Smartphones have forever changed the way we interact with the world. Previously, blogging was done from the comfort of one’s home or at the most, an internet café. With the convenience of a cell phone, users can instead use the apps for their favorite blogging platforms in order to update their blogs while on the go.

This is handy for uploading pictures and capturing video of live events that would otherwise have to wait until you get home. Here are the top blogging apps available for iPhone and Android phones:

WordPress

WordPress is the number one blogging platform in the world. It is used by millions of people across the globe, both as the self-hosted downloadable version and the managed version provided for free by WordPress.com.

The WordPress app works with both of these services and makes it easy for bloggers to check their stats and update blogs while on the go. WordPress supports uploading pictures and video from your phone and you can even schedule posts directly from your phone.

The application is completely free for both iPhone and Android and is continuously updated by Automattic, the maintainers of the WordPress platform. Comments can be managed from within the app as well, so you can quickly follow the discussions generated by your blog throughout the day.

Blogger

While Blogger is not the most popular platform for blogging, it was the first and is the reason the term ‘blogging’ exists. The Blogger interface is simple and easy to use and allows you to update your blog instantly. You can also interact with comments left and add comments to any threads that have been started.

The only downside of the app is that it doesn’t allow you to make any changes to your blog, so if you want to edit the sidebar or any other information you will have to access the site from a computer.

Tumblr

Tumblr has grown in popularity as a quick-blogging platform for posting pictures, small snippets of text or bits of audio that people will enjoy. Most Tumblr’s are designed around a specific theme, while others are used as a professional catalog for artists and writers.

Since Tumblr is based around its own social network with the ability to follow other people’s blogs, the app also lets you catch up on all of your follower’s activity. You can quickly browse their updates and favorite them, or even leave a note to tell them what you liked about the entry.

Mobile Tethering 

Since these apps are designed to post to your blog on the go, if you need to make changes to the design or other interface options, you will need to access your site from a real browser on a computer. Mobile tethering can help with this, as it allows you to use your cell phone as a modem to bridge your data so that your laptop can connect to the Internet. If there are no wi-fi hotspots available, then mobile tethering is often the only way you will be able to get Internet on your laptop.

Some carriers charge extra for mobile tethering and require you to have a plan specifically designed for tethering, so if you want to tether your laptop or tablet with your cell phone you will need to check your carrier policy to determine whether or not you are violating the terms of service.

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Apple has embarked finally with the iPhone 4S- the latest iPhone. Though this hottest device might disappoint its fan since it doesn’t carry the aura of mythical iPhone 5, however, it comes with great sophistication and innovation which is going to surprise people all across the world.

Even the current users of iPhone 4 would be lured to upgrade to this new device. The following are the four important reasons to upgrade from any device or iPhone 4 to iPhone 4S, let’s try to find what makes it different from the previous version:

The Siri responds in whatever you demand

Do you feel like having any helping hand or assistant reading out your text messages or weather forecast, gets for you a list of good food joint near your place, sets your alarm, tell you the time in any foreign language, checks your schedule and appointments and anything you would require to have. And if you want this to happen in your life, these all things are made possible with Siri, a personal assistant which comes in iPhone 4S. You can seek any help from this assistant as said above as it remains your handy helper for anything posed at any now and then. Siri is capable of understanding your needs and its context in a right way and hence respond in the same fashion as you expect from your assistant.

The camera competent in all point and shoots

Apple is known to claim using the best cameras in its iPhone devices. However, at this point of time the hype which we hear about the camera used in iPhone 4S seems to be coming true. The device promises a camera having 8 megapixel sensor, an enlarged aperture, new fifth lens, face detection with low motion blur which means that it is capable of handling the specs of point and shoot. Besides, the camera also permits you for some of the basic photo editing requirements, wherein you can crop and rotate the image, enhance the photo automatically and even remove the red eye. Furthermore, the iPhone 4S is equally competent in video shooting as well, wherein it shoots the HD video with 1080p.

iPhone 4S comes with more power

The device has the A5 chip which is the same dual core chip used in the iPad 2. This means that it is capable of carrying the workload with efficiency and power. So whatever you do, you get things in pace, for instance web pages can load much faster or with double speed. The applications runs fast and smooth, data which you will download gets fast with a speed of 14.4 Mbps and graphics has amazing speed. With such speed the battery has nothing to compromise in its life, you will find a nonstop eight hours talk time or 14 hours for the 2G, and while in 3G browsing you will get a six hour life and lastly with WiFi the browsing time comes to nine hours.

All time compatible phone

You don’t have to worry whether you use a GSM or CDMA, since the phone is competent in handling both. So wherever you travel in the world, you do not have to worry about these constraints. An excellent choice for business class people who travel abroad on a frequent basis for their business needs. With this competence, the iPhone 4S can move around on a GSM networks in about 200 countries making an ideal choice for business community people. Now you do not have to worry about your carrier, anyone is compatible over this new device.

Final Word

Certainly with these above four factors as discussed above in the article you have enough reason to upgrade to the latest device of Apple – the iPhone 4S. So with double power, great camera of 8 Megapixels and feature like the Siri, no one can afford losing this device for sure. So have it and enjoy the incredible things which comes in built in this latest device of Apple.

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Competition is hotting up in the tablet market.  Despite, Steve Ballmer demo-ing a Windows 7 Tablet in advance of the Apple iPad launch, no Windows tablet has yet to be launched.  However, serious competition to Apple’s iPad is starting to emerge, based on Google’s popular Android operating system.

A strong contender for tablet of the year is the Samsung Galaxy Tab.  This super slim tablet from Samsung incorporates a very strong spec list, and looks beautiful in the flesh.

The Galaxy Tab  incorporates a 7 inch WSVGA screen, as well as four buttons on the front for home, options, back and search; similar to Android handsets.  Inside is a 1Ghz processor so it’s super-fast.  It has two built-in cameras – a 1.3MP front facing camera and a 3MP rear-facing camera.

Connectivity is well supported with 802.11n Wi-Fi, and 3G support is included in all models.

In terms of storage two sizes are offered, 16GB and 32GB.  However, both Galaxy Tab’s include a microSD slot so a further 32GB of storage can be added (of course, multiple microSD cards can be utilised so the iPad’s 64GB of storage can be exceeded)

To assist with the launch of the Galaxy Tab, Samsung have produced a series of videos.  My favourite is by a London-based photographer, who shares how he uses his Galaxy Tab:

To learn more about the Samsung Galaxy Tab, click here or visit their Facebook page here.

Sponsored Post

Viral video by ebuzzing

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In a surprisingly short period of time, smartphones have gotten to the point where they’ve become an essential commodity in our everyday lives. Their versatility and impressive app market has made them indispensable tools for every sector from business to education. Try and think of something that you’d like to do and there’s probably an app that will perform that specific function along with a dozen other things.

As far as college students are concerned, whether you’re attending any universities or top online colleges, it’s hard to keep track of everything. It’s this same concept that inspired the creation of many useful applications. Educational apps is one of the biggest markets where developers are creating new ways for a college student to more easily manage their busy day and numerous demands. Great apps for college students include:

iStudiez Pro

This app was developed to help students keep track of their schedules, but does far more than that and allows users to do everything from organize their homework assignments to keeping track of their grades in each class. You can alter the settings to give you alerts when a test, assignment, or presentation is coming up. This app can be used for more purposes than just students. Teachers have also found iStudiez Pro useful to keep track of all the needs and upcoming events for classes. It can also be useful to parents who are keeping tract of their young child’s schooling. This app costs $2.99, which brings it in on the expensive side, as far as apps go. There are free options you can choose from if you’re wanting comparable features for managing your workload.

Wikipedia Mobile

This free online encyclopedia has gotten a lot of blow back from many in the education field due to the nature of the way the information is gathered. The site relies heavily on user contribution and is discouraged among many collegiate programs, yet it remains one of the most popular ways for students to gain a quick overview of an idea, period, or topic. Though there are some instances where the information has been called into question, Wikipedia is still an excellent source that covers the gambit of most any topic you can think of, and the app is free which is always a bonus.

Evernote

This application gives a fresh and improved approach to taking notes for classes. Evernote obviously would work for far more than just students, but it’s useful in almost any capacity. The goal of this app was to give users the ability to never forget a moment, idea, or quote. It can be used across many platforms and devices. You can do anything from creating text notes to snapshots of whiteboards or book text. You can capture almost any text or something that you want to remember for a later date. You can save web pages or any source material that might be useful when writing a paper or keep ideas for your next assignment. It’s an incredible note management system that’s perfect for anyone who needs to keep track of a dozen things at once.

If you’re in college or getting ready to head off to one, look at some of these apps to help you increase your performance in your educational exploits. If you check some of these apps out, you may find that they’re just as essential as a good pen, book bag, or computer. College students live a fast-paced and hectic existence that requires a lot, but you can lessen the stress by adding some management approaches through some of these apps. If these aren’t what you’re looking for, there are many more apps that you can choose from to get the most out of your college experience.

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In a world where cell phones are becoming more and more technologically advanced, the Android and iPhones are two of the most popular cell phones on the market. There are many things to consider when deciding if an Android or an iPhone will best suit your needs.

While there are many applications for both kinds of phones, the iPhone blows the Android out of the market in terms of available apps.  iPhone offers more than 230,000 apps, compared to about 70,000 available for the Android. Many preloaded apps on the Android have been found to cause problems for users. It has gotten so bad that Motorola’s support forums contain a petition from Android users to have those preloaded apps removed from all new Android phones. One of the biggest complaints Android users have is that the phones are loaded with bugs that cause some users to have problems with their phone every day.

Android users have also reported problems viewing pictures on their phone. Oftentimes, trying to view pictures taken by the Android or imported to it results in an error message. Users report the only way to solve the problem is to restart the application or reboot the entire phone. Watching videos on the Android has also been an issue for many users. Some common problems reported when trying to watch a video on an Android are the picture is choppy and the audio is not in sync with the video.

iPhones have more internal memory than the Android does. When it comes to external memory, the Android is the winner. However, for many people, the internal memory of the iPhone is enough to suit their needs.

Both the Android and the iPhone offer SIM only deals. These deals will save users money on their monthly cell phone bill, making phone calls, text messaging and mobile Internet cheaper than they would be if the user did not have the SIM only deal. For iPhone users these deals are customised for anyone who is not currently under contract with them to receive cell phone service. iPhone users receive cheaper service through SIM only contracts because the offers meet the user’s needs. These users are generally most interested in downloading apps and surfing the Internet on their phone. iPhone users who receive a SIM only deal are not being charged for the phone itself or their daily use of it.

The SIM only deal for Android works pretty much the same as the deal for the iPhone. SIM only deals are beneficial to anyone looking to save money on their cell phone bill. SIM only deals for both phones are growing in popularity with today’s cell phone users.

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Most mobile phone users manage to use their batteries for quite some time, maybe one to years at the most depending on how they use their phone. This is quite understandable, as mobile phones are the virtual lifelines of individuals. Mobile phones are used every day at almost every hour, and so it is perfectly normal to think that the battery will degrade at some point.

Basically, there are several types of mobile phone batteries that can last longer when they are properly used. Simple habits can go a long way. To give you some tips, here are 8 ways on how you can extend the battery life of your phone:

1. Do not charge your phone more often unless it shows you are low in battery.

If you recharge your mobile phone every day, the capacity of your battery will be degraded. Depending on the battery type, the best time to recharge your battery is when it is low or empty. This will extend the battery’s life span longer. What is important is to avoid charging when unnecessary.

2. Turn off Wi-Fi and data connections.

Utilizing GPRS, Edge, 3G or Wi-Fi data connections wears out the battery too quickly. If you are not regularly using your phone for Wi-Fi or internet access, you can turn these options off to save battery life. Try to use your mobile phone without connecting to the Web, and observe the battery for a day—you will notice that you will not charge as frequently.

3. Lower the screen brightness.

Your phone looks great if it is set to maximum brightness. Unfortunately, it is not good for your battery. The display brightness uses more power and consumes the battery faster. Lowering brightness helps to extend battery life. What is important is that you are able to see clearly.

4. Avoid using your phone by playing games or listening to music.

The problem of all-around mobile phones is always the battery consumption. The battery of a typical smartphone runs out fast when games and the music player are played. The more you use your phone with these mobile applications, the shorter the life span of your battery. To lengthen the lifespan of your battery, bring a portable music player, gaming console and camera—all these are portable anyway.

5. Set phone to flight mode

If you do not want to make calls, use the internet or send text messages, but you want to keep your phone on, you can set it to flight mode to disconnect network connection temporarily to avoid extra power usage of your battery. When you are also in the plane for a long flight, it is best to set the phone to flight mode if you do not wish to turn it off.

6. Turn off Bluetooth.

Bluetooth consumes more power when not in use and can drain battery life. Turning it off will definitely maximize battery life. It is best to use this only when you are exchanging files.

7. Turn the phone off.

If you are not going to use your phone for some other reasons, or there is no service in the area, turning it off can save battery life.

8. Control the keypad tones, vibration function and ringtone volume.

The keypad tones and vibration function of mobile phones use additional battery power. Turning it off will help keep the battery stay longer. Also minimize the ring tone volume as low as possible when you least need it.

[]This guest was provided by Danny who blogs at http://www.androidtabletfanatic.com/ and loves to write about the best android tablets on the market.[/box]

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Several months back a few publications ran stories that went after the claims by AT&T that they were providing phones and service that could be defined as “4G” when these phones were in fact not quite 4G.

Since the HTC 4G Android phone lineup is expanding, it’s a good time to find out what 4G really is, and whether or not any of these companies are attempting to deceive consumers in anyway. The mission actually drove me to try and get an answer to the even bigger question of what exactly defines the difference between 2G, 3G, 4G, et cetera.

It turns out that the ITU-R, or the International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector, is who decides what defines the difference between mobile technology generations. They base these titles on speed-while-mobile versus speed-when-still: when the ITU-R decided what can be considered 4G, they defined it as devices that can receive/relay 100 Mbit/s when in fast motion such as a train or car and 1Gbit/s when the user is walking or sitting down. They also outline expectations for security.

But there is no such thing as definitive “3G” or “4G” – these are for all intents and purposes simplified differentiations utilized by mobile phone marketers. Everybody more or less runs on their different methods of achieving the speeds and security necessary to be considered “3G” or otherwise. This has created some serious room for debate among many people who consider the definition as nothing but an authoritative-sounding marketing ploy.

The reason being that companies, being left to their own devices to achieve the necessary requirements to be called 4G, are releasing phones marketed as part of the 4G that are in fact simply highly-advanced 3G technology. But that, they would argue, is the nature of the beast. Nobody can pinpoint when exactly a phone or a service enters a new generation. Whenever parts of the 4G achievement are met, that’s often good enough for a company such as AT&T to potentially pass along a phone marketed as 4G that might be a little bit faster than the average 3G phone and reach 1Gbit/s, but is actually not what the ITU-R would classify as 4G

The ITU-R, like most facets of the UN, is not a governing body as far as individual nations are concerned, so there’s virtually no illegality in a company calling their phones and networks 4G. You have to do your research before buying a phone marketed in such a way. Many are as strong as the ITU-R has defined as 4G, but it’s still uncharted territory and it can be argued that none are yet truly 4G because such a thing, 3G, 4G, or otherwise, doesn’t really exist in the first place. It’s just a guideline, one you should use when choosing the latest generation of smartphone and service.

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I don’t intend on queuing for 5 hours this year to get my iPhone 5, but I almost certainly will be upgrading to the latest iPhone as soon as possible.

I’m coming up to my second anniversary as an iPhone user, and here are the new features and improvements I’m hoping the iPhone 5 will include.

My iPhone 5 Wishlist

Universal Inbox

Please Apple, a universal inbox for SMS, mail and voicemail that stores logs for all contacts with address book entries in one location.

Wireless/OTA iTunes Synchronisation

Having to hook my iPhone up to my PC every time I want to sync it is ludicrous in this day and age.  I’d almost settle for being able to sync wirelessly on my home network, but full wireless sync is a must for me.

Quicker Access To Camera

One of my big pet hates with my iPhone is the length of time it takes to get to the camera.  When I see something I want to capture I have to press the home button, slide to unlock, enter my pin, click on the camera app and then press record…by the time I’ve done all this the moment has gone.  What would be great is a one touch way to get into the camera, either via a dedicated button or a keystroke combo.

Better Battery

I know that as smartphones become more and more powerful the power requirements will increase, but what I really want is a phone like my Sony Ericsson T68 back in 2001 which I only needed to charge twice a week.  At the moment my iPhone is lasting on average 1.5 days on a full charge which is ok, but I want more!

Improved Notifications

The notification system on Android is so much better than on iOS.  What I want is a way to see all my notifications in one place, rather than having to click on every app individually.

Richer Lock Screen

Prior to switching to an iPhone, I had a Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia.  What I miss the most is the Windows Mobile ‘Today’ screen that provided a quick snapshot of my world. What I’d really like is a richer lock screen with a similar experience on the iPhone 5.

NFC Support

I rarely use cash and I try to use my Amex card as often as possible.  It’d be great if I could speedup more of my transactions just by using my phone.  What would be even better if is I could store the details of my loyalty cards in my phone, as I don’t tend to carry these with me as I like to keep a slim wallet.

What features would you like to see in the iPhone 5?

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I’ve been using an amazing computer program from DVBlogic in my home for just over a year that has transformed the way we watch tv within our household.  I have a very connected home and since 2007 all of my music, videos, dvds, blu-rays and photos have been stored on a central machine.

Now with DVBlogic DVBLink I’ve been able to add live and recorded tv to this equation, which are now shared not only within my home but also online, allowing me to watch any of my shows through a browser or on my iPad or iPhone 4.

Initially I had DVBlogic running on a Windows Home Server, but in the last year my ‘server’ machine has been running Windows 7 to reduce costs as I ditched WHS when I realised the new version would still not have Media Center integrated (I now have one machine storing the files and connected to my main TV, rather than one machine storing the files via WHS and a second running Windows 7 Media Center connected to a TV).

The diagram below best shows how DVBlogic works:

My ‘server’ is represented by the PC on the left, which is connected to my main TV.  Within this machine I have 4x Hauppauge  WinTV-Nova-HD-S2 TV cards each taking a feed from my Satellite.  DVBLogic’s TVSource product uses these cards and makes both the SD and HD channels available within Windows Media Center with full support e.g. guide listings, live tv, pausing tv, scheduled recordings etc etc.

My Four TV cards allow me to watch or record up to four channels at once.  There’s no limit on how many cards can be added and DVBLink TVSource even allows different types of cards to be mixed i.e. Satellite, Cable and Terrestrial TV channels can all be used together as DVBLink intelligently merges these channels.   TV cards that aren’t directly supported by Media Center such as DVB-C cards can also be used via DVBLink TVSource.

The real power of TVSource is unlocked though, when it is combined with DVBLink Network Pack which is depicted by the right-hand side of the diagram above.  Network Pack allows the tv cards on your PC to be shared with other devices including other Windows Media Centers. Without Network Pack if you wanted to watch live TV on other Media Centers, then each media center needed to have its own tv cards installed.  Now, TV cards installed on one PC are shared with other PCs.

In my household for instance, we have 4 Media Centers each running W7MC.  Network Pack serves up 4 virtual tuners for each of these machines, so across my home we can record and watch up to four shows at once.  So in room 1 we could be watching BBC1 HD and recording Sky 1, in room 2 my daughter could be watching BabyTV and in room 3 I could be recording the football – i.e. up to four channels streamed from one PC to the others.  Network Pack also manages tuner sharing so if two or more rooms are actually watching the same channel at the same time, only one tuner is used rather than two.  Using Recorded TV Manager 3, any recordings made are copied over to the ‘server’ allowing them to be watched from any machine at a later date.

UPNP enabled clients such as Sony Playstation 3 and almost any internet connected device such as ipads and iphones are also supported. Streaming live tv requires a reasonably powered PC, but if you find your PC struggling then there are settings available to reduce the picture quality.   The software is so fantastic that you can even use the online service to schedule recordings that you’ve realised you’ve forgotten or are going to miss because you are running late.

All of this costs just over 40 euros; an amazingly low price for such a great piece of software that is constantly being updated by the developers.  If you have more than one PC in your home or just want to be able to watch your TV online then investing in DVBlink is a no-brainer.  If you’re not sure if DVBLink is right for you, then you can try the product out free for 30 days.

More: DVBLogic

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Over the last month I’ve been testing a MiFi Mobile Broadband device that has been lent to me from Three.  This small dongle sized device connects to the Three mobile network and creates a Wi-Fi hotspot  that can be connected to by up to five devices at once.  For the first week or so it remained in its box as I was too busy to test it, but then my world turned upside down.

In terms of internet connectivity at home I’m normally well served by my Virgin Media 50Mbps connection which is normally ultra-reliable.  However, suddenly last month Virgin had a network fault which knocked out my connection for around 10 days; a total disaster for a homeworker like me.   For the first day I totally forgot that I had the Three MiFi device sitting on my desk, but after spotting it on the second and getting it up and running it proved to be a godsend.

Setting up the device was simple. The MiFi itself is small enough to fit comfortably into a pocket measuring around 9x5x1cm, although we positioned it near a window to try and get the best possible mobile internet connection.   There is only one button on the device – to turn it on and off.  Once it’s on, the device automatically connects to the Three network and creates the mobile hotspot i.e. no configuration is needed.

Once up and running the front of the device has a small status screen providing information on:

• 3G signal strength
• Network speed: 3G or the faster HSDPA
• Wifi connections: how many devices are connected to the modem
• Battery charge level
• Data used: usage in MB per session

Speed

I was pleasantly surprised, no make that very surprised, by just how fast the Three MiFi was.  I’ve been with O2 for nearly two years and the only reason I chose O2 was because at the time they were the only network offering iPhones.  Since then I’ve learnt the hard way that O2′s mobile internet speed is shockingly slow, partly due to having more data hungry iPhone users than other networks.  However, I was shocked when I saw first hand just how slow the O2 network was compared to Three’s.  With the MiFi device I was able to browse the internet without really noticing that I wasn’t using my fixed line connection, or that I was sharing the connection with my wife.  This wouldn’t be possible with my iPhone 4 acting as a mobile modem, or using my O2 dongle (which of course can only connect one device at a time).

To compare the speeds of Three and O2 I installed Speedtest.net’s mobile app on my iPhone 4 and compared the results of connecting directly to the O2 network Vs connecting via the Three MiFi Unit.   On the O2 network my download speed averaged around 0.9-1.1Mbps and upload around 0.3-0.5Mbps, whereas Three averaged 2.2-2.6Mbps for downloads and 1.4-1.6Mbps for uploads.  That’s a huge difference!  My O2 contract is up in two months and I will be definitely switching to Three based on these results.

So what didn’t I like about the MiFi?

• The battery life wasn’t the greatest in terms of both usage and standby.  If I were a true mobile worker, the device wouldn’t have lasted a full day without a recharge and I’m sure I would get a bit frustrated trying to find charging points daily and having to charge it every night.
• I also had occasional problems connecting to the internet via the device – the MiFi would say that it was online, but I wasn’t able to go online with my laptop.  I’m sure though that this was probably related to my review unit, rather than this problem affecting all devices.

All in all, I think the MiFi is a great device and could be a worthwhile investment at £71.99 if you have more than one mobile device in your household.  For this price, not only do you get a dongle free mobile internet connection for your devices that can be carried in your pocket or bag, but you can also connect up to five devices at once.

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Our exposure to technology has not been incremental. We interact with it on an increasingly personal level and it seemed, that with the invention of the computer and Internet, things would only get faster, not stranger. We can now surf the web from practically any point on the globe and stay connected with anyone, anywhere. We can do everything from a little reverse phone lookup to compiling terabytes of data in an instant. Changes in the field of technology have been quick and noticeable as well as exceedingly smaller. It appears that this trend will continue and, in order to notice the changes to our technology in the coming years, one will require the assistance of a microscope to see it.

Nanotechnolgoy is likely to be a benchmark of our collective future. If you’re not familiar with nanotechnology it is, in essence, the science of very small things. Usually smaller than a hundred nanometers, which is really small. A hundred nanometers is the about the equivalent to a thousand atoms across. It appears that bigger isn’t always better and scientists are still trying to understand how pervasive this front in tech development will be. Nanotechnology is a very new science but once it starts to be applied it will evolve fast and will likely affect every aspect of our lives. Whether it is the medial field, to science research, to computers and cars, a new world is about to break through and many people don’t even realize it.

The process behind it is actually simple. It works on the premise that carbon is one of the most versatile particles in the universe. When you get small and take them down to the atomic level, very interesting things start to happen. If you take atomic carbon particles and arrange them in different ways, you get extremely different outcomes. Arranging carbon one way will give you diamonds. Another will give you graphite. The possibilities are limitless and through the use of nanotechnology we’ll, soon be able to alter the atomic ordering of things. In essence, reshaping the very foundation of creation.

It seems that the application process is starting small with a simple battery approach. Apple is currently devising a way to introduce nanotechnology into its power source for future iPhones. Apple hopes to completely get rid of the need to replace batteries. It works by taking the granules inside a battery that are a nanometer in scale, and use nanotechnology to recharge your battery using nothing more than kinetic energy. Scientists also hope to make a battery charge faster and last longer, if not indefinitely. You might even be able to charge your iPhone with as little as the heat/vibrations that comes from the users heartbeat.

This isn’t just for phones and will likely replace older computer systems in a mater of a decade or so. The silicon transistors in your computer will probably be replaced by carbon nanotubes. They will likely power, run, and process your computer and it’s information on a microscopic scale. Eventually everything’s just going to get smaller and smaller and rarely ever need to be recharged.

Eventually, scientists are hoping to develop a way to make nanotechnology self-replicating. This means that, in essence, this would create a self-sustaining mechanism built around cloning itself over and over again towards achieving a specific task. This is likely to be used to great success in diagnosing and operating on patents in the future and will probably extend our life spans by several years if not decades. This isn’t to mention how different the world is likely to look in the next 20 years.

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I think it’s safe to say that we all know that the Android Market is growing at a rapid pace. Every month there’s new reports on how Android sales have overtaken every other device on the market, so it’s only obvious that developers are going to be making more and more apps for it’s market.

Well according to the latest report from Distimo, Google’s Android Market now offers 134,342 free apps, while Apple’s App Store only has 121,845 free Apps. However, overall Apple still has the largest number of Apps at 333,214 while Android is a bit behind at 206,143.

If you look at the Android Market, you will see that there is more free apps than paid ones, on the contrary, Apple’s app store is the reverse, with many more paid apps than free ones.

While Apple’s App store is the largest, it was the slowest out of all the App stores in terms of growth for March.

Apple’s iPad App Store managed to grow by 12 percent last month to a reasonable 75,755 applications, with 34,120 of those designated for the iPad only. Overall when you combine the iPhone and iPad App Store Apple have an impressive 367,334 available.

Interestingly the iPad apps have become more expensive over time, while all the other app stores have gone in the opposite direction. The average iPad app price is now a steep $5.36 and only 30 percent of apps are free.

Distimo are also forecasting that RIM’s Blackberry App store will double in size over the next 6 months and will probably surpass Nokia’s Ovi Store by the end of May. What’s more, they expect the Android Market to continue growing at it’s furious pace and to become the largest App Store on the market within 5 months! That would put them ahead of Apple’s App Stores, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, Blackberry App World and the Nokia Ovi Store.

Things aren’t really looking too good for Nokia’s Ovi Stores, the company itself is loosing a lot of its market share over the last couple of months, and Distimo reckon that Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will be larger than it within a couple of months.

Now these figures have been calculated by Distimo themselves, and are not supplied from the various App Markets themselves. However they are generally fairly accurate.

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What is SkyFire?

It is one of the more popular alternative browsers for the Android platform. This is due to the fact that it can play Flash videos on Android-powered devices. By itself that would not be enough to make an impact since most have the ability get Adobe’s Flash from the Android Market.  However, Skyfire essentially converts and compresses videos on their services, streaming it to you in a manner that’s customized for your screen and connection speed. Now SkyFire has released updates to the web browser with eight new features.

New Features

The browser comes with a customizable scolling SkyBar that includes the following:

• Twitter
• Groupon
• Share
• Google Reader
• Sports
• News
• Finances
• Settings

What does Skyfire offer?

• Searching with a search box to the top of the toolbar UI
• Search experience includes data from more content providers
• Play More Video: many sites and video formats are standard
• Performance enhancements and fine-tuning are standard

Other standard features are Flash Video, User Agent Switching, Facebook QuickView, Fireplace Feed Reader, Popular Pages, Related Ideas, Skyfire Search, Facebook Like Button.

There is on-demand video, where video thumbnails don’t suddenly appear when you load a page; instead, you can choose which videos you want to play by hitting the video button and then loading it from there. There are new in-browser tips, tricks and tutorials to help users get the most out of Skyfire.

You get a three day free trial vor SkyFire Video and then a one time service fee of  $2.99 one time fee. Verizon Android owners who download this new version soon will also get the video optimization feature for free. The three million beta testers who have used this version also get the video optimization feature for free .

For Android users this is a good App to have. There are current upgrades in the works for other platforms.

[Download Link]

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How long will Apple’s iPad dominate the market? An interesting question that was asked by Gartner Research recently. Basically, they predict that Apple will maintain a virtual stranglehold on the tablet market through 2011 and 2012, and remain as the top tablet platform through at least 2015.

Dell’s Approach

Dell is betting on Android and Windows 7 tablets to counter the surge in popularity of the Apple iPad. Why two tablets? First of all some history is needed here.  Last year Dell tried its hand at Android tablets but it was not a successful venture. They tried it with the 5-inch Streak, a hybrid tablet/smartphone. But it had old software, high pricing and negative reviews. Most saw the Streak as a flop. Then Dell unveiled a 7-inch Streak tablet in January, running Android 2.2. Dell also experimented with a 10-inch tablet/netbook hybrid last year, called Inspiron Duo, running on Windows 7. So now dell is looking at a new approach.

The release anticipated sometime later this year will involve two Windows 7 tablets and a 10-inch Android Honeycomb tablet. The approach will be with three tablets the Latitude ST, Streak Pro, and Latitude XT-3. Each is configured for different clients. The Windows tablet is the the 13-inch Latitude XT-3 with release expected in July, and the Latitude ST expected  in October. The Android tablet is the Streak Pro, is due to be released in June.

What is interesting about Dell’s use of the Windows Tablet is that they feel that Android will ultimately dominate the market, not Apple, and not Windows.  So why bother? Probably because they don’t want to miss out on getting some market share, even if it is not overwhelming.

Many companies are becoming tablet manufacturers. And why are tablets successful now when they weren’t before? that is an easy question to answer. It’s Apps. Sure the hardware technology is better now than it was even five years ago. It is more powerful, faster, lighter, and can run longer on batteries. But the game changer were the Apps. Because now the tablet was distinctly seen as something different than a PC.

Source: AndroidCentral

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In one of the biggest deals I’ve heard in a while now, AT&T today announced that they’ve agreed to acquire one of the main players in the mobile market in the USA – T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion.

This acquisition will mean that AT&T who already have the largest customer base in the USA will boost it’s numbers from 95.5 million by a further 33 million to 129 million subscribers. Verizon Wireless the US’s second largest carrier has just over 94 million customers.

According to the conditions of the deal, AT&T will pay $25 billion cash and the remaining $14 billion will be paid in stock. This will see Deutsche Telekom take an 8 percent stake in AT&T and a seat on its board of directors. The deal has been approved by both boards of directors but is still subject to regulatory approval, which could cause AT&T some trouble if they deem the acquisition unfair for customers and competition.

AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement announcing the deal that

“It will improve network quality, and it will bring advanced LTE capabilities to more than 294 million people.”

As I mentioned above, one of the main problems AT&T could have is with the regulators. Since AT&T and T-Mobile are the two largest GSM carriers in the US, this will mean that customers will only have one carrier to choose from if they want to use that wireless standard. GSM is the dominant global technology across the world and is the standard in Europe which means the Verizon LTE phones wouldn’t work there. This means that US cell phone users who travel frequently will want a GSM phone which will only be available from AT&T now, where as before they had a choice with T-Mobile.

This announcement has come somewhat as a surprise since we heard that Sprint were getting ready to make an offer for T-Mobile only a couple of weeks ago.

Source:

Businesswire

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Once again I have to take my hat off to Apple for generating such a massive buzz around a new product launch.  Last month we had the mobile world congress, where for three days nearly every (other than Apple of course) mobile and tablet manufacturer showed off their upcoming 2011 products.

If you didn’t watch the usual tech shows, blogs and websites you wouldn’t have known about this event.  Yet, this morning every mainstream news channel had the iPad 2 launch on their front pages and lead items.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the original iPad; I’ve been a proud owner of an iPad for around 5 months and I also use an iPhone 4 as my main phone.  But, I do find it bizarre that Apple have created such a dominant position in the market that most people aren’t even aware of the strong competing products.  When the iPad came out it was fairly unique and created a whole new market sector, but now it doesn’t have a clear run at the market with some great Android and Windows 7 Tablets available vying for potential buyers.

The iPad 2 is an improvement over the original iPad, being thinner, lighter and faster without an increase in price.  But, I don’t think the increase in specification is enough to make current iPad users want to upgrade:

• Addition of cameras: Lots of my friends have iPhone 4s, but I think I’ve only used facetime around a dozen times – adding a camera to an iPad isn’t going to increase this usage.  I also don’t think I’d ever take a picture with my iPad as I use my phone which is much more accessible
• Faster processor: Only useful if you’re playing the latest games
• Thinner & Lighter: My iPad gets chucked in a bag when I’m travelling, so saving a few grams means I can carry an extra packet of sweets in my hand luggage

I personally will hold off on an upgrade until the iPad 3 comes out, as I’m sure by then the original iPad will struggle to run whatever version of iOS Apple are up to by then.  I will probably be in the minority though;  Mashable are reporting that the secondary market for iPads has already taken a hit, as users attempt to offload their unwanted iPads.  Apple of course are also doing their best to whip users into a frenzy by shifting the launch time from the usual 8am slot to 5 o’clock in the evening, ensuring that there will be mile long queues outside Apple stores on March 11th.

Will you be joining the throngs?

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Apple’s iPhone 4 is undoubtedly one of the best smartphones on the market today, but it’s constantly plagued with the antennagate issue. Ever since the iPhone 4 was released on AT&T, frustrated users have been complaining over the poor signal quality and the number of dropped calls.

The iPhone 4 has a completely new and innovative antenna design. An Apple rep said

“iPhone 4 has a great antenna that allows it to have an amazingly thin design, great battery life and reception. We designed the iPhone4 external antenna to work great on Verizon’s network”

However this unique antenna design doesn’t seem to be able to do what it’s meant to do, make phone calls….

Many thought that the Verizon iPhone would have solved the antennagate issue, but apparently not. After Consumer Reports “Did Not Recommend” the AT&T iPhone 4 to its subscribers, they’ve now said that same thing about the Verizon iPhone 4.

As posted on their website,

“The Verizon iPhone4 closely resembles the original AT&T iPhone 4 in many positive respects, including offering great multimedia functionality, a sharp screen and the best MP3 player we’ve seen on a phone,”

“Unfortunately, it also shares with its sibling the possibility of compromised performance in low-signal conditions when used without a bumper, or case.”

So just like the AT&T iPhone 4, it’s a brilliant smartphone and it performs better than many other phones on the market. However it can’t excel in the one area it should, and that’s making a simple basic phone call.

It was this “Not Recommended” rating that prompted Steve Jobs to publicly apologise and give away free iPhone 4 cases to solve the issue.

The “Death Grip” occurs when users place their finger on the bottom left hand side of the device. Once the finger covers that part of the antenna the signal quality is greatly reduced, and in poor signal areas, calls are dropped all together.

So now both the AT&T and Verizon iPhone 4 are on the Consumer Reports “Not Recommended List” even though they out perform many other smartphones.

What do you think of this decision? Does the iPhone deserve to be on this list?

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There are several versions of the Android OS in play now. There is Gingerbread officially known as Android 2.3. Google’s Android Gingerbread introduces a collection of improvements to the operating system, both on the surface and under the hood. The most significant core changes — in terms of what will directly affect users — revolve around four main areas: Faster speed, better Android battery life,  better application management, and an updated user interface.

Honeycomb, or Android 3.0, is a big  step toward the unified, mobile world that Google is trying to bring to us. Why? Because Google hopes to have, a tablet-ready version of the Android operating system, which it hopes can beat back Apple’s iOS and the iPad. Up to now, all the Android tablets that have shipped have used a modified version of the OS found in a typical Android smartphone. The problem with the Android OS on the tablet is that it looks and acts like stretched out versions of  a handset. But that is not what people want in their tablets. So along comes Honeycomb, which is an overhaul to the Android OS, and it changes that perception.

As Google is near to issue the  release of the XOOM tablet sometime this week,  the Android focus shifts to the horizon beyond Honeycomb. What will happen beyond Android 3.0? Are handsets ever going to see Honeycomb, or what? Will there be two different versions of the same OS? As it turns out, the answer is a little of both.

Ice-Cream

Well Ice-Cream  or Ice Cream Sandwich, which is the next iteration of Android should resemble both Gingerbread and Honeycomb.  Why the combination? Well, as you might expect, not everything will be the same on phones and tablets. That is because scaling up a phone experience to a larger tablet screen has not worked well. So the next version, Ice-Cream should be a version that sits well with both phones and tablets.

Source: ComputerWorld and Cnet

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In a bid to outdo the high-end performances that are offered by large format processors, Qualcomm Company has conceptualised a brand new mobile processor that is an advanced version of its earlier Snapdragon mobile processor. This earlier version, introduced to the market in the year 2008, consisted of a 1 gigahertz chip and a single core. The new version promises to stir up the business of processing data with the speed at which it stipulates to do being marked at a whopping 2.5 gigahertz. That’s per core because this is a multicore version.

With this new product about to be launched in the market, the challenge to laptop and desktop processors is abundantly clear. Qualcomm aims to bring mobile phones, smart phones and tablets at par with the performance seen in laptops and desktops. The Qualcomm chip, consisting of around 4 cores, will inhabit the next generation smartphones and tablets. Working on handhelds will of course, never be the same again. They would now be able to run 3D games as well as enable video images to be splashed across big screens from the phones, with absolute clarity of picture and sound. All this has been promised to the consumer market by this year itself so that soon mobile users will have all the advantages of the computer in the palm of their hands. This new successor of the Snapdragon has been code-named Krait.

The company will also be offering 4 wireless features with this new product. These are- WiFi, a global positioning system or GPS, Bluetooth and interestingly — an FM radio system. All these features would be available on one SoC. Along with this advantage, the user will also be able to access the near-field communication services which is basically a relatively new technology that allows a customer to run his phone over a reader instead of swiping a card to make purchases. Krait has also assured the more creative and entertainment-seeking users that it would enable the screening of stereoscopic 3D video, allow 3D photography and ensure that everything is played back smoothly. In terms of its competition with computer processors, the new version of the Snapdragon is said to have a 150% greater overall performance accompanied by a 65% lower power usage compared to the ARM-situated CPU cores. With Qualcomm’s conceptualization of the 28 nanometer technology, a radical invention that enables finer circuits to be marked on chips, the creation of this highly adventurous and technologically avant-garde product has been successful. Its earlier version had used a mere 65 nanometer technology. Seems like Qualcomm right now is emboyding Moore’s Law— a scientific prophecy by the former chairman of Intel, Gordon Moore who stated that the chip components would escalate at a double rate every 2 years.

Along with this innovation, Qualcomm has also introduced to the market its new collection of GPUs, called Adreno. As an upgrade on the previous Adreno chip, the new one which is a quad-core Adreno 320, can provide a service which is 15 times more advanced. Without feeding on as much power as the gaming consoles, this product promises to provide its users graphics that are similar in quality to those offered by the consoles.

demo game designed by qualcomm to show off Adreno

The single-core Snapdragon MSM8930 on the other hand provides an in-built modem technology which ensures the cheap process of transference of data networking speeds for smartphones. This speed is marked at around 24 megabits.

All the news about the new inventions was relaeased by Quadcomm at the Mobile World Congress 2010 held in Barcelona earlier this month.

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Rumors of a mini iPhone have once again started to do the rounds around the blogosphere. Way back when the iPhone was first released there were many people assuring us that an iPhone nano was just around the corner, but of course it never came to light.

Now however rumors of a mini iPhone have cropped up again from several reputable sources such as the WSJ and Bloomberg

The two reports are slightly different but they both cite people who are inside Apple or are very well linked. They both agree that this mini iPhone is a lot cheaper than the current iPhone and will go on sale, contract free for just $200 which would mean carriers could subsidize it and sell it for free.

There are rumors that it’s a third smaller than the current iPhone 4, and others saying that it’s half the size of the current iPhone but either way it definitely is a lot smaller. Some say that it’s Apples answer to the rising tide of Android devices which are currently starting to take over the mobile phone market mainly because they’re cheaper than the iPhone.

Some people are claiming to have actually seen prototypes of the device late last year saying that it has an edge-to-edge screen with voice navigation

However there have also been question marks over whether or not it will actually make it to market. According to these “sources” Apple has been aiming to unveil the device near mid year, probably along with the iPhone 5, but it may well be delayed or scrapped all together. Very few Apple employees are said to even know about the project.  Apple do regularly work on projects that never find there way to market.

It’ll be interesting to see how an mini iPhone would do, I think that edge-to-edge screen would look pretty cool, but it may cause problems for people who are a bit clumsy with their fingers.

What do you think of one?

Let us know in the comments below

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Go with the flow. That, it would seem, would be the mojo of hackers. Why? Because now, they are moving their hacking enthusiasm towards the mobile industry. According to McAfee, there is a growth in hacking operations occurring in the mobile devices as well as mobile platforms. Key targets now include Android, and the SymbOS/Zitmo.A and Android/Geinimi were the two big malware threats for mobile.

Symbian remains the most targeted for malware, but that may be due to market share. A virus called  “Zitmo” hit them. This came from a botnet called “Zeus” that has repackaged spying software.

Google’s Android operating system, overtook Nokia’s Symbian as the maker of the world’s most popular smartphone software last quarter; it was the victim of a  Trojan virus, called “Geinimi.” This virus buries itself in applications and games. Then it often destroys data on a device, and to add insult to injury, it sometimes sends a mocking message that flashes on the screen.

McAfee said that the level of Spam dropped, but at the same time, the amount of hack attacks on mobile devices increased.

Other things worth noting were that certain types of malware were popular in the fourth quarter, these included banking Trojans, Autorun Malware, and downloaders. Interestingly, Botnets were not making a big impact. But get this, over 50 percent of the 100 daily search terms lead to malicious sites. And that number is expected to start hitting mobile devices in 2011. Finally, Adobe’s  Acrobat is a software with exploitable weaknesses; making it a hacker favorite.

The upshot is that with a new venue to exploit, hackers will be in hacker heaven, at least for a while. The important thing for users to do is to practice caution and some common sense when using their mobile devices. Beware of attachments, and be careful when downloading information from sites you are not sure of.

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Current iPad

The new iPad 2 is almost here, with improved features and ergonomics and a lot of speculation and rumors as is normal for the industry. However, it is also being said that other than the dual core GPU and improved RAM speed (512MB RAM running at 1066 MHz), the Apple iPad 2 does not have anything new to offer. Apple of course has nothing to say about the rumors. It rumored to have a dual core 1.2 GHz CPU, as compared to the single core 1 GHz CPU in the first generation model and is therefore expected to provide a speed boost. Some obvious improvements are expected to include slimmer and thinner body with antiglare coating on the display for better reading in the daylight. The resolution (1024 x 768) however shall remain the same as the previous iPad. The Dual resolution cameras shall be like the one in iPod touch. It shall be launched in two parts, GSM and CDMA versions.

Apart from the second-generation iPads, there is a lot more to come our way in 2011. While Sony Ericsson is going to launch the next generation Vivaz handsets, rumors are in the air than LG is going to announce the launch of its new LG Optimus 3D. Whether it is a 3D phone or it is just the name, hasn’t been confirmed by the company as of now.

The Xperia X10

The Sony handset shall probably be named Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo in spite of the fact that it resembles the old Vivaz handset more than the XPERIA. It is said to be preparing for an unveil at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that is coming up next on the Tech yearly calendar. Certain leaked sources say that the new handset will run an Android 2.3 install and will also feature an 8.1 mega pixel camera with the inclusion of a Bravia Display with an 854×480 resolution. At this rate, it is said that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo shall soon be at par with the already announced Xperia Arc and the yet unannounced Xperia Play. Sony’s going all out in order to woo the market right at the beginning of the year. Probably because the first XPERIA did not do that well in the market.

The leaked image of the Optimus 3D, credit:Phandroid

Other anonymous sources are talking about the LG Optimus 3D saying that the LG model shall feature a dual core CPU like the rumored A5 from Apple, multi channel RAM modules and a tentative screen size larger than 4” apart from a front facing camera (which is an in-demand feature right now). The resolution of the camera however could not be confirmed. From the images in circulation, it is guessed that it must be more powerful than the Dual Core 3D Droid X. There has been a sudden revolution-like increase in the 3D hype that has taken over the tech industry in the past year. Initially it was limited to theatres, televisions and now is gradually being introduced in monitors and now on to handhelds as well. As technology makes its progress, what manufacturers are looking into is creating 3D gadgets that shall do not require special 3D glasses for viewing. The pace at which things are making progress, it seems phones with 3D technology without having to use those glasses shall indeed become very common in the days to come. And that is not restricted to mobile phones either. Handheld gaming devices from the likes of Nintendo are also implementing the same technology to lure new markets.

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Enspert had a surprise hidden for its customers at the recently concluded CES 2011. The company unveiled an Android tablet called E201, which looks quite impressive on the surface. Along with the release of this tablet, the company also revealed to the press that from this month, the company would be exporting 100 percent Google-certified Android tablets. The Android 2.2 tablet that sports a 7-inch screen would be ready for the consumers from the 1st of February. The new tablet is based on the Android platforms which will increase the compatibility of the tablet with already existing app, some of which are tablet friendly.

Notion Ink, the company that manufactures the Notion Ink Adam tablet ran into rough weather with its pre-orders. The company revealed that the customers who had ordered the product after checking it out at the recently concluded CES 2011, will not receive the product until the eve of Valentine’s Day at the end of this week. The company made it very clear right at the outset that the waiting time for customers pre-ordering the Notion Ink Adam tablet would increase under the present circumstances. The reason for this unexpected delay can be traced back to the accidental damage to the touchscreen components that happened during the transit of certain shipments. This damage meant that the company had to replace the existing Adam tablet units with a new touchscreens.

But replacement is bound to take a long time as the parts are supposed to arrive from their manufacturing hub in China. With the celebrations of the Chinese New year slated to commence from the first week of February, chances are that the arrival of the touchscreen replacement parts would be delayed even further

Whilst one company is experiencing problems with its damaged touchscreen shipments, the Barnes and Noble NOOK color has perfected its graphics with the Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb supporting its high definition images. The $250 tablet from B&N is happily sporting the more tablet-friendly version but it’s not official so far. When Google finally gets around to releasing Android 3.0 Honeycomb to the entire market, it would augment the performance of the Barnes and Noble tablet in leaps and bounds. Since the tablet was built using the previous version of the operating system, there are certain glitches that could not be solved with the current port. The accelerometer, sound and WiFi are still not compatible with Honeycomb but an official version is sure to fix that for good. At least that is what we hope will happen. Tablet manufacturers have this tendency to rush their products out the gate and hence overlook glaring problems untill it’s been all over the forums and blogs.

Meanwhile the Enspert Identity Tab E201 has tried to capitalise on the shortcomings of the Barnes and Noble tablet by offering to the customers a more full-proof option. This is possible because the former is coupled with the benefits of both Gmail and Android platforms. For a price of $350, you can get a tablet with a 512 MB RAM and a 8 GB Hard Disk. For seamless connectivity, it sports an 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 device. This 800 x 480 tablet comes armed with a 1GHz Hummingbird processor which supports PowerVR SGX540 graphics.

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Today Google announced a new web-based Android Market store which will make it easier for people to view and purchase applications for their smartphones and tablets.

They made the announcement today at a press event at the companies headquarters in Mountain View California. Up to this point Android users were only to get apps on their device by accessing the app store directly through their smartphone or tablet. Now user’s will have the option to install them from any web browser.

The updated Web-based Android Market can be accessed by going to https://market.android.com/ and the site itself has received a much needed revamp. It’s got a lot more detail on it than the traditional Android Market client with more pictures as well as more ways to promote apps. It’s also easier now to view screenshots and user reviews.

The social side of things has also found it’s way into it, users can now recommend app purchases to their Twitter followers.

So now you can browse the app store from your computer as well as purchase them, then it will push the app to your phone and trigger the download for you. Google also announced in-app purchases, which will let users purchase things like virtual currency or additional levels etc… without having to leave the app. This feature should start appearing by the end of spring.

Also announced was better currency support. Developers will now be able to set the price for their apps by currency as well. So a $5 app hopefully won’t cost €3.62 anymore, more like a rounded figure such as €3.50 or €4

This updated app store then not only makes things easier for the user, but also for the developer, giving them more control over how their apps are presented.

Hopefully it will give the Android Market another boost, it’s done quite well all things considered, it did have a pretty late start. However it’s still dwarfed by the Apple App Store which has over 400,000 apps.

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Google’s Android smartphone operating system finally overtook Nokia’s faltering Symbian in the last quarter to become the top-selling mobile OS.

Figures obtained by research firm Canalys and published by the Guardian show that of the all the phones sold to retailers and mobile networks in the last quarter of 2010, Android sold 32.9 million with Symbian trailing slightly on 31 million.

Apple’s iPhone is still sitting in third-place with 16 million sales for the quarter, down slightly but this is to be expected while people wait for the launch of the next generation iPhone, possibly today or tomorrow.  This is still a very strong sales figure for the company however.

RIM’s Blackberry devices are also down slightly having lost a small amount of market share.  Finally Microsoft’s fledgling smartphone OS, Windows Phone, sits at 3.1 million having only been released half way through the quarter.  This figure also includes sales of the old Windows Mobile however.

According the Guardian, the largest phone markets at the moment are Europe, the Middle-East and Africa with year-on-year growth standing at 90%.  Nokia continues to lead the table in Asia and Africa but is being overtaken by its rivals now in many more markets.

In a statement, a spokesperson from Canalys said…

“2010 has been a fantastic year for the smartphone market. After a difficult 2009, the speed with which the market has recovered has required real commitment and innovation from vendors and they have risen to the challenge,” said Canalys VP and principal analyst Chris Jones. “But vendors cannot afford to be complacent. 2011 is set to be a highly competitive year with vendors looking to use new technology, such as dual-core processors, NFC and 3D displays, to differentiate their products and maintain value.”

In the US Android has three times the market share of RIM and Microsoft’s launch of Windows Phone at the beginning of November in the country saw their market share slip from 8% the year before down to 5%.

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Apple have been taking over the mobile phone market ever since the iPhone was released and gained some traction. They’ve slowly worked their way up from being bottom of the list to the top and entered the top five mobile phone makers by market share last quarter from the strong iPhone 4 sales.

Apple were fourth worldwide according to market share with 4.1% however this quarter the results from the “Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker” report released by IDC,  see that Apple have slipped back to the number five spot with 4% of the market worldwide.

Now the drop in market share is nothing to do with a drop in sales, in fact last quarter Apple had a record number of shipments at 16.2 million, up from 14.1 million. Two other factors have caused a drop in Apple’s market share.

1. The size of the market is rapidly expanding. Overall, the global mobile phone market rose 17.9 percent in the fourth quarter compared with 2009′s final quarter. In total, vendors shipped 401.4 million units in the quarter versus 340.5 million a year ago.

For the whole of 2010, the industry shipped an incredible 1.39 billion units, up 18.5 percent from the 1.17 billion in 2009.

2.The second reason? There’s a new player on the market, ZTE. I personally have never heard of ZTE, but apparently they are well known by lots of people out there. They now hold 4.2% of the market, knocking Apple down to the fifth position. It’s the first time they’ve managed to break into the top five and shipped an impressive 16.8 million units last quarter.

It’s main customer base in in China, but they’ve begun expanding and picking up customers in Africa and Latin America where Apple has very little dominance. ZTE mainly focus on entry level to mid range smartphones which are selling much better than the high end more expensive smartphones in these regions.

As you can see Nokia are still at the top position, but have suffered  a bit when you look at their market share last year, they’re followed by Samsung but there’s over a 10% gap between them so they should be safe at the number one spot for the moment.

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Get ready. There will be two versions of Android in the future. One will be for the mobile phone, the 2.3 version called Gingerbread, and the 3.0 version for tablets, called Honeycomb.

Honeycomb will be for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets; it is a new design, from the ground up.

Here is what is planned.  Start with Android’s basic feature set, that is multitasking, notifications, and widgets. Now, add a new set of features, starting with a new UI framework for creating apps for larger screen devices; it will also have high-performance 2D and 3D graphics using a built-in OpenGL (Open Graphics Library). It will add support for multicore processors, multimedia, new Bluetooth APIs (application programming interfaces), and enterprise enhancements such as password expiration, and encrypted storage.

According to Google “The new UI brings fresh paradigms for interaction, navigation, and customization and makes them available to all applications—even those built for earlier versions of the platform. Applications written for Android 3.0 are able to use an extended set of UI objects, powerful graphics, and media capabilities to engage users in new ways.”

This means, that App writers of 3.0 won’t be able to port their new Apps back to 2.3, You can’t go from Honeycomb to Gingerbread. So if App developers want an App for Honeycomb and one for Gingerbread, they will have to write two Apps, even if it is the same App. The platforms will be different, so naturally the App structure will be different.

Here are highlights of the Android 3.0 platform.

• UI framework for creating great apps for larger screen devices
• High-performance 2D and 3D graphics
• Support for multicore processor architectures
• Rich multimedia
• New types of connectivity
• Enhancements for enterprise

There are also some improvements in the UI Builder such as

• Improved drag-and-drop in the editor.
• In-editor preview of objects animated with the new animation framework.
• Visualization of UI based on any version of the platform. independent of project target.

Source: Android 3.0 Platform Preview and Updated SDK Tools

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It’s fairly well known at this stage that high end smartphones like the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices can all be hacked and have been, but surprisingly only 16% of all mobiles are actually smartphones. The rest are just regular bog standard feature phones that can send and receive texts, make phone calls and play back mp3′s. Now if you’re one of those users, don’t worry your not alone. These feature phones comprise of 5 Billion users around the world.

Up until now we didn’t think those phones could be hacked, simply because no one bothered to try, until now that is. Researchers from the Berlin Institute of Technology have come up with “SMS-o-Death.”

Feature phones are harder to attack, but two students discovered a way to send malicious text messages and force cell phones to shut down or disconnect from the network. They took advantage of an SMS protocol that is used to send small programs known as binaries which network operators often use to change settings remotely on mobile phones.

By taking advantage of this, they were able to create malicious messages for all popular feature phones like Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Micromax. The attacks could abruptly knock the phone off or disconnect it from the network without warning.

Because feature phones are so common and take up most of the market a large number of users could be knocked out by these attacks if they ever happen. One limitation with the attacks is that they need to know your phone number and your phone model, however 5 text messages could be sent out to thousands of phones aimed at the most popular feature phones and take down a large number of them.

So is there a way to protect against this? Well not really, it would be up to the networks to roll out firmware upgrades for all those feature phones, and most feature phone users wouldn’t be aware of how to update the firmware over USB or may not be bothered to at all. Aside from filtering all text messages (which is already done for spam) there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.

However Smartphone users are still more likely to get attacked since their devices generally contain a lot more personal information worth gaining, were as the worst that can happen at the moment with feature phones is that it gets turned off.

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Subscribers are on the march towards Verizon communications. Ever since Apple announced that its iPhone would be available for service besides AT&T, subscribers have been anxiously waiting for the iPhone Verizon launch.

On Tuesday the company, jointly owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone, reported that it added almost a million new contract customers, actually 872,000 during the last quarter of 2010. Overall, Verizon Wireless had a total of 102.2 million wireless customers at the end of the fourth quarter. They grew by 26% over 2009 at year-end 2010 in customer smart phone devices.  This was up from 15 percent at year-end 2009. Finally, in the fourth-quarter of 2010, more than 75 percent of new customers on contract service to Verizon Wireless bought smartphones.

Other growth – Fios

In it’s Fios, fiber-to-the-home service The company added 197,000 new customers and 182,000 new Fios TV customers. Overall, the company is approaching 4.1 million Fios Internet customers and 3.5 million Fios customers. The average revenue per user on Fios increased about 10.7 compared to the same quarter in 2009. And Fios revenues now represent about 53 percent of all consumer revenue at Verizon.

AT&T

Still, with all of this growth, the iPhone will increase the profit since many new subscribers will be moving from AT&T. As long as their vaunted service keeps up, they will not have trouble keeping their growth rate constant.

This, however, is not good news for AT&T. Its monopoly of the iPhone is coming to an end, and in the short run their profits may take a hit. However, now they may be forced to address some of the technical issues that made their subscribers criticize or potentially move away, like dropped calls, delays, and broadband outage. In one sense, the loss of the iPhone monopoly may make AT&T a better company in the long run. If they can fix their problems, new subscribers may feel confident in AT&T. Most consumers aren’t wedded to any service. They could just as easily recover the customer base.

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Ever since Apple introduced the iPad to the world at Large, it has been been a positive downpour of tablet/slate type devices of all kinds.You cannot get away from them, they are everywhere. In the midst of all the controversy about whether they are really useful and consumer being confused about what do with them — these so called ‘iPad Killers’ have been leaking out and getting announced by the dozen. Asus, being the company they are, have as usual looked at the trend and thought of what small modification they might be able to add that can allow them to create their own copy cat tablet. So what’s the number one complaint that you got to hear about tablets — where’s the damn keyboard! Seems like Asus has tried fixing exactly that.

Asus had previously launched a standard tablet in the guise of the Asus Eee MeMo and a tablet with a bolt on keyboard in the guise of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. Now it has come up with the new Eee Pad Slider, a tablet that reveals a QWERTY keyboard beneath it when one pushes the screen back and upwards. Much like the slider smartphones that have been around in the market for quite some time now.

The new Eee Pad Slider weighs 886 grams, is 16.7mm thick, has dual cameras — a 1.2 MP one in front for video chatting and a 5 MP one at the back for shooting — and comes with Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor. The operating system is Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) although like all the Android Asus devices on show on CES in Las Vegas, it was running Android 2.2 (Froyo).

It has 1280 x 800-resolution display, and houses mini-HDMI and mini USB ports as well as a micro SD card slot. The capacitive touchscreen uses an IPS display and apparently it has decent viewing angles. It also offers an Adobe Flash 10.1 support so that one can “enjoy the full experience” of the web. The Tegra chip helps make the running of Apps and using the device easier. This will of course create quite a drain on the battery but the new crop of tablet makers don’t seem to care much about that.

Onboard 3G is optional, which means the base model is WiFi only. How useful a slide out keyboard will be on a 10 inch tablet is debatable .but apparently it has a nice amount of resistance to the keys and features-dedicated Android shortcut keys are spread around the standard QWERTY layout. So you have the advantage of having the Home, Menu, Search and Back keys. But you still can’t use more than your thmbs for typing while holding it up — it is designed to be set down on a surface. If there’s one thing this tablet can beat though, it is netbooks. With some basic productivity apps, it can easily replace netbooks, which now look bulky in comparison.

To pull the keyboard out, you simply lift one edge of the screen and pull. The keyboard appears below, and the display is propped up at an angle which should make typing comfortable. On pushing the back of the screen forward again, you can close the tablet. The dock has an integrated battery that will keep the tablet running for 16 hours on a charge; however the tablet on its own should last for eight hours.

The Asus Eee Pad Slider is expected to be in the market by May this year. ASUS says that the prices for the Slider will range from $500 to $800.

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Using the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas as a platform to showcase his company’s upcoming revolutionary projects, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the ‘windows will be everywhere’ concept. The basic idea is that almost all devices will be able to run on Windows, from phones to tablets. In the presentation that he delivered at the Show, Ballmer charted out his company’s plans of using Windows to run devices that would cater to home entertainment. The Xbox 360 coupled with its wireless, touch-free controller, Kinect would act as the communicative medium and transfer the features of home entertainment such as games, videos and music to their locations.

Revolutionising the services of the Kinect further, he talked of its improved face recognition abilities that has led to the conception of the avatarKinect. Now the Kinect would be able to recognise an individual by noting his smile and other facial expressions. These expressions would then be transferred on to the user’s Xbox avatar which would impersonate the bodily movements of the actual user in a parodic manner. Using the bodily movements and voices of the Xbox 360 users, Kinect would enable them to command and use the services of Netflix. The Xbox 360 users would also have the pleasure of catching up on any television show, running on any device by subscribing to Hulu Plus, which will be arriving at the doorstep of the Xbox 360 users with the support of Kinect. Since its introduction to the market about 2 months back, Microsoft has sold 8 million Kinect kits.

Windows Phone 7 which happens to be a recent offering by Microsoft is a mobile operating system that is an enhanced version of the earlier Windows Mobile platform. Microsoft announced the new mobile OS last year and the first smartphones using the OS have already started coming out and we will see more this year. Ballmer further promised that Microsoft would come back with a cut-and-paste capabilities for WinPho7 — something that a lot of people are sorely missing.

At the CES2011 event, the he also introduced the modified version of Microsoft Surface, the multitouch-adept table. This version promises to be sleeker because of the replacement of cameras by infrared sensory features. It would be a 4 inches thin wonder. This version of the Microsoft Surface has been incorporated with a “Pixel sense” technology which is not only sensitive to touch, but to sight as well. Therefore, it would provide efficient responses to whatever it “sees” before it. They demonstrated it with the help several different visual objects and also printed material, showcasing of course its corporate and retail friendly features.

Since almost all devices would run on Windows, Microsoft is building various versions of Windows. These are being powered to function for not just big devices, but also for smaller ones like smartphones and some tablets. For this, Window needs to work on the low-power ARM processors. Microsoft made test-runs available to the public where Windows was made to work on systems built with chips provided by ARM manufacturers. Quite successfully, the system worked swiftly enough in spite of the low-power chips. In a bid to reduce the virtual world to a single chip, Microsoft has started out on its support campaign for all ‘system-on-a-chip’ devices. Soon this would enable Windows to permeate every space, big or small. So it is a possibility that soon, the entire Windows spectrum will be able to run on ARM chips. That is of course ARM can actually match Intel’s full-size processors. Currently ARM is leading in SoC’s but Intel rules the rest of the roost.

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Acer is introducing a brand new tablet ICONIA Tab A500 device which will work on Verizon’s network to provide access to Verizon’s 4G LTE. This tablet will have navigation features, along with the media-streaming, larger, 10.1-inch display version. The Tablet powered by a Tegra 2 dual-core processor with clock speed of 1GHz, will have the latest version of Android and will also feature Clear.fi. This new technology will enable people to share their media with other devices on the WiFi network. The Clear.fi media sharing system for easy access, play and sharing of multimedia across the home network as well as to instantly publish updates to social media networks. It is essentially an assisted program for managing WiFi connections and data transfers.

Acer’s vice president of Smart Handheld, Campbell Kan said that they were proud to offer the ICONIA Tab in a version that works on Verizon’s 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network. This will make sure that users get a mobile Internet experience like no other. The tablet is using a LTE chip from ZTE, who have become quite ubiquitous in the 3G and 4G mobile internet markets all across the world. It features a Sky Cross antennae for reception.

The ICONIA Tab A500 is part of the new crop of Android based tablets that have come out after Apple released the iPad. It is running on Android with Acer’s on proprietary UI 4.5 skin slapped on for effect. Acer is really trying to tap in to the mobile entertainment market by making the A500 HD capable. It comes packing an HDMI port with full 1080p support thanks the Tegra 2 SoC with a 1.0GHz dual core processor — a structure similar to what Apple’s next chip, the A5, is rumored to have. The same hardware enables the tablet is its ability to run and play premium HD arcade games and complex online 3D games with the 10-point multi-touch and it even features a gyroscope for movement detection. Given the right developer action, this tablet could see some major gaming action happening.

However, that does make battery life a major suspect. With support for Flash 10.1 and 3D gaming, it has to be wondered where the tablet is going to get all the power from to run for a respectable amount of time.

The 10.1inch touchscreen is fully capacitive and is encased in an aluminum housing that has a fingerprint loving glossy finish along with an engraved pattern. Also, it boasts of being 13.3 mm thin, completing the sleek look.

Verizon Wireless launched its 4G LTE Mobile Broadband network in December 2010. It is the fastest, most advanced mobile data network in the United States at the moment. It provides speeds which are up to 10 times faster than VZW’s 3G network. This 4G LTE Mobile Broadband network currently reaches only one-third of all Americans though, with plans to expand the network to the company’s entire 3G coverage area over the next three years.

The press release of course contained a lot of statistics about VZW’s network like it is currently serving 93 million customers. It also said that its 3G network is the largest and the most reliable one in the country. Of course, given the spat of ad fights between them and AT&T just a year or so back, the debate still remains unresolved. Your mileage will definitely vary on either network depending on where you are and what the situation is. And with the iPhone now available on VZW, things are bound to get interesting.

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Apple’s App Store is one of the main reasons behind the success of the iPhone and iPad. Only 9 months after the App Store was launched back in 2008, it hit 1 Billion downloads. Now in 2011 it’s just after reaching the magical 10 billion download mark!

It’s quite impressive and to commemorate the occcasion Apple have given away a $10,000 iTunes gift card to the lucky person who downloaded the 10 billionth app. Apple also revealed their top Apps of all time as well, the first time we’ve gotten a proper look at what’s making history on the app store.

And in first place we have Doodle Jump! The most popular paid iPhone app of all time. Yes that’s right, Angry Birds didn’t get it! In fact Angry Birds was fourth, with Tap Tap Revenge 3 and Pocket God finishing above it. Tap Tap revenge 2.6 was in fifth place.

Now these figures are for the American App Store, I’ve also looked at the rankings on the Irish App Store and Angry Birds actually got the number 1 spot there, so it does vary be region. You can see you’re region here

Interestingly, out of the 10 paid iPhone apps of all time, 9 of them are games.

On the free side of things, Facebook reigns king beating everyone else to the top spot. It was followed by Pandora and Google’s mobile app and then Shazam (a personal favourite of mine). Interestingly Paper Toss was the only game that made it into the top 10 free Apps.

When you look at the iPad apps, it seems that games aren’t as important to users. The top paid iPad apps was a music discovery app called SoundHound and was followed by Stickwars, Flight Tracker, Backbreaker Football and Calorie counter.

Then looking at the free apps you’d expect Facebook to reign supreme, but no, and for one very good reason. They haven’t bothered to make a Facebook app for the iPad for some obscene reason. Instead Pandora took the number one spot, with Google’s Mobile App, Movies by Flixster and Google Earth. Yelp then came in at 5th place.

What are you’re favourite apps of all time?

Let us know in the comments

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The “End is Near” at least that is what AT&T executives are saying as their exclusive hold on the iPhone is coming to an end. Come February, Apple will now start selling it iPhones with the Verizon blessing. Why did AT&T lose out? Well, At the moment, the iPhone faces fierce competition from Google’s Android platform, which is closely nipping at Apple’s heels. Part of the reason for Android’s success is that it is available on all the major United States carriers, according to numbers available from comScore, which monitors mobile phone use.

Nearly half the active Android devices in the United States operate on Sprint and T-Mobile. Some commentators think that Apple is realizing that the AT&T exclusive contract is not to their advantage any more. Verizon may offer fertile ground to gain new iPhone customers, and this sets the stage that if Apple feels Android is still gaining on other networks then they may start to look at other subscribers to compete there too.

Putting the iPhone on Verizon was a technological challenge for Apple, because Verizon’s network uses CDMA technology, while AT&T’s, which uses GSM technology. Apple has made the technological modifications necessary to make the iPhone work with CDMA, which other networks use as well. So it would be technically feasible, although it would require some work, for Apple to supply an iPhone to MetroPCS, or Sprint Indeed, further adjustments to put the phone on T-Mobile may have to occur.

The development of an alternative relationship with other carriers could make consumers happy, especially if the technological problems of AT&T continue (dropped calls). Also, more carriers could spur more movement toward the iPhone and away from the Android model.  Carriers will also be happy if in the end they can carry as many mobile phones as possible.

Source: The New York Times

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Starbucks announced that its 6,800 stores would now begin accepting payments from mobile devices. The Starbucks Card Mobile app that is on customers  iPhone, iPod touch or BlackBerry will now be able to use those devices for payment.

The nationwide rollout marks the official launch of the Starbucks Card Mobile payment program, which was initiated in a pilot program at Target stores and in selected location in San Francisco, Seattle and New York. Starbucks Card Mobile, with an iTunes link, lets users add their Starbucks Cards, track rewards and reload cards as needed with either PayPal or credit card. Paying is easy with their phone, since app users simply select “touch to pay” and hold up the barcode on their mobile device screen to the 2-D scanner at the register.

What about Android? Not yet, but coming.  In the meantime, Starbucks has its own custom-built technology to order to enable the 2-D mobile barcode scans.

Starbucks could have used field communication technology to make payments, instead of barcode scanning. What turned the table was that field communication is not available everywhere. Actually, there was some of “the customer is always right” mentality. Starbuck customers were interested in making mobile payments now.

Starbucks took time to investigate the mobile payment option by measuring application speed, transaction speed and total customer wait time. In those instances the Starbucks Card Mobile was the fastest way for customers to pay.

Starbucks is investing in mobile payments because customers have requested the option and have shown a propensity to not only pay with Starbucks Cards, where one in five transactions are made using a Starbucks Card, but frequently use their smartphones while waiting in line.

What is interesting about this is that the mobile phone device is used in a way not exactly anticipated. More companies will probably go this route.

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Rumored New iPad Features

With more competition coming in the mobile market,  Apple is bound to lose in the technology sooner or later. Market share is still vibrant, but it’s getting tougher to set any product apart from the others. So it’s not surprising that Apple is doing just that…trying to get ahead of the technology in order to sustain a robust feel for their products.

Rumor has it that the anticipated iPad 2 will probably deal with some of the first version’s shortcomings, such as built-in cameras (one for snapping photos, the other for video chatting). Some of these changes are necessary, but they will satisfy current consumers, not necessarily bring in new ones.

So, tech and Apple sites are a-wash with rumors that the new iPad will feature supercharged graphics and enhanced resolution.

Not to be outdone in the specs arena, the new iPad will have  new A5 chip that contains a dual-core graphics chip using a SGX543MP2 core. It is purportedly twice as fast as the SGX535 that’s on the current iPad, and it can support four times the pixel count. What this means is possibly a “Retinal Display.” iPad could be in the works, containing a pixel resolution of 2,048×1,536. This is twice the amount of the first-generation iPad. It is worth noting that recent graphics found in the latest version of iBooks have a much higher resolution than in previous versions, which appears to be another clue that a Retina Display is on the way.

One group that would benefit from the increased pixel capacity is gamers. PC gamers play at 2,560×1,600 on their systems if they have the monitor and graphics card to support it.

Still, there are concerns that the retina display may not be viable, at least not now because the iPad couldn’t display any content. There are problems that the display can cause at that resolution, such as 1080p video would have black bars not only along the top and bottom, but also along the sides of the screen.

It remains to be seen whether the iPad2 can live up to the rumors, or if there is more to the technology than anyone knows about, and it will succeed.

Source:  CrunchGear

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By now most have heard that the deadlock iPhone-AT&T market connection will be loosened in February. Verizon will now be able to present the iPhone as part of it’s mobile calling offerings. 74% plan to stay put, but 26% plan to make the move. Why are so many making this move?

The dropped call problem. One reason that customers of AT&T complain about is the number of dropped calls, and this may have an impact on the retention rate. Apparently, the dropped call rate hovers around 4.7%, while Verizon’s is at about 1.7%. The AT&T drop rate was at 6% in September.

The iPhone availability issue. Many iPhone users are ready to make the move away from AT&T. The jump will occur when the iPhone becomes available.

How other providers are faring? Here are some numbers. First only 4% of Verizon’s customers plan to switch in the next 90 days. However, in comparison, 10% of Sprint/Nextel’s customers say they plan to switch, as do 15% of both T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s. So it seems that the people using Verizon are happy for the most part, but that can’t be said for those using T-Mobile or AT&T.

Customers frequently complain about bad AT&T service, not just with dropped calls but also with no service available. For example:

“I am going thru att and have recently moved to a different state. We no longer get any services at all, at my house and by the local grocery stores. We have called several times to let them know and the just give us a run around. “

“Very bad service. It has been hard to refrain from ***** words. They charge you months after you terminate service.”

“I’ve had more problems in my first month with AT&T than I did in 7 years with Verizon: dropped calls, poor sound quality, inability to make and receive calls, and all with full signal strength.”

Complaints see: http://www.cellphonebattles.com/att-wireless-service-review/

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/

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Google seem to be rolling out new versions of Android quicker than anyone else can update their hardware. But this latest flavor, Honeycomb is said to “Entirely for Tablets” We had heard rumors up to now that it would only be for tablets and this is confirmed in the latest video released by Google.

I think it’s safe to say that this Tablet UI doesn’t look anything much like the current Android, and it’s pretty obvious that it wouldn’t work to well on smartphones.

It was debuted on the Motorola Xoom tablet today at CES which will be shipping with Android 3.0 along with a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor that can kick out an impressive 2Ghz of power. It has two digital cameras on board: A front-facing 2.0-megapixel camera acts as a webcam for video chat, and a 5.0-megapixel camera on back is for photos and 720p high-definition video capture. It has a higher resolution than the iPad at 1280×800 compared to 1024×768 and user will be able to watch 1080P HD video as well as use the HDMI port.

Android 3.0 is a brand new, completely different user interface. It’s a truly virtual and holographic user interface” with “refined multitasking, elegant notifications,” and “home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive.” It has a new browser, auto-fill, private browsing and integrated book mark syncing

Have a look at the Android 3.0 Honeycomb video below, and let me know what you think of the new interface.

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For years now Apple and their iPod Touch have had the entire market to themselves. The iPod Touch was really the first proper touchscreen music device that worked and people actually bought. Since then it’s only evolved further and has become more than just a music player. Microsoft have tried to get in on some of Apple’s territory with the Zune HD but they never really managed to make much of an impact.

Now Samsung is going to give it a shot, and it looks like they’re going all out. The Samsung Galaxy S smartphone and the Galaxy Tablet both serve as legit competitors to the iPhone and iPad and are doing some damage to Apple’s sales. Samsung are hungry and are now going after the iPod Touch as well with their latest creation, the Galaxy Player.

It looks great, it’s almost identical to the current iPod Touch but it’s running Android which gives you a lot more freedom. It also has a removable battery, a 3.2 MP camera on the back and a VGA one on the front, Bluetooth, GPS, a microSD card slot, a 1-GHz processor and is running Android 2.2 Froyo.

While the screen may be bigger than the iPod Touch’s at 4-inches, it’s a lower resolution of 800 x 480 (while the Touch sports a 960 x 640 “Retina” display) The other thing is it’s slightly thicker than the iPod Touch at 9.8mm compared to 7.2mm. But then again it’s probably how they fit in the better camera and removable battery.

We’re still waiting for pricing, but expect more information at CES which is less than 2 weeks away. It will come in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB capacity’s but i’m not sure if that includes the SD card slot or not.

Anyway it looks like a promising contender to the iPod Touch, what do you think?

Let us know in the comments

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Google announced “Gingerbread” the latest iteration of Android not too long ago. However, most of the news about it has since died down ever since the Nexus S was announced, the successor to the HTC built Nexus One.

The Nexus S is built by Samsung and is a slightly higher spec device than the current Samsung Galaxy. The Nexus S is the flagship device for Android 2.3 also known as “Gingerbread”.

The Nexus S has a crystal clear 4-inch Super AMOLOED touchscreen with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution, a 5-megapixel rear camera, a front-facing VGA camera, a microUSB 2.0 port, 16GB of built-in memory, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and Near Field Communication (NFC).

But what about all those users who jumped onto the Nexus One ship before Google decided to pull the plug on it and stop selling it? The Nexus One is by no means a bad device, in fact it’s still one of the best out there and I wouldn’t be disappointed if I got one in the morning, it’s almost identical to the extremely popular HTC Desire.

Well the Nexus One was always going to be the first handset to get the update for Android updates, it was for Android 2.2 anyway (Froyo) Google tweeted out that the update for the Nexus one will be coming in the coming weeks

The Gingerbread OTA for Nexus One will happen in the coming weeks. Just hang tight!

So hopefully Nexus One users wont have to wait to long, unless of course you’re running one of the carrier branded Nexus One’s which will always have slight delays before the carriers add their own stuff to it. Of course you can easily flash it onto your carrier locked device if you haven’t the patience.

Now all the remains to be seen is when Android 2.3 will make it to other Android devices like the HTC Desire? I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too long after since it’s so similar to the Nexus One and it didn’t take too long to get the update to Froyo 2.2 either. I’d imagine other popular handsets like the EVO 4G, Incredible, Galaxy S and Droid won’t be too far behind either.

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Archos has long been at the forefront of the PMP market but somehow it has always failed to make that much of an impact. It was in fact one of the first companies to actually come out with a tablet/slate device. Still, they were more or less forgotten till the iPad came along and actually re-introduced the segment, as opposed to introducing it for the first time — a wrong notion shared by many. Archos has been updating its portables with wireless connectivity and most recently with the Android OS as the platform, in its latest efforts to secure a place for itself in the market. The Archos 32 internet tablet is one such product.

A 3.2 inch device, it is primarily crafted of black plastic but the back is made of some sort of brushed metal. The front of the device is mostly glossy screen. Below the display there are six touch-sensitive buttons but one disadvantage remains that they are not backlit. This makes it hard to operate it in the dark. The device weighs merely 2.5 ounce and the overall built quality of the 3 inch thick tablet seems to have fairly impressed the reviewers so far. It’s a sleek looking touch screen device that is finished in aluminum, offering a 3.2-inch (400 x 240) resistive display along with touch controls and a VGA camera at the back. However, one point to note is that the display looks pretty glossy and surely enough — a lot of users are complaining about reflections under brightly lit conditions.

As a media player, it can play a fairly wide range of video and music formats, including the not-so-mainstream formats that include some open source ones. Music formats include MP3, WMA, WMA-Pro 5.1, WAV, AAC, OGG and the video formats include 720p MPEG-4 clips, H.264 HD, and WMV9 files. The device is also pre-loaded with Archos’ MPEG-2 codec / plug-in that allows for watching AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, FLV and other video files. It is imminently pocketable thanks to its weight and dimensions and the user interface seems quite smooth thanks to the 3D graphic accelerator. It also has WiFi connectivity to help you along.

Archos 32 also supports HD video (720p though) and can also display subtitles and alternate audio tracks. There is a small microphone at the bottom but there is no speaker, which is a bit of a disappointment considering most of the other Archos PMPs in the past had one. The earbuds provided are apparently not up to the mark either as they are reported to be somewhat uncomfortable for the ears. The common features such as a photo viewer, calculator, voice recorder and video recorder are all present.

According to Archos, the battery can last up to 24 hours during music playback, 6 hours during video and 8 hours while surfing the web.

With a market price of about $150 (and lower, in some places), the new Archos 32 internet tablet is quite a good deal. Being cheaper than both the Zune HD, the iPod Touch and several other similar PMP’s by a large margin — the Archos 32 just might carve out a niche for itself on the market. In spite of quite a few drawbacks, the reasonable price makes sure that people looking for a touchscreen PMP on budget wll find this nifty little PMP quite attractive. Archos packs an impressive range of features into an attractive, slim device, and one can expect to make good use of the flexibility on offer thanks to it being an Android slate. Get ready for the hacking and cracking that usually accompanies every good Android device.

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Apple’s iPhone is one of a kind. All the latest models of Android phones are lagging way behind this new release, especially when it comes to the App Store and its Android equivalent — the Marketplace. In response to the criticism it seems almost, Google has declared a new store client app for phones running on Android OS 1.6 or higher. With Cover Flow-like browsable control for Android phones, the makers of Android plan to add popular content like live wallpapers and widgets that will present a variety of information on a single page that will include the links, similar to how Apple’s App Store works. Google plans to cater to users with newer phones, in hoping that it will serve their purpose.

A change in policy on software returns and the release of commercial commodities instead of simple ad-supported headers, which is favored by Google, is also on the cards for the Android Market. The hardware fragmentation issues that have been plaguing the Android apps have been addressed, according to Google. They will now support target-based screen sizes and densities along with GL texture compression formats. However, one caveat still remains — Apple’s limits are 40x larger for iOS app downloads in comparison to Google’s Android markets’ 50MB.

Games larger than 300MB, like the latest Infinity Blade and GPS app having maps of the US and Canada, have been released on to the iOS platform. Users are allowed to download big apps from iTunes App Store via WiFi. This is not available in the Android Market. Only three games, as noted by Apple, are present on the Android Marketplace. John Carmack, a gaming legend, said that he was especially excited about the iPhone because he’s of the opinion that the gaming experience was much better on the iPhone than on Android phones. Not much progress has been seen in the Android Market on that count, though improvements in the gaming sector have continued.

This progress will however, not be obvious in the market as the developers are still not sure of their apps that are very ‘graphics-intensive’. A lot of market mismanagement has been noticed as Google, according to reports, has not been retuning investment as much as iPhone. iPhone has paid 50 times more and has proved to be of better quality than Google, which provides only certain high quality apps. Google  has also not allowed the usage of local currencies in order to buy foreign apps.

Spam and other infringements like trademark and copyright have also been seen to be monetized by Google.  This is widespread in the Android market. Spam ringtones, pretentious iTunes and paid Disney themes have cluttered the ranks of the multimedia category. These complaints have so far been overlooked. A study says that 97% of Asians, 70% of Europeans and 43% of North Americans have been using Android and gaming illegally on it. Android smart-phones are sold more in number as compared to iPhones because users are attracted to the stolen games and also because there’s a larger presence through multiple manufacturers and markets.

Google Ads even promote fake Android apps and thus they have successfully taken over the market. Game developer Rovio tweeted that that is how Google promotes business. For this reason, it has also faced consequences regarding poor security, unwittingly allowing users to collect private information. To build an equivalent platform for an iTunes-like app for Android and policing the software catalogue would mean quite an investment but it should not be that hard for one of the largest companies on the plaent! Google employees however, note that the release of web apps for Google’s Chrome OS platform has already taken the path towards rivaling Apple’s App Store. However, it is definitely a long, long way off from being an equal and a threat for Apple.

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Finally, its arrived! Android 2.3 or probably better known to you all as Gingerbread has found its way out into the world at long last! It comes bringing a whole host of new tweaks that is certain to get current Android users pretty excited when it eventually rolls out. Of course Nexus one users of course will get it first, we’ll have to see how long it takes for other devices to get it.

So here’s what’s new:

Refreshed UI

Now Google haven’t gone to town all together with redesigning the whole UI, but they have made one or two tweaks and just made the whole thing cleaner looking. the notifications bar has been revamped, a new task manager, better options and a system wide downloads manager.

New Keyboard

The keyboard has long been the Achilles heel for Android, that’s because it’s being compared to the iPhone, which is only fair, and it has the best keyboard out there. The new Android keyboard learns a few lessons from it. It’s been reshaped and repositioned for improved targeting. It has support for multitouch and it’s easier to access symbols etc… and voice input has been much improved. The letters are easier to distinguish and more widely spaced apart so it should be a much better typing experience.

Better Copy & Paste

Copy and paste features have been much improved as well, before it was a right pain to try and highlight text but now it’s much easier with clear controls for highlighting what you want.

Improved Battery Life & Faster

It’s great that Google can get speed and more power just be refining the OS. Android 2.2 did speed up devices significantly but 2.3 is said to take it to a whole new level! This is mainly thanks to the new built in aggressive task manager which will kill unwanted tasks running in the background taken up memory and battery.

Internet Calling

While it’s widely expected that many carriers may pull out this feature, it’s still pretty cool. Gingerbread now support VoIP calls to SIP addresses, built into the handset which is pretty handy.

Camera

The update now has support for you to take pictures and record using the front facing camera on devices where there’s one fitted instead of just the rear camera.

There’s a few other little bits and pieces as well, but nothing too major, have a look at the video below and it should tell you all you need to know.

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Everything seems grand, you could be one of many people sitting there at home or at work reading this article and you haven’t a care in the world. But have you ever thought about all those poor trees that your harming??

While many people have questioned theadverse side affects of wireless networks, nobody has really found any evidence that it affects humans at all. However, scientists from the Dutch city Alphen aan den Rijn have been getting worried about the trees in their area and decided to commission a study to see what was going on.

In their study, they found that over the last 5 years, deciduous trees in the western world have been affected by radiation from Mobile Phones and also wireless LAN’s.

In fact, over 70 percent of trees in urban areas of the Netherlands were showing signs of “Wi-Fi sickness”. The symptoms include variations in growth, bleeding and fissures in the bark. If look back to 5 years ago, only a mere 10 percent were showing signs on the illness. Scientists conducted this study after they noticed some abnormalities on trees that couldn’t be explained by known viral or bacterial infections.

Meanwhile, out of the urban areas, the trees seem to be fine and not suffering from any signs of “Wi-Fi sickness”

So while our trees may be feeling the affects of all this wireless radiation floating about the place, what affect does it have on us humans? The Health Protection Agency states that “there is no consistent evidence to date that exposure to radio signals from Wi-Fi and WLANs adversely affects the health of the general population”.

Really the only signs that people are showing from exposure to these technologies is some mild headaches and cases of nausea.

Generally speaking, Wi-Fi isn’t really going to cause us any trouble, is the mobile phone radiation which is a lot more powerful, but still nothing has proven that it’s bad for you. You’d have to live in a Wi-Fi hotspot for a year to absorb the same amount of radio waves as you would from a 20-minute phone call!

So really the trees are the only ones suffering at the moment

Source:

Cnet

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I think we can all agree that the hype and build up to the Google Nexus One, the iPhone killer, was much bigger than the actual sales of the smartphone. Yes it was a great device, and still is, but it just didn’t stand out from the crowd. Just over a month after it was released, HTC, who made it, released the HTC Desire, which was the exact same spec wise, with one or two better things.

Google also tried a new method of selling the device. They tried to sell it via their own online store, and later through carriers but the concept just never took off, and less 11 months after it’s release, Google axed the Nexus One.

Now rumors have begun to rock the web again as we look for a Nexus Two. This time though, if we’re to believe rumors, it’s coming from Samsung. What’s more, they’ve even come up with a release date, 11th November? IntoMobile, say they’ve got a reliable source saying that Gingerbread, the next iteration of Android (2.3) is coming out to coincide with the release of the Nexus Two on this date. Conveniently Samsung have also scheduled a press conference in New York on the 8th, so they reckon that’s when the Nexus Two will be announced.

Rumored specs are as follows : A full touchscreen with black, shiny glossy plastic and a curved back. The updated Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system will offer a video chat feature built-in with the help of a front facing camera.

Sounds good? Well it does I guess, if you believe it. I personally can’t see why Google will want to release a Nexus Two, and secondly, why they would suddenly ditch HTC for Samsung? Google said they had a very close relationship with HTC and up to now have worked very closely with them. It seems odd that they would suddenly switch manufacturers.

Then less than 24 hours after all these rumors came out, Samsung say it’s all just hot air and there’s no Nexus Two coming from them. Techcrunch then suggest that the Nexus Two does actually exist, but it’s been delayed until next year due to hardware issues.

I’ll leave this one in your hands, is there a Nexus Two coming anytime soon? Do you want one? Do we need one?

Let me know in the comments

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The Android onslaught is continuing, the relentless march to the top of the smartphone market share pyramid is not stopping, and there’s nothing Apple can do about it. Android is the leader when it comes to smartphone shipments in the US.

Several reports are coming in, and they all say the same thing. Android phones accounted for 44 percent of phone purchases in the US market in the third quarter, with iPhones coming in at second place with 26 percent of sales. So in raw numbers, that’s 9.1 million Android phones sold, versus 5.5 million iPhones.

In the US Android is certainly making an impact, and since the second quarter of 2010, Android sales have already increased another 11 percent. Android is the greatest driver of the market, sales for Android are up 1,309% compared to the same time last year.

Worldwide, Android is still making its presence known, Nokia is just about hanging in there shipping 33 percent of smartphones, followed by Android at 25 percent and then Apple at 17 percent. RIM is really beginning to struggle with just 15 percent of shipments.

From this time last year, Android has shipped 20 million units, this is compared to 1.4 million back in 2009. Android is making up a quarter of the current smartphone market.

In the first six months of 2010, Android made up 30.8 percent of all smartphone sales in the US, this is a big jump up from 4.6 percent during the same period last year. Apple, slipped from 21.1 percent down to 19.8 percent of total sales. However, the biggest drop is with RIM, there sales plummeted from 51.4 percent in 2009, to 35.5 percent this year.

The reason for Androids massive success at the moment is because it’s available to so many different manufacturers, and available from so many different carriers. Android devices are available and affordable to consumers on pretty much any budget.

So the droids continune to march on, firmly staking there place in the smartphone market, will there be any let up any time soon? Or will the surge continue to overtake the world leader, Nokia?

Source:

PC World

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Ok. Take a look at this.

Market Share By Smartphone

For Apple, it looks good.  In the World of the Mobile phone, Apple has made a lot of gains. So much so that it is now number 2 in market share, ahead of RIM, and behind Nokia. Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry,  has been ahead of Apple in the global smartphone market for a long time. But not any longer. The research firm Strategy Analytics, reported that the iPhone shipped more devices than did BlackBerry during 2010′s third quarter.

But if there is a silver lining for RIM, its that the entire smartphone market had an overall  growth rate of 78 percent. Though Apple did go ahead of RIM in sales volume, and perhaps may even be ready to ship more in the upcoming future, since the supply constraints which provided a hold up in 2010 maybe gone. However,  Apple has a long way to go to overcome Nokia, which dominates the smartphone market.

So how did Nokia do? Well Nokia sold 26.5 million devices during the three-month period. Apple shipped only 14.5 million, about half as much. Which begs the question, where is Nokia dominant? Apparently it’s market is in Asia and Europe. How long that will last is anyone’s guess, but it will be hard to shake from this lofty perch, however, it is losing ground. Last year it held  a 37.8 percent of the market, this year it is about 34.5 percent. So inroads can be made, but it will take a while to overcome, and that is assuming that it will be a static player in this dynamic market. Such an assumption is unrealistic.

How did Apple do? Well is had a small amount of growth; their market share grew from 17.0 to 18.3 percent over the year. BlackBerry dropped about as much as Nokia’s. It fell to 16.1 from 19.6 percent; RIM shipped 12.3 million devices during the quarter.

Source: Strategy Analytics

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It’s finally been made official, what is much hoped to be the first real competitor to the iPad has been given a release date as well as a price.

Verizon Wireless customers in the US will be able to get their hands on the 7 – inch Samsung Galaxy Tablet running Android 2.2 from November 11th for $599.99

Customers will then be able to pay for a monthly wireless plan starting at $20 per month for 1Gb of data on the go. It looks like there will be more plans than this , but information on those isn’t available as of yet.

All the 4 major US carriers are set to carrier the Samsung Galaxy Tab at some stage, but Verizon is the first out of the gates to tell us a release date as well as pricing, I can only imagine that other carriers will be fairly similar.

Verizon also had a few more details to share with us about the tablet device itself.

You’ve got a 1GHz Cortez A8 CPU running Android Froyo 2.2. You’ve then got a 3MP camera on the back and a 1.3MP camera on the front so video chatting should be easy. The device is 4.7 x 7.4 x .45 inches with a screen that’s 7-inches big, smaller than the iPad.

It’s interesting price wise, it sounds fairly expensive, but the Galaxy Tablet is Wi-Fi and 3G enabled and comes in $30 cheaper than the iPad 3G. However you can now get the iPad on Verizon as well for just a tiny bit extra, and you also have to carry around the MiFi hotspot with you everywhere.

What do you think about the Samsung Galaxy Tab? Is it the first tablet that is actually a real competitor to the iPad and will tempt even those of us that aren’t nerds?

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As Apps go, Angry Birds has hit 2 million downloads on Android-based devices after only two days of availability.

On Friday, Rovio released Angry Birds for Android users on cross-platform app store, GetJar. The impact was to cause a server crash, and bring the site down. This game has consistently been at or near the top of Apple App Store charts in several countries around the world. The move to Android after originally playing in the Apple market caused a high demand. The GetJar site eventually recovered, and is currently up and running for those want to download the game to their Android-based device.

Angry Birds Mobile Phone App

Differences with iPhone.

The iPhone version of Angry Birds costs 99 cents, but the Android version is free to download. However, the Android gaming version has ads and is the primary economic support mechanism. One question is why free? Well, according to Rovio, the decision to offer the App at no charge was due to the notion that paid Apps have not performed very well on Android. In that case, if it is true, the company representative added that it would be following “the Google model” by offering an ad-supported app.

What is the Angry Bird?

Ok, so what is all the fuss about? After all, it is just a game. True. But apparently a highly addictive one. Angry Birds allow users to fling a flock of birds with different capabilities at green pigs through nearly 200 levels. The latest version 1.4.2 includes 15 new levels, plus support for the iPhone 4′s Retina Display, and integration with Apple’s new Game Center. And now it is in the Android market.

The updated Angry Birds also sports an optimized memory usage, a new golden egg soundboard, and language support for Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.

Download here

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Many of us are trying to save costs in as many areas as possible.  I personally have run through just about everyone of my utilities, hobbies etc this year to see if savings could be made.  One area where I haven’t been able to make savings is with my mobile contract, as I’m tied to O2 for another 9 months on a 24 month contract.  When my contract expires I will definitely be looking at moving to a SIM only contract, as I’m more than happy with my iPhone 4 and I doubt I’ll want to upgrade until iPhone 5 comes out in 2012.

Why a SIM only contract?  Because they tend to offer better value contracts with more minutes and texts for the same price or lower, because you don’t get a new discounted handset with the tariff, where some of the cost of the handset is added into your monthly payment.  Instead you get a new SIM card to insert into your existing phone handset.  You can even keep your existing phone number and 30 day contracts are also available.

http://www.simonly-deals.com can help you find the best sim only deals available from the main networks in the UK such as Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3 Mobile.  The site offers a very easy to use search engine that allows you to easily search for the best sim only contracts that provide the number of minutes, texts or total cost that you require.  You  can also specify whether you want a 1 month or 12 month contact to ensure you get the best sim only contracts.

Other search options available allow users to choose which networks to search across, as well as specifying whether a personal or business contract is required.  The results rate each deal, so you can be certain you are getting the best possible deal.

Looking For A SIM Only Mobile Deal? is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.