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Showing posts from July, 2013

App Spotlight, Episode 4 - Pocket

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Many of us nowadays get information from the world wide web. Be it educational information, entertainment gossip, political scandals, sports news, editorials or opinion articles, or even some new recipes we want to try, the internet is probably the most informative and knowledge-laden place in the world. But with so much information at our disposal, we often times find ourselves unable to consume all this information at any particular time. We may browse our favourite news aggregator or RSS feeds for interesting stories across various fields, but we may not have time to read all of them at that time. We could be preparing to go to work or school. We might only have a few minutes in the train. Or even while stuck in a jam. We could of course try to remember those articles we want to read and find them again later when we have some time to spare, but how reliable can our memory actually be in these situations? Thankfully for us, Pocket is an app that does all the remembering for us.

Smartphone and tablet pet peeves

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Are you a douchebag when it comes to your smartphone? Image: APC Smartphones and tablets have become common sights in society today. What started out as a premium market thanks to Apple's expensive iPhones and iPads, has now become a market that is much more accessible to the average Joe thanks to more affordable alternatives from the many Android partners. Unfortunately, as more and more people are using mobile devices, I find myself getting more and more irritated with certain habits. I'm sure everyone gets annoyed with people using their phones in the cinema, talking loudly in public or forgetting to put their phone on silent in a quiet environment, but those are not the habits I'm talking about. Those are cellphone habits. The pet peeves I'm talking about are specific to modern smartphones and tablets, post-2007 since the original iPhone was released.  So I got this idea to write a post about smartphone and tablet habits that are particularly annoying to me. At

A beginner's guide to smartphones

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This is not how you use a smartphone. Image: Business Insider Yesterday, Google released the new Nexus 7 along with Android 4.3, among other things. But apart from announcing new products, Google also shared some interesting statistics. Among them, the Play Store has now surpassed the 1 million app mark, and has seen 50 billion downloads . Another interesting fact is that in the past year, the number of online videos that have been viewed on a smartphone or tablet have increased by 2.7x . Taken together, these stats suggest that we truly are in a mobile computing era. No longer are we bound to our desktops and laptops. More and more people are buying smartphones, and tablet sales have steadily increased as well. PC sales have dwindled since 2012 , and that truly signifies the transition to mobile computing. But between smartphones and tablets, transitioning from an old dumbphone to a smartphone can be a bit more challenging than using a tablet for the first time. Even though mode

Top 5: Why I love Android

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Image: Alex Shaikh I have now officially been part of the Android community for one year! It's my Android-versary !! In this one year I have learned A LOT about mobile technology. Not just about Android in general, but more specifically about the hardware that goes into our mobile devices and about all the community development that makes Android such a great mobile platform to use. I don't know why, but my interest in mobile technology started when I started using Android. During the three years I spent using iOS, I wasn't as interested in the industry as I am now. Sure I knew about Android and its OEM partners, but I never visited sites like  +PhoneDog  or  +Pocketnow , which I regularly visit nowadays. I didn't know and was never interested in what processor was in my iPhone, I didn't know what resolution it had (only that it had a Retina display), I didn't know how much RAM it had. I basically knew nothing about mobile technology other than what I was

Xperia Z vs One vs S4 - Mid-year Android flagship guide

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Arguably the three best Androids currently in the market. Image: Techradar It's the middle of the year and anyone looking for an Android smartphone has quite a few great options to choose from. HTC, Samsung and Sony - three of the major Android manufacturers - have already released their respective flagships for the year, and choosing between them can be a bit of a challenge for someone just looking to get their first smartphone, or someone who is looking to upgrade to a flagship from a mid-range or entry-level smartphone. I wrote a post last month with some tips to help potential buyers choose a smartphone which would best suit them based on their needs and preferences. This time I will try to provide a bit more, based on specific flagships for those who are still undecided. This won't be a review, as I don't own and don't have any experience with any of the devices. This will act more as a buyer's guide based on reviews I have read and hands-on videos I hav