Mobile devices

[Administrator]

Amazon has a new Fire HD 8 tablet and it costs ?90


The new version of Amazon's Fire HD 8 tablet promises faster processing, more storage and a longer battery life than the original. And it's much cheaper...
We're fans of the existing Fire HD 8, but a few improvements to the new model combined with a more affordable price tag could well push the new version of this budget tablet further up our list of favourites.

The Fire HD's 8in widescreen HD display remains the same and the tablet runs on Amazon's own Fire OS 5 operating system. Battery life is up to 12 hours, however, which is a big jump from the 8 hours of juice provided by the previous version.
There's also a 50 per cent boost in the RAM department (up to 1.5GB) that should deliver faster performance, while you can now choose between 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage (compared to 8GB and 16GB). If this isn't enough, you can always expand this by up to 200GB via microSD memory card.

Arguably the biggest draw of the new model is the price. The tablet starts at ?90, which sits well below the ?130 Amazon asked for the 8GB original. On paper, it seems an interesting proposition but as always, the proof will be in the testing.
The new Fire HD 8 tablet is available to pre-order on Amazon now.

[Administrator]

LG's new V20 smartphone boasts a Quad Hi-Fi DAC and B&O Play headpones

LG's new premium V20 smartphone has a serious hi-fi slant thanks to a built-in 32-bit, Quad Hi-Fi DAC, and the fact it comes with a pair of B&O headphones...
Following hot on the heels of the LG G5 with Hi-Fi Plus DAC, LG is turning its attention to high-quality audio once again with its new smartphone, the LG V20.

The phone features a new Quad DAC. Not to be confused with Quad, the hi-fi manufacturer, this DAC has been developed with ESS Technology and Robert Blair, CEO of ESS, says: “As a technology more typically available in high-end audio equipment, Quad DAC on the LG V20 will make users feel as if they are carrying around a professional home audio system on their smartphone."

Like the LG G5 phone, the LG V20 has also been designed in conjunction with B&O. But, instead of getting a modular B&O DAC to tag onto the phone, the V20 comes complete with a pair of B&O Play H3 in-ear headphones.

Other specs of the V20 include a 5.7in IPS display with 2560 x 1440 resolution, Snapdragon 820 processor, fingerprint scanner, 4GB of RAM, a 16MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing camera. It also claims to be the world's first phone to ship with the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system.

The LG V20 is available in Titan, Silver or Pink, and is available in Korea now. Launch dates for other markets are still to be confirmed.

[Administrator]

iPhone 7 Plus appeal: Apple just made its jumbo phone more irresistible
By adding the new-fangled dual-lens camera only to the more expensive Plus model, Apple is widening the gap between its two flagship iPhones.
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Apple didn't exactly pull out all the stops with its latest iPhone.

Sure, the company's latest iPhone 7 flagship product is faster, water-resistant and comes in more colors to boot. But with a body and look that is essentially two years old, it's a bit tough to get excited about this year's offering.

What may frustrate many fans, however, is that the new marquee feature -- a dual-lens camera with a wide-angle lens and a telescopic lens capable of zooming to 10x -- can be found only on the iPhone 7 Plus. There's something to get excited about, but only if you're willing to pony up the premium for the larger model.

Apple has taken this two-pronged approach since the debut of its first jumbo iPhone, the 6 Plus, in 2014. But the gap between the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus is wider, and that underscores a philosophical change at Apple. Co-founder Steve Jobs wanted to build a single phone for everyone. Now you have to get the iPhone 7 Plus to get the company's true flagship phone and its best feature.

The iPhone 7 only has one camera, while the iPhone 7S has two: a wide-angle and a telephoto.

"This is the best camera ever made on any smartphone," said Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing chief, at the launch event on Wednesday in San Francisco.

Of course, Apple has a reason to steer customers toward the bigger and more expensive iPhone. The higher price tag means even more profit for a company that already makes money hand over fist.

What's good for Apple, however, might be a raw deal for consumers. The $120 premium ($20 more than in years past) will be a financial burden for some and it comes after carriers have ceased subsidizing the cost of phones. That means consumers will have to shoulder the full price.
"Apple is clearly taking a risk here, just as it did when it eliminated the smaller iPhones a couple of years ago, but it's presumably decided that risk is worth taking," said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research.

Some folks may simply prefer the more compact iPhone 7 and consider the hefty iPhone 7 Plus, which fits into what the industry refers to as the "phablet" category, too unwieldy. The decision is complicated by the fact that choosing the smaller iPhone 7 means choosing the lesser version.

Phone enthusiasts will note that Apple isn't doing anything that other manufacturers haven't done before.

For example, Samsung positions its Galaxy Note 7 phablet as a step above the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. But at least the Note 7 emerged months after the S7 and S7 Edge.
So what's new in the iPhone 7? Both models finally get optimal image stabilization as a default. (It was previously a feature on the Plus only.) They're also resistant to water and dust, joining Android phones from Samsung and Sony. Apple also swapped in a new home button that uses haptic feedback, where a motor simulates the feeling of the button being clicked.

As rumored, the new iPhones also took the controversial step of dropping the audio jack in favor of just the Lightning port. But Apple will sell you its new wireless earbuds, dubbed AirPods, for $159.

"Apple clearly does not feel any market pressure to out-innovate itself at every turn," said Jefferson Wang, a senior partner at IBB Consulting.

[Administrator]

Feds will formally recall Samsung Galaxy Note 7
After reports of exploding batteries, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is officially stepping in to help recall Samsung's Galaxy Note 7.
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The feds are stepping in.

Samsung has agreed to replace every single Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, after at least 35 reports that the phone's batteries could overheat and explode. But some argued the voluntary recall wasn't enough, since the phones were still on sale. Consumer Reports called for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to step in and do more.

In a emailed statement Friday, the CPSC now says it's officially working with Samsung on a recall -- as well as evaluating whether a simple phone exchange is enough of a solution.

In a separate press release, Samsung confirmed that it's collaborating with the CPSC, and also says it's no longer selling or shipping phones affected by the issue.

"We are asking users to power down their Galaxy Note 7s and exchange them now," said Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America.

The CPSC's involvement may change the pace of Note 7 exchanges, though. Samsung now says new Note 7s will be issued to existing buyers "upon completion of the CPSC process," and neither Samsung nor the CPSC offered a specific timetable beyond "as soon as possible."

(It took 6 months for the CPSC to recall exploding hoverboards, to give you some context.)

However, participants can also opt to receive a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge and be refunded the difference in their purchase price, or borrow a Samsung J loaner phone while they wait for a new Note 7.

In the meanwhile, the CPSC says it's "urging all consumers who own a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to power them down and stop charging or using the device."

Separately, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning Thursday to airplane passengers, asking them not to turn on or charge a Galaxy Note 7 on planes.

If you have a Galaxy Note 7, you can find out more about the recall
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[Administrator]

Why your AT&T iPhone 7 won't work well on Verizon's network

You won't see an "Intel Inside" sticker on your new iPhone 7 the way you do on Windows laptops, but it appears Apple picked the company to supply an important chip for its newest phone.

Some models of the Apple's iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will use an Intel modem, a critical chip that handles the radio communications linking phones to mobile networks, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. It's not as important as the central processor, a business Intel pulled back from earlier this year, but it's a prestigious partnership for Intel. And according to Recode it gives Apple more bargaining leverage over Qualcomm, which previously supplied all modem chips.

Such deals may seem like obscure business machinations, but it affects everyone. That's because the Intel modems don't work on an older network technology called CDMA used by Verizon and Sprint. That matters if you're considering switching carriers.

"The iPhone for AT&T and T-Mobile does not support CDMA and will not work on Sprint or Verizon Wireless," Apple warns on its website.

In the longer run, a healthy partnership could help Intel -- now with an expanding foundry business building others' chips -- bring its advanced technology to your pocket by manufacturing iPhone's primary processors, too.

Bloomberg reported Intel's modem deal in June, saying it had replaced chips made by Qualcomm in some phones. Apple and Qualcomm declined to comment for this story. Intel didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich was in the audience at the iPhone 7 launch event.

Apple likes to control important hardware in its products, and indeed it's done well designing its own central processors like the A10 Fusion in the iPhone 7. But modems are a big pain to develop and support, so it's not surprising they let others handle this component.

"Modems are pretty expensive and complicated," said David Kanter, an analyst at Linley Group. In addition, they require complex software and said software stack and tight ties with regulatory agencies around the world for certification, he said. "I have no doubt that Apple could do the software and hardware, but it would require hiring a very large team."

[boom]

This might be our closest look at the Galaxy X foldable smartphone

We’ve long been reading about Samsung’s upcoming flagship smartphone (codenamed Project Valley) with a foldable display, and we’ve reported about a number of related patents that have been filed by the company. However, a patent application that was published earlier today not only showcases the latest development by Samsung but also offers clearer renders of what the actual device might end up looking like.

These images showcase the smartphone’s hinge from various angles. The hinge looks very familiar to that of the Microsoft Surface Book, and the device might end up having a similar cavity when it is folded. However, it will still be a huge step forward in the smartphone industry. The curved screen design was first introduced with the Galaxy Note Edge, and the Galaxy X might be the first smartphone with a completely foldable display.

The Galaxy X was expected to be launched by the end of 2016, but Samsung has reportedly pushed the launch date to sometime next year. What do you think about the concept of foldable smartphones? Are they the future?

[Administrator]

Malware found preinstalled on 38 Android phones used by 2 companies
Malicious apps were surreptitiously added somewhere along the supply chain.

A commercial malware scanner used by businesses has recently detected an outbreak of malware that came preinstalled on more than three dozen Android devices.

An assortment of malware was found on 38 Android devices belonging to two unidentified companies. This is according to a blog post published Friday by Check Point Software Technologies, maker of a mobile threat prevention app. The malicious apps weren't part of the official ROM firmware supplied by the phone manufacturers but were added later somewhere along the supply chain. In six of the cases, the malware was installed to the ROM using system privileges, a technique that requires the firmware to be completely reinstalled for the phone to be disinfected.

"This finding proves that, even if a user is extremely careful, never clicks a malicious link, or downloads a fishy app, he can still be infected by malware without even knowing it," Check Point Mobile Threat Researcher Daniel Padon told Ars. "This should be a concern for all mobile users."

Most of the malicious apps were info stealers and programs that displayed ads on the phones. One malicious ad-display app, dubbed "Loki," gains powerful system privileges on the devices it infects. Another app was a mobile ransomware title known as "Slocker," which uses Tor to conceal the identity of its operators.

The infected devices included:

Galaxy Note 2
LG G4
Galaxy S7
Galaxy S4
Galaxy Note 4
Galaxy Note 5
Galaxy Note 8
Xiaomi Mi 4i
Galaxy A5
ZTE x500
Galaxy Note 3
Galaxy Note Edge
Galaxy Tab S2
Galaxy Tab 2
Oppo N3
vivo X6 plus
Nexus 5
Nexus 5X
Asus Zenfone 2
LenovoS90
OppoR7 plus
Xiaomi Redmi
Lenovo A850
Check Point didn't disclose the names of the companies that owned the infected phones.

Padon said it's not clear if the two companies were specifically targeted or if the infections were part of a broader, more opportunistic campaign. The presence of ransomware and other easy-to-detect malware seems to suggest the latter. Check Point also doesn't know where the infected phones were obtained. One of the affected parties was a "large telecommunications company" and the other was a "multinational technology company."

Here we go again

This isn't the first time Android phones have been shipped preinstalled with apps that can surreptitiously siphon sensitive user data to unknown parties. In November, researchers found a secret backdoor installed on hundreds of thousands of Android devices manufactured by BLU. A few days later, a separate research team uncovered a different backdoor on more than 3 million Android devices from BLU and other manufacturers. In those cases, however, the backdoors were previously unknown, and, in the latter case, they were intended to deliver legitimate over-the-air updates.

Friday's report shows why it's never a bad idea to scan a new Android device for malware, especially if the device is obtained through low-cost channels. Reputable malware scanners such as those from Lookout, Check Point, or Malwarebytes are all suitable. Most such apps can be used to scan a phone without having to pay a subscription. Although who sold or supplied the 38 phones Check Point found infected is unknown, another general rule is to avoid low-cost resellers. Instead, buy from a trusted store or website.

[Administrator]

Amazon brings Alexa to new Fire 7 and HD 8 tablets

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Amazon's updated tablets have better screens, sharper contrast and better battery life.
Amazon has announced updated versions to its Fire 7 and all-new Fire HD 8 tablets, making them slimmer, improving the screens and delivering Alexa capability.

Both the new Fire 7 and the Fire HD 8 tablets have, respectively, the same 7in and 8in displays as their previous incarnations, but Amazon says it has made improvements to contrast and sharpness.

The tablets have dual-band wi-fi and an extra hour of battery life - meaning eight hours for the Fire 7 and up to 12 hours for the HD 8.
In terms of raw storage, the Fire 7 starts at 8GB with support for 256 GB of expandable storage, while the Fire HD 8 starts at 16GB.

The most interesting new feature either tablet is, undoubtedly, support for Amazon's voice asistant Alexa. Unlike the Echo or the Echo Show, however, it has to be activated by holding a button on the table rather than by voice (to save battery power - having the tablet constantly listening is a drain).

If you want to get Alexa on your existing tablets, you can - an upcoming update will give Alexa functionality to the previous Fire 7, HD 8, and HD10.

Pricing remains the same: Fire 7 is ?50, while Fire HD 8 is ?80. They're available in black, red, blue and yellow, and both devices will start shipping on 7th June.

[Administrator]

How a phone app detected Sprint’s alleged throttling of Skype
User tests indicate throttling, but there's some room for doubt.

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The US government killed off its net neutrality rules in June of this year, but that doesn't mean no one is monitoring whether carriers are blocking or throttling online services.

Northeastern University researchers led by computer science professor David Choffnes recently determined that Sprint was throttling Skype. Their finding was based on an analysis of user-initiated tests conducted with Wehe, an app for Android and iPhone that the researchers developed to detect throttling. About one-third of the tests detected Sprint's throttling of Skype, Choffnes said.

If the findings are correct, Sprint would be violating a Federal Communications Commission rule requiring Internet providers to disclose throttling. Even though the FCC no longer bans throttling itself, the agency requires ISPs to publicly disclose any blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization.
But was Sprint really throttling Skype? Sprint denies it and points out that researchers haven't released the data underlying their conclusions. Choffnes acknowledges that his research has limitations and that he couldn't detect the throttling in the lab. But he's still confident that Skype was getting a raw deal on Sprint's network, and he explained why in an interview with Ars.

"We're certain that our users' tests were throttled," Choffnes told Ars.

Choffnes published a summary of the findings at this page. His research triggered an inquiry by Senate Democrats, who sent letters to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile asking for detailed information on their throttling practices. The senators asked for responses by December 6.

How the app detects throttling
When a smartphone user opens the Wehe app and initiates a test, Wehe analyzes whether the carrier is throttling services such as YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon video, Vimeo, and Skype.

"We send network traffic exactly the same way that Skype does with the only difference being that it's coming from our app and going to our servers instead of Skype's service," Choffnes said.

In order to simulate Skype traffic, the researchers made a Skype video call "and recorded all the network traffic that our Skype client exchanged over the Internet with the other [client]," Choffnes said.

Skype's recommended download speeds range from 100kbps to 8Mbps depending on the call type and number of people on the call.

The data stream for the researchers' recorded Skype call is about 2Mbps. If there's no throttling, the Wehe app should be able to send the Skype traffic at that same rate. Instead, Wehe found clusters of Skype tests that only received 1.4Mbps and some tests that only received 0.5Mbps.

Of course, wireless network quality can fluctuate unpredictably due to congestion or poor signal strength, but Choffnes' team has a method of isolating random noise from deliberate throttling. Immediately after tests that send un-altered traffic from popular Web services, Wehe performs another set of tests in which the content is replaced with randomized bytes, "which prevents the ISPs from classifying the traffic as belonging to the app," the Wehe mobile app's "How it works" section explains.

If two Skype tests—one with randomized traffic and another with un-altered traffic—result in different speeds, there may be throttling or "differentiation." But again, random noise may also be leading to that result, so Wehe performs a second pair of tests any time throttling is detected in the first pair.

"Any time the app detects differentiation from one of these pairs of tests, we run another one," Choffnes said. "The idea is, if there is some kind of random noise, the likelihood that it would lead to the exact same result would be pretty small. It's not zero, but it's small."

The likelihood of deliberate throttling is increased further when many users see the exact same results. When lots of users get the exact same speed from a test in cases of throttling, it's likely that the carrier has set a specific Mbps rate for a particular app.
"We look at all the data we've collected from users to see how often users see the same two pairs of tests that get the exact same result," Choffnes said. In the case of Sprint, there were "hundreds" of tests that found throttling, and these were "spread out throughout the country," Choffnes said.

Despite all that, Choffnes described several limitations to the research.

"As a researcher, I have a lot of self-doubt," Choffnes said. "I'm trying to be as big of a skeptic of my own work as possible and trying to explain what our assumptions are and how might they be violated."

Choffnes' team was unable to reproduce the Sprint/Skype throttling using Wehe on an Android phone in their lab. Choffnes speculates that the throttling applied only to certain data plans. "We bought a prepaid plan with unlimited data," Choffnes said. "We do not have any data about our users' subscription plans, which is why we can't say for certain whether this is the explanation."

Wehe research has been going on for a few years and is not limited to the US; more details about the methodology was published in this 2015 paper. The research is supported by a National Science Foundation grant, a Google Faculty Research Award, and Arcep (Autorit? de R?gulation des Communications ?lectroniques et des Postes), the French telecommunications regulator.

Sprint denial
Sprint told Ars that "We do not impose any restrictions on VoIP traffic or VoIP services. Sprint is not throttling Skype, and Sprint does not single out Skype or any individual content provider in this way."

Sprint went on to criticize the researchers for not providing their data.

"Since the researchers did not provide the data they used, it is not clear how they reached their conclusions," Sprint said. "There are many factors that can impact the performance of third-party apps. And even the researchers noted they were unable to reproduce the results of the users' data themselves. In our own network tests, we found no degradation in Skype user experience."

The consent form in early versions of Wehe said that no data would be shared, even anonymously. Choffnes acknowledged that his team "screwed up" by not updating the consent form at the same time that it changed the way it collects data.

"We should have changed the informed consent to allow us to share the data, because we were no longer collecting information that would be potentially sensitive," he said. That's been changed, so Choffnes' team will be able to share underlying data when they release future research. Choffnes hopes that change will allow carriers to make more detailed responses to future Wehe findings.

"The goal is absolutely to share as much data as possible," he said.

Skype owner Microsoft hasn't responded to our messages about Choffnes' research.

Throttling may have been unintentional
Sprint's apparent throttling of Skype doesn't seem to make sense on the face of it, since it was detected on only about 34 percent of Wehe user devices, Choffnes said. Since not even half of the Skype streams were throttled, it doesn't seem like Sprint is trying to "kill off Skype," he said.

Choffnes' team found throttling of YouTube and Netflix by Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T. But that was expected because wireless carriers disclose throttling of video services and, in some cases, charge customers extra for higher-definition streaming.

Since Sprint discloses throttling of video services but not VoIP and denies throttling Skype, Choffnes speculated that there might be "a misconfiguration somewhere" in Sprint's network that caused a subset of Skype calls to be throttled.

The apparent Skype throttling mostly affected Android and not iOS. "I can think of absolutely no reason why it should be different" between Android and iOS, Choffnes said.

We asked Choffnes whether Sprint might be throttling Wehe tests specifically and not real Skype calls, but he thinks that is unlikely. For one thing, not all Wehe tests were throttled on Sprint—Vimeo was unaffected, for example. Theoretically, carriers could identify Wehe tests based on the IP address and impose throttling, but there's no obvious reason for Sprint to do that.

Using IP addresses to determine which services to throttle wouldn't make sense in general because IP addresses can change so easily, Choffnes noted. He thinks carriers are identifying which streams to throttle based on the domain or host names, which are transmitted in the Wehe tests the same way they're transmitted by the actual services like Skype and YouTube. Even in encrypted traffic, carriers can generally see the domain name specified in the TLS handshake, Choffnes said. TLS version 1.3 can encrypt domain names, but it isn't widely deployed yet, he said.

The domain name isn't the only information carriers can use to identify content. "For UDP traffic (e.g., Skype), we've seen cases where they identify traffic using specific byte values that correspond to standard VoIP protocol fields," Choffnes said.

If Sprint used IP addresses to identify which streams to throttle, instead of examining the actual content being exchanged, "we would never see throttling [on Wehe tests], assuming that they weren't throttling our IP addresses," Choffnes said.

"We're just running random servers" hosted on cloud services such as Amazon's, Choffnes continued. "The fact that we do see throttling is an indication that they're doing something based on content, because that's really what we're testing for."

Wireless industry defends slowdowns
One reason to think that Choffnes' research has correctly identified throttling comes in a statement last month from CTIA, the wireless industry lobby group for Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

CTIA disparaged the research in a blog post, saying, "The Wehe app is not measuring performance between users and content providers like Netflix or YouTube but instead uses simulated data traffic to their own servers." CTIA claimed the results thus have "nothing to do with actual network performance between mobile customers and actual content providers."

But the same blog post acknowledges that the Wehe app does exactly what its creators say it does. CTIA wrote:

In order to manage networks, providers optimize the bandwidth available for a video so that your smartphone gets DVD quality without downloading excess data. The Wehe app compares the data speeds that consumers experience with and without that content provider metadata. If the Wehe app detects a difference in speed, it registers this as "differentiation" and implies this is a violation of "net neutrality." What the Wehe app is really detecting is basic wireless network management and operators delivering the service consumers choose.

In that statement, CTIA acknowledged that carriers "optimize the bandwidth available for a video," meaning they reduce the bandwidth available to video. CTIA's statement that the Wehe app is "really detecting... basic wireless network management" confirms that Wehe detected the carriers' intentional reduction in bandwidth.

CTIA defended the throttling, noting that it reduces consumers' data consumption and that consumers can pay more to get video streams that aren't "optimized." Carriers put consumers "in the driver's seat" by providing "the ability to alter video resolution settings or sign up for data plans that do or don't use those features," CTIA wrote.

Throttling some video apps, but not all
But even if consumers retain some control over data speeds, they still have to rely on carriers to selectively throttle certain services without impacting the overall user experience.

In Wehe tests, Vimeo appears to have mostly escaped the throttling applied to more popular video services. Choffnes thinks this may be because Vimeo isn't as widely known.

While that's good for Vimeo users, Choffnes wrote in his report that it demonstrates the potential danger of carriers applying their throttling policies on some services and not others.

"Such behavior highlights the risks of content-based filtering: there is fundamentally no way to treat all video services the same (because not all video services can be identified), and any additional content-specific policies... can lead to unfair advantages for some providers and poor network performance for others," Choffnes' report said.

[Administrator]

Palm Phone Review: Fun, endearing, and bad at everything
Palm's tiny phone looks like a comedy prop, but the real joke is the battery life.

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"Seriously?"

That's usually the expression I get when I whip out the new Palm phone, one of the tiniest Android phones released in recent memory. This 3.3-inch device has a spec sheet closer to a smartwatch than a smartphone, and it looks more like a prop from a comedy skit rather than a serious connectivity product. There have been phones with 3.3-inch displays in the past, but they haven't really been combined with the more compact design trends of today. The result is something ridiculously, eye-catchingly small. The Palm phone looks like a joke.

Wait, "Palm phone"? That Palm? Yep, this phone, which is called "Palm" and from the company "Palm" (so the Palm Palm?) is a newly formed zombie brand made from the ashes of the legendary Palm Inc, the very same company that created the Palm Pilot, the Palm Treo, and WebOS. After bombing out in the smartphone market circa 2010 and selling to HP, Chinese firm TCL bought the rights to Palm back in 2014 and announced plans to resurrect the company in 2015. The corpse of Palm remained still for several years, but the right combination of a full moon, or lightning strike, or something roused the company back to life just last month. Zombie Palm's first product is this tiny, Verizon-exclusive smartphone with a not-so-tiny price tag of $350.

Design and build quality
Palm definitely did something right with the design of the Palm phone. Before the logic center of the brain kicks in and asks "What am I supposed to use this for?" people's initial impression of the Palm phone is usually amusement. You'll always get a smile, laugh, or eye roll when you show someone the Palm phone for the first time. It's just so cute and tiny and different. You look ridiculous using it in public, and you'll usually get weird looks from people as they no doubt wonder, "what the heck is that thing?"

SPECS AT A GLANCE: PALM PALM
SCREEN 1280?720 3.3-inch LCD
(445ppi, 16:9 aspect ratio)

OS Android 8.1
CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 SoC (Eight 1.4GHz Cortex A53 cores)
RAM 3GB
GPU Adreno 505
STORAGE 32GB
NETWORKING 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS
PORTS USB 2.0 Type-C
CAMERA 12MP rear camera, 8MP front camera
SIZE 50.6?96.6?7.4mm
WEIGHT 62.5 grams
BATTERY 800mAh
STARTING PRICE $350 at Verizon
OTHER PERKS IP68 water resistance

It's hard to communicate just how small the phone is from a spec sheet, but here's a little exercise for those of you at home: grab your wallet, pull out a credit card, and hold it as if it were a smartphone. That's about how big the Palm phone is.

Now hold the credit card in both hands, stick both thumbs on the front, and pretend you're typing on a tiny QWERTY keyboard. Are your hands cramping up yet? Having a hard time imagining typing on a keyboard that small? You're now getting a good idea of what to expect.

The 3.3-inch display doesn't sound that small on a spec sheet: after all, the first-gen iPhone had a 3.5-inch display, and the first Android phone (the T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream) had a 3.2-inch display, so it doesn't sound that outlandish. Those early smartphones only had a 3:2 aspect ratio. So they were much wider than the Palm phone's 16:9 display. So, forget about the screen measurement—you've probably never held a smartphone this skinny.

The 1280x720 display means the Palm phone is packing 445 pixels per inch. The dense, tiny display looks great, although it is only an LCD. The front and back are covered with Gorilla Glass, with an aluminum frame peeking out from between the two glass panels. The glass back is a fingerprint magnet, and, while usually I would complain about how fragile glass backs are, I'm honestly not sure the Palm phone weighs enough to crack the glass panel when dropped.

The front adheres to many of the usual smartphone conventions—you get rounded display corners, a speaker/earpiece combo on top, and an 8MP front-facing camera. For navigation you get the option of displaying the world's tiniest on-screen navigation buttons or using the single capacitive navigation button that sits just below the screen. This one button tries to pull triple-duty and cover the three main navigation features: a single tap will go back, a double tap will open the home screen, and a long press will open recent apps. I never found it to be even close to useable.

The aluminum sides have only a power button, SIM tray, a pair of microphones, and a USB-C port. There's no volume rocker at all. Instead, you have to pull down the Quick Settings panel and adjust the volume slider the same way you would adjust screen brightness. The lack of a volume rocker is pretty annoying—you can't easily adjust the volume of music or a call, and you can't change the volume of a video while still watching the video. It also makes a phone reviewer's life difficult, since you can't take screenshots easily. There's a button in the Quick Settings to take a screenshot, but that simply doesn't work for many screens.

The back has just a single 12MP camera and flash and nothing else. Without a fingerprint reader, you'll have to log in with a PIN, pattern, or password, or you'll have to trust the questionably secure 2D face-unlock powered only by the front-facing camera.

Other than the lack of a fingerprint reader and NFC, the Palm phone is a full-featured Android device with all the LTE connectivity, telephony, and app access you would expect from a normal-size smartphone. Oddly though, Verizon won't let you buy the phone and activate it. The company requires the Palm phone to be a secondary device on your Verizon account, where it will share a phone number and SMS access with your primary smartphone. Another oddity: the phone has what is clearly a SIM slot on the side, but it doesn't open.

So... what are you supposed to use this for?
The Palm phone might be cute to look at and fun to show off to people, but once you've made all the obligatory Zoolander references and gotten over the novelty of a tiny cell phone, you'll realize the Palm phone isn't really good at anything. And it is really expensive. What are you supposed to use this for? Is it a new-age iPod? A smartwatch alternative? A smaller phone to take on your fitness activities? It's not really good at any of these things.

First, the $350 price tag puts it firmly in smartwatch territory, which is a huge problem for justifying a lot of Palm's supposed use cases. You can get an Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular access for $380. You can also get an LTE-equipped Wear OS or Samsung watch for around this price.

Palm calls this phone a "wearable" and sells a variety of cases, armbands, and lanyards designed for easy portability, but nothing is more portable than a smartwatch. So, if you're looking to travel light, just get the smaller device.

The Palm phone isn't a great music player thanks to the lack of a headphone jack and physical volume rocker. Sure, you can pair Bluetooth headphones to it, but you can also just pair Bluetooth headphones to your smartwatch, which is going to be smaller and more portable.

The Palm phone also can't beat a smartwatch for fitness activities, since a watch is going to be lighter and easier to carry. Plus, a watch will do heart-rate tracking. Maybe you want to bring a real phone, because you hate the lack of a keyboard on a smartwatch and don't want to speak to your device in public—but the Palm phone is too tiny to comfortably type on. The body is so skinny that you can't hold it with two hands, and the keyboard on this skinny screen is so small that a fingertip presses about four keyboard letters at once. You're relying on autocorrect so much that you might as well use Wear OS' tiny keyboard.

NFC
Plus, a smartwatch has one more major feature that the Palm phone doesn't support: NFC. If you're out for a jog, you can run into a shop and buy a drink with your smartwatch. You can't make a payment with a Palm phone.

I could kind of understand the Palm phone if it were dramatically cheaper, as kind of a smartwatch stand-in for people who don't want to spend the money on a good smartwatch. But when it's exactly the same price as a smartwatch—just buy a smartwatch. If your goal is hyper-portable functionality, you get even more functionality in an even more portable form factor with a smart watch. The Palm phone simply isn't good at anything, and it lacks the payment and fitness tracking of a smartwatch.

The Software

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The Palm phone comes with a teeny-tiny version of Android 8.1. Again, we've seen Android phones with 3.3-inch screens before, but the 16:9 aspect ratio makes this display much skinnier than any of those older, first-gen Android phones. The whopping 720p resolution also serves to make everything much smaller than it was on those early 480?320 devices. Some things, like text, do a fine job of scaling, but the on-screen navigation buttons are clearly too small, and the screen just isn't wide enough to support a decent QWERTY keyboard. Some buttons, like the "Clear all" button at the bottom of the notification panel, are so small that most of the time I can't press them on the first try.

This build of Android 8.1 has been skinned with a dark theme in most places. It looks nice and makes the LCD blend in with the bezel of the phone, but it would be a lot better—and more power efficient—with the zero-power, true blacks of an OLED display. The highlight colors of this dark theme are really funky, ranging between pink and neon green for things like switches, buttons, and icons.

The biggest change from the normal Android layout is the home screen, which does away with the usual app drawer and multi-page home screen for a single scrolling list of apps. The layout looks like the Apple Watch's baby brother, with a honeycomb grid of app icons that grow bigger as they scroll into view. There's no app drawer and no way to even set a wallpaper—just a black screen with scrolling icons. This is a full-featured Android phone, but the simple home screen really makes the Palm phone feel more like a limited media device than a do-it-all smartphone. If you don't like it, installing something like Nova Launcher and getting a normal home screen back is easy enough.

Palm Graffiti
The other big addition to Android—I guess—is the Palm Graffiti-inspired lock-screen feature. If you swipe up from the bottom of the lock screen, you'll launch an app-search interface that uses drawing-text input. Just like on Palm's Graffiti system, the bottom-third of the screen is dedicated to letter drawing, with an icon in each corner of the drawing area. Each letter you draw will narrow the list down as you spell out an app name, and then you can tap on a result to launch an app.

I appreciate the throwback to Palm's old writing system, but this app-search interface was never useful. Thanks to the time it takes to draw a letter and wait for the system to recognize it, scrolling through the app list for what you want was always much faster. The input doesn't even support Palm's graffiti gestures, and there's no way to see what you're currently typing or a way to erase a letter. The app search is nothing but a poorly implemented gimmick.

The rest of the Android bits are right where you would expect them, just really tiny. You can pull down the notification panel from the top and expand the Quick Settings panel, which also contains the critical volume controls, since there are no hardware buttons. You can double-press the physical power button to open the Google Assistant and speak a command. You can flip through an itty-bitty settings screen, open a tiny webpage in Chrome, or install a tiny app through the Play Store. Recent Apps is also the normal vertical cascade of cards that you would expect from an Android 8 device. Everything is here, just dark, which is fine.

Normally I would write about the device's OS update prospects at this point, but Palm—the new zombie Palm—is a brand-new company without an update history. Things aren't looking good so far, though. First, Android 8 is an old version of Android—the newest version is Android 9, and it's November, and this phone is still on the "August" security patch. That's three months out of date. I'm going to guess the update support will not be good.

Performance
Speaking of things that are "not good," let's talk performance! The Palm phone struggles to do just about everything, which is expected considering the Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 SoC is near the bottom of Qualcomm's lineup. You get eight Cortex A53 cores and an Adreno 505 GPU, all built on a 28nm manufacturing process. While that's not great, the Palm phone still performs worse than the specs and benchmarks would lead you to believe. I ran into all sorts of problems like GFXBench crashing in between benchmarks and Chrome randomly closing.

The battery life is awful. The Palm phone easily has the worst battery performance of any phone I've ever tested. It's the worst score we've ever gotten in our battery tests, and during heavy usage, describing the battery percentage as a minute-by-minute countdown timer is not an exaggeration.

The battery life is the real killer for this phone. Even if the $350 price doesn't matter to you, the battery life is so poor it makes the phone unfit for any use case. The Palm phone feels like it is always on the brink of death, and that makes it an untrustworthy product to bring with you as your only form of communication or media.

Palm's band-aid solution to the terrible battery life is to include a "Life Mode" switch that will turn off Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity when the screen is off, which will certainly improve standby battery life.

Listing image by Ron Amadeo