Kyocera and CAT: Will They Ever Take Smartphones Seriously?

GuuzakaTube                                                                                                   2018-04-10

Kyocera and CAT: Will They Ever Take Smartphones Seriously?

Type "Kyocera" into YouTube. The first thing you might get is the following: Kyocera's Torque Phone: Smashing This Phone Won't Stop It From Working. Type "CAT" into YouTube and you'll get... um... the predictable: small, furry, cute, carnivorous mammals commonly kept as pets. Try "CAT Smartphones" and then you'll get what I'm talking about in this unique context. 

CAT, short for Caterpillar Incorporated, is an American company headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. It also claims to be the the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. Kyocera Corporation on the other hand, is a Japanese multinational manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. They claim to be the leading supplier of solar power generating systems, mobile phones, printers, copiers, printheads, LCDs, electronic components, semiconductor packages, cutting tools and industrial ceramics. Wow, that is surely a lot of goods! 

So ok, these companies' products really do have a lot of international recognition and use. You see them all over worksites and several other places. But as you can obviously see, this blog post is about why they don't seem to take smartphones seriously, whether they ever will, and why they should seriously start doing so: because Samsung. What about Samsung? Their Samsung Galaxy S Active series have fallen in grace, ever since the S6 Active. In my opinion, the last good Galaxy S Active was the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active. It had a tiny 12.9cm screen which would make it puny in my books. But despite that, it had proper mechanical navigation buttons, a full high-definition display, Snapdragon 801 Socket-on-Chip and a removable battery with IP68 water-resistance. "HUH?! B-but I thought smartphones had to be sealed with bucket loads of glue to achieve that type of rating?!" Wrong. That's what a lot of these misinformed journalists, YouTubers and even the companies themselves, want you to believe. This couldn't be anything further from the truth. Kyocera's own Kyocera DuraForce XD also boasted IP68 water-resistance and had a removable battery. I'll discuss this device later in the post.

So what went wrong with the 6th, 7th and 8th iterations of the Active smartphones? They became less functional, and more fashion focused. Sad. The 6th iteration, lost both its microSD card slot and removable battery. Really stupid, but at least it kept its mechanical buttons, active key and significantly boosted the battery capacity. The 7th iteration got an even larger battery, and the microSD slot came back. So to be fair, the 7th would have honestly been the 2nd best Galaxy Active, despite the non-removable battery. For the 8th iteration, gone is the Active key and mechanical buttons. The Active key is replaced with that stupid Bixby button that most people hate! Consumers want a dedicated camera button. Not a button for a voice assistant, which Google already provides. And because the regular S8 and S8+ both have IP68 water-resistance, the S Active series at this point is now just an uglier version of its standard counterparts. Talk about a waste of resources.

After reading all of that, you must be thinking, "Is this supposed to be an article on Kyocera and Caterpillar, or a Samsung Galaxy Active bash article?" It's about Kyocera and Caterpillar, but it was extremely important that I first highlighted the fall of the most popular, high-end, rugged smartphone. That way, you can realize how silly Kyocera and Caterpillar have been to not take advantage by offering high-end smartphones to challenge the Galaxy S Active series, and make them look silly about become fashion conscious. Why do I think these two have been really pathetic? Because of what their latest smartphones have offered. I'll explain starting with Caterpillar first.

Alright, to be honest, the upcoming CAT S61 actually has a lot going for it: an improved camera, air quality detection, laser measuring, a normal 16:6 ratio and more. It's biggest downfall would be its Snapdragon 630 chipset. Why? Because for a smartphone that's allegedly going to cost €799, it should be using the very best Socket-on-Chip for 2018: Snapdragon 845! And based on a few hand-on videos I've watched on YouTube, some pointed out the mid-range chipset for struggling with some of the resource intensive applications. Not good. So if only they had just gone with Snapdragon 845 it would have made a notable difference. Also, because it uses its camera and screen for a lot of its technological functions, increasing the native resolution to flagship-modern 2540 x 1440 (2K) or even 3840 x 2160 (4K) would put it right on par with the other high-end guys. Lastly, the 13.2cm screen is puny in my books. I know, I know, me and my bias with tiny screens. But seriously, I'd like to see them make something with 18cm of screen estate. It would allow for more productivity and media related business. So Caterpillar may actually be starting to take its smartphones more seriously, despite the flaws I've pointed out. They said that they'll be planning to give the CAT S61 an upgrade to Android 9.0 Pop-Tart, which further proves a change of attitude. 

Kyocera! Out of the two manufactures I'm discussing here, they are by far the biggest offender with their attitude towards their smartphones! Their newest half-decent smartphone was released all the way back in October 2016, Kyocera DuraForce Pro. It had some middle-ranged specifications on paper with its Snapdragon 617 chipset and full high-definition resolution. Unfortunately, a lot of users complained about the device breaking or not being as reliable as it was touted to be. They also hated the camera quality, despite it being touted as 13MP. It also doesn't help that Kyocera doesn't seem to upgrade their smartphones to at least one major version of Android. I haven't ever heard of them at least unlocking their bootloaders either. Maybe that's changed. Maybe it hasn't.

If there's one smartphone of theirs that caught my attention most, and would have had a lot of potential if loaded properly, it would be the Kyocera DuraForce XD. It had a massive 3700 milliampere hour removable battery, IP68 water-resistace and a 14.4cm screen, making it the same size as the Samsung Galaxy Note 5. A quick search will reveal why it was dead on arrival: very poor specifications! The screen resolution was supbar for a device that large, the chipset was really weak, and so was the camera. On top of all this, the Kyocera DuraForce XD remains stuck on Android 5.1 lollipop with a locked bootloader.

Now at this point, you might thinking that Kyocera and Caterpillar just don't give two hoots about making high-end smartphones to compete with Samsung's S Active Series. Their goal is solely to make devices that can take a wicked beating and make calls, right? Sure, if that's all they're going after, then they have succeeded greatly. But as you can obviously tell from my desire to create this post, I seriously think that they should do more than just that. Why would they want to just let Samsung get away with being the only maker of high-end, ruggedized smartphones when they have huge potential to take a bite out of their lunch? It's like having a big, strong, rough-tough man, getting up from the dessert table to go and paint his nails. And then all you do is just stare at his complete cookie butter cheesecake. Why not take a slice? The opportunity is staring you right in the face.

People probably might not have thought about the importance and difference it would make to have more proper, high-end choices in the ruggedized smartphone world. If you've taken the time to read this entire post, I hope that I've been able to successfully make you aware of this. Oh, how nice it would be to have a nice, large, high-end, rugged device that wouldn't shut off in frigid, Canadian weather, even after recording for 30 minutes! 


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August 26, 2016 Uploads

08.26.16

August 26, 2016 Uploads

In this entry, I'll be discussing the five videos uploaded on the 26^th, which are Orange Fuzzy Caterpillar: Possibly Spilosoma Virginica, Some Bush Trail that Connects to Concession Road #3, Pac-Man: Sound Test With The Retro Arcade King!, Asphalt 8: Ruf, ruf! Can you hear me now?, and Run In Crowd: How Far Can You Run With Your Friends? 5 videos is quite a lot, so let's dive right into it!

Orange Fuzzy Caterpillar: Possibly Spilosoma Virginica

Remember Trans-CanadaTrail: North of Regional Road 28? Yep, I came back to the same place that day for another trip! I found this fuzzy, little critter when I was close to the end of trail, so I squatted to film him, because I thought he'd make an interesting subject, since I haven't really filmed much animals on this channel. It may look cute and tempting to touch, but I often hear that these furry caterpillars may cause adverse reactions if you touch them, or worse, eat them! Ok, I don't think anybody would be stupid enough to do that, but you never know. I have seen images of people holding them, but I preferred to play it safe and avoided handling this little chap. Now for the big question: what species is this caterpillar? Spilosoma Virginica? Estigmene acrea? Or could it even be Acronicta aceris? Only a skilled entomologist would know for sure.

Some Bush Trail that Connects to Concession Road #3

Ah, the video that was never supposed to see daylight, but ended with a second chance! For real though, the video had some heavy, unwanted rippling, horrendous shaking and constant exposure changing! Prime emphasis on the exposure changing! I don't think there's an exposure lock for the built-in camera, so I'll have to poke around to find a fix or maybe see if there are 3^rd applications that can solve it. So in order to fix these, I've obviously applied anti-shake and changed the colours to improve the video. The results? Far from spectacular, but better off from what it used to be. So! What about the trail itself, you may ask? Well, it's really a shortcut to a dog park that you can use when walking north up Valley Farm Road, and is located to the left, or right in the case of the those coming from a southbound direction. It's not difficult to navigate, but due to the copious amounts of long grasses, bushes and trees, you're definitely going to want to make sure you have bug spray and water. That's of course if you're using it in late spring, summer and early autumn. Common sense, but it's worth a mention anyway. Oh, and final thing: even though it's a “shortcut” it's not super short per se, but not too long either, so just be weary of that.

Pac-Man: Sound Test With The Retro Arcade King!

Good ol' Pac-Man! He's a very famous, well recognized, classical arcade icon that almost everyone has played with before. In this gaming session, I decide to play a mobile version of the game to conduct my 1^st sound test with a new application I purchased recently. The results? Fairly good until I found out that the video stopped recording after about three and a half minutes... Joy. I should also mention that it doesn't even actually record the video's audio along with the video itself for games which really sucks, and for other applications you have to downgrade to 360p to get get both sound and video saved. No thanks. Thankfully, I've discovered a workaround that sounds counterintuitive, but here goes: set the resolution to the highest you see, which will be 720X720 for the phones like the BlackBerry Q10 and Classic and likely 720X1280 for the slab phones like the Z10, Z30 etc. I'm not sure about the Passport, but I also hear that the 1440X1440 resolution is unavailable, which again is another caveat. So after choosing your resolution, you actually have to set the audio to disabled. Sounds odd doesn't it? Until when you realize you get the full audio blaring at you while you're recording! While this is happening, you make sure you have a microphone near by to capture the audio, which you can then later toss into your editing software to get the best of both worlds: Native application + Sounds! Is going through all of this worth it? Depends. I can imagine BlackBerry Passport users having an easier time with the multitasking and screen capturing due to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Soc in their phones, which brings me to the next point – actually not yet..... I'll save what I was about to mention for the Asphalt 8 section since I didn't have that problem for this game. Ok, so this feels more like a review of Headless ScreenCorder rather than Pac-Man, but because the game cut off so early, I didn't get to feel the vibe for long enough. And to be honest, I think I'm somewhat glad it stopped because I did mention lots of random, weird things and frequently brought up soundwaves, so I won't complain too much, but should probably try Pac-Man again later at some point. Let's just say that this game is fun. Very fun! Next time around I'll try not to let the ghosts kill me so much!

Asphalt 8: Ruf, ruf! Can You Hear Me Now?

In this experimental episode of Asphalt 8, I play with my preferred Ruf car, the Ruf Rt 12 S, in Barcelona. The video tells you everything: choppy, choppy, lag, lag! Choppy, choppy, lag, lag! Seems like the combination of a high graphics, processor demanding game and screen recording with a new application, was too much for the ancient Snapdragon S4 Plus. I mean, it got the job done, but poorly... I don't know if it's mostly the application to blame, the processor or both, but something tells me that it's likely both, because even on other recording applications like Screen Recorder (I know, very generic name) you may have seen it happen in some of other videos like Asphalt 8: The Unfamiliar Roads, but it hasn't been as bad as it was with ScreenCorder. So with this said, this is why I believe that BlackBerry Passport owners may fare better with these type of tasks; for the reason I mentioned above in my Pac-Man ramble: their beastly Socket on Chip! Seriously, I often hear about how these guys keep bragging about how fast their phones are, and how they handle Android applications like champions, which can be just plain boastful to say, but there may very well be some truth to it. So will I shoot another episode with Asphalt 8 using ScreenCorder? YES. I have to get more results and compare different tracks before I can come to concrete conclusions. As for the gameplay itself, hasn't been my best run due to the constant pausing, but hey, at least I did a clean run in one attempt. Not 1000 like the way I often do!

Run In Crowd: How Far Can You Run With Your Friends?

This is a game where you race alongside other players in a new world each day. You tap to jump and tap again for a double-jump. Pretty self-explanatory if you've played this game or watched my video, where you'll also see it picking up the pace! This will require you to use faster reflexes and much more caution to avoid running into crates or dropping off the cliff like a grand loser! The game is cross-platform and apparently you actually get to race with people from iOS, Android and BlackBerry 10 in a session, unlike Asphalt 8 and other so called cross-platformers which is pretty awesome. Wait, where's Windows 10 Mobile?! Who knows. As simple as the basic premise may be, this game is actually a great time killer with a wonderful soundtrack. You can customize your person, but as you heard me complaining about, you have to cough up $0.99 CAD for one outfit or $2.99 for all! Not digging that. I don't why the developer couldn't just make you pay with in-game currency, or better yet just charge $0.99 CAD for the whole application with everything unlocked. I'd totally pay for it, but I know some cheapskates wouldn't and this is especially true on the Android platform where piracy can be very rampant. So what about Headless ScreenCorder's capabilities, you may ask? This is the 3^rd game I've tested with it and have seen mixed results. The games loads and runs fine, but the audio stuttered rather frequently. While this is a bit of a nuisance, it's much better than the scenario with Asphalt 8 where it was both gameplay and audio. I've already went into detail about theories behind this, so I won't bore anyone with that here. Despite the varying results I've had with audio and gameplay during these sessions, I'll definitely be testing more native game applications with ScreenCorder, but will use Screen Recorder for the Android games, which does a phenomenal job at capturing both audio and footage simultaneously, without the need for using an external microphone to save audio that would have otherwise disappeared with ScreenCorder under high resolution recordings.