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.
Of all the features that arrived when iOS 5 reached the end-user back in October of last year, iMessage has been arguably the most significant, and by now allowing messages to be sent and received in a faster, more secure manner across a variety of platforms, it has to go down as one of the best in the business. Granted, it has its occasional downtime, but it's not bad as is, and with the service also arriving to the Mac with OS X Mountain Lion, it will almost certainly become the sole mode of quick communication to many Apple enthusiasts.
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.
Although Android is quite a distance ahead of the competition in terms of reach and overall user numbers, it does have its caveats, and one glaring issue prominent from the beginning has been that of audio latency. Android Jelly Bean (4.1) has just released to a number of devices, and although it is a significant improvement on previous iterations (ICS saw playback latency of around 88ms), the audio lag issue still exists.
Some smartphones just outright refuse to die. The HTC HD2, released in late 2009, is the most recent example of this. It was the first smartphone with a 4.3” display*, powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, a 5-megapixel camera. The HD2 was the last smartphone that was based on Windows Mobile 6.5, but later, thanks to vibrant community support, the device was able to run Windows Phone 7, and Android all the way from 2.2 to the recently released 4.1 Jelly Bean.
With the final chapter in the trilogy of Christian Bale's Batman - Dark Knight Rises - having launched worldwide yesterday, the iOS title also made its way over to the App Store to supplement its box office release. Now, casually late as usual, the Android iteration is available to download over at the Google Play Store at the cost of $6.99.
Although it has been recently reported that current Apple CEO Tim Cook has been meeting with Samsung executives to discuss the ongoing patent battles which are becoming laborious to both sides, it seems that it hasn't stopped the disputes from hitting the courts once again. In a United States appeals court, Samsung again had to experience defeat as a judge has seen no reason to overturn a sales ban relating to their Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.
As well as making any tech fan shudder, the drop tests of our much loved gadgets serve an educational purpose, because despite most consumers getting carried away with nice displays, sharp cameras and other great hardware features, few actually take into consideration how quickly it can all be lost with one spillage or drop on the floor.
The next phase of the continual trials between Samsung and Apple are expected to kick off in the US on July 30th, but as has been the case previously, no-nonsense Judge Lucy Koh ordered both parties to try and resolve their differences by means of a mediation meeting. According to an article previously accessible over at The Korea Times, Apple head honcho Tim Cook met with Samsung execs Choi Gee-sung and Shin Jong-Kyun on July 16th, but no agreement could be reached.
HTC completely refreshed their whole lineup earlier this year with the One series of smartphones. The aim was to focus on a minimum number of phones so as to increase their overall quality, provide quick software updates and generally just reduce customer confusion that was created as a result of HTC releasing new smartphones every few weeks.
