Edoardo Maggio

We know that T-Mobile likes to distinguish itself from other US carriers, and that usually results in some bizarre stunts. Last month, to emphasize the return of water resistance in the Galaxy S7, the company set up a completely underwater-shot video unboxing of the device, and now that the LG G5 is about to reach stores across the country, T-Mobile is back at it again…

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For the past few years, most of the major manufacturers have embraced a war on specs — which ultimately led to an incredibly fast-paced evolution of the smartphone. Unlike any other tech-related market before it – think desktop computers or laptops – however, the smartphone has proven to be disruptive in a different kind of way; it became truly universal, and capable of becoming an intimate part of virtually every aspect of people’s lives, from their jobs to personal hobbies to more practical utilities and a myriad of other use cases enabled by its mobility.

We had mobile phones before, sure, but the smartphone arrived and put a small computer in our hands, one that would eventually allow us to do a million things on the go that we would have only dreamed of a few years prior, literally outgrowing the tech industry and making companies like Google, Amazon and Apple among the highest valued in the world. So naturally, with such a big, expanding and opportunity-rich market, manufacturers and other tech giants alike put all of their effort into improving and refining these experiences, ultimately taking us where we are now.

The spec-war has been furious: each year’s imperative was a constant impel to cram in the newest and best components on the market in the smallest, most elegant package possible. More pixels, more megapixels, more cores, more RAM, more everything. While users — at least on Android — most notably complained about the lack of a polished experience to match the sheer capabilities of these internals, looking at it in retrospect we can see just how far we have come…

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You might not know that Chrome for Android has two ways of dealing with downloads. When there is a file you want to save, you will often click on a link which redirects you to a blank page where a pop-up window asks for your consent to download the file, which is essentially the ‘Downloads’ (or ‘Download Manager’) app making its way into Chrome. Another way of downloading a file is to simply long press on it and consequently click ‘save’. This second method utilizes Chrome’s built-in downloader, which is seeing some welcomed additions with the upcoming version 50 of the Chrome app (via AndroidPolice).

While the stable version of Chrome on the Android N preview already has the functionality built in (because the OS comes with Chrome v50), both the v49 currently running on Marshmallow and the latest build of Chrome Beta do not. What the latest iteration of the browser allows you to do, though, is to both pause and resume files that are being downloaded, and also to delete them altogether in case you were to start downloading something unintentionally…

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Alphabet-owned Nest is best known for its smart thermostat, but the company works on a number of devices which, albeit being generally good at their given task, do not communicate with each other particularly well. And that’s mostly due to the fact that said devices have always had a hard time detecting whether you are actually at home or not.

With the upcoming implementation of GPS support via the Nest app, however, it looks like your house is about to become decidedly more efficient – and smart…

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While we do know that LG will likely not be joining Google to build the very next Nexus, which is expected to come towards the end of the year, a sketchy rumor coming from Chinese website MyDrivers suggests that HTC might have been given the green light for a three-year long partnership with Mountain View. Directed towards bringing Nexus devices to the market, the deeply troubled Taiwanese phone maker could be part of Google’s plan to take more control over its hardware offerings…

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Among the numerous changes made by Samsung with last year’s pair of Galaxy S6 flagships, the decision to stick with the Exynos 7420 everywhere the device was shipped stood out particularly. Common practice for the South Korean giant was to manufacture its high-end handsets with Snapdragon chips in the mainstream markets of Europe and the United States, while delivering an Exynos-powered experience in Asia.

Given the Snapdragon 810’s notorious over-heating problems, however, it was probably a good decision; but Qualcomm set to come back in full swing this year, obtaining a deal that sees US-bound Galaxy S7s equipped with their SoC. This, however, seems to have created major discrepancies between the two models’ performances; according to AnTuTu tests, a negligible 5% difference sets the two models apart as far as CPU power goes, while up to a massive 32% gap separates the greatly superior Snapdragon 820 from the seemingly under-performing Exynos 8890 in GPU-related benchmarks…

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Among the features people came to love about the Galaxy S5 that were removed in the big design overhaul brought by last year’s S6, water resistance was possibly the most noticeable. The plastic ruggedness of the S5 was replaced in favor of a sleeker, more elegant design. But with the Galaxy S7, Samsung managed to bring back the best of both worlds, delivering a gorgeous-looking device with all the functional utility provided by IP68 certification.

In order to protect the phone, it looks like Samsung has built an internal safeguard which is triggered any time remains of water are spotted in the proximity of the microUSB hole. The phone shows a message “moisture detected in the charging port,” which could potentially prevent both the handset and the cable to malfunction or fry altogether. It sounds like a handy feature to have…

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It is no secret that Samsung has stepped up its camera game significantly in the past few years. Particularly, starting with the Galaxy Note 4 at the end of 2014, the high-end devices of the South Korean giant have started to truly impress reviewers and customers alike, further cementing this perception with the strong performances delivered by the Galaxy S6 family as well as the latest iteration of the Notes.

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Display technologies have experienced numerous improvements over the years, from mere augmentations in terms of resolution to more advanced processes dedicated to lamination of the panels getting closer to the actual glass, enhancements in color reproduction and all sorts of works devoted to power efficiency, brightness and the likes. Most recently, a few companies, namely Samsung and now Xiaomi, have worked on ‘2.5D’ screens that curve around the edges, but the general operating principles in regards to software have remained largely unchanged.

With the introduction of the iPhone 6s last fall, however, Apple decided to borrow the ‘Force Touch‘ technology from its own Watch and bring it to the iPhone under the name “3D Touch”, thus introducing an entirely new dimension with the Z-axis effectively becoming part of the UX; a bold move that other manufacturers, primarily in China, may see as an opportunity, and something they are apparently already working on.

A somewhat sketchy report from an industry insider on Weibo, in fact, claims that Xiaomi, Meizu, OPPO and Vivo – as well as HTC – are all hard at work to bring their pressure-sensitive panels to life…

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Mobile contactless payments are progressively becoming more and more mainstream as major manufacturers adopt systems that can be easily used via our smartphones. While LG Pay is yet to be seen in action, Google, Apple and even Samsung all have a technology – Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, respectively – that allows a user to complete transactions thanks to the NFC chips contained in most recent devices.

To this day, however, Apple Pay was the only service active in the United Kingdom, leaving a good number of consumers out of the industry, as more than half of the smartphones sold in the country run Android. According to a Telegraph report, however, sources close to the matter have confirmed that Android Pay should go live across Britain within the end of next month, approximately six months after the original US debut…

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One of the arguably biggest efforts pulled off by Google in recent times is its massive visual facelift that goes by the name of ‘Material Design‘.  Among the most prominent concrete examples of its practical application, Android certainly stands out, and in Google’s commitment towards bringing a more unified and consistent looking OS, the company may be taking things a step further by the time Android N lands.

In a report from Android Police, the publication independently confirmed that screenshots found on the Android Developers blog post about Android Support Library v23.2 are coming from a yet-unreleased version of the OS, which seems to be implementing the famous hamburger menu inside the Settings app…

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It is not often that a smartphone is capable of genuinely surprising me anymore. I don’t think it’s just me, either, but anyone working in tech. It may be due to the fact that cycles have become incredibly short, at times as quick as a six-month period, or perhaps it’s that it’s been a while since a device has brought any meaningful innovation. Each new iteration of a flagship feels shinier, more polished and powerful than its predecessor, but ultimately has very little time to make a dent in people’s minds (and hearts) because ‘the next big thing’ is already around the corner.

Perhaps there’s no escaping from this kind of extreme consumerism, particularly in the smartphone business, which revolves around one of the most important objects in literally everyone’s life. On this basis, I know that I don’t want to fool myself, but I nonetheless believe that credit needs to be given where it’s due. Yesterday was just a regular day for me, but while taking a walk in central London, close to Oxford Circus’ station, I briefly entered a carrier’s flagship store and was greeted by a flashy new pair of Galaxy S7s…

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One of the main reasons why so many people love Android is its famous customisability. Google’s OS is notoriously flexible, and despite being already available in a variety of different forms thanks to the OEMs’ re-skinning, the hundreds of apps present on the Play Store allow for further personalization in almost every corner of the system. Toggles, widgets, icon packs and entire lock screen replacements are just a few of the categories of things Android can be user-modified with.

However, particularly after Material Design‘s introduction and a general push towards cohesiveness and consistency across the system, the diverse adaptations of the OS have started to look more and more similar; be it thanks to whiter, more card-based menus, the use of similar toggle icons or the widely adopted carousel-like task switcher, among others, Android has finally started to look and feel instantly recognizable, even when buried deep underneath the oft-poor design decisions made by third parties…

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One of the reasons why I initially fell in love with Android was Google’s ability — often showcased on an annual basis in May or June at I/O — to always push technology forward, reinvent itself, and even dare to go a little overboard before making sure that everything was under control.

Most notably, since the end of 2011, Ice Cream Sandwich started to look as a more mature OS, one whose direction was beginning to make sense, appear clearer, as Android itself was soaring, soon to be the most adopted mobile operating system on the planet. What we know as “Holo”, a good-looking visual style for the system, was introduced, and coupled with bleeding-edge devices such as the Galaxy Nexus it made for a pretty sweet package.

But now, 5 years after the Galaxy Nexus was released and with Lollipop’s new design under its belt, where is Google going next?

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Despite being entirely touch-based for the overwhelming majority, a few successful smartphones have enjoyed styluses as secondary input peripherals, such as Samsung‘s famous Galaxy Note series. LG, not to stay behind, introduced a Stylus version of its G4 flagship last year, whose reception came as mixed due to a non-stellar pen implementation and an overall underwhelming experience.

The South Korean giant is nonetheless looking forward to a come back with the now-official upcoming LG Stylus 2…

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When looking at the landscape of Android flagship smartphones, I rarely find it easy to pinpoint a single manufacturer that, in one way or another, has consistently been able to meaningfully innovate one year after the other. More often than not, the OEMs have a go at things that are then removed the following year, or that in some way fail to broadly introduce a proper trend, like for instance the first attempts at fingerprint sensors or stereoscopic cameras…

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