Huawei plans to trial 5G mobile internet at the 2018 World Cup

Who needs to watch the football when you can check Facebook?

Huawei and Russian network operator MegaFon have teamed up to develop 5G technology in time for coverage at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. This will be two years before most people expect 5G to be widely available.

The agreement between the two companies will see them holding regular meetings to share progress on the standardisation of 5G technology, as well as working together to determine what needs to be done to create a 5G network.

A test area will be created to conduct 5G trials and pilot projects with a goal that by the end of June 2017 a 5G network will be created, which will be available to guests at the 2018 World Cup.

Ryan Ding, president of Huawei products and solutions, said: "with the help of MegaFon, we are confident of turning science-fiction-like service into 5G reality for citizens in Russia and soccer fans around the world, two years ahead of the industry's estimated 5G introduction date of 2020".

Huawei and MegaFon aren't the only companies using an upcoming sporting event as a goal to introduce 5G. Japanese network operator NTT Docomo has announced that it wants to have 5G services running in time for the 2020 Olympic Games.

Via Mobile World Live

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Ofcom opens up airwaves for faster and cheaper mobile internet

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Ofcom's latest move will mean faster mobile internet by 2022

Ofom has just announced its decision to open up airwaves to make them available for mobile broadband services.

The move will allow mobile network operators to use frequencies that are currently reserved for digital terrestrial TV services and wireless microphones, known as the 700 MHz frequency band.

This means mobile networks could offer faster and cheaper mobile internet to their customers by the beginning of 2022, with the possibility of it coming two years earlier.

If you view digital terrestrial TV services such as Freeview or YouView then don't worry, as Ofcom is ensuring that this move will not affect those services. Ofcom has also confirmed that you will not need to buy new equipment when the time comes.

Sports venues, theatres and other events that use wireless microphones have also been reassured that this move will not affect them.

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This time, no new equipment required

BT welcomes the competition through gritted teeth

So many megahertz it hurts

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Boost Mobile is getting the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cheaper than Apple

This could be your excuse

This shouldn't come as a surprise, since Boost Mobile also carried the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C, but the Sprint-owned carrier will begin selling the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on October 17.

The nice surprise in this news is that Boost Mobile is selling the new iPhones at a significant discount compared with Apple's official prices (and other carriers).

In fact, Boost Mobile customers can get the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus contract-free for $100 off Apple's prices.

Boost is charging $550, $650, and $750 for the 16, 64, and 128GB iPhone 6, respectively.

Meanwhile the same sizes of the iPhone 6 Plus will cost $650, $750, and $850.

If you've been waiting for an excuse to buy the new iPhone, this might be it.

Via Phone Scoop

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Mobile apps are leaving Web work in the dust, code guru laments

How it shakes out will profoundly affect the way we all use computing devices, warns high-profile developer Tim Bray. And should we cede so much control to Apple and Google?

Prominent developer Tim Bray, speaking at the Goto conference in Aarhus, Denmark. warns that mobile programming has better tools than Web programming. Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

Beware, browser fans: mobile apps could out-evolve the Web's open computing foundation, letting companies like Apple and Google dominate our digital future.

That's the warning offered by Tim Bray, a programmer and technology expert who spoke at a Goto Conference for software developers in Aarhus, Denmark. Although Bray formerly was Google's Android developer evangelist, he's spent much of his career as a "Web guy."

"Things really aren't that great, to be brutally honest, in the world of browser programming," Bray said in a Goto video posted Wednesday.

When it's time to write an app -- something interactive, not just a document with some hyperlinks -- Web programmers must reckon with flawed foundations that have been patched over by a constantly shifting collection of tools.

The situation is very different for programmers working on apps that run on mobile phones and tablets based on Google's Android operating system or Apple's iOS. When managers tell them to write mobile apps, programmers often are eager because the software development kits are much better than for Web programmers.

"You've got these huge, elite teams at Google and Apple making the native mobile app development better," Bray said at last week's conference. "There are a lot of smart people working on browser technology, too, but I'm not sure they're catching up."

How it all shakes out will profoundly affect how we all use computing devices in the future. The Web is an open foundation with no single player in charge, but the mobile markets are controlled in varying degrees by Google and Apple.

"The single most important thing about the Web, which we are in danger of forgetting, is the Web is the only major computing platform that has ever existed that does not have a vendor," Bray said. "I want an Internet where people can write beautiful software and post beautiful software and have people use beautiful software without having to ask anybody's permission."

Dice, a company that hooks programmers up with jobs, notes that mobile skills are important -- but that the Web is still a force, too. "On any given day, there are 1,825 job postings for mobile applications, 3,005 for tech professionals with iPhone experience and 2,652 for Android skills. [For] Web developers, there are 2,045 job postings on any given day," Dice spokeswoman Rachel Ceccarelli said.

What are the problems with those companies building the operating systems, app stores and sometimes hardware? Bray sees app stores' slow, cluttered search services as vastly inferior to a browser search box when it's time to get something done. It can take days or weeks for Apple to authorize updates, he said, and Google, while faster right now, is getting slower.

"Do you have a really nasty, core-dumping, security-spilling, privacy-leaking, password-exposing bug? Well, it sucks to be you," Bray said of mobile-app programmers. "Whereas if you're a citizen on the Web, you can actually fix it."

Tim Bray argues that shortcomings in Web's JavaScript, CSS, and DOM technologies means programmers must rely on a "pile" of higher-level software tools. Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

Bray believes Web programming has three big sore points: JavaScript for programming, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) used for formatting, and the DOM (Document Object Model) used to let JavaScript programs control Web pages.

"When you come right down to it, of all the great programming languages, JavaScript isn't one of them," Bray said. "Our basic programming language is probably not good enough. It's kind of ugly and kind of stupid and full of dangerous things and it's not fast enough."

Dealing with their shortcomings requires "piling more layers of software on top of it" to shield programmers from the complexities. There has been a "Cambrian explosion" of such tools, he said, likening the situation to the burst of evolutionary variation hundreds of millions of years ago that led to countless exotic but ultimately short-lived branches on the tree of life.

Bray's list of the bigger helpers: JQuery; Google's Angular, Polymer, and Dart; Ember.js, Backbone.js; Mozilla's ASM.js; CoffeScript; IcedCoffeeScript; Less; Sass; Twitter's Bootstrap; Bourbon Neat; and ZenGrids.

"There's nothing intrinsically wrong with being in a period of explosion of creativity -- unless you happen to bet on the browser equivalent of one of those creatures that died away," Bray said. "The browser is under attack at a very high pace. We need to accelerate some of this evolution."

CNET staff writer Seth Rosenblatt contributed to this report.

Stephen Shankland Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and covers browsers, Web development, digital photography and new technology. In the past he has been CNET's beat reporter for Google, Yahoo, Linux, open-source software, servers and supercomputers. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. See full bio

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Oracle bolsters E-Business with 14 mobile apps

Oracle goes big with mobile apps

Oracle has added 14 mobile applications to its E-Business suite. New apps include mobile procurement, mobile expenses and mobile inventory.

The applications are meant to bolster the E-Business Suite by offering easy-to-use Android and iOS apps that can be accessed and utilized on mobile devices in a similar manner to how they are accessed on desktops.

Licensed E-Business Suite users can access the new mobile applications for free with the two latest versions of the platform, Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 and Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.2.

Mobile ApprovalsMobile ExpensesMobile TimecardsMobile ProcurementMobile Sales OrdersMobile InventoryMobile Product InformationMobile ProcurementMobile Project ManagerMobile Discrete Production SupervisorMobile Process Production SupervisorMobile Project ManufacturingMobile MaintenanceMobile Field Service

Earlier this year, Oracle unveiled 57 applications for smartphones and tablets. The apps covered maintenance, field service, project management, supply chain, health and safety management.

This week, Oracle also added six new tools to its Cloud Platform Services. The tools focused on big data, mobile, integration, process management, Java Platform, andNode.js.

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Industry voice: Will Apple Pay pave the way for more secure mobile payments?

Even before the release of the iPhone 6, the rumour mill had been in overdrive on what we could expect from the device's new features and functionality.

One of the most significant announcements to have been made at last week's event was the launch of Apple Pay: a new mobile payments service using NFC to enable contactless payments.

Although mobile contactless payments hold the promise of greater convenience with quick and easy 'wave and pay' transactions, they have not, to date, reached mass appeal.

The big question, now, is can Apple succeed where others have failed and take contactless payments from a niche service to more mainstream adoption?

At the heart of the issue, and probably one of the most important factors in determining if it will catch on, is the security of the system.

This is because retailers in particular have been a prime target for cyber criminals with POS systems proving to be a valuable commodity, and malware targeting credit and debit card readers or cash registers, steadily on the rise.

The cyber-attacks on US retail giants Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels Stores - which involved malware on POS systems - had a profound impact on sales and consumer confidence in the safety of credit-card information at POS terminals.

Of course, Apple don't have control over POS systems, but its new mobile payments should provide reassurances for consumers, as it uses a new approach which would mean that it is harder for criminals to perpetrate the kind of widespread data breaches we've seen this year.

From the first analysis of Apple Pay, it appears that Apple is attempting to revolutionise payment methods into a far more secure and transaction-specific system which could only benefit the retail industry and users.

The critical difference here is that it uses "Secure Element," an encryption method to protect payment information, using a one-time payment number. Personal Credit Information is not transferred in the transaction, instead a transaction code is sent to the bank which uses an algorithm that tells the system where money needs to go.

If we add the extra stage of security in fingerprint recognition, this is a very powerful and secure change in transmitting PCI data. It's an approach which could even put pressure on banks to change the way a standard debit or credit card transaction takes place and to change their security protocols.

From what we know so far, and the workflows that Apple is proposing with the Device Account Number being used alongside a transaction-specific dynamic security code, this looks like a significant advancement in securing mobile payments.

The trade-off between security and ease-of-use for consumers has always been a challenging balance to strike. It could just be, that with this latest innovation, Apple has been able to blaze a new trail in the evolution of safer payments, pioneering a more secure method as transactions are not creating re-usable data

Time will tell if consumers are now ready to swap cash and cards for mobile payments; that said, adoption rates for NFC payments are rising and the addition of mobile payments by Apple - which has a loyal base of customers - looks set to shake things up further.

Closer assessment of the security will of course have to wait until the phones are fully in use and theory is put into practice.

What we do know is that with Apple's announcement that security and privacy are core to this service, we should anticipate a robust system that can protect consumers and their data as fully as possible.

Nick Pollard is Senior Director of Professional Services, Guidance Software

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iWatch mobile payments could change everything

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Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. M Wireless Mobile Gaming Headset

Pros Powerful bass. Lots of connection options. Comfortable. Long battery life.

Cons Expensive. Highly sculpted sound profile isn't as good for music as it is for games. Multi-purpose button is easy to accidentally tap. Bottom Line The Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. M Wireless headset lets you listen to your games and media almost any way you want—if you can get past the price tag.

By Will Greenwald The Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. M Wireless tries to do everything, and it generally succeeds. This $199.99 headset is part of Mad Catz' GameSmart line of mobile device-focused gaming accessories, but it's more than just headset for smartphones and tablets. Besides Bluetooth with aptX support, it can function as a wired device through a 3.5mm or USB cable, offering ways to connect to any device you might have. It's packed full of features and flexibility, but its sound quality doesn't quite hit the levels you can get from similarly priced dedicated Bluetooth headphones like the Editors' Choice Supertooth Freedom or non-Bluetooth wireless gaming headsets like the Skullcandy PLYR 1.

Design
Like most of Mad Catz' gaming devices, the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless is colorful and stylized, with a glossy, candy shell-like plastic body available in red, black, or white. The headband and outsides of the earcups sport the headset's primary color, while the round earpads, the hinged joints between the headband and the earcups, and the small padded cushion on the underside of the headband are black or white. The F.R.E.Q. M Wireless is comfortable to wear without being bulky, even if the fit is a bit snug. The hinges on the earcups both pivot and bend inward, letting the headset fold up neatly for carrying in the included padded mesh pouch.

The outsides of the earcups are shiny and angular, with casings shaped vaguely like Mad Catz' R.A.T. gaming mice. They're differently and irregularly shaped compared with the circular earpads they hold, which along with the big hex bolts on the hinges give the headset a stylish cyberpunk look.

All connections and controls sit on the outside of the right earcup. A large button that takes up most of the earcup's area sports the Mad Catz logo and serves as the standard multi-use Play/Pause/Call control. The button's easy to tap accidentally, especially when folding up the headset and putting it in a bag. Two smaller sets of buttons flank the large one above and below, offering volume controls, track navigation, and microphone muting. Full-fledged Track Forward/Back and Volume Up/Down buttons are welcome and not often found on Bluetooth headphones, and it's nice to see a full selection of physical controls that don't require multiple, timed taps to get the job done. A 3.5mm port and micro USB port sit on the back edge of the right earcup, between the two rows of buttons.

Features and Connectivity
Mad Catz' free A.P.P. app for Android and iOS offers some useful controls and information about the connected headset. It can switch between Speech, Game, Music, or Movie equalizer settings or turn off the equalizer entirely, and can toggle the microphone on and off. It also has a very handy battery meter that shows how charged the headset is and how much time is left on it. Mad Catz estimates the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless can last approximately 24 hours playing music at medium volume, but that number will obviously go down as you crank the headphones up. With regular use at high volume and connection to multiple devices (the headset can maintain two connections at a time), I found the battery life to be closer to a still-impressive 12 hours.

The F.R.E.Q. M Wireless is primarily a Bluetooth headset, but it can work as a wired headset with or without power. It can connect to your mobile device with the included 3.5mm audio cable to work passively in what Mad Catz calls Flight Mode, or connect to your computer through a USB connection, serving as its own digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

Performance
While it's billed as a gaming headset, the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless also works as a pair of Bluetooth or wired headphones. It does an admirable job playing music, but it doesn't quite reach the clarity or response offered by dedicated, non-gaming Bluetooth headphones in the same price range. It handled our standard bass test track, The Knife's "Silent Shout," very well, though it did brush up against distortion at maximum (and borderline unsafe) volume levels. The bass response is powerful enough to rattle the ears, but I heard just a hint of crackle when the bass synth hits kicked in. Fortunately, it went away completely by reducing the volume a little bit.

The F.R.E.Q. M Wireless handles non-thumpy music fairly capably, as well. I listened to Ninja Sex Party's "Everybody Shut Up" and "Attitude City" through a Bluetooth connection on my computer, and the funky synth of both tracks sounded full without muddying Danny "Sexbang" Avidan's dulcet vocals. Miles Davis's much less synth-heavy "So What" didn't fare nearly as well, though, with the piano lacking enough definition and brightness. The texture of the recording itself lost its warmth or clarity, turning the scratchy analog sound into a steady hiss. This isn't a headset for audiophiles or fans of very subtle mixes at all. 

So music performance isn't quite on par with music-oriented Bluetooth headphones in the same price range, or high-end, non-Bluetooth gaming headsets like the Skullcandy PLYR 1 or its older, more expensive brother, the Astro Gaming A50. Instead, the audio profile is very clearly tweaked towards gamers, with notable sculpting in both low-end and high-end to make games and music sound more exciting. Even the equalizer presets, which are only available through the A.P.P. app, change the headset's sound in ways that will make audiophiles cringe, like pulling up the midrange and high-end and completely dropping out the bass for the Voice preset. For music, the Music equalizer setting offers the best general performance, but it's still sculpted heavily enough to give even my forgiving ears pause. It sounds very good, but not particularly accurate to any given track's mix.

Because the earcups are relatively small and don't completely cover the ear, the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless can bleed sound outwards if you play games or music too loud. It's not an issue for your listening experience, but it can be disruptive if you're using them in a relatively quiet place around other people.

I played Team Fortress 2 with the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless, and the small, collapsible headphones sounded full and powerful while I fought through the Asteroid beta map. Explosions were forceful and punchy, and the music and atmospheric dialogue was clear. The headphones are strictly stereo, and there aren't any audio processing effects to produce positional imaging, like many dedicated PC gaming headsets offer.

I paired the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless to my PlayStation Vita PCH-2000 without any problem and played both Persona 4 and Persona 2: Innocent Sin. The games' soundtracks came through loud and clear, though both funky, atmospheric games obviously emphasize dialogue and music more than explosions.

Conclusion
The Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. M Wireless is an audio Swiss army knife that's aimed at gamers, but capable in multiple roles. It sounds very good for a gaming headset, but for its price its sound profile isn't particularly balanced or friendly to audiophiles. If you spend most of your time on front of a PC or HDTV when gaming, a Skullcandy PLYR 1 might be more up your alley, or the best-in-class Astro Gaming A50 if you can afford the even higher price tag. If you mainly want a good set of headphones to listen to music wirelessly on the go, the Supertooth Freedom offers a more comfortable fit and superior sound. If you're the type of hardcore gamer that lands between those categories, and wants to be able to go wireless both on the go and at home across multiple devices, the F.R.E.Q. M Wireless is an ideal headset.

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LG Volt (Boost Mobile)

Pros Well-built. Android 4.4. Supports Spark LTE. Big battery. Built-in IR emitter.

Cons Mediocre display and cameras. Low internal storage. Bottom Line The LG Volt smartphone shines on Boost Mobile thanks to its beefy battery, Spark LTE compatibility, and affordable price.

By Eugene Kim

Though far from the electrifying force its name might suggest, the LG Volt is a potent Android smartphone for the price ($179.99) on Boost Mobile. It's essentially a rebranded LG Lucid 3, but Boost bumps the battery capacity up to a whopping 3,000mAh, which equates to all-day battery life and then some. And it's still got the same compact design we liked on the Verizon model, while performance is in line with similarly priced devices. It's comparable to the Warp 4G, which has a sharper 720p display, but more dated hardware and a significantly smaller battery. Between the two, I personally prefer the Volt—it's a great value pick for those who can't afford the $600 for a Galaxy S5, but still want a modern Android experience.

The LG Volt is nearly identical to the LG Lucid 3 on Verizon, so head over to that review for a full rundown on the design and features. I'll cover the slight physical and software differences between the two for this review.

Design, Call Quality, and Android
With a beefier battery, the LG Volt is marginally thicker and heavier than its Verizon counterpart at 5.18 by 2.6 by 0.41 inches (HWD) and 4.8 ounces. The glossy back is gone, in favor of a textured, matte plastic cover that I much prefer. That back still peels off to reveal the removable 3,000mAh battery (up from 2,440mAh on the Lucid 3) and SIM and microSD card slots. The Volt still feels solidly built and compact for its display size. Also new to the Volt is a built-in IR emitter embedded on the top of the phone—the preloaded Quick Remote app worked fine with a number of HDTVs in our lab.

Note: The slideshow below is of the LG Lucid 3, which is physically identical to the LG Volt.

Boost Mobile piggybacks on Sprint's nationwide 3G and 4G networks. The Volt supports CDMA (800/1900MHz) and LTE (850/1900/2500MHz), which means fast speeds on Sprint's new Spark LTE network—where you can find it, of course. Call quality was disappointing, with weak noise cancellation and low transmission quality through the mic. My voice often sounded muffled and digitized, and when I ventured into a noisier environment, everything became a garbled mess. Earpiece volume is sufficient and callers on the other end sound clear and easy to understand.

In my tests, the 3,000mAh battery was good for over 20 hours of continuous talk time. That's significantly longer than the Lucid 3, which lasted for 15 hours in the same test.

See How We Test Cell Phones

The Volt runs Android 4.4.2 with the same LG Optimus UI tweaks found in the Lucid 3. Of the 8GB of total storage, only 3.8GB is available to users out of the box. Boost's loathsome Mobile ID software is onboard, but luckily most of the pre-loaded apps that go along with it are removable. Our 64GB microSD card worked fine as well, but you can't install apps onto the SD card by default, meaning bigger titles like Asphalt 8 are going to quickly fill up the phone's internal storage.

Conclusions
While the Lucid 3 was simply another entry-level option in a sea of subsidized phones on Verizon, the quality and breadth of options on Boost elevate the Volt above its Verizon counterpart. $180 gets you a modern Android smartphone with bonuses like extra-long battery life and a built-in IR blaster for controlling home theater devices. Those two useful features, combined with the overall solid experience, make the Volt a great affordable option on Boost. If you prioritize screen clarity, the Warp 4G or even the two-year-old Samsung Galaxy S III are better options, though neither supports Sprint's new Spark LTE.

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Kyocera Hydro Vibe (Virgin Mobile)

Pros Waterproof. Affordable. Solid media support.

Cons Poor call quality. Unimpressive display. Mediocre camera. Bottom Line The Kyocera Hydro Vibe for Virgin Mobile is an affordable waterproof smartphone, but its performance is only average.

By Alex Colon

It would be great if all smartphones were waterproof, but most carriers only have one or two options. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is water-resistant and available just about everywhere, but at $599.99 on Virgin Mobile, it's also extremely expensive. The Kyocera Hydro Vibe is a solid waterproof alternative, with less impressive hardware, but a significantly lower $149.99 price tag. It isn't the best smartphone on Virgin, but it gets the job done.

The Hydro Vibe on Virgin is virtually identical to the model we reviewed on Sprint, so much of this review is the same. That said, I come to slightly different conclusions about them because Virgin has a different lineup and pricing than Sprint.

Design, Waterproofing, and Display
At 5.02 by 2.50 by 0.43 inches (HWD) and 4.9 ounces, the Vibe is easy to hold in one hand. It has a generic look, made completely out of plastic with a rubberized, textured back panel. The phone is mostly black, with silver buttons, and a dark gray band around the display. You'll find a Power button and 3.5mm headphone jack at the top of the phone, with two Volume buttons on the left. There's a dedicated camera button on the bottom right, and a micro USB port for charging on the bottom. Three touch buttons sit below the display.

The Vibe is certified waterproof for IPX5 and IPX7 standards. That means it can survive submersion in up to 3.28 feet of water for up to 30 minutes. You need to make sure the battery door is properly sealed, but the headphone jack and power port needn't be covered, which is helpful. I tested the Vibe by soaking it in a pitcher of tap water for 30 minutes. After a quick pass of a paper towel the phone emerged unscathed, so if you've ever lost a phone to water damage, the Vibe is a device you might want to consider. 

The phone has an unimpressive 4.5-inch LCD. It features 960-by-540-pixel resolution, which works out to 245 pixels per inch. It looks fine, but sometimes text can appear a bit grainy, and in general it pales in comparison with a 720p or 1080p display. It could also stand to get a bit brighter.

Network and Call Quality
Virgin Mobile uses Sprint's network, and the Hydro Vibe supports both 3G and 4G LTE connectivity. We've seen some fast numbers on Sprint's LTE network, but performance wasn't great where I tested the Vibe in New York City. Reception was average at best, and the phone often dropped down to 3G. It also supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, and had no trouble connecting to our test network in the PC Labs.

The phone uses Kyocera's Smart Sonic Receiver technology, which transmits audio using tissue conduction rather than a traditional speaker. That means there's no speaker on the front of the phone—instead, the glass of the display sends sound vibrations to your ear. I've experienced this done well before, but that's not the case here. Call quality on the Vibe is abysmal. Voices sound thin, tinny, and grainy. When taking a call outside, it becomes difficult to hear. Calls made with the phone are only slightly better, but sound too digitized and suffer from poor noise cancellation. The speakerphone is fine, but far too low to hear outdoors.

The Vibe supports Bluetooth 4.0 + LE/EDR and connected to a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset. Calls over Bluetooth were much better, with a louder, fuller sound. The phone also has NFC, and can be charged wirelessly through the PMA (Power Matters Alliance) standard if you purchase a charging pad. Unfortunately, the 2,000mAh battery was only good for 6 hours and 59 minutes of talk time in our tests, which is on the short side.

Performance and Android
The Vibe is powered by a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8926 processor and 1.5GB RAM. Performance can't touch a high-end phone like the Galaxy S5, but completely trounces the older Reef, Virgin's other waterproof device. It even did a little better than the HTC Desire, which costs $100 more. Still, home-screen transitions sometimes lagged behind the touch of my finger, and benchmark scores were only average. It should be able to handle most apps just fine, but it isn't a great phone for gaming.

Kyocera has made some heavy tweaks to Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), the somewhat dated OS that powers the Vibe. There's an Easy mode for smartphone beginners (which is somewhat difficult to find under Home Mode), which places up to six giant app icons at a time across three home screens, and gives you access to a simplified, vertical app menu. Back in Standard mode you get five home screens, which come preloaded with a minimum of apps and widgets. Kyocera also includes a power saving feature called MaxiMZR, which lets you control background data connections for running apps.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The Vibe has 8GB of storage, but only half of that is available to the user. There's also a free microSD card slot under the back cover, buried under the battery, which supports cards up to 32GB—it couldn't read our 64GB card.

Media support is pretty solid. The Vibe was able to play back all of our test files except WMA, as well as all of our video files up to 1080p, aside from DivX. Once again the phone's speaker is somewhat low, but audio was fine over both wired and Bluetooth headphones.

The 8-megapixel rear-facing camera isn't the best. It fires off a shot in just 0.5 second, but details are lacking and color reproduction is only average. On images taken outdoors, some of the brighter colors were completely blown out even though it wasn't even a particularly sunny day. Another annoying feature is that, right after taking a photo, you need to press the back button in order to take another one. And there really is no video button—the Vibe just starts recording as soon as you press the video icon. Video quality is also lacking. The camera is able to record 1080p30 video outside, but it looked jerky and was constantly refocusing. Indoors, the frame rate drops to a sluggish 15 frames per second.

The Kyocera Hydro Vibe might not be able to even come close to the water-resistant Galaxy S5 in terms of features or performance, but you can buy four Vibes for the price of one S5. It's also a better choice than the waterproof Reef, which doesn't support LTE, runs an ancient version of Android, and has a slower processor. But if you can live without the waterproof build, you might want to take a look at the LG Volt 4G LTE. We haven't reviewed it yet, but it has a bigger display than the Vibe, and runs a newer version of Android.

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Adobe Lightroom Mobile (for iPhone)

Pros Attractive, responsive interface. Syncs with Lightroom desktop app. Imports from Camera Roll. Includes major Lightroom adjustment tools. Multitouch editing gestures. Tasteful Web galleries.

Cons Still requires desktop photo import to work with full Lightroom program. No curves, levels, or lens-profile-based geometry, chromatic aberration, or noise correction. Requires Creative Cloud subscription. No color coding or keyword tagging. Bottom Line Lightroom for the iPhone brings some serious photo tools to mobile users, along with the ability to edit images synced from Lightroom on the desktop.

By Michael Muchmore

Lightroom, Adobe's professional photo-workflow software, is one of the more intensive desktop applications around, so when the company brought a version to the comparatively horsepower-challenged iPad last April, it obviously couldn't include all its most-powerful features. You might expect to get even less for the iPhone version of Lightroom, but the Lightroom iPhone app (free) actually gets all the same photo editing abilities found in the iPad app. Both apps let you take a pass through a batch of new shots you've imported to Lightroom on the desktop, rate them, and do initial lighting and color adjustments. And, for fun, the app throws in Instagram-style filter effects.

Getting Started with Lightroom on the iPhone
You get the Lightroom iPhone app from the iTunes App Store (it requires iOS 7 or later). The iPad and iPhone versions have separate entries in the app store. Both are a very reasonable sub-45MB download. Before you can do anything with the app, you have to sign in with an Adobe ID. A free account option lets you use the app for locally stored iPhone photos and even gets you 2GB free cloud storage. There's also a free 30-day Creative Cloud trial, but after that you'll need either a full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription ($49.99 a month) or a CC Photography subscription ($9.99 a month) to work with desktop Lightroom files. A subscription gets you access to the full desktop version of Photoshop as well as Lightroom and the mobile apps—among many other excellent Adobe applications.

To work with your D-SLR shots (including raw camera files) in Lightroom for Windows or Mac, you'll need the latest version (Lightroom 5.5). You still have to import images from the camera using the desktop program, and you also have to sign into the same Creative Cloud account on the desktop app so that images sync between the desktop program and the iPhone app.

Key to Lightroom Mobile is a new online service from Adobe that syncs all the editing you do on your pictures across the desktop and mobile apps. The service not only includes syncing, but a Web view of your photos on lightroom.adobe.com. I'm not sure why Adobe didn't stick with its Revel online photo galleries, which are used by other of the company's products, such as Photoshop Elements. Another key is the use of Lightroom's "Smart Previews." These are smaller files that stand in for your large D-SLR raw camera image files, which can easily weigh in at 15 to 30MB. This shrinkage makes it practicable to edit otherwise unwieldy files on a tablet, but when you go back to the photo on the desktop, full resolution is preserved.

App Interface
As you'd expect from the design powerhouse that is Adobe, this iPhone app's interface is easy on the eyes; it also feels fast and makes good use of multitouch gestures. A two-finger tap on the photo toggles between showing photo metadata and a histogram. A three-finger tap-and-hold gesture shows the original image, so, yes, editing is non-destructive. A side-swipe bar across the bottom of the screen offers many of Lightroom's old standby adjustments. Tapping these presents a full-width slider control to raise or lower each setting.

When you first sign into your cloud account, photos don't appear instantly—each photo requires a few seconds of processing before it's visible. A small + at top right lets you create a new collection, to which you can add photos from the Camera Roll. As with so many cloud services of late (Flickr, Dropbox, OneDrive), the app can optionally auto-import everything you shoot with the iPhone to Lightroom Mobile, making the photos accessible on the lightroom.adobe.com website.

Organization options are limited to Pick/Reject flags and star ratings, which you access from the same icon at the bottom. Tapping this button toggles it between a flag and a star. In another interface nicety, swiping up or down on a photo can pick or unpick it, or set the star rating, depending on which option you've set. I'm still disappointed that the app doesn't offer any keyword tagging, and others might miss Lightroom's color coding option. You can, however move photos among collections or simply remove them.

Editing Digital Photos
Lightroom on the iPhone does offer a generous selection of familiar photo adjusters, including white balance, temperature, tint, auto tone, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity, vibrance, and saturation. These work just as on the desktop, and they're terrific tools. The app can show a histogram for your photo, but it's not adjustable in any way. Undo and Redo buttons in the lower-right corner are helpful, but when you view the photo later in desktop Lightroom, its History panel of actions performed says only "From Lr mobile."

If you're of the Instagram school of photo editing, you can use the app's preset choices, which include color and black-and-white effects. A General section in this group also offers sharpening, punch, and medium-contrast curve.

What you don't get are the adjustable curves, levels, and lens-profile-based geometry corrections of the desktop Lightroom software. There's no chromatic aberration correction or noise reduction here—even the free Photoshop Express app offers an in-app purchase for noise reduction. Brushes for local edits, like those offered by iPhoto and Snapseed, are also a no-show in the Lightroom app. Perhaps Adobe will adopt the clever technique it uses in its Adobe Mix app in future Lightroom mobile versions, sending images up to the cloud for processing on its powerful servers to achieve cool edits like camera-shake reduction and content-aware fill.

Lightroom on the Web
Lightroom.adobe.com is quite nicely done. Just log in to your Adobe ID and you'll see a simple black background with thumbnails for each of your collections. Click one, and you'll see a Flickr-like justified view of all the collection's images. You can play a slideshow, and even make a collection public and share it to social networks or via a direct URL.

The Lightroom iPhone app does an admirable job of offering powerful Adobe photo correction tools to users on the go. If you already have a Creative Cloud subscription, installing Lightroom on your iPhone is a no-brainer. For even more Photoshop-style editing, check out Apple's iPhoto for iPhone ($4.99) or Nik Software's free Snapseed, both PCMag Editors' Choices.

View the original article here

Adobe Lightroom Mobile (for iPhone)

Pros Attractive, responsive interface. Syncs with Lightroom desktop app. Imports from Camera Roll. Includes major Lightroom adjustment tools. Multitouch editing gestures. Tasteful Web galleries.

Cons Still requires desktop photo import to work with full Lightroom program. No curves, levels, or lens-profile-based geometry, chromatic aberration, or noise correction. Requires Creative Cloud subscription. No color coding or keyword tagging. Bottom Line Lightroom for the iPhone brings some serious photo tools to mobile users, along with the ability to edit images synced from Lightroom on the desktop.

By Michael Muchmore

Lightroom, Adobe's professional photo-workflow software, is one of the more intensive desktop applications around, so when the company brought a version to the comparatively horsepower-challenged iPad last April, it obviously couldn't include all its most-powerful features. You might expect to get even less for the iPhone version of Lightroom, but the Lightroom iPhone app (free) actually gets all the same photo editing abilities found in the iPad app. Both apps let you take a pass through a batch of new shots you've imported to Lightroom on the desktop, rate them, and do initial lighting and color adjustments. And, for fun, the app throws in Instagram-style filter effects.

Getting Started with Lightroom on the iPhone
You get the Lightroom iPhone app from the iTunes App Store (it requires iOS 7 or later). The iPad and iPhone versions have separate entries in the app store. Both are a very reasonable sub-45MB download. Before you can do anything with the app, you have to sign in with an Adobe ID. A free account option lets you use the app for locally stored iPhone photos and even gets you 2GB free cloud storage. There's also a free 30-day Creative Cloud trial, but after that you'll need either a full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription ($49.99 a month) or a CC Photography subscription ($9.99 a month) to work with desktop Lightroom files. A subscription gets you access to the full desktop version of Photoshop as well as Lightroom and the mobile apps—among many other excellent Adobe applications.

To work with your D-SLR shots (including raw camera files) in Lightroom for Windows or Mac, you'll need the latest version (Lightroom 5.5). You still have to import images from the camera using the desktop program, and you also have to sign into the same Creative Cloud account on the desktop app so that images sync between the desktop program and the iPhone app.

Key to Lightroom Mobile is a new online service from Adobe that syncs all the editing you do on your pictures across the desktop and mobile apps. The service not only includes syncing, but a Web view of your photos on lightroom.adobe.com. I'm not sure why Adobe didn't stick with its Revel online photo galleries, which are used by other of the company's products, such as Photoshop Elements. Another key is the use of Lightroom's "Smart Previews." These are smaller files that stand in for your large D-SLR raw camera image files, which can easily weigh in at 15 to 30MB. This shrinkage makes it practicable to edit otherwise unwieldy files on a tablet, but when you go back to the photo on the desktop, full resolution is preserved.

App Interface
As you'd expect from the design powerhouse that is Adobe, this iPhone app's interface is easy on the eyes; it also feels fast and makes good use of multitouch gestures. A two-finger tap on the photo toggles between showing photo metadata and a histogram. A three-finger tap-and-hold gesture shows the original image, so, yes, editing is non-destructive. A side-swipe bar across the bottom of the screen offers many of Lightroom's old standby adjustments. Tapping these presents a full-width slider control to raise or lower each setting.

When you first sign into your cloud account, photos don't appear instantly—each photo requires a few seconds of processing before it's visible. A small + at top right lets you create a new collection, to which you can add photos from the Camera Roll. As with so many cloud services of late (Flickr, Dropbox, OneDrive), the app can optionally auto-import everything you shoot with the iPhone to Lightroom Mobile, making the photos accessible on the lightroom.adobe.com website.

Organization options are limited to Pick/Reject flags and star ratings, which you access from the same icon at the bottom. Tapping this button toggles it between a flag and a star. In another interface nicety, swiping up or down on a photo can pick or unpick it, or set the star rating, depending on which option you've set. I'm still disappointed that the app doesn't offer any keyword tagging, and others might miss Lightroom's color coding option. You can, however move photos among collections or simply remove them.

Editing Digital Photos
Lightroom on the iPhone does offer a generous selection of familiar photo adjusters, including white balance, temperature, tint, auto tone, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity, vibrance, and saturation. These work just as on the desktop, and they're terrific tools. The app can show a histogram for your photo, but it's not adjustable in any way. Undo and Redo buttons in the lower-right corner are helpful, but when you view the photo later in desktop Lightroom, its History panel of actions performed says only "From Lr mobile."

If you're of the Instagram school of photo editing, you can use the app's preset choices, which include color and black-and-white effects. A General section in this group also offers sharpening, punch, and medium-contrast curve.

What you don't get are the adjustable curves, levels, and lens-profile-based geometry corrections of the desktop Lightroom software. There's no chromatic aberration correction or noise reduction here—even the free Photoshop Express app offers an in-app purchase for noise reduction. Brushes for local edits, like those offered by iPhoto and Snapseed, are also a no-show in the Lightroom app. Perhaps Adobe will adopt the clever technique it uses in its Adobe Mix app in future Lightroom mobile versions, sending images up to the cloud for processing on its powerful servers to achieve cool edits like camera-shake reduction and content-aware fill.

Lightroom on the Web
Lightroom.adobe.com is quite nicely done. Just log in to your Adobe ID and you'll see a simple black background with thumbnails for each of your collections. Click one, and you'll see a Flickr-like justified view of all the collection's images. You can play a slideshow, and even make a collection public and share it to social networks or via a direct URL.

The Lightroom iPhone app does an admirable job of offering powerful Adobe photo correction tools to users on the go. If you already have a Creative Cloud subscription, installing Lightroom on your iPhone is a no-brainer. For even more Photoshop-style editing, check out Apple's iPhoto for iPhone ($4.99) or Nik Software's free Snapseed, both PCMag Editors' Choices.

View the original article here

Kyocera Hydro Vibe (Virgin Mobile)

Pros Waterproof. Affordable. Solid media support.

Cons Poor call quality. Unimpressive display. Mediocre camera. Bottom Line The Kyocera Hydro Vibe for Virgin Mobile is an affordable waterproof smartphone, but its performance is only average.

By Alex Colon

It would be great if all smartphones were waterproof, but most carriers only have one or two options. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is water-resistant and available just about everywhere, but at $599.99 on Virgin Mobile, it's also extremely expensive. The Kyocera Hydro Vibe is a solid waterproof alternative, with less impressive hardware, but a significantly lower $149.99 price tag. It isn't the best smartphone on Virgin, but it gets the job done.

The Hydro Vibe on Virgin is virtually identical to the model we reviewed on Sprint, so much of this review is the same. That said, I come to slightly different conclusions about them because Virgin has a different lineup and pricing than Sprint.

Design, Waterproofing, and Display
At 5.02 by 2.50 by 0.43 inches (HWD) and 4.9 ounces, the Vibe is easy to hold in one hand. It has a generic look, made completely out of plastic with a rubberized, textured back panel. The phone is mostly black, with silver buttons, and a dark gray band around the display. You'll find a Power button and 3.5mm headphone jack at the top of the phone, with two Volume buttons on the left. There's a dedicated camera button on the bottom right, and a micro USB port for charging on the bottom. Three touch buttons sit below the display.

The Vibe is certified waterproof for IPX5 and IPX7 standards. That means it can survive submersion in up to 3.28 feet of water for up to 30 minutes. You need to make sure the battery door is properly sealed, but the headphone jack and power port needn't be covered, which is helpful. I tested the Vibe by soaking it in a pitcher of tap water for 30 minutes. After a quick pass of a paper towel the phone emerged unscathed, so if you've ever lost a phone to water damage, the Vibe is a device you might want to consider. 

The phone has an unimpressive 4.5-inch LCD. It features 960-by-540-pixel resolution, which works out to 245 pixels per inch. It looks fine, but sometimes text can appear a bit grainy, and in general it pales in comparison with a 720p or 1080p display. It could also stand to get a bit brighter.

Network and Call Quality
Virgin Mobile uses Sprint's network, and the Hydro Vibe supports both 3G and 4G LTE connectivity. We've seen some fast numbers on Sprint's LTE network, but performance wasn't great where I tested the Vibe in New York City. Reception was average at best, and the phone often dropped down to 3G. It also supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, and had no trouble connecting to our test network in the PC Labs.

The phone uses Kyocera's Smart Sonic Receiver technology, which transmits audio using tissue conduction rather than a traditional speaker. That means there's no speaker on the front of the phone—instead, the glass of the display sends sound vibrations to your ear. I've experienced this done well before, but that's not the case here. Call quality on the Vibe is abysmal. Voices sound thin, tinny, and grainy. When taking a call outside, it becomes difficult to hear. Calls made with the phone are only slightly better, but sound too digitized and suffer from poor noise cancellation. The speakerphone is fine, but far too low to hear outdoors.

The Vibe supports Bluetooth 4.0 + LE/EDR and connected to a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset. Calls over Bluetooth were much better, with a louder, fuller sound. The phone also has NFC, and can be charged wirelessly through the PMA (Power Matters Alliance) standard if you purchase a charging pad. Unfortunately, the 2,000mAh battery was only good for 6 hours and 59 minutes of talk time in our tests, which is on the short side.

Performance and Android
The Vibe is powered by a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8926 processor and 1.5GB RAM. Performance can't touch a high-end phone like the Galaxy S5, but completely trounces the older Reef, Virgin's other waterproof device. It even did a little better than the HTC Desire, which costs $100 more. Still, home-screen transitions sometimes lagged behind the touch of my finger, and benchmark scores were only average. It should be able to handle most apps just fine, but it isn't a great phone for gaming.

Kyocera has made some heavy tweaks to Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), the somewhat dated OS that powers the Vibe. There's an Easy mode for smartphone beginners (which is somewhat difficult to find under Home Mode), which places up to six giant app icons at a time across three home screens, and gives you access to a simplified, vertical app menu. Back in Standard mode you get five home screens, which come preloaded with a minimum of apps and widgets. Kyocera also includes a power saving feature called MaxiMZR, which lets you control background data connections for running apps.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The Vibe has 8GB of storage, but only half of that is available to the user. There's also a free microSD card slot under the back cover, buried under the battery, which supports cards up to 32GB—it couldn't read our 64GB card.

Media support is pretty solid. The Vibe was able to play back all of our test files except WMA, as well as all of our video files up to 1080p, aside from DivX. Once again the phone's speaker is somewhat low, but audio was fine over both wired and Bluetooth headphones.

The 8-megapixel rear-facing camera isn't the best. It fires off a shot in just 0.5 second, but details are lacking and color reproduction is only average. On images taken outdoors, some of the brighter colors were completely blown out even though it wasn't even a particularly sunny day. Another annoying feature is that, right after taking a photo, you need to press the back button in order to take another one. And there really is no video button—the Vibe just starts recording as soon as you press the video icon. Video quality is also lacking. The camera is able to record 1080p30 video outside, but it looked jerky and was constantly refocusing. Indoors, the frame rate drops to a sluggish 15 frames per second.

The Kyocera Hydro Vibe might not be able to even come close to the water-resistant Galaxy S5 in terms of features or performance, but you can buy four Vibes for the price of one S5. It's also a better choice than the waterproof Reef, which doesn't support LTE, runs an ancient version of Android, and has a slower processor. But if you can live without the waterproof build, you might want to take a look at the LG Volt 4G LTE. We haven't reviewed it yet, but it has a bigger display than the Vibe, and runs a newer version of Android.

View the original article here