Those who use an AOSP-based ROM are quite used to using Google’s own Clock app, but for those with OEM skinned devices it can now be installed through the Play Store. The app features multiple time-zones, alarm, timer, and stopwatch functions as well as Android Wear compatibility.
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The Fairphone 2 is a device unlike what you typically see announced each year. On the verge of modular phones hitting the market with Phonebloks and Project Ara, it is not unexpected to find that other OEMs are coming up with their own visions for modular smartphones. The Fairphone 2 is a brave new attempt at modularity with a noble cause, but is it worth the hefty price? How useful is its modularity?
The Fairphone 2’s main appeal is that its construction process is environmentally friendly, and it also attempts to better the lives of the workers behind the manufacturing. Both are noble causes, as smartphone production (like many other kinds of manufacturing) can have significant ecological impacts in the areas surrounding plants and the world at large through metal depletion, ocean toxicity, and global warming. The smartphone fabrication process sees its fair share of controversy as well, from the creation of components to the final steps on the assembly line. Every year we hear about a fresh Foxconn horror, and every year those on the other half of the world forget shortly after.
Going to the phone itself, the way it is presented on their (admittedly gorgeous) website focuses on two aspects to the exclusion of all else: the aforementioned environmental and social causes, and how the phone is designed and built to lessen those negative impacts. This is where the modularity begins: beyond the familiar removable and replaceable battery, many components can be stripped from the phone with varying (but generally low) degrees of effort. Ports and more can be replaced if/when the components break, and there is additional room for upgrades as well. But it is clear that the focus of the phone is in repairability for a number of reasons, mainly recycling and longevity. Before we go further, I must bring in the specs:
The only standout specifications here is the Snapdragon 801 processor, but even this is old (though still adequate) by today’s standards. Everything else is not just under the current leading specs, but also behind its preceding high-end phones from mid 2014. The fact that the Fairphone 2 comes with Lollipop on board is a nice touch, and we’ll return to this point later. The biggest offender here is the battery: at 2420 mAh, this is on the low side, barely over the Moto X (2014)’s capacity that earned it bad battery life reputation. When you factor in that these are inexperienced phonemakers, the doubt begins settling in. The real problem comes when you see the price: €525 ($590).
It’s true that there are still costly Snapdragon 801 devices on the market, namely the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact that retailed for €550 at the time of its release. However, these phones arrived while the 801 chip was still in its prime, and pack , a premium design, a large battery that proves its might, and many of the commodities you can only expect out of a higher tier OEM. The Fairphone 2’s price is likely inflated due to the engineering feats behind achieving its modularity, and this shouldn’t be understated. But with its focus on repairability, that modularity is rather useless when you consider the package as a whole. Hear me out:
The OnePlus One will be our reference device, as this phone had amazing specifications for its time, including the same Snapdragon 801 processor. But then you must consider the bigger battery, higher MP (and well-reviewed) camera, the software, developer support, etc. I mention developer support because the company behind the Fairphone 2 is attempting to get developers behind their software through open source. Anyway, for the price of one Fairphone 2, you can get two of the base-model OnePlus One, and are only €25 shy of upgrading one of them to the 64GB version.
This is where I bring up why the modularity is not worth the extra price: it cannot allow for significant upgrades that enhance longevity. Its main benefits are repairability, and the eco-savings of not disposing of the phone if a component breaks. But the thing is that when a component breaks, most consumers already send it in or exchange it due to warranty or insurance. You can argue that not having to dispose of the whole device allows for a greener solution, but I’ll mention why this is not quite the case.
Even if you could upgrade the processor (which you can’t), for example, this would cost extra money for you, the user, and the processor itself would still need to be disposed. The battery, however, cannot be upgraded unless someone specifically designs a higher density unit that is compatible with this phone in particular. The company did not include an NFC chip either, a very common component in most smartphones, because it is not as widely used… instead, there is a possibility of obtaining NFC capabilities through an upgrade in the extension port. If the company focuses on longevity, it makes little sense to not include what will become a core component of Android Pay, which could easily become a huge selling point and commodity of the platform.
Which leads us to software: the company is looking to learn from its mistakes and open up the software. The first Fairphone was deemed “an unplanned obsolescence” due to its inability to (easily) run custom software, as it opted for a set of hardware technologies with a poor record of supporting FOSS apps. They used a MediaTek chip, unsurprisingly, and this also directly impacts part of their “social impact” cause – MediaTek, like Qualcomm, uses TSMC for manufacturing, and a quick list at their workers’ reviews reveal many keyphrases against the narrative, mainly things such as “long hours”, “high pressure”, “stress” and “overtime”. It’d be nice to get a breakdown of how what subsets of workers get the benefits. While there is a shortage of green chipset manufacturing, and while TSMC has green developments, information about current improvement efforts is relatively important because it forms the basis of current marketing tactics, seen below.
Below are charts come courtesy of a Fairphone-sponsored study on the environmental impacts of device manufacture, and the circuitry and components relevant to chipsets make an important bit. But that’s not all: the gimmick of the Fairphone is its modularity, which helps with its longevity, and in turn this helps with the environment as users do not need to dispose of their devices as early.. However, we don’t know how long Fairphone will support their device, or how upgrades will work in the future, even though the stock components are mediocre at best and many (important ones) are simply unupgradable. Not only that, but focusing on the impact of the housing more so than in the processor is silly considering the housing impact percentages are so low. Then we touch on to another inconsistency:
“Throughout a 3-year usage scenario, based on the maximum charge cycle and average charging time per year, it is assumed that Fairphone owners will buy an additional battery” is what their site says, and it makes sense: in order for a device to last 3 years, you will most likely replace the battery at some point. They also claim that “nearly 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions come from the electricity used to charge the phone during the 3-year usage scenario”. This is funny, because so far nothing suggests (nor guarantees) that this phone will have exceptional battery life. Assuming that users want to minimize environmental damage, they’d need to reduce the electricity consumption from unnecessary charging. They would need to charge their phones more often, however, which easily leads to unnecessary charging. Battery life and battery longevity should be at the top of the list in their priorities, as (per their studies) batteries are damaging components, particularly in metal depletion, and this approach would most likely degrade the battery faster than usual.
An ethical phone is not a bad idea – in fact, it’s a great idea. But the way I see it, the modularity in this phone makes no sense. For its size, the phone packs a rather small battery, most likely due to the extra space the modular foundation requires. This may prove problematic to users not only due to the frequent need to charge, but because more charge cycles mean accelerated deterioration of the battery. On the modular front, it requires an additional purchase for future-proof mainstays like NFC that come standard in other handsets – if these are even produced.. Similarly, the 801 is plenty fast, but there are better options for the price. But the nail in the modular coffin comes from answering these fundamental questions:
“Assuming you are careful, how common are cases of phone components suddenly dying? How often do you need to send a phone in due to a randomly broken component? How many users prefer paying extra upfront for a modular phone rather than rely on warranty or insurance on the off-chance that they are in the minority that suffer from faulty hardware or drop?”
The way I see it, for one to choose for a modular repair system over a conventional phone’s frame, one must have little faith in the build quality, quality assurance, and company behind the phone’s construction. When I purchase a new device, I don’t walk into the store with fear and doubt of getting faulty hardware, or having a component die on me before it should, or breaking the phone myself due to shoddy quality or construction. This is not to say that modular devices are a bad idea – Ara and its piecemeal compatriots have entire component ecosystems that allow your phone to evolve with you as your needs change. The issue is that all the Fairphone can muster is promising to keep last year’s tech from succumbing to rare hardware faults that are already covered by most OEMs.
Ultimately, I see this modularity as a big gimmick. I am a big supporter of environmentally friendly processes, and I even go to eco-friendly conventions every now and then (mosty about fabrics and textiles, per my girlfriend). But when you consider the effort that goes into the repairability of this device in order to maximize its theoretical longevity, when everything else points towards reduced practical longevity, it just doesn’t add up. Not for this price. Not when warranties, insurances and services like HTC’s Uh-Oh make it easier to repair or exchange phones. Not when you can grab the huge amount of savings and either buy an extra phone, or donate it to charity or a non-profit organization of your choosing (which allows you to pick reputable and transparent ones as well).
Or, you know, you can also just donate the phone to someone that needs it. Focusing on modularity makes little sense when production is mostly the biggest offender when it comes to pollution and environmental damage, as shown by their own graphs, while recycling is not. The one place where it is not the most significant – climate change – would benefit from good battery life or innovate battery solutions. If you are an educated consumer, you can make better use of the additional money you are paying for modularity on undeserving specifications. You don’t need to pay extra for a company to handle it for you. Simply pick a non-profit or charity and dispose of your devices intelligently. I personally think that’s ultimately more fair to all of us.
I suggest you to read about the first Fairphone’s actual impact and the outcome of their project. It was an unfulfilled promise, to say the least, so it is worth looking into before deciding whether this phone is worthy of your wallet.
Would you buy a Fairphone 2? Let us know below.
The post Thoughts on Fairphone 2’s Modularity and Unfair Price appeared first on xda-developers.
The guys at Anandtech have undertaken some in-depth testing on the revised version of Qualcomm’s infamous Snapdragon 810. Comparisons between the HTC One M9 and new Xiaomi Mi Note Pro showed changes to thermal control, memory bandwidth and the GPU, but check out the full report for more info.
The post Snapdragon 810 v2 and v2.1 Comparison appeared first on xda-developers.
AT&T, one of America’s largest wireless service providers, was charged a fine of $100 million by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), America’s regulatory agency of interstate and international communication.
As per the report, AT&T started offering unlimited data plans to its customers from mid 2007, with the highlight being that it did not throttle users after a certain data cap, in effect, providing a consistent experience regarding speeds. While the company stopped offering this unlimited data plan to new customers in 2010, old customers could be grandfathered on term or monthly basis.
However, in 2011, the company implemented the Maximum Bit Rate policy on unlimited data plans, according to which, customers would be throttled down once they reached a set amount of data in a billing cycle (5GB for LTE customers, and 3GB for 3G and 4G customers).
What’s more, the report states that the post-cap speeds offered to the customers under the MBR policy were “orders of magnitude slower than the normal network speeds AT&T advertises”. The report goes on to give examples on the advertised LTE speeds being 5-12 Mbps while post-cap speeds were throttled down to a meagre 512 kbps, while the non-LTE speeds were advertised as 1.7-6 Mbps but were throttled down to 256 kbps.
These reduced speeds—256 kbps or 512 kbps—significantly impaired the ability of AT&T’s customers to use their data service. Although a customer may be able to send an email at these speeds, he or she may find it impossible to use AT&T’s data service in ways that most people today use smartphones—for instance, using mapping applications to get from one place to the next, streaming online video to catch up on television or news, or using video chat applications to stay connected with friends and family. A minimum download speed of approximately 700 kbps is necessary to use FaceTime or another video calling application, and 3.5 Mbps is necessary to watch standard-definition television. Further, at 512 kbps, a ten megabyte file would take nearly three minutes to download. At AT&T’s widely advertised speed of 12 Mbps, it would take less than 10 seconds.
The report further goes on state that on an average, customers were subjected to throttled speeds for 12 days per billing cycle. Further aggravating the complaint was the fact that this throttling was intentional and not directly based off network congestion and affected the remainder of the billing cycle, while the current network congestion based throttling was put into effect only in June 2014.
In its defense, AT&T stated that the change in the MBR policy for unlimited data users was notified through various means, including a press release and update to its website. AT&T also sent text message to these unlimited plan users when they first reached their data cap informing them about the capped speeds and directing to the webpage with updated information about the MBR policy. However, the FCC noted that this text message was not sent subsequent times upon reaching the data cap irrespective of the time between two such instances.
The FCC states that it has received thousands of complaints from customers about AT&T’s unlimited data plans, even after a fair few years have passed since the change in MBR policy and the responsibility of full disclosure to concerned customers. Allegations range from having speeds intentionally reduced to misrepresentation and not providing services that people had paid for. Snippets from the complaints included in the report:
I entered into a contract believing I was paying for unlimited data at 4[G] speeds. Providing me less than that seems disingenuous at the least. They say this is because of overloaded networks but then offer ‘double data’ promotions up to 100 [gigabytes] for new customers.
I have received text messages from AT&T stating my data would be throttled back if I went over 3GB . . . with no standard reasoning other than [I] have a unlimited data account . . . I was not told of this ‘throttling’ when I signed this contract.
After I purchased these plans, A[T]&T changed their policy about what ‘unlimited’ meant. They would begin to throttle my connection if they felt a set amount of data [was exceeded] during a specific billing cycle. I disagreed with this policy since it was not what I had signed up for.
The FCC’s investigation and discussion led to the decision that AT&T willfully violated rules of the FCC by “using the term “unlimited” in a misleading and inaccurate way to label a data plan that was in fact subject to prolonged speed reductions after a customer used a set amount of data” as well as “failing to disclose the data throughput speed caps it imposed on customers under the MBR policy“. The disclosures that AT&T did make regarding the change in the MBR policy were found to be inadequate and in violation of the Open Internet Transparency Rule, 2010 [1]. Collectively, the misleading disclosures and non-disclosures made regarding these unlimited data plans “impaired consumers’ ability to make informed choices regarding the purchase and use of broadband services and impeded competition.”
The FCC concluded that every time AT&T described their “unlimited” plans as such to a customer, it misrepresented the nature of its service. Another conclusion that came about was that AT&T’s misleading use of the term “unlimited” to label its plan obstructed fair competition as it prevented customers from fully comparing AT&T’s plans to other similar plans from competitors.
While AT&T describes its plan as “unlimited,” its competitors describe almost identical plans as offering “unlimited talk and text” with a set amount of LTE data. Without adequate disclosures, the average consumer would consider these plans to be significantly different, when in fact they are not. A consumer was likely to mistakenly assume that the AT&T “unlimited” plan offers more high-speed data than the competing plan, thus hindering fair competition between AT&T and its competitors. Continuing to offer the plan to renewing customers under the original “unlimited” label falsely advertised that the data plan was the same plan customers originally bought before the MBR policy was implemented.
There are more violations stated in the 31 page long report, which can be found here.
For corrective action, the FCC has ruled that AT&T’s action violated the Transparency Rule [1], and as a result, the company has to first correct all misinformation regarding its unlimited plans. Then, the company also has to individually inform all of its unlimited data plan customers that the disclosures were in violation and have since been corrected. Furthermore, AT&T also has to inform these users that those who choose to cancel such “unlimited” plans after reading through the revised disclosures can do so without any penalty.
Also, in order to deter future violations, the FCC has also imposed a penalty of $100 Million as sufficient deterrent and as punishment for clear knowledge of misleading customers over a prolonged period of time.
[1] The Open Internet Transparency Rule was adopted by the FCC in 2010. The rule mandates that broadband access providers should disclose accurate information sufficient to enable consumers to make informed choices regarding their use of broadband Internet services and to ensure they are not misled or surprised by the quality or cost of the services they actually receive.As a customer, it is reassuring to see that a government regulatory authority has stepped up for the greater good of consumer interests. Such a move will only help retain the faith of the general public on regulatory authorities and discourage malpractices in the communications industry.
What do you think of this decision by the FCC? Was justice finally served to the customers? Or is it another case of too-little-too-late? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
The post AT&T Charged $100 Million For Throttling Data Plans appeared first on xda-developers.
The launch of the S6 and S6 Edge back in March saw the latest version of Touchwiz being released alongside the devices, with some serious effort put into it this time around, in a bid to move away from the notorious reputation Samsung’s Android skin has gained over the past few years. Memory efficiency and decreased bloatware were the obvious fixes, but Samsung went above and beyond, adding features that end users actually needed. One of them is the homebrewed Theme Store that allows users to style their device using a multitude of themes from the store.
Despite the store containing a handful of themes in its infancy, the collection has been growing ever since, with Samsung releasing a bunch of new themes every so often and even bringing third-party designers on board. Today saw sixteen new themes hit the Theme Store, increasing the multitude of styles available, and these are the latest additions:
Clock Master
Flat Candy
Flying Blue _MINDON Design
Gram of the Night Sea
London Night
Matryoshka Doll
Mint Flower
Old Time
Returning the Bullet
Skull Bike
Sky Sketchbook
Soft Flower Shop
Sweet Cone
Sweet Truck
Tire Tracks
Yo-Man
As of now, the Samsung Theme Store is only available for S6 and S6 Edge owners, but is expected on the older flagships soon. If you own either of the aforementioned devices, head on over to Settings>Themes to give one of them a shot. Do any of Samsung’s themes suit your style? Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below!
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AirDroid is one of the best applications for managing your files and chats from your phone on a PC, and there’s no shortage of useful applications one can find for this platform. Not only does it have file transfers, but it can also mirror various phone operations on your computer – which makes it perfect for productivity. Now AirDroid takes its functionality a bit further:
The newest AirDroid update for its Windows and Mac clients, released just moments ago, significantly expands functionality by bringing some new tricks to the most desired feature since AirDroid’s mirroring. With v3.1.2, AirDroid allowed users to reply to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger chats from their computer’s AirDroid pop-ups, and while these are some of the biggest chat clients, AirDroid followed suite on the poll featured on our giveaway and has now added support for Telegram and Kik, meaning you can now send messages on these clients through your computer as well.
Other than that, the update brings support for new languages as well as some healthy bug fixes to make the experience more pleasant than before. To enjoy this update, your Android app must be updated to version 3.1.3 (released last Thursday). You can find the changelog below:
In case you haven’t gotten around to it, you can get the official AirDroid client for your computer on the AirDroid website.
What are your thoughts on the update? Let us know below!
The post AirDroid Windows/Mac Client New Support & Features appeared first on xda-developers.
Elephone made a huge step towards becoming a developer friendly OEM. The source code of the recently released P8000 will be published as well as free devices sent to developers ready to work on the MTK platform. Check out the announcement to learn more!
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