Triplicate Thoughts

Upgrade time!! The Nexus 5 is coming. Soon. Like real soon. We may not know much about KitKat yet, but everything about the Nexus 5 as a phone is pretty much confirmed, including dimensions, design and internal components (specs). Leaks have been plentiful, and I'm willing to bet that most of them were pretty accurate, which is why I'm confident enough to write this post. As everything about the new Nexus is already out there, I've been comparing it to my current phone, the HTC One X. As I've said in the past, I want the Nexus 5 and will get it when it becomes available to me in my country. So how does it stack up to my current daily driver? Well it's better, that's to be expected. There are several things about the upgrade that I am particularly looking forward to, which is what I want to share with you today.

Image: Social Media Examiner Social media is huge. There's no way to deny that. The turn of the 21st century will probably go down in history as the time when social media began taking over the world. Now, social networking as a concept is nothing new. Back in the day there were many social networks pre-Facebook. I'm sure many of you reading this remember Myspace and Friendster. At the time, those networks were huge in their own way. But the growth of social media today, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+, is unlike anything ever seen before. Hundreds of millions of people use these social networks monthly, and the amount of traffic these sites get is just astounding. So what's the deal? Why is social media suddenly so huge today? Well it's probably a combination of a few key factors, which I plan to discuss in this post.

Galaxy S5? Image: Pentagon Post The smartphone industry is probably the most rapidly advancing industry in the world of technology. I mean look back at the phones from just two years ago. The standard Android smartphone back then probably had a WVGA (800x480) display, a dual-core processor and a 5MP camera. Flagships nowadays have FHD (1920x1080) displays, quad-core processors and 13MP (even 20MP and 41MP) cameras. The technology in smartphones is evolving at such a rapid pace, that phones generally look outdated on the spec sheet after just one year, or even worse, a few months. Earlier in the year, almost everyone on Google+ would recommend getting the HTC One, Xperia Z or the Galaxy S4. But now? People normally recommend getting the LG G2, Xperia Z1 or the Note 3. Like, phones from just 6 months ago are no longer worth getting. But that's a rant for another day. As we approach the end of the year, with the Nexus 5 (that's what I'm calling it until it's official...

Image: Morton's Weblog HTC has had some pretty historic moments. It had many firsts in the industry like the first Android device , the first Nexus device , and the first 1080p device from a major Android partner (second to the Find 5 by Oppo). Even my first Android is a HTC device, the HTC One X. Whenever I see people talking about their favourite smartphones of all time, HTC devices are usually mentioned. When it comes to phones with great build quality, again you will find that HTC phones are mentioned quite often, most recently thanks to the HTC One. With so many great moments in the industry and one of the best phones of 2013 , why then is HTC in such deep financial trouble ? Some people are even saying that HTC could possibly end up like Nokia , BlackBerry and Motorola , i.e., be acquired by a larger corporation, like Lenovo . Where did HTC go wrong? How did a company that was once the king of Android get dethroned so brutally? I have a few thoughts, which I think most...

Image: Maypalo As Android users, we absolutely love poking fun at Apple. After the unveiling of the iPhone 5s and 5c, the Android community I'm a member of on Google+ was full of images and posts making fun of Apple. We were making fun of how the 5c looks like a children's toy, how iOS 7 looks like Android, and how the 64-bit A7 chip was nothing more than a gimmick to show how "advanced" the 5s is. All joking aside though, I honestly do think that Apple's best days are behind it. The iPhone 5s and the final version of iOS 7 have been out for about 2 weeks now, and reports of problems with both the hardware and the software are becoming more and more frequent. This is not something that we normally associate with Apple. The iPhone and iOS are supposed to "just work". There shouldn't be a laundry list of bugs, inconsistencies and hardware problems just days after the launch. The fact that Apple are already working on iOS 7.0.3 , the third patch...

Image: Android Authority We have gotten to a point where to many people, Samsung is synonymous with Android. Samsung are so dominant in the Android realm, that many people probably associate Android with Samsung more than they associate it with Google, who actually own Android. A report from earlier in the year listed Samsung as having 42% market share among all Android smartphone shipments. What about everyone else? Well, they all have single-digit market share. So if any of the other OEMs were to suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth, Android's market share wouldn't be significantly affected. That's how dominant Samsung is. Personally, I don't really like Samsung devices, but it's obvious that many people do. Why is that? What is it about Samsung's devices that people like so much? The hardware? TouchWiz? The choices? Is it really a preference? Or are Samsung devices the only ones people see in the market? If you spend any amount of time follow...