LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition has beefier specs and built-in cellular connectivity

Alongside the LG V10, the folks at LG today introduced a new version of the LG Watch Urbane with cellular connectivity built-in.

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LG Watch Urbane

LG

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LG V10 is an Android phone with two front cameras and two displays

Tomorrow is LG’s big event in New York City, but the Korean side of the Life’s Good crew has announced the new hardware ahead of time.

LG

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Google talks Nexus 5X and 6P naming, lack of wireless charging, and more

Yesterday Google took the wraps off of the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, its big new phones for the year. And while Google showed off a number of the phones’ features yesterday, there are still a lot of questions to be answered. Thankfully, Google’s Nexus team is here to help.

Google

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iPhone 6S / 6S Plus Camera Review

The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus Camera Review is in. Does the iPhone's new 12MP Sensor bring back the keys to the kingdom for best in class camera on a smartphone? Find out in our review of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus Camera!

Apple

Apple iPhone 6s

Apple iPhone 6s Plus

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Latest LG V10 leak offers another look at the ticker display

Tomorrow is the event at which we expect to see the LG V10 and its secondary ticker display officially revealed. But surprise, surprise: the V10 has been fully revealed ahead of the show.

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LG

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Waiting for Microsoft’s event is worth it

With the recent unveiling of Google’s new Nexus 5X and 6P phones, which comes not even a month after Apple’s newest iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, it can be a hard task to wait to get your hands on two of the hottest devices of the year. However, if you haven’t already pulled the trigger, you might want to hold on just a little bit longer before making a solid decision if you’re in the market for a new smartphone.

Microsoft

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Google begins backing RCS messaging standard, acquires Jibe Mobile

Text messaging isn’t a terribly exciting topic in mobile, but that’s been changing recently as Rich Communications Services (RCS) have become a topic of conversation. T-Mobile recently began deploying RCS using its Advanced Messaging service, and now Google is getting behind RCS, too.

Google

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iOS 9.0.2 update now rolling out to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

UPDATE: Apple has also released an iOS 9.1 Beta 3 update to registered developers.

 

Hey, iOS users. How would you like a new software update to help get you over this Wednesday hump?

Apple

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Hands-on review: Blackphone 2

Hours before Silent Circle's Blackphone 2 broke cover, the mobile phone company formerly known as Research In Motion unveiled its first Android-based smartphone, Priv. By moving towards Android, BlackBerry cemented the belief that the platform is now ripe to be used as an enterprise-class, secure platform.

Was this purely coincidental? Maybe. But what it does is legitimise, to some extent, the work carried out by companies such as Silent Circle, Boeing or Granite, all of which have developed Android-based smartphones for businesses and individuals looking for more secure devices.

Silent Circle's original Blackphone was released last year in a joint venture between Spanish manufacturer GeeksPhone and Silent Circle. Since then, the latter bought its hardware partner out of the joint venture, a move which came as Silent Circle revealed it raised $50 million (about £33 million, or AU$70 million) to fuel its expansion.

The new iteration, called the Blackphone 2, just launched for $799 (about £530, or AU$1,140) and brings in some noteworthy improvements to its predecessor.

The phone runs on mid-range hardware with some additional security components to keep your data private and the phone itself untouched. We've been told that there's a physical fuse that blows should someone other than the owner want to modify the smartphone's firmware.

BlackPhone 2 uses AES-128 encryption to keep your data secure from the moment it's switched on, and promises to provide the world's fastest vulnerability management.

Critical vulnerabilities, the company says, will be patched within 72 hours of detection or reporting with updates coming directly from Silent Circle, not from the carriers or Google.

Design

As expected, the phone is almost entirely anthracite in colour and sports a glossy finish with a glass facia at the rear and the front, both of which do a great job of keeping the owner's fingerprints in plain sight (we're not sure whether that is a privacy risk).

Its slightly curved corners and textured edges don't make it any easier to hold though – its large 5.5-inch Gorilla Glass display means that its size might be an issue for those with smaller hands.

With a full HD resolution (that's 1920 x 1080 pixels, the same as the iPhone 6 Plus and 6S Plus), it rivals what high-end business laptops usually offer, albeit on a larger screen. The display is bright and quality-wise it's on par with other efforts at the high-end of the smartphone market.

Open the phone (we obviously didn't do that) and you'll find an 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor clocked at 1.7GHz.

There's also 3GB of RAM, 32GB internal storage, a microSD card slot that can store up to 128GB (just make sure you don't store any vital information on it), a 13-megapixel rear camera at the back and a 5-megapixel snapper in front.

A 3060mAh battery (with Quick Charge 2.0) keeps the whole thing ticking; the longevity of the handset will, as one expects, vary according to how the phone is used.

As for Wi-Fi, the Blackphone 2 offers a Smarter Wi-Fi service (the handset has 802.11ac) that stops broadcasting your details to an open hotspot after a short period of time.

One obvious missing feature is a fingerprint reader for those who prefer biometrics-based security solutions but Silent Circle told us that they didn't find it compelling to include one at this stage.

Security

The Blackphone 2 runs Silent OS, a modified version of Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, which boasts Google's services including the Play app store, which might seem to be slightly odd given the recent spate of vulnerabilities that have hit apps within Google Play, and the tendency of free mobile apps to siphon as much personal data as possible in order to serve more relevant ads.

But you have granular control on each application's permissions, something that Google has introduced in Marshmallow, otherwise known as Android 6.0. Whether users will wholeheartedly embrace that concept or just ignore it because it requires tinkering with the setting remains to be seen.

Blackphone 2 also offers the ability to segregate your applications, separating your work life and your personal life. You could potentially have other so-called 'spaces' (up to four of them) which act like virtual machines or silos.

These can be populated with anything you'd expect to find on a smartphone (apps, files, photos and so on) and can be pushed to the target handset by the IT department like a shrink-wrapped package ready to use.

Silent Circle also includes a Silent App store which it says will be populated with apps carefully vetted by the SC team via a semi-automated process. Needless to say, only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of apps on Google Play will ever make it to that proprietary store.

At the core of Blackphone's security features is the Silent Suite of applications which encrypts calls, texts and data on the phone, and is sold as a subscription.

Note that you will need a separate data plan to get the whole thing working as the feature runs as a VoIP service, handled by Silent Circle's ultra-secure infrastructure located, as you might have guessed, in Switzerland.

Subscriptions start from $12.95 (around £8.50, or AU$19) per month for 100 Silent World Minutes to $39.95 (around £25, or AU$55) for 1000 minutes to 120 destinations. You will also need to have a Blackphone on both sides for the communication to be entirely private.

Early verdict

The Blackphone 2 is a sleek, attractive handset with a premium feel, and it's a phone that Silent Circle says has been designed from the ground up to be private. However, its price is likely to be a massive stumbling block; don't expect them to sell like hot cakes.

The company made it clear though that while individuals might be a significant portion of its end-users, the biggest market will be enterprises and organisations where there is a demand for secure Android devices that don't look rubbish.

That is why the product ships in two boxes – one bland outer shell for the IT department or value added reseller to open, and a black one that houses the smartphone once it has been configured for its final end-user.

For those that this handset targets, the fact that it doesn't yet have government and military certification such as FIPS 140-2 makes it more of a challenge.

It does however integrate with the more popular MDM systems (SOTI, Blackberry's Good and Citrix) and Android for Work.

Looking ahead to the next 12 months, the biggest threat will come from BlackBerry who will now fully commit to Android, allowing its customers to get the best of both worlds.

Then there's also the fact that Google has included a number of these features as part of its Android for Work scheme, available on Lollipop and Marshmallow.

This makes Android as a whole a more resilient, enterprise-ready platform, but also opens the market up for other potential competitors that have a more established business user base.

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TAG Heuer's Android Wear smartwatch will cost $1,800, debut on Nov. 9

TAG Heuer has been trickling out details of its upcoming Android Wear smartwatch throughout 2015, but now we know when we’ll finally get a look at the device.

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Sprint $60 unlimited plan getting a price increase on October 16

Sprint has been boasting about its $60 unlimited plan, which includes bottomless high-speed data, since it launched in August of last year. Next month, that plan is undergoing a notable change.

Sprint

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Samsung Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic launch October 2, start at $299

Following their debut at the end of August, Samsung today officially announced the launch date and prices of the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic, its first round smartwatches.

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Samsung Gear S2

Samsung

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Microsoft leaks Lumia 950 XL, Lumia 950 in its online store

We’ve seen quite a few Microsoft Lumia 950 XL and Lumia 950 leaks so far, including one that may have come from an internal Microsoft presentation. Today’s leak is a bit different, though, in that Microsoft itself posted it.

Microsoft

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Hands-on review: Chromecast 2

Google has a Chromecast 2 for 2015, and it's built to be more reliable and easier to use than its first media streaming dongle, yet it's just as inexpensive.

The new Chromecast is on sale right now through the Google Store for an easy $35 (£28), but the media streaming landscape has changed since the first edition launched two years ago.

It faces competition from the fuller-featured new Apple TV and new Amazon Fire TV, and for a direct comparison, other HDMI streamers like Roku Streaming Stick and Amazon Fire Stick. In a few days, we're bound to see a Roku 4K set-top box.

Then there are 20 million Chromecast 1 buyers who have pressed that "Cast" button 1.5 billion times to beam their phone's movies, television shows and app content to a big-screen TV. What about them?

Is it worth upgrading to this device with the same name? Let's take a hands on look at this video and audio streaming device now that we've tried it out.

Design

The new Chromecast 2 streams the same app content as its predecessor, but Google gave this refresh extra flavor when it comes to the design.

It takes the form of the circular Chrome logo with an attached HDMI cable sticking out of one end. This disk-like shape is certainly different from what had looked like an oversized thumbnail drive.

It's also easier to plug in because the HDMI cable gives you extra room to let the Chromecast hang behind the television. It's as if the Chromecast HDMI Extender accessory comes built-in.

Noting that it hangs behind the TV out of sight, it's curious to see that Google decided to liven up the Chromecast with different colors: Lemonade (yellow), Coral (pink) and the normal Black.

But there's a hidden reason for this. The Chromecast 2 is designed to travel, so just in case you also have the new and very similar Chromecast Audio, you'll be able to tell them apart by color.

Chromecast's other portable design perk is that its has a magnetic back. This enables the HDMI cable curl and cling to the back for easy stowing. It's a small, but convenient change.

Features

Google has made its new Chromecast more reliable with the inclusion of new Wi-Fi antennas, giving us the newer 802.11ac standard and the less congested 5Ghz band.

Between the 2.4GHz / 5Ghz and the built-in extender, the Chromecast 2 should put an end to those annoying buffering moments that prevent you from getting lost in a movie or TV show.

The device itself feels a bit heavier in my palm as a result, but it's still just 39.1g or 0.086 lbs. Given the superior antenna, I'm okay with that - it won't weigh down my television mount.

The Chromecast 2 works with the same devices, including Android phones and tablets, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Chromebook and even Macs.

Sadly, you still won't be able to project your entire iPhone or iPad screen onto a television. Mirroring is still limited to Android and the Chrome browser, and that's not really Google fault.

Google isn't pairing the Chromecast 2 with a physical remote either, which means one of these phones, tablets or computers is required to initiate app streaming. Sometimes it's nice to get away from phones and tablets, but the new Chromecast skips that and any sort of central hub menu on the TV.

Apps

You're not going to miss out on any new apps if you don't upgrade to the new Chromecast. That said, Google did announce a fresh set of partnerships to keep your stream flowing.

New additions like Spotify, NFL Sunday Ticket by DirecTV, YouTube Kids and Google Photos are all recent additions for movie, music, sports and photo streaming content.

There isn't a central hub on the main screen, however Google has designed an app that culls "featured content" across all of the apps on your casting device. The job of figuring out what to watch a tad less of a chore, but it is displayed on the smaller screen.

Google is trying to position its Chromecast 2 to stay on the screen indefinitely. Its latest update allows you to customize a TV with photos from Flickr and Facebook (so, not just Google+ now).

It is also readying the ability to "cast" games like Angry Birds Go Gold, Driver Speedboat Paradise and Just Dance Now. Friends and family can join in on the multiplayer fun using their phones as a "personal" game controller. Google isn't ready to design a Chromecast-compatible gamepad of its own just yet.

Early verdict

The Chromecast 2 is still the cheapest way to make your dumb television a lot bit smarter in a jiffy. And at $35 (£28), it streams app content to the big screen with the push of a button.

The fact that Google made it more reliable and added a new content partners like Spotify means this dongle is more worthwhile than ever. Think about it: two years ago, Chromecast launched with zero sports apps. Now it feature 43 sports apps on its website.

I'm still waiting for a way to natively stream Amazon Instant Video from my phone to a Chromecast, or mirror iOS devices to the TV with it. I'm not holding my breath for either. Amazon and Apple obviously aren't fans of the ultra-cheap Chromecast.

It may not be worth replacing an existing old Chromecast, but the new version is the most affordable choice for anyone who hasn't bought into Google's streaming platform yet. Alternatively, you could also give yourself the excuse that you need to get a second one in the house, or have one in a bag for travel. After all, it packs up nicely in its new, smaller form factor.

• See: Google Chromecast 2 vs Chromecast 1

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Nexus Event Recap: Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Pixel C Tablet, Chromecast 2 & Chromecast Audio

On September 29, 2015, Google officially unveiled the LG Nexus 5X, Huawei Nexus 6P, Pixel C Tablet, Chromecast 2 and Chromecast Audio. If you were to choose only one device, which device would you pick? Let us know in a comment below!

Google

LG

Huawei

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