November 21st Entry: Very Brief Smartphone Hands-ons
So as the title implies, these hands-ons I've have with the smartphones you'll read about below, have literally been just quick 1-3 minutes fiddling sessions. There certainly won't be any detailed reviews here, but I will be able to tell you about what I thought of their displays, build quality, size and so forth.
With the background wallpaper totally blacked out on this demo unit, I wasn't able to see the notch, nor determine how much of nuisance it would be while browsing around on it. The phone isn't as small as I feared it might be, but not large as some of the other flagships around either. The iPhone X does have a nice build quality, which it should for a phone that cost $1500 CAD in the 256GB configuration! 😱 The vertical dual camera positioned to the far left, still looks a little odd to me. Other phones like the LG G6 and LG V30 for instance, have it positioned horizontally in the centre, which looks a little more natural. Not a dealbreaker, but just something to throw in there. The display is very nice, but unfortunately, it was a pain to navigate! The reason should probably be very obvious, but in case it isn't -- NEW iPHONE GESTURES in place of the iconic home screen button we've known and loved for years! Yaaaaaaaayyyyyy! 😁🎉 Not. 😓 While the BlackBerry Q10 and other OS 10 Blackberry phones have gestures as well, Apple has decided to implement the gestures on this phone in both familiar and unfamiliar ways to that of other smartphones.
Even though its sibling I just discussed above is supposed to be larger with a 147mm display, versus the iPhone 8 Plus with its 139mm display, the Plus has a larger body and doesn't have its screen comprised with an awkward notch atop. And to be a geek, I also like the fact that it has a more standard 16:9 ratio of 1920 X 1080 pixels, which makes it more inline with most computers and televisions. I know I've recently mentioned this in an entry already, but it's something that a lot of people overlook. They don't realize that this matters until when they play videos back, take a screen shot, load up wallpapers, and beyond. The X has a display of 2436 X 1125 pixels. 😐 Anyways! Enough with that and let's just talk about this iPhone shall we? So judging from the photos, we can see that it's also sporting dual cameras to the far left like its quirky sibling, but horizontally like on the last generation iPhone 7 Plus. The phone looks great from both the back and front, but I still missing the clickability of the mechanical button from the 6th generation iPhones. Oh yeah! And let us not forget about the headphone jack! 😫 Come on, you didn't really think you'd see me discuss two iPhones without mentioning that, did you? It would be nice to see it return for the iPhone 9, but that likely won't happen so let's just conclude this part by saying that my short time with this phone was great. The display it not as rich and vibrant as something like a Samsung Galaxy S8+, but it's by no means a grainy slouch.
"It sure is tall and narrow!" Were the words that came to mind as I picked thia stylus-toting flagship up. I really should have brought my Lumia 1520 to compare the length and height of these 18:9 ratio phones, but alas! I unwisely left it behind that day. ☹ Oh well. But yeah, I really would like for manufacturers to go back to making their phones a little broader and return to 16:9 aspect ratios. This phone is not terribly narrow, so I could live with it on a day to day basis, but I'd imagine users coming from broader phones to feel cramped. It's also a shame that there was no blue demo unit, but this one was available to do the job. I still would have preferred Samsung's capacitive buttons from older generations like on the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, but they ain't coming back! But hey, at least the display is gorgeous and it has a headphone jack and micro SD card slot! 😁 But no removable battery. 😭 Speaking of the card slots, you can see that this model is packing 64GB of storage, but the models in Asian countries like China, South Korea and possibly Japan, roll with 128GB! Not fair! Yes, you can easily import them, but then you'll have to use an adapter to charge it, and do additional research to make sure you get a variant with 4G LTE capability! Oh, and there's supposedly an "Emperor Edition" with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. I don't know how legit that is at this point, so let's just go ahead and discuss that stylus! Yes, you can see that the demo units finally have some protection in place! I mean, it's a true shame that ghetto thieves keep robbing Notes of their styluses, so I'd often walk into shops to test the stylus, only to find that I couldn't! Oddly enough, the LG Stylo 2 units I'd play around with, usually weren't robbed of their styluses. Not sure about the Stylus 3 though. Speaking of that, I intended to get hands-on of it months ago, but couldn't find a working unit. As we can see in the middle and bottom photographs, were presented with two lovely cameras and a fingerprint scanner positioned in a very awkward spot! Just about every reviewer who has had some time with this phone complained about this. Here's hoping that Samsung will listen and put it in a better spot for the Note 9! While I don't care for fingerprint scanners, this location is really bad! You want to know what else is bad? Bixby! But thankfully, an update has come that finally lets users to disable that pest altogether! Too bad they didn't give you the option to reprogram it to another application of your choice, such as your camera! Do you have any idea how many people have said that they would have loved if the 8th generation Samsung flagships had dedicated camera buttons, instead of Pestby? I lost count... 😥 All in all, I think the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 would be my pick for an Android 2017 flagship. Either it, or a Sony Xperia XZ Premium in ravishing Rosso Red! 😛😍😍🤑
What a lovely display! It's too bad the unit refused to come out of the demonstration page, but whatever. At least it functioned and allowed me to interact with it. Unlike most 2017 Android phones which sport two rear cameras, both of Google's 2017 smartphones don't. Why? I don't know, but they should have gone with this setup. Oh, and tossing in a headphone jack and memory expansion capabilities wouldn't hurt either. The top part of this phone's rear is a fingerprint magnet, but I'm not one who's overly fussy about that. You can use a case to not only minimize or eliminate this, but also protect it from day to day damage. Oh, and while we're talking about the build quality, this thing feels like plastic. Yes, it's supposed to be metal, but because it's coated with an oleophobic coating, it feels the way that it does. If you're the type that likes that premium glass and metal feel, you won't be feeling that here, unless you buy 3rd party accessories. I guess there's not much else I can say, apart from that I'd personal buy this in white if I were in the market for it.
Wrap up & Other Ramblings
Alright, so that has been it for this smartphone hands-on post! It's been quite a while since I've done one. I was really glad to be able to get a feel for these 2017 flagship smartphones, but did not appreciate the fact that Chrome kept crashing while I was typing this earlier! Good grief! After finishing the iPhone X's part, I had to switch to Microsoft Edge. How ironic it is, that a Google product being used on Google's browser was behaving so unstable, but behaved on Microsoft's browser? Too weird! But I got no time to waste! My videos? If you can recall from the last entry, I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be able to film anything due to possible precipitation over the weekend, and guess what? It rained one day, and snowed the next! 🌧🌨❄ Not lovely! So for this week, I'll be editing 4 gaming videos that should appear on the channel by Thursday hopefully. And now I'm out!
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