My Thoughts On iOS 7, Did Apple Reinvent iOS ?

Earlier this week Apple held their annual WWDC 2013 developer's event. Every year on day 1 of the agenda is the press conference which Apple usually announce new versions of their iOS and Mac software with some casual hardware announcements. I gave my thoughts to the event a few days ago, so if you want to read it click here. In the almost 2 hour long press conference, Apple announced the latest version of OS X and refreshed lineup of MacBook Airs as well as giving us a sneak preview of the upcoming refreshed Mac Pro desktop. Well the mega star of the show was iOS 7, in this article i'm going to talk all about what i think about iOS 7. Fast forwarding back to Monday when Apple held the keynote, i was watching the event live and if i'm not mistaken they announced iOS 7 at about 2:15AM (11:15AM PT). Tim Cook was the one which announced the new software and he didn't do much as the product video did most of the talking. Moving on to my very first impressions of it, i really like the new interface and it was paired up with the new dynamic wallpapers so it made the experience look even better. My first impression of it and my current impression of it is still the same which brings to my overall conclusion is that i like iOS 7 a lot, well the new interface that is. About the new icons, they look very nice and redesigned and Jony Ive seemingly made them look very simple and very minimalistic in terms of the overall look and feel. The text on iOS 7 is really to my liking as i really like minimalism in the things i do, minimalism just makes thing even more cleaner and simple looking. The negative impacts which i can see this bringing is that although the minimalistic text looks clean and simple, while reading long paragraphs it might be as easy to the eyes for some users because the text is pretty thin and the letters look very similarly in size which makes somewhat of an optical illusion to the text body. Another thing which i'm concerned is that the icons which Jony Ive bundled in with iOS 7, the new icons no longer have texture or abstracts like wood and felt. In that some of the icons now have pure white backgrounds and that might raise a problem when a user is putting up a dark background and the icons might just look weird. On that topic the new icons somehow will not look good with other third party app icons. Take for example the Facebook app icon will indefinitely not look good beside the new iOS 7 icons because it has a dark styled icon, whereas the official twitter app icon will most probably blend right in due to its simple and light color.

The fresh new coat of paint iOS desperately needed to survive, but is it enough ?

Moving on to the overall look at iOS 7, Tim Cook said that iOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone and Craig Federighi says "its like getting an entirely new phone, but one you know how to use". I totally hands down agree on what Craig says about iOS but as for Tim Cook, err not so much because it seems that this sentence is repeated every iOS release.

As what the rumor mills said prior to the launch, iOS no bears a more flatter UI which dissolves the 3D look and feel to the whole OS and leaving only the front of everything. iOS 7 to me really looks very organized and looking at the demos Apple did during the event, the OS seems to look very unified everywhere around the stock apps. I literally love the look of the new keyboard. The animations now look a bit androidified but there's no harm done there. The new dynamic wallpaper which Apple has introduced is just Apple's way of defining a live wallpaper. Currently there are only two available in the 1st beta of iOS 7 and when the software hits prime time this fall more are expected to be added but the question now arises whether Apple will allow you to add third party dynamic wallpapers. Apart from the dynamic wallpapers, Apple also added a new element which gives your still wallpapers some motion which is actually pretty cool, you can also put a panorama static wallpaper for your home and lockscreen and the wallpaper will follow your motions as you go round and round and round a circle. In addition to the new flatter and cleaner UI, Apple also introduced the new notification pull down menu which now shows you not only your notifications but also a nicely lined up day agenda which consists of your calendar appointments and your alarms, the notification pull down menu is now also supported on the lockscreen . Seemingly gone is the tweet button and the stocks which was introduced last year in iOS 6. Also throughout the whole UI iOS 7 tends to use a blurred out screen of your current screen as the background of certain features like the spotlight search keyboard, notification center, command center, etc. Which brings me to the next big thing on iOS 7 which is Command Center, for jailbreak users this might just be pretty normal as something like this has been in the jailbreak community for quite some time now. Basically command center is a simple way for you to access some simple settings like wifi, brightness, camera, etc. Similar to the notification pull down menu, the command center also works on the lockscreen. But the problem here is that nothing there is seemingly customizable, other than that i think that command center will work quite smartly. Another thing is that in the past few days i've been hearing and reading a lot of criticism about Apple copying other platforms and in command center you can say that apple did reference it from the android pull down notification bar but i can see that Apple's one is more easily accessible because it is a pull up from the bottom opposed to a pull down on android and the toggles are located at the very tall and with phones getting bigger and bigger you would have to stretch your fingers a bit to reach those toggles. Jumping into the usual preinstalled apps on iOS 7 like photos, weather, notes, etc these apps have now been given a facelift and is updated to join hands with the new flatter and cleaner UI. The app which i most like is Safari, Apple has made it even more beautiful with that search bar which hides on when you are scrolling down to create a full screen browsing experience.

It's like an alternate universe where everything works the same

Next on i'll jump right into the camera app which has been totally redesigned and in my eyes it is the best camera interface present on any platform period. Sure, the new iOS 7 camera does not come with a load of modes like the S4's one but the iOS 7 keeps itself to the most basic level at core for a camera which is soley for taking picture only. The UI of the app is very very simple and easy to use, its basically your viewfinder and below are your camera functions like video, aspect ratio, filter, etc. All you have to do to switch modes is to either swipe left of right and the function starts immediately and seemingly the response is very good. One major system feature which Apple has given a facelift is the multitasking bar/window which is now no longer only icons which vibrate at its own position when you want to close them, it is now a card style interface with the screen of the app and the icon below. All you have to do to close the app is to swype up and that's it. Similar to the notification pull down and command center the multitasking window/bar takes up the whole screen and the background is a blurred out screen of your current screen. Inside the new app icons Apple has added a new feature to the stock mail app which enables you to swipe to the left to archive or delete the mail. The App Store now also has a tab which you can now search apps based on the age rating. Overall the new UI is sleek and beautiful in design and yeah now you can just swipe to the right to go back provided that there is a back button in the top left to the screen. I can't say that the UI is flawless but it is still what iOS users like but now its just been given a fresh coat of paint. Oh yeah another thing is that the there is one icon which has live movements which is the clock app, it is literally live and you can stay all day long looking at the second hand move one second at a time. Apparently, the weather icon is not live because in Apple's test it was draining battery life, but if would be quite cool if it was live but i do agree because the weather app needs to take on data from the web and constantly update it whereas the clock app is basically just moving routinely. I also liked the animation which come with iOS 7, the best one is the one where you change from apps in the multitasking window where apps just like motion up in a rectangle and i can relate this animation because its similar to the one found in android. 

Good artists copy, great artists steal

I have talked and highlighted most of the high points of iOS 7, so now i'm going to talk about the user responses in social media. Over the course of the days in the middle of me making this article and the iOS 7 unveiling i have been looking through my facebook and twitter to read through some comments on iOS 7. I seems that everybody does not like the UI with exceptions of a handfull of people liking it from day 1. People started trash talking about Apple by saying this and that and that Apple copied every there OS out there and people left and right were saying that they were disappointed that Apple was now copying even from windows, the talk goes on and on. But what i would like to reiterate is that, Yes it is very obvious that apple copied/referenced/steal the design of key iOS 7 features and called it their own and called it their innovation. That point is obvious but what i tend to see is not comparing it with other OSs and just look at iOS 7, Jony Ive Apple did a great job in designing this new OS which is fresh and clean. If you do compare (picture above) the iOS 7 features which Apple copied with the respective platforms you can see that its like a carbon footprint but overall Apple refined the design of the things they copied and added a little of their own touch. As what Steve Jobs said 'good artists don't copy they steal'. Moving forward to things which i'm still concerned about iOS 7, as i said earlier about the white based icons, there is actually a engine inside the OS which detects your background and intelligently changes the theme from either black mode or white mode; you can also manually change it yourself in the settings. This does come up with a question of wheter is it enough. Another thing is that other than images Apple never actually showed iOS 7 running on the iPad. I think they still haven't quite got the UI right and the beta for the iPad is only coming in a few weeks time. Relating to that i'm not sure how Apple plans to implement features like command center or the multitasking bar/window into the iPad's bigger display. Could it be like a full screen experience or a partial one like the pull down notification on the iPad with iOS 6. As i always say with Apple products 'Apple made software itself is nothing unless paired up with the hardware optimized for it'. So in order to have the best experience of iOS 7 i would need to see a device built around the new OS which is seemingly more optimized and carries all features. That would be the new iPads and iPhones which is coming in fall. I will come back once again with another article about iOS 7 when Apple releases new hardware in fall, so until then see you!

The crowd is going wild, well on social media that is #Twitter #Facebook 

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My Thoughts On WWDC 2013

Its about 24 hours since Apple held their keynote at WWDC 2013 in the Moscone West center. As usual i'll do a wrap up article after some time because i want to get to look into the opinions around the web as well as some mysteries behind the just announced things. So this is my first year jumping into the mobile phone industry and this is my 2nd experience of the WWDC fever. To be frank i really liked this WWDC but i really missed the moments where Scott Forstall took the stage last year as he is the only person which could just present spontaneously and gets fast to the point. This year at WWDC a lot of things were different, this is also the first public press event Apple has held this year and i can see that Apple is in a route to announce new hardware at the end of the year from now onwards. The event started at about 10+ and this year's intro video was focused on simplicity with minimalistic text. Tim Cook then took the stage first and talked quite a bit about the current status of Apple and some of the achievements Apple has collected since the last press event, as usual some trash talking came to play. Then there was a short demo by anki which showcased iOS device controlling robotics. Soon after that was done, Tim Cook took back the stage and started on again with the Macs and Mountain Lion took the tile of the best version of Mac Apple has ever created with 28 million copies sold since it was announced last fall. Next Craig Federighi comes up to stage to announce the new version of Mac which is called Mavericks. This new version of Mac includes a ton of new features which makes the experience of using Mac even better with some tagging, window collaging, multiple display support and quite a number of technology improvements inside the OS itself. I was really impressed with the battery life thing which was very innovative indeed, it basically is a Safari thing which helps Macbooks save more battery on the fly by intelligently turning off and on the CPU usage for the browser. iCloud Keychain was another cool addition to iCloud which can save your passwords and autofills and not to worry as these sensitive documents are encrypted. Next, Phil Schiller went up and announced the new refreshed Macbook Airs which are being powered by Haswell processors and are now a bit more cheaper. I was literally impressed with the battery life of the new MBA. Then after that it was the moment which i was waiting for since WWDC last year, it was the sneak peek of the all new Mac Pro which really looked nothing like a tower desktop and future upgradability for it looked bleak. But moving upon that i actually liked the design of it and it was also in a very small package and is powered by some very high tech components like 12 core Xeon processors, AMD FirePro GPUs, and comes with SSDs. The next thing was that it came with 6!!! Thunderbolt 2 ports which was just jaw dropping and Phil added that the new Mac Pro is capable of outputting 3 4K displays without any problem whatsoever. The highlight of it was that it is going to be assembled in the USA. Next, iWork for iCloud was announced and from the looks of the Demo that was really one very powerful program which runs on the we browser. Then after that Tim had the pleasure to finally announce iOS 7 and then the crowd went wild. Craig took the stage once again and went through 10 of the new things in iOS 7. The new mobile OS from Apple ushered in a whole new design and the whole OS finally had its long overdue UI overhaul. Well it wasn't much of a UI overhaul but it was much more of an improvement to the previous versions. New features like Command Center, iTunes Radio, Face Time Audio, etc was announced. Well, i'll talk more extensively on iOS 7 in my upcoming featured article about my thoughts of iOS 7. The even then wraped up with Tim Cook saying some closing words with a short video ad in the end about Apple. All in all i really felt that this years conference was way better than last year in terms of the richness  of announcements. So until next year, i'll see you again for the WWDC 2014 recap. Watch this video below by TheVerge of the highlights of the keynote.
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I Will Be Changing Platforms From Blogger To Wordpress

Well if you've been following our facebook page since the past week, then you would have seen this picture above here. Well today i am formally announcing that i'll be finally returning to blogging and you might say that what i am doing here at The Technology Of Today International is blogging and yes. But the point is that for the first time since i left the 3 years ago, i'll be starting to do some personal blogging. I remembered when i first started blogging it was around the year 2008/2007. At that time facebook and twitter was alive but it was not as widespread as the duo we know and love today. So i started my blogging journey with blogger as it was a pretty popular platform at that time for a free online blog. If not mistaken in that year alone i created over 6 blogs and up until recently i was trying to get back one of my blog with my name as the URL but i was not able to track down the email. The funny thing about it is that while trying to find the email behind that blog i found out i had a gmail account which was long forgotten, the most funny thing is that i had no recollection of creating that email but the password is to my knowing. Ok enough about that, fast forward to the present time, i am finally back to personal blogging and this time around i am switching platforms. I am announcing that for my personal blog i'll change to wordpress and as for this blog i have no plans of exporting it to wordpress so i'll be still using blogger one way another. You can read more about my journey of changing platforms in my blog at www.dickwyn.wordpress.com. You can socialize with me via twitter via my twitter handle which is @dickwyn or via the hashtag #iChange. Well while i'm here i'll talk a little bit about my experience about changing platforms. At the beginning it sounded very fun indeed and before i start anything too in depth i did some research and found out that 50% of the top 20 blogs in the world are rocking wordpress. As i was researching more i got more and more excited. Up until i started jumping into the interface i was truly frustrated as there was really a learning curve to things and everything seemed misplaced. Well i won't continue any further, if you want to read more about my journey click here to read it in my blog. Here are some screenshots and some captions.

The blogger interface is really super simple and revealing as for the wordpress interface i don't even know where to screenshot because the interface was really very knocked up and it seems like everything is hiding from me, literally.

The new post page for blogger looks very complicated compared to the one on wordpress

The new post page on wordpress is really super simple and is more powerful than the one provided in blogger

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, Flagship Gone Rugged

In the long line of rumored things, today Samsung has finally revealed the Galaxy S4 Active in the midst where most of the attention is on Computex in Taipei. The Active has been rumored shortly after the S4 hit the market. Prior to this the device has also been spotted out in the wild and even with some short hands on video. For starters the Galaxy S4 Active (GT-I9295) has a 5" 1080P screen which translates into 443PPI, but here's the catch the screen is not an AMOLED one, its a IPS display TFT display which is ok given the high pixel density. The hardware inside this adventurous phone is similar to the GT-I9505 and yes the device supports LTE. The main attraction of the device however is its ruggedized body which is IP67 certified and is water (up to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes) and dust resistant. For additional specification of the device check out the chart below. Samsung's CEO J.K. Shin had this to say about the device:

"The Galaxy S4 Active is the newest addition to the GALAXY series and is purposefully designed for active users who love the outdoors. Samsung has taken the innovative features of the Galaxy S4 and added breakthrough protective design elements to create a device that thrives in an active environment and is built for a lifestyle of travel and exploration"

Moving on, i was reading through the press release and it seems that the Active is not only more rugged but it also has some added features. Samsung still retained most of the Galaxy S4 hardware and software features like airview, super sensitive screen, air gesture, group play, etc. What is missing is the support for the dual camera mode but the device is still capable of recording underwater. Given its ruggedness, Samsung has added a feature in the camera app called 'Aqua Mode' which will make pictures and videos more clearer. The overall footprint of the device has been increased (139.7mm X 71.3mm X 9.1mm VS 136.6mm X 69.8mm X 7.9mm), the device also weighs 21g heavier than the original S4. Well these dimensions can be justified with the waterproofability and overall ruggedness of the device. But one thing i am skeptical about is wheter the device can live up to its rugged name by fairing in a drop test, only time will answer that. Talking about rugged, i think this is the first time i've seen a rugged flagship phone because other than the Xperia Z no other flagship device have been IP certified. Personally i would choose the Active over the original S4 any day of the week because the Active has a better and more solid design plus its rugged. I can close my eyes with the 8MP camera and the thicker body. Oh yeah not forgetting the Active also comes in 3 magnificent colors which are Urban Grey, Dive Blue and Orange Flare. Availability of this device is still unknown but it'll make an appearance at Samsung's London event later this month. 

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The iPhone Reaction

It has been about a year since i dove into the mobile phone industry and in the past year i have learnt quite a lot and enjoyed my research time. Fairingly enough, i'm still not ready to switch topics as unlike computers, mobile devices is a ever changing thing and i'm keen that evolution is just around the corner, so i'll stay by for about a year more. In today's topic i'll be talking about something which has always bugged me in and out when i hear about it. The topic is the iPhone reaction; it seems that today, everybody at least knows something about a smartphone and take for example is you ask about a smartphone the 'iPhone' phrase is sure to pop out into the conversation. In that same context, the iPhone has become to mainstream and has become as house phrase and people tend to say iPhone rather than saying the Galaxy S4. Another thing which i have been noticing when i am walking around and looking at people's phone and how they use it is that there is somehow a trend which android users are using an app similar to Apple's assistive touch. I really do not know why anybody wants that, in my conjencture these users think that their android phones will have the similar problem like the iPhone 4 in which the home button will stop responding. Its really ridiculous to even use that as i've never heard anybody broke their home button on their android device. Another thing is that, people seemingly want to theme their device like the iPhone and that is another #facepalm issue, really?!. Additionally last month when i tried the Galaxy S4 for the first time there was a new feature on the device which is similar to the assistive touch feature on iOS, so i asked the salesperson and he replied saying 'like the iPhone touch thing'. 

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Nvidia's Geforce GTX 780, Underpowered GTX Titan ?

Well, today is the launch date of the GTX 780 and the card will be available for purchase starting today with a base price of $649. This card will replace the previous gen GTX 680 and will be Nvidia's flagship card for this year and is also the first 700 series card to be announced. The GTX 780 still utilises the kepler architecture and has the GK 110 core; similar to the GTX Titan and the Nvidia Tesla. Moving on, the specs of the GTX 780 include the GK104 core with 2304 cuda cores, 3GB of GDDR5 memory, 48 ROP units, 7100 million transistors, a 384bit wide bus, and the core is clocked in at 863MHz at stock. After reading some of the reviews and watching a couple of videos showcasing the cards, my impressions are that Nvidia may not have created a new card but what they are trying to do is to bring better performance to a more affordable price. This fact is true because not everybody has the money to spend a hefty $999 to buy a Titan. With the GTX 780 Nvidia's bringing 60% the performance of the Titan and bringing it at a price point which is affordable to people. In the SLI reviews, i've seen the GTX 780 is similar to other cards ever made as the price to performance ratio is similar as 2 cards does not mean double the performance. In the design of the card, Nvidia did a great job by bringing the awesome design introduced on the GTX 690 down to the GTX 780 which includes an aluminum frame and a plexi-glass window as well as a blower style fan. On to the temperatures and i averaged out a few of the reviews i managed to go through and 35-37 degrees seem to be the idle and under full load the temps are at about 80 degrees. Overall Nvidia has provided users with an upgraded version of the GTX 680. Other than new hardware, Nvidia alongside the GTX 780 has announced shadowplay which will record you gameplay and will give you sort of a gameplay video of about 20 mins for your complexity to show people. 

'You could call it the GTX Titan Le too'

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The Droid Guy Will Be Our Alias In Tech News

Back in April i announce version 2.0 of this blog and one of the big changes hitting is that since then i said that i would not be posting about news content and i redirected you to the social networks under our network. Additionally if you have been following me on twitter and facebook then you would have noticed that in the week following to this day i've been teasing of a new launch with the hashtag #GreenDROID. Well today i'm proud to announce that we will be partnering up with thedroidguy.com to provide you, our readers with tech content. Well, we weren't able to partner up with big site but this is a start. This site is the first of the few which we are partnering with and more will coming very very soon. This site is based in the US so, it'll be more informative for users there. Jumping into that, i'll also be writing there from time to time also so watch out for that.

• My first article there...

And another thing, their articles will also be widespreaded over our whole network so all of our page will be featuring up to date news. For the readers not in the US, rest assured i'm ready to announce our next partnership by the end of this month, get ready readers from india... Click the link below to start reading news.

• The Droid Guy 

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Jolla Announced Their First Smartphone, Yours For €399

Late last year a group of ex-nokia employees under the N9 and the meego platform formed a new company called Jolla Mobile and soon after that they showed off the OS which will be powering the device from the company which was called Sailfish OS. Fast forward to this day, the company has finally announced their first device which somehow doesn't have an exact name yet but for now i'll just call it Jolla's first smartphone.  This device will be pioneering the new operating system and in the hardware sides' the device packs a 4.5" display of unknown resolution, an unnamed dual core processor, an 8MP camera with LED flash, 16GB of onboard storage which is expandable via microSD slot, the ever so controversial user removable battery is present, and LTE in supported regions. The company said that this device will be yielding support for android apps. Moving to the outer of the device, which includes a two part construction which is the back cover and the phone, the design looks very simplistic and has a certain style to it and to top it off, multiple colors will be available.

"Carrying the DNA of Nokia with Colors"

"Jolla's phone might not have the apps but it's design is surely something to drool over"

I can see this phone really being a popular hit among people which are particularly keen for design because the amount of detail the team at Jolla put is just phenomenal. Personally i really like the design of it with the buttons and the two piece design, this really is the true successor to the N9 or in other words "the N9 reborn". Moving on to the nitty gritty info, Jolla is planning to launch this phone at first to selected European countries and in the near future more regions will get it. The price of the device is set at €399 or about $510, personally i think that the price is pretty reasonable but that is when i overlook the unannounced capabilities of the fresh OS. Additionally, device will be heading to users by the end of the year. It really looks like a tough battle for this new OS as they are not only competing with the heavyweight contenders but they also need to take on the new kids on the block which include Ubuntu, Tizen and Firefox. It seems to be a tough battle but i think Jolla is able to make it if they get the operating system correct because currently hand swiping gestures is pretty popular, so they are on the right track. In the same context they are having 3 pre order options for the device; the first one is a zero cost option which will include you a reservation of the device when it finally comes to your land; the second one is will cost you €40 and will get you a limited edition version of the device, a t-shirt and a priority status for you pre order; finally is the €100 deal which includes an exclusive back cover for the device, a t-shirt, and a €100 rebate off the total price of the device. You can check out more details here. As to more of my thoughts, i can't convey it because the company still has not officially revealed details on the sailfish OS in whole, so this will continue in a follow up article. To check out more photos of Jolla's first smartphone click here 
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Camera360 Ultimate App Review, The Best Camera App Ever

Preface:

If i'm not mistaken this is my first ever proper review for this year, well moving along this time around i'll be doing things differently. First up is that i've been testing out this app for about 5 days now and i felt that i was ready to do a review. Well as usual i'm using my Galaxy Note GT-N7000 to test things out but i did have a chance to head over to the Nokia store and tried it out on the Lumia 920. Additionally before this i've only used one third party camera app which is the cameraZoomFX app. Personally i'm the type of person which does not like to modify things and i like to keep things to the most stock level. Also at the start i actually felt pretty fed up with the app because of the preview menu after taking each photo.

Introduction:

Camera360 is a camera app which is pretty popular on android as well as iOS. Just recently they announced that they now have 100 million users worldwide. Well in the 21st century where smartphones dominate the world and apps are a key part of the smartphone experience, Camera360 does the right thing as they have an app for the top 3 most popular mobile OS's in the market currently which are android, iOS and Windows Phone 8. In plain sight the UI of the app in all the 3 platforms it exist in might look a bit different but deep down the features are still there. 

Design & Layout:

To be frank here, at first i did find the app a bit frustrating because of the layout and the small icons on the left side of the screen. But i conquered the ordeal by trying to click out each and every button there and then after that i was used to the UI and everything went on pretty smooth. Then after that another problem popped out and it was the preview menu which popped out each time i take a shot. But then i solved this problem by changing the shooting mode to fast shoot. After that ordeal the app actually worked pretty fine and all of the buttons and toggles actually seemed properly placed.

"The UI might look densely populated but actually its not, its just perfect..."

Features:

The camera360 app is categorized as a camera app but actually its features span into the world of photo editing. Well it does not have very in depth photo editing centric features like increasing the brightness or changing the contrast but it does have something more simpler and hassle free. These are called filters and this app has a lot of them and in my period testing it i was unable to try out each and every one of them. But the ones i tried was pretty cool and the best filter by far is the random filter which chooses a random filter for each photo but actually i highly recommend using the random filter because it gets the best out of the image. At plane sight they say that the random filter is random but who knows maybe they have some engine powering it. You can check out the photo above in which i took a single photo and added a few filters to it. As to most third party camera apps, there is also a HDR filter on this app which seemingly works pretty good is some situations. 

"Filter, Filters and even more Filters"

Performance:

In my time using it there was a minimal amount of lag but there is a slight frame drop on my phone when i close the app. Overall i did not experience anything too unbearable and the app performed pretty well. Taking photos are really pretty fast and the loading time of the app is actually a few microseconds faster than the stock camera app on my phone.

"Lag is not an issue here"

Conclusion:

In conclusion i will be making the step forward and from now onwards i will be using this as my main camera app on my phone. I do have to address in a few issues i faced while using the app, the first is the UI which as i said earlier a bit confusing when you first open the app. If the developer could like implement a walkthrough guide for first time users about the whole UI of the app then that would just be amazing. Another thing is that with certain filters it takes a tad bit more time to save, i'm not sure if that's a problem with my phone or the file size is just too big. All in all if i were to give this app a score in a scale of 1 to 10, i would give it a solid 9/10 because the features it brings to the table is just phenomenal and is the only app i currently know which has that much of filters. In addition to that, the UI of the app is actually fairly simple after you use it a few times. Finally if you're just wanting a camera app on your phone, the camera360 is actually a fairly good balance between features and simplicity. In contrast i would like to thank Kerry, my rep from camera360 for introducing this app to me. Check out some of the images i took with the app below...

"Camera360 is a spectacular camera app which can help you capture moments not only in perfect clarity but also with a touch of style, the filters present in this app are really a lot."

[+] Pros:

1. Has a ton of features
2. Literally has the most filters i've ever seen
3. The random effect filter works surprisingly smart, bringing photos to life
4. App launch time is relatively quick
5. The stabilizer feature is very nifty
6. has setting to turn your volume rocker into a shutter button
7. The tilt-shift and color shift mode is pretty cool

[-] Cons:

1. lacks the function to share directly to Instagram
2. UI somehow feels a bit messy and unlabeled on the android version
3. Takes some time to save images with the implementation of certain filters
4. Lacks a toggle to change the aspect ratio
5. Lacks video camera support (only available on iOS via a separate app called Movie360)

What are you waiting for, Try it now!: 

• Camera360 Ultimate for iPhone
• Camera360 Ultimate for Android
• Camera 360 for Windows Phone 8

Sample Pictures:

The Magic Color filter allows you to select certain colors to display 

The Sketch filter, gives the picture a nice touch

The Magic Color filter in action, a very nice filter...

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Nokia Lumia 925 Initial Impressions, The First Aluminum Lumia

Earlier today Nokia held an event in London in which they unveiled the long awaited Lumia 925 codnamed catwalk. The device bears similar specs to the Lumia 920 and 928 but one thing which is different on the Lumia 925 is that the storage is only at 16GB and a microSD card slot is still MIA. Well let me recap the specs: a 1.5GHz dual core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 4.5" 1280 X 768 OLED display, an 8.7MP Pureview camera, Windows Phone 8, and LTE support. Well in terms of the design of the Lumia 925, the device tops the chart of being the slimmest Lumia device to date measuring in at a staggering 8.5mm. The weight is significantly lower compared to the 920 and 928. Nokia achieved this with the inclusion of a aluminum band around the device which acts as an antenna for the device and gives the device a bit more rigidity. In the following days i will have a response article about Nokia's flagship WP8 device(s). From the surface it looks like Nokia just redesigned the 920 and that is what they did, but they also made the camera more powerful then ever. The MPx count is still the same but this time around Nokia added a sixth lens which is 1 lens more than the 920 and 928. The additional lens is a glass physical lens which accompanies the 5 plastic ones which are present on the 920. With the inclusion of this sixth glass lens, Nokia says that the ISO can now go up to 3200 and daylight as well as low light images will be more sharper than ever before. The 925 with its 6 element lens is the first in the industry and beat devices like the iPhone5 which has only 5 element lens. Well with the overall thinness of the device Nokia wasn't able to throw in wireless charging but they did provide an optional wireless charging accessory which connects through the 3 pin outs on the back of the device similar to the L720. The Lumia 925 has received quite a lot of reactions and one of them is the color which Nokia failed as they were only offering metalic colors for the Lumia 925 but that can be easily solved with the wireless charging back cover which comes in many different colors. Moving to the software sides, the Lumia 925 still runs Microsoft's WP8 but nokia has added a new app called Nokia Smart Camera Mode which is by default the main camera app and the main feature is its motion photo capabilities which are similar to action mode android devices (sample image below). The app is actually pretty cool and this will be soon be available to other Lumia WP8 devices via the Amber update coming in July. Alongside that Nokia has announced a new app coming to WP8 called Hipstamatic which is currently only on iOS. The main highlights of the app is the filters and the capability to post images to instagram. Overall the Lumia 925 seems to be an underwhelming device. The device will be hitting store next month for about 469euros. In the US this will be a T-Mobile exclusive device and in the UK it will be a Vodafone exclusive. Stay tuned for more content on the Lumia 925 coming your way in the coming days ahead.

Sample image taken on the Lumia 925

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Google I/O 2013, What To Expect

Google I/O is just 3 days away and this time around don't expect something big to be announced like Android 5.0. The main keynote as always will be held on the first day, which is May 15. So without further ado i'll list out the top things i think will be announced. A new version of android is what i'm firmly putting my hands on and according to the internet, Google will be announcing android 4.3 Jellybean which is just a cover up because v5.0 seemingly is facing some delays. This new android version is going to bring some minor improvements so don't put your hands on something big. Another things which is nearly confirmed is a branch of the Play Store called Play Games which will be a service similar to Game Center on iOS which will record all your game achievements and you can compare them with your friends. Additionally, Google might also announce an update to Google Now which will add more features, also expansion of the service to the desktop site is also a big probability. In the hardware side, Google is set to either announce the 32GB Nexus 4 with LTE or the Nexus 5 or even both. In other speculations the Nexus 7+ is also slated for announcement this wednesday, the new 7" tablet from Google will have a higher resolution screen, a faster processor and will still have that $199 price range. Alright on to the pure speculation, maybe just maybe google might once again give light to the Nexus Q media player. Also Google Glass might be a main topic of the keynote this time around. This is all of my speculations for the keynote happening in 3 days time, stay tuned for the recap article. 

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The Nokia Lumia 928 Has Finally Been Unveiled

Following the leaks which surrounded the internet in the past month, today Nokia and Verizon finally announced the Nokia Lumia 928 which is the latest Lumia model from Nokia and is an exclusive device for Verizon Wireless in the US. As speculated and leaked previously the Lumia 928 is basically deep down a Lumia 928 but the design of the device changed and interestingly enough the device is actually 0.3mm thicker than the Lumia 920 but looks really thin . Alongside that, Nokia equipped this device with the same 8.7MP Pureview camera and this time around they smacked a Xenon flash on the back. Overall this device deep down is a Lumia 920 with a whole new look. The device still lacks a microSD card slot but wireless charging is still built in. The device will go on sale on May 16 on Verizon for $99 and that is literally a good deal for a 32GB phone. 

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