It’s true that Apple made tablets – portable computers with a slate design – a mainstream gadget with their iPad, even though there existed a lot of similar devices before that. Not only did they make it more accessible by selling the iPad at a price point that was agreeable to the masses, but the support from the Cupertino giant’s iTunes App Store with its massive number of iPad specific apps also helped the device’s popularity. Even though competitive manufacturers jumped onto the bandwagon with their similar Android based offerings, even today, the iOS App Store sports a much larger number of tablet-optimized apps in comparison to Google Play Store.
If you're constrained by a data plan, or just plain curious about how much traffic you're running through, you may find Network Traffic Monitor for Android to be of use. As it name quite openly entails, it allows you to keep a close eye on the amount data use in real-time, ensuring you don't use excessive amounts of data, and helping you source the main points of your network use.
Samsung Electronics have today announced they will be offering consumers a chance to get their hands on a new smartphone that should be immediately recognizable to those who keep up to speed with the industry. The Galaxy S II Plus was originally leaked back in August of last year, with South Korean based Samsung now officially introducing us to the device that is essentially an upgraded version of the extremely popular Galaxy S II.
Personalizing your mobile device to your liking is still one popular idea, and a lot of people spend quite a good amount of time setting their phones up with the right wallpapers, themes, graphics and audio effects. Of course, as the smartphones have evolved, so have the customization means, but that still doesn’t mean that the old things have lost their touch. I remember back in the day of Nokia devices when monochord ringtones were the rage, and being able to compose your own ringtone was the height of customization that you could’ve gotten on your phone (along side the funky carrier logo on the monochrome screen of the Nokia 3310).
Smartphones these days are not mere communication devices, and I’ve said so many times before as well. What they’ve turned into is an all-in-one solution for portable media playback, internet surfing, managing personal information, manipulating documents, spreadsheets, presentations on the go, and so much more. Not to miss out on one of the key uses that a capable smartphone is put through, is photography. The powerful camera units being mounted atop these devices nowadays have practically redefined the whole digital photography frontier, and spawned an entirely new breed of photographers who have a reasonable quality capturing unit for every moment, right there in their pockets.
For Linux-based operating systems, especially Android, bootloaders are more like a double-edged sword. On one hand, you’d want an unlocked one, because that will enable opening up your device to all sorts of modifications, including gaining root/super user access, but at the same time, an unlocked bootloader also means a potentially vulnerable smartphone or tablet that’s open to malicious attacks. With the amount of new apps that the Play Store gets on a daily basis, it’s also hard to figure out whether an app is truly what it claims to be, or some developer with the intent of stealing your personal information that’s unleashed a Trojan horse in the guise of an otherwise-innocent-looking application. Thus, the risk of remaining exposed stays lingering above you.
If you’re looking for yet another way to enjoy your mobile Android games, NVIDIA has just announced a new portable console that is worth looking at. Project SHIELD is NVIDIA’s take on the portable gaming market: it features a full-sized gaming controller, the latest version of Android and PC connectivity.
In the world of Android, and modern smartphones in general, apps are what define how useful the device is going to be. The popular phrase, “there’s an app for that”, might’ve been notorious for Apple’s iOS platform, but it holds pretty true for the rapidly-growing Android operating system as well. No matter what the hardware capabilities of your device are, unless you supplement them with the right apps, it’s going to be pretty much useless. Android, as a mobile OS, has matured a lot over the years, adding features and useful gimmicks to the AOSP as the versions have evolved. One particular thing, however, that remained pretty much unchanged, was the way how you launch apps on your Android smartphone or tablet. Other than introducing the recent apps list in the newer iterations, Google hasn’t really changed app-launching method, and hence, you have to usually hit the Home button and start a new app from the launcher itself.
For a long time, Facebook was always thought of as a web-based company that didn't put a lot of importance on users who prefer to access their services through mobile devices. The official Facebook app was built around cross-platform technologies making it notoriously slow, unpredictable and unstable, and their mobile website didn't really make things much better. That focus started to shift with the acquisition of Instagram, followed by the updating of their mobile apps into native languages as well as the release of standalone apps such as Messenger and Camera. For the first time, we can now actually get an insight into Facebook's mobile users and devices and firmware that they actually use, thanks to some meticulous data collection from Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis.
My primary camera for day-to-day photos remains my smartphone, for various self-explanatory reasons. It’s portable, has a high-quality lens with reasonable detail and post processing, comes with significant storage space, can shoot high-definition videos, is easy to carry around, and stays with me no matter where I go, allowing me to capture moments wherever and whenever I want. The truth is, smartphones, especially the high-end ones, have revolutionized how we look at amateur digital photography. While nothing beats a true DSLR camera, or even a normal dedicated point-and-shoot one, smartphone cameras have upped the game a few notches recently, and if you consider Nokia’s PureView 808 to be any indicator of what’s to come, with its 41MP sensor and outstanding photo quality, things definitely seem to be headed in the right direction.
