Category Archive:
Posted by Matthew Serre on April 24, 2013 at 7:32 am
Almost four full months into the year, the Internet is already abuzz with talk about the best smartphone of 2013. In March, HTC released the One, its flagship successor to the similarly named One X. Despite the ambiguity of its naming conventions and its apparent obsession with el numero uno as per the new First (the first phone to feature Facebook Home), HTC seemingly intends to assault would-be customers with a marketing blitz in the same league as the one Samsung has engineered for its Galaxy line to convince everyone that the One is, well, the one you want. Manufacturing delays have prevented HTC from gaining an advantage early, however, and Samsung is gearing up to release its own flagship phone in the Galaxy S4. Undisputed king of market share among Android smartphones, last year’s S3 will receive a moderate refresh in terms of aesthetics and specifications to bring it into line with other devices available currently, the One included. But how exactly do these two phones stack up? Which one is better? More importantly, which one is better for you?
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Posted by Carlos S. on March 25, 2013 at 6:51 pm
This week saw the release of Google Keep, a Google-made note-taking service, and it comes with a very nice looking, powerful Android app that you can download right now and give it a whirl. Android has lacked a note-taking app since release, with users instead relying on external services like Colornote, Evernote, and so on. Google has finally made an official app, that integrates with Google Drive as well, and you can access it through this link, allowing you to make new notes, see the notes you’ve made through the Android app and organize your current notes.
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Posted by Carlos S. on March 3, 2013 at 9:53 am
I have tried a lot of web browsers on my Android devices over the years, the quality ranging from abysmal to just plain useful. The stock browser that comes with Android does a pretty fine job, and also manages to support Flash and not have any major compatibility problems, but the UI sucks (it gets better if you activate radial menus, but still) and it tends to be somewhat unstable and heavy on my devices. Google Chrome for Android is also a decent choice, but as of yet it seems to be too slow and memory hungry, and also borders on unresponsiveness a lot of the time, most noticeably on heavy pages. It has been getting better and it is regularly updated, but it still doesn’t qualify as my main browser.
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Posted by Matthew Serre on February 28, 2013 at 9:13 pm
One of the most common discussion questions I come across when browsing various Android forums is “do you regret purchasing your Nexus 7 [or other commonly used Android tablet]?” Another is “I just bought a Nexus 7; what do I do with it?” When you read these questions, you may be tempted to respond by asking, “Well, if you had no use for a tablet or were unsure of what to do with it, then why did you buy it in the first place?” This seems like a valid question.
Or at least I thought it did; then I started to think about it a little more.
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Posted by Carlos S. on February 10, 2013 at 2:10 pm
If you’re like me, listening to podcasts is one of those things you just do regularly. I always like to have some background noise going on while I’m doing my work, exercising or browsing, and what better to listen to than a few podcasts featuring some of my favorite people? Rarely a day goes by where I don’t listen to a podcast episode, so much that even though I check them regularly, I still have a huge backlog to go through. It gets kind of hectic and insane, and that’s where a app can make your life easier, especially outside your computer.
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Posted by Matthew Serre on January 1, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Now that 2012 is squarely in the books, 2013 promises to deliver another bevy of high quality and not-so-high quality Android phones. But with the major phone releases for 2012 now in the rear-view mirror, we should revisit and reflect upon the year’s Android offerings by highlighting the year’s best phones. In doing so, we can hopefully help those of you who want to spend your hard-earned holiday gift dollars on a brand new Android phone. To streamline the process, I will list the best phone for each US carrier and a runner-up (just in case you like options).
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Posted by Carlos S. on November 3, 2012 at 10:34 am
As you may know, Google has released a brand new version of Android, bumping it from 4.1 to 4.2. It still retains the same name, “Jellybean”, and is a simple version bump, however it does have some interesting new features. If you were expecting a new Project Butter or something like that, you may have felt underwhelmed, but the truth is that the new version of Android does bring some very much welcomed improvements with it to the platform, and improves on the core apps and Google services just enough to make a difference.
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