作者彙整: Andrew Martonik

Best answer: The Pixel 3 XL has great hardware, easy-to-use software, and one of the best cameras of any smartphone available today, but its successor the Pixel 4 XL has better specs and a cleaner design, and the Pixel 3a XL offers most of the same features for considerably less money.

Better value: Google Pixel 3a XL ($430 at Amazon)
Top-end flagship: Google Pixel 4 XL ($780 at Amazon)

A great phone that can’t quite justify its price anymore

It should come as little surprise that Google makes a fantastic Android smartphone. The Pixel 3 XL went with the same proven formula, focusing on simplicity, speed, and useful features paired up with astonishing camera quality.

The software is far more appealing to use and experience than it is to read about.

The Pixel 3 XL can produce amazing photos in all types of conditions, from bright sunny days to dim indoor settings, all with a single rear camera. With a standalone image processor, the Pixel Visual Core, you can take multip… 閱讀全文 →

There are very few situations in which you need to hear your phone ring.

Any smartphone from the last couple of years will have a good speaker. And if you spent some more money, it probably has a pair of really good speakers — with tuning and optimization that makes it sound great. I regularly use my phone’s speakers to listen to podcasts and music around the house when I don’t want to bother with a Bluetooth speaker. But that’s where my usage ends: those speakers are for media, not for ringtones and notification sounds.

How often are you in public within earshot of your ringtone but not able to tell it’s vibrating?

Please do us all a favor and put your phone on vibrate, because nobody needs to hear your phone. If you’re in public, the people around you really don’t want to know that you just got a Facebook message or an email, or your Ring camera saw motion at your front door. Much like not every app on your phone deserves the highest priority when it comes to notification… 閱讀全文 →

All of the best announcements at the show, from concepts to shipping products.

CES can be a tough show to navigate, with so many intersecting themes and product categories all exhibiting in one place. With everything from ready-to-ship products all the way up to high-level concept devices, there are more great new things to see than you’d ever have time for.

The team here at Android Central took the meetings, roamed the halls and covered all of the news to find the best announcements at CES 2020. These are our award winners!

Best of CES 2020

Best of CES 2020

Samsung Galaxy Chromebook

From $999 at Samsung

The Pixelbook 2 Google won’t make.

Samsung doesn’t release many Chromebooks, but it sure knows how to do hardware — and its prowess is fully on display in the $999 Galaxy Chromebook. Partnering closely with Google for this new flagship-level device, you get exquisite hardware, a 4K OLED display, included stylus, high-end specs, and all of the extras you’d expect in this l… 閱讀全文 →

Time to do that big thing again.

Just as we expected given the rumors, Samsung is going to hold its next major Unpacked event on February 11 in San Francisco. Whether they call their next flagship lineup the Galaxy S11 or Galaxy S20 doesn’t make much of a difference; we’re going to see the latest and greatest it has to offer.

Say hello to a whole new Galaxy. Unpacked on February 11, 2020 #SamsungEvent pic.twitter.com/ln1pqt2vu7— Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) January 5, 2020

The question remains how Samsung plans to handle the Galaxy Fold’s history in this announcement.

The event is landing over a week earlier than last year, which will give it a little more breathing room ahead of the mobile-heavy MWC trade show happening in Barcelona the last week of February. But no matter what, Samsung is guaranteed to dominate the news cycle of the following weeks as it rolls out pre-orders and hits stores.

An interesting wrinkle that has yet to be explored much is whether Samsung … 閱讀全文 →

Another year of Android fun awaits.

We just spent a considerable amount of effort covering all of the milestones of the past decade, but now it’s time to look forward to 2020. The Android world always keeps us on our toes with tons of variety and innovation coming from unexpected places, and the start of a new year gives us an opportunity to speculate where it’s all headed. These are the trends and changes I’m expecting in the coming year.

Foldable phones (for real this time)

2019 was supposed to be the year where foldable phones entered the mainstream. It didn’t happen. The Galaxy Fold failed and re-launched after it had lost all momentum, and the Huawei Mate X never really launched in the first place. And so, we look forward to 2020 as the real start of foldables.

Not only will we see more foldables, we’ll see a wider variety of designs.

The year will kick off strong with the new Motorola RAZR, which is not only a foldable but also the first clamshell-style foldable to… 閱讀全文 →

Samsung has streamlined its setup process in the last few generations, but there are still several extra steps compared to other phones as Samsung injects its own steps alongside Google’s. The process is self-explanatory, but we have all of the information and tips you need to know about as you go through each step.

How to set up your Galaxy phone

Start by selecting the language you’d like to use for setup — you can change this later.
If you’re coming from a Samsung phone, you can skip most of this setup process and restore from that phone. Just open up Smart Switch on your current phone, and follow the prompts on both phones.

We recommend doing this with a cable rather than Wi-Fi, which really speeds up the process.
Alternatively, if you want to set up fresh or don’t have a Samsung phone, continue with step 3.

Connect to a Wi-Fi network. You can skip this step and use mobile data, but it’s best to use Wi-Fi for initial setup since it uses lots of data.
Agree to all of the Sa… 閱讀全文 →

Emergency alerts on your Android smartphone are a good thing — even if they are a bit annoying sometimes!

Every so often — or frequently, depending on your tolerance level — you get an emergency alert on your phone. That horrible blaring of the emergency tone, the buzzing the vibration motor, and then the grim news. Someone’s missing. Or there’s a severe weather alert headed your way. Suddenly and without warning, your phone’s scaring the hell out of you. It’s bad enough during the day, and downright dreadful in the dead of night.

And that’s the idea.

The U.S. carriers have worked with the federal government to come up with a way to push alerts to your Android smartphone to warn you about dangerous weather, missing persons or other matters of grave national importance. The point is they want you to see this information in hopes that it could save your life — or someone else’s.

Here’s what you need to know about these emergency alerts and how you can contro… 閱讀全文 →

It won’t really matter in the long run, but right now it’s near-impossible to explain what 5G is.

The build-out of consumer 5G networks is difficult from a technological and logistical standpoint. Varying network standards between carriers, coverage issues resulting from necessary infrastructure upgrades, and limited availability of 5G phones early on are all hindering the 5G rollout. But one of the biggest problems underlying it all is that “5G” isn’t just one thing, and it’s both confusing and difficult to explain for just about everyone.

There’s no simple answer to the question of ‘what is 5G?’

5G comes in a ton of different flavors. There’s Sub-6, which you can deploy in low-band or high-band, and also in so-called stand alone or non-stand alone mode, and then also with or without DSS (Dynamic Spectrum Sharing). Then there’s mmWave 5G, which uses ultra-high-frequencies and is considerably different in its operation because of the challenges introduced by the spectrum it op… 閱讀全文 →

This is the fingerprint sensor we’re likely to see in the Galaxy S11.

What you need to know

New ultrasonic technology offers 17x larger recognition area.
Recognition area supports increased security via simultaneous two-finger authentication.
Yet to be known which devices will launch with the sensor in 2020.

Qualcomm has announced the next generation of its in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, dubbed 3D Sonic Max. The new sensor is, remarkably, 17 times larger than the original sensor area — Qualcomm says it’s the largest fingerprint sensor available. That larger area enables simultaneous two-finger authentication for heightened security, but also increased speed and ease of use because it requires less precise placement from the user.

These changes directly address our biggest issues with the original sensor.

An increased recognition area and faster speeds directly address the two biggest complaints with Qualcomm’s first ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. The first… 閱讀全文 →

It doesn’t matter if you use an Android phone, this is the best sub-$300 tablet you can buy.

Android tablets aren’t good. Some would argue they never have been. But Apple makes really good tablets, and that isn’t just the case with its highest-end iPad Pros — the base-level, few-frills “iPad” is an excellent device. And when it’s discounted down to just $249 for Cyber Monday, there’s no better buy in the tablet world. Yes, even if you use an Android phone.

Best deal in tablets

Apple iPad 10.2-inch (7th gen)

$249 at Amazon

A great tablet, even if you use an Android phone.

Apple dominates the tablet world, and for good reason. You get incredible hardware, useful software and a dramatically better app ecosystem, all for an exceptional price.

Even the “cheap” iPad has excellent build quality, a really good screen, and exceptional battery life. At just over a pound, it’s easy to carry around and prop up with one hand for long reading sessions. And at this price, you aren’… 閱讀全文 →