Category Archives: Tech News

How to remove Apple’s free U2 album in a simple click

Apple, Tech News

After receiving some negative publicity over adding a free album by U2 on to peoples idevices, Apple has created a simple tool to remove it.

Go to http://itunes.com/soi-remove.

Click Remove Album to confirm you’d like to remove the album from your account.Sign in with the Apple ID and password you use to buy from the iTunes Store.You’ll see a confirmation message that the album has been removed from your account. If you downloaded the songs to iTunes on your Mac or PC or to the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you’ll need to delete them manually.

Personally I enjoyed the album.

It’s all about the screen – stunning stats on the Samsung Note 4

Android, Tech News

Displaymate have analysed the Note 4 screen.

“Here’s just a few facts – max brightness is 750 nits. Lowest 2 nits. No other smartphone gets close. ”

“Based on our extensive lab tests and measurements, the Galaxy Note 4 is the best performing smartphone display that we have ever tested. It matches or breaks new records in smartphone display performance for: Highest Absolute Color Accuracy, Highest Screen Resolution, Infinite Contrast Ratio, Highest Peak Brightness, Highest Contrast Rating in Ambient Light, and the smallest Brightness Variation with Viewing Angle. Its Color Management capability provides multiple Color Gamuts—a major advantage that is not currently provided by any of the other leading smartphones. The Galaxy Note 4 delivers uniformly consistent all around top tier display performance: it is the first smartphone display to ever get all green (very good to excellent) ratings in all test and measurement categories (except one Yellow for a Brightness Variation with Average Picture Level) since we started the Display Technology Shoot-Out article Series in 2006, an impressive achievement for a display. The Galaxy Note 4 has again raised the bar for top display performance up by another notch.”

And this along with the stylus is why this phone is in my wish list.

More at Gizmodo.

It doesn’t matter what anyone says – iPhone 6 is a success

Apple, Tech News

In the first 24 hours of pre-orders alone, Apple fans bought over four million handsets. For the sake of comparison, the iPhone 5 sold more like two-million units in its first 24 hours of pre-orders.

Of course it could be everyone bought one of each size and so there will be 50% returned. That’s unlikely though at that level.

Just reaffirms that people wanted a bigger iPhone.

More thoughts on the new iPhone 6 compared to the LG G3

Android, Apple, Tech News

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I’ve been pondering over the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus more and more this weekend. I’ve looked at my LG G3 and decided to see if I installed Apex or Nova Launcher whether that would help cement my decision not to get the new iPhone.

The new iPhone 6 in particular the 6 Plus is the version that interests me the most. But despite it looking like a gorgeous piece of hardware and iOS 8 seemingly the finest operating system from Apple, it just doesn’t tick enough boxes at the moment. This is strengthened after I installed a third party launcher on my current phone , the LG G3.

I own the full/pro version of a number of third party launchers. Apex is my favourite as the theming is more extensive but it has a bug that appeared after hours of customisation which stopped widgets being resized. So I installed Nova Launcher and proceeded to create the above look above. I later on recreated TouchWiz found on Samsung devices. Using either Nova or Apex introduces a few other time saving options too and a bespoke user experience.

But the fundamental point is with my LG G3 it has everything I could want and more. A new iPhone 6 Plus will also provide an amazing user experience except it will just be a different one, not necessarily better just different.

So by holding off being first out of the blocks with a new iPhone 6 Plus I can let others post their experiences, bugs, positive and negative thoughts. In addition, I can then spend some time at my local Apple store exploring the phone further and make a more informed decision based on better data and not marketing promises. The Samsung Note 4 will also be released shortly, meaning I can really compare the LG G3, Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus without making any rash decisions.

I must admit I find it odd that I haven’t pre ordered the new iPhone. That is a first. I’ll be honest to also admit I’ve read Apple.com many times over the last for days too 🙂

UK-based Phones 4u seeks administrator after EE contract loss

Tech News

Reuters- UK mobile phone retailer Phones 4u said it is seeking the appointment of administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers after its key partner EE notified the company that it would not be renewing its network agreement.

This is after both Vodafone and O2 declined to renew their contracts with the retailer. 720 shops could close and 6,000 staff could lose their jobs.

This is bad news for the high street and for consumers. Dixons Carphone will soon have no competition and a free reign on pricing if Phones4U cannot be saved.

Source – Reuters

Gav & Dave’s Tech Podcast – Episode 23 is now Rocking – Please RT

Amazon, Android, Apple, Reviews, Tech News, Wearables, Windows,

As you know, I co-host a weekly podcast with David from UKMobileTech called Gav & Dave’s Tech Podcast. It is a light hearted tech podcast broadcast bi-weekly. To subscribe click here for iTunes or copy and paste this link into your favourite podcast app.

Episode 23 is now live for your listening pleasure.

Spam – Why?

Tech News

I was checking the spam stats on Gavin’s Gadgets, and the amount of spam received so far is 24,958 items.

The WordPress Spam filters have so far achieved a 99.88% success rate. But you have to ask why does a site like this get targeted with so much spam. What is the end goal especially as there is zero financial benefit?

I really hope that the 2 step authentication that I have enabled across my entire internet presence is enough to thwart these spammers.