Agree re: OIS but I think the sensor for the blurring looks pretty cool.

That's what I thought at first. But it looks from the reviews that it is done in a cheezy manner and doesn't look natural.

I hate the infinite depth of field on every phone camera anyway, so I wonder if the trade-off would be worth it for me in some situations. Hopefully they get better at that stuff.

Are there any free apps that can check battery drain? I have S4 and past few days seems like its been draining quicker then normal and I havent changed anything with it. Is this just normal over time?

GF and I getting S5s today. Will see how this goes. Expecting a great phone.

Do you use your camera a lot?
It sounds dumb but remove any camera short cuts and hard reboot. Known bug

Thanks for the reply. I guess it could be considered alot as prob use it a few times a day. Will try this. Thanks alot.

Got our S5s. Very good upgrade over what we previously had. S2 skyrocket/lumia 920.

Only thing I don't like so far is how light the phone is. Kinda used to something heavier, which I seem to like better. But I'm sure I'll get used to the weight. The screen is legit. Shooting true UHD video is awesome, as I have access to a 4k tv. Looks stunning. The camera is amazing as well.

GF is happy with hers too.

Google's coming out with a configurable phone skeleton that can fit different modules to essiently create a customized phone. It's called project Ara. Looks interesting.




http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/9/559...-to-make-parts

GSam Battery Monitor does a decent job. If you're rooted I highly recommend Better Battery Stats. It's not free but will tell you a lot more information.

Wow i remember countless threads everywhere from techneckbeards saying that module phones would never happen when the concept came out on youtube

They will never take off fwiw, but the big difference between then and now was Google and Moto (when they owned it) said soon after they would make one. The concept that first made people take note was pure vapourware.

yeah i ll believe when i see some prices and some real test , for now it s still a concept that have potential to be great or really awefull

Thanks. I installed this app and im horrible with technology so couldnt really tell with it what was making it drain quicker. It also used to fully charge within three hours i would say and now its taking over eight to fully charge it. Even when charging and in use seems like its draining, when before i never noticed it. Ive had it probably for nine months so is this just normal over time? Its my first smart phone really so i apologize for all the newb questions.

Yeah if it's charging slower, it could very well be a crappy battery.

Smartphone batteries do get bad over time, and how long that takes depends on use. From experience and talking with friends, it usually happens after about 18-30 months. 9 months would be unusual but it's possible. Batteries like to be at around 50%, at a cool temperature, and re-charged with frequent small charges. If you're constantly running your battery all the way down to <5% or keeping it permanently topped off at 100%, that will cause your battery to go bad quicker. If you're constantly overheating the battery, that will cause it to go bad a little quicker as well.

It's probably worth buying a cheap (not crappy) battery off of Amazon or something. Doesn't need to be OEM but should be a name brand at least.

You can't either, the files that contain the songs are encrypted so that only the spotify app can play them.
The "Play any song, anywhere" refers to the multitude of apps they have (PC/android/iphone or directly in your browser in case you have a chromebook).

Can anyone here play directly from the 'Play Music' app to Sonos? I Don't see any obvious way to make it work, if not is there a quick / easy work around to play downloaded music from the Play store to Sonos? (Note 2)
thanks

I feel like that feature was announced like one week ago.

Edit :

http://blog.sonos.com/news/now-playing-google-play-music-on-sonos/

awesome. thank you.

Thanks guys. Yea after installing that suggested app and then looking at the suggested charge time, it was well over 12 hours. I guess it was my fault as i didnt realize it is better suited charging at 50% as i was letting it go down to 5% any time i charged it. So i guess its a bad battery. Thanks for the help.

Any suggested batteries to purchase? I looked through amazon and have no clue the difference between which and seems like a bunch are fake counterfeits. Does that matter?

after running awefull with phone , breaking my galaxy note 1 year ago (my bad huge mistake on my part) and my nexus 4 breaking a bit out of nowhere and having the top half of the screen not responding anymore. I ordered my first chinese phone that i linked ealier:
Xiaomi red rice for 125€.

First impression: feeling a bit weird at the screen beeing not as large as N4 but way taller.
- feel really solid but a bit big and heavy.
- screen looks good
- scrolling feel a bit laggier than N4 not sure if it s the screen/OS/hardware
- I m happy to have hardware buttons again , but hate chinese phones(i had an old ZTE like that before )for using back button on the right side instead of left side obv should be a 2 days issue.
- MIUI is ok , i like the quick control panel , dont like the look of notifications(but not a big deal) , not a fan of the home screen beeing iphone like and dont feel like digging in the thousands of theme available so i guess i ll go back to apex soon
- dual sim is way better handled by miui than the few random chinese phone with mediatek hardware i ve seen before
- SD CARD SLOT , zomg !!!!!!!!!! that will be a huge upgrade over my N4 once i get my 64gb card, with my old 16gb card it s already a huge + over N4
- pretty smooth so far I d be curious to compare to a moto G which would be the direct competitor even if it s little bit more expensive.
-camera is ok

Hopefully MIUI 6 will be released soon since that kind of phone is the target of kitkat low ram usage feature.

So far i m pretty happy with that purchase and look forward to getting used to that phone

OnePlus One will be < $400

OnePlus One confirmed for 16 launch markets, costs under $400 #android - http://phon.es/47q9 by @androidcentral via @flyneapp

Charge it to 100%, let it drain 20-30% then go to battery settings and post the screenshot of what services are draining your battery. I had a note 2 I posted about earlier that had similar symptoms to what you're describing (also got really hot easily). It was a google media service that normally scans your phone for new music/pics/videos to upload and I had a corrupted file somewhere. I took all my media off the SD card and reformatted it, which solved my battery problem.

You could try looking at that and googling around to see if anyone else has this problem before replacing battery.

Got the HTC One m8 2 days ago, coming from a note 2. Really like the build quality and it's fast as hell. Getting used to downgrading screen size, but it's nice to be able to use 99% of the screen with 1 hand instead of 75% like on the note. I wasn't sure about the camera given it's small sensor size and while I haven't used it a lot, so far the picture quality seems better than the note's, though I'm sure at a larger size or crop the note would win. The camera itself has some cool functions that i think are more than gimmicks.

The phone has already slid out of my pocket a couple times so I'm thinking about a case - something which just made the note way too big and bulky. The combination of smaller phone and slick back means the thing just has no friction in my pocket.

In case people weren't aware, verizon is running a BOGO on the S5, One M8 and some other phone which brings the new phones to a pretty reasonable $200/2 of them.

The launch is set for April 23, which is just a week away.

Has anyone seen one of these in the wild?