Rick's "12 Days of Christmas" for 2014 - Day 7: HTC One M8

My favorite smartphone of 2014.

The HTC One M8.

With its brushed-metal design and wrap-around unibody frame, the HTC One (M8) is designed to fit beautifully in your hand. It's fun to use with amped up sound and a large Full HD touch screen, and intuitive gesture controls make it seem like your phone almost knows what you need before you do.

Amazon.com

The Best Just Got Better

Last year’s HTC One delivered a wide range of innovative smartphone breakthroughs: beautiful all-metal design, an ever-changing home screen that streams customized online feeds, dual front-facing speakers and an amazing HTC UltraPixel camera.

The HTC One M8 ensures you're never out of touch with your world (view larger).

But innovation doesn’t rest and neither does HTC. That’s why we’re introducing the HTC One (M8). With a full wrap-around, high quality, all-metal design with curved edges that naturally fit in your hand, significant enhancements to every breakthrough feature of last year’s model, as well as all-new innovations, the HTC One (M8) is designed to impress and built to perform.

Premium Design

With the HTC One (M8), we’ve refined this process and taken our award-winning design to another level. The housing is now wraps all the way around the sides and right up to the edge of the display screen, creating natural curves that fit snugly in your hand and make it easy to hold. It’s curved back and brushed, high-quality metal present an unsurpassed premium look for a phone that’s as easy to admire, as it is to use.

HTC DUO Camera

Some of the most prominent new features of the HTC One (M8) have to do with its ability to take truly stunning portrait photography and pictures with unique, fun and creative special effects. In a smartphone first, HTC’s Duo Camera features a dual lens that captures depth of field information and provides an entirely new set of editing tools.

UFOCUS: Never Lose Focus

The HTC One (M8)’s camera is 50 percent faster than before, with a top focusing speed of less than 300 milliseconds. After you take a photo, the UFocus capability uses the depth information collected by the dual lens camera to give you professional-looking portraits. You can easily add an artistic blur known as ‘bokeh’ around your subject with just a tap. You can also refocus the shot on any person in the photo.

ZOE VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS: Multiple Points of View

Now you can share your Zoe Video highlight reels with your friends and have them add their own photos, music or themes to create completely new highlights. Enjoy the same event photographed by different people from multiple angles for a true creative collaboration and a richer way to relive special moments.

MOTION LAUNCH

Unlock your phone, access your home screen, and launch apps with Motion Launch. Built-in motion sensors detect when you pick up the phone, and with a single swipe or double-tap you can unlock your screen or launch an app, without even hitting the power button. Swipe left to access Widget Home. Swipe right to go to HTC BlinkFeed. Swipe up to launch the previous app. Or access the camera by holding the phone in landscape and pressing the volume down key.

Spec Highlights

• 3G/4G LTE connectivity
  
  Sprint 4G LTE network is available in limited markets
  
  
• Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) with HTC Sense
  
  
• 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core, 8974 quad-core
  
  
• 5.0-inch Full HD 1080p with 440ppi display
  
  
• Dual camera with UltraPixel
  
  
• Front 5-MP camera with 1080p video
  
  
• 32 GB storage + 2 GB of RAM
  
  
• Wireless-N Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 + NFC
  
  
• 2600 mAh battery capacity
  
  
• See full specs below

Zero-gap aluminum unibody with tapered edges for a smooth grip (view larger).

Extreme Power Saving Mode

Finally, a battery that can keep up with you. The battery in the HTC One (M8) lasts 40 percent longer than before. Extreme Power Save mode gives you up to 2 weeks of standby time while still giving you manual access to calls, email, texts, and other basic functions. Even with just 10 percent battery, you’ll have 30 hours of standby time with Extreme Power Saving Mode.

HTC BOOMSOUND: Parallel Speakers, UnParalleled Sound

HTC BoomSound boasts our signature dual front-facing speakers that project audio directly at you. The sound is crisper, richer, and fuller than competing smartphones.

The HTC One (M8) features a new multi-band amplifier that ratchets up
the volume and sound quality, and boosts bass while keeping the mid/high frequencies clear. A new software balancing system optimizes bass and treble levels to ensure clear vocal and sound details. Redesigned speaker chambers result in sound that is 25 percent more powerful than the HTC One (M7). A new DSP constantly monitors the speakers to ensure the audio is never degraded by clipping or distortion.

HTC ADVANTAGE

You bought the best and HTC believes in keeping it that way. Be confident knowing your smartphone will always have the latest software updates. If your screen breaks it will be replaced for free within the first 6 months from purchase. HTC also offers free storage plus back up and restore so you’ll never lose your content.

What's in the Box

HTC One M8 smartphone, 2600 mAh battery, USB cable, wall charger, stereo headset, quick start guide

Day 3: Rick's 12 Days of Christmas - Motorola Moto X

Are you, or are you looking to buy a new phone for someone before the end of the year.

You might want to look at my favorite mobile phone of 2013 - the Motorola Moto X.

It's customizable, it's fast, it's easy to use, and it's made right here in the good old USA.

It's also at a great price from AT&T and others.

This Android phone is about $99 with that 2-year contract, but there are deals and rebates where you can get it cheaper.

I love this phone, like I said, it's fast and it just feels good in your hand. Pick you color and customize the look of your Moto X.

Link:

https://www.motorola.com/us/motomaker

or

Oscars Trivia App

Sunday night is the Oscars.

Maybe you want to brush up on your Oscars trivia before the big night.

Here's a$2.99 Android app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobiFusion.android_oscars_ads

Security Hole Found in Android Phones

A recent report says some 99.7% of Android devices in circulation are vulnerable to an attack that could compromise sensitive data transmitted over a wireless network connection. The hole reportedly stems from a flaw in Google's ClientLogin authentication protocol, which verifies communication between Android devices and applications.

To use ClientLogin, an app requests an authentication token (authToken) from the Google service by passing an account name and password over an HTTPS connection. The returned authToken can be used for any subsequent request to the service API and in addition to remaining valid for up to two weeks, it's not bound to any session or device-specific information.

Those attributes wouldn't be an issue if attackers couldn't obtain an authToken, but that isn't the case.

The article notes that many applications can send such data over an unencrypted HTTP connection, making it easy for unsavory types to obtain the authToken with software utilities such as Wireshark.

I'm sure they are working on fixing this at this moment.  Androis users, look for an update or updates soon.