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.
With many products from various manufacturers already said to be arriving in what's shaping up to be an explosive next few months, Samsung has voluntarily added itself to the fray by notifying the guys over at TheVerge of a significant Galaxy announcement on August 15th.
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.
We’ve already discussed everything you need to know about Jelly Bean in one of our previous post, but if you’re not in the mood to read the lengthy post itself, you should know that Android 4.1 brings vastly smoother user interface, more powerful notifications, better keyboard with next word prediction and offline typing, and lastly, the amazing Google Now.
As important as the hardware specification of a smartphone or tablet may be, it's not necessarily the end-all, be-all, and the software it runs can be an even more significant factor in the overall quality and popularity of a device.
Android Jelly Bean (4.1) has enjoyed a much warmer welcome into mobile space than its predecessor Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), which took an age to trickle through to many Android devices, leaving quite a few consumers feeling somewhat disillusioned with the update process in general. Google has clearly regrouped and revaluated its battle plan this time around though, and as well as being arguably the best release of Android to date, the Big G isn't hanging around with its OTA updates.
Announced as part of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at Google I/O 2012, Google Now is a powerful, never before seen personalized search app. It gathers data about your preferences, interests, daily routine and location to provide you related data in the form of cards. This feature has left many reviewers floored with just how good it is, and now, thanks to Android’s development community, you get to enjoy it on your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. There is one thing you should know though: the voice to text technology used in this project is not the one used in Jelly Bean. This means your voice searches may not be as accurate or fast.
Although Android certainly trumps Apple's iOS when it comes to reach, versatility, and number of devices available, one area in which Google's mobile operating system has always struggled is security. Malware on the platform has been steadily increasing over the past year, and with security one of the main concerns of consumers, it's essential the Web company does its level best to combat the problem.
ClockworkMod Recovery is the de-facto standard when it comes to custom recoveries on Android. It packs a wide variety of powerful features that make it an absolute must have for those of you who like to flash new ROMs regularly while keeping their personal data safe.
