Throughout most of the year, the price of most iGadgets scarcely move beyond the occasional $10 or $20 saving at most retail outlets, and even then, said offer usually requires you to grab a gift card for that store. But with the holiday season upon us, the big retailers have come out fighting with some aggressive pricing, and following the discounts offered by Walmart and Target on Apple's coveted iPhone 5, Fry's has sought one-upmanship by offering the handset for just $126.
If you're tired of waking up having forgotten to charge your smartphone, and realize that a relatively high amount of battery has been reduced considerably, you are not managing your device's functions properly. If you run out of juice much quicker than you think you should be, the chances are, a few tweaks and alterations to the way you manage your handset could make all the difference. Deep Sleep Battery Saver wants to help with the science of battery retention, by slipping your smartphone into a deeper sleep overnight -while you're tucked away in bed.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was one of the most eagerly-anticipated releases this holiday for iOS, and with good reason. The tenth anniversary re-release of the iconic original title was teased on numerous occasion by Rockstar, and when it finally made an appearance on December 6th, I - like many Vice City fans - excitedly went over to the App Store and parted with the cash. Unfortunately, unlike the remake of GTA III last year, the launch has left many users noting of numerous bugs, and so instead of spending the past ten days celebrating the landmark launch, Rockstar has been working hard to iron out the lingering bugs. Today, version 1.1 of Vice City has been released to the App Store, and as per the changelog, most of the problems should now have been solved.
One of key promises made by Mark Zuckerberg upon Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, was that the image-sharing network would retain its own identity, and would not simply become a Facebook-branded product. Thankfully for Instagram fans, that promise has been delivered upon hitherto, although an update to Instagram's privacy policy suggests its Facebook integration will grow a great deal stronger over the coming months.
What’s better than a powerhouse of a tablet that’s running on Android? The same tab running on CyanogenMod 10.1, which entails Android 4.2 goodness for all that support it. Why, you ask me? Because CM 10.1, or any AOSP ROM, for that matter, brings with it a freedom that you are very unlikely to find anywhere else. For most power users of Google’s smartphone and tablet operating system, trying different ROMs is almost a weekly affair, if not more frequent. Following suit, I have tried a lot of ROMs on my Android tablets, from Stock to ROM ports to AOSP builds like CyanogenMod and Android Open Kang Project (AOKP), but I have always kept coming back to CM because of the ‘balance’ that it offers, between features and stability, and because it carries with it a sense of reliability.
Considering we are right in the middle of the festive season, it shouldn't really come as any great surprise when developers take the plunge and reduce the price of some of their wares for a limited period of time. Australian based Halfbrick Studios has been hit with a fairly large dose of festive spirit, much to the benefit of iPhone and iPad owners. For the next 24-hours, the development outfit from down under have made all of their fantastic iOS games entirely free of charge as their gift to the Apple hardware owning community.
The Universal Serial Bus interface, more commonly known as the USB, is perhaps the most useful invention in the world of computers and technology after the floppy disk. The bus provides a standardized media and input/output interface that has truly revolutionized how removable devices and other peripherals connect and interact with computers all over the world. Today, USB-interface is used not only for removable storage media, but also for the likes of printers, human interface devices (like mice and keyboards), gamepads, speakers, device connections, and lots of other cool gadgets that you’d just like to have sitting around on your desk while you work. If you really think about it, you’ll hardly find yourself using any other port on your PC or laptop more than the USB ports.
All of the recent Nokia and Windows Phone discussions may be centered around the Finnish company's launch of the fantastic new Lumia range of devices powered by Windows Phone 8 but if you happened to have gotten in on the Lumia action during the first wave of releases last year then there could be a nice software related surprise waiting for your Lumia 800 device when it connects to the Zune software. Those who still make daily use of their Lumia 800 have obviously made the conscious decision that the upgrade to a newer Lumia device isn't on the cards just yet but that shouldn't stop 800 owners from updating the device to Windows Phone 7.8 as it becomes available through Zune.
Smartphones provide for us a plethora of functions, and increasingly, we're utilizing them for the purpose of taking photos and shooting video clips. Now there's certainly not a shortage of image-editing utilities available over at the App Store for those on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, but when it comes to video, the selection is decidedly less rich. If you've been looking for a way to spice up your boring video clips, Strum for iOS might just be of interest for you, since it quickly turns 15-second video clips into fun music videos.
Cydia is constantly being updated with new packages and enhancements that change the way how iOS devices operate, but it's always nice to see a new tweak land in the store that actually enhances the iOS software. The Speaking Keyboard package is one of those that pretty much does exactly what it says in the title, by bringing text-to-speech functionality directly to the keyboard on the device. The package requires iOS 5 or above and integrates with the built-in keyboard to bring audible letters, words and sentences as the user presses the keys.
