Losing your smartphone is never a pleasant experience. In fact, in most cases, it’s the worst kind of experience because you end up missing not just a valuable device, but also your contacts, your email, social networks, gallery, media and pretty much your entire digital footprint. There are, of course, fail-safe solutions available for almost every platform that you can employ to remedy some of the damage that takes place as a result of such a loss, but the device is still gone with little to no hope of recovery.
The introduction of the iPhone 5s during the final quarter of 2013 marked a significant hardware change in the mobile industry. Not only was the 5s the first consumer facing smartphone to introduce 64-bit architecture with the A7 chipset, but it was also the first publicly available smartphone to implement fingerprint scanning technology thanks to Touch ID. It's highly likely that biometric based detection and authentication will become increasingly popular over the next few years, with manufacturers coming up with their own unique uses. On the subject of biometrics, a new comparison video from Tanner Marsh gives a fairly comprehensive overview of fingerprint detection on what are arguably the market's two most powerful smartphones: the iPhone 5s and Galaxy S5.
Facebook's commitment to mobile has undoubtedly been questionable in the past. The purchase of Instagram and subsequent acquisition of WhatsApp has proved that Mark Zuckerberg's social network definitely sees native mobile experiences as of paramount importance to the company's immediate future. However, it's the continuing development of the Messenger app that manages to convince us that the small screen is extremely important to Facebook. It's only been a matter of days since Messenger was updated with a powerful group management system, but version 4.1 for iPhone and Android is already here, bringing with it the introduction of unlimited free voice calls via a Wi-Fi connection.
Last week, we caught wind of a new app that utilizes mesh networking to enable devices to connect to one another without the need for an Internet connection. Having established quite a strong following, the app has been ported to Android, and is now available to download, for free, over at the Play Store. Further details, as well as the download link, can be found after the jump!
Since its announcement at Mobile World Congress in February, we've seen the Galaxy S5 compared with several of the market's foremost devices, including the all-new HTC One M8 and of course, the Galaxy S4. But while it mightn't compare to Samsung's show-piece in terms of size, Apple's iPhone 5s knows how to compete at the very top end of the market, and as such, a lengthy comparison clip has emerged showing how the Galaxy S5 holds up against it's bitter rival's flagship.
No matter what brand of smartphone we pledge our allegiances to, we're all united in the battle against waning battery life. We've all been caught out with a quickly-depleting battery at a time when we desperately need our devices at hand and switched on, and while placing a device into airplane mode does work wonders, it also completely disconnects us from the world. A neat Android tweak called Auto Pilot Mode will throw your device into airplane mode when your signal is down, intermittently checking to see if cellular data has been restored before deactivating airplane mode once again.
Even though many of us are willing to put down hundreds of dollars on a new smartphone, seldom do we take the time to read the manual. But if you're planning on picking up the Samsung Galaxy S5 when it finally releases late next week, then it mightn't be a bad idea to check out the user guide, which has just been leaked out into the wild.
We can talk about the LG G Pro 2 and the Sony Xperia Z2 when making a case for the recent releases vying for supremacy in the high-end market, but if we're being honest, there are only really two stand-out candidates that can top the pile in 2014; at least, in terms of Android smartphones. Samsung's Galaxy S5, announced at the Mobile World Congress, will be pushed to the limits by the HTC One M8 this year, and with the HTC One M7 having been the closest to competing with the Galaxy S4, early reactions to both devices suggest that the Taiwanese vendor may have well and truly struck gold this time around.
Even though the announcement of the Galaxy S5 at Mobile World Congress in February brought an abrupt end to months of rumor and speculation, we knew that the big reveal of Samsung's latest and greatest was only a part of the story. The Korean outfit makes a habit of releasing several spin-off versions of its major handsets, and today, we may have our first proper look into the specs of the Galaxy S5 mini.
Independently of the forthcoming Android 4.4.3 update, which should begin to trickle out to the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 in the very near future, Google plans to add some useful new features to the native camera app of its mobile operating system. According to a newly emerged report, the standalone app will be given a complete makeover, delivering a revamped UI, improved panorama and more.
