Androidifying

This week saw Motorola announce not one but three new smartphones and one of them, the Moto G 2015 , is the latest edition in the widely popular range. At a starting price of just $159.99, the Moto G 2015 has a lot going for it and while there’s a lot of content, some of you may still have questions about Motorola’s latest handset. Is there a catch? Does the Moto G 2015  offer everything you need? On paper, the specs are pretty impressive including a 5.0-inch HD screen, optional dual SIM, LTE, IPx7 water resistance certification, a quad-core Snapdragon processor, 1/2GB RAM, a 13MP camera and a lot more. Given the impressive specs and durability, this may just be the perfect handset for those on a specific budget and/or looking for the best affordable smartphone. Curious about the Moto G 2015 ? We’ve got a hold of the device and I am in the process of putting a review together. In the meantime, we wanted to give you the opportunity to ask us anything abou

NVIDIA has begun rolling out an Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update to its Shield Tablet , which offers performance improvements and fixes for an audio bug. The update weighs in at 767MB and contains the latest Lollipop tweaks as well as NVIDIA’s own bug fixes, performance improvements, and system wide optimizations. The move from 5.1 to 5.1.1 Lollipop is mostly about fixing the OS’ annoying memory leak problem, so users won’t find any fun new features to play around with this time. NVIDIA has now also addressed a lingering audio issue with the tablet with this latest update. Users had been reporting that the speakers were emitting a high pitched whine when loading up certain games, which should now be fixed. The update should appear under system updates in the settings menu, but the rollout might take a few days to reach you, depending on your region.

Mobile payments are fast becoming the next big thing in mobile and rather than just smaller companies offering the service, we’re increasingly seeing large mobile OEMs enter the mCommerce arena. Samsung is no different and is set to follow Apple (with Android Pay also coming later this year) by launching its Samsung Pay service in Europe. Related: Samsung Pay trial launches for select Galaxy S6 owners in Korea 1 674 The Korean manufacturer has today announced that it has extended its partnership with MasterCard to bring Samsung Pay to Europe. Samsung Pay – which is currently in testing in South Korea – is rumoured to be launching in limited form on Samsung’s upcoming round smartwatch, which is dubbed the Samsung Gear A. Samsung Gear in video: Samsung Gear VR - Quick Look... Samsung Gear S First Look! Samsung Gear Live Review: Br... Samsung Gear 2 Neo Review Samsung Gear 2 Review Samsung Gear Fit Review Samsung Pay will use MasterCard’s Di

A couple of weeks back, Samsung launched an SDK for round-smartwatches , which, along with a leaked spec sheet, prompted rumors that the company was preparing to release a new wearable. Fast forward to today and Samsung has confirmed a number of our expectations. Speaking at the Tizen Developer Summit in Bangalore, India, Samsung revealed a few specifications about its as yet unannounced round smartwatch, also tentatively known as the Gear A . We now know that it will be running the latest version of its own Tizen 2.3.1 OS, rather than Android Wear, and that the watch will feature a round display with a 360×360 pixel resolution. Also mentioned during the talk is a new control scheme, which uses a rotating bezel ring and crown to move through the smartwatch’s menus. This may give the Gear A a unique selling point over other round smartwatches, such as those from LG and Motorola. Other previously rumoured specifications for the Gear A include a dual-core Exynos 3472 SoC, 768MB of RA

Earlier this week OnePlus unveiled the successor to the OnePlus One , the aptly named OnePlus Two . Less than a day later, Motorola turned around and unveiled its own flagship at nearly as aggressive of a price point. With increasing competition, will the OnePlus 2 find the same level of success as the original? Obviously it’s way too early to answer that question, but so far things look pretty good. OnePlus 2 vs Samsung Galaxy ... OnePlus 2 vs OnePlus One OnePlus 2 hands-on OnePlus 2 StyleSwap cover ha... According to OnePlus, the waiting list for invites has already passed the one million mark. Considering the OnePlus One sold roughly 1.5 million units during its entire life, that’s rather impressive. Of course, this is assuming that all the folks that requested invites will actually buy the phone once the invite is received. Nonetheless, the OnePlus 2 is off to a good start. What’s important now is that OnePlus works to avoid some of the issues that caused

Silent Circle , the company behind the security-focused  Blackphone , today announced that its new Blackphone 2 smartphone has joined Google’s Android for Work initiative. Not only will this move help get the secure smartphone into more users’ hands, it will also allow users to easily separate personal applications and information from work-related content. This also marks the continued expansion of Silent Circle and its enterprise privacy platform, which includes a combination of devices, software and services that aim to offer users much more robust security measures. Related: Silent Circle gets talkative about the Blackphone 2 and the cryptically named Blackphone+ tablet 8 453 As for the device itself, the Blackphone 2 was announced back in March. It features a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS LCD display, an octa-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon 615 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage as well as microSD expansion up to 128GB. It also has a 13MP rear-facing camera, a 5MP front-facing

Did you get around to turning tabs back on in Chrome through last week’s Android customization post? If your Recents list is a little cluttered, you might want to give it a go . This week, we continue to tweak Chrome, in an effort to help you reduce data consumption , speed up web page load times and even reduce your battery usage, let’s look at Chrome’s Data Compression tool. Before we begin You will need to be running a relatively recent release of Chrome on your relatively recent Android phone or tablet running a recent release of Android. No other requirements are necessary at this time, except, you may get mixed results if you are operating over a VPN. For most of us though, you should be ready to follow along. I will note once again that this week’s piece will be considered a beginner’s tool by many, I’ll have some good info for you below, but nothing ground breaking if you are already a frequent user of the advanced settings of Chrome. And one last thing, please don’t get