Android

Hands-On Review of the Republic Wireless $19 ‘Unlimited’ Cell Phone Plan

Back in early November I wrote about Republic Wireless, a company offering a compelling $19 a month unlimited plan with no contract. I ordered a phone the same day, and it arrived late in December. Let’s take a quick look at what they have to offer! The Hype: Newsflash: anything a cell network can do, the Internet can do better and cheaper. So we think a truly smart smartphone should make a habit of using Wi-Fi for everything. Surfing. Texting. Sharing. And, yes, even talking. There isn’t an app for this. And you definitely shouldn’t have to download any special…

Editorials, Game Diary

Gaming Future and Obsoleteness

Obsolete describes something that is no longer being used or is out of date. The perception of obsoleteness shapes the upcoming gaming outlook as the Wii and PSP are scrutinized as the “new” Wii U and PlayStation Vita release soon.

Editorials

Gear Chat 2012- We’re Back!!

It has been over a year but Gear Chat is back and we’re talking tech. In this first episode Thomas and I talk about the Samsung Galaxy Note, the Series 7 Slate tablet and what configuration of Apple computing products is best. Future episodes will include Gaming and eBook segments and much more. We also want to hear from you! What content do you want covered? What questions do you have? Would you like us to do the podcast as a live, call-in conversation? We want to know. Happy listening and, as always, thanks for sharing via Twitter and Facebook.

Editorials

Apple’s Amazing Quarter Makes the iPhone Bigger Than ALL of Android!

It was only a few weeks ago when I posted the news that Android and iOS were in a virtual tie for market share of the smartphone market based on recent data, I said that ‘everyone wins’. I still believe that – I think that having strong competition in any market makes everyone work harder … and the results are better products for us as consumers! Last week Nielson put out estimates of smartphone market share for the fourth quarter of 2011, showing that iOS had significantly closed the gap with Android for recent months. Now, after the final tally…

News & Features

Samsung Pokes at a Key iPhone Weakness in New Ad

If you were to ask a random group of smartphone users to name a feature that Android has that iOS is lacking, while you’d hear nonsense like ‘open’, you’d also hear one message loud and clear: turn-by-turn navigation with voice support. For me, this is one of three reasons I am still using Android (the others being physical keyboards and something work-specific). I use my Google Maps navigation everywhere and for everything – and it is awesome. I tried using the navigation built into pre-Mango Windows Phone 7 and it twice tried to tack on 30 minutes with inept guidance…

Events

The Droid Motorola RAZR MAXX and Droid 4 Were Worth a Look, but They Didn’t Steal the Show

Motorola stole the show last year at CES 2011. The Moto Xoom and the Atrix with its web top keyboard dock… oh my! They were pretty amazing to see. Francis and I even had a chance to remote log into my iMac in New Jersey using the Atrix smartphone as the “computer” powering the remote access. Sadly, the actual experience of using the Xoom and the Atrix left a good deal to be desired. Judie, Thomas and I all bought one; we all returned them. Judie and I visited Motorola again this year at CES 2012, and while they didn’t…

Events

Thomas Takes On the Wrapsol Non-Slip Grip Pad

Every now and then you come across a product that, despite liking the company that produces it, you cannot help but wonder, “Why?” That’s certainly the case with the Wrapsol non-slip grip pad. The product is designed for large tablets and adheres to the back of a tablet. From there its sole purpose is to allow the tablet to stay in position more easily when rested on, for example, your thigh. Don’t get us wrong…. the product actually works as promised but we cannot help but think it is an idea searching for an application. I don’t know of…

Editorials, Events

iOS, Android and Windows Phone – Where is the Market Headed? An Open Discussion

Judie and I both got HTC Titans the other day and have jumped into using them. Our initial thoughts? We both like them… a lot! We’ve been discussing a great deal of this behind the scenes. One discussion began with my posting So I really have to say that I am loving the hell out of the HTC Titan (even with its now slightly dented corners):-] I’m still learning how to get around but it is polished, tight, and a pleasure to use. Best onscreen keyboard ever! No matter how good the hardware o do t think I would like an Android…

Events, News & Features

Waterproof Protection from the Inside Out: HzO Technology Coming to a Smartphone Near You

Here is one of the biggest finds of CES so far. We’ve seen a number of companies that are offering new technologies that will waterproof electronic devices, but the technology HzO is bringing to market is different. And better…

Editorials

When THIS Happens We ALL Win

If you search around the internet based on the images in this post you will find loads of prognostication – Android fans calling it meaningless (despite foretelling the death of iOS with each percentage Android gains at the expense of RIM), iOS fans calling it the ‘Android plummet’ (in spite of arguing that short term shifts are meaningless), and so on. What I see – particularly when I look at the next image – is a market that is moving more rapidly than ever before. Smartphones accounted for over TWO THIRDS of all mobile phone sales in October and November…

News & Features

Android’s New Holo Theme to Help Speed Updates; Potential to End Themes?

According to Droid Life and the Android developers blog the Holo theme included in Android 4.0 is a requirement on a devices that ship the Android Marketplace with 4.0. This promises to fix is the amount of time it takes manufacturers to produce updates to the OS. They do this by making Holo a requirement and allowing a DeviceDefault skin as well. Adam Powell of Google says: Formally separating these theme families will also make future merges easier for manufacturers updating to a new platform version, helping more devices update more quickly. Also, developers can specify DeviceDefault or Holo. Since…

Reviews

ePillow Tablet Pillow review

Every now and then we are invited to review something that just looks… well… ridiculous but we end up agreeing to take a look anyway. When the “ridiculous review item” first arrives and we open the box our first impressions are, for the most part, confirmed. Yes, more often than not the product is silly, looks like a bad joke and poses a bit of a challenge with regard to actually writing the review. Every now and then however, once we actually start using the item we discover that our first AND second impressions were actually wrong! Sure, the item…

News & Features

US Cellular Launching Huawei Ascend II in January for FREE After Rebate!

Phones such as the Samsung Repp and HTC Wildfire have shown that low-end devices still have much to offer, and the Huawei Ascend II looks to step in at a somewhat higher level but still be available for free after rebate! This is the description: The Huawei Ascend IITM with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) is your entertainment center, GPS navigator, news and weather hub, and your social network connection all in one powerful, pocket-sized device. Stream content from the web or your own media library and view it on the 3.5″ HVGA touchscreen display. Grab apps from the Android Marketplace and…

Reviews

HTC EVO Design 4G for Sprint Review

As smartphones continue their march into the mainstream the challenge of choosing the right phone for you grows ever-more challenging. This challenge is compounded by the fact that so many of HTC’s phones seems to be a slight variation on the same theme over and over and over again. (The same holds true for Samsung’s phones which all offer slight changes in screen size, features etc while remaining largely the same.) As Judie wrote in her review of the HTC Rhyme a few weeks ago, I like items that have their own personality and that aren’t similar to every one else’s, but…

Editorials

Where’s my “Made for Android?”

My eldest son had a birthday recently, receiving numerous presents. This in and of itself is not unusual, but there was an aspect to one of those presents that triggered a revelation of sorts for me. Before I delve into that, let me preface it with a disclaimer: I currently own no Apple products. Zip. Nada. Zero. In the realm of cell phones, I’m partial to Android. I love the customizability of it, the screen widgets, and how I can choose to integrate it with my PCs. My son, not yet a cell phone user, owns an iPod. Consequently, towards…

Editorials, Gear Bits

Latest Android OS Distribution Numbers Showing Gingerbread Taking Over

Have you ever heard me complain about Android fragmentation as a major issue? Yeah, you probably have. But there is actually some good news on the fragmentation front – more than half of all Android phones are running the latest operating system Android 2.3.x aka ‘Gingerbread’. Add to that the 35.3% running the previous version Froyo (2.2), and you have more than 85% on a ‘fairly unified’ platform.

Gear Bits

One More Tablet Gone; Can Microsoft Avoid the Same Fate?

image courtesy of BerryReporter Clinton recently wrote an opinion piece entitled, “As RIM Writes Off The Playbook, The Pressure is on Microsoft to Make a Complete Windows 8 Tablet“, in which he says: This morning the Wall Street Journal reported that RIM is taking a $485 million charge for their lackluster tablet, the Playbook. The charge comes by way of a markdown in the value of the massive inventor that RIM still has of the devices. It is a brutal and costly reminder that if you kinda-sorta-maybe-woulda-shoulda your tablet strategy, the price can be steep. Very steep. and The challenge facing Microsoft is that they are…

Gear Bits

Droid 4 Revealed – Like a Moto Razr with a Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboard

When it comes to mobile devices I tend to be fairly platform agnostic, owning Android phones, iPod Touches (well, iPods since the original one in 2001), and both iPads and Android Tablets. But there is one place where I have clear bias (well, aside from gaming performance), and that is my preference for physical keyboards. Listing the smartphones I have used over the last few years, there is the original Droid, Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, HTC Touch Pro 2, HTC 7 Pro, and Droid Pro. What do all of those phones have in common? A physical keyboard. I even stuck…

Reviews

The Motorola Droid RAZR Android Phone Review

The battle for “World’s Thinnest” presses on with the release of Motorola’s latest flagship. Resurrecting the name of a phone that became an icon, the RAZR is back, but aside from the name, it bears little resemblance to the phone-in-skinny-jeans of 2004. The new RAZR, or the XT910 as Motorola define it, is an Android slate measuring a trim 7.1mm at its thinnest point, handily eclipsing the Galaxy S II’s now portly 8.49mm figure. Make no mistake; this is a seriously thin phone. But like a Lamborghini, it may hug the ground when laid flat, but it’s seriously wide. At…

Editorials, News & Features

Android Rules Smartphone Roost … But Holiday ‘Wish Lists’ Show Vulnerability

Guess who wants an Android Tablet for Christmas/Hanukkah? (Hint: no one). But we’ll return to that in a moment. This week we got news that put the Android OS at more than 50% market share for smartphone operating systems. This is based on numbers from Gartner, which means that they willingly and knowingly count Samsung’s % estimates’ the same as other people’s ‘shipments’ the same as other people’s actual SALES. In other words, their numbers are a crapshoot. But make no mistake – Android is BY FAR the dominant mobile OS. If you look at the trends in the graph above,…

News & Features

Samsung Hits Another Advertising Home Run with Google Nexus Commercial

I had already written about just how great the Samsung Galaxy S II commercial was a couple of months ago, but at the time Apple and Samsung were in the midst of the ‘copy me, copy you’ spectacle and so I wrapped it around a tongue-in-cheek accusation of copying. Certainly Samsung has learned that the macho specmanship approach of Motorola has a very narrow appeal, which shows very well in this new ad as well. The upcoming Nexus has gotten some very positive early looks, and should be a big success for Samsung and give a great look at the…

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