Triplicate Thoughts

The Play Store is abundant with amazing apps. Image: Tested Our smartphones are only as good as the apps we have on them. Having a powerful smartphone with a buttery smooth OS is cool sure, but having the right selection of apps is what makes the entire experience worthwhile. With over one million apps in the Play Store , choosing the best ones can be a bit difficult if you are new to smartphones or Android. Especially if you have no idea what Android is capable of, because some of the best apps in the Play Store take advantage of some of Android's strengths. This list is not a list of the best apps in the Play Store, because quite frankly, different people have different preferences. But these are some of the most popular in their respective categories, and I use all of them frequently on my smartphone. You can always look for alternatives if my suggestions don't suit your style. That's why Android is cool. You always have a choice. So here are my suggestions for must...

What do you want in 2014? Image: Talk Android With the product cycles for this year's mobile devices coming to an end, many are already looking forward to 2014. We've heard rumours of a metallic Galaxy S5 , rumours of a larger iPhone , and even seen leaks of the alleged  successor to the HTC One . I've shared with you what I think we will see on spec sheets in 2014 , from an OEM perspective. But this time I'm taking a different approach, a more consumer-centric approach. Once a new device has been launched, we normally say things like "I wish they made this like this" , or "I wish they didn't include this" when reviewing devices. As consumers, we have our own preferences, hopes and dare I say, expectations with regards to the mobile devices we carry on our person at all times. This post won't focus on one particular device or brand specifically, but on the industry in general. Things that I hope I'll see more of (or in one particula...

Customisation is probably the greatest strength of Android. There are of course other reasons why Android is so great , but when it comes down to something that every Android user can easily do, without needing to do any hacking (i.e., rooting), simple customisation is what I see as Android's greatest strength. Some of the more advanced methods of customising an Android device like changing icon packs, the colour theme, grid size and transitions may require a bit of know-how with regards to custom launchers , but there are three things I believe anyone can do on their own right from the start; changing their wallpaper, ringtone, and notification tones. Don't laugh, it may seem trivial to many of us, but there are a lot of Android users who seem to not know about this simple customisation, or simply don't care. I've seen friends' phones that still use the stock wallpaper even after months of owning the phone, they use boring ringtones that come out of the box, an...

Image: zmags Things have changed over the past few years with regards to how we go about using technology in our daily lives. Before the age of smartphones, our computers and laptops were entirely separate entities from our dumbphones . What we did on our computers stayed on our computers, and what we did with our phones stayed on our phones. Of course, with the exception of certain business-minded individuals whose BlackBerrys were at the time, considered smart due to their ability to handle e-mail. Things have changed now. What we used to only be able to do on a computer can now also be done on a smartphone, and what we have on our phones can also be accessed from our computers. The barriers between desktop computers and the mobile computers we carry in our pockets have been knocked down. We now live in a multi-screen environment , and that doesn't seem like slowing down anytime soon.

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. ...

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...

When is a phone too big to be a phone? Image: CNET Over the years, w e have continually changed our definition of what an acceptable screen size is for a smartphone. The original iPhone with a 3.5" screen was the gold standard in 2007, but in 2013 a 3.5" smartphone is just pitiful (sorry iPhone 4s-and-earlier owners). 4.3" was then the accepted size, then it grew to 4.7"-4.8", and now most flagships come with 5" screens and are well accepted. Samsung pushed the boundaries with the original Note, which surprisingly was a great success. Samsung proved that there are people who enjoy using large phones.  As a result of this, many other manufacturers have joined the large smartphone market, most recently Sony.  They recently unveiled the gargantuan  6.4" Xperia Z Ultra . That's just 0.6" smaller than a 7" tablet. If Samsung blurred the lines between phone and tablet, what Sony are now doing is borderline insanity.  Has the smartphone ma...

The iPhone started the rise of modern mobile computing. Image: BuzzFeed Mobile technology has made so much progress this past decade or so. Things that we never thought would be possible to do on a mobile phone are now common features on all smartphones. Some of which we might even take for granted from time to time . Being able to do more things on our phones and tablets makes life easier. More convenient. Want to know tomorrow's weather? Check your phone. Want to know the score to last night's game? Check your phone. Need to convert ounces to grams for that recipe? Use your phone. Need to send an important letter to someone but don't have a scanner? Take a picture using your phone, make some adjustments and e-mail it from your phone. Need directions to some place? Use your phone. The possibilities are practically endless for what we can do using our mobile devices. What ever you think of, there's probably an app for that. But there have been some casualties  ...

Text input on mobile phones has come a long way. From the old T9 keypad to BlackBerry's world famous physical QWERTY keyboard to today's software QWERTY keyboards. While the technology has swiftly changed to fit with the current trend of capacitive touch screen smartphones, users have found the switch a little bumpy. Without a tangible typing experience, we practically need to be looking at our phones constantly as we type, as opposed to how it was back in the day. I could confidently type an SMS without looking at my phone thanks to a physical T9 keypad I could feel. I bet many long-time BB users could type just as easily as well. The removal of a tangible keypad has made blind typing (accurately) almost impossible. On small screens, typing can be a challenge due to closely spaced letters. Typing errors have become accepted as a normal occurrence when it comes to typing on a software keyboard. Embarrassing auto-corrected messages have spawned an entire genre of internet LOL ...

Galaxy Tab 3. All of them. One of the things Apple is frequently criticised for is a lack of options in their mobile line-up. At the other end of the spectrum however, Samsung are also being criticised; for having too many options. While I admit that choices are good, having too many can be downright confusing! Samsung have done brilliantly to lift Android up as the world's most used mobile OS. Their software customisations to Android although can be a bit heavy and overwhelming, has added great value to an otherwise "plain" operating system. Even so, the amount of devices they are producing is just mind-blowing. All the phones and tablets they put on the market is just crazy! Do you know how many Galaxy-branded phones were made in 2012? 19. Of those 19, how many do you think you can name? The Galaxy SIII. NoteII. SIII Mini. Galaxy Beam maybe? How about the Galaxy Rugby Pro? Do you remember that one? What about the other 14? Who can name them all?

The horror. Image: The Oatmeal Initially I was going to ask "Could you survive without the internet?", but then after thinking about it I realised, that question didn't make any sense. It would be similar to asking "Could you survive without oxygen?". The internet has become such an integral part of our lives, our businesses, our economy and our society that if the internet were to one day  suddenly  "disappear", I feel like the whole world would fall into anarchy. Some people like me are more dependant on the internet than others. The first thing we do in the morning is go online. The last thing we do at night before going to bed? Go online. What do we do when we're bored? Go online. Those who are less dependant could maybe survive a few days without the internet. A friend of mine recently went 5 days without internet access. It wasn't by choice, but he survived nonetheless. But could anyone survive longer? A month? A few months? A year ...

This will be the start of a new series I'm starting on my blog. As the name suggests, I'll be highlighting one of my favourite apps in each episode. I won't be covering the best apps in the market though, as I don't have experience with each and every one of them. I'll only cover what I feel are the best apps in my own collection, which I have used for quite some time. Also I won't be covering games. Games to me is a whole separate category of apps with its own sub-genres. Different gaming genres will appeal to different people, which would make writing spotlight posts about it difficult. I want to focus on services and productivity apps, which I feel will benefit a larger audience. To get the ball rolling, a category of apps which I feel every Android user should use; custom launchers. My personal favourite, Nova Launcher . 

Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins recently made a pretty bold statement, claiming  “in five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” . A very bold statement, especially considering the latest statistics . The tablet market has increased by 142.4% since last year. A total of 49.2 million tablets were shipped in the year's 1st quarter, with Android now leading the tablet market for the first time ever with 56.5% market share. It is possible that in 5 years nobody will use tablets, we could all be using Google Glass by then. But at the moment, the market share tells a different story; tablets are becoming more and more popular.