If you’re into shopping at all, and online version of it in particular, Black Friday and Cyber Monday would be nothing unfamiliar or new to you. Every year, retailers, brand manufacturers, stores and supermarket chains, wireless carriers, and almost everyone else, goes on a sale spree for the shopping frenzy that both these days are. Cyber Monday, in particular, caters to the digital crowd, and aside from the sales on goods that it brings, the app crowd can also rejoice, for this year’s no exception – both the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store – the conveyors of world’s biggest share of smartphone apps – are seeing massive sales on apps that have gone on pricing diets to mark the celebration weekend. We brought you a compilation of all the greatest iOS apps that went free for Black Friday a couple of days back, and now it’s time for its Android counterpart, the Google Play Store.
When I switched over from iOS to Android as my daily driver, the first thing that I ensued was the quest for battery optimization. It’s no hidden truth that iOS beats Google’s cute little droid hands down in this arena, and if someone claims otherwise, they might want to try reaching out to the likes of Guinness World Records or something, for that matter. Nevertheless, despite the platform’s own shortcomings, there are always steps that one can take to maximize the potential that the Li-ion cells in the back of your handset have to deliver.
Mobile phones with great cameras have been around for a good many years now, and while the units mounted atop the likes of Apple’s iPhone 5 and 4S, Samsung Galaxy S III or Sony Xperia lineup have been nothing short of impressive, Nokia PureView 808’s 41-megapixel shooter had, indeed, taken smartphone photography to a whole new level. Add to the mix the powerful noise reduction algorithms that these cameras come with, the variety of photo applications they have their disposal, and the connectivity for wireless and cloud sharing that they offer, makes one absolutely believe that this is the future of general photography, no matter what point-and-shoot cameras might have you believe.
HTC has had a pretty difficult year all told, but with the Windows Phone 8 duo in the 8X and 8S now making their way to market, and a recent licensing agreement reached with Apple, things are certainly looking up for the Taiwanese company. The HTC One X+ on Android offers an even beefier list of specs than the original One X released earlier this year, which wasn't exactly underpowered in itself, and if you want to have even more fun with your One X+, you'll be pleased to learn that the all-in-one toolkit has just been released for the device.
When the Nexus 4 was announced as next Android flagship, there was no mention of any 4G/LTE support. Then, when the phone came out mid-November, there was, again, no LTE support again – not very surprisingly, though, since supporting 4G would have essentially meant manufacturing multiple versions of the device to make it agreeable for all the different 4G bands around the globe – an approach that Apple had to adopt with the iPhone 5. LG, however, decided to avoid going down that road, and hence, Nexus 4 stuck to the plain old 3G bands.
With Thanksgiving day, followed by Black Friday, and inevitably, Christmas, the consumer electronics market will be abuzz with savings, as each vendor and retailer looks to attract additional custom at this most lucrative time of year.
Using an Android phone is no east feat, I tell you. Apart from the fact that if you’re a fond of playing around with the intricate workings of your operating system, and consequently flash a new ROM every week (can be even day, in extreme cases), one major annoyance that you’ll feel is the battery, which essentially drains faster than any other smartphone OS that I’ve played around with. It’s not really necessarily the device’s fault – a simple code inspection actually establishes that it’s how the AOSP is built which causes the battery to drain faster, and perhaps it’s Google’s acknowledgement of this fact that they’ve decided to take up Project Roadrunner after the successful implementation of Project Butter with Jelly Bean.
Comic book-based titles have had a great year in both the gaming and motion picture industry, and if you're a fan of this particular genre, you may want to check out Avengers Initiative for Android. If your device doesn't run on a Tegra-3 processor, Avengers Initiative is unfortunately not supported, but if you have one of the growing list of Tegra-3 smartphones or tablets currently available - such as the Samsung HTC One X or the Google / ASUS Nexus 7 - then you'll be able to enjoy a title boasting some very cool visual effects.
In the world of Android, rooting a device is what jailbreak is to Apple’s iOS creations, although the former is much easier compared to the latter, thanks to Android’s open source nature and direct Linux-based kernel base. Nevertheless, it does take quite some skill to achieve that for all the new devices that are released, and here, we owe thanks to the highly dedicated and active developer community that exists for Android, putting in tireless hours to make lives easier for us. This is symbolized in many cases. Take Google’s Nexus 4, for example, that got rooted just a few hours after its release, showing how much potential the platform has for community support and developers’ love.
Samsung's Galaxy series has taken to Google's Android platform like a duck to water, and the release of the Galaxy S III earlier this year was by far the biggest Android release of the year. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that, after just a few months, the rumor mill is now picking up tidbits on its eventual successor - the Galaxy S IV.
