Nexus 6 imagining looks ahead to Android 5.0

The Google Nexus 6 smartphone is a device that’s already anticipated despite the fact that the release of the Nexus 5 was only weeks ago. Today we have a Nexus 6 imagining to show readers, although we’ll point out from the off that this is a concept design.

Concept renders are a good way of getting a glimpse of what future devices might be like and this Nexus 6 concept was devised based on rumors about the Nexus 6 so far. It was designed by Rishi Ramesh for Nexus6us and Concept Phones provided some of the details.
Specs include a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 805 processor, a 5.2-inch display with resolution of 2560 x 1440, and 3GB of RAM. There’s also a 13-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization along with a front-facing camera and it runs Android 5.0.
Photo Sphere would get a complete overhaul and design-wise you’re looking at an aluminum build with Gorilla Glass. Pricing would likely be around $300 to $350. This isn’t the first concept for the Nexus 6 we’ve seen and undoubtedly it won’t be the last.
If you want to check out a couple of previous concepts we’ve shown then head here or here. It will be interesting to see how many styles and rumored Nexus 6 spec sheets we see between now and its likely release next fall.

We’d like to know what readers think about this latest concept idea so do send us your comments. Also we’d like to know what you’d like to see for the real Nexus 6 next year?

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Last Nexus device could be made by Lenovo

The Google Nexus smartphones and tablets have been a real success with Android device enthusiasts. Two benefits of having a Nexus device are that they run stock Android and are also first to receive Android updates. However, news today is that the last Nexus device could be made by Lenovo.
If you’ve been following Nexus news you may recently have heard the latest rumor we reportedon last week stemming from prominent tech blogger and insider Eldar Murtazin. He came up with the news that the Nexus brand is to end and that future such devices will be rebranded with the Google Play Edition name beginning in 2015.

This has not been confirmed by Google and Murtazin has a mixed record of accuracy, but the news certainly caused a stir among those who love the Android platform. The thought of the demise of Nexus is sad for many of us to contemplate but at this stage we won’t believe it until it’s made official.
However, Murtazin has now struck again, claiming that Lenovo will be producing one of the last Nexus devices, and of course if his earlier claim was correct it could be the final one ever. He also tweets that volume of this device will be huge and that it will be focused on the US market.
While it may have seemed unlikely at one time that Lenovo would be involved in a new Nexus device, this could be plausible. Yesterday there was news that Google is to sell its recently acquired Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, although it was stated that Lenovo would not be disposing of Motorola’s brand identity.
For now we’re sitting firmly on the fence on this one. We’re not completely convinced that Google plans to axe the Nexus brand so for now we won’t get too involved regarding who might be making one of the final devices with the well-loved name.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this though. Are you disappointed to hear that Google Nexus devices may be coming to an end by next year? How do you feel about a future Lenovo Nexus device? Send us your comments on this.

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Nexus 6 Lenovo finished look is enticing

he Google Nexus 6 is a phone that plenty of people are already talking about, especially with recent news about the possibility of it being made by Lenovo. A few days ago talented concept designer gave us his initial ideas for a Lenovo Nexus phone and now his Nexus 6 finished look gives us a tempting glimpse.

Last week we informed readers that Google had sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo and of anunconfirmed leak suggesting that Lenovo could be making one of the last Nexus devices, hence the idea behind this latest concept from Smit. We can get some great insight into the possibilities for new smartphones from concept renders and this Nexus 6 is no exception.

When we gave you the first images of Smit’s Lenovo 6 as a work in progress we noted the slight curve on the rear of the handset and an almost edge to edge display of around 5-inches in size. Now the designer has kindly given us a gallery of images of his Lenovo Nexus 6 finished concept (some of which you can see here) along with the video that you can view below this story.

One of the ingenious ideas of this impressive Nexus 6 creation is that the figure 6 that you can see on the reverse of the handset actually acts as a low light message indicator. Different colors would be available and Smit has also come up with his idea of specs for the Google Nexus 6 Lenovo.

His Nexus 6 specs include a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 805 quad-core processor, 4.99-inch display with Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080, and 32GB of internal storage. It also has a 13-megapixel rear camera with dual Flash, 3-megapixel front-facing camera, and dual speakers.

This very sleek looking handset has a soft touch rounded back and is just 7.4mm thick. We feel this is another great concept from Smit and look forward to seeing what he comes up with next, but we wonder what you think.

Would you welcome a Google Nexus 6 made by Lenovo? If so, would you be happy if it looked like this latest Jermaine Smit concept? Let us know with your comments.

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Android smartphones rule the world, dominance grows

One subject that we often find sparks an influx of comments from Phones Review readers is the Android vs. iOS debate. Fans of devices using each operating system can be pretty passionate about which platform they favor. However, the latest figures show that Android smartphones rule the world, as the dominance of the platform grows further.

A market intelligence firm has just gathered the latest data for the mobile market and Android very clearly takes top spot in smartphone operating system market share. In 2012 Android devices made up 69% of global smartphone unit shipments and this increased further to a massive 78.6% for 2013. Compare this to the 49.2% figure for 2011 and that’s a substantial rise.
However, the iOS platform market share for smartphones fell to 15.2% in 2013, as opposed to 18.7% in 2012. This might surprise many people as the iPhone is so popular, but its success is more evident in some regions than others.
Of course others would point out that there are a huge variety of Android smartphones available when compared to iPhones. Nevertheless the fact remains that Android devices globally are most popular, and that their dominance is still gathering pace.
BlackBerry’s share of the market also fell, with BlackBerry 10 failing to rejuvenate the platform as had been hoped. In 2011 the BlackBerry platform smartphone market share was 10.3% but this fell to 4.5% in 2012 and dropped further still to just 1.9% in 2013.
The smartphone operating system market share for Windows Phone handsets rose slightly. The figure in 2011 was 1.8% and in 2012 this rose slightly to 2.4% and for 2013 to 3.3%. Not a substantial gain, but a rise all the same. You can check out the image below from Statista for all of the figures.
At Phones Review we encourage the healthy competition offered by having a variety of smartphone operating platforms to choose from, and the team uses a range of devices on different platforms. However, this seems to be irrefutable evidence that Android reigns supreme and it’s difficult to see this changing, certainly within the next few years.

We really welcome your comments on this, as we’re always interested to hear what you have to say. Which platform is your choice of smartphone operating system? Are you surprised at just how far Android is stretching away from the rest of the competition?

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Could iPhones be more data secure than Androids?

Currently the mobile technology world has been highlighting the fundamental security advantages iPhones have over other Smartphone models.

This came about after recent media attention concerning the data protection risks mobile phones pose now forensic recovery software is available to the general public. Earlier in February Channel 4′s Data Baby launched this concern into the mainstream by testing how easy it is to retrieve data from a strangers phone even after it had been wiped.

Data baby reported, “The phones look like they’re completely blank, but the data is still there in the memory,” said Glenn Wilkinson of SensePost. “You can use software to find it, and that software is freely available for download. I can teach you how to access the data in 10 minutes.”

However several technology organisations and phone recyclers have claimed that Channel 4 did not make it clear enough that there is a significant difference between an iPhones’ security capacity and a general Android. The Channel 4 report investigated the data security hazards solely on Android phones, not iPhones and according to many Phone recycling companies this makes a substantial difference.

Mobile recyclers Bozowi Sell My iPhone said “The good thing about the newer iPhone models is the data pathways are encrypted, making it ludicrously difficult to trace its data. This is the complete opposite to an Android handset, where the pathways are very easy to reconstruct.” These encrypted data pathways make it almost impossible for a hacker to find their way to the phone’s data. Pathways are essentially the phone’s directory, this tells the software exactly where the data is lurking in the handset’s solid-state memory.

According to Apple Support ” Devices that support hardware encryption erases user settings and information by removing the encryption key that protects the data. This process takes just a few minutes.”

This means the ‘erase all content and settings’ option on an iPhone is very different to an android’s factory reset. A factory reset simply deletes the pathways to the data and leaves the data scattered around the solid-state memory. When you perform an ‘erase all content and setting’ on a iPhone however, the pathways lock with it so does the data.

Granted, the data is still on the iPhone after an ‘erase all content and setting’, but unlike the Androids’ factory reset the information is much more resistant to forensic recovery software. Recovery software at one point was only available to the government and police, but now practically anyone can get hold of it for virtually nothing.

The Crown Prosecution service sated “Forensic Data Retrieval Software (FDR) was developed to help the police investigation officers convict criminal suspects by recovering data from their phones or computers. However, as technology progresses such software develop frequent limitations”

One of its limitations being the iPhone 4s and up. Forensic recovery software works by using algorithms to reform pathways to the phone’s debris data. This works affectively with Androids but not with the newer iPhones models because the encrypted pathways disorientate the software’s algorithms.

This does not mean the iPhone is completely safe from data retrieval programs, but it is considerably more secure than other Smartphone handsets.

Phones Review would like to say a big thanks to Samantha Greenaway, a dedicated freelance researcher and writer of security within technology. She is currently working as a researcher for the University of Birmingham, UK.

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LG Nexus 6 vision of design and specs

There has been a lot of conjecture lately about whether Google will continue the Nexus brand in the future, but yesterday a Nexus 6 smartphone for later in the year appeared to be confirmed by Google’s Sundar Pichai. It could also be made by LG again, and a Nexus 6 by LG has been imagined with specs in this concept vision for the phone.

There’s no reason why LG wouldn’t make the next Nexus phone, given the popularity of the LG-made Nexus 5, and sometimes it can be interesting to take a look at concept ideas of devices to tease us with what could be offered. The source of this latest Nexus 6 concept that we are showing you today has also come up with what are felt to be conceivable specs for the device.

The LG Nexus 6 render shown here would be equipped with a next-generation Snapdragon processor, 5.2-inch IPS display with resolution of 2560 x 1440 and 550 ppi, 3GB of RAM and a 13-megapixel or greater rear camera with optical image stabilization and 4K video capture. Further specs include a 3000 mAh battery and it would be running the Android 5.0 operating system.

Design-wise you’re looking at a handset of between 7 and 8mm thick made from aluminum with polycarbonate filing. The appearance shows straight sides with rounded upper and bottom edges, pretty much like the lines of the Nexus 5. Of course the Nexus 6 is a long way off yet so anything speculated here is mere guesswork so far.

You might want to look at a couple of previous concept Nexus 6 phones that we’ve shared hereand here. It would be good to hear your thoughts on this latest Nexus 6 design. Would you like to see a design like this for the real deal, and do you think the specs are realistic or not?

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How Android Wear dodges the 'Glasshole' bullet

Google's Android Wear has a lot going for it -- including the fact that smartwatch users won't invite instant ridicule or worse.

We're still in the infancy of the age of smartwatches, but give Google credit for nudging the concept forward with its long-anticipated announcement of Android Wear.

With a little luck -- and a clever hardware design or two from Google's partners -- maybe we're about to bear witness to one of those Very Big Things that cross the tech horizon occasionally.

Maybe.

For now, all we have is a glitzy promotional video filled with a variety of bouncy, well-scrubbed -- and obviously well-heeled - folks living the bright future envisioned by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (particularly). No coincidence that Google's video clip showed a lot of bouncy athletic people as if they were plucked away from a Frisbee game on a tech campus in Northern California.

The talking points heralding Android Wear -- "useful information when you need it most, straight answers to spoken questions, the ability to better monitor your health and fitness, and your key to a multiscreen world" -- are just the sort of technocratic prescriptions you'd expect from Silicon Valley. Okay, they seem nice to have. Nowhere in the verbiage, though, is anything to convince the rest of us why an Android Wear-able would be a must-have item.

For now, this announcement was a PR plug for coming attractions that may or may not arrive. Android Wear relies heavily on functionality anyone using Android smartphones will recognize in Google Now -- and then some; one feature portrayed in the Google video has a cyclist using the smartwatch to open a garage door. Google Now doesn't do that currently. But you can envision how this might develop. So it is that a swimmer uses her smartwatch to receive a jelly fish warning while she was still on dry land. And given Google's recent acquisition of Nest, the company bringing thermostats and smoke detectors into the 21st century, the nexus between smartwatch and smart home isn't a stretch. A lot is going to change, obviously, but today's news points in fun directions.

Google also gets props for not bringing out another product that's going to invite popular derision, if not worse. You could be a veritable Mother Teresa but if you walk into a bar wearing Google Glass you just know that's an invitation to someone to beat you over the head like a baby seal. Okay, the two people on line in the video impulsively breaking into dance were annoying and I can envision scenarios where talking into your watch like a latter-day Dick Tracy might raise eyebrows. Still, it's a major advance in social etiquette over Glass and the rise of the "Glassholes."

It looks like LG may be first into the market. The Moto 360 watch is also expected by the summer. Myriad other consumer electronics manufacturers, including fashion brands like Fossil, also are lining up with Google.

"It's not the end of the game. It's just the beginning," said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

Whoever can figure it out first will do well. A recent study of 23,000 consumers in 23 countries carried out by Accenture found that 46 percent of the people surveyed expressed interest in smartwatches. I should note the flop that was the Galaxy Gear, which was awkwardly oversized, hard to navigate, and expensive. (Samsung now says it knows what to do.)

Perhaps, as Milanesi noted, Google's official entry into the category with the introduction of a very simple user interface will help companies focus. But if past is prologue -- and product development cycles in the tech industry don't often deviate from the script -- it's still going to take a while before vendors reach the point where their merchandise makes our hearts go pitter-patter.

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