Two New Smartphones Unveiled By Google

Last week, Apple unveiled its newest iPhone models with the 6S and 6S Plus. Not missing a beat, Google has debuted two new smartphones as well. The new Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P come with 5.2" and 5.7" screens, respectively, and are actually pretty inexpensive. In addition to that, these phones are aimed to be direct competition to the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Both phones run the latest version of Google's Android operating system (6.0 Marshmallow), bringing a ton of updates to Google's operating system, including increased battery life.

The Nexus 5X, which comes from LG, is the least expensive of the two smartphones and comes with a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution and a pair of front-facing speakers for better audio. On the rear of the device, you'll find a 12.3-megapixel camera sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and larger pixels that will aid with low-light photos. Laser autofocus will help with detecting and focusing on objects faster, meaning there will be less delay when taking pictures.

In addition to that, the back of the 5X also has a fingerprint scanner. Granted, this is an odd place for a fingerprint scanner, but it is within easy access of your index finger while the phone is in your hand. The one thing this could cause problems with is when making mobile payments as this typically requires you to place the back of the phone on a retailer's payment terminal.

On the inside of the 5X, you'll find a 6-core processor with 2GB of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of storage. Unfortunately, this storage is the only option you have as there is no place for upgrading. Still, the 16GB model will start at $380, which is a heck of a deal compared with the iPhone 6S starting price of $650.

On the flip side, we have the Nexus 6P from Huawei. This smartphone comes with a 5.7" screen that has a 2560 x 1440 resolution and is aimed at consumers looking for a big screen handset with a super high-res AMOLED display. This is Google's flagship device, meaning it gets the luxury of having an all-metal design made from aerospace-grade aluminum.

Like the Nexus 5X, the Nexus 6P comes with a 12.3-megapixel camera and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. On the front of the device, you'll find an 8-megapixel camera, making the billions of selfies you take everyday look nice and bright. Inside you'll find a powerful 8-core processor and 3GB of RAM for fast performance. In addition to that, the 6P also offers more storage than the 5X. Here you'll get 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB of storage.

However, that increased memory, bigger screen, and more RAM means a higher cost. The base Nexus 6P with 32GB of RAM will run you $500. That's still cheaper than the base model iPhone 6S Plus, which runs you $750 for only 16GB of memory.

Both phones get a USB Type-C port, which is faster than the older micro USB ports found on most Android smartphones, allowing you to stream video to external displays. In addition to that, this port is reversible, meaning you don't have to worry about which way you plug it into your device.

This is Android smartphone technology at its purest. The fact that both devices are being made by Google means that the Android interface is unchanged and you won't have to deal with any unwanted apps or things from manufacturers like LG and Samsung. It also means that you will get all the Android updates as soon as they become available, which is always nice. If you're looking for a nice, new Android smartphone, then the Google Nexus 5X and Google Nexus 6P may be precisely what you're looking for.

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T-Mobile's New Dual-Screen Smartphone

On Monday, October 17 T-Mobile unveiled the “ultimate multi-tasking handset,” the dual-screen LG DoublePlay.

The DoublePlay smartphone has some amazing features. It offers a 3.5-inch touchscreen at the top of the phone as well as a 2-inch bottom touchscreen when you slide out the keyboard, which is a QWERTY keyboard that is split on both sides of the bottom display. The smartphone also comes standard with Swype, which allows for easy texting. T-Mobile said that it "allows users to perform multiple tasks at once such as updating their Facebook pages while simultaneously surfing the Web, texting or checking email." The DoublePlay runs a 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as well as Android 2.3. It also features a fantastic 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash and 1080 HD video recording.

"Whether sending texts or emails, checking in on social media sites, or browsing the Web, consumers are looking for fun and easy ways to stay connected to the people and things that matter most to them," said Kim Swanson, director of product management at T-Mobile USA. "With the introduction of the LG DoublePlay and its unique dual-screen design, we are bringing the ultimate multitasking tool to our customers."

Unfortunately, T-Mobile has not yet announced when they will be releasing the DoublePlay and how much it will cost customers. However, there have been recent reports that the device will launch on November 2 and will cost users $149.99.

Just as a side note, the DoublePlay will be the device that is used for the 2011 U.S. National Texting Championship. The competition seeks to find the fastest texter in the United States and rewards whoever can text the fastest with a grand prize of $50,000. Obviously, if the DoublePlay is being chosen for a national texting competition, it has to be a great media phone. If you’re a constant texter, this could be the phone for you!

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Apple Brings in Great Second Quarter Numbers

According to the International Data Corporation, Apple has more than doubled the number of smartphones it has sold compared to the same quarter last year.

Strategy Analytics said that in the second quarter, Apple shipped 20.3 million iPhones, which is up 8.4 million phones from last year’s second quarter. They continued saying that this means that Apple has 18.5 percent of the global smartphone market, which is up from 13.5 percent last year.

"We had previously reported on Apple becoming the largest smartphone vendor in terms of revenue and profits. Now, just four years after the release of the original iPhone, Apple has become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume with an 18 percent market share," according to Strategy Analytics.

Samsung wasn’t far behind Apple. In the second quarter, they shipped 19.2 million smartphones grabbing 17.5 percent of the smartphone market. That was also quite a big bump from their numbers the previous year. Last year, Samsung only shipped 3.1 million smartphones and had a 5 percent share of the market. The success of Samsung and Apple caused Nokia’s numbers to drop however. Last year, they had snatched 38.1 percent of the global smartphone market, but this year their numbers dropped to 15.2 percent.

When it comes to the overall shipment of smartphones and feature phones, Nokia is still the number one phone provider. During the second quarter, Nokia shipped 88.5 million phones globally, down 20 percent. Samsung was number two, shipping 74 million units, a 16 percent boost. LG came in a close third right in front of Apple. They shipped 24.8 million devices, but were down 19 percent. Apple was so close to coming in third place. Strategy Analytics said that this is "the closest Apple has ever been.”

The IDC confirmed the numbers that Strategy Analytics released naming Nokia, Samsung and LG as the very top mobile phone providers. The firm also did say that Apple’s “record” quarter helped to close in on the gap and bring the company much closer to the top.

Apple "easily posted the highest growth rate of the worldwide leaders despite the fact that its flagship iPhone 4 is now more than a year old," IDC said. "The triple-digit shipment volume growth allowed Apple to more than double its share when compared to the same quarter last year."

IDC agreed with Strategy Analytics and reported sales of 20.3 million iPhones in the quarter. It gave Apple a 5.6 percent market share in the global handset market, as well as a 141.8 percent boost from the same time period last year.

"Apple’s ability to bring its smartphone momentum to developing economies, where it’s less successful, will help dictate the company’s smartphone fortunes in future," IDC said.

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First LG Phone for T-Mobile

On June 30TH, LG introduced their first ever T-mobile phone, the LG Sentio. For being LG’s first phone with T-mobile, you would most likely expect something fabulous and show stopping but don’t exactly hold your breath. The Sentio is nothing more then an average, middle of the road type of phone. It does however have a nice smooth and sleek design, and its multimedia features work fairly well. Perhaps the most attractive part of the phone is that it is very affordable.

The Sentio has an incredible slim and stylish design and is quite compact. It is 4.2 inches long and 2.1 inches thick. It is one of the thinnest phones yet to hit the market at only 1.5 inches thick, and its one of the lightest as well weighing in at 3.3 ounces. Although the Sentio is not covered in steel or glass like most other high-end touchscreen phones, it is wrapped in a lovely soft slate gray plastic that grips well. Its smooth corners and edges add to the overall feel of the phone.

The front of the phone features a beautiful 3.0-inch touch-screen display. The Sentio has a resistive screen so it's not quite as responsive as the regular touchscreen that is used on more advanced touchscreen phones such as the iPhone. You have to push a little harder on the screen then you should have to in order to get results from the Sentio. One nice feature the phone possesses is its vibration feedback capability. Vibration Feedback is when there is a slight vibration each time you touch the screen, this allows you to feel the responsiveness. You are given the ability to adjust the type and intensity of the vibration.

You can customize the Sentio's home screen with widgets or application shortcuts. By merely tapping on the arrow on the right side of the screen, you can drag and drop widgets from the slide-out menu to the home screen. You can make any function of the phone into a widget shortcut icon. At the bottom row of the home screen are four additional shortcuts to the phone dialer, the contacts list, the Web browser, and the main menu.

In order to dial a number to make a phone call, you must use a virtual number keypad who’s icon is located at the bottom of the home screen. When you touch the icon your usual phone keypad will appear. The keys are large, and the number input area is quite roomy as well. As far as texting goes, you can stick with T9 predictive text on the nine-key keypad, or you can rotate the phone ninety degrees to the right to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. The QWERTY keyboard is spacious enough and is fairly easy to use. On the downside, the text input area is quite small making it somewhat hard to read your whole message as you type.

Underneath the 3-inch touch screen are three real non-touch screen buttons: Send, Back, and the End/Power key. All three keys have a nice appearance and are easy to press. Located on the left side of the phone are the volume button, the task menu key, and the headset/charger jack. Along the right side of the phone is the camera key, and the Sentio’s 3.0-megapixel lens is placed on the back. The camera is okay, but it certainly isn’t above average or anything. A screen lock key is located on the top of the phone and placed conveniently behind the battery cover is a microSD card slot.

The LG Sentio's phone book has the ability to hold 1,000 contacts with room in each entry for five numbers, three e-mail addresses, three instant-messenger IDs, a Web address, a company name, three street addresses, a birthday, an anniversary date, and a memo. Its standard features include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a notepad, a world clock, a tasks list, a calculator, a stopwatch, a unit converter, and a tip calculator. You also get voice command, instant messenger, e-mail, a HTML Web browser, Bluetooth, and GPS with Telenav Navigator support. For social networking fans, LG includes Social Buzz, an app for managing your various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, on the Sentio.

Overall the Sentio has good call quality, posses the support for 7.2Mbps 3G networks, and has a rated battery life of 6 hours talk time and 13 days standby time. For the most part the Sentio is a fairly decent phone for its price of $69.99 with new two-year contract with T-Mobile.

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Completely Green Phone from Sprint

Sprint is now introducing the newest edition to there environmentally friendly line of phones. The LG Remarq is an adorable, compact, eco-friendly, sliding messaging phone that is complete with a QWERTY keyboard.

So some of the basic specs on the Remarq include the fact that it has excellent call quality and features access to social networking apps. You can easily update your Facebook or Twitter status with the phone. It does only have 22 MB of internal memory, but it has a microSD slot, so if your looking to improve its memory you can just pick yourself up an inexpensive micoSD card to beef everything up.

Another one of the drawbacks to the Remarq is its poor photo quality. Its 1.3 MP camera just doesn’t seem to get the job done. The camera is even awkwardly located which makes picture taking somewhat inconvenient.

Although the LG Remarq does not posses all the high-tech features in many of the phones today, its still a nice, easy to use, affordable messaging phone. Also, the Remarq is made from almost 100% recycled or recyclable materials. Even the packaging is recyclable, and all images and text on the box and instruction manuals are made from 100% soy ink. It received the Green Tech Approved award.

The Remarq is a perfect phone for kids or teens buying there first cell phone. It is now available through Sprint for free after a $50 mail-in-rebate. This really is a great value.

If you're looking for a touch phone from Sprint with a ton more features, read all about the HTC EVO 4G.

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The New Kin Family of Phones from Verizon

On Monday, Verizon Wireless introduced their two newest Microsoft phones called the Kin One and the Kin Two. The first and most important thing to note about the Kin phones is that they are not smartphones. On first glance they may seem very smartphone-like, but they do not feature apps or games.

The Kin One and Kin Two are aimed more towards customers in their teens and twenties. They are both sliding phones that feature fantastic keyboards for easy texting. These are classified as “quick messaging” phones, and they are perfect for those who spend most of their time messaging on their phone.

The phones are both Windows phones. They are made by Sharp and run a new operating system that is very similar to the Windows Phone 7 OS that is coming out soon. The Kin phones share the heart of the Windows Phone 7’s design but are more geared towards the social networking side of things.

As I mentioned previously, the Kin phones are not smartphones. They cannot download apps or games. They are not expandable like smartphones. They are simply cool, fun, easy to use messaging phones.

The Kin phones feature the “Loop” home screen that brings any possible social networking information that you might want straight to your attention. It feeds any social networking information or messages from your friends directly to your home screen for easy viewing. You are even able to prioritize your friends and come up with a top friends list. By creating this list, all of your top friends updates will show up in a larger font than your other friends. Derek Snyder, the senior product manager at Microsoft says, “We're the only phone that actually keeps your close friends close and treats them differently.”

The Kin One and Two feature the ability to sync music with any PCs running Zune software. Snyder says that they are, “the first Windows phones to ship with Zune.” The phones have built-in FM radios, and Zune Pass owners can listen to unlimited subscription music. Both Kin phones also feature either 5- or 8- megapixel cameras with a LumiLED flash that is much brighter than the usual cameraphone flash.

One of the only criticisms of the Kin phones would be the size of their screens. The Kin One features a 320 x 240 screen, while the Kin Two features a 320 x 480 screen. These can both be a little difficult to navigate when viewing Web pages, but they aren’t horrible.

The Kin phones are great phones for anyone that likes to use them mostly for messaging purposes, and honestly, I think that they’re just awesome looking. Their unique shape, cool sliding keyboard, and amazing features make this family of phones quite appealing. The Kin One is now available from Verizon for $49.99, and the Kin Two is listed at $99.99. These are two great phones to consider from a great service provider that are at the same pricepoint as the LG EnV line.

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LG to Announce 20 New SmartPhones This Year

South Korea-based LG has announced that it plans to release about 20 new smartphones this year. Most of the phones will run Google's Android software. The company says it's goal is to tell 140 million handsets in 2010, which would be a 20% increase from last year.

LG's fourth quarter (September to December 2009) profits were $256 million. That's quite an improvement considering the company had a $487 million loss during the same quarter in 2008. Even so, analysts had predicted the company to make $344 million.

LG is the third-largest handset maker in the world behind Nokia and Samsung, however it entered the smartphone industry pretty late in the game. Because of this, the company has focused on making high-end devices. Analysts predict the recovering global economy and increased consumer demand will help the company continue to post a profit.

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LG eXpo

The new LG eXpo for AT&T is the newest handheld mobile device from LG and it is definitely one of the company's best. First of all the phone itself looks pretty good with a resemblance to to the Tilt2 and Touch Pro2. The phone has a semi-thick shell which feels solid as well as a metal battery cover which is definitely an improvement from the plastic-heavy and cheap Incite.

The eXpo has a full QWERTY keyboard that is better than most phone's keyboards but still not the very best out there. The boards keys are clicky and wide and the spacebar seems to have the perfect position. The numeric keypad is in the traditional square formation yet it is completely flat and reports of a "crushing plastic" sound being heard when certain keys are pressed is a little sketchy. But only review units have been tested so who knows about the final product.

One of the coolest features is the fingerprint scanner which doubles as an optical trackpad. While good, the trackpad isn't as good as the trackball or trackpad seen on the latest BlackBerry. On the top of the device is a power/lock button as well as a micro-USB slot hidden under a plastic flap. One innovative thing about the port is that is also doubles as the phones headphone jack although it does lack the 3.5mm standard connector.

The 3.2-inch screen looks really good but is slightly small. To operate some features you are probably going to need a stylus or a fingernail. The on-screen keyboard, however, is easily used and looks just as good if not better than HTC's. eXpo's on-screen keyboard also XT9 integrated and is just as good as the actual phone's keyboard.

The core of this device is home to the 1GHz Snapdragon Processor. While you would expect it to be amazing in the device, it doesn't blow you away. This isn't to say that the Snapdragon Processor is bad, it just isn't on the same page as the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS used by the eXpo. It seems that the device does not take advantage of the Snapdragon's capabilities. Web browsing on the device is good, but not good enough to make it stand out above the rest.

Compared to LG's latest device, the Incite, the eXpo is hands down a better device all around. The eXpo has practically every feature and more that a 2009-spec phone in the business market could want or need. Overall this is an excellent phone for the businessman out there that needs a solid mobile device.

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LG GD910 Watch Phone

I’m sure that James Bond and LG would be best friends if he could see what LG is cranking out now. The new LG GD910 Watchphone, is a touch screen watch, that allows you to make calls, text message, listen to music, send pictures, and tell time! When I saw this I was amazed. The tech world has been waiting for something like this to come out. We are seeing more and more of these “sci-fi” gadgets coming out recently. The GD910 is a touch screen phone that is Bluetooth enabled. It has a small camera on the top right hand corner that will allow you to take pictures and also will allow you to video chat with other people who own the watch. Also has a voice recognition system, which allows you to control most of the phones main functions like dialing, and reading messages easier. Texting will be done the same way as you do on a T9 keypad. The screen is 1.43 inches diagonally, which made me skeptical about dialing the phone, but then I saw a video of the phone being used and it seems to be very responsive, and easy to use. The phone is going to be available late this year, only in Europe. There are no plans for LG to release the phone in the US, just yet.

I am really excited to see how this watch is going to perform in everyday use. Even though I am not a “watch wearing” kind of person, its still going to be very interesting to see how this is going to set the standards for new mobile products. I was very surprised when I found out that LG was going to be the manufacturer for the phone. I was expecting someone like Apple, or maybe Samsung to be the ones to come out with the idea. I knew that something like this was eventually going to happen, I just didn’t know when. And I am very surprised that it came this early. Now we will probably be seeing some on screen advertisement with James Bond and LG.