Personalizing your mobile device to your liking is still one popular idea, and a lot of people spend quite a good amount of time setting their phones up with the right wallpapers, themes, graphics and audio effects. Of course, as the smartphones have evolved, so have the customization means, but that still doesn’t mean that the old things have lost their touch. I remember back in the day of Nokia devices when monochord ringtones were the rage, and being able to compose your own ringtone was the height of customization that you could’ve gotten on your phone (along side the funky carrier logo on the monochrome screen of the Nokia 3310).
JoinedNovember 9, 2012
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When working with computers, if there’s one thing that’s inevitable, that’s the need to reinstall the operating system at some point. Perhaps it was some software installation that went wrong, or maybe the registry entries getting corrupted, but ultimately, you’re bound to come across a time when you will just want to start fresh and get your computer back to the state it was in at the time you bought it first. With Windows, this has been especially true through the OS’s life cycle, starting with Windows 3.x and all the way up to Windows 8. It’s undeniable that with Windows 7 and now Windows 8, the issue has become less prominent, thanks to the OS development, but still, the time does come, and you have to be ready for it.
For Linux-based operating systems, especially Android, bootloaders are more like a double-edged sword. On one hand, you’d want an unlocked one, because that will enable opening up your device to all sorts of modifications, including gaining root/super user access, but at the same time, an unlocked bootloader also means a potentially vulnerable smartphone or tablet that’s open to malicious attacks. With the amount of new apps that the Play Store gets on a daily basis, it’s also hard to figure out whether an app is truly what it claims to be, or some developer with the intent of stealing your personal information that’s unleashed a Trojan horse in the guise of an otherwise-innocent-looking application. Thus, the risk of remaining exposed stays lingering above you.
Before Apple introduced the world to the iPad as a mainstream, usable-for-everyone gadget, no one really believed that tablet computers would every become a mass usage item for a majority of technophiles the world over. Slate-based PCs existed long before that, but neither they were as powerful in their specifications, nor did they have an ecosystem as strong as iOS to back them up with a plethora or apps. Then, they were really overpriced, too, making it harder for average Joe to consider buying one.
My primary camera for day-to-day photos remains my smartphone, for various self-explanatory reasons. It’s portable, has a high-quality lens with reasonable detail and post processing, comes with significant storage space, can shoot high-definition videos, is easy to carry around, and stays with me no matter where I go, allowing me to capture moments wherever and whenever I want. The truth is, smartphones, especially the high-end ones, have revolutionized how we look at amateur digital photography. While nothing beats a true DSLR camera, or even a normal dedicated point-and-shoot one, smartphone cameras have upped the game a few notches recently, and if you consider Nokia’s PureView 808 to be any indicator of what’s to come, with its 41MP sensor and outstanding photo quality, things definitely seem to be headed in the right direction.
The success of a smartphone these days depends on a lot of factors, and for that reason, it’s hard to single out devices that have been successful with all sorts of crowds. For Apple, success comes mainly from the immense ease of use that their phones and tablets deliver, and from the fact that the company sells on its brand name, too. When it comes to Android. a lot of other factions come into play. For instance, the device’s hardware specifications, the Android version that it’s running, and equally importantly, how much customization friendly it is. On the last front, advanced users are more concerned with how much hackable the device is. Recently, Samsung’s high-to-middle range phones have been on a roll, not just receiving rooting methods, but also, a lot of community support.
Have you ever really thought about customizing your Android device to its fullest? I know I have, and I also know that a lot of casual users at least think about it millions of times, even if they don’t really do it. Whether it’s the effort behind the whole deal or the attention to details that such a process demands, a thorough revamp of how your Android-based smartphone or tablet looks is definitely not a piece of cake. Then, there’s no standard element that you’d need; customization comes out of a combination of various tools and packages all working in tandem with each other. One necessary component of any such method is a full-screen launcher setup.
If you use your Android smartphone or tablet for even half the purposes that an average geek would put it to, chances are strong that you have pretty sensitive data stored in there that you’d definitely not want to get in the wrong hands. Truth be told, today’s smartphones are no long mere communication devices; they’re photo albums with all the pictures of our loved ones, they’re our personal information managers, holding all our contact lists, appointments, schedules etc., then these devices are also our internet hubs, storing all content ready for access by anyone who can get into your device. And these examples constitute only the tip of the iceberg; the rabbit hole goes far deeper.
Instant messaging has been one of the most revolutionary developments when it comes to written communication. While SMS came into existence long before IM did, the concept caught on so well with users that today, even SMS conversations got arranged into “threads”, to give an experience closer to how you’d expect an instant messaging client to behave. Popular IM clients like Yahoo Messenger, MSN (now Windows Live) Messenger, ICQ etc, have seen their days of glory, and still have a pretty loyal user base. Then, there were mobile specific clients, like Nimbuzz, Jabber, IM+, even mig33, that became a true hit with the on-the-move community. The trend carries on even today.
In the Android ecosystem, the first ever tablets (other than the first experimental builds like original Galaxy Tab and HTC Flyer) ran on Honeycomb, Android 3.0, which was tailor-made to suit the tablet devices’ larger screens. Unfortunately (or not), Android 3.0 didn’t really see much glory for two reasons. One, it was rather buggy in itself, and two, when Ice Cream Sandwich was released, it unified both tablet and smartphone versions of the Android ecosystem, making it redundant to have a separate OS in the first place. For the same reasons, the said Android version didn’t see much developer love, either.
