ZTE Launches Axon M, a Foldable, Dual-Screened Smartphone (theverge.com)
ZTE's new Axon M is a full-featured smartphone with a hinge that connects two full-size displays, making the Axon M a flip phone of sorts. "Its front screen is a 5.2-inch, 1080p panel, it has last year's Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 20-megapixel camera," reports The Verge. "But flip the phone over and there's an identical 5.2-inch display on the back, making the Axon M anything but run-of-the-mill." From the report: The M's hinge allows the rear screen to flip forward and slot right next to the main display, creating an almost tablet sized canvas. You can stretch the home screen and apps across the two displays for a larger working area, or you can run two different apps at the same time, one on each screen. You can also "tent" the phone, and mirror the displays so two people can see the same content at the same time. ZTE says that it is utilizing Android's default split-screen features to enable many of the dual-screen functions, and it has made sure the "top 100" Android apps work on the phone. In the "extended" mode, which stretches a single app across both screens, the tablet version of the app is presented (provided there is one, which isn't always a guarantee with Android apps). It's even possible to stream video on both screens at the same time and switch the audio between them on the fly, which might be useful if you want to watch a sports game and YouTube at the same time, I guess.
Can it be rooted? Can the baked-in spyware be shut down?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I just want a hard keyboard!
Enough.
This phone hasn't been launched. Check the ZTE web site and you can't even buy it yet.
Not sure I'd want one, but at least they're making a decent effort to be innovative. For the last 10 years all phone companies have been doing is trying to make a "better iPhone" (as in the 2007 original).
At work, it's mainframe-dumb terminal to thick client to cloud/browser to app to mobile page, and at home it's slab to clamshell to slab to clamshell. Fuck this, I'm moving to Thunder Bay to open a meadery.
Great! More Slashvertisement!
This is the **same** ZTE that had deals with Iran and North Korea.
Chinese tech firm ZTE has agreed to pay a $1.2 billion penalty for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/0...
The article goes on and on about the two screens. Wow. And a big battery (of course). Yes!
But guess what is hidden at the end of the article?
Yep. Weight and size: 12mm thick and 230 grams. It's a total brick. So much of innovation.
5.2" means you can choose between an enormous phone and an even-enormouser one.
When will manufactuerers realise there are millions of peoplw who want a small, thick, 4" phone ?!
If it folded out to an 8" screen, that might be nice, but let's start with a plain old 4" phone - AND WE DON'T CARE HOW BLOODY THIN IT IS !
My top-loader washing machine doesn't look much different from the ones sold back in the 70s. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had all sorts of superfluous features and embellishments, from 4 decades of "innovation".
You should really get a side-loader washing machine (aka ~30 year old technology). They're way more efficient (use less water and less soap), and they're gentler on your clothes. Win-win.
I think you mean a front-loading washing machine. They do use less water and you HAVE to use a low-sudsing detergent. They are harder to maintain and a bitch to repair.
and i like it very much, depending on the price it might be my next phone. this is true innovation, if you ask me. What i also like is that the phone is not a fragile small device, because it has two screens it is a thicker.
the only downside i see right now is that the camera is hidden behind the second screen, so if you want to take a picture, you need to 'unfold' it.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
NEC Medias W N-05E Kyocera Echo
What was the point again?
That has got to be the "meh"est thing thing that has ever meh'd.
You wont get updates! They install apps by default you cant remove.
NO ROOT!
I want a second screen to be touchscreen e ink so I can see it outdoors...
I'm with GP, I love my front load. Less water, generally less noise, don't have to stop it mid-spin-cycle to redistribute the one god-damned towel or pair of jeans throwing the balance off causing it to dance around the laundry room. But the maintenance you suggest (keeping all of the water sealing parts clean) IS an inconvenience, and if ignored causes a pretty foul odor. And when the bearing goes, you're pretty much writing off the appliance and buying a new one. So definitely not without disadvantages, but overall I won't be going back to top-load.
If they manage to make this concept successful, I might be interested after a few years of advancement. As it stands, Gorilla Glass 5 does not strike me as sufficient for having two outward facing screens. The screens themselves don't look like they belong together. Both screens need to be bezelless on the connecting sides, engineered so for the purpose of making it seem at least almost seamless. A litmus test would be the ability to draw an image with a stylus across both sides, where the experience would not be jarring. Also, the battery would be okay for a single screen, but your going to have to push it up to 4,000 mA for this to be a feature that can be used frequently. Engineering a solid case would be a challenge.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
May not be the best idea, but at least it is SOMETHING outside of the box! Every smartphone since 2007, has been nothing more than a rectangular slab of metal, plastic & glass. It's a novel idea, but, being tied to at&t "only" means it WON'T be promoted by at&t, and, it will be stuck in the corner, in the shadows, of most at&t stores. Heck, walk into any at&t store and you think you had walked into an Apple/Samsung store. I remember in 2010 when I read about the Dell Streak 5 (at the time all smartphones had 3.5" screens) was announced with a "MASSIVE" FIVE INCH screen. I bought one direct from Dell, came with an at&t logo. Great phone, loved it. But, if you went into an at&t store, you never saw one, they had no idea what it was. At&t didn't promote it and Dell didn't promote it. Same will happen probably with this phone. Interesting idea, but tying it to at&t, will mean unless you know about it, no one will know about it. The "true" folding phones, I don't see coming for a few years yet.
I still have that FirefoxOS paperweight around that was deprecated by Mozilla just 2 months after i bought it. Probably not ZTEs fault, but no more ZTE and Mozilla for me.
https://xkcd.com/1372/
The best of both worlds is top loading horizontal drum, all the benefits of front loaders without having to rely on seals, having to lean down or have stuff accidentally touch the ground, plus the drum has bearings on both sides reducing the stress on them (unless they're garbage that fails after warranty ends like on whirlpools).
What , the Android and iOS keyboards aren’t hard enough?
It's not that they're hard as much as that they're flat.
"Touch typing", or typing while focusing on the document instead of the input device, requires feeling the edges of the keys in order to line up the fingers over each desired key, as opposed to adjacent keys or adjacent space without keys (a "whiff"). The flat sheet of glass in front of an on-screen keyboard fails to give this sort of tactile positioning feedback.
Why would a front loaded machine use less water? ... ... hence rests of soap are in the cloth.
And water usage hardly is an issue in the civilized world, as it costs next to nothing. Oh, I forgot about California
Plenty if my friends are complaining that the washing stepp where only clear water is used to remove the soap uses not enough water
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yeah, I've heard of those/saw them online, but I don't recall seeing them as an option in the states.