Saturday, August 24, 2013

Why A Gold iPhone Would Make Perfect Sense

Today is the 24rd of August and the Summer season is about to end which means Fall is arriving and that is when all of the exciting events unravel. Various companies will be holding press events for product launches all around the world and today i'll be specifically talking about Apple and to more precise, the iPhone will be the main topic of today. If you have not been unplugged from the internet or dissociated with social networks you would have most probably heard about Apple's upcoming iPhone(s) which will include the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C. In this article i will be touching on the iPhone 5S leaks which has increased in volume in the past few days.
"as usual leaks are overflowing as we near the launch event"
Well, this whole week was a usual week with a lot of news and leaks but something which caught my eye in the pool of news topics is the rumor of a champagne gold iPhone which then lead to a string of leaks and mockups which flooded the internet. But if you give this rumor a thought, with prior iPhones several companies have been opening services to make gold colored iPhones and even in an overkill statement, some also tried burying the iPhone with real gold. Personally i think that this rumor has a future and i'm pretty much standing by it, you may begin thinking why? 
To understand why Apple is potentially producing a champagne gold iPhone, you have to go way back to WWDC 2013 where Apple announced iOS 7. If you read my article on my thoughts about iOS 7 a few months back then you would have known that the thing which i detested the most on iOS 7 is the icons which are brightly colored. In addition to that if you have been noticing one thing on the iOS 7 product video you would understand where i'm going on with this article. The iOS 7 product videos and demos did on stage were all done on a white iPhone 5. Continuing my point, the stock iOS 7 homescreen is full of vivid an bright colors which is perfect on a white panel but for a black panel it'll just look bad. I can see why Apple chose to make the sacrifice in making iOS 7 look more nicer on a white iPhone because white iPhones are selling better than its black counterpart. Going back to my main point the introduction of a champagne gold iPhone is actually pretty plausible. Plus, people love the color of gold which is calm and signifies premiumness. Well i have basically said everything in my will about the champagne gold iPhone, wheter you choose to believe, thats for you the reader to deiced. Do tell me your thoughts about this topic in the comments below. 

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Saturday, August 17, 2013

My Thoughts On The LG G2

First up I would like to say that I am about 1 week late in writing this, I was supposed to write it up last Saturday but here I am today writing it. Well let’s get on to today’s article which is about the LG’s new flagship smartphone the G2 which is the successor to the Optimus G. Unlike its predecessor LG has opted to drop the Optimus name and leaving only the G. Moving on to the device itself; the G2 is the same as every flagship android phone released this year, by similar I mean that the hardware that the G2 is storing is currently as powerful as possible. Talking about powerful, the G2 houses the currently top of the line mobile chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor which in this case is clocked in at 2.26GHz, alongside the chipset is the Adreno 330 graphics chip, 2GB of RAM is in the package as well as 32GB of storage which cannot be physically expanded. Filling up the front of the G2 is the massive 5.2” True HD IPS display covered with Gorilla glass 3 sums up a 424 pixel density, turning back the device shows off the 13MP camera which does have optical image stabilization as well as the unusually placed volume rocker and power button. In the dimension standpoint the G2 is not the most thinnest device ever but it’s dimensions are bearable by all means. With all that impressive hardware, LG has jammed in a 3,000mAh battery which has a ‘stepped’ design (basically it means that there is more space for the battery cells compared to conventional battery designs). Other than that the usual wireless connectivity features like wi-fi are present on the device.
"the most powerful smartphone on earth period"
Moving on the design of the G2 which is a total departure from the standard smartphone design not in terms of form factor but in terms of usability. As you can clearly see there are no physical keys on the sides of the device, LG has relocated them to the back of the device which is just below the camera module. Well this is surely a bold move by LG but I think if the user gets used to it its actually a pretty practical change because in this past week I did try holding my phone with my fingers on the back opposed to my usual way of wrapping my fingers around the device because the buttons are on the side. I found that when I using the my phone to make calls the most natural place to put my finger is on the back and my finger is just laying flat on the camera module which does cause smudges to appear. LG did take into account that if you’re holding your phone like that you will be wanting to rest your finger on the camera module so they actually covered the camera module with a sapphire crystal glass lens cover to prevent smudges on it so your picture won’t come out being blur. In addition to that LG also demoed on stage during the announcement that taking selfies on the G2 is made easier with the volume rocker keys on the back which also can act as a camera shutter button. Another cool design implementation is the speakers which are dual speakers on the bottom of the device alongside the earphone jack and microUSB port. What’s interesting about it is that LG is stating that it is the first Hi-Fi smartphone and it is capable of pushing 24 bit 192kHz sound through the speakers. I’ll just have to try it myself to see what difference can it make and wheter it is better than the dual stereo BoomSound speakers on the HTC One which is currently the best on the smartphone market.
Dropping on to the display of the screen of the G2 which has a bezel which is 0.1” wide, the display is of course an IPS display and during the even LG even compared the display to the AMOLED panel found in the Galaxy S4 and they said that the G2’s display has more pixels than the AMOLED panel because the G2 is using the standard RGB matrix pixel arrangement whereas the AMOLED panel is having the pentile matrix where pixels are share thus there are lesser pixels present. Another innovation on the display of the G2 is the inclusion of GRAM (graphic memory cache) to help beef up the battery life during the use of static applications. The common usage scenario is when you’re either reading a book or browsing the web on the G2 the GRAM will come to play because in conventional phones when you are reading something off your screen the pixels will refresh automatically but in the case of the G2 the GRAM will store the image of that current screen and thus eliminating the need of refreshing the image every second and ultimately saving battery life. Other than that LG did some more thinking about the reposition of the power key which is on the back and when the phone is laid flat on the table the keys are not accessible. So they implemented a feature called KnockON which will enable you to lock or unlock your device just by double tapping the screen, this feature is similar to Nokia’s glance mode on Lumia devices rocking the Amber update.
Continuing to the software of the G2 which comes with quite a lot of novelty features but the feature pack is still not as humongous as Samsung’s. First up, the G2 is running almost the latest version of android which is 4.2.2 and on top of it is LG’s practicalUX which is a new name for their UI. Among the features, the one which I feel is the most practical is the SlideAside feature which is basically a cool new way to multitask. You literally store the apps you would like to multitask on the left side of the screen and when you want to use it you just slide it out and it is ready for action. I’ll have to try it out myself to see how nifty the feature is. Other features are AnswerMe which is something like Samsung’s Direct Call but it works differently, it enables you to answer calls just by putting the phone near your ear. Plug&Pop is yet another novelty feature which is similar to Samsung’s page buddy, it basically just recommends options or related features for your to choose from when your plug in either an earphone or a USB cable. In my experience of using the Samsung version of it, the feature is really a handy one and all OEMs should implement it. TextLink is something which looks and sounds cool but I don’t think its that practical to all users, It basically allows you to export information from the text messages to your calendar, memo, etc. QuickRemote is essentially just a fancy name for the universal remote app on the G2 powered by the IR blaster. GuestMode in the other hand is really like a carbon copy of kids corner on Windows Phone which can be enabled with a different unlock pattern on your lockscreen. Additionally LG also tweaked the software of the G2 of you can long press the volume rocker keys to activate smart memo and the camera. Alongside support of 60fps 1080P video, LG has also added a feature on the camera which is called Audio Zooming which basically enables you to focus the audio at a single point, I find that this feature will be pretty useful to most of the users.
“there are a bevy of software features on the G2”
Finally I’m going to talk purely about my opinions on the device. The thing which I absolutely adore about the G2 is not the display or the camera but the customization in the software. In case you didn’t know you can actually modify the icons on the G2, for me that is a big plus because currently on my phone I’m running nova launcher and I’m constantly changing the icons. The change in the icons can also strongly impact the look of your device. On the G2 LG opted for on screen keys, and I’m not such a big fan of it because when I’m using device with on screen keys I always tend to accidentally trigger the buttons. But one thing which LG did on the G2 is that they have a setting to enable you to change the order and the look of the on screen keys which is a big plus for me even though I somehow detest on screen keys. In addition, as a left hander i'm always complaining why OEMs won't put the power lock button on the left side but on the G2 it would be more fair because the buttons are on the back. 
"a little justice for use left handers"
Another thing which I was a bit down is that the G2 does not have a microSD card slot but LG did make it up by having 32GB of storage on the device. However in the news topics along the past week, the Korean G2 has been shown off and it has a microSD card slot but the negative about that is that the device is 0.1cm thicker. Moving down to availability of the device, till today there are still no solid dates but LG did say its happening in the fall. The device will be coming the over 130 carriers worldwide in launch and the 4 main US carriers will all have it. But the problem I can see LG facing now is competition with the devices being released in the fall. Devices like the Galaxy Note III and iPhone 5S will be hitting markets around in the starting of fall. In other stories, recently a Vietnamese blog said that LG will be making this year’s nexus phone for the second time in a row and the device will be based on the G2. My conclusion of the LG G2 is that it may succeed but don’t expect a big success because in this era of smartphone powerful specs don’t contribute much plus in about 3 months down the road these specs will be dethroned by newer chips. The success of the G2 is highly dependent on how LG is going handle marketing of the device. 

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Thursday, August 15, 2013

Which Version Of The Galaxy Note III Will Your Country Will Receive ? We Have The Whole List Here

Well, last week Samsung sent out invites for their Unpacked event which will take place on September 4 in IFA at Berlin. The obvious star of the show is the third generation galaxy note which its details are not that clear yet. Additionally Sammobile has released a complete list of the countries which will be receiving either the 3G or 4G version of device. They noted that if the country is receiving 2 of the variants, the 4G version will be making its way in first. The 3G version will be packing the octa core exynos processor and the 4G version will be utilizing the snapdragon 800 paired up with the new Adreno 330 graphics. What's interesting to see is that this time around Samsung will be starting off the storage at 32GB but 16GB version will be available but not at launch. You can check out the whole list below: 
Source: Sammobile
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Thursday, August 8, 2013

My Experience Being On Facebook For 5 Years


Facebook was launched in 2004, which means that it has been nearly a decade that it has existed on the web. As of March 2013, there are 1.15 billion monthly active users worldwide. I’m pretty sure that you yourself have a facebook account.
"facebook has embiggend our lives"
The growth of facebook is really phenomenal and before is start my article today, I would like to talk about some interesting statistics about facebook which I found over the past weekend, some of these stats might sound unbelievable but they are indeed accurate. The largest age group on facebook is actually users aging in at 45-54 years old and the second largest is usersaged 24-34 years old. In addition to that, 25% of facebook users are from the united states. 92% of corporate companies prefer using facebook compared to other social networks to market their products. Also, more than 50% of the fortune 500 companies have facebook pages. 

These are some of the short facts about facebook, maybe in the forseen future I will compile all of these facts in to an articles. Moving on to today’s article, I am going to talk about my experience in using facebook for this past 5 years. First up I will start with a story of how my first facebook account was created. My first ever account was created by me my friends which were nagging me to create an account for a few weeks, in the end they helped me create the account and that’s how it started out for me. Seemingly enough my first facebook account was created on the 8th of August 2008 or 08.08.08, that day was also the first day of the Beijing Olympics.
"i didn't realize it until i was researching about this article earlier this year, really a coincidence"
At the time when I was still not quite an internet user but I did have a myspace account and I also was blogging around that time. Moving to facebook which was in that time still not that widespread yet was pretty hollow as I only had about 20 friends or so and the only thing which I did on facebook that time was to use the poke button to poke my friends. Up to today I have a few facebook accounts and the present account which I’m always using was created 1 year after my first account. In that timeframe where joined facebook, the social network was more towards app/games than sharing content or consuming content as most of the content mainly because people who want to write their thoughts would either blog about it in blogger or write a tweet. Additionally to that in early 2009 twitter saw an explosive growth and somehow I created my one and only twitter account that year. 
Well towards the end of 2009 I started playing restaurant city because I saw my siblings play with the game on facebook and that game was a high ranked game on facebook in that year alongside pet society. Among all of the games I played on facebook in the years, reataurant city was the best. But sadly when EA bought playfish the game when south in terms of user base. Well earlier this year I was like bored reading up tech news so I thought why not I fire up restaurant city and see how my restaurant is doing and the yeah a page came up saying that the game has retired I was like saying fu*K. Seemingly enough I might have missed their email about the retirement of the game. 

Moving forward to 2011 I joined Google+ and in the start it really wasn’t that pleasant mainly because the page is not centered but always facing the left hand side (found out this only happens in high res displays only) leaving a big white empty spot on the right (what is google thinking?!), this can be seen in the present with the new youtube layout which has the same orientation which sides to the left hand side leaving a lot of empty unused space on the right. But last year Google overhauled the layout of Google Plus which is the current 3 slot feed which uses up the available realestate. Well Google+ is actually a very excellent social network which in terms of design can easily trump facebook. But the reason why people don’t loiter around Google’s homegrown social network is because many of our friends are just not there and Google+ is really a bit complicated at first but after learning its actually more simpler and well planned compared to facebook. 

I’ll be doing a few articles about Google+ early next year to showcase some of its features, so stay tuned. One of the most memorable events which I remembered in my 5 year in facebook is when the social media giant introduced the timeline profile with the timeline cover in late 2011. People were like saying they did not like it and said that they preferred the old one which had a little bit more customizations. But personally I like the timeline profile from the start mainly due to the inclusion of the timeline cover which gives a profile a certain personality. 
Fast forward to the present day in which LG has taken the wraps off their new flagship smartphone the G2. Facebook is pretty much a totally different thing compared to when I joined facebook 5 years ago on this very day. In todays generation people are constantly holding up their smartphones and using apps. The facebook app on mobile has evolved a lot in the years since it was introduced. Currently the facebook app is basically an advertising platform for advertisers with an ad popping up in every 7-8 feed items. In the desktop, facebook has also changed a lot with inclusions of new features recently like graph search and the new news feed which is more intuitive. With the phenomenal growth of facebook, practically all of your friends have a facebook account.

I used to have 1000+ friends and in the past few months I have been filtering and refining my friends list and I found a lot of people which I did not even know in my friends list. With facebook being not that safe in this era I’m locking down my account and I’m still in progress to filter my friend list into groups. I have to say in these 5 year facebook security has been increased and hacking a facebook account is not as easily done than a few years ago. One of the things which I don’t quite like on facebook is the news feed, currently facebook is filtering a lot of content so basically I’m looking at about only 30-40% of the content shared by my friends and on the mobile app that percentage gets lower. 

It just feels seemingly wrong that you have so many friends and you don’t always see their content. But I have found a simple workaround which is to classify your friends in to lists and you can see all their content. Another thing which i do not like one bit at all are these pages which post up fake giveaways asking you to share the photo and like the page and in return they seem to have a lot of stock of devices like the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 to give away for free, now these are just ridiculous. Also there are like these pages stating that if you like a photo they will donate a few cents to the situation in the photo and that is just outrageously a scam in disguise.
"users must be more aware"
Additionally in this time, facebook and other social medias are an important asset as it has the power to convey information like breaking news to everybody in a strike. Take for example there is a natural disaster and not everybody watches the news so social media comes to play where everybody starts sharing out the news and it becomes a frenzy of activity. This is about it, my experience of being on facebook for 5 years which all started without my consent. 

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