The smartphone industry is absolutely packed full of competitors. It’s got to the point where every competing manufacturer is trying incredibly hard to offer up everything they’ve possibly got. Sometimes, the OEMs with the biggest brand name or marketing budget push out the smartphone manufacturers you might not be aware of. In this article, I’d like to share five of my favorite manufacturers that I believe don’t get enough attention.
Marshall
Marshall? What? Yes, that’s right. Marshall, the same company responsible for the popular music amp lineup has now entered the smartphone space. I’m not really sure what gave them the guts to brave the smartphone industry, but as you could imagine it was based somewhat upon music.
Whilst it’s internal hardware isn’t superb, what makes the London special is its audio setup, both software and hardware wise. Firstly, the smartphone has a dual front-facing speaker, similarly to the HTC One M9. On top of that, the Marshall London has two audio outputs so that you can share your music with a friend. Finally, you’ll find a range of audio software features including equalizers, volume controls and gain control. Basically, if you’re a music head, the Marshall London might just be of interest to you.
Oppo
Oppo is perhaps more known in the smartphone world than Marshall is, but with that being said, this smartphone brand still doesn’t have a great grasp of the smartphone market. The Oppo has a lineup of different devices that’s a bit confusing to outsiders, but their latest device is the Oppo R7 Plus – a huge beast of a smartphone.
Firstly, Oppo’s smartphones have always been incredibly thin, so if that’s your thing, you’ll be excited to hear that the Oppo R7 is one of the thinnest phablets around right now. Despite the moniker, the R7 actually only has a 6-inch display, which admittedly is still rather large. Amazingly the Oppo R7 also comes with a 4,100mAh battery, as well as 3GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 615 which features an octa-core processor.
Yota
You may have heard about Yota before. It’s because they’ve managed to build the best smartphone to rival the likes of Samsung, LG, Sony and Apple, but instead because what they’ve done is quite unique. Yota’s last smartphone was the Yotaphone 2, but soon a Yotaphone 3 and Yotaphone2c will be launched into the market.
Yota’s speciality is creating dual-display smartphones. The Yota range has always had one thing in common – on the front, users will find a standard smartphone display, whilst the back there sits a less power-hungry e-ink display, like those found on a traditional Kindle.
The idea is that the e-ink display can be used for basic tasks in everyday life, which will help lengthen out the battery life. When you’re ready to view some real content, the main display can be used.
It’s a neat idea, but it never really caught on, mostly due to the lack of decent internal hardware and Yota’s struggle with appealing to the global market.
Fairphone
What is a Fairphone? Apparently it’s a smartphone that has been constructed fairly. It’s not so much about the smartphone, but the message behind it. Here’s a little excerpt from the Fairphone website.
By making a phone, we’re opening up the supply chain and creating new relationships between people and their products. We’re making a positive impact across the value chain in mining, design, manufacturing and life cycle while expanding the market for products that put ethical values first. Together with our community, we’re changing the way products are made.
If you’re concerned about the way smartphones in today’s industry are manufactured, then Fairphone is a company you may want to get behind and support.
On top of being fair to all involved in the creation process, the Fairphone will feature a modular design, making self-repairs not only possible but viable for most consumers. The device will also come with some decent internal specifications (Snapdragon 801, 2GB RAM) and a reasonable 525 Euro price tag.
Pantech
Pantech is one of the Korean manufacturers that has been around for a long, long time. Unfortunately, Pantech hasn’t done quite as well in the mobile industry as either Samsung or LG have, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make good devices.
Yes, that’s right, they do actually make smartphones and they’re actually pretty decent. Earlier in the year, one of Pantech’s most popular smartphones was the Vega Iron 2 – this device had some flagship-worthy specs and a decent build quality.
A Snapdragon 801 can be found inside, which includes 3GB of RAM, an Adreno 330 GPU, a 5.3 inch 1920 x 1080 AMOLED display, a 3,220 mAh battery and 32GB of storage among other features.
These specs are a little outdated, but this device was competing with 2014 devices such as the Galaxy S5. There’s no reason not to dismiss Pantech as a smartphone brand because they’re actually doing a pretty good job at making decent devices.
So there we have it, they’re five great smartphone manufacturers you might not have been aware of. What lesser known manufacturers are you a fan of? Let us know in comments.
Today’s Google Doodle came as a surprise, bringing a new vibrant, playful and bold logo to represent the Search Giant. The company decided to adopt a new logo for Google, which will be eventually rolled out to other products that operate under the new Parent company ‘Alphabet,’ unveiled last month. It might won’t affect any current services that you’re using, but it changes the very fabric of this company. It is one of the most dramatic and noticeable change ever since the company decided to ditch ‘backrub’. Here are the 5 facts about Google logo history, you should know about.
Creepy BackRub Logo
Google wasn’t launched with a perfect name back in 1996. The company was formerly known as ‘BackRub’ – the web crawler. It even flaunted a creepy logo, featuring a bare back of a hand with less cartoony, simple text written over it. It was rebranded as ‘Google’ a year later.
Original logo designer wanted it to be “Non-Designed”
Once the company was rebranded as ‘Google’ in 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided their pre-launch logo wasn’t enough to represent the search engine, which was hard to read as well. The Original logo was designed by Ruth Kedar a year later in 1998.
Google started using Doodle
It was August 30, 1998 when Google team decided to use their homepage to support local events or celebrate special occasions. Burning Man Symbol was the first Google doodle in 1998, this doodle was added to inform the visitors that the founders of Google are on a visit to the Burning Man Festival. The ritual has been carried on ever since.
Google dropped Exclamation point
If you were born in 1990’s, chances are very little that you’re not aware of the original logo of Google with an exclamation mark at the end. It was formally meant to be more exciting and fun. ‘Google!’ did sound like it. The exclamation point stayed with the official logo until the company decided to drop it in September 2013.
The new Logo adopts design from Alphabet
Google’s new logo has a tweaked version of Sans-Serif typeface, which is very similar to its parent company Alphabet. Larry Page, the company’s CEO, wrote in a blog post on August 10 that “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” So the new fun logo seems to demonstrate that.
The recent smartwatch trend has followed dozens of manufacturers as they have tried to release wearable devices worth a consumer’s time. Honestly, smart watches aren’t getting any smarter at this point, but I thought I’d look at the difference between 2014 and this year to see exactly what’s the difference with smart watches in 2015.
I’ll be focusing on two main smart watches and their successors in this article; the Gear S, the S2, the Moto 360 and the Moto 360 2. Because some details about the successors are currently unavailable, this article is somewhat based on rumors so take everything with a grain of salt.
Internal Hardware Improvements
Smartphone internal hardware improves at an incredibly fast pace. We’re used to seeing improvements on a yearly basis and these changes are often quite drastic. Can the same be said for smart watches? Let’s hope it’s the case because the first round of smartwatch releases were a little lacking in the hardware department.
Moto 360 vs Moto 360 2
The original Moto 360 was powered by a TI OMAP 3 processor, which admittedly caused lag and stutters when operating in some instances. This was no surprise considering the OMAP 3 is a 4-year-old processing unit at this point.
The 320 mAh battery in the Moto 360 was … decent, but the processor drained out its life quicker than a mobile processor should. With 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage, you’re also getting an on-par 2014 experience in the memory department.
The Moto 360 2 will, fortunately, take a jump towards better hardware components. We don’t know the hardware specifications for sure at this point, but we are expecting a better resolution display, a new processor and other improvements. Strangely, the Moto 360 2 may come in two variants – a premium version and a sports version, the latter having just 275mAh battery whilst the former will have a 375mAh battery. It’ll be interesting to see battery tests for both.
Galaxy Gear S2 vs S
The S2 has very similar specs to the original S – the same 512MB RAM, the same 4GB internal storage and the same or similar 1GHz processor depending on what S2 model is picked. The display will actually have a worse resolution, but it will finally be circular. The battery life will also be reduced to 250mAh in some models and will have the same 300mAh in the most expensive model.
Software and Apps
Smart watches are slowly getting more dedicated apps – as more manufacturers are pushing for smart watch development, more app developers are becoming curious about the platform. I think that over time more apps will be seen as useful utilities on smartwatches instead of additional gimmicks that can already be accessed from a smartphone just as conveniently.
More support for smart watches is coming. In fact, Google recently made the bold move to make Android Wear smart watches compatible with iPhones.
Build Quality and Design
I was actually really excited about the designs and build quality found within smart watches of 2014. The LG G Watch R and the Moto 360 both have some really dynamic designs that much better suit the whole watch theme.
This year we’re looking to see slight improvements to the designs where necessary, but what worked last year is coming back in 2015 and I’m glad for that.
Actual Utility
So are smart watches in 2015 actually filled with a utility? Can a smart watch become a useful device in my day to day life? Well, it’s hard to say for sure. Yes, there are more available features for smart watches in 2015, but it still mostly comes down to preference.
If you are the kind of person that relies on a watch or uses a watch already, I could see a smart watch being a useful addition to you. Checking the time on your wrist will already feel natural and using various apps will be easy enough to pick up.
For those who don’t already use a watch, switching to using your smart watch or checking it over a smartphone will take some getting used to, and this stage may negate any real feelings of convenience that the device is supposed to offer.
Adonit has designed a wide range of stylus Pens for Android and iOS smartphones, extending their vision to promote one stylus pen for all your devices. Their existing product Jot Touch, and Jot Script is wildly famous among the professional users and artists. If you were missing out more traditional ball-pen experience, Adonit has announced a new stylus – Jot Dash.
The Jot Dash is a thin-tipped active stylus that has a plastic 1.9mm tip that offers more precision than a standard rubber-tipped stylus. Adonit, known for manufacturing a pressure sensitive stylus, has introduced a new feature that will allow you to initiate your scribbling with the click of a button.
The company also made some essential tweaks and design upgrade from its predecessors. The Jot Dash has a traditional carrying clip, and On/Off button, which works more like a Roller Ball pens.
Like any active tip stylus, the Jot Dash works with all capacitive touch screen devices, including all of Apple’s iPhones and iPads. Notably, it works with the iPad Air 2, which includes a different screen technology than other older iPads.
Adonit’s goal with the Jot Dash was to imitate a standard ink pen, so the Dash is just 8.5mm in diameter (about the thickness of a BIC pen) with a lightweight, rechargeable battery and a clip. According to Adonit, the Jot Dash is its most intuitive stylus to date, because it “looks like a pen, feels like a pen, and acts like a pen.”
It’s priced about the same as similar styluses, $50, and is available now from Adonit’s website, which ships internationally. There’s no word on UK or Australian launches, but that price converts to about £35 or AU$70.
Everything you do over the internet is being monitored, believe it or not, your VPN provider can only do so much to keep your identity private. Many of us think that using a VPN will make you an anonymous ghost on the internet, and untraceable with the click of a button — you’ll be surprised by the fact that everything you’re being told by popular VPN companies is a lie. Yes, it is true that VPNs can hide you from direct tracking/tracing by analytic codes on websites, and it hardens the network security, but it has its limitation. When a VPN company claims that they can give a degree of anonymity and privacy that any VPN service is virtually incapable of, you’re better off without it.
I was able to trace one such example few days ago, where I warned my VPN readers to immediately disable WebRTC on the web browser they’re using on the computer. Google Chrome is your privacy nightmare, because it doesn’t officially allow you to disable WebRTC feature on the browser, and third-party extensions/scripts are not trustworthy. If you are a privacy freak and a guy with ‘tin foil,’ I would immediately suggest you to start using Firefox and remove anything that says “Google” on your computer. Their products and user privacy are shady, and they became data hungry lately – so much for “Don’t be evil.” While there are no evidence or data to back up my opinions, but if you’re privacy freak, I would recommend to stay clear of Google.
Let’s not make this article all about why you shouldn’t rely on VPN, rather we should focus on why we chose VyprVPN and recommending it to our readers. One of the most obvious reason would be the transparency in their terms of service, and trust me there are very few of them who do provide what’s been advertised. Almost all VPN providers would claim at some point that they are capable of providing 100% anonymous internet presence while keeping 0% user data on their server. When they have no control how a simple browser exploit can reveal original IP address, how come they claim to make anyone using their service 100% anonymous? – VyprVPN makes no such claim.
While VPN service providers are competing each others with massive outreach with “anonymous service” they can provide, but the fine print in their privacy policy suggests they log a significant amount of customer data. VyprVPN stands out as a purple cow by informing users what actually a VPN service can truly do for you.
We tested several other VPNs before, and none of them actually proved to be as robust, reliable and transparent as VyprVPN. During 1 months extensive test, we found some uniquely engineered features one can rely on.
The features and state of reliability offered by VyprVPN might change over a period of time, and we can only vouch for the service offered during DigitFreak’s testing phase*. VyprVPN and its parent company GoldenFrog is not associated with DigitFreak and its services. This review is independent, and DigitFreak cannot be held responsible for any personal loss or influence of user decision to purchase their service.
Registration & Price
VyprVPN has incorporated an interesting business model, which allows you to start a free trial of any existing plans they offer. You’ll not find “buy now” button anywhere on their pricing model, rather there is a “Start Free Trial” option that allows you to test the service before making the purchase. However, due to spams and invalid attempts to use their service for free, they need you to attach a payment information during the signup, which includes credit card or Paypal account. It is little limited to the payment options, as you cannot pay by bitcoin, Alipay or any other third party payment gateway, which is little weird considering they have been targeting Chinese market with their proprietary Chameleon encryption technology.
The company is offering a wide range of plans to choose, which includes – VyprVPN Free($0), Basic($6.67 to $9.99), Pro ($8.33 to $14.99) and Premier ($10 to $19.99) — which bends slightly toward the heavy budget for the premium service. We were surprised to see that Free plan is way better than their ‘VyprVPN Basic’ Plan, which only has an advantage of the unlimited bandwidth. If you don’t need high bandwidth, Free option is something that can help you stay anonymous, but again there are plenty of other Free VPNs available for casual users with minimum restrictions, and unlimited bandwidth. One reason you’d probably want to use “VyprVPN Free” plan is to test their service without revealing your credit card information.
We wanted to test their service with full capability, hence, we registered a “VyprVPN Premier” test account. The only difference with their pro and premier plans is the number of concurrent devices you can simultaneously use on a single account. We filled the registration form with required information and credit card details, and before hitting the “start Free Trial” button we were informed that we’ll be charged US$119.99 if we fail to cancel our subscription within the trial period of 3 days. That’s fair, and it is a good thing that they are making it clear that we might get charged automatically if we don’t cancel the subscription.
Dashboard
Once we received the login information and account details, we jumped directly into the ‘Control Panel’ or, the Dashboard. The moment you log into the ‘Client Area,’ you’d know they’re very serious about positive customer experience, everything is so neat and well oriented that it feels like you’re special to them. While most of the VPN providers use similar backend design,
Infrastructure
Golden Frog’s founders are Internet veterans who have owned and operated Internet businesses since the dawn of the public Internet in 1994. Although incorporated in Switzerland, Golden Frog, GmbH, is a global service provider committed to preserving an open and secure Internet experience while respecting user privacy throughout the world.
VyprVPN is one of the few options available right now which has total control over their network; you can literally count the number of services that owns their own tier-1 network — Only other service that I personally know would be IPVanish. This means that no part of the service is outsourced to 3rd parties. Other VPN providers use 3rd parties to host their servers. Golden Frog even owns and operate their own DNS service, VyprDNS, to add further privacy and security for their users. Golden Frog offers a 100% private, no-logging DNS service to complement VyprVPN. VyprDNS is Golden Frog’s 100% owned and operated DNS service available exclusively for VyprVPN users.
server locations and IP acquisition
VyprVPN doesn’t only boast their Tier-1 network and fully private DNS service, but they also excel in server location availability and IP acquisition. This is something you won’t find by services provided by some of the best VPN service providers.
Some VPN services limit user bandwidth, speed, and server switching. VyprVPN does not. Switching between server clusters is easy and effective with over 200,000 IP addresses for its users. It even has a Fastest Server setting so you can automatically be connected to the fastest server available for your location. At the time of Writing this review, VyprVPN offers servers in North America, Europe, Oceania, Central America, South America, Asia and Middle East.
Logging and user data retention can be an issue for those who are involved in illegal activities, and VyprVPN does strictly follow DMCA notices. They claim not to disclose user information to the third party requests, how they do take actions to mitigate the crimes on their network by suspending or terminating the user account under the 3 strike rule.
Software
The software client of VyprVPN is easy to use, and mostly flawless on all platforms. We used it on 2 smartphones and a computer, running Android and Windows 10 respectively. We had few hiccups on Windows 10 powered device, which was quickly mitigated by the support team, more on in later.
The software and mobile apps are streamlined, and you’d find similar options and UI experience on any platform you use it on. It is nice to see that they worked with the developer closely to make sure we get the same features and UI design on all platforms, which makes you feel at home anywhere you go.
We had a little hiccup on both mobile and desktop software, as the connection was automatically dropped without any interference, but it was occasional and didn’t bother us much. Everything else worked as it should, and we couldn’t stress much to point out how much we loved their consistent cross-platform software and apps.
Feature Highlights:
Autologin/Autoconnect
Choose Autoconnect server
Sort servers by ping time, city or country
Choose server from map view
Check IP address to verify the VPN connection
Visual system tray indicator (Blue when disconnected/Red when connected)
Smart Server Selection by desired use: (Speed, Video Streaming, Gaming, etc)
DNS Leak Protection
VPN Kill Switch/ Auto-disconnect on dropped VPN connection
While all of these features are amazing and really effective to ensure a good user experience, I would like to discuss some of them.
Kill Switch
Usually, our internet connection works pretty solid and stable. However, you cannot deny the times when you loose the internet connection simply because your router would restart automatically, or someone turns it off unknowingly. It happens to best connections. Sometimes, we forget to turn on the VPN before surfing the internet and regret doing so when we finally realise that we have been sharing sensitive data without the protection.
The ‘Kill Switch’ is a switch that automatically kills or blocks your internet connection whenever VyprVPN is disconnected. Except for network communications related to running VyprVPN services, Kill Switch will block all other Internet and network communications. The kill switch can be enabled in VyprVPN for Windows and Mac.
Encryption Protocol
VyprVPN offers multiple encryption protocols so one can choose their preferred level of encryption. Each of them varies according to their strength of security and interference with original internet speed. It includes OpenVPN, L2TP, PPTP and Chameleon (proprietary technology).
VyprDNS
Golden Frog doesn’t only boast their Tier-1 Network, but they also offer a private secure DNS server to protect from any DNS leaks and third party reliability. When you’re trusting them for your online security, then it only makes sense that you’d want a single company to handle all your traffic. If you don’t know what is DNS, simply head over to this wiki. In short, DNS (Domain Name System) is a service that translates hostnames (such as http://digitfreak.com) into computer-readable IP address (178.220.123.121), so your computer can communicate with the desired host. It is actually very effective since it protects you from DNS leak over the network. We had a positive test result, which showed VyprVPN is pretty solid service.
VyprDNS is Golden Frog’s 100% owned and operated DNS service available exclusively for VyprVPN users. They developed a zero-knowledge VyprDNS service to increase user privacy and defeat censorship across the world. VyprDNS is built into VyprVPN and when you connect, you will automatically use VyprDNS. Please note, VyprDNS cannot be used separately from VyprVPN.
Speed
GoldenFrog (The company that owns VyprVPN) maintains all their own server infrastructure and utilizes high-speed server clusters. The benefit of all this? Faster speeds and fewer dropped connections.
Vypr is one of the fastest VPN’s we’ve tested. In fact, nearly all the servers we tested maxed out our ISP connection or revoked the throttles put by our ISP. It’s no wonder that VyprVPN made our list of the fastest VPN providers. If you have a faster internet connection than we do, you will actually experience faster speeds than our test shows.
However, When connected to our local nearest server (India), we experience greater latency or ping time that we did with the USA or other server locations we tested, which is little weird as servers in India should’ve had better latency. Other than that, we could easily stream youtube videos and unblock geo-blocked websites without any hiccups.
Without VPN
USA server
UK Server
We were surprised too. UK server test returned false speed test result, reporting higher download speed that our ISP’s restriction. We did experience faster connections while connected to UK & Australia location.
and it was same when connected to Perth, Australia
India Server
Support & Customer Care
usually, we don’t actually contact the support team, unless there are some serious issues that we couldn’t fix on our own. All our systems at the office and my personal computer have been upgraded to Windows 10, that leaves us with some software refusing to cope with the new environment — VyprVPN is no exception. We didn’t face the specific issue right away, but it was only triggered when we used “Connect on Start” features — “Connect VyprVPN when Windows starts up” and “Connect VyprVPN on application launch.”
When these options were turned on, it would throw the error which reads “The VyprVPN Service could not be contacted. Would you like to attempt to start the service?” Even when we choose “Yes,” it didn’t work for several attempts before it would trigger the VyprVPN client. It interfered with our computer default functions, and it wouldn’t let our computer to shutdown.
However, we were able to solve this issue by starting the VyprVpn service manually from “service manager,” but it wasn’t a proper solution. So we pinged the support team without letting them know that it can be easily fixed manually. It could be a great help for them as it would minimize the time required to pinpoint the cause of this error.
We were expecting the delay in response, so the review team shifted the focus on different tasks. When we checked back after few hours, we were surprised to see a response from their side within 3 minutes of our query submission.
They finally pinpoint the error, ensured us that they informed the developers and told us that we should expect the update within few days. We received the update after 2 days, and it solved the issue. 10/10 for support.
What do we think?
VyprVPN is pretty reliable and professional service that will provide top-notch online security and premium quality if you can afford its above-average prices. Their Teir-1 network acquisition and a large number of shared IP address pool are going to capture a huge percentage of the VPN market because it ensures better internet speed than most of the competitor providers. We heard poor reviews about their support team, but we were satisfied with their pleasant customer support. Their limited payment method, keeping logs for a questionable period of time (30 days), DMCA compliance and geo-IP workaround keeps us from recommending it to everyone. However, they do certain things the way that no other competitor really does. The fact that VYPRVPN was recently elected the best VPN for France by VPNmag, just makes it superior to most of its competitors.
The secure protocols, encryption levels, and additional service will keep your data safe and with a widespread server location, your identity will remain secure and private. If you need a VPN service provider that can keep you safe and secure while still delivering the actual Internet speed, you should definitely go for this service.
Android emulators have been around for a while now and BlueStacks has always led the pack with its easy installation process, simple and intuitive interface and high performance. For those who are not aware what an Android emulator is; it is a simple application that can be easily downloaded and installed on your computer. Android emulators are available for Windows and Mac operating systems.
Once installed, an Android emulator functions as a platform allowing searching, downloading, installation and operating Android apps on your Windows or Mac personal computer. The interface of an Android emulator is similar to an Android device thereby enabling you to convert your PC into a fully functional Android device.
Android emulators have several practical applications. They allow you to operate an Android app on the bigger screen of your PC as compared to your Android mobile phone or tablet. You also do not have to invest in an Android phone simply because you want to play a game or use an application. Therefore, cost efficiency is another important benefit of using an Android emulator. If you have a Windows PC, you can simply install an Android emulator and further install the Android apps or games you want instead of buying an Android phone.
You can also enjoy your favourite Android games on a much larger screen and use the keyboard and mouse of your computer as gaming controllers. Android emulators have several benefits as they allow easy cross platform access to Android apps.
There have been several Android emulators that have been released over the years and quite a few of them are pretty efficient. BlueStacks however still rules over the rest and it continues to hold its position as the best Android emulator around even for Windows 10 platform.
BlueStacks is the most popular emulator and app player due to the convenience of use and several unique features. The BlueStacks application has a very simple and easy installation process. It has an offline installer as well as a split online installer. Once the installation process is complete, users can easily download Android APK files of their favourite apps and games from sources such as Google Play Store and install them on their computer. It is a simple double click installation process. The installed apps and games can be accessed through the BlueStacks menu that has an architecture similar to an Android operating system.
However, BlueStacks is a power guzzling application and requires significant RAM and processing power. You need to ensure that you have sufficient system resources to install and run BlueStacks. Even with sufficient RAM and processing power, running BlueStacks on your computer slows it down and you may find it difficult to concurrently use other software.
Despite this, BlueStacks gives a simple and easy access to Android apps on your Windows PC. If you have recently upgraded to Windows 10 and want to access Android apps on it, you can download the executable file of BlueStacks from its website for free and start using it right away.
It was August 30, 1998 when Google team decided to use their homepage to support local events or celebrate special occasions. Burning Man Symbol was the first Google doodle in 1998, this doodle was added to inform the visitors that the founders of Google are on a visit to the Burning Man Festival. The ritual has been carried on ever since.
If you were born in 1990’s, chances are very little that you’re not aware of the original logo of Google with an exclamation mark at the end. It was formally meant to be more exciting and fun. ‘Google!’ did sound like it. The exclamation point stayed with the official logo until the company decided to drop it in September 2013.
We wanted to test their service with full capability, hence, we registered a “VyprVPN Premier” test account. The only difference with their pro and premier plans is the number of concurrent devices you can simultaneously use on a single account. We filled the registration form with required information and credit card details, and before hitting the “start Free Trial” button we were informed that we’ll be charged US$119.99 if we fail to cancel our subscription within the trial period of 3 days. That’s fair, and it is a good thing that they are making it clear that we might get charged automatically if we don’t cancel the subscription.
VyprVPN is pretty reliable and professional service that will provide top-notch online security and premium quality if you can afford its above-average prices. Their Teir-1 network acquisition and a large number of shared IP address pool are going to capture a huge percentage of the VPN market because it ensures better internet speed than most of the competitor providers. We heard poor reviews about their support team, but we were satisfied with their pleasant customer support. Their limited payment method, keeping logs for a questionable period of time (30 days), DMCA compliance and geo-IP workaround keeps us from recommending it to everyone. However, they do certain things the way that no other competitor really does. The fact that VYPRVPN was recently elected the best VPN for France by 
