As well as making any tech fan shudder, the drop tests of our much loved gadgets serve an educational purpose, because despite most consumers getting carried away with nice displays, sharp cameras and other great hardware features, few actually take into consideration how quickly it can all be lost with one spillage or drop on the floor.
HTC completely refreshed their whole lineup earlier this year with the One series of smartphones. The aim was to focus on a minimum number of phones so as to increase their overall quality, provide quick software updates and generally just reduce customer confusion that was created as a result of HTC releasing new smartphones every few weeks.
Unveiled late last month at Google I/O 2012, the Nexus 7 is one of the most well received tablets since the iPad 2. Critics are absolutely loving the Nexus 7 because it offers the features of a $500 tablet – quad core processor, a gig of RAM, HD display, long lasting battery life, powerful graphics etc. etc. – at just $199. Combine all that with the latest version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean, and you get the best in Android tablet experiences today.
As well as acquainting herself with many an iPhone 4S user over the past nine months, Siri has yielded much additional airtime as the stare of many a parody video. Whether it's been in solving a domestic argument or testing the sensibilities of a rather irate Scotsman, Siri has starred in all manner of viral clips.
As avid followers of the mobile industry here at Redmond Pie, we've grown used to seeing how casually Apple dishes out lawsuits to competitors, berating patent infringement here and there, and our favorite: blatant plagiarism. Of course, it's not all one way traffic, and the likes of Samsung and HTC have dealt with their fair share of suits from Cupertino, California; but these seem more in retaliation than anything, and it does appear Apple's rivals will do anything to avoid the fruit company's wrath.
The Nexus line of Android smartphones is known for the pure Android experience that they offer, their direct support from Google and, more importantly for flashaholics, unbridled support from the Android developed community. These devices often get rooted and have a custom ROM ready before their public release. The latest example of this is the Nexus 7 tablet that has its bootloader easily unlocked, root access easily gained and custom recovery easily flashed.
The YouTube Ninja Unboxing videos have become a trademark of any new Nexus release, and the trend which started out all the way back in 2010 with the Nexus One has carried through to Google's newest Nexus outlet, the Nexus 7 tablet.
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was announced to much fanfare at Google I/O 2012. It introduced a nice variety of features like vastly smoother user interface with Project Butter, more powerful notifications system, Google Now, offline voice typing and more.
Google's I/O conference brought little in the way of surprise, but still presented aficionados of the Big G with plenty to get excited about. As well as the Nexus 7 tablet, which has seen an uprising in talk of a smaller iPad (a device which, as yet, hasn't been proved to be in development), Google also announced Android Jelly Bean (4.1), the successor to the rather tasty Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) operating system.
Scarcely a week after an injunction which abruptly ended the sales of Google's Galaxy Nexus, the Samsung-manufactured device has now reappeared on the web company's Play Store, and will resume shipping in a couple of weeks time. The injunction, handed out by judge Lucy Koh, prevented the device from selling due to an infringement of Apple's intellectual property, but with Jelly Bean 4.1 said to amend the problem in question, the popular HSPA+ smartphone will be available to Android fans once more.
