Amazing Deal: Doogee F3 Pro for $159.99

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The Doogee F3 Pro. I don’t even know where to start with this thing.

The Doogee F3 Pro is a flagship phone in its own right. It has everything you would expect from a $700 phone, all for $159.99 from Gearbest.

The device uses a 1.5 GHz octa core ARM Cortex-A53 processor. This is top of the line. That octa core processor powers a 5″ 1080p IPS LCD.

All of that and it has 3 GB of RAM, which is huge! This is an unlocked phone here. With specs like these, you would expect to pay this price with a two year contract, but there’s no contract required here. This is a flagship killer, as OnePlus would say.

Then there’s the camera, which is what I’m really excited about here. The Doogee F3 Pro uses a Samsung S5K3M2 lens, which is 13 MP. The aperture is f/2.2, which is great for low light performance.

The really great thing about the rear camera on the Doogee F3 Pro is that it includes phase detection autofocus (PDAF). PDAF is what allows users to take perfectly focused, crystal clear photos with an iPhone 6 or a Samsung Galaxy S6. Do you remember last year’s iPhone event when Apple made a big deal about focus pixels? This is what they were talking about, except this phone costs $500 less than either of those.

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Then there’s the front camera. The front camera is 8 MP with a 78º wide angle lens and an f/2.2 aperture, so you can get plenty of group selfies in there and you have plenty of room to crop them without losing quality.

This is a very high end phone at a very low price. I invite you to take a look at the market around you. Find another phone with a 5″ 1080p display (441 ppi) for this price. Find another phone with 3 GB of RAM at this price. Find a phone with PDAF for this price. Find a phone with an 8 MP front camera for this price.

You couldn’t find any of those. You’re not going to find anything with all of those for this price.

You can grab the Doogee F3 Pro right here from Gearbest for ONLY $159.99!

Grab a Kingzone N5 for Just $111.89

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Today, we have another great deal from EverBuying. They’re selling the Kingzone N5 for only $111.89.

So what do you get from the Kingzone N5? Quite a bit, actually. You get a 5″ HD IPS LCD. That’s powered by a 1 GHz quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor. Note that this is significantly better than something like a Snapdragon 200, which is ARM Cortex-A7.

You get 2 GB of RAM, which is huge. First of all, despite the fact that there are these new flagships with ridiculous amounts of RAM, 2 GB is more than enough for running mobile applications. I would also point out that it’s impossible to find a phone for this price with 2 GB of RAM, at least in the United States, so 2 GB of RAM is huge here.

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Then there’s the camera. The rear camera is a 13 MP Sony Exmor RS sensor, so you know it’s quality and you have plenty of room to crop your images; however, the rear camera also has an f/2 aperture. Aperture means the opening of the lens, so a large aperture like that means that the device will provide better low light performance.

The front camera looks to be pretty sweet as well, coming in at 5 MP. Again, this means that you have plenty of room to crop and zoom your selfies.

Other than that, you have a 2600 mAh battery, which can guarantee all day battery life, but that’s not all…

The big story here is the design. This is an absolutely beautiful phone. It’s 6.3 mm thin, meaning that it’s more than half a millimeter thinner than the iPhone 6. Almost as whole millimeter thinner than the iPhone 6 Plus!

People often underestimate how important it is to have a phone that’s thin and light. You want a phone that’s comfortable to hold and to carry, and this is that phone.

You can grab the Kingzone N5 right here!

Don’t forget to use the coupon code KZN5!

Introducing the OnePlus 2: the 2016 Flagship Killer

Today, OnePlus finally announced the OnePlus 2. If you didn’t watch the first ever virtual reality product launch, well, here’s a recap.

Funny story though. OnePlus has been leaking specs of the OnePlus 2 for the last month or so. As far as I can recall, they officially announced that it would be $449. The only problem with that is that at the end of the launch, they made jokes about how much it would cost and then cut the lights before they said the price. Are they trying to leave something to the imagination? Who knows?

Continue reading Introducing the OnePlus 2: the 2016 Flagship Killer

Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Beta 5, Public Beta 3 Coming Tomorrow

Surprise! Just six days after releasing Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Beta 4, they release El Capitan Beta 5. It certainly wasn’t a typical release, as there was no new iOS 9, WatchOS 2, or Xcode 7 Betas. In fact, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Beta 5 isn’t even on Apple’s developer web site just yet, so I have no release notes to show you.

For public beta testers, this means that you will most likely get Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Public Beta 3 tomorrow. We’re getting later in the release cycle, so at this point, new builds can come at any time as it’s becoming more and more stable.

Continue reading Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Beta 5, Public Beta 3 Coming Tomorrow

Deal: Grab a KingZone N5 for Just $112.99

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Gearbest has a new product available and I have to say, it’s pretty slick. It’s one of the most well designed phones I’ve seen in a long time. I’m talking about the KingZone N5.

The KingZone N5 really has everything you want in a phone. You can start with the stunning design. It’s just 6.3 mm thin. That’s more than half a mm thinner than the iPhone 6. In fact, it’s the thinnest phone I’ve ever seen. At 139 g, it’s super light as well. People often underestimate how important it is for a phone to be comfortable to carry around and this guy is sure to be comfortable.

The KingZone N5 rocks a 5″ HD display and it’s all powered by a quad core MT6735P. The MediaTek MT6735P is ARM Cortex-A53, which means that you’re guaranteed a better experience than with some of the lower end processors, which are ARM Cortex-A7.

It also has 2 GB of RAM, which is really important. Most phones at this price range are going to have 1 GB of RAM or even 512 MB of RAM. 2 GB of RAM is a massive boost in performance.

Then there’s the cameras. The KingZone N5 sports a 13 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front camera, so you have plenty of room to crop your photos.

The battery comes in at 2600 mAh, so you’re guaranteed to get a full day of usage out of it.

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You can grab the KingZone N5 right now from GearBest right here.

Don’t forget to use the coupon code: N5GB

Deal: Get a Doogee Y100X for $84.99 and get VR Glasses for Free!

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EverBuying has another deal just for you. This one is the Doogee Y100X for just $84.99, which is a fantastic deal all on its own; however, they’re even going to throw in RITECH Virtual Reality 3D Glasses II.

Let’s start with the Doogee Y100X. The Doogee Nova Y100X uses a 1.3 GHz quad core MediaTek MT6582 processor. It has 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of onboard storage with microSD expansion.

Probably the big story about the Doogee Y100X is the camera. The device uses an 8 MP rear camera, which is my personal preference for a smart phone camera. Anything greater than 8 MP is useless unless you intend to crop or zoom in on the photo.

The big deal about the rear camera is that it has an f/2 aperture, which is fantastic for a phone of this price. Aperture means the opening of the lens, so a larger aperture gets better low light performance. There are only three phones in the world with apertures larger than this, and they all cost quite a bit more than $84.99, and they’re not throwing in a free VR headset.

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The front facing camera also looks to be pretty great. It uses a 5 MP sensor, so you have plenty of room to crop those selfies. It even has an LED flash, another very rare feature in a smart phone front camera.

Then you get a free RITECH Virtual Reality 3D Glasses II. Thought about spending $20 on a Google Cardboard? There is no need!  You can get a pretty great phone and a free set of VR glasses, no assembly required!

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You can grab this wonderful deal right here from EverBuying!

So, Maybe Turn Off MMS on your Android Phone?

Researchers have found a major security flaw in Android devices. It’s a bit of an interesting case because no one seems to know much about it. Typically, in a case like this, a researcher finds the flaw, gives the company a predetermined amount of time to fix it, and if it’s not fixed, he informs the public everything there is to know about it so they can take the proper precautions.

I’ve seen multiple sources about this. Some have said that it only affects pre-Jelly Bean devices while some are saying that the flaw affects Android 2.2 all the way to Android 5.1. Interestingly enough, nothing has been said about Android 5.1.1 or the Android M Developer Preview.

Continue reading So, Maybe Turn Off MMS on your Android Phone?

Google AdSense is Implementing a User Consent Policy

Do you use Google AdSense on your web site? Of course you do. Everyone does. We do. Well, Google has a new policy in place that requires web sites that get visitors from any country in the European Union to implement a user consent form.

That’s right. Google needs consent to use the data of citizens of the EU. Well, anyone in the EU. So guess what? That responsibility passes on to you, the simple web site owner that’s just looking to earn a couple dollars for his very hard work.

You might be asking if this policy corresponds to the mobile version of your site. It sure as hell does.

Continue reading Google AdSense is Implementing a User Consent Policy

Could C# be the one language to rule them all?

Being a developer, it is important to continue to learn about new languages as you are being asked to create solutions for multiple platforms.  The reason why we have so many languages is because on a hardware level each CPU uses a different assembly language to run their instructions.  Due to this fact not every language is able to run on every platform.  For this to work you would need to have multiple companies that are able to understand these CPU differences to write compilers for the same language.

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For a time, the language Java (which as owned by Sun Microsystems for a time until Oracle purchased the company) was set out to solve this problem.  From 1995 through the mid 2000’s it seemed like Java was supported on almost every computer and device.  That was until the iPhone come along with its first version of iOS in 2007.  It wasn’t unusual that a new device didn’t have support for Java on the initial release but then Apple announced that they will never support languages like Java (http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/9731).

The reason is because their terms of use do not allow developers to create apps that were written from interpreted code.   So that means you are only able to create apps that are written in a low level language like Objective-C which create compiled programs.  This was bad news for developers as there was one more language that we needed to learn.

The folks over at Google decided on using Java (although you can also use C++) to write your mobile apps for their Android operating system.  Meanwhile Microsoft relies on their .NET Framework to create Windows Mobile apps which includes the Visual Basic .NET and C# languages.

By now you see the problem.  If you wanted to write a mobile app for each of these platforms, you would need to learn three different language on three different frameworks.  Wouldn’t it be nice if someone created a new language and would allow programmers to create apps for all of these types of devices?  Well the short answer is no.

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The solution to this problem has been solved for us already by the Mono group (http://www.mono-project.com/).  The Mono project was started back in 2004 as an open source project to port the .NET Framework to run on Linux and Mac.  This project was original independent from Microsoft but now it is being included in the latest version of its developer environment: Visual Studio 2015.

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This is all possible because of Xamarin (http://xamarin.com/) which takes the ported version of the .NET Framework and uses it build apps that run on both Android and iOS devices.  However it isn’t perfect.  For instance, in order to create iOS apps in Visual Studio 2015 you are going to need to purchase a business account from Xamarin ($89/month) plus have access to a Mac.  This will then create the compiled programs that iOS will allow to run on its devices.

Also the version of the ADK (Android Development Kit) that is included with Visual Studio 2015 isn’t the latest version so you will need to manually go out and download and configure the latest version on your machine before you are able to create Android apps.  At any rate you will be prompted to log into Xamarin.  You can find more information about this here: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/xamarin-vs.aspx.

Not exactly plug in play, but it is still early days.  Hopefully, future versions of Visual Studio will allow developers access to a more “turn key” solution for creating mobile apps in a single programming language.

LG Lancet vs Yezz Billy 4.7 Comparison

Recently, I received the LG Lancet to review. It’s LG’s first attempt at a Windows Phone since Windows Phone 7. Well, let’s just say it’s LG’s first attempt at a modern Windows Phone.

So far, I’ve been pretty impressed with the LG Lancet. My first instinct was to compare it to the Microsoft Lumia 735. After all, those are Verizon’s two mid-range Windows Phones. As it turns out, the LG Lancet blows away the Lumia 735 in benchmarks, but not much else. Battery tests weren’t great, nor was the camera, which might not have been fair, considering how stellar the Lumia 735 camera is (first phone to have an f/1.9 aperture. That’s right, Galaxy S6 fans).

Continue reading LG Lancet vs Yezz Billy 4.7 Comparison

Calling it like I see it, not pulling any punches