A lot of people, including most of the Redmond Pie team, live with their smartphones in silent mode. With the vibration motors being so good on handsets these days, you can probably hear the thing as well as feel it, anyway!
Samsung’s half-smartphone half-tablet Galaxy Note recently received Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich and there is good news for those of you who like to hack their devices: an easy-to-apply method has been unveiled that not only lets you gain root access to your Galaxy Note but also do it so without increasing the flash counter that causes a yellow ! sign to show up at boot time. We’ve prepared a step-by-step guide that you can follow right after the jump!
If you want to reclaim some long lost storage space on your Android smartphone and happen to be someone who is installing and removing apps more often than most, then SD Maid may be the app for you. By completely removing traces of uninstalled apps, SD Maid promises to reclaim some of that storage space that you probably never thought you would see again.
It's amazing that, although our devices offer features such as LTE, pin-sharp cameras with 1080p recording and screens bereft of a hint of flaw that often, some of the more 'bread and butter' features such as notifications aren't as convenient as they should be, and with such high-end hardware packed into our smartphones, we expect the software to perform at the same advanced level.
Android and iOS are two very different ecosystems, and while it's a matter of opinion as to which one is more superior, each has its strengths and weaknesses. Up until last October's release of iOS 5, the notification system of Apple's mobile OS was nothing more than a whimsical collection of popups and alarms, but the Notification Center soon saw to that, and thanks to iPhone Notifications for Android, a similar system can be replicated on devices running Google's domineering mobile software.
A combination of great camera hardware and the rise of Instagram has given developers behind image and photo-centric apps something to shout about, but having said that, the app still has to deliver the goods and offer a substantial array of features to have any lasting effect on consumers.
Google's Android has constantly come under fire from Apple for ripping off elements of iOS, with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously vowing to go "thermonuclear" and "destroy" what he deemed to be a "stolen product," and one suspects the Cupertino outfit won't be best pleased to hear that the Big G has, according to rumor, decided to develop its own Game Center-like infrastructure for Android.
The battle for supremacy in the cloud computing market is hotting up, and although Apple was the first of the big companies to push forth its iCloud service last year, Microsoft and Google have both joined the party in the last couple of months with their SkyDrive and Google Drive services respectively.
It still seems like madness that in some cases, brand new Android powered smartphones and tablets don't get shipped with Google's latest version of the Android operating system installed upon them. If I was rushing to the store to purchase myself some of the latest hardware, I would expect it to ship with the latest and greatest software available in the market.
If you check out any technology lover’s arsenal of gadgets, I am pretty sure it will contain pieces of kit that cover all aspects of the consumer electronics spectrum. In today’s day and age it isn't uncommon to walk into a home office and see a desktop computer as well as a laptop or notebook, also accompanied by a smart mobile device such as Apple's 'Post-PC' iPad tablet as well as the a smartphone like the iPhone.
