Before Ice Cream Sandwich, manufacturers put their Home, Menu, Back and Search buttons in different order just to differentiate themselves from one another. Companies like Samsung even went head and removed the all-important Search button* altogether which results in a different Android experience.
Apple and Samsung's court battles are well documented in the blogosphere, and in the very latest, Apple has been granted an EU-wide injunction preventing sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7.
Google's new Nexus 7 tablet has already proved to be extremely popular gadget amongst technology fans. As expected, it hasn't flown off the shelves as fast as we generally see the iPad go, but recent reports have shown that consumers have already depleted official supplies of the 16GB model, with prospective purchasers now needing to wait until more come off the manufacturing line before they can get their hands on that Jelly Bean goodness. With Google only recently launching their first Nexus 7 commercial via YouTube, it represents a pretty decent success story without any actual defined advertising and we are pretty sure the popularity will continue as we move forward.
Android smartphones have, till recently, been notorious for their terrible power management and resulting awful battery life. This problem became apparent with earlier high end smartphones like the Nexus One and HTC Desire HD, became worse with 4G LTE devices like the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon, improved a little with the Galaxy Nexus and has now, finally, reached a state where one can use a Galaxy S III and One X without carrying an extra charger to work. This is mostly thanks to newer hardware that sips less power.
The Nexus 7 tablet has been an almost permanent fixture in tech news of late, and with sales currently through the roof, Google has finally given its cheap-yet-powerful tablet its very first advertisement.
With a quad core processor, 1GB of RAM (2GB in certain variants), a 4.8” Super AMOLED HD display, 8 MP / 2 MP optics and being based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the Samsung Galaxy S III is one hell of a powerhouse. The general public, it seems, has agreed to this fact as, according to sales figures, the Galaxy S III is selling like ice-cool lemonade on a hot day.
It sometimes really doesn't matter how hard companies like Apple and Google try to make their devices and operating systems the best and most powerful on the market, users just occasionally want to try something a little different. As you would expect, devices running the Android operating system always ship with a built-in native music player app which allows playback of any track that is imported to the device. Unfortunately, native apps don't always offer a one-size-fits-all solution, meaning people are often forced to look elsewhere.
Anyone who is an avid user of the top of the range smartphone or tablet such as the iPhone 4S, iPad or the new Google Nexus 7 tablet will appreciate the difference that a beautiful looking app can bring. Functional apps are all well and good, after all, we expect a purchase or download to fulfill its purpose but an app that does what it says on the tin while looking beautiful pushes the user-experience to a new level.
Touch is a now the dominant method of input for mobile devices. Although touchscreen based devices have existed for a long time, they were popularized and made user friendly with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010. In his original iPhone keynote, Steve Jobs categorically stated that if the device requires a stylus, you’re doing something wrong. And we tend to agree with him to some extent, emphasis on extent.
VLC Media Player from VideoLAN has long stood out as the media player of choice among consumers. Famed for handling just about any media format you could care to throw at it, it’s certainly the best in the business, and although the VLC Media Player app was tossed from the App Store by Apple, VideoLAN as bounced back, offering an iteration for Google’s Android platform.
