Spyke

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android

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It's LUDICROUS! It's rugged, powerful, has a HUGE battery, and best of all, it's affordable!

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@[email protected] That looks like a good "tough" budget device, but it's important to quantify costs. It was my frustration with Kyocera dropping to the LOWEST tier of performance specs, but making "tough phones".

$800 is a lot until you really put all the hardware in perspective.
Compared to the Hotwav, the Tank has more than twice as much RAM, twice the storage Android 14, 5G radios, a slightly larger screen (Hotwav doesnt list screen resolution or refresh), 30% larger battery (with faster charging) and the SOC is an order of magnitude more powerful than the Unisoc.

All of those bits, plus a projector, costs climb pretty quick. Yet the Tank is significantly less expensive than gear sold to first responders and warehouse/construction workers.

android

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Early access on the Patreon! The Xiaomi 15 is here, but the phone I have is NOT ready for a review! https://www.patreon.com/posts/xiaomi-15-not-123472388

Xiaomi 15 performance has been very poor during the embargo. OF COURSE there was an announcement-day patch, and it significantly improved real-world performance across a wide collection of apps and services. https://www.patreon.com/posts/xiaomi-15-by-we-123487332

Xiaomi made me scramble to re-do all my tests, but now you can see what the phone can REALLY do.

#tech #technology #review #android #xiaomi #xiaomi15 #smartphone #geek #gadgets

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I always wait for updates before producing a phone camera DEEP dive, and I'm glad I held off. The Vivo X200 Pro might be THE best premium phone camera of 2025.

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@[email protected] unfortunately, the only premium camera-focused phone with a headphone jack left on the market is the Sony XPERIA, and the XPERIA 1VI was kind of a downgrade from the 1V. I don't know what the 1VII will look like, but right now I'd take Vivo and Xiaomi camera phones over Sony, Apple, Google, and Samsung.

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Where are all those smartphone camera "experts" who kept telling me a shutter button on an XPERIA was a bad idea because shutter buttons shake your photos too much?

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@[email protected] It's kind of a running theme on tech YouTube these days. Tech "enthusiasts" motivated to comment on videos only appreciate the popularity of product.

If a company is less popular, it doesn't matter if they have useful or fun features, those features are never "worth it". Especially if those features aren't on a more popular phone.

So an XPERIA is often made fun of for having a headphone jack and memory card expansion, and a shutter button has to be mocked.

It's all fanbois and bias confirmation. The rational people aren't leaving comments like they used to, because why would they?

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Cloudy day and soft light, picked a dandelion on my walk. The macro sensor on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is a lot of fun.

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@[email protected] so I don't go looking for specific shots except for some of my review set ups for my camera deep dive videos.
I'm just generally looking for things I think look interesting.
I was walking with my daughter, saw this seeding dandelion, picked it so I could get a cleaner background and better light, then took the shot.
I'd say the whole set up and capture took less than a minute.

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News broke this week that YouTube has been demonetizing videos featuring the game Balatro to protect kids from "gambling". I've been thinking about it a lot this week. Is a game like this gambling?

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@[email protected]

In the video, I feel I've laid out an argument for how RNG in free games is demonstrably worse than what Balatro is doing.
We'll see if it gets any good chatter. The video is already dead on YouTube, so that was a lot of work down the drain...

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I'm not a drone guy, but an auto-tracking 8K floating camera is TOTALLY my speed! HOVERAir X1 PROMAX is GO!

I'm really proud of how this video came out. All the "talking to camera" footage was captured by the HOVERAir (with a special shout out to the Saramonic mics recording).
I dont usually do outdoor shots like this, and the drone nailed these simple "walk and talk" shots.
You'll absolutely be seeing footage from this action camera in future videos of mine.