Category Archives: Android

HTC One – Zoe Mode

Android, Tech News,

Yesterday, Apple opened a new store in Plymouth, Devon, UK. As it is located inside a shopping centre, 100s of people shuffle along. Therefore, trying to take a picture inside the shopping centre is challenging at the best of times, but became even more difficult as people wanted to check out the new Apple store.

Well it would be difficult for most cameras, but not the HTC One. Simple open the camera, tap the Zoe icon which turns blue, and press the shutter screen icon. The HTC One takes 3 seconds of video and 20 photos all within a few seconds. It even takes a photos 1 second before you actually press the shutter icon. Once taken, all you have to do is tap photo, edit, retouch, object removal, done and save. So simple. So below is the photo I published yesterday of the Apple store in Plymouth. What is amazing, is that all the people that were walking passed the store got removed.

This is why I love the HTC One camera. It totally removes the need for editing tools like photoshop.

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Google and Motorola Handset Plans

Android, Tech News

During Google’s Q1 earnings call, Larry Page made the following comment –

“Think about your device. Battery life is a challenge for most people. You shouldn’t need to carry around a charger to make it through the day. If your kid spills their drink on your tablet, the screen shouldn’t die. And when you drop your phone, it shouldn’t shatter.

“Having just seen Motorola’s upcoming products myself, I’m real excited about the potential there. In just under a year, they have accomplished a lot, and have impressive velocity and execution.”

Also mentioned was the fact that screen size was important to get right, and that was not 5 inches but smaller. Lets hope next month at Google I/O that some new amazing phones get announced, and that they are available globally with ease.

Google’s current attempts at selling hardware have not proven great when it comes to keeping the customer informed, logistics and handling returns.

HTC One – Car and AC Charging Tip

Android, Tech News

The HTC One has a standard micro USB connector, so one would assume that when charging you can use any micro USB connector lying around both at home and in the car. Well you can but be warned.

In the car and at home you need to make sure that when using a third party cable and plug that you are charging AC power mode and not USB. Nothing wrong with USB mode except it’s slow and in the car might not charge the phone quick enough as you use the GPS, Bluetooth and more. If you use HTC’s own car and supplied charger you will see the below screen shot. Go to settings, power and top left it says AC charging.

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Now if for example you used an iPad wall part with a USB cable the top left wording would change to USB charging which takes a lot longer.  In the car I originally tried a Kensington car charger block with a BlackBerry micro USB cable. This only gave USB power and consequently when I had GPS and Bluetooth running the phone battery died by 2% every hour. Swap over to the official HTC car charger,  AC power mode is triggered and the phone chargers ahead despite using it heavily.

Mini MicroSD Reader for Android Tablets and Phones

Android, Tech News

If you have an android device, you probably can plug in a USB OTG cable and then a memory card into the cable. This allows your device to use the memory card as required. But wouldnt it be great if you could do the same but without the USB OTG cable. Well that soon will be a reality.

Check out this kickstarter project that aims to create a microsd reader that can plug directly into your device.

Very cool and I hope it is a success.

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ZTE takes aim at Geeks with the ZTE Geek phone

Android, Tech News

Seriously, I couldn’t have made the title up even if I tried.

The ZTE Geek is an Android Jelly Bean phone powered by an Intel 2GHz Clover Trail Atom, 5-inch 720p display with Gorilla Glass, 8-megapixel main camera, a 1-megapixel front-facing camera, 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, 2,300mAh battery and wireless charging. Radios UMTS 900/2100 courtesy of Intel’s XMM 6260 chip, and there’s also the usual lot of 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE and GPS.

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 16gb – some advice

Android, Tech News

Without a doubt the Samsung Galaxy S4 when it is launched next week will be a big hit. This is due to it being a competent piece of kit and Samsung’s tremendous marketing budget.

But it is not unusual nowadays for any phone to have memory allocated for the system firmware. For example, the HTC One is advertised as a 32gb phone but has just over 25gb actually free. That’s 7gb for the firmware.

So if the HTC One needs 7gb approximately, how much does the Samsung S4 require? Well, at present there are two options being mentioned around the web. Russian website mobile-review mentioned it has only 8gb free, whereas elsewhere it increased to 9.2gb. Nothing unusual with these figures and in line with the firmware requirements of the HTC One.

However, if 8-9gb is left free for the user, that is a precarious amount if you like games, or have apps that have large databases. Medical apps are a good example that could have a large database requirement. Need for Speed Most Wanted is a great game, but its also nearly 2gb in size. Also, if you buy music on the device from amazon or google or even a film, or rent a film, it will again need to be saved in the phones main memory.

But, I hear you say, the memory is expandable with a micro sd card. Sort of. The memory card can be used for storing the camera shots or camera videos, documents and music you have copied across from your computer. It cannot be used for saving apps or games. The S4 burst camera mode needs to store the photos in the main memory.

So if you don’t install many apps, then you should have nothing to worry about, but if you are the opposite, your 8-9gb memory will be swallowed up.

So is there a solution. Well according to Samsung, the S4 will be available in 32/64gb options. However, no information has been confirmed by Samsung of the availability of these, and based on previous Samsung phones, S3 and Note 2, the promised larger capacities never materialised. I can only hope that this time the larger memory versions will surface.