Just 6 days away from its official launch, the OnePlus 2 has paid a visit to TENAA, which is the telecommunications equipment certification authority in China. The listing gives us the clearest look so far of the OnePlus 2, as all previous leaks and hints did not provide an image of what the device could look like.
What was known so far regarding the OnePlus 2 was that the device would feature a metallic frame, along with the presence of a fingerprint scanner. As per Anzhou.cn, the TENAA listing confirms the specs of the device, with the display still remaining at 5.5″ but the resolution being notched up to QHD, while the OnePlus One sported a FHD display. The OnePlus Two will still pack the previously rumored Snapdragon 810 processor, along with 4GB of RAM as well as 32GB of internal storage. As there is no mention of a micro sd card slot, it would be safe to assume that this would be the base storage option, with extra storage options being a likely possibility. The listing also specifies that the rear camera will be a 13MP shooter with the front getting bumped up to 8MP. All of this will be supported by a 3,300 mAh battery, which is slightly juicier than the OnePlus One.
Getting on to the visuals of the device, the OnePlus 2 still retains the OnePlus One feel but has a lot of distinguishing factors to make both the phones easy to tell apart, unlike some recent phone lineups.
On the front of the device, the most noticeable difference is the presence of the fingerprint sensor. The front camera sensor has also been moved to the right side of the speaker grill, while it was present on the left side of the grill on the OnePlus One.
On the back, the camera piece and the OnePlus logo have been repositioned more towards the center of the device. The rear camera also has laser autofocus now, as can be clearly seen from the image. If you are someone who is very much used to the looks of the OnePlus One, you might find the flash module being present above the camera to be a little disconcerting.
From the images, the USB Type-C port appears to be shifted to the left side of the frame. It also looks like the port will have a sliding door mechanism to cover the port when not in use.
The right side of the OnePlus 2 frame is now home to the power button as well as the volume rocker. There is also a small indentation on towards the bottom, which should facilitate easier changing of the StyleSwap back covers. As neither left nor right side of the device featured the slot for the SIM tray, we can take a guess on it being accessible after removing the back panel, as the OnePlus 2 is believed to be a dual SIM device.
All in all, the OnePlus 2 is shaping to be an interesting device. Whether it will succeed the throne as the flagship killer from the OnePlus One is dependant a lot on the price of the device as well as any other improvements it makes. For now, we can wait for things to be made official, as July 27th is not that far away now.
What do you think about the OnePlus 2 now? Do you think the device improves upon the OnePlus One in terms of looks, or is a regression in this regard? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
YouTubev10.28 introduced fullscreen for portrait videos recorded on cellphones. Vertical videos can now be displayed properly by clicking the fullscreen button in the bottom-right corner of the video. Try this example video to test it, yourself! Go update your YouTube app, now!
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Google has announced that Pixate has joined the Google design team. Pixate is a well received visual prototyping system for mobile interfaces. With today’s announcement, Pixate is now free and the Pixate cloud service has dramatically reduced pricing.
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Ubik is a new company with offices in China, Korea and the USA, and a big idea. It’s announced a Kickstarter project today for the UNO, a flagship-level smartphone, which is selling at $280 to backers, or $345 once the campaign ends. This isn’t exactly a new idea, but the company is hoping to grab some extra attention with their interesting promise of an “Open Source” business model.
Let’s kick it off with the handset itself; it comes with a 5.5″ 1080p IPS display complete with Gorilla Glass 3, advertised as coming with “no-bezel”. This holds out for the left and right-hand sides (apart from in one render), however the top and bottom edges more than make up for that, and may involve too much bezel for some. The overall design is mostly minimal, relying on a conspicuous metal frame around the edges of the device to add a premium feel, whilst the rear of the unit is comprised of what looks like polycarbonate, with a very large raised circle where the camera is housed. Overall, the smartphone is not attractive per se, although on balance it doesn’t do much wrong either, and so comes across as a little boring but functional.
The inside of the UNO features a 64 bit MediaTek MT6795 clocked at 2.2GHz which is “true octocore”, meaning that there are no low power cores, and that the systems spreads workload across them or turns individual cores off. The jury is still out on whether heterogeneous computing is all it’s cracked up to be on mobile devices (check out this video for a more in-depth look at multiple core performance), so overall efficiency remains to be seen, especially when compared to main rival ARM’s more widely adopted big.LITTLE architecture. A typical 3GB of RAM is available, along with a slightly disappointing 16GB of storage, although there is a Micro SD slot, with the minor caveat that it only accepts memory cards up to 64GB in size.
The front facing camera features Sony’s newest stacked CMOS 21MP sensor the IMX230, without OIS of course, with the front facer being an unspecified 5MP unit. The usual bevvy of connectivity options are available including NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi (no mention of ac) and GPS, and the smartphone is powered by a sealed-in 3100 mAh battery. The phone is aimed at the US to begin with, claiming LTE compatibility across North America, although as it is a GSM mobile phone, Verizon and Sprint customers won’t be supported (although UBIK specifically mention Verizon in the campaign – we’re not sure quite what they mean here). The device should also work across the world on other GSM networks, although compatibility will obviously depend on which signal bands are available.
UBIK are advertising their lack of ‘bloatware’, explaining that the UNO runs stock Android 5.1, which is refreshing and should make for easier software updates, although as they are a brand new company this remains to be seen. Crowd-funded devices don’t have the best history when it comes to future software support, as the companies behind the phones don’t always have the man-power to develop and test updates so this will be something for backers to keep in mind.
Where UBIK plan to stand out however, is in the aforementioned “Open Source” strategy. Essentially, the company are promising to follow the decisions of the “mayority” (sic) of their community fan-base, by setting up forums, blogs and polls to assess this demand. In its words:
“Our mission is to assign every function a price, so the community can choose what they like and build their own phone.”
It is clear that this process is directed at whatever the UNO’s successor will be, as the prototypes for this phone already exist and the company claim that they are ready to begin manufacturing it. Even so, this is a bold and thought-provoking business model from such a young start-up, and one wonders whether it will have the R&D resources to put the community’s ideas to full use. Throughout the campaign, UBIK likes to announce that its members have more than 15 years in the mobile phone business, but in the end, sustaining this practice will unfortunately take funding, and it is not clear how much profit the company will be making from each unit sold.
Let’s face it, this smartphone launch is directly in competition with the OnePlus One and Two, and not just in terms of price and specs. The campaign goes as far as calling out the ‘Invitation System’, but don’t specifically answer the question of how they expect to keep up with demand or how many units they plan to sell, and the phone itself is named the UNO…get it? If their open source model takes off and proves to be successful, then UBIK will definitely have something to shout about, but until then they don’t have the luxury of a large brand like Oppo behind them to inspire confidence. This is added to a Kickstarter campaign that unfortunately features a number of spelling and grammar mistakes despite the company’s ‘office’ in the US, and a few meaningless marketing lines like: “As of this moment, UBIK UNO is looking like the best Android Smartphone you’ll be able to buy for the foreseeable future”.
And therein lies the issue; crowd funding platforms are becoming an increasingly popular way for technology start-ups to avoid huge initial debts, and have their future customers pay for device production for them, but while this can help original ideas to be catapulted into the lime-light with minimal marketing, it also means that consumers should be wary of less well-formed business plans too. UBIK stress that the reason that they can sell their UNO at such a low price is because they haven’t spent the huge amounts of money that large firms do on marketing and advertising, but research and development, manufacturing yield, build-quality, on-going support, and customer service are all extremely important, and all of this takes money. It should be noted that cutting corners for cost purposes can result is some significant issues, and taking the relevant example, the OnePlus One still suffers from touchscreen issues, regardless of the myriad software updates that ensued (hint: it’s a hardware issue). The reason big companies can charge double what UBIK is planning to is partly because they have sunk huge amounts of money into creating reliable and sustainable manufacturing processes and support infrastructure, and once again it remains to be seen how this company plan to compete.
On the other hand, without evidence it’s never worth writing off a start-up, especially one that’s actively trying to engage with its customers more than its competitors. If you’re interested on picking up this cheap flagship, check out their Kickstarter campaign here. The project is at $27,000 pledged of its $200,000 goal with another 44 days to go, which is a great start on the first day, so hopefully things go well for the fledgling company, and they manage to start shifting completed units in time for their estimated shipping date of September. Comments are generally positive so far too, so given time and the support of enthusiasts, the company could do very well with this aggressive business plan.
What do you think of the UBIK UNO? Let us know in the comments!
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AT&T is set to raise its (already high) activation fees to $45. Additionally, the carrier is allegedly planning to add an activation fee to bring your own device (BYOD) plans and AT&T Next customers. This is unfortunate as activating a phone where you can simply place your SIM card in is dubious at best already.
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Announced back at CES 2014, the new Gorilla Glass variant utilizes ionic silver embedded into the glass surface to obliterate odor- and stain-causing bacteria, algae, mold, mildew, and fungi that may make themselves at home on your phone.
“Corning’s Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass inhibits the growth of algae, mold, mildew, fungi, and bacteria because of its built-in antimicrobial property, which is intrinsic to the glass and effective for the lifetime of a device.”
Though perhaps a solution in search of a problem, Corning is hoping their new glass will garner enough interest to keep it ahead of its competitors—such as Dragontrail—and at the same time keep your phone screen clean and clear.
The ZTE Axon is currently available for pre-order, unlocked, for $449.98. Its official release date is on August 1, 2015—a little more than a week from now.
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The XDA community achieving root on a new device is always cause for a little celebration, and proud owners of the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 will be able to do just that now that root access has been confirmed. The 5.5″ mid-range handset previously had its bootloader unlocked, but root access was proving tricky due to users having to call a dedicated port to enter fastboot mode. However, yesterday the process was announced and has now got its own thread, after a few month’s combined hard work by dedicated users.
Taking influence from an exploit found with a similar device, XDA forum members frankee207, DallasCZ, and Gynoid successfully altered the steps to create a custom batch file and published the steps for other users to follow. DallasCZ has now combined all of the steps into a more simply explained method in a dedicated thread, perfect for those less confident with the process. The community has taken dumps of the boot and recovery images, and is now working on bringing TWRP to the phone to maximize safety whilst modifying the phone, and at this point care should be taken until that is achieved.
It should be noted that the batch file used was created for Windows PCs to begin with, and requires that the Idol 3’s specific drivers are installed prior to use – to do this easily you can connect the phone via “cdrom” mode, whereupon it will mount and make those drivers available to install. Senior member famewolf has also posted modified commands for those running Linux, with rhcohenrefining it and tuning for Macs, due to the similar nature of the shells, so the solution is now platform agnostic.
This exploit works on the latest version of the official software, and with either locked or unlocked users, so at the moment the only caveat is that it’s only officially confirmed to work on the 5.5″ version of the handset. This paves the way for custom ROMs and kernels to be created for the device which is great news for those who’ve been waiting to optimize the phone since it was released in March, so well done to all involved!
If you own a 5.5″ Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 and have experience with rooting, carefully check out the steps in threads linked above and let us know in the comments how you got on!
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