on my phone, all I do is surf the web, check Facebook, message on Hangouts. My phone gets me nearly 3 days battery life with my usage. I also came from the Apple A6 and 1 GB of RAM, and even with the Sony UI running over it, I'm not noticing any lag. I always found having the highest performance anything meant a compromise in battery and more heat.

 

It makes a big difference going from 1080p to 1440p. Even web pages render slower on my Nexus 6 than they did on my HTC One M8 with the 801. The 810 is really the first processor that should be used to drive a higher resolution display. Its something that hampered the G3 as well, with all reviews noting lag with the quad HD screen compared to full HD 801 devices.

As for the leather and glass backing debate, I would never own a phone with a glass backing. That's asking for a broken phone if it gets dropped. I don't like the leather either. Looks super tacky. Give me aluminum...

 

Ah see that's another reason why I didn't get a QHD phone, always thought it was overrated. I thought the Nexus 6 was too large, and the battery was too small for that size phone. But then again all Nexus phones have always had that compromise, like my Nexus 4.

See I'm always careful with my phones, and it's in an Otterbox. My Nexus 4 was fine, I mean it did get a little scratched up. But I grew sick of the cheapo plastics that were being used in flagship phones. Glass or a metal frame was definitely more premium feeling.

 

I'm actually impressed with the battery life in the N6. Qualcomm really did optimize the battery usage with the 805, I use my Nexus all day long and it usually has to go on the charger after 10 hours. My M8 was dead in 7 with 3 1/2-4 hours screen on time and I'm averaging 4h58m (max 6h54m) screen on time since December 14th when I last flashed my phone. That's pretty impressive if you factor in the faster processor, the QHD screen, the fact that screen is AMOLED, AOSP draining more battery than Sense, 802.11ac WiFi draining more battery than 802.11n, etc.

And Lollipop is worse on battery than KitKat was.

As for the back, I always put my phones in a UAG case when I get them so I don't have to worry about scratching up my camera so there is always protection anyway so I guess I don't really care what it's made from now.

I can tell you though that the Samsung Captivate (at&t's version of the Galaxy S) with its aluminum back was ahead of its time... That phone was indestructible. I still have it somewhere actually.

 

Max 6h54m screen on time? Glad I never use any flagship headset as primary device.

AMOLED is not necessarily more power hungry. It depends on what is displayed.

 

I do applaud LG for doing something different with the G4, but just as Ethrem, I am a bit concerned about the rumoured 808 SoC choice. I've actually started feeling a bit at ease whenever I see an attractive flagship phone maintain a FHD resolution because of QHD maturing issues. The other thing I don't like is the back-firing speaker. Leather is unique and adds grip, but seems a bit gaudy to me, most likely because I'm not used to seeing it on phones. I would have preferred aluminium, wood, or rubberised plastic. I'm very curious to see the first sample photos from the 16MP f/1.8 sensor guided by OIS and an IR sensor, and I'm also happy to see a 3000 mAh battery and microSD slot, not to mention the wide colour gamut. This is shaping up to be a strong contender.

The Xperia Z4 is also one of the phones I'm keeping an eye out for. It looks to be more of the same, but a solid all-rounder. I fear that the screen will still have a blue tint and poor black levels, but at least Sony may use their new IMX230 sensor with improved light sensitivity and autofocus instead of reusing the IMX220 that they've utilised since the Z1. Ideally, something unexpected will happen, like the crazy Meizu + Nokia = ❤ rumours currently circulating coming true.

That's why it's nice to have an AMOLED phone on a longer flight when running an emulator like My Boy! in portrait mode; more than half of the screen remains black and dormant.

 

You have to look at my usage though. I use my cell phone for basically everything I can which means my computers get used basically for games only. That also means that I'm constantly watching videos, browsing (yay for white power drain on AMOLED), texting, I have constant push Gmail, nonstop Facebook notifications, I play a few mobile games, Tapatalk is also on push notifications... When you factor in a 2.7GHz quad core into all that usage, the battery life doesn't seem bad at all. Then the turbo charger fills the battery in less than an hour and a half with just 15 minutes giving around 6 hours of talk time.

If I would switch my phone from LTE to HSPA when I'm at home, the battery life would go up considerably higher as well.

My average total time between each charge is 12h38m, more than enough to get through a day. If I worked, my phone would last two days easily.

 

Another Chinese flagship phone: Meet the LeTV X900 for 2500 Yuan / $400



- 5.5-inch 2K Quad HD screen, 2560x1440 pixels
- 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor
- 3140mAh Lion battery
- 20.7MP rear Sony camera and 4MP front camera
- 4GB RAM, 32GB/64GB/128GB internal memory, expandable via micoSD
- Supports global 4G FDD LTE bands (GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz; WCDMA: 850/900/1900/2100MHz, FDD LTE: 1800/2100/2600MHz)
- USB Type-C connector
- LeUI based on Android 5.0

See also the Elephone P7000, a $200 MT6752 phone with multiple factory ROMs, including CyanogenMod.

 

I'm having a hard time finding benchmarks and relevant info about MediaTek's line-up. What exactly is it that makes the MT6795T, aka Helio X10, their best performing chip apart from clock rate? Take one step down the family tree and you have the mid-range MT6752, which also has an octa-core A53 design, but the more powerful Mali-T760 found in the Exynos 7420. Surely there's more at play here than the 500MHz difference between the MT6752 and MT6795T, considering the former's job is just to best the Snapdragon 615?

EDIT: Apparently there's a turbo version of the MT6752 as well - the MT6752T. Yet, HTC chose the underclocked MT6795M, mobility, for their One E9 handset.

 

MT6795 uses big.LITTLE, has support for 2K screens, and more

http://www.gizchina.com/2015/01/12/...d-to-know-about-the-mt6795-mt6752-and-mt6732/

 

Dropped by a Best Buy today when running some errands and played with a Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge on display. Very well-made, buttons are much more solid and satisfying than on my S3, the screen is amazing in terms of brightness/contrast/color accuracy/pixel density (basically everything), no lag that I could notice at all even with TouchWiz, and the camera performed very well in the limited test environment.

The S6 Edge is pretty cool-looking, but the narrow, sloping edges do make it a bit more awkward to hold. Certainly not worth it for purely for aesthetics.

Once prices come down a bit, and once we get to see the upcoming S6 Active, I think I'll settle for the S6 as my next!

 

Beside the Galaxy Note line, what Android phones/phablets have magnetic stylus support nowadays?

 

I'm pretty sure Samsung has the patent on the stylus tech. I know that the Tegra Note 7 has stylus support as well but outside of that it is all Samsung.

Well I may end up trading in my Nexus 6 after all. I really have to think hard about it. S6 and S6 Edge support carrier aggregation of Band 12 with one or both of bands 2 and 4 while the Nexus has no band 12 aggregation. It wouldn't be a big issue if T-Mobile didn't only have a 5MHz slice of bandwidth for band 12 but since they do, that means that Denver LTE took a huge hit. We had 10MHz of LTE on Band 4 that worked out well, averaging 20Mbps but now that Band 12 is not only up but set as the priority by T-Mobile, speeds top out around 9Mbps and average 7. Carrier aggregation would mean an average of 27 or 28 and since we also have voice over LTE, we should also have better call quality since band 4 runs throughout town and 12 does not.

 

Tegra Note 7 has a capacitive pen, not magnetic.

I'm a using a Adonit Jot clone capacitive stylus on my phone at the moment. It gets the job done for note taking, but the performance could be better.

 

Urgh, I only use my phone sparingly as I'm usually in front of my computer at work. Thus phone is only used when I'm walking between appointments, surfing Facebook, etc. I don't even get that many texts these days, everything is through like Facebook messenger or Hangouts. I think maybe I peak 3-4 hours of total screen on time, but that's over 60-64 hours of on time.

 

Surprised the new Snapdragon SoCs are doing ok with battery life. Then again, when they're throttled to 66% of rated maximum, any CPU will do well with power consumption.

I find it even more interesting that the M9 is using a Snapdragon 810, but the M9+ is using a MediaTek SoC. VERY curious...

 

805 doesn't throttle. It's the 810 does because Qualcomm switched from Krait cores to an off the shelf ARM big.LITTLE design.

The MediaTek phone is Chinese market only. I don't think MediaTek has a modem that supports US bands so it makes more sense for HTC to stick with Qualcomm and throttle the core to 1.6GHz than it does to pay more for separate processors and modems, especially since Qualcomm has the best modems too.

 

Oh...too bad.

I'd still like to see how that PowerVR GPU stacks up against the Mali and Adreno...especially the Adreno in the M9 and the Mali in the S6.

 

Its a midrange chip. Not a high performer at all.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Imagination-PowerVR-G6200.129146.0.html

GFXBench vs S6: https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?be...2=Samsung+Galaxy+S6+(SM-G920x,+SC-05G)&cols=2

Nexus 6: https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?be...&os1=Android&api1=gl&D2=Google+Nexus+6&cols=2

I used the older Nexus 6 because the 1440p resolution isn't out on an 810 device yet (both M9 and G Flex 2 are 1080p) but as you see, the older Nexus 6 spanks it

 

Normally I wouldn't knock the Adreno in the Snapdragon SoCs. But since updating to 5.0.1, the GPU performance in my M8 has taken a serious dive. Very noticeable when running the FPse emulator. Apparently many others are experiencing the same issues with the Adreno GPUs and Android 5.0. Opinion is Qualcomm royally forked up with the firmware drivers in 5.0, but fixed them in 5.1.