HTC One M8′s Battery Lasts 40% Longer than its Predecessor

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The one complaint we had about the HTC One last year was the battery life. It didn’t seem to last as long as we needed or wanted it too. It did have a 2300mAh battery inside, which was the standard for batteries when it was released. However with the HTC One M8, HTC has bumped it up to 2600mAh. Which may not seem like a huge bump, after all it is only 300mAh change. But with the Snapdragon 801, battery life should be better and the device should charge a lot quicker as well. HTC is claiming that the HTC One M8 lasts 40% longer than the HTC One M7, which is a pretty big deal, that’s nearly double what the HTC One lasted.

The HTC One M8 also has a power-saving mode much like the Samsung Galaxy S5. In which HTC says the device can last about 2 weeks in standby mode. Which is pretty spectacular. And that means that standby is pretty good on the HTC One M8, which is good for those that don’t use their phones every minute of the day. At 20% HTC says it can last 60 hours, at 10% 30 hours, and at 5% it’ll last 15 hours. That’s just crazy talk right?

It’s great to see companies like HTC and Samsung working on battery technology, because that’s where I think they all need to be working. As every other aspect of the smartphone is fantastic, until you get to the battery life. None of us like having to charge our device multiple times a day, am I right? and you didn’t buy your phone to let it sit there and not get used all day either so you can keep from having to charge it throughout the day. Hopefully they’ll be able to catch up to the likes of LG and Motorola with their battery technology pretty soon. As I think those two are leading the way right now.

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The New HTC One M8 Battery, Will It Go The Distance For You?

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Now that the new HTC One M8 has been officially unveiled and announced, did it live up to the leaks and the hype? While some might find there to be a lack of excitement due to all the information we pretty much already knew for weeks, most might be presumably caught up with other details about the device. Like how long will this device last during a full days use? Will it live up to the battery life of the original HTC One? Last years One had a 2,300 mAh battery inside, and battery life was pretty decent especially for HTC. This years device ups the ante with a 2,600 mAh battery, and according to yesterdays in depth video review by Tech Smart, they were able to pull off about seven to eight and half hours on a single charge from continuous heavy use during the day, with activities like watching YouTube videos, browsing and interacting with social media and just general daily tasks. That’s not bad but it’s a far cry from the toted up to 21 hours of talk time that we saw boasted in the leaked spec information on the Rogers website yesterday.

So where will the battery sit for the general consumer? Well considering the average smartphone user doesn’t use quite the amount of features that some of us techies might, the battery life should be quite substantial. For those of us that would be considered the power user, and take full advantage of features like the Boom Sound speakers or just love to fire off tons of photos, it might be more in line with the 6-9 hour range. This if course will all depend on what you tend to use the most. The good news is that the battery is 40% longer battery live than the previous device, and HTC just announced that soon to come they will be updating the phone to have an Extreme Power Saver mode, that will allow the phone to last up to two full weeks in standby mode. While most of us probably don’t have the device in standby mode very long or very often, two weeks in standby would be a nice feature to have.

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HTC One M8 Google Play Edition Available for $699 USD

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It was outed earlier today in the HTC Gallery app that was uploaded to Google Play. But it’s now official. The HTC One M8 is going Google Play Edition. Can’t say we are really surprised. But it’s nice to see it announced on the same day as the device, instead of hearing about it months later like last year. Once again, it is US only and will only work on AT&T and T-Mobile as well as their MVNO’s, since it is a GSM device. The HTC One M8 Google Play Edition will be available for $699 USD, which might seem a bit pricey, and it is about $150 more than the original HTC One. It’s basically the HTC One M8 but without Sense 6 and stock Android instead, you’ll also be getting even quicker updates which HTC has done pretty well with in the past 12 months, even for their Sense-based devices like the HTC One, One Mini and One Max.

The HTC One M8 Google Play Edition comes with a 5-inch 1080p display, 2GB of RAM, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, a 4.1MP UltraPixel and 2MP cameras on the back with a 5MP front-facing camera. There’s also the best part of any HTC device lately, and that’s the front-facing speakers. We also have on-screen buttons, although there is still a pretty thick bezel at the bottom of the device that houses a HTC logo. So far we don’t know what color or storage capacity the Google Play Edition model will be available in but we do know that it will have expandable storage, up to a 128GB microSD card, so we shouldn’t care too much about whether Google Play will be selling the 16GB or 32GB model.

Great to see the Google Play Edition announced on launch day. How many of you are going to be picking up the HTC One M8 Google Play Edition when it launches? Let us know in the comments down below.

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HTC’s Website Confirms HTC One M8 Availability for all Four Carriers starting at 1pm ET Today

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Well, what do we have here? It looks like the rumor about Verizon having the exclusive on the HTC One M8 was wrong. Or at least they are the only ones having it in-store today, since the landing page on HTC’s website will allow you to order your HTC One M8 at 1pm ET today for Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T or Verizon. They are even offering free express shipping, so that means you’ll probably have it before the end of the week. Additionally, the HTC One M8 will be available in four different colors today, according to the source code on the site. Those colors are Gun metal, Silver, Gold and Black. I think I’d grab the Black one, as it looks the nicest.

However, that’s still not all that the landing page confirms. It also confirms the developer edition and Google Play Edition of the HTC One M8 being available today as well. Which is pretty big and good news for everyone out there looking for the developer edition or the Google Play Edition.

Then there’s also the HTC Dot View case, which is the case that we saw leaked a few weeks ago. It’s listed as a compatible accessory for the new HTC One M8. This case showed the time and weather, kind of like a light-bright, and it’ll likely be available later on today as well. However, there are more cases coming from third-party manufacturers for the HTC One M8 as well.

The picture is getting clearer and clearer as we get closer and closer to HTC’s event. They are doing their event in London and New York City and it’ll be beginning in about an hour or so, from the time of writing this. Are any of you excited to see what HTC has been up to? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Select Sandisk MicroSD Cards On Sale This Week from Amazon

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Yesterday, Amazon was running a sale on Samsung microSD and SD cards. Well today – and for about another week – they are running a sale on select Sandisk microSD cards. They are offering the Sandisk Ultra 32GB microSD card for just $22.10. Which is definitely a good deal, and if you’re picking up a new Samsung Galaxy S5, it’s a good idea to grab one or two so you can expand your storage. Additionally, Amazon has the 16GB microSD card on sale for just $13.73, and the 64GB microSD card for just $42.89. All are pretty good prices for these microSD cards. Sandisk also has a 128GB microSD card available, but it’s still pretty expensive.

With a microSD card you can expand the storage on some Android devices like the Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S5, or even the new HTC One 2014 that’s being announced today. It makes it easy to transfer your music library or gallery of photos from device to device when you upgrade or if you switch devices a lot like I do. Either way, these are great prices, and you’ll want to pick one up before they are gone.

SanDisk Ultra 64 GB microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card 30MB/s with Adapter SDSDQU-064G-AFFP-A

SanDisk Ultra 32 GB MicroSDHC C10/UHS1 Memory Card with Adapter (SDSDQU-032G-AFFP-A)

SanDisk Ultra 16 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card with Adapter (SDSDQU-016G-AFFP-A)

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Android 4.4 KitKat Still Accounts for Less Than 10% of Devices

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On the part of Google, it is a monthly ritual wherein Google release Android distribution numbers which tell developers which versions of Android are in circulation and what percentage they hold vis-à-vis the total pie. The details also provide insights into the problem of Android fragmentation. For the uninitiated, the Android ecosystem is open source, which provides device manufacturers with the flexibility of choosing which Android version to put on their device, and when to upgrade their older devices to the latest Android iteration. This flexibility has resulted in several older devices being stuck on older Android versions, which breaks up the Android ecosystem into several segments or fragments. From a developers’ viewpoint, fragmentation in Android means that he needs to design his app to be compatible with more Android versions, or else lose out on a large chunk of users.

To tackle this issue somewhat, Google brought a lot of changes in their latest and greatest Android version yet – Android 4.4 Kit Kat. The Kit Kat build was basically designed from scratch, keeping the needs of ageing and low-end devices in mind. Kit Kat has been slimmed down with Project Svelte, which has seen major improvements in memory management – with the software running very well on devices with 512 MB of RAM. However despite its features, Android 4.4 Kit Kat is yet to come to most devices. As evidenced by the Mixpanel data, published by Statista (see the graph below), we see that fragmentation in Android still lives on. As compared to iOS, which has seen around 85% users upgrade to the latest version, Android users are still mostly on the various builds of Android 4.2.x and Android 4.3.x Jelly Bean. The latest Android version is on only 8.24% devices. This is not much different from Google’s Android distribution numbers released during March’s first week.

Fragmentation on iOS is non-existent only because there aren’t any other OEMs who use iOS except for Apple. For Android, fragmentation may not be too easy to deal with. Though Kit Kat is backwards compatible with older devices, since Google doesn’t directly control the upgrade process for all manufacturers and carriers, some amount of inertia is bound to remain, which would see adoption of the latest version slow down. Do you think Android fragmentation is a major cause for concern? Do let us know in the comments below.

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OnePlus One Finally Gets A Launch Date; To Officially Launch on April 23rd 2014

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Many people are waiting to see what OnePlus has to offer in way of their first flagship device. Though we have specs, little has been found about price, launch and release date. However recently, OnePlus has announced exactly when we will be properly introduced to their “baby” the OnePlus One.

As far as specs go, we do have some ideas as to what we will be getting, though the juiciest part of this device may not be the specs, but rather the software. As you may know, the software has been designed by CyanogenMod. As such, it is very exciting to see what the have in mind for the future users of the OnePlus One. What we do know is that the OnePlus One will have a SnapDragon 801 chip inside, hidden by the 5.5-inch display. What may prove to be the sexiest part of the design is that the 5.5-inch display, though bigger than the display on the Galaxy S5, the device itself is smaller.

Besides the design, the device is going to have a 3,100 mAh battery powering it all and a 13 megapixel camera with some interesting features in itself. Reports suggest that the camera has a Sony Exmor IMX 214 sensor and an f/2.0 lens. This could prove to be a very admirable competitor in the smart phone camera arena. Now that we have gotten the suggested specs out-of-the-way, let’s talk about when exactly we will be introduced to this bad boy.

OnePlus announced that on April 23rd 2014, we will be introduced to the OnePlus One. Their announcement claims that they are taking a different approach to the smart phone. OnePlus makes comments like, “Forget gimmicks and bloat.” continuing to put the design of the new device ahead of anything else. Making sure that, “…in the end, it’s the user that benefits.” So, we will continue to wait, as other OEM’s are making available their newest flagship devices. Hoping all the while that the OnePlus One is worth the wait.

What about you, let us know just how interested you are in the OnePlus One. Also, is this a device you will be waiting for, or will you snatch up a different flagship, and wait for others to review the first flagship device from OnePlus?

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