My friends believe I am not an easy person to get along with, because I often get confused about what I want. Perhaps they’re right. Let me give you an example. I love widgets – those flashy bits of useful information that you often see Android home screens adored with. Have you ever checked out HTC Sense’s clock & weather widget? It’s downright gorgeous! And those weather animations when unlocking screens, make it all the more desirable. But, widgets keep running in the background, consuming RAM, draining precious battery faster than what I’d like. So, widgets are bad, eh? But I want to stay abreast of my location’s forecast! Maybe I should use a weather app – but wait, I don’t want to fire up an app every time I want to check out the current temperature; that’s too primitive, I like information that’s readily available… You getting my point?
If someone thinks smartphones are merely devices for telephonic communication, chances are that they’ve either never used a smartphone, or they’ve actually been living under a rock. Today’s smartphones are nothing short of an electronic Swiss knife – they offer portable multimedia players, news readers, internet communication, handheld gaming, digital cameras, all packaged into one. With powerful quad-core microprocessors, adequate RAM chips and more than sufficient storage capacities, these devices are actually computers that you carry around in your pocket all day long.
Since the release of iOS 6, the flaws of the Maps app have stood out like a sore thumb in an operating system which, otherwise, is fairly polished. When it first made its appearance along with the iPhone 5 back in September, people were tripping over themselves to pour scorn on an implementation which was supposed to be the center piece, but following an apology from Apple CEO Tim Cook by means of an open letter, the issue has petered out as consumers have sought alternatives.
Were you looking forward to picking up a brand spanking new Nexus 4 smartphone today? You may have been lucky, but chances are, you probably weren't thanks to sell-outs and ordering issues worldwide.
In the world of Android, launchers are really what define the outlook of your phone, even if not the actual performance (although that, too, varies significantly with your choices in this arena). For that very reason, there’s no shortage of really solid and well-equipped launcher/home replacement apps in Google Play Store, or available choices across the ecosystem anyway. Tencent Technologies’ QQLauncher is nowhere a new addition to this collection, but it deserves a particular mention now, since the developers behind the neat and smooth home replacement have made it available in English (prior availability was only Chinese), much to the delight of general user base.
When Google announced Android 4.2 last month, a lot of people were left unimpressed, mainly because it was an incremental update and not really something that would cause a lot of bells and whistles. Nevertheless, the update did bring a few fresh additions to the Android ecosphere, including the likes of Notification Quick Settings, Gesture typing (trust me, it’s not Swype), Photo Sphere, improvements to Google Now, Miracast support, multiple user accounts for tablets, and more.
If there’s one thing that Android makes really good use of, it’s the notification panel. Evolved quite a lot over the new versions, the biggest use I find for the notification drawer (apart from viewing the actual notifications, of course) is quick access to system toggles, which have become so much of a norm that manufacturers are including more and more customized solutions in their stock offerings. Then, there have been AOSP based ROMs like CyanogenMod, MIUI, AOKP etc., that have put as many as 15 toggles in the notification tray, making it almost entirely unnecessary for a casual user to venture inside the Settings menu. With Android 4.2, Google itself seems to have taken a liking to the whole idea, adding versatile quick settings controls in the same drawer. Open source has its advantages, and while your device may not be rocking Android 4.2 yet, you can get a taste of what the toggles feel like, right now.
The patent wars that Apple have found themselves in over the last eighteen months are extremely well documented and have been covered all over the world as the Cupertino based company carries on the fight to protect what they believe is their registered property. The ongoing issues with Samsung and Motorola Mobility may not show any signs of coming to an immediate end but it looks like Apple may have one less thing to worry about after coming to a legal agreement with Taiwan based HTC regarding patents.
The Nexus 7 from Google has been a real breath of fresh air to the tablet market. Not only does it offer a solid performance on Android Jelly Bean, but its low price has lured in many consumers into grabbing a device they perhaps wouldn't have been able to afford. Google outdid itself by dropping the price of the popular device earlier this week, and while this will no doubt increase general consumer interest and subsequent sales, it has left those who paid the original prices feeling a little underhanded.
Getting apps onto an Android device just got a little easier, with a free Windows app being released that makes installing APKs as easy as dragging and dropping them.
