iPhone’s similar home screen, which hasn’t changed much aesthetically since the very first generation, can get pretty boring very quickly, and the ability to theme the home screen to your liking remains one of the top reasons for a lot of people to jailbreak their iDevice. Thankfully, Android doesn’t natively suffer the same limitation, and even if you don’t have root access on your Android smartphone or tablet, the variety and sheer number of home launcher replacement apps available in the Play Store is enough to keep one busy for quite a while. We keep experiencing new launchers that come to our notice every now and then, and ones that we find worthy, we bring to our readers’ notice. Well, here’s one that I personally loved, going by the name of Smart Launcher in the Google Play Store.
Samsung today accidentally gave the world a sneak peak at a smartphone that we've all pretty much known was on the way, and that phone is the much talked about Galaxy S4 mini.
Google I/O was expected to play host to the grand unveiling of Android 4.3, but despite a number of key announcements pertaining to the search giant's flagship ecosystem, the next version of Android remained firmly off the agenda. Following the news (or lack thereof), many sources then went along with the story that Android 4.3 release date could be set somewhere around summer this year, and today, that notion has been offered a degree of legitimacy with the sighting of the bumped software running on an LG-manufactured Google Nexus 4.
As everyone probably knows at this point, each time an Android app is installed it has to tell the user what it will want access to. Be it location, SMS or general internet access, it's all laid bare for us to see. It means that we can ask questions when an app asks for far too many permissions for what it's supposed to do, for example. The problem is, not everyone pays attention.
Early sales figures of the two biggest flagship Android smartphones thus far this year have shown once again that when it comes to overall consumer appeal, the Samsung Galaxy S series is still head and shoulders above the rest. The 10 million handsets shifted in first month of the latest and greatest Galaxy S4 is double the unofficial 5 million quoted sales of the HTC One in the same timeframe, but with the Taiwanese company still managing to flog the unibody device at a quicker rate than it can make them, its own sales figures are certainly not to be baulked at.
Samsung's ads have been known to be a little weird in the past, and its press events can be just as bad. Lest we forget the infamous Gangnam Style moment that led to a Bollywood actor prancing around on stage like Psy. For a company so large, you'd think it could afford one or two advertising specialists wouldn't you?
As the device continues to arrive at various shores across the world, the debate rages on as to whether the Samsung Galaxy S4 is indeed worthy of its position as Android's poster boy. The latest in an immensely popular series, the Galaxy S4 dramatically improves on its predecessor in terms of hardware features, but opinion remains divided on whether it is a true humdinger, or just another re-hash of the same old rhetoric.
Custom ROMs are the way to go for power users of Android devices. No matter what developer you take and whichever flavor of a custom ROM you may want to pick up, some of the omni-present features would be faster updates, better modifications, root access, custom recovery, zip aligned APKs, deodexed ROMs, more features, ports from other devices and whatnot. Then, there’s that class of these firmware that hail from the Android Open Source Project, or AOSP, as it is better known. These ROMs are decidedly different from others, in their minimalist native feature set and more freedom towards change.
A leaked Android 4.2.2 ROM for Galaxy S3 is now available for download. The said ROM includes tons of new features from Galaxy S4 for the old maestro.
Having a network locked device can really hamper how you use it, especially if the network isn’t of your choice. While most of the times, the operator in question would let you unlock your device for a small fee, not everyone might be that lucky. Imagine a scenario where you’re travelling abroad and want to use another network’s SIM card, only to discover that you cannot thanks to a carrier lock. Unlocking can really save you from quite a few hassles and tight spots.
