ImaginativePRO Blog

A FIRST LOOK AT THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S8 & S8 PLUS SMARTPHONE, PREORDERS START MARCH 30, DELIVERY BY APRIL 21

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the nicest phone I’ve ever held. It’s a beautiful combination of glass, metal, and an absolutely massive screen in a body that’s much smaller than you might expect.

And that might not be enough to make it stand out anymore.

There are two versions of the S8:

• Standard Galaxy S8 with a 5.8-inch screen
• S8 Plus with a larger 6.2-inch screen.

Both are available for preorder on March 30th and will be shipping in the US on April 21st. Pricing, as always with Samsung, is up to the carriers — but you can expect them to command a premium price. The early word is that it will start at $720.

Here's the official introduction video uploaded on YouTube on March 29, 2017:

Here’s everything we learned about these two phones after using them for an hour or two last week.

GALAXY S8 HARDWARE

Holding the S8, I’m struck by the fact that nothing about it feels especially surprising, and not just because damn near everything about it has been leaking for the past few months. The boldest feature is every phone’s more important feature: the screen. On the S8, it extends up and down to cover nearly the entire front of the phone. It also curves around the left and right, something Samsung is calling the “infinity display,” which gives it the look of not having any bezels at all. And speaking of curves, the four corners of the screen are also slightly curved instead of squared-off, which adds some elegance and perhaps some screen durability.

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The S8 and S8 Plus fulfill Samsung’s promise of fitting a big screen in a smaller body, and so they’re quite a bit more usable than other large-screened phones. I didn’t experience some of the accidental touch issues that I still get with the Galaxy S7 Edge. But I also only had about an hour with the phone, so it’s possible that it could still be an issue.

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More than anything else, the S8 is nice. It may seem like table stakes in 2017, but these phones are incredibly well-designed. There are no seams, only the barest of camera bumps, and everything seems milled down to sub-millimeter tolerances. They feel inevitable in a way that almost becomes boring. Many of the design touches are evolutions of the S7 Edge and Note 7, but refined to their Platonic ideals.

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Extending the screen to near the bottom of the phone means that there’s no room for Samsung’s traditional hardware home button. Instead, it uses software buttons like other Android phones. It also uses some haptic feedback like Apple’s iPhones to create a virtual feeling of pressing a home button, though it only works on the very specific spot where the software home button appears. One neat feature: some Android apps hide those main Android buttons when they go full screen, but you can still firmly press the bottom of the screen to activate the home button.

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Getting rid of the physical home button also means that Samsung had to move the fingerprint sensor. It’s on the back now, right next to the camera. That’s not a very convenient place for it, honestly. It’s too high up on the phone to comfortably reach and it’s also right next to the camera module, which might mean you’l be getting fingerprints on the camera more often than you’d like.

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Speaking of fingerprints, because the S8 is nearly all glass, you’ll see them on the back a lot, but they’re not as prominent as you might expect (they’re worse on the LG G6, for example).

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Both the USB-C port and the 3.5mm headphone jack (hallelujah) are located on the bottom of the phone. You have power on one side and volume buttons on the other, underneath which you’ll find a whole new button that’s dedicated to the big new software feature on the Galaxy S8, Bixby. There’s much more on Bixby below, but for now I’ll just note that dedicating a hardware button to this software feature is a big bet on Samsung’s intelligent assistant. If Bixby ends up being not that great, I expect many people will be looking for ways to remap that extra hardware button (or decrying that it’s vestigial).

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GALAXY S8 SPECS

As you’d expect, the S8 has the best specs you can get on an Android phone. Depending on the region, you’ll either get Qualcomm’s newest (and slightly rarer) Snapdragon 835 or Samsung’s own Exynos. In both cases, Samsung is touting that they’re built on a 10nm chip, which should theoretically help with power consumption. In my brief time with it, everything was whip-fast. Hopefully it will stay that way over time — Samsung phones often don’t.

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The standard S8 has a 570ppi 5.8-inch screen, with a resolution of 2960 x 1440. The S8 Plus has the exact same resolution on its 6.2-inch screen, which works out to 529ppi. For my money, the standard S8 is the way to go. It still feels like a massive screen and the body is significantly smaller. The height of the screen is interesting, too: the aspect ratio is a super-tall 18.5:9, which adds a bunch of screen real estate to scroll through. I didn’t get to test a bunch of third-party apps, so hopefully we won’t see too much weirdness with the new aspect ratio. Even if we do, Galaxy phones are popular enough to prod developers to update their apps to support it.

In terms of other specs, it’s pretty bog standard stuff: 4 gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of onboard storage, and an expandable SD card slot.

GALAXY S8 BATTERY

Nearly 900 words in and I haven’t made an exploding phone joke (you’re welcome, Samsung). But now is the time to point out that the last time the phone maker released a phone this big and beautiful, it literally set itself on fire on a disturbingly regular basis. The company’s responses to this issue were botched and bad for some time before it pivoted, apologized, and introduced a new process for checking battery safety. Those safety checks are important, but Samsung still has to own all the exploding phone jokes and hear them at every mention of its phones for a while.

So on the S8, Samsung did not push the envelope when it comes to capacity. The S8 has a 3,000mAh battery and the S8 Plus has a larger 3,500mAh battery — the same capacity that the Note 7 had. But neither is especially large when you consider the fact that they need to power towering screens. Samsung claims it has tweaked the battery chemistry to help the batteries last longer after a year or two of use.

To make up for it, Samsung is offering the usual suite of power options: Qualcomm Quick Charge and support for both major wireless charging standards. But I still have reservations about how long the batteries will last on these phones. In fact, it may be a reason to seriously consider getting the larger S8 Plus.

GALAXY S8 CAMERAS

Another place where Samsung hasn’t really pushed the envelope is the camera. The S8 uses the exact same rear camera as the Galaxy S7, a 12-megapixel sensor with OIS. Samsung says it’s done work on the software side to improve picture quality, and in my short time with it I found it to be significantly faster than the camera on the Galaxy S7 Edge.

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It is notable that the S8 Plus doesn’t get a better camera or a dual-camera setup. Excepting screen and battery size, both phones are identical.

I suspect it’s using the “take pictures all the time in the background and just save them when you hit the shutter button” trick we’ve seen on other phones. It also borrows another trick from other Android phones: the shortcut to launch it is double-pressing the power button now (since the home button is virtual).

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The front-facing camera (aka the one you really care about) has gotten an upgrade. It’s an 8-megapixel sensor now, but more importantly it has autofocus. Switching between cameras was fast and easy, as was swiping over to get to Samsung’s kajillion photo gimmick settings. But some of those gimmicks are pretty neat, I’m especially fond of the GIF mode, though I do wish it was just automatic like you can do with Apple’s Live Photos and the Motion Stills app.

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In any case, the competition for the “best smartphone camera” is way more interesting now than it was a year ago, when just Samsung and Apple were at the top. Now, Apple and LG are sticking multiple cameras in their phones while Google’s Pixel has jumped to the top of the Android camera quality game. It’s too early to say that Samsung is resting on its photography laurels with the S8, but it is fair to say that there’s probably nothing here that will give other companies reason to worry.

GALAXY S8 SOFTWARE

That Samsung is capable of making great hardware should come as no surprise to anybody. It’s the software where we have reason to be skeptical. Running all the way back to the bad old days of TouchWiz, Samsung has a well-earned reputation for taking Android and mucking it up with bad ideas.

For the past few years, though, the common refrain has been restraint, and I’m going to repeat it again today. Samsung has done a pretty good job keeping its worst instincts in check. There are a ton of weird features to find in the dark recesses of the settings menu, but out of the box the basic look, feel, and functionality of Samsung’s Android skinning is pretty good.

And there are some genuinely great parts, too. The iris scanning that lived all-too-briefly on the Note 7 is back, if you’d like to unlock your phone that way. But the best way to unlock the phone is Samsung’s new face detect system. It takes about 20 seconds to set up and once you do, it works really well. It’s not the same, bad face unlock that was introduced in Android years ago, it’s an entirely new system Samsung made.

In my 10 minutes or so of playing with it, it didn’t fail to unlock a single time. In fact, it was so fast that we a hard time filming it. I had to point the phone away from my face and then just tilt it up to look at myself. I unfortunately forgot to print a glossy 8 x 10 of my face to test with, though, so I can’t say if maybe it’s tuned to be a little too forgiving when it tries to see if it’s you. Samsung admits the face-detect system is less secure than the other ways of unlocking, so you will still need to set up the iris or fingerprint scanners to make payments.

There is one gimmick that in theory I should be excited about but in practice I’m just not: DeX. It’s a feature where, after buying a specialized dock, you can plug your Galaxy S8 into a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and get a full desktop mode. Unlike solutions we’ve seen in the past (RIP Motorola Atrix), the desktop mode here simply offers Android apps instead of a full desktop browser. It looks well-designed for what it is, offering full access to your notifications and resizable windows. But it can’t escape the fact that outside a few apps like Samsung’s own browser, Microsoft Office, and Adobe’s creative suite, Android apps are bad on big screens.

People who unironically call themselves Road Warriors like they’re IT managers in 1999 will love it. The rest of us probably won’t use it. And that’s fine.

GALAXY BIXBY PERSONAL ASSISTANT

Samsung may not have put a ton of effort in changing its hardware design language, updating its camera, or packing in a bigger battery. But it has been focused on figuring out how to make software that people actually like, and it’s all centered on a new virtual assistant called Bixby.

As I mentioned above, Bixby is launched by pressing an honest-to-god dedicated physical button. It has basically three modes:

1. A short-press of the button takes you to Bixby Home (you can also swipe over to it from the home screen).
2. Long-pressing the button turns on Bixby’s voice features.
3. There’s a small button on the camera app for Bixby’s augmented reality features.

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Let’s start in the middle with voice, because speaking to Bixby is the most interesting and challenging set of features here. Essentially, what Samsung is trying to do is create a new kind of virtual assistant, one that helps you use the device directly in your hands rather than ask random questions from the cloud.

I wasn’t able to test this myself, unfortunately, but Samsung did run us through a couple demos. In one, you can open the gallery app and then issue voice commands for editing a photo rather than trying to dig through the interface to find the right button. “Bixby, rotate this photo left,” and “Bixby, send this photo to Dan.” If you live that Samsung Life, you can use Bixby to send videos to your TV or turn off your smart lights, too.

The goal is that “anything you can control with touch, you can also control with voice.” It’s a laudable goal, but it’s also one I very seriously doubt Samsung can achieve. For one thing, it only works with about 10 Samsung apps at launch. Also, it can only work with apps that are written to support Bixby. Unlike Google Now on Tap, Bixby doesn’t do any screen reading to try and guess what’s on the screen. So it might be a virtual assistant, but it’s very far from an artificial intelligence.

The other big question with Bixby is how exactly is it differentiated from the Google Assistant. It seems pretty clear, but then you discover that there’s a bunch of overlap. For example, you can do things like set alarms with Bixby. There’s also Bixby Home, which so far as I can tell is a giant, random set of information cards for things like your smart light bulbs, fitness data, local news and weather, and whatever else Samsung thinks belongs in a virtual assistant home screen. It looks like every widget screen you’ve ever seen on a phone, which is to say it looks like sort of a mess that you probably won’t use very much.

Last but certainly not least are Bixby’s camera features, which are Bixby’s best features. You can launch it either directly in the camera app or from Bixby Home, and what it essentially does is turn your camera into a photo search machine. Point the Bixby camera app at anything and it will identify it and suggest web searches for it. I tried on flowers and it gave me options to buy flowers on Amazon or look at more flowers on Pinterest. It wasn’t able to precisely identify my Android Wear watch, but it did know it was a round watch and offered to let me buy a real one on Amazon.

It also works with more prosaic things. Samsung ran a demo with wine labels and book covers, both easily identified and given options to buy. Samsung says it’s working with specific partners for Bixby — including Amazon and Pinterest — but it doesn’t appear that it works with the biggest search engine of them all, Google. That’s not really a surprise.

GALAXY S8 RELEASE DATE, COLORS AND PRICE 

In the US, the S8 and S8 Plus will come in black, gray, and silver. Gold and blue are options internationally.

The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are available for preorder starting tomorrow, March 30th, and you should get a free Oculus headset with a controller and a set of games along with your preorder. The official release in the US is on April 21st. Unfortunately, Samsung won’t confirm pricing, leaving that to its carrier partners — again, it looks like it’ll start at around $720.

COMMENTARY:   I was so impressed with the new Samsung Galaxy S8, that I pre-ordered a Galaxy S8 Plus on Thursday, March 30.   T-Mobile, my wireless carrier, is running a special promotion, offering a FREE pair of Samsung VR goggles with each new phone ordered, while supply lasts.  This is my fourth Samsung Galaxy phone, and I see no reason to change handsets.  I hope I made the right choice.   

Courtesy of an article dated March 29, 2017 appearing in The Verge and an article dated March 29, 2017 appearing in Android Headlines and an article dated March 29, 2017 appearing in Digital Trends and an article dated March 29, 2017 appearing in Seeking Alpha

 

 

BLACKBERRY'S NEW PRIV ANDROID PHONE, REAL KEYBOARD, SECURITY, AVAILABILITY, PRICING, SPECS AND REVIEWS

 

BlackBerry Ltd.’s new Android phone hit the market through AT&T on November 6, 2015, and could be the company’s last attempt at making its devices profitable before ending production.

 

The Canadian company has unveiled several new phones in the two years since Chief Executive Officer John Chen took over, but none has managed to stop hardware sales from falling. Chen has repeatedly said he will exit the device business if he can’t make it profitable.

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The BlackBerry “Priv” -- named for its emphasis on privacy -- runs a full version of Google’s Android operating system but features some of BlackBerry’s highly respected security and productivity features. It comes preloaded with an application that tracks how much other applications on your phone are accessing your personal data and location. It also has BlackBerry’s signature physical keyboard, which slides down from under the touch screen.

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Brian Colello, a Chicago-based analyst at Morningstar Investment Services, said in an interview.

“Perhaps there’s something else in the pipeline, but this device does seem like a last stand.  We’ve seen new products come out for the last couple years, BlackBerry’s trying to get a hit with any form factor, any price point and now it’s with a different operating system.”

With its share of the global smartphone market at less than 1 percent, BlackBerry has been working to shift its focus to higher-margin software sales. As he tries to turn around the company’s fortunes, Chen has held onto the phone business, which still accounts for about 40 percent of revenue. Blackberry could stop producing phones within the next year if it doesn’t begin turning a profit, he said at a conference in October.

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Software Target

Chen is working to reach $500 million in software revenue by March 2016 by acquiring security-focused software companies and building up new products like secure teleconferencing. BlackBerry completed its $425 million acquisition of Good Technology Corp. on Monday, a deal the company said will contribute about $160 million in revenue in the first year.

Ron Louks, BlackBerry’s head of devices, said the company will make announcements about its product “road map” in the beginning of 2016, but declined to say whether it would announce a new phone. Chen has said the company is going ahead with software updates to its BlackBerry operating system. 

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By running Android for its new device, the Priv sidesteps one of the biggest problems BlackBerry has had in persuading people to use its phones: a lack of applications. As the company’s operating system waned in popularity, developers stopped making applications that were compatible with it, prompting even more people to ditch its devices.

If the Priv sells better than BlackBerry’s two most recent major releases, the Passport and the Classic, it may keep the phone business going, Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial LP, said in an interview.

Declining Shipments

BlackBerry shipped 800,000 smartphones in the quarter that ended Aug. 29, its lowest since at least 2007.

Gillis, who has a buy rating on the stock, said.

“It doesn’t take a lot of phones to really move the needle for this company.” 

The company’s shares gained 2.9 percent to $7.50 at the close in New York and have declined 32 percent this year.

The Priv, with a retail price of $699, is targeted at a “very, very competitive market,” of high-end Android phones, Colello said, including those made by HTC Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. The new device is BlackBerry’s latest effort to find a phone that can stabilize sales as the company transitions toward Chen’s software revenue target.   He said.

“They’ve done a good job of continuing to lower their break-even level for the hardware side to stay in business, but even though the bar’s going lower and lower, the sales still aren’t keeping up.  I think BlackBerry’s still searching for a hit phone.”

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COMMENTARY:  

Cellular Network Support, Prices, and Pre-Order Details For The BlackBerry Priv

AT&T is the currently the only U.S. cellular carrier offering BlackBerry's Priv smartphone.  Customers can purchase the phone for $250.00 with a two-year contract or via AT&T Next with $0 down.  You have your choice of the following contracts:

• Next 24 (30 payments) for $24.67 per month.
• Next 18 (24 payments) for $30.84 per month.
• Next 12 (20 payments) for $37.00 per month.  

Both T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon are in negotiations to offer the BlackBerry Priv through their cellular networks, but no definite dates have been released. T-Mobile CEO John Legere told CNET that BlackBerry is "on a comeback" and hinted that the Uncarrier will have the Priv soon.

The comment on BlackBerry's comeback is just one in a growing collection of comments by Legere on BlackBerry.  In an interview with Fox Business News anchor Liz Claman, Legere said that John Chen is doing a "great job running BlackBerry," and T-Mobile is "trying to figure out how to get to groups of zealots -- T-Mobile fans and BlackBerry fans -- how to get those two together.

T-Mobile confirmed that that talks are happening, and suggested a 2016 release date is probable.  T-Mobile's network already works on the BlackBerry Priv, if the phone is unlocked.  

The phone sold through the BlackBerry Store is designed to work with GSM cellular networks, but a CDMA-compatible is coming to Verizon soon.  Verizon tweeted confirmation on November 6, and directed those interested to sign-up on its website for more information.  No release timeframe was offered.

BlackBerry will also make the Priv available internationally as follows:

• Canada -  Rogers (Pre-Orders) and ShopBlackBerry Canada ($900 CDN)
• United Kingdom - Carphone Warehouse and ShopBlackBerry UK (560 Pounds including VAT)

Marshmellow and Security Updates

In a recent interview with Android Central, Ron Louks, BlackBerry's president of devices, commented on the upcoming update to Android Marshmellow 6.0 and monthly security updates.  Louks didn't give a firm date for Marshmellow 6.0, but said the update should hit "sometime in the new year," at least confirming that BlackBerry Priv users will not have to wait long for it.

BlackBerry's added improvements to Android that will attract enterprise users who seek data encryption and built-in security features that track how apps are interacting with your data (Click Image To Enlarge)

BlackBerry has done really solid work adding a layer of security to the Priv — "Priv" stands for "privacy," after all. The user-facing aspect of it is a piece of software called DTEK security, which monitors your phone for nefarious acts and also gives you a handy security audit that lets you know what's going on inside each one. The Priv isn't running the most recent version of Android, but it has the same ability to let you examine each app's access to your privacy settings and turn them off if you don't like them.

On security updates, Louks said BlackBerry will try to adhere -- at least in Europe -- to pushing security updates within a month of Google releasing them.  As more malware and vulnerabilities hit Android, manufacturers are being called upon to quickly update devices and make sure users are safe and secure.  BlackBerry will import its own security systems as well, to ensure vulnerabilities are mitigated before Google patches them.

Priv Specifications

BlackBerry has gone all-out with the Priv Android phone, so the specs are about as high-end as any other flagship Android phone -- Unfortunately, the Priv also has a high price tag to match.  The phone has an intriguing slider design, the likes of which we haven't seen in a number of years, so that users can choose between a virtual keyboard or a physical keyboard.  When you slide the screen back, a full QWERTY keyboard in the old school BlackBerry style is revealed.  The keys are touch sensitive for scrolling and cursor control, too, so you can use it as a trackpad if need be.

 

GSMArena created this wonderful breakdown of the BlackBerry Priv's technical specifications:

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BlackBerry's New Android Apps

When it comes to software, BlackBerry's added a few bells and whistles to make Android secure enough to suit its standards.  The BlackBerry Hub is included, which brings all your messages into one feed, as are other standard BlackBerry apps like BBM.  BlackBerry's special DTEK for Android software will also alert you when your privacy may be at risk, give you a security rating for your device, and it offers for specific security features, so that you know what's going on with your personal info and more.  You can determine which apps and services are allowed to use your microphone, camera, contacts, and more. 

BlackBerry released a range of apps onto Google Play store in late October.  The apps will be pre-installed on the BlackBerry Priv, and are apparently only usable on that device.  Users that tried to download the apps were informed that their devices are incompatible. 

The apps include BlackBerry Launcher, Keyboard, Camera and Services.  Password Keeper has been added to store all passwords in a single folder, encrypted and secured by BlackBerry -- the app can also import infor from previous BlackBerry owners moving to Android.  DTEK for BlackBerry and MicrosoftextFat for BlackBerry have also been added to the Google Play store.

Having all the applications available on the Google Play store should make them instantly available without a firmware update.  BlackBerry plans to offer an almost stock experience, with additional security and some new applications ported over from BlackBerry 10.

BlackBerry "Old-Style" Keyboard

A lot of mobile device experts don't give the BlackBerry Priv a chance of succeeding among smartphone users or making a dent in the smartphone market, because its debut comes four years too late.  However, I believe that the Priv will be able to capture market share because there is a latent demand for smartphones with old-style features like a physical keyboard.  

Although the BlackBerry Priv may look "old-school," a physical keyboard fills a need in the marketplace.  The limitations of a virtual keyboard on tablets like the iPad, quickly gave rise to attachable physical keyboards, and now they are a must-have accessory for most serious tablet users. It is my opinion that the Priv's physical keyboard is going to be a hit with users, especially old-school users like yours truly.

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BlackBerry's keyboard is truly special, incorporating fresh ideas that most smartphone makers ignore:

• The keyboard software is optimized for the keyboard — no mean feat, given how few Android phones have bothered with them anymore.
• The keyboard is also touch-sensitive, so you can scroll with it and swipe down on it to bring up an optional symbols keyboard.
• The keyboard does not make the Priv top-heavy or ackward to hold or use.

You are probably not going to be any faster or more accurate using the Priv's physical keyboard than you are on a touchscreen virtual keyboard, but it isn't about what's definitively "better." Because after you reach a certain level of quality and functionality, it's perfectly fine just to have personal preference. Live and let live.

I believe that enterprise and government users will like and value the BlackBerry Priv's security and data encryption features.  These are must-have features for corporate users, government agencies and individuals who want that extra layer of security not found in most of today's smartphones.    

Multi-Tasking On The Priv

One change that I love on the Priv is the layout for multitasking. Instead of showing a vertical stack of cards, BlackBerry designed multitasking to show a grid of apps in varying sizes. Think of it like the Windows 8 Start menu for apps you already have open. Hitting the multitasking button and then thumbing through the list of apps on the keyboard’s touchpad feels like magic. Compared to the stacked card interfaces of Android Lollipop and Marshmallow and iOS 9, Blackberry’s implementation is a breath of fresh air. You can see more than one app with its preview clearly. It’s one of the biggest things I’ll miss when the Priv goes away. 

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BlackBerry Priv Reviews

BlackBerry Priv reviews by expert reviewers are mostly good averaging about 3.5 stars out of 5.  The Priv is regarded as a good phone, not a great phone, but a "great first effort for an Android phone." The $699.00 price tag may scare off a lot of potential buyers, but with a two-year plan through AT&T, the price is only $250.00.  According to Ron Offringa, Droid-Life, ere are the good and bad of the Priv:

The Good  

Display - The 5.4-inch (1440 x 2560 pixels) display on the Priv is visually great. Colors are accurate, text is crisp, and the curve along the edge of the display makes Android’s slide out menus feel more real.  The display is able to get very dim, but I have definitely seen displays that get brighter, meaning you may have some issues in direct sunlight.

Hardware Design - The Priv feels like a tank. A plastic tank, but a tank nonetheless. That’s not a bad thing, but don’t expect the Priv to delicately slide into your pocket.  The body looks downright handsome in its stealth black paint. Where other phones look delicate with their bendable aluminum bodies and glass backs, the Priv feels like a solid, well constructed pocket computer.  The body of the Priv is curved to match the sloping glass on the front, but the middle edges are flat so that the phone is easy to grip.  The power on/off button is on the left instead of the right, but that's no big deal.  The bottom of the phone has a micro USB port at the center and the headphone jack on the right.  The placement of the headphone jack makes it relatively easy to find with a cursory brush against the bottom of the device.  The top of the phone features a micro SD card tray and the SIM tray. For whatever reason the SIM card should've been placed on the bottom of the tray (facing the back of the phone) instead of on the top. This isn’t a big deal, but it is an odd design that was confusing at first.

The Keyboard - The slider keyboard on the Priv is probably the single best thing about it.  Can you type faster on a virtual keyboard?  Probably not, but if you have never used a phone with a hardware keyboard then it might take you longer to adjust, but after using the Priv keyboard a few times, you will feel right at home.  The keyboard is touch-sensitive and can be used as a trackpad for scrolling by brushing your fingers on the keyboard.  Finally, as long as you’re using the stock launcher, you can also set shortcut keys for individual presses or long presses on the keyboard.

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The Software - The Priv runs an almost stock version of Android 5.1.1 (that’s right, no Marshmallow 6.0 Android on the most secure phone in the world), but CEO Chen says "they are working on it (getting Marshmallow upgrade) sometime in 2016."  Here are a few changes to note. Notifications can be bundled by app, so if you have a ton of new notifications, but you really just want to see your emails you can tap on your email app icon and only see those in the notification shade. BlackBerry includes a Peek menu on the edge of the display to quickly see your calendar, favorite contacts, messages from BlackBerry Hub, and tasks.  BlackBerry Hub is an app that summarizes your communications for you. All of your emails and texts and calls and even social media bits can be found in one place. I can see this being really helpful for someone who either needs or wants a summary of their day regularly or who wants a notification center to go to because they find the notification tray too limited or lacking context.

Device Search is a limited replacement for Google Now that allows you to search your device or, if you don’t find what you want, you can tap a button to search the web or Drive or any other app listed under Extended Search. When you’re on the home screen if you start typing on the keyboard it will ask if you’d like to use Device Search or Google Now.  I haven't tried Device Search, but I use Google Now all the time, and like it very much.

Multitasking  (See above) on the BlackBerry Priv is a breeze and one of the changes that users love is the layout for multitasking.  Instead of showing a vertical stack of cards, BlackBerry designed multitasking to show a grid of apps in varying sizes.  Think of it like the Windows 8 Start menu for apps you already have open. Hitting the multitasking button and then thumbing through the list of apps on the keyboard’s touchpad feels like magic.

Average

Security and Privacy - The first, and most important, is that the Priv lacks a fingerprint scanner like high-end phones like the iPhone, Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, HTC One A9, Galaxy S6, and Note 5. 

The second is that DTEK (See Above) thinks it’s secure for me to have a password or PIN that locks my device after 10 minutes.  BlackBerry should not be giving that default setting a passing score. I also love that DTEK has a section that says that my device is secure because it is a BlackBerry.

The third is that the Priv runs Android 5.1.1. While this shouldn’t be too upsetting for users considering Marshmallow is only just over a month old, from a security standpoint it is a bit of an issue. Maybe BlackBerry will be quick with updates, but there’s a good chance that unless BlackBerry picks up the pace the OS itself will become a security issue.

NOTE:  In my opinion, Ron Offringa from Droid-Life either does not understand the Priv's security features, or didn't want to dwelve too deeply into the Priv's security capabilities.  For these reasons, I differ with the security review of Ron Offringa from Droid-Life.    

If you wonder just how secure the BlackBerry Priv really is, well, it's very secure.  For starters, the Priv uses data encryption technology and its security software works like an internal "firewall" that operates in the background and monitors for malware and mobile app spyware that might want to tamper with your program files and data.  If it senses this, it will notify you immediately to take appropriate action.  

And there's much more than meets the eye centered specifically around security and stability.    

What about fingerprint readers? Apple does them. Google does them. Samsung does them. Why doesn’t BlackBerry?  Dave Kleidermacher, BlackBerry’s chief security officer, said.

“User authentication is a freakin’ nightmare in the mobile world today.  There is not yet a widespread and ubiquitous user authentication mechanism that is both strong for security and users don’t hate it."

Kleidermacer explains why the Priv does not come with a fingerprint scanner.

“The reason we haven’t put a fingerprint scanner is that if you lose your fingerprint, you’ve lost that part of your identity forever. And that’s a problem, because it’s a static picture of your finger. It’s just bits. You drop those bits, and you’re done. We’ve never put a fingerprint scanner on our devices because we think of it as a relatively weak authentication system.”

Kleidermacher argued that, if implemented poorly, it’s easy to steal those bits off of a device, or even lift the fingerprint off the actual device and use that to log into it. In short, he believes that using your fingerprint as your identity is flawed from the get-go, because it doesn’t change. Other types of biometrics, where the “password” isn’t just a static image, but rather something that is moving or changing, while still being unique to you, are “much better.”

He elaborated further.

“I’m not saying biometrics are a bad idea.  I’m saying that today, in terms of what’s available in the market ubiquitously, there is not yet one that I’ve seen that passes our muster from a security and stability perspective.”

Indeed, Kleidermacher refused to declare that BlackBerry would never include a fingerprint reader in a future device. He said that relying on a combination of a fingerprint and something else might be a reasonable tradeoff, adding that “eyepanning” technology shows tremendous promise.

He continues.  

“We are constantly evaluating biometrics in general, and when we feel satisfied that the security strengths, cost, and usability are in a sweet spot, then we would consider putting them into devices. When that will happen, and exactly what type of biometric, remains to be seen still.”

Translation: Don’t be surprised if a BlackBerry Android phone next year has some sort of biometric solution.

So, what exactly has BlackBerry added to the Priv that isn’t available in Lollipop out of the box? Quite a bit.

There’s the aforementioned DTEK and picture passwords, as well as a Password Keeper app and media card protection.   FIPS 140-2 compliant full disk encryption is on by default, and you get the S/MIME encryption protocol for digitally signing and/or encrypting messages, and of course doubly encrypted messages via BBM (though you can install BBM yourself on any Android device, assuming you still have someone to message on it).

But there are three improvements that particularly stand out on the Priv:

• Secure compound, a special BlackBerry area of firmware that runs below Android (making it immune to Android vulnerabilities) and handles operations such as validating the integrity of the Android OS itself
• Verified Boot and Secure Bootchain, which uses the embedded keys to verify every layer of the device in order to make sure they haven’t been tampered with
• Modifications to harden the Linux kernel with patches and configuration changes to improve security

The first two points we discussed earlier:  These are the two that were impossible to pull off before Lollipop came along. For the third, Kleidermacher explained that BlackBerry has made “literally thousands of changes to both the Linux kernel below Android and to Android itself for security and privacy.” Of course, if Android 6.0 was the base, the company wouldn’t have had to include as many patches.

But there’s more than just software fixes here.  Back in February 2009, BlackBerry acquired cryptography company Certicom. Ever since, BlackBerry has injected security keys into its chipsets to guarantee the “hardware root of trust.”  This is a big sell to corporations, according to Kleidermacher.

He declared.  

“How do I know that the hardware key, that the hardware root of trust, hasn’t been tampered with during the supply chain? You can’t test this with Fibs certification.  So we don’t really care where the device is being manufactured, the chipset and the injection is controlled by BlackBerry and our Certicom technology. That can give users and businesses a very high level of confidence that the root of trust for all crypto (encryption, integrity validation, and application-level security policies) is rooted in something that is truly BlackBerry secure.”

This is where it becomes very clear that BlackBerry will be selling the Priv to die-hard BlackBerry fans, sure, but it will be mainly selling it to corporations.  The Priv is meant to be Android plus BlackBerry, the best of the consumer and business worlds.  

I know this has been an lengthy explanation for why I differ with Mr. Offringa's poor review of the Priv's security.  Having said this, it is my opinion that the Priv's security is the real strength of this phone, and why security should be rated as one of its best features.  Heads of IT and enterprise users are going to love the security features of the Priv, but I think that regular users concerned with mobile app spyware and malware will love the Priv as well.  Security should be everybody's concern, so BlackBerry must communicate its security strengths when it markets the phone.  Execution will be everything. 

Performance - Performance on the Priv is great. Between the Snapdragon 808 and the 3 GB of RAM apps launched quickly, ran well, and stayed in memory for plenty of time. The device does run hot when under the stress of a game (which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering this year’s Snapdragons) and battery life definitely takes a hit.  That being said, the Priv took everything thrown at it with aplomb.  For whatever it's worth, I have the Snapdragon 800 on my non-BlackBerry smartphone, and it screams, plays video without any interruptions and the heating issue is hardly noticeable.

Audio - The front facing speaker on the Priv is great to see.  It’s not a Boom Sound speaker or anything, but it’s plenty loud for speakerphone calls or listening to music in an otherwise quiet room. I put The Beach Boys on while washing dishes and I could hear Brian and the gang perfectly well. I do wish the volume got louder with headphones, though. With headphones the audio is certainly audible, but my iPhone and the Galaxies are able to get several clicks louder.

The Bad

Pricing and Availability - The BlackBerry Priv is available right now at AT&T for $24.67 per month on a payment plan or $249.99 on a 2-year contract.  BlackBerry's CEO says the company is now negotiating with T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint to carry the Priv, but not likely to become available through those carriers until Q1 2016.   You can also buy the Priv directly from BlackBerry for $699.99.  The model from BlackBerry will work with AT&T or T-Mobile. This isn’t the best availability we’ve seen on a phone at launch.   I’m also not a huge fan of the pricing, but remember most top tier phones have been within $50 of this price point until very recently.

Battery Life - According to Droid-Life, battery life on the Priv was less than stellar. The same deficiency was reported by The Verge, CNET, Engadget and Android Authority.  TechAdvisor gave the battery good marks for longevity, but they didn't use the phone for watching videos or playing games. Like most of the phones reviewed this year, fast charging is a nice workaround for low battery life. However, you need a fast charger which costs extra.  The Priv is equipped with a very decent sized battery in it.  On Ron Offringa's first full day with the phone the battery lasted until 3:30 PM when it was around 10%.  Better results are expected of a phone whose manufacturer claims the battery can last up to 22 hours.  

I never trust the claims of the manufacturer when it comes to battery life.  They tend to exaggerate. How long the battery will last before requiring a charge depends on how you are using the phone.  If you view a lot of online videos and play games, those activities are very processor and battery intensive, and this will drain a battery twice as fast.  On the other hand, if you are just sending and receiving emails, texting, making or receiving calls, and visiting your social networks, and dont't view a lot of videos or play games, you could conceivably get 10-12 hours of usage.  

A lot of these reviewers did not operate their Privs at different types of activity and intensity of usage. In my opinion, batteries should be tested for light use, medium use and heavy use (includes watching videos and playing games).  I have a feeling that those 22 hours were based on very light usage.    

Camera - The front facing camera on the Priv is good in bright light. In anything other than bright conditions you’re going to want someone else to take your selfies for you unless you love blue/green hazes over your photos. The fact that BlackBerry shipped a front facing camera this bad in 2015 just goes to show how little they care or know about what people want in a smartphone. 

The rear facing camera on the Priv takes good shots. Pictures are sharp and clear, and colors are bright and true. The dynamic range was surprisingly good in shots where the light differed and it performs well enough in low light situations. That led to an experience a bit more akin to shooting with an actual camera and I felt like I was able to stabilize the shot better than I can if I have to push in a volume button or peck at the screen.

 
Pictures taken with the BlackBerry Priv's front-facing camera (Click Image To Enlarge)

The frustrating and ultimately disappointing part about the camera is that it is downright slow.  It takes about a full second for the shutter to activate after you press the take picture button.  

Here again, I beg to differ with Ron Offringa's bad review of the Priv's camera's.  Most of the Priv's pictures will be taken with the 18-mega pixel rear-facing camera.  As you can see from the above, the pictures are just fantastic.  I think Ron's criticism of the front-facing camera is way over the top.  I would've given the Priv a good grade for its phoos.  Shame on Ron for being so centered on selfies. Kind of tells you what this narcistic reviewer does with his smartphone camera.

Final Verdict

The Priv features a lot of really good software ideas with interesting hardware, particularly with its security and stability, but the lackluster battery life and poor camera performance make it hard to recommend to anyone but the biggest keyboard nerd.  If you don’t use your phone to take a lot of pictures and you don’t mind having to charge your phone then the Priv is worth looking at. This is heartbreaking to write because the Priv does so much so well and, most importantly, actually offers something you can’t get on any other Android phone.  

It's apparent that Ron places far too much emphasis on battery life and the camera.  Exactly what I thought he would do.  Ron entirely misses the point of the Priv.  This is not a phone targeted to Ron's Millennial generation.  It is targeted at older Generation X, younger boomers, corporations, SMB owners, and former BlackBerry users who appreciate quality construction, a "built like a tank" smartphone, with unbreakable security, a physical keyboard, good rear-facing camera and accessibility to the Android ecosystem.  If they want selfies, they will ask someone to take them using the rear-facing camera.  If you want to make egg over the battery life, I can show you several instances, where even the iPhone and Galaxy phones can suck up a battery dry in no time at all.  As a Boomer, I don't get all bent out of shape if my phone sucks up juice. I get a better battery, kill apps running in the background that I don't need, watch videos on my laptop, and drop the brightness of the display a bit. That's what I do with my ZTE ZMAX smartphone, and this works for me.  It's been a long 15-hour day, and my ZTE ZMAX is telling me I have 80% power still available.  Battery no problem. My grade 4.0 out of 5 stars.  If you don't like me review, sue me.          

Courtesy of an article dated November 2, 2015 appearing in Bloomberg, an article dated November 9, 2015 appearing in The Verge, an article dated November 6, 2015 appearing in VentureBeat, an article dated November 25, 2015 appearing in Droid-Life, an article dated November 17, 2015 appearing in Digital Trends, an article dated November 18, 2015 appearing in International Business News, an article dated November 17, 2015 appearing in ValueWalk

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GOOGLE UNVEILS NEW HUAWEI NEXUS 6P SMARTPHONE, COMPETES WITH iPHONE 6 PLUS, AVAIL LATE OCT BEGINNING AT $499

 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai gives keynote speech at the September 29 new product event held in San Francisco, CA.  

Google's biggest phone just got a bit smaller. On stage in San Francisco this morning, Google unveiled the Nexus 6P, a new version of its Nexus 6 smartphone with a slightly smaller 5.7-inch display and a completely new design. The phone is only 7.3mm thick and is supposed to be about the same overall size as the iPhone 6 Plus — that means it's fitting a slightly bigger screen into a body of about the same size. That screen, a WQHD AMOLED display, actually makes up nearly three quarters of the front of the device. Google used the event to announced the Nexus 5X, too.

 

Google is calling the Nexus 6P its "most premium phone yet." That's for a lot reasons. It's the first Nexus with an all-metal body. It includes two front-facing speakers. And it also has a fingerprint sensor on the back, placed where Google expects you to rest your finger while holding it. All you need to do is tap on the sensor with your finger, and the phone will wake up and unlock. It can also be used to authorize payments through Android Pay or in the Play Store.

The Huawei Nexus 6P smartphone will come in four color options: grey-silver, white, black and gold (Click Image To Enlarge)

But the really standout feature on the Nexus 6P, at least as Google tells it, is its camera. You'll notice that the 6P has a pretty large camera on its back, and that's because it's hiding away a 12.3-megapixel Sony sensor that features larger pixels than what you'll find on most smartphones, including the iPhone. That should allow the phone to take better photos in low-light, and that's basically what Google is saying. The camera is supposed to be optimized for indoor photography; it also features slow-motion video, 4K video, and burst mode for photos. An 8-megapixel camera is on the front.

Huawei Nexus 6P smartphone (Click Image To Enlarge)

The Nexus 6P is also switching over to USB Type-C for charging. The new reversible cable is starting to spread throughout the tech industry, and Google officially adds support for it in Marshmallow, the new version of Android that's shipping on this phone. Google says that the Nexus 6P also supports fast charging, allowing it to charge twice as fast as an iPhone 6 Plus.

Huawei Nexus 6P reverse side showing the fingerprint sensor and new USB Type-C port for faster battery charging (Click Image To Enlarge)

Though Google didn't mention it up on stage, the Nexus 6P has some high-end internals. As mentioned by Wired, the phone has a Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAM. It also includes a large 3450mAh battery.

Preorders for the Nexus 6P begin today, with device shipments beginning in late October. Pricing starts at $499 for a 32GB model, and rises up to $549 for a 64GB model and $649 for a 128GB model. It'll be available in white, silver, and black. The phone is also unlocked and supposed to work across "major carriers" — though Google didn't name explicitly which ones. Naturally, it'll work on Google's Project Fi network, too. Finally, Google is introducing an extended warranty for Nexus phones. For the Nexus 6P, it'll cost $89 and add provide two years of coverage for mechanical breakdowns and accidental damage.

Google first introduced the Nexus 6 last year in partnership with Motorola. This year, it's working with Huawei instead, which is why the Nexus 6P looks like a brand new phone, rather than a continuation of the design we saw on the original Nexus 6. It's an important move for Huawei, which has been struggling to make inroads into the US, in part due to the country's fears over Chinese spying. Google may also benefit by befriending a Chinese phone maker, as it begins to slowly reestablish itself in what's quickly becoming an enormous technology market for its competitors.

COMMENTARY:  At today's Google new product event in San Francisco it announced the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, succeeding the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 respectively. Google’s seventh-generation phones are now official.

The new Nexus 5X and Nexus 6 Plus are meant to replace the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 respectively (Click Image To Enlarge)

Nexus 5 vs Nexus 5X Side-by-Side Technical Specifications Comparison

Click Image To Enlarge

Nexus 6 vs Nexus 6P Side-by-Side Technical Specifications Comparison

Click Image To Enlarge

Courtesy of an article dated September 29, 2015 appearing in The Verge and an article dated September 29, 2015 appearing in VentureBeat

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APPLE SETS NEW RECORD, SELLS 13 MIL iPHONE 6S AND 6S PLUS OVER WEEKEND, ANDROID PHONES FIGHT OVER REMAINING SCRAPS

It’s an established fact that Android is the dominant mobile OS around the world. Estimates claim that Android owns from just over 50 percent to nearly 80 percent of the mobile device market, but Apple is winning where it counts—money. According to data released by Apple it seems the iPhone money train is still steaming along nicely with a record-breaking 13 million iPhone 6S and iPhones 6S Plus units sold in just the opening weekend.

Apple iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus side-by-side (Click Image To Enlarge)

The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus are really just getting started. On October 9 the devices will become available in 40 additional markets, including Italy, Mexico, Russia, and Spain. Apple says the new smartphones will be available in more than 130 countries by the end of the year, which means the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus sales figures will just keep climbing.

 

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said.

 “Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history.  Customers’ feedback is incredible and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos, and we can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”

Evolution of the Apple iPhone from the 5S to the huge iPhone 6S Plus (Click Image To Enlarge)

As a whole, Android will sell far more devices. The vast majority of those devices are typically Galaxy devices—which Samsung sells in massive volume. Despite outselling Apple significantly in terms of volume, though, Samsung makes a fraction of the profit that Apple does. Apple is making an estimated 92 percent of the profit in the mobile industry, followed by Samsung at a distant second with 15 percent. It adds up to more than 100 percent because the rest of the Android and other mobile device makers actually lose money according to IDC.

iPhone 5S Comparison to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus Technical Specifications (Click Image To Enlarge)

 

This isn’t a new trend either. I wrote about the discrepancy in profit in the mobile industry back in 2013:

"It turns out that two thirds of the devices that make up Android’s 81 percent market share are cheap “junk phones”. The remainder is primarily Samsung, which makes up 39.9 percent of the total Android devices shipped.

There is another area where dominant market share isn’t turning out to be an advantage for Android. In spite of a greater than six-to-one advantage in device market share, Android doesn’t sell more apps, or generate more advertising revenue than Apple."

It turns out that two thirds of the devices that make up Android’s 81 percent market share are cheap “junk phones”. The remainder is primarily Samsung, which makes up 39.9 percent of the total Android devices shipped.

There is another area where dominant market share isn’t turning out to be an advantage for Android. In spite of a greater than six-to-one advantage in device market share, Android doesn’t sell more apps, or generate more advertising revenue than Apple.

COMMENTARY:  The worldwide smartphone market grew 13.0% year over year in 2015 Q2, with 341.5 million shipments, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. This growth is primarily due to gains experienced in emerging markets such as APEJ and MEA. This quarter's shipments were slightly lower than forecast and IDC expects to see a noticeable slowdown in smartphone shipments in 2015 as China joins North America and Western Europe in a more mature growth pattern. Android dominated the market with an 82.8% share in 2015 Q2. Samsung reasserted its global leadership with a renewed focus on lower-cost smartphones.

Click Images To Enlarge

Android dominated the smartphone market with a share of 82.8%. Samsung, the #1 contributor, had lower volumes QoQ and YoY. This comes in the midst of an underwhelming performance by its flagship releases, Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. However, the Android share has seen a rise compared to 2015Q1, with strong growth in unit shipments by other players such as Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE.

iOS saw its market share for 2015Q2 decline by 22.3% QoQ with 47.5 million shipments. Despite the seasonal decline, Apple enjoyed success thanks to consumers' insatiable appetite for the larger screened iOS devices. The popularity of the iPhone 6 Plus continued in many key markets including China, where the overall smartphone market saw a revival in growth by 6.7%.

Windows Phone experienced a QoQ decline of 4.2% with a total of 8.8 million units shipped this quarter. Since its acquisition of Nokia in 2014, Microsoft has been revamping the product portfolio with Microsoft branded Lumia devices. But now that Microsoft has decided to take a loss on its Nokia purchase, the scenario for Windows Phone looks bleaker. Acer is a new entry into the top five in this segment. Most other vendors took a beating in shipments QoQ, with the exception of Samsung, which showed an 8.5% increase with its ATIV range of phones.

Blackberry OS, which saw a small increase in some regions, continued to decline in growth globally. The bulk of its volume shipments came from the Blackberry Classic.

Courtesy of an article dated September 28, 2015 appearing in Forbes, an article dated August 25, 2015 appearing in IDC and an article dated September 9, 2015 appearing in TechCrunch

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NEXTBIT'S SLEEK NEW ROBIN SMARTPHONE UTILIZES CLOUD STORAGE TO SOLVE INTERNAL STORAGE LIMITATIONS

The smartphone space is quite cluttered right now. It might not seem like it in major markets, since Apple and Samsung dominate the smartphone industry, but there are dozens of companies around the world fighting for space in consumers’ pockets. Different companies use different strategies to try to separate their products from the pack, but by and large, most companies hit the same notes. Since Samsung and Apple dominate the high end, other companies compete on price.

Nextbit Robin cloud-based smartphone (Click Image To Enlarge)

Interestingly, no smaller smartphone makers have made a real effort to break through by addressing one of smartphone users’ top pain points in a new and creative way… until now.

Meet Nextbit and its first new smartphone, the Robin, which features a delightfully unique design along with smart, innovative software at a very affordable price point.

Beginning with the scrappy startup behind the Robin, Nextbit was founded by a number of big names in the mobile space. CEO Tom Moss was formerly an executive on the Android team at Google, and he’s also a founding board member at Cyanogen. CTO Mike Chan worked as an engineer on Google’s Android team and then spent time at Motorola, and chief design and product officer Scott Croyle is the well-known name behind HTC’s One M7 and M8.

The company was founded in 2013 and counts Google Ventures and Accel Partners among its investors.

Nextbit has been buzzing over the past few months and we all knew something fun was coming, but I’m not sure anyone expected the Robin. This sleek but unassuming smartphone isn’t an iPhone killer or a Galaxy killer, and it won’t kill any other smartphones on the market. Instead, it’s a problem killer, and it has its sights set on what is constantly listed near the top of smartphone users’ chief complaints with their phones: Storage space.

How many times have you gone to capture a video on your iPhone or Android phone and seen that dreaded storage full message? How many times have you tried to transfer new movies or music to your phone ahead of a trip and had to clear out space before you were able to?

Most of us have run into issues with free storage on our phones, and that’s why storage is consistently listed along with battery life as a top complaint in studies that look to determine users’ biggest problems with their phones.

Using some cloud-based software wizardry, the Robin solves the problem of storage in a brilliantly simple way. Well, it’s simple for the end user, but it’s a wonderfully complex engineering feat behind the scenes.

Nextbit calls the Android-based Robin the word’s only “cloud-first” smartphone, and that’s an accurate description. The handset ships with 32GB of internal storage, but that memory is completely dynamic and is supported by an additional 100GB of cloud storage.

Here’s how it works: you have apps, movies, music, photos, videos and all sorts of other files on your phone, but you don’t ever need to access all of that data at once. So, when your phone is nearing its 32GB local limit, the Robin begins intelligently deleting apps and files from your device to make room for new data.

But “deleted” isn’t the right word. Everything pushed off of your device is backed up to the cloud, complete with all user data and settings. So, for example, if the Robin removes Angry Birds from your phone to clear space as you capture some video at your daughter’s soccer game, you can pull it back down from the cloud on demand and you’ll be able to pick things up right where you left off.

The Robin also learns as you use it, so apps and files you use often will be kept on the device, while other items you rarely use will be the first to be kicked off to the cloud when you need more storage.

This smart solution effectively allows Robin owners to forget about storage space and just… use their phones. And in a meeting ahead of the phone’s debut, Nextbit was careful to point out a number of times that the magic behind this innovative cloud solution was designed with data caps in mind.

Data is used as sparingly as possible, and Wi-Fi is favored heavily by Nextbit’s software. Since the handset backs up data frequently while connected to Wi-Fi, it can delete unchanged apps, videos or photos on the fly without having to back them up on the spot when a Wi-Fi network isn’t available. That said, it is not yet clear exactly how much cellular data Nextbit’s solution will use in practice.

Now, for the bad news: you can’t buy a Robin yet. The phone is slated for launch in the first quarter of 2016, but preorders went live on Kickstarter beginning September 1. The first 1,000 Robins will be made available at just $299, and then the phone will be $349 for the duration of Nextbit’s 30-day campaign. When the phone launches early next year, it will cost $399.

I spent time using an early version of the Robin and it’s safe to say I was impressed. The phone is familiar but unique, with a simple design that uses concave circles and color accents to separate itself from the pack. There is also a set of LEDs on the back to let you know when Robin’s cloud magic is working.

Then, the software is unmistakably Android. The Robin I used was running Lollipop, though the launch version may have Marshmallow. In either case, the software has a very “pure Android” look and feel that enthusiastic Android fans will love.

The Robin’s key specs can be found in the graphic below.

Nextbit Robin smartphone specifications (Click Image To Enlarge)

More information can be found on Nextbit’s Kickstarter page.

COMMENTARY:   With only three days to raise donations via Kickstarter,   With only three days to go, Nextbit has already received 3,436 pledges totally $1,286,766.  This is well in excess of its goal of raising $500,000.  Not bad for a young smartphone startup.  

In spite of this successful raise through Kickstarter, and VC investments from Google Ventures and Accell Partners, it is going to be a challenging and very difficult slog for Nextbit to establish itself as a viable alternative to the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy smartphones, who dominate the smartphone market.  

I could be wrong about this, but even at $399 per phone, Nextbit will probably lose money on every phone they make.  Nextbit must capture significant market share to generate economies of scale to get their smartphone production costs sufficiently low enough to generate decent gross profit margins.  However, the sleek and smart design and cloud-based technology of the phones definitely provide a unique value proposition that might attract some buyers to the company.  

Disadvantages of the phone include its minimal display and camera resolutions, but somewhat faster processor speed.  The Robin battery can also more than holds its own against the iPhone 6S and Galaxy S6.

• Display
• Robin:  5.2" IPS 1080p
• iPhone 6S:  4.7" IPS 1334 x 750 - 326ppi
• Samsung Galaxy S6:  5.1" Amoled 2560 x 1440 - 577ppi
• Camera
• Robin:  5MP
• iPhone 6S:  12MP
• Samsung Galaxy S6:  16MP
• Processor
• Robin: Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 64-bit 2.0Ghz quadcore
• iPhone 6S:  64-bit 1.8Ghz dual core
• Samsung Galaxy S6:  64-bit 2.1Ghz octacore       

Courtesy of an article dated September 1, 2015 appearing in BGR and an article dated September 10, 2015 appearing in Gizmag and Qualcomm Series 800 Snapdragon processor comparisons

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A 2-MINUTE GUIDE TO APPLE’S RECENT PRODUCT UNVEILINGS: NEW IPHONE 6S, IPAD PRO, APPLE TV AND APPLE WATCH

YOUR 2-MINUTE GUIDE TO THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS APPLE ANNOUNCED AT THEIR NEW PRODUCT UNVEILING ON SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

The iPhone 6s is here. And it brought with it several bigger cousins.

As expected, Apple unveiled the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus today at its annual fall product launch event in San Francisco. Despite their familiar looks, the phones sport a new aluminum exterior, new colors, and a new feature called 3D Touch (essentially Force Touch for the iPhone). 3D Touch allows the phone to recognize the degree of force being used in touch gestures—a mini-tap vs. a full tap, for instance—and respond accordingly. While navigating the iOS interface, 3D Touch can serve as a new sort of "right click" functionality, calling up menus and allowing users to preview content from outside of a given app. It also opens up new possibilities for playing (and developing) mobile games.

The iPhone 6s will ship with Apple's new A9 chip, which promises to be 70% faster than the A8 chip found in the iPhone 6.

As expected, both phones are getting camera upgrades. The iSight camera now packs 12 megapixels and shoots super high-def 4K video. Meanwhile, the front-facing FaceTime camera is now at 5 megapixels and has a front-facing flash. Apple is also debuting a new feature called Live Photos, which turns still photos into mini-animations.

Click Image To Enlarge

As usual, both new iPhone models start at 16 GB (somewhat surprising, considering the growing footprint of iOS and the amount of extra space Live Photos must eat up) and come in 64 GB and 128 GB models. The pricing of the new phones is the same as that of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: The iPhone 6s starts at $199 (16 GB) and ranges up to $399 (128 GB), while the 6s Plus starts at $299 (16 GB) and gets as pricey as $499 (128 GB). And for the first time, Apple is offering an upgrade plan that lets users buy unlocked phones and upgrade them every year, starting at $32/month.

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will be available for pre-orders on September 12 and start shipping September 25. Meanwhile, iOS 9 will be available for download on September 16th.

 

iPhone 6s and 6s Plus specs: 

• A9 chip (3rd generation 64-bit chip) 
• 3D Touch 
• 12 MP iSight camera
• 4K video support 
• 5 MP FaceTime HD camera
• Live Photos 
• Stronger cover glass
• 2nd generation Touch ID

Apple Overhauls The Apple TV

Apple also gave an overdue refresh to the Apple TV. Most crucially, the set-top box will now support third-party apps.

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook before unveiling the new Apple TV said. 

"Our vision for TV is simple, and perhaps a little provocative.  We believe the future of television is apps."

The device also has a redesigned remote, which includes a touch pad and can be used as a game controller. As predicted, the device now also supports Siri voice control. It will ship with universal search, which will allow users to search for content across apps like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, and Showtime.

Click Image To Enlarge

While the overall user interface looks very familiar, the functionality of the Apple TV appears poised to change substantially, thanks to the integration of Siri and universal search. For instance, viewers can ask Siri for a specific episode of a specific show, or even an episode guest-starring a particular actor. As is typically the case with Apple, the name of the game here is usability. And with this update to Apple TV, the company is taking its most sincere crack yet at the fractured, imperfect design of Internet-based television and movie watching.

The Apple TV operating system now has a name: tvOS. The new OS, which Eddy Cue says is "based on iOS and built for the living room," also has a new suite of software development kit to let developers build new TV apps, including games—a use case Apple is pushing pretty hard, given how popular games have proven to be on the iPad and iPhone.

Apple also partnered with MLB to create new Apple TV-specific sports apps, promising to help scratch an itch often cited by those hesitant to cut the cord from cable. But the Apple TV won't be limited to video content, music, and games. Shopping app Gilt also demoed its upcoming Apple TV app on stage at today's event, and Cue mentioned the impending arrival of an Airbnb app on the Apple TV.

 

The new Apple TV, which comes in 32GB and 64GB versions, will ship in late October.

Apple TV specs:

• Redesigned remote control featuring a touchpad, accelerometer, and gyroscope
• Siri voice control
• Developer kit and third-party app store 
• Universal, cross-app video search 
• tvOS operating system
• Bluetooth 4.0 
• 64 bit A8 chip

Apple's New iPad Pro Tablet Offers Desktop Performance, Huge 13-inch Retina Display and Built-In Apple Pencil Stylus

Click to view a video of the new Apple iPad Pro

As expected, Apple previewed the latest addition to its tablet lineup as well: the iPad Pro. It sports a 12.9-inch screen with 5.6 million pixels, which is a higher resolution than the display on the MacBook Pro with Retina. Its new A9X chip promises "desktop class performance" that is faster than 80% of portable PCs on the market. The iPad Pro will ship in November.

For the first time, an iOS device will have a physical keyboard. In addition to a case that includes a keyboard, the iPad Pro will also support the Apple Pencil, the first Apple-built stylus for an iOS device. The Apple Pencil can be charged using the iPad Pro's lightning connector port. Both the iPad Pencil and the keyboard ship separately as add-on accessories.

 

The launches of iPad Pro and Apple Pencil present new opportunities for developers. One early partners is Microsoft, which shared the stage with Apple to show off new productivity features in Office for iPad. Apps like Word and Excel have been fine-tuned to work specifically with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

 

The iPad Pro comes with a built-in digital keyboard, but this lacks the feel of a physical keyboard, so Apple is offering an optional keyboard called the Smart Keyboard which serves as a protective case for the iPad Pro and folds out into a stand and full-size keyboard with sensitive touch keys.

Speaking of Apple rivals, Apple has also been working with Adobe to build apps for the iPad Pro. Adobe announced Photoshop Fix, a new app that was built for the iPad Pro first. Eric Snow, the director of design for mobile apps at Adobe, demoed how Fix can work with other Adobe mobile apps like Comp and Sketch, which have been custom-tweaked for the iPad Pro as well. The new iPad-only Adobe workflow will be available in October. TypeKit fonts are now available on a mobile device for the first time.

Apple also added the iPad Mini 4 ($400), which is essentially the iPad Air 2 but smaller. The iPad Mini 2 is now available for $269.

Click Image To Enlarge

iPad Pro specs:

• 12.9 inch screen ("The biggest we've ever built in an iOS device," says Phil Schiller)
• The display sports 5.6 million pixels 
• A9X chip (double the memory bandwidth and 2x faster storage performance of the previous chip, the A8X) 
• 10 hours of battery life. 
• Four-speaker audio system with 3 times the audio volume of the iPad Air 2. 
• 6.9 millimeters thick (vs. the iPad Air 2 at 6.1mm)
• New cover that has a built-in physical keyboard
• Apple Pencil, the first Apple-built stylus for an iOS device
• Touch ID
• 8 megapixel iSight camera
• Up to 150 mbps LTE connectivity
• Comes in silver, gold, and grey

The New Apple Watch OS2

Before beefing up its lineup across bigger screens, Apple gave a quick update on the Apple Watch, which now boasts over 10,000 apps, including new additions like Facebook Messenger and a GoPro app. The company also announced new watch bands and product designs, including a strap co-created with Hermes. The Apple Watch will come in two new finishes: rose gold and gold, both in anodized aluminum. There are also new Sport models available, which start shipping today.

Click Image To Enlarge

Apple is also pushing the medical use cases for Apple Watch pretty hard. Apple invited Dr. Cameron Powell to demo an app called AirStrip, which promises to "change how doctors interact with their patients." Doctors can view live feeds of patients' medical data (including their heart rate), as well as their schedules, using the AirStrip app for Apple Watch.

Watch OS 2 will be available for download on September 16.

  

COMMENTARY:  

Apple Is A Great Copycat, But Did They Improve Anything?

It used to be that Apple was, without a doubt, considered the king of innovation. Steve Jobs delivered products that changed our lives. Think: iMac. Think: iPhone. Think Different–-you get the gist.

Apple events nowadays, however, are known as much for innovation as they are for copycatting. And yesterday's annual September iPhone event included several products that—while they may still be on my Christmas list—look awfully familiar.

It could be argued, of course, that Apple can only iterate on their own devices so much each year. And as Jobs biographer Rick Tetzeli pointed out, it took a quarter century to move from the personal computer to the mobile computer, and it could take just as long before we see the next major breakthrough. This shifts the debate from being about whether or not Apple ought to be copying the hard work of others (and to be fair, plenty of companies have copied from Apple over the years) to a more salient question: Whose product does it best?

APPLE PENCIL (SEPTEMBER 2015) VS FIFTYTHREE PENCIL (NOVEMBER 2013)

The name alone caused a flurry of Twitter outrage among the techno-savvy hipster artist elite. Apple outright lifted the "Pencil" name from, well, a real pencil—but that wasn't the issue. There's an existing stylus with that same name, FiftyThree’s much-praised Pencil.

Is Apple’s reinvention better?

Apple’s Pencil, judging from the demos during the keynote, is impressive. There's a virtually undetectable latency–-the time between when you begin pressing the Pencil to the screen and the time the iPad knows you’re doing this. But besides this latency improvement, Apple's Pencil itself doesn’t actually offer any noticeable drawing features that FiftyThree’s Pencil doesn’t. Both detect varying degrees of pressure to create thick or thin lines, both allow you to draw with the point of the tip or with the tip at an angle.

Apple’s hardware design does, however, seem to have some improved benefits when it comes to power. Apple’s Pencil plugs into a Lightning port for charging. FiftyThree’s Pencil requires you to take the battery out and plug it into a USB port. Also, it’s impressive that you can charge Apple’s Pencil for only 15 seconds and get 30 minutes' worth of use from it. Then again, Apple’s Pencil only lasts for 12 hours per charge, while FiftyThree’s Pencil lasts for up to 90 days–-that’s handy if you're sitting in a field sketching sunflowers for days at a time. Also in FiftyThree’s court: Its Pencil has an eraser at the other end. Apple’s Pencil? Nope.

As far as cosmetic design, Apple’s Pencil is what you would expect: a cold-looking sliver of white plastic (Steve Jobs might use it to impale himself if he saw it). FiftyThree’s Pencil, on the other hand, while trying a bit too hard to appeal to the Brooklyn hipster, at least offers a few varieties such as a nice black, brushed aluminum to give you more style options.

Engadget spoke with over a dozen professional artists, illustrators and designers to gauge the reaction to the new Apple Pencil stylus. Many use styli in their everyday workflows through options including dedicated Wacom graphic tablets, all-in-one solutions like the Surface series or capacitive options like FiftyThree's Pencil for iPad -- and they've got a lot to say about Apple's entry into the market.

An illustrator working at architecture studio Foster + Partners, who asked not to be named due to the firm's work on Apple's new headquarters. 

"I've tried [Wacom's capacitive] Bamboo stylus on my iPad and it was rubbish. This looks much better.  I can't see using it for sketching, though, because it's missing the software. The iPad versions of Adobe's Creative Suite aren't as good. ... I'd rather buy the [Wacom] Cintiq, and have full Photoshop with a sensitive pad."

Mike Messina, senior UX/UI designer at [Engadget's parent company] AOL says.

"It (Apple Pencil) doesn't look to have many practical applications in terms of a professional   design tool as it's not possible to use full Creative Suite and other industry-standard applications on a tablet device." 

Messina uses a Wacom professional tablet and stylus for his work in combination with Adobe apps like Illustrator and Photoshop.  He says.

"I don't think [the Pencil] compares to traditional [graphics] tablets and is more of an expensive toy -- albeit a nice one."

Although Apple's dedicated developer community will undoubtedly create great apps that support the Pencil, the chances of these apps being useful for more than the average consumer are low. Many creative industries are entrenched in Adobe software, while other studios, such as Disney, have their own tools like Meander, the program that was used for the Oscar-winning short Paperman. Adobe's apps for iOS are useful for certain tasks, and they will sync through Creative Cloud to the regular desktop apps, making the iPad Pro a potentially useful companion device.

Artist/illustrator Dennis de Groot explains. 

"Where I could see a big advantage is in this replacing my sketchbook.  I like to go around the city and have a coffee while sketching out new ideas. The hassle with that is that I'm always carrying a variety of pens, pencils, rulers, a sketchbook, a lightpad, etc. If it's as accurate as said, this could potentially replace that whole bag of tools for me."

Winner: Close call, but FiftyThree did it first and offers a better design–-and that eraser.

APPLE SMART KEYBOARD (SEPTEMBER 2015) VS MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO TYPE COVER (FEBRUARY 2013)

Apple’s got a bold tagline on the page announcing their new Smart Keyboard page: "The only thing we didn’t reinvent was the alphabet."

Eh, that’s not exactly true. I mean they didn’t reinvent the other fabric covered tablet keyboards that came before this one. Microsoft’s Surface Pro Type Cover is the most obvious example. That keyboard cover has been around for years and works exceptionally well as both a keyboard and a cover for a tablet. That’s not to say Apple’s new Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro won’t work just as well, it’s just not super innovative (though it is welcome to finally have an Apple-sanctioned keyboard cover).

Winner: The Microsoft Surface Pro Type Cover. Apple, talk to us when you add some kind of trackpad so we can slide the text cursor around the screen inside word processing apps.

SIRI REMOTE (SEPTEMBER 2015) VS WII CONTROLLER (NOVEMBER 2006) VS FIRE TV REMOTE (APRIL 2014)

Look, I’m a HUGE fan of the Apple TV. Matter of fact, after my iPhone it’s probably the most-used Apple device I own. I’m immensely excited about the new Apple TV, its games, and its new remote that includes voice control. But I’ve seen most of its features in other products before.

The new Apple TV remote–-officially called the Siri remote-–features a glass touch surface across the top with physical buttons below it. Apple does deserve props for the glass touch surface, that is truly innovative on a television remote. However, two other big features of the Siri Remote–-Siri voice control and its use as a gesture-based game controller—are something we’ve seen before.

First, Amazon’s Fire TV has had voice control for a while now. You can press its mic button and speak what you want to watch. That being said, Fire TV's voice controlled remote only searches across the Amazon Instant Video library, while Apple's new remote will crawl across all apps and channels—including HBO, Hulu, Netflix, and Showtime—for what you want to watch.

As a game controller, the Apple TV has clearly borrowed from almost every other digital media player as well as games consoles, including the Roku and Wii. It’s still cool, just not original.

Winner: The new Apple TV and its Siri Remote beats what came before it. The fact Siri can handle more advanced commands other than simple movie search queries, such as fast-forward and check the weather, makes Apple the innovator in this department.

LIVE PHOTOS (SEPTEMBER 2015) VS GIFS (1987)

Apple managed to keep one small iPhone feature from getting leaked: the introduction of Live Photos on the iPhone 6s. Live Photos are pictures that automatically record a few seconds on each side of the still frame. When viewing the picture on your iPhone 6s it looks like a still image until you force-touch it. Then it comes to life.

Sure, this is a pointless eye-candy feature—but it’s one that I think offers surprise and delight. Of course, that’s not to say Apple has innovated here. I mean, wizards have had this technology for a long time. And seriously, CompuServe beat Apple to the animated GIF by about, oh, 38 years.

Winner: I’m going to say GIFs, because some can keep me laughing for hours. Then again, GIFs generally are low-res and don’t look anything close to as beautiful as the Live Photos the iPhone 6s allows you to take.

APPLE WATCH (SEPTEMBER 2015) VS A WATCH (1570S)

Apple began its iPhone event by showing off the latest iteration of the most expensive iPhone accessory ever: the Apple Watch. Though it didn’t unveil the Apple Watch 2 (that’s likely for 2016) it did unveil some pretty cool new anodized aluminum color options: gold and rose gold.

The Apple Watch is no doubt a computing marvel and it deserves its praise-–but I mean really, is it better than a regular watch? Take Storm watches, for example: They’re beautiful, come in a wide array of colors and materials, and have more band options than you could ever need–-and they, you know, tell the time exceptionally well while featuring a battery that lasts for years.

The Apple Watch is a great, tiny computer, but as far as a timekeeping piece? I like my watches to keep on ticking without needing to be recharged every 18 hours.

Winner: Regular watches.

Courtesy of an article dated September 9, 2015 appearing in Fast Company, an article dated September 10, 2015 appearing in Fast Company and an article dated September 10, 2015 appearing in Engadget

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THE RISE OF CHINA'S SMARTPHONE MAKERS: APPLE NOW #1, SAMSUNG IS BIG LOSER DROPPING TO #4, XIAOMI AND HUAWEI NOW #2 AND #3

After Apple and Samsung, which companies are selling the most smartphones around the globe?

If you guessed a growing group of Chinese smartphone manufacturers, you would be correct.

Most Americans know little about the emerging Chinese smartphone makers, let alone how to pronounce some of their names. Most of these handsets are unlikely to be seen in use by U.S. customers, at least for now.

Yet, these Chinese companies, with names like Huawei, Xiaomi, Coolpad, Lenovo, ZTE, and even Alcatel (which is now part of TCL Corp., a Chinese electronics company) are having a big impact both inside China and in emerging economies.

These companies mostly sell unlocked smartphones that run the Android mobile operating system. They usually charge much lower off-contract prices than Apple and Samsung, and they're beginning to challenge some of the world's traditional smartphone makers.

Huawei Ascent P7 smartphone (Click Image To Enlarge)

Globally, Huawei of Shenzhen, China, was the No. 3 smartphone maker in terms of revenue in the third quarter of 2014. Huawei was well behind Apple and Samsung, but in a virtual tie with LG Electronics of Seoul, South Korea, according to Infonetics Research.

While Apple and Samsung are still the smartphone sales leaders worldwide, Chinese vendors such as Huawei and Lenovo are growing in influence.

The worldwide smartphone market kicked off the year with an expected post-holiday dispersion in shipment volume compared to the previous quarter's unprecedented results. According to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 334.4 million smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15), up 16.0% from the 288.3 million units in 1Q14 but down by 11.4% from the 377.6 million units shipped in 4Q14. Android dominated the market with a 78.0% share in 1Q15. Samsung reasserted its global lead with a renewed focus on lower-cost smartphones.

 

Click Image To Enlarge

Meanwhile, market research firm IDC reported that for Q1 2015 Apple was No 1 (14.5 million units), newcomer Xiaomi, which is based in Beijing, shipped the second-most smartphones (13.5 million units) to retailers. Xiaomi was just ahead of Huawei No 3 (11.2 million units), also based in Beijing. Samsung took the biggest hit at the expense of Xiaomi and Huawei dropping from No 1 in Q1 2014 (20.5 million units) to No 4 in Q1 2015 (9.6 million units, down 55% YOY).  Lenovo (formerly Motorola), like Samsung, dropped from No 2 in Q1 2014 (10.5 million units) to No 5 in Q1 2015 (8.2 millin units down 22.1% YOY)  Xiaomi's smartphone shipments jumped an amazing 42.3% year over year, reaching 13.5 million units, according to IDC.

In China, privately-backed tech start-up Xiaomi has trounced Apple, Samsung and all others to retain its spot as the most popular smartphone vendor in the country during the first quarter of 2015. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Out of the top 17 smartphone makers globally in the Q3 2014, 10 were based in China, according to Strategy Analytics. Xiaomi ranked third in total production, and Huawei ranked fifth. The rest of the Chinese group in Strategy Analytics' top 17 included Lenovo, ZTE, TCL Alcatel, Lenovo (formerly Motorola under Google), Coolpad, Oppo, Vivo, Micromax and Tionee.

Ken Hyers, an analyst at Strategy Analytics, said.  

"The Chinese vendors are absolutely having an impact on many smartphone brands that have to compete with low-cost Chinese smartphones," 

John Byrne, an analyst at Infonetics, added. 

"People in the U.S. don't even know who these Chinese companies are,  I was just in China recently, and you see phones in use with labels I'm not even familiar with.  It was an eye-opener. Especially in Asia, there's a much larger variety of phones in use and not the duopoly of Samsung and Apple that we have in the U.S."

Can you say 'She-ow me'?

The third-largest smartphone maker, Xiaomi (pronounced she-ow me), was founded in 2010 by a group of tech-savvy entrepreneurs that included Jun Lei, the company's chairman and CEO, and Bin Lin, its president. Xiaomi's global division is headed by Hugo Barra, who joined in 2013 after working as president of Android product management at Google.

Its first smartphone, an Android device called the Xiaomi Mi1, was announced in 2011.  Since then, the company has produced several smartphones and a tablet, the MiPad, announced in 2014.

The private company had $5.5 billion in revenues for the first six months of 2014. Xiaomi is the Mandarin Chinese word for "millet," or literally "little" (Xiao) "rice" (mi). But the name also links "Xiao" to "mi," the latter possibly short for "mobile Internet" or even "mission impossible," according to comments attributed to Jun, the CEO. He also has connected "Xiao" to a Buddhist belief that a single grain of rice is as great as a mountain.

A long-term threat?

Are these Chinese companies a threat to the established phone makers? They probably aren't a threat to Apple, which still holds a secure spot in the high end with its iPhone, but Chinese manufacturers do pose a threat to many other well-known smartphone makers, even powerhouse Samsung.

Some Chinese-made smartphones are sold at $100 to $200 without a carrier contract (compared to more than $600 for an iPhone 6), which puts several traditional manufacturers on guard.

Ramon Llamas, an IDC analyst, said. 

"You'll never find Apple in the $100 off-contract range, but Samsung has tried some entry-level phones while Chinese vendors have included top-end specs and still reduced their prices to gain market share.  That move has pushed Samsung back on their heels."

Llamas said low-priced Chinese-made smartphones do indeed represent a threat to some manufacturers.  He said.  

"It's just a question of how long Chinese manufacturers can seek volume sales over profit.  It's harder to compete on the lower end. Knowing how costly it is to manufacture a smartphone, I wouldn't be surprised if some vendors are losing their shirts."

Even in the U.S., Samsung is less able to sell a midpriced smartphone off-contract, Hyers said. For example, he pointed out that the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini would cost around $250 without a contract and said consumers would be more likely to choose a low-priced Chinese device that can cost $150 and has the basic features that many buyers want. In the U.S., customers are skipping midpriced phones and buying either premium smartphones, like the iPhone 6 or the LG G3, or low-cost, entry-level or near-entry-level devices, like the Moto G or the Lumia 500.

Hyers said.

"Midtier devices are not selling well at all in the U.S..  Market dynamics really favor higher quality and very competitively priced smartphones from Chinese vendors."

Noting that TCL Alcatel offers French design sense along with low-cost Chinese manufacturing, he added. 

"ZTE is really gaining U.S. market share along with TCL Alcatel." 

China's advantages

Chinese smartphone manufacturers have an advantage over other phone makers in the global market in part because low-cost labor keeps their manufacturing costs down. But the cost of labor isn't the only factor.

For smartphone sales within their home country, Chinese manufacturers don't pay the patent and intellectual property royalties they would pay for sales in other countries because of lax government IP regulation, analysts said. Every handset made typically comes with scores of different IP royalties that are paid to various companies for network, hardware and software functionality, and those fees can add $20 to $40 to the cost of a device on top of the cost of parts and assembly, Hyers said. Stripping out most of that cost can help keep smartphone prices down in China's enormous market. And that, in turn, enables those vendors produce phones in higher volumes at lower costs.

For its part, Xiaomi aims to sell phones at just above the cost of parts and assembly and it keeps models on the market for around 18 months, instead of the usual six months favored other producers, according to comments made by Xiaomi CEO Jun. As that longer selling period progresses, the cost of components can fall, leading to higher profits. Like other smartphone makers, Xiaomi also sells phone accessories and software. The company relies on original sales from its own online store, and it puts a strong emphasis on advertising on social networks.

Xiaomi recently ran into trouble over intellectual property royalties when it tried to expand outside its home turf into India. On Dec. 11, the company said it halted sales in India due to a patent dispute with Swedish network equipment maker Ericsson.

If the patent dispute is resolved in India, Xiaomi will likely be forced to pay royalties, since it's a young company and has a relatively small patent portfolio. Companies that compete with Xiaomi and other Chinese smartphone makers might resort to using patent litigation to help stem the growth of Chinese vendors outside of China, analysts theorized.

For the third quarter, smartphone production volumes within China itself clearly favored Chinese vendors, leaving South Korea's Samsung as the only non-Chinese vendor in the top five. Xiaomi finished first, followed in order by Samsung, Lenovo, Huawei and Coolpad, according to Strategy Analytics and other analyst firms.

China's fit in the global smartphone market

Chinese smartphone makers clearly have a leg up in their own country, which by its sheer size has the largest smartphone market potential of any nation.

With a population of 1.35 billion, China is the world's largest country. It exceeds the U.S. population of 316 million by a factor of four. China has 160 cities with 1 million or more people, compared to 10 of that size or larger in the U.S.

In the third quarter, nearly one-third of all smartphones shipped by all vendors went to China, IDC said. In fact, China received 105 million of the 327 million smartphones shipped globally in the quarter. Outside of their home country, Chinese smartphone brands accounted for 13% of all global shipments, up from 9% a year earlier. That uptick is an indication of the growth expected for sales of Chinese smartphones outside of China in coming years.

Of course, 13% of the global market might not sound like much when you take into account the fact that it's spread across several Chinese vendors. But it's the specter of what's coming in the next year or two that has some competitors restless. Lenovo, which is top in PCs globally, is expected to be more aggressive in the smartphone market in the U.S. and other countries now that it owns the Motorola brand.

Motorola MotoG 2nd Generation smartphone (Click Image To Enlarge)

Google sold the Motorola handset division to Lenovo earlier this year after putting its imprint on the technology. A recent result of that effort was the 5-in. display second-generation Moto G smartphone with a quad-core processor that goes after the lower-cost segment so favored by Chinese vendors. An 8GB version sells for $180 unlocked and off-contract on Amazon.com.

Hyers called the Moto G "an amazing value in a smartphone."

ZTE ZMAX smartphone (Click Image To Enlarge)

Other Chinese smartphones are sold by U.S. carriers, but few get much attention from U.S.-based reviewers and they aren't well advertised. T-Mobile, for example, carries the ZTE ZMAX, which runs Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and boasts a big 5.7-in. display, a Snapdragon quad-core processor and a 3400 mAh battery for $252 before rebate.

Buying an unlocked, off-contract Chinese smartphone on the Web to use with a U.S. carrier could prove to be a disappointment, however. That's because not all the wireless spectrum characteristics of a given smartphone will match up with a carrier's available spectrum.

Xiaomi RedRice smartphone (Click Image To Enlarge)

In one example, an unlocked Xiaomi RedRice smartphone with a 4.7-in. display was selling recently on eBay for $160 . While it is listed as working worldwide on GSM and WCDMA networks, a Verizon Wireless representative said that even though Verizon has a CDMA network, there could be no upfront guarantee that the phone would be compatible with Verizon's service. It's possible to run an online test for compatibility, but that requires having the device available to run the test.

Growth potential for Chinese smartphone vendors

There's little doubt that smartphones made in China will affect the global market for years. Their biggest impact today is in helping drive down prices, but whether Chinese manufacturers can sustain lower prices and still make profits in the future remains to be seen.

Chinese manufacturers typically operate in the range of 2% to 4% profitability, but the question is how long that will be enough.  Hyers said.  

"At a certain point, I'd think they'd like to be more profitable."

Hyers said.

"In recent years, Apple, Samsung and LG have captured the lion's share of the smartphone industry's profits, while the rest of the vendors are just scraping by.  That leaves the Chinese vendors best-positioned to continue to make it on 2% to 4% profits."

Also, while economists talk of China's overall economic slowdown going into 2015, that nation's economy is still expected to grow by about 7% in 2015, down from as much as 15% in recent years. And even at 7%, China's economic growth rate is still well above those of the U.S. and other countries, and the decline is seen as having little impact on the ability of Chinese smartphone makers to produce devices, analysts said.

Some of the biggest growth markets for smartphones will continue to be in India, Indonesia and Thailand, partly as a result of sales of Chinese and Samsung smartphones. Those countries are expected to see 55% smartphone growth in all of 2014 compared with 2013, IDC said. Meanwhile, smartphone growth in all of North America will be much lower, in the 25% range. Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa are expected to see the highest smartphone growth, at 78% over the prior year, partly due to the influence of the low-cost Chinese smartphone ecosystem, IDC said.

China itself will see 11% growth in 2014 for all smartphones, down from recent years. That slowdown has helped spur a desire by Chinese vendors to expand to other markets.

And now, the losers

Who are the potential losers in a scenario that includes continued steady performance by Chinese smartphone makers? HTC, based in Taiwan, might be the most vulnerable, but other companies under threat include a range of international smartphone makers such as Microsoft, with the Lumia brand it acquired when it bought Nokia, as well as BlackBerry, among others.

Even Samsung saw a big drop in third-quarter profits, much of it due to the impact of cheaper Chinese smartphones. Samsung's global smartphone market share dropped to less than 25% in the third quarter, down from nearly 30% a year earlier, Hyers noted.  He said.  

"Part of that [Samsung] drop is due to the midtier market shrinking and the more competitive threat in the entry-level market."

The irony of the low-cost smartphone

While low-cost smartphones, mainly from Chinese companies, are a driving force in the global market, there is still plenty of consumer lust for higher-priced products like the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy devices.

Byrne asked in an interview.

"How far can we take this low-price trend? Are Apple and Samsung doomed?  The answer is no. There's still real cachet around the iPhone. The Apple Store, even in Shanghai, is still as crowded as ever. There's certainly an appetite for these high-end phones and still status associated with an iPhone and with a Galaxy, to a lesser extent. People will still spend money on high-end phones."

Byrne said there's an interesting connection between the two groups of devices.

"There's an argument made that lower-end phones get people into buying smartphones and that [those people] will still have iPhone envy," Byrne said. "In that way, the lower-priced models become the gateway drug of smartphones."

COMMENTARY:   User growth in the world’s largest smartphone market is slowing. That’s according to IDC estimates of Q1 2015 smartphone shipments. Despite this, Apple has managed to grab the top spot in terms of Q1 market share in the country.

The firm is measuring shipments and not ultimate sales to Chinese consumers. Nonetheless, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have powered significant growth for Apple around the world. Beyond Apple only home-grown Chinese brands (Xiaomi, Huawei) grew, while Samsung and others saw year over year declines according to IDC.

Click Image To Enlarge

The slowing is driven by “reduced operator subsidies” and by the fact that there are relatively few mobile subscribers in China left to upgrade to smartphones.

Analyst estimates put Chinese smartphone penetration at roughly 90 percent. This may be an aggressive estimate but other third party sources also assert there are already nearly 1.3 billion mobile phones in a country of roughly 1.4 billion people.

China now becomes a market for brand and OS switching. IDC also argues that we’ll see more aggressive expansion by Xiaomi and Huawei outside China as the Chinese market sees only modest to flat growth this year.

Back in the US enterprise and public sector markets, the iPhone 6 made up 26 percent of all activations reported by Good Technology in its Q1 Mobility Index Report. Apple retained its overall leadership position with 72 percent in Q1. However that was down a point, while “Android ticked up 1 percent to 26 percent.”

When it comes to tablets, Apple had an 81 percent activation share in the first quarter. But this represented a drop of 11 percent since Q1 2014. Android and Windows Surface tablets have both gained, with Android Q1 activations at 15 percent and Windows at 4 percent.

The data are aggregated from Good Technology’s worldwide customer base.

Apple and Samsung combined to control 28 of the top 30 device spots in the Mobility Index. According to Good, iOS has not dropped below 70 percent market share since the introduction of the iPhone 6.

Courtesy of an article dated December 30, 2014 appearing in CIO, an article dated May 11, 2015 appearinig in MarketingLand, and an article appearing in IDC

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RUMOR: BLACKBERRY ABOUT TO LAUNCH A NEW ANDROID PHONE, WILL BE SOLD THROUGH AT&T IN THE FALL 2015

We've expected for a month or so that BlackBerry is working on an Android phone with a "dual curved display" that slides up to reveal a physical keyboard underneath. It is supposedly based on a device that was originally announced at Mobile World Congress back in March, and back then the best image we had to go off of was a low-resolution snapshot of the device being held up on stage. Now, Evan Blass (aka @evleaks) has posted a high-resolution render of the device, codenamed Venice, to Twitter.

The BlackBerry Android Phone high-resolution image (top) and a BlackBerry phone with slider keyboard (bottom) (Click Images To Enlarge

It reveals the aforementioned display, curved at the sides like the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. There's a speaker at the bottom, and if you look closely at the last photo you can see that the basic design mostly matches up. It looks as though BlackBerry has chosen to excise dedicated Send and End keys — presumably because the device is now going to run Android instead of BlackBerry 10. It also seem possible that there's still a keyboard scurried away underneath that screen. The one other notable thing about Blass' image is that it has Google app icons strewn about — which should mean that it has full access to Google's suite of apps and services. Blass also claims that the Venice will be coming to AT&T.

Last month, Reuters originally reported that BlackBerry would make the switch to Android. If this render proves accurate (and Blass has a long history of posting accurate leaks), it might well be coming soon. It's been a very long time since there's been a decent Android device with a physical keyboard and an even longer time since there's been a vertical sliding phone with a physical keyboard. If BlackBerry pulls this off and actually releases something good, a lot of old Palm Pre fans are going to be pretty happy.

A leaked render of BlackBerry's upcoming "Venice" slider phone shows the device running Lollipop, instead of BlackBerry's own BlackBerry 10 OS. There have been rumors that BlackBerry was working on an Android powered device, but until now we had no idea just how that would look. One of the most notable things about the render that surfaced is the apparent inclusion of Google Apps on the device. This would mean that BlackBerry worked with Google to have the device pass Google's Compatibility Test Suite, instead of just forking an Android version that didn't include the services.

Specs for the alleged "Venice" popped up on N4BB a couple of weeks ago, calling it a slider with a 5.4-inch screen, 18MP rear camera and 1.8GHz Hexa-core CPU. According to Blass, the Venice will run Android, and is coming to AT&T first.

COMMENTARY:  This unconfirmed move to Android not only signifies BlackBerry’s disappointment with its own operating system but also a new focus for the company, which now wants to “focus on software and device management.” BlackBerry’s BES12 enterprise device management software works with all devices, and a first party Android handset would be a good way to show some of those capabilities.

When contacted for comment by Reuters, the company said it wouldn’t comment on rumors, and that it stood behind its own BlackBerry 10 operating system “which provides security and productivity benefits that are unmatched.”

With a barely discernable market share across the world, there’s little that BlackBerry could do to make its situation worse, and this possible bet on Android might just pay off.

Worldwide Smartphone Market Shares by OS Platform - Q1 2015 (Click Image To Enlarge)

This BlackBerry android phone is just a rumor since BlackBerry has refused to confirm or even comment on such a move.  Unfortunately, if true this switch over to Android comes about three years t00 late.  In a previous blog post January 23, 2012, I strongly recommended that BlackBerry come out with an Android phone in order to stop the hemorrage of customers abandoning BlackBerry for iOS and Android phone makers like Apple and Samsung.  At that time Android had over 300,000 apps.  That number is now well over 1 million, with Apple about the same.    

Courtesy of an article dated July 3, 2015 appearing in The Verge, an article dated June 12, 2015 appearing in Neowin, an article dated June 11, 2015 appearing in AndroidCentral, and an article dated May 6, 2015 appearing in MacRumors

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HOW STEVE JOBS GOT STARTED -- THE LIFE OF APPLE'S FOUNDER [INFOGRAPHIC]

Steve Jobs unveiling the first Apple iPhone before an amazed audience (Click Image To Enlarge)

If you would like to catchup on the life of Steve Jobs, this interesting infographic captures it all.

Click Image To Enlarge

Courtesy of Anna Vital appearing in Visually

APPLE NO1 SMARTPHONE VENDOR IN CHINA IN Q1 2015, 14.5 MIL iPHONES SOLD, CHINA SMARTPHONE SALES DOWN 4.3%

Consumers in China -- the world's largest smartphone market -- hit the pause button during the first quarter, and that has implications for how companies like Apple and Samsung go about their business there.

Those two companies headed in opposite directions during the first quarter, with Apple's market share in China soaring after the arrival of its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and Samsung's share sagging just as dramatically.

And all contenders had to face the sobering reality that overall smartphone sales in the country shrank during the three-month period -- the first time in six years that the China smartphone market has declined year over year.

Total shipments across China in the first quarter reached 98.8 million units, down 4.3 percent from 103.2 million units in the same period last year, research firm IDC said Monday.

Apple was the market leader during the first quarter of 2015. It shipped 14.5 million iPhones, representing a 62.1 percent gain over the same period a year earlier. China-based companies Xiaomi and Huawei came in second and third place, respectively, with 13.5 million and 11.2 million unit shipments.

Click Image To Enlarge

Samsung had the most troubling quarter. It shipped 9.6 million smartphones to China during the period, for a decline of 53 percent compared with the 20.5 million units it shipped in the first quarter of 2014, when it led China's smartphone market. This time around, it was relegated to fourth place, just ahead of China's own Lenovo.

China is one of the most important markets for technology companies. The country has a booming middle class with a strong desire for shiny new tech, and smartphones have proven especially appealing. Some estimates have placed China's smartphone market at nearly 520 million users -- a population that dwarfs the entire population of the US. Given its size, foreign companies like Apple, Samsung and Microsoft are all vying for a piece of the massive pie, and they have to contend as well with homegrown up-and-comers.

Apple's success came against the surprising backdrop of China's decline in smartphone shipments. IDC argued that the year-over-year decline came about in large part as China's smartphone consumers changed from first-time owners to second-time buyers.

Kitty Fok, managing director at IDC China, said in a statement.

"Smartphones are becoming increasingly saturated in China.  China is often times thought of as an emerging market but the reality is that the vast majority of phones sold in China today are smartphones, similar to other mature markets like the US, UK, Australia, and Japan. Just like these markets, convincing existing users as well as feature phone users to upgrade to new smartphones will now be the key to further growth in the China market."

The research firm predicts that growth in China's smartphone market throughout 2015 will be relatively flat.

The changing market dynamics mean companies will need to shift strategies, according to IDC. For instance, some -- including Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi -- will try to make inroads into higher price categories. Other routes will likely include trying to expand sales through their own-brand retail shops and direct-to-customer online sales.

But although competition will be stronger at the upper end of the market, IDC said, most growth will come in the market for sub-$150 smartphones as those consumers who currently own less-sophisticated feature phones switch to those low-priced devices.

Apple has arguably done one of the best jobs of capitalizing on China's growing consumer base. The company reported last month that China is now its largest market, superseding the US for the first time. During Apple's fiscal second quarter, which ended March 28, the company's China revenue soared 70 percent from a year earlier to a record $16.8 billion.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said late last month during an earnings call with analysts. 

"It was an incredible quarter.  I've never seen as many people coming into the middle class as they are in China, and that's the bulk of our sales, and we're really proud and continue to invest in the country."

COMMENTARY:  Countering the idea that China's smartphone market is only interested in cheap phones, Umeng, China's largest analytics firm, issued a report for 2013 outlining that 27 percent of China's smartphones cost over $500, and that 80 percent of those are iPhones. 

Highlighted by analyst Benedict Evans, Umeng's report details that China's market for smartphones and tablets exploded in 2013, nearly doubling from 380 million devices at the beginning of the year to more than 700 million by year end.

Click Image To Enlarge

Apple currently markets three iPhone models on its Chinese website: iPhone 5s priced between $860 and $1120; iPhone 5c priced between $730 and $860; iPhone 4S priced at $535. The company originally continued to sell iPhone 4 in China priced at $435, but no longer lists that model for sale on its public website.

The fact that Apple has dominated China's most valuable segment of the smartphone market is particularly noteworthy because throughout 2013, it didn't have any agreement in place to sell iPhones on China Mobile, the nation's (and the world's) largest mobile carrier by far. 

Apple inked a deal with China Mobile in January, making iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c two of the very few models capable of working on the carrier's newly deployed 4G network using a China-specific version of LTE technology.

Apple's chief executive Tim Cook told shareholders last month that both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c had outsold the models they replaced.

Apple building an iOS ecosystem stronghold in China

Evans separately noted that Apple now has "probably more" iPhone users in China than it has in the U.S., with around 100 million iPhone users in each country. 

Last September, Cook noted Umeng research stating that the total number of Chinese iOS developers has increased 9.3 times between 2011 to 2013. Globally, Apple has over 6 million registered developers, with 1.5 million added in just the last year Cook said. 

Evans rhetorically asked,

"Has any foreign tech company done as well in China as Apple?"

Courtesy of an article dated May 11, 2015 appearing in C|NET and an article dated March 17, 2015 appearing in iPhone Forums