Last night I was a guest on the Phones Show Chat, with hosts Steve Litchfield and Ted Salmon. It is a really good podcast, with opinions on the latest phones.
Click here http://stevelitchfield.com/sshow/chat.html to listen, or search in your favourite podcast app.
I had my first extended sleep in ages, so the news is slightly later than normal 🙂
Anyone, last night I installed Samsung Kies on my mac. I know, the dreaded Kies. Well after installing from Samsung’s website, it asked to download the latest version. Sigh. That installed. And then it needed a further 2 more smaller updates.
So was it worth it. Actually, it has worked much better than previous attempts over the years. I moved my music across from iTunes to my K Zoom. I did this as I am fed up of using Google Play Music and moving music to and from the cloud. I just wanted a large amount on my micro sd card that could be moved from device to device without using the cloud which can be slow.
I also backed up the parts of the K Zoom that android does not back up.
The small surprise was music quality was marginally better via the Samsung Music app. In fact perhaps a bit more than marginally. So here I am typing away with my K Zoom playing the music over Bluetooth to my AKG K845BT headphones. Bliss.
Happy Sunday everyone.
This goes especially to my podcast co-host Dave Rich – Congratulations, now turn off the tech 🙂
At the moment you can log in to Yahoo services like Flickr using Facebook or Google.
However, from the end of this month, 30th June, Flickr is removing this method and you will now have to use a Yahoo login. So rush and sign up to Yahoo if you haven’t already.
Flickr is a great photo sharing service with up to 1 TB free storage space.
Just a reminder that you can get live weather info by using the menu, weather option.
Now includes a live snapshot of the sky every day. Rain stats are being integrated shortly into the above display.
Pocketnow have produced an excellent YouTube video of the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active. At present it’s a US only device.
I’ve been having issues uploading to flickr but I’ve now added a selection more of the snaps from the K Zoom. These include landscapes, macros, and horses in action. Most have used zoom too. I forgot to mention that apart from 10 times optical zoom, you have the option of digital zoom which takes the total amount to 20 times zoom if needed.
To view the photo collection click here https://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinfabl100/sets/72157644532639249/
This should come as no surprise, since PayPal already uses Samsung S5 finger print scanner for payments, but now according to Business Insider, several PayPal developers attended a WWDC session on the new API and the company is actively considering its implementation. The idea here is likely to get a head-start on Apple, which is currently said to be working on its own mobile payment service in conjunction with several major payment processors.
YouTube’s update to version 5.7 brings the ability to manually select the quality of a video that’s playing. Android Police reports that users can set the video quality anywhere from 144p to 720p, but readers of ours have noted that 1080p manual options are available on certain devices. There’s also an automatic option, which will choose the best resolution for the user’s current Internet connection speed.
The Hangouts update to version 2.1.223 adds per-contact notification tones, an SMS block list, and more. The per-contact notification tones are available in the “People & options” menu in Hangouts chats. SMS blocking has been made easier to use.
There’s also now a keyboard toggle button to switch between the regular keyboard and the number pad. Finally, there’s now a “Hidden Contacts” option. If you decide you don’t want a particular contact to show up on your list, you can press and hold to hide them. They’ll then be made available to access in the “Hidden Contacts” list.
Yesterday, my wife and I spent the day at the Royal Cornwall Show. I was armed with my Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and my wife with her trusty iPhone 5S. Both good phones for photography.
Apart from the photo taking side, the phones were used throughout the day for all the usual tasks.
Statistics – after 104 photos, the iPhone 5S battery was in a poor state, and to stop it dying completely was put in to flight mode. The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom was up to 500 photos and still had 44% battery. In fact the K Zoom took 700 photos at the show, and by my reckoning it was good for 1,000 shots on a full charge.
Of course, unlike the 5S, the K Zoom is necessary could have been placed into Ultra Power Saving mode to provide another 1.2 days worth of basic smartphone usage.
Photo quality – we were sitting in the grandstand taking photos of the show jumping and driving events. My K Zoom blew the iPhone 5S photos out of the water. I had 680 good shots, which I then narrowed down to the best 150. I have posted a few below.
All I can say, is the K Zoom is an amazing piece of kit. It has weaknesses. But if you always want a photographic or video memory of reasonable quality, this is the phone I would recommend was in your pocket.
You have just bought an android phone, but you don’t like the look or layout. You can install a third party launcher like Nova, which can give you full control of the look and operation.
Well Nova has been updated to include “OK Google” hotword from the home screen. So now, just speak “Ok Google” and Google Search will jump to action.
Click link to Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher&hl=en
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 