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  • MWC 2014: The Red Herring Price Goes For – Triple Draw Between Samsung, LG and Sony

    It's split between three big players this year.

    Samsung:

    The core feature Samsung has been touting all MWC long has been the ability of its tablets to run 4 application windows at once. Useful, of course, but… Nothing else?

    LG:

    How long have you been dreaming of a curved mobile phone? Me neither, but the engineers at LG are very happy with its curved battery and screens. The phone doesn't feel specially awesome either.

    Sony:

    Speaking of dreams, we've been always waiting for a waterproof tablet, don't we? No? Yeah. Sony thinks otherwise. In any case, after seeing the impressive feats of the HZO guys I'd rather purchase a water-proofer from them and use the tablet I like.

  • Mobile World Congress 2014: Protect Your Devices Like a Pro – Panzer Glass and HZO Water Proofing


    Pictures explain better than words. See what HZO does to a bare Raspberry Pi:

     

    And see this live video of Panzer's tempered glass screen protector:

  • Mobile World Congress 2014: HTC Keeps Its Pace


    HTC didn't bring anything significantly new on the table at the year's Mobile World Congress. If you ignore the fact that one of its phones can actually drive a huge screen in real time, as seen below.

  • MWC 2014: More Variety is Better – Firefox OS, Tizen and Ubuntu


    "Bare" Android is no longer trendy. We have choices now: Tizen (from the Linux Foundation,) Firefox OS (I guess you know where it is coming from) and Ubuntu OS. Below you can see videos of Firefox OS and Tizen. After playing with more than 20 different devices, I wasn't able to unlock the Ubuntu OS device. There goes great usability.

  • Mobile World Congress 2014: Oppo Making a Big Splash


    A relatively obscure Chinese company, Oppo has just launched its N1 mobile phone, to complement its Find 5 device. With 2 GB of RAM and a Quad Core Snapdragon, it packs some serious punch. It features a custom Android version named Color OS. It felt as one of the fastest phones at this year's Mobile World Congress. You can see a video below.

  • MWC 2014: Nokia Doesn't Put All Eggs in One Basket – Android Handheld Launched


    Nokia astonished the mobile world (well, more or less since news of this had already been leaked) with its Nokia X1, an Android phone that makes Nokia probably the first mobile manufacturer to have 3 operating systems under control. X1 is a relatively heavy UI change on Android, but as a phone it felt relatively vulgar, indistinguishable from any other Android phone. Below you'll see a few pictures and a video.

    We also took some time to check the Nokia Asha, its low end mobile for kind-of developing markets, using the S40 operating system. It's not a full-fledged "smartphone," but it looks like a decent device. See a short video below:

    Finally, we played for a few minutes with a Nokia Windows tablet. The Metro UI actually looks very good in high definition screens, as you can see below. 

  • Mobile World Congress 2014: Jolla and Sailfish OS Bring a Breath of Fresh Air


    We've had the pleasure of checking out the fresh-from-the-oven Sailfish OS 1.0, living inside the new Jolla handset. Sailfish is a new mobile operating system, cross-compatible with Android (so you'll be getting Angry Birds, don't worry.) Sailfish feels snappy and fast, and its swipe around menu system is surprisingly smooth. You can see a few pictures and a video below.

    Sailfish for Android will be available "very soon," so you'll be able to install it on your own Android device. We've seen it live on several Samsung and HTC devices, and it works very, very well. Sailfish 1.0 will still be "beta" for Android, and probably require around 1GB RAM on your device (likely to go down in the future.)


    At the Jolla booth at the Mobile World Congress they were also giving away Angry Birds soda. Angry Birds branded Jolla phone is said to be available before summer. 

  • Why the Apple TV Sequel, Expected In 2014, May Now Face a Tricky Debut


    We know for sure that Apple is developing a new Apple TV. We are curious as to what new features the new tiny black box will have and when exactly it's set to be launched.

    There was the possibility that apple might have been creating its own Internet TV service as a solution to its Apple TV limited content. Bloomberg News reported that it was less probable for Apple to by-pass cable operators and gets programming rights licenses from the media companies after failed negotiations with programmers and cable operators. Apple may be looking at the next alternative which would be having cable operators like Times Warner Cable and others get the programming rights on their behalf.

    When news later came of the acquisition of Time Warner Cable by Comsat in a $45 billion deal, it seems that Apple may find a hard time getting a good deal with Comcast since Comcast has a set top box of its own. The X1 set top box may make Comsat reluctant to give up its internet TV to a market rival.

    People following Apple’s activities and new innovations have been waiting on the company to cause a storm in the TV market just like what it did with the iPod player and iTunes in the music industry. The 2007 Apple TV was last updated in 2013 and there have been news of a new AppleTV with the iOS 7 mobile software which is indicative of a new device this year.

    13 million AppleTVs have been sold according to Apple CEO even with rumors of the company reducing its plans to venture into the TV industry. They are now focusing on getting programming rights from media companies though cable providers so that they do not seem like they are competing with the companies. So for now, all eyes are on the outcome of these deals. Mostly, we look forward to what will happen with the Time Warner Cable as it seems to be the first company that Apple has approached.

  • Bolt VoIP app with support for regular calls launches at the Play Store


    One may find VoIP a bit troublesome because using it requires a user to sign up to the service and in order to share the experience of using it with friends and family, one has to sort of market the service or maybe put in some effort to get them on board. That is not all; using VoIP across different services may also be an up-hill task but Bolt intends to make life on VoIP easier and maybe something to look more forward to.

    Bolt uniqueness comes in the aspect that, unlike services like Skype where users can only use it to call fellow Skype members, bolt does not obligate its users to such a choice. Calls made by Bolt users to other Bolt members will be channeled through their service and calls to other services are channeled normally. This makes Bolt a one-stop VoIP significantly reducing all the work one gets into once you sign up to each new service.

    Their main target may be to rally up users for their system or just make it a service to want. The Bolt VoIP keeps a record of the most frequent calls and lists them first and at the center just like the stock calling service. People who like simple easy to use applications should really look forward to Bolt VoIP, especially those that find the new Android launcher troublesome. It is a wonderful service for people out to make just simple calls and you never know; some of the calls may be free of charge.

    The new application is available in the Playstore and interested users with android 4.0 should feel free to download it. Still new at the store, it has a rating of 3.4 but you can be rest assured that it is as good as we say it is. Using it is quite simple and when you are not using it to call other Bolt users, it is still a good enough calling application.

  • Duracell Ventures into the Lucrative Cloud Storage Market

    Duracell, the battery maker and a subsidiary of Gillette is now offering cloud storage services. The service is offered at an intriguing monthly rate of $US199 for 2TB storage. There is a vast difference between batteries and cloud storage batteries and many people are wondering why Duracell has taken up this venture.

    A dig through the cloud storage service by Duracell indicates that it is not entirely in the business. It mentions Condre, a value added reseller as well as cloud facilitators offering the backup as a service. The facilitators of Condre also offer NAS/cloud storage functions.

    It has not been established whether Duracell is fronting Condre or whether Condre is using the name of Duracell. However, pundits are of the view that Duracell is poised to deliver on its claims of being 250-1000 times quicker than its rivals in the cloud storage service. The cloud storage service also includes the share n sync functions for shuttling data amongst mobile devices and PCs. This is done through the cloud backup as well as a web portal to enable access of data.

    The Duracell’s suite indicates collaboration with StorZon, which is a trademark that is held by Condre. It is said to offer cloud storage services that are Geodiverse including two data centers. Duracell indicates that the data will be stored twice on the premises and twice on the cloud. For now, the service looks to be US only.