Samsung has released info that if you are in Times Square on 14th March 2013 you will witness or be part of the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch. Nobody knows exactly what Samsung has planned but clearly the company believes they have a huge winner on their hands.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is a massive device at 5.5 inches. However, newer phones are coming out like the Huawei Ascend Mate with a 6.1 inch screen. Below is a photo comparison. In my mind that’s too big to carry around every day.
What do you think?
Often we overlook the mid range devices being released.
The Ascend G526 is just that phone from Huawei, features a 4.5-inch qHD IPS display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and a dual-core 1.2GHz processor paired with 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear camera and VGA front-facing cam, as well as a 1,950mAh battery and WiFi Direct support.
Price is yet to be confirmed.
Samsung is unveiled its “Samsung Wallet” mobile app solution, clearly inspired (copied) by Apple’s iOS 6 ticket, card, and coupon solution known as Passbook.
Samsung Wallet appears to work much the same way. The app will allow users to store event tickets, membership cards, coupons, and boarding passes in one central app. From there, users will be able to present the digital passes and companies supporting the standard can scan a barcode included for each digital ticket.
Surely another patent war is looming.
Runners up for the most expensive setup was by McIntosh. The gear was quite a fair bit less on cost compared to the winning display revealed tomorrow.
However, I really liked the look of this especially the power amps on the floor. Look at the glow from the tubes and the finish. Beautiful.
And here is the small print. It’s yours for £75,000.
At midnight Sony had an offer where the first 500 people who bought the Z got a £300 pair of headphones free. You knew if you were successful as the price after entering the code would drop the phone price by £1.
So the site went live at 11.57pm. And I got my cart updated saying I had the free headphones. After that and for the next 30 mins Sony’s website kept crashing and each time I got further to paying for the phone with the free cans.
But the after the last crash with 30 mins passed my cart showed I didn’t have the free headphones. I called it a night.
Perhaps this was a sign not to buy the phone. Very disappointing that a company like Sony couldn’t cope with the web traffic
Amazon Cloud Player has gone universal and now works on the iPad.
It has also had a visual improvement, and it certainly does look rather good.
Further to my original article on jail breaking I have reached a further conclusion on what tweaks to use. So what I have done is summarised below what I am using and what settings within the tweaks and the benefits.
Tweaks
Installed on both iPad and iPhone 5
Sbsettings – used to show date on statusbar and 24 hour clock and have settings toggles in notification centre. Removed battery icon as i had battery percentage showing. That’s all for this one.
Bolt – as battery icon gone, when phone or mini charging a lightning bolt shows
Opennotifier – adds notification icons into the status bar. I use it to show email, twitter, and 5 other apps. Great if phone on silent mode, since you can see straight away if you need to address something . Also adds silent icon in status bar if device on silent mode. To get the extra icons you need to buy opennotifer premium.
Protube – a universal app that does YouTube much better, downloading with quality choices , viewing choices of quality and more. Update. Video downloads on the iPhone version aren’t working for me.
Mapsopener – use this tweak to make google maps app open as default. A must have in my book.
ikegwi – 5 row keyboard. Don’t buy the iPad version. The keys are too small on the mini.
F.lux – during the evening changes the white screen to a softer halogen glow. Makes reading easier at night. I had thought this would be a gimmick but I really like it.
Auxo – not needed. But it makes the app switcher beautiful. Best watch a YouTube video on this. It adds larger icons, better music controls and a brightness slider and settings toggles. But again I could live without this, but as I paid for it, it is staying.
Springtomise 2 – changed lock animation to old TV. Simply love this. Made dock have 5 icons with cover flow. Lock screen you can now pull down notification centre. Lock slider I’ve changed the wording to say “unlock and fry” . On iPhone 5 changed to 5 icons per line. The Mini is 7 per line. Don’t do anymore on Mini. It crashes. Icons resized to 85% on all 3 options. Folders allowed 5 icons per line and auto close folder. Status bar changed carrier logo to 👹
When you install sbsettings or springtomise 2 , activator gets installed automatically. I used this app to mimic pressing the home button once by sliding from bottom of screen upwards. Really superb as stops wear and tear now on home button.
iPhone 5 – just one bespoke extra. Pdanet. Provides tethering via wifi from the iPhone 5 to Mini for free. App is free too.
iPad Mini – bespoke options
Full screen for safari. Allows to change to full screen plus adds loads of gestures. I just use for double tap to go full screen and some other gestures to go back and forward.
Splitscreen – provides same email split as landscape view
Retinapad. I have many iPhone only apps. With this app I select to always open app 2x size. It also on 80% of apps makes them look retina. Really amazed by this.
Screen shots are below.
Don’t try octopus keyboard. It’s a z10 rip off and I didn’t like it in the end. I also found winterboard and the ayecon theme not necessary so I deleted both. I also tried colorkeyboard. It’s ok but again not needed.
CEO Jim Morrison of i-mate returns to MWC with a new mobile device that, he claims, runs full-fat Windows 8 in the same way that Ubuntu for Android will behave. The i-mate Intelegent is a 4.7-inch handset running the desktop OS on a Clover Trail CPU with 2GB RAM and 64GB storage. The secret, however, is that the $750 handset will slot into a Webtop-esque desktop dock to become your work machine when you get into the office. Morrison has said that there’s a factory in California ready to produce 10,000 units a week.
Now I checked the exhibitor list and I see no mention of i-mate. And the last we heard of the company concerned fraud and the firing of all employees.
So whose willing to bet this phone is for real? I’m not!
