Articles by Andrew Martonik

Most phones come in just one size… but Google gives us two options with the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. We’ve used both to find the high and low points to help you decide which size is right for you.

Google Pixel 3

Compact yet powerful

$380 at Amazon

Pros

Easily usable in one hand
Excellent camera
Stereo speakers
Wireless charging

Cons

Weak battery life
No headphone jack

It’s a relatively small phone, but the Pixel 3 has all of the same features and power of the larger 3 XL. The 5.5-inch 18:9 display looks excellent, and makes the phone compact enough for anyone to use with one hand. The only potential downside here is a smaller-than-average 2915mAh battery.

Google Pixel 3 XL

True flagship

$425 at Amazon

Pros

Big screen
Excellent camera
Stereo speakers
Wireless charging
Sizable battery

Cons

Huge display notch
No headphone jack

Google took the Pixel 2 XL’s body and fit a much larger 6.3-inch 18.5:9 display — and it’s not all about size, the screen is also d…

This isn’t an equation, it’s a perception.

As smartphone prices continue to rise, discussion of the “value” of phones — both on their own, and comparatively — seems to be louder than ever. With the upcoming Note 20 Ultra expected to be over $1300, alongside phones like the OnePlus Nord at €399 and Moto G Fast at just $200, the range of prices you can pay for a phone is getting wider and wider. The argument is, then, that these super-expensive phones don’t offer the same value as lower-end devices, which have been benefiting most from the rising tide of quality components available at affordable prices.

There are more variables at play in a discussion of ‘value’ than you’ve ever imagined.

But this logic is flawed. “Value” isn’t something you can equate by taking the price and dividing by some combination of a phone’s specs. Value is a perception. A feeling. Yes it’s influenced by price, just like everything else a phone offers, but the weighting and specifics of how all o…

Samsung is one of the biggest phone manufacturers in the world, and with good reason — it makes some pretty incredible phones, combining outstanding hardware design with long lists of handy features that differentiate its phones from the competition. The Galaxy S20 Ultra is the company’s top phone, but there’s also a range of other devices that hit different sizes, price points and value propositions.

Best Overall — Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra

The Galaxy S20 Ultra is the culmination of years of iteration and improvement. Samsung has been sticking with this general design language since the Galaxy S6, but it feels like it might have finally perfected it. The S20 Ultra is incredibly well-built, and its massive footprint allows it to squeeze in top-of-the-line specs, 5G support, and a massive 5,000mAh battery.

It also has the best display we’ve ever seen on a phone: an enormous 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling. It has plenty of oth…

And there are lots of great watches to choose from.

It’s time to think outside the box for Father’s Day gifts — and a great way to do that is to get your dad his first smartwatch. But smartwatches are tough to give as a gift because there’s so much personal choice involved, from design to features, and a wide range of choices. We’re here to help you pick the best one for your dad’s needs, and have narrowed down all of the great smartwatch options to four main picks.

If you don’t really know what your dad’s looking for in a smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 is a great choice because it’s an all-around performer. It has a simple design that wears well with a variety of clothing, and can dress up a bit by swapping to a different band. (And chances are you’ll want to get the larger 44mm version.)

It has solid all-around fitness capabilities for tracking everything from daily activity to a variety of different workouts. But even if you don’t think he’ll be very active with the wa…

Having a good processor is a checkbox item, not a purchase driver.

The debate over what processor you should expect in a smartphone has picked back up in 2020 after a couple of years of seemingly taking a back seat in people’s hierarchy of needs. It seems to be mostly driven by increasingly-expensive high-end phones saddled by the extra cost tied to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865, and the subsequent decision by some companies to step down and use Qualcomm’s 700-series processors typically used in less-expensive phones.

Every time one of these arguments over processors springs back up, I need to remind everyone that the vast majority of people simply don’t care what processor is in their phone — in fact, most people don’t even know what processor they’re using. And even those who do know which processors are in phones probably shouldn’t put so much emphasis on them when buying their next phone.

Research shows that average consumers simply don’t factor the processor into their buying…

This is an ingenious way to address issues with gestures overlapping.

It’s no secret that people have frustrations with Android 10’s gesture navigation, particularly the back gesture — and phones with curved screen edges have only exacerbated the problem. Apps that rely on slide-in drawers can be really tough to use, and when that’s a core part of the interface it can slow you down dramatically.

But this week, I received a much-needed ray of hope for this system in the form of an app update. Slack, which previously had one of the worst collisions with gestures and curved screens, has redesigned its app to address both — and it’s a wonderful change that every Android app developer needs to study and implement.

Android 10’s gestures don’t have to be frustrating — we just need fresh app designs.

Slack used to, like many apps, rely on a slide-in drawer for switching contexts inside the app. In the case of Slack, it was to change between channels, groups, threads and messa…

Here’s the information you need to know.

Google and Apple partnered to launch their COVID-19 exposure tracking and notification system on May 20, raising a lot of questions in the process. People want to know how the system works, what it will mean to individuals, where and how data is stored and shared, and so much more.

Here’s all of the information you need to know about Google and Apple’s new COVID-19 exposure tracking system.

What is this system, and what is an API?

Google and Apple created the Exposure Notification API. It is designed to help the process of contact tracing, which has the goal of tracking the movement of an infectious disease between people to slow its spread. Public health agencies are often in charge of contact tracing, employing hundreds or thousands of people to track known infected persons and then inform others who may have become infected, so that they can quarantine themselves and prevent further spread. Obviously this is top of mind given the ongoin…

The optics of a slow launch are worse than a month of lost sales to Google.

We initially expected to see the new Pixel 4a launch in May, coinciding with the Google I/O conference. Then, I/O got cancelled, and rumors pointed to an early June launch. Now, the latest information from noted Apple (and now Google) leaker Jon Prosser points to a mid-July release. And the reasoning given makes sense: it’s economical, not technological.

Pixel 4a Was originally May, then got pushed to June, now pushed again. “Just Black” & “Barely Blue”Current plan for announcement:July 13 BTW – just 4G. (Sorry to kill the 5G rumors)Seems like they’re ready to ship. The decision is mostly based on market analysis.— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) May 21, 2020

No, there doesn’t seem to be any issue with the Pixel 4a’s hardware, or its software. There probably isn’t a problem with performance or some radio certification. And we knew it wasn’t going to have 5G. Prosser points out something that m…

Pixels have never been about chasing specs — but Google may actually be able to compete on price now.

It’s no secret among tech followers that Google’s Pixel line doesn’t sell anywhere near the numbers that the big-name competition does. The Pixel 3a and 3a XL are the only exception, and even still, the “high” sales are only relative to their underperforming siblings. As a constant observer of phones in the wild, when I see a Pixel in the hands of a regular person is a notable occurrence.

With flagships getting really expensive, Google has an opportunity to change its positioning in 2020.

The reasons why that’s the case are numerous and continuously debated, but what’s clear is that the Pixels typically have prices mismatched to what they offer on a spec-for-spec and feature-for-feature comparison to the high-end competition. In 2020, Google has an opportunity to change its price positioning and actually sell some phones this year. Rumor has it that the Pixel 5 will run on a…

It’s time to get back to basics.

The OnePlus 8 Pro, starting at $900, is no longer representative of the classic OnePlus phone that earned the company its early recognition. Even the OnePlus 8, at $700, is pushing the limits of what a traditional OnePlus fan is willing to pay for one of its phones. If you jumped on the OnePlus bandwagon a few years ago because of its solid phones with almost too-good-to-be-true prices, the OnePlus of 2020 is basically unrecognizable.

OnePlus is now in the same situation as so many other companies: it needs to fill in the newly-created void underneath its ever-more-expensive flagship phones with a value-focused offering at a lower price. But in the case of OnePlus, it’s even more necessary because of just how rapidly its phones increased in price. If you, like most people, only upgrade your phone every two years, you bought a OnePlus 6 for only $530 — and are now being asked to spend 30% more on a OnePlus 8, which isn’t its top-end model like th…