Category: Mobile

Moto G7 Review with Alexa installed!

Paul
Moto G7 with Alexa Hands-Free – Unlocked – 64 GB – Ceramic Black (US Warranty) – Verizon, AT&T, T–Mobile, Sprint, Boost, Cricket, & Metro
Disclaimer :  Amazon isn’t paying me for this review and I get a small amount of money from people who use my links to buy products from Amazon.   Other than that this will be a straight up honest review.

The Back story

I’ve always loved Amazon for over 10 to 15 years.   I’ve always used them to do my buying of stuff from movies to electronics when I can.  When I need a new cell phone or something else,  I’ll go to Amazon and check to see if I can get it there cheaper than around here.   So you see how much I use Amazon from day to day.   Lately I’ve been looking at buying a new cell phone for me.   I loved my other cell phones on Amazon.   I found the Motorola G7 with Alexa installed on it and you could make monthly payments, which was sweet because it was a little higher than I would like to pay all at once.  When I bought this phone, I was paying 60 dollars a month for 5 months for this phone. 

Specs of the phone:

Power
  • Operating System – Android™ 9 Pie
  • Processor – Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 632 processor with 1.8 GHz octa-core CPU and Adreno 506 GPU
  • Memory (RAM) – 4 GB
  • Internal Storage – 64 GB
  • Expandable Storage – microSD Card support (up to 128 GB)
Battery
  • Battery Size – 3000 mAh, Non-removable
Display
  • Display Size – 6.2″
  • Display Technology – LTPS LCD
  • Resolution – Full HD+, 403 ppi
  • Aspect Ratio – 19:9 (2270×1080)
  • Display Design – Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3
Camera
  • Rear Camera Hardware – 12 MP ( f1.8, 1.25um pixel), 5 MP depth sensor, LED flash, PDAF (Phase Detection Autofocus)
  • Front Camera Hardware – 8 MP (1.12um pixel), Screen flash
Audio
  • Speakers – 1 receiver, 1 bottom-ported speaker
  • Dolby – Dolby Audio™
  • Microphones – 3 microphones
  • Headphone Jack – 3.5mm headphone jack
  • FM Radio – Yes

My thoughts on this phone

(Positives)

The phone was speedy and the ease of it was really.   The display was big enough for me and I could watch movies and shows through Netflix with no issues.   I loved the storage size and the ability to add even more storage which I bought a 64 GB Micro SD card.  It helps for me to have the extra space for my audible membership.   I simply love Audible and listen to my favorite books as I go to work or other errands.  Android Pie is really nice and very handy even the Google voice commands are working great with the phone.

(Negative)

So the negative of the phone is some what just my observations of using it.   The Alexa capabilities are nice but was something that I had to disable and enable Google instead.   It really wasn’t to hard just a little bit annoying but for the benefit of paying monthly this wasn’t a really bad situation.   The Battery Life, which is good for people who don’t use your phones a lot is good but for someone who plays games and uses a lot just won’t last all day.   The Display and brightness was also annoying because when it is really bright outside you would have a problem unless you turned up the brightness, which drains the battery even faster.  The Gorrila Glass 3 that it comes with still broke at least twice with the use of the phone.   I replaced the screen twice and It might of been because I kept putting it in my pocket.  If you buy the phone, I suggest buying a holster or something to put the phone when you are traveling.   The first time I broke it, it had a cover and tempered glass protector and I accidentally dropped it.  The second time, looks to be around the middle where I might of done it myself.   Motorola should make their screens even more durable for the end users.  

Finally

All in All,  I am happy to use the phone and the voice and video chats are sweet using it but you know you the screen issues are a real problem.   I still love the fact that I can charge the phone rather quickly and be able to play games on it.   I just hope they fix the issues that I talked about and hopefully will think about fixing these issues.   Have you used the Motorola G7 and what do you think about it?   Leave a comment and tell me your experiences on the Phone and tell people what you think about it!

 

More Rumors Unfold for the Samsung Galaxy S4

Fahad Majidi

With the announcement of the release of Samsung Galaxy S4 comes a bunch of rumors as well. What folds now primarily pertains to the screen of the device. According the rumors surging around Samsung Galaxy S4 will be equipped with floating touch technology. Floating touch technology allows you to interact with the device by hovering your finger above the screen. It works with the help of electrical field created by our finger which is then detected with the help of a sensor, pretty much similar to what you have seen in Samsung Galaxy Note II where you use S pen to interact with notifications and emails. Same goes for the Sony’s low end phone Xperia Sola.

Previously the device had AMOLED display but now the S4 is rumored to have Green PHOLED. So, what’s the difference? In AMOLED screen the green and blue OLEDs were fluorescent where red OLEDs were phosphorescent. But now the S4 is touted to be equipped with green and red OLEDs with phosphorescent materials and fluorescent materials for the blue ones. It does not augment the picture quality or so but it does aids in the power efficiency of the device, almost 25% more power efficient.

It is also believed that Samsung is preparing two prototypes of S4. One with the LCD display and runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor whereas the other one is said to have an AMOLED display and uses Samsung Exynos 5 Octa processor. As for now there is no clue whether Samsung will sell both of the devices or drop any of the two before its introduction next week in New York.

And lastly, the device will run on Jelly Bean Android 4.2.1 at the time of its launch but will be upgraded to 4.2.2 as soon as the update hits in the same month.

Fahad Majidi is a Paid Contributor for the Paulstechtalk.com website.  Any views of his is his own and not of the website.   Any Links in this article are affiliate links to products mentioned to help support paying for the contributor.


 

Reviewing the Captr II from Cricket Wireless!

Paul

Cricket Captr II

Click on Image for More information

I recently bought the Captr 2 and I must say from everything I have done with this phone,  I am really impressed.   So before I begin with my observations, I will at least tell you the specifics of the phone itself:

The Retail Price of this phone is $59.99, even that can be a good thing.    I simply love this phone because of the durability of it and how reliable it has been for me.  I have been using a Plantronics Explorer series Bluetooth headset with this phone for quite some time and have great success with many of the features that come with this.

“What Have I tried?”  you may ask.

I will put it to you this way.   On other phones that I have used a head set on I have had very little success with voice dialing.    After you have trained you phone with your own voice could you dial a number without having to even touch the phone.   I like the fact that I could have it call any number I said and it rarely got it wrong.

The Pro’s of the Phone:

  • Obviously the Voice Commands —  They have fixed common problems with voice commands and it works even better.

  • Size —  I am one of those who like to have a small phone, don’t need any bulky phone to show off.

  • Battery life — Having used it for over 3 weeks.   The Battery life is really good, Only having to charge it every couple days.

  • Cost — It being a low cost phone, almost anyone can afford it.

  • Great for College or Highschool Students —  It being limited on web browsing this is good for cost and still keeping it touch with your kids.

The Con’s:

  • Screen size — If you are used to a big screen then this is something that you will have to get used it.

  • Memory size — The phone memories isn’t as big as an Iphone, so you can’t have unlimited contacts or messages on the phone.

All in all, This phone is great for anyone who is on a tight budget.    I have been really pleased with it.   I definitely will recommend this phone to anyone who might need a low cost phone and still be on a budget.   I have not had it dropped calls from this phone and the signal strength has been over 2 bars anywhere I have went.   Go check out the Captr II for yourself and you will be happy with it like I am!!

Related articles

Are you Email domains being blocked by Cricket?

Paul

So I got this Tweet from Mai_ling on twitter and she said:

mai_lingemail

So I did some digging around the net and found it is something that is a common practice for ISP’s to block PORT 25.   If you want to find out if Cricket is blocking your mail service you can easily follow these instructions to see if port 25 is actively being blocked.  So what are some options in fixing this little problem.

[ad#cricket-right-ez]Due to spammers exploiting port 25, ISP have been blocking port 25 for other domains but theirs.   You can receive email but not send email.  Most ISP’s have a way for you to have an Alternative Port that you can use and you should check with your email domain provider to see if you can send and receive on either a SSL or another Port.

You could set up your email client to receive on port 25 but send out on the SMTP server of Gmail.  This would be useful for people who want to send mail out but not have to change there email address.  People will still see it coming from whatevername@whatever.com.   You can tell Thunderbird to send out on the port and yet use your domain as your email address.

Another possible solution that may work for some is to sign up for Google Apps.  The downside of this is It cost 50$ a year but that is 4.20$ a month to be added on to your Cricket Modem charge.  This looks promising and has a 30 day trial so, if it works then you will know before you have to pay for anything.  This should be dealt with by Cricket, they should have a way for there customers to send and receive email without having to jump through hoops to send email and receive email.

Cricket Broad Band Modem Extended Review 12/23/08

Paul

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Modem Review[/intlink] Or the [intlink id=”4523″ type=”post”]UM185 Broadband modem[/intlink]. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

after the last fiasco of the troubles, I had with Cricket.  I wanted to talk about some of the performance of the Broad band that I experienced going from one City to another major City.   I thought I’d explain how well this went from one City to another.  While on the road we had to watch for sleet and ice conditions of the surrounding area.

I had the system going through the whole part of this travel and thought I’d share my impression of the speed and reliability of the service.  This is my expressions:

  • A few times I’ve had to activate the modem — During the trip I had to activate at least twice from once city to the other but that created no major problems and took relatively short time to activate.

  • Got comparative speeds all on highway —  This is due to distances and where the cellular towers are and how they respond to incoming and outgoing request.  Although there were many hills it seemed to keep about the same all through the drive.

  • Connected until I got out of Coverage area — This was due to us traveling outside of the coverage area and ended my use of the modem, but until that time it seemed to be very good at keeping me up to date on current weather conditions and other important information during the drive.

Update 12/26/2008

travel-highway1

As you can see, On my way home, I decided to run the test to show you how different it can be on parts of the highway.  These show you just how much of a difference you will experience on different areas of any given city.  You see it all comes down to Hills and Valleys and also the location the tower.  You will never be able to get the best speed possible while driving but you will of course be able to surf the web and check email.   I also was able to use Twitter with this to test that feature out.  It seemed to work well with Twitter web update with out much trouble.  Please see below to see how you can get this service for yourself.   If you like this service, please recommend my review to others so they can determine if this is available in there area.   Please remember this will only work if you are in the coverage area.   This was done on the way home once I got into the Cricket Service area and you can see what type of speeds I got.

travel-highway3To see my other review of this modem you can click here.  I had problems with speed until after I did the activation of the modem the first time around.   After I activated the modem, the speed really increased to what it should be.  When it comes to the reliability of the modem and the ease of use, I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars due to the problems and understanding of the problems associated with a broad band modem.  I will for the time recommend this to friends and family because after the activation of the modem, I’ve had really good speeds and want to remind people that the modem is only as good as the source, so you must remember where the towers are to better help you get the speed you want.

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