Articles by Andrew Martonik

Competition makes for better products, and the Android ecosystem is more competitive than ever. The best of the best right now is the Galaxy S20+, bringing an excellent combination of hardware, display, specs, features, and cameras into a single package. If you want a new Android phone at any price range, we’ve done the research to separate the great from the good, and the good from the bad. This list will help you make your next purchase easier.

Best Overall: Samsung Galaxy S20+

Before the Galaxy S20 series came out, our top pick here was the Galaxy S10+ — and everything Samsung did this year made it an easy move to recommend the S20+. The S20+ makes improvements across the board, with a bigger display that has a super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate, a larger 4,500mAh battery, more RAM, and a new Snapdragon 865 processor. Every Galaxy S20+ is 5G capable as well, for all of the U.S. carriers, which isn’t the biggest deal right now but will become more important as we push into 2021….

And recognize that the system of classifying phones into these buckets is flawed to begin with.

When we say a phone is “mid-range,” what does that even mean nowadays? Do its specs land under a certain level overall? Is it based on specific missing features? Or is it purely defined by price? Any of those calculations can be easily confusing, if not outright flawed.

I’m not sure how or when, exactly, the nomenclature was developed, but for some reason technology enthusiasts are eager to put phones into buckets: “budget,” “mid-range,” and “flagship,” at a minimum. Problem is, the lines between these made-up categories differ from person to person, and just keep getting more and more blurry.

OnePlus 8 vs. Galaxy S20: Which should you buy?

For some reason, we’re eager to put phones into broad groups — but it doesn’t make any sense.

I suppose “flagship” (as silly as the name is) can always make some sense, as it’s always going to represent the best and most expensive phones avai…

Things have changed in the short term, but are sticking to the plan for the final release.

Without a Google I/O conference to align with, and plenty of other obstacles in the world right now, Google has decided to shift the release timeline of Android 11. We don’t yet know if the end launch date has been “delayed” per se, because we never had so much as a month that it’d be released, let alone a specific date. But we know that things have been adjusted fromt he original plan — here’s how it changed.

When Google first announced the start of the Android 11 Developer Preview program, things were slated to follow the path shown below:

Three “Developer Preview” releases focused on finishing underlying APIs for developers to write apps against, followed by three “Beta” releases with more user-facing features included, and a final stable release some time in Q3 (aka by the end of September). With this layout, Google would lock in final APIs for developers in May, and presumably be we…

Mint Mobile is all about getting great service for a fraction of the price of the big carriers, and for many, that philosophy extends to the phone they choose to use. Thankfully, tons of great Android phones embody the same idea: getting a great experience with the latest specs and features and not paying top dollar for it. The best example of this is the OnePlus 8 Pro, which offers a flagship-like experience for less than the direct competition. It’s a great phone to pair with the solid-but-inexpensive Mint Mobile service.

Best Overall: OnePlus 8 Pro

The OnePlus 7 Pro is as excellent and well-designed as any high-end smartphone out today. If you know much about OnePlus, you’ll be happy to know it doesn’t stray from its traditional formula. Instead, it extends to its logical place in the landscape of 2020 flagships with more features and a higher price — but of course, not too high.

The hardware is toe-to-toe with any flagship, and it’s punctuated by the best display OnePlus h…

The first wireless charger out of OnePlus is a stunner. The Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger charges nearly as fast as its wired counterpart, which is an incredible achievement. But to accomplish those speeds, it generates a lot of heat, and subsequently has a built-in fan to keep everything cool. That can be a bit annoying, but thankfully you can tell your OnePlus 8 Pro to charge more slowly at specific times, taking away the wireless charger’s bothersome fan noise.

Products used in this guide

Best wireless charging: OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger ($70 at OnePlus)

How to use Bedtime Mode to slow OnePlus 8 Pro wireless charging

Go to Settings, Battery and Bedtime Mode.

Tap the toggle next to “schedule” to turn Bedtime Mode on.
Set your start and end times for Bedtime Mode — during these hours, charging will be slowed and the fan noise will be reduced.

Don’t be concerned with starting it early, since the phone will have plenty of time to charge overnight.

That’s …

This charger unlocks amazing speeds … for one phone.

It took until 2020, but OnePlus finally made a phone with wireless charging. And because it’s fond of controlling its charging standard in order to provide fantastic charging speeds, that means it has made its first wireless charger, too. The new charger carries the company’s “Warp Charge” branding, but it’s more than just a name — the speeds back it up, with this wireless charger nearly matching the incredible speeds of its Warp Charge wired chargers.

That’s worth getting excited about, particularly if you’ve been using OnePlus phones for years and watching the rest of the industry add wireless charging while you’re stuck plugging in. But now that you have wireless charging in your OnePlus 8 Pro, is it worth buying a Warp Charge branded charger when the world’s filled with Qi compatible charging pads? And further, if you don’t have a OnePlus phone, should you check out its first offering? I’ll cover recommendations for both …

A relatively strong quarter comes in under the shadow of coronavirus-forced issues ahead.

What you need to know

Alphabet’s Q1 2020 revenues were $41 billion, up 13% year over year.
Ad revenue experienced a “significant slowdown” in March, but YouTube ads still gained 33% year over year.
Google’s “other” revenues, including its hardware division, posted revenues up 22% year over year.

Alphabet’s first quarter earnings are in, and Google’s parent company posted another slate of relatively strong numbers. Revenue came in at over $41 billion, up 13% year over year, while net income was $6.8 billion, also up about 2.6% year over year. Interestingly though, income numbers were actually down year over year when removing the effects of European Commission’s (eventually) $1.7 billion fine levied last year. Though operating margin for the quarter was still a healthy 19%.

Alphabet’s stock ($GOOG) is up nearly 8% in after-hours trading.

There are lots of strong numbers here, given the …