Tips for Buying a Perfect Smartphone
With lines of constant renewals of technology, many operating systems interfaces and super processor smartphones are coming to market. It is not an easy task to choose a smartphone among a number of smartphones.
This year, several smartphones have already flooded the market and many are yet to come. If you are looking to buy a new perfect smartphone for you then you must keep few things in your mind.
Operating System: There exist five most famous operating systems in the era of smartphones. These five OS are iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and Bada. In all these smartphone operating systems, there’s something for everyone (although, there is still a strong physical resemblance between a lot of devices, unfortunately), all expectations and all prices. At this time, Android OS smartphones are verdict in the market because of their flexibility and on other hand iOS (Apple Smartphone operating system) is considered as the smoothest operating system. Apple smartphones are however costlier than most of Android smartphones.
Display and its size: Mobile phone display technology is passing through a great revolution. Every month, a new display smartphone hits the market. You must review the display of the phone you are going to buy that it should not have short viewing angles, contrast that prevents any particular reading in direct sunlight, etc. Presently AMOLED, Super AMOLED display, IPS HD and Retina display are ruling. I would suggest you to go with a smartphone atleast with display resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. According to all the analysts, 4 inches sized smartphones are considered standard sized smartphones. but now a trend has come to keep a smartphone having atleast 4.7 inches display.
Ergonomics: most phones have good ergonomics, which ensures a pleasant grip and a sleek design. Feel free to take the mobile in hand, especially if your heart leans toward a great smartphone with more than 4 inches, that’s a trend. Test the keyboard, virtual or physical, especially if you consume a lot of SMS and emails.
The multimedia capabilities: The photo is the most used multimedia function. Although the quality of the sensors has greatly improved, the overall returns are still very variable. It is clearly seen to be a trend: a handful of smartphones offer a good quality picture, sometimes equivalent to a compact, entry / midrange. Practice to shoot on the fly slices of life and share photos immediately with his tribe (MMS, Facebook, Twitter.)
Applications: all smartphones are supported by store applications, these little programs and games that enrich the phone and can shape it in its sauce. all operating systems therefore benefit from kiosk apps more or less busy. Top trimmed? The Apple AppStore and Google Android Market. The BlackBerry Store enriched gradually, like the store of Microsoft for its Windows Phone OS.
Tips for Buying a Perfect Smartphone
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Categories: Technology Tags: Apple, blackberry, operating systems, physical resemblance, smartphone, windows phone
The smartphone battle: Meet the top contestants
8 May 2012 Last updated at 00:07 Share this page By Tim Weber Business editor, BBC News website
There is a new contender in the highly lucrative smartphone market: Samsung's Galaxy S3, launched on Thursday in London with great fanfare. but can it stand up to its rivals? We are taking a look at a few of the top phones.
In the world of smartphones, BIG seems to be the new black. not that today's smartphones are gaining weight. They are slim and light creatures.
Their screens, though, are growing larger and larger. Phone makers clearly want to wow buyers with big images on high-definition screens. the drawback: those with tiny hands will find it difficult to clasp the latest crop of high-end phones.
Tight jeans pockets will also have to make accommodations, although wearers of jackets will be fine.
Alongside the form factor, there is also the battle of the operating systems. Apple and its iOS 5 is facing a vast raft of challengers running Google's Android software – from Samsung to Panasonic and many more.
Nokia, meanwhile, is the standard bearer for Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system.
And lumbering up for what it hopes will be a fresh start is the once-mighty Research in Motion with its new Blackberry 10 software.
So how do some of these rivals square up?
Sony's Xperia S promises to be an entertainment centre
Sony is one of several mobile phone makers trying to revive their fortunes. the company recently ended its joint venture with Ericsson; the Sony Xperia S is its first phone since.
It is a chunky looking phone but feels light (144g), and has both enough processing power and inbuilt memory (32GB) to be an entertainment hub. Its stand-out feature is the 4.3" HD screen, which displays movies and pictures in startling quality. an HDMI cable can connect the phone to HD flatscreen television sets, bringing the phone's HD quality video to the big screen. once connected, any TV remote control can be used to navigate around the phone's content and applications, from email to music to Twitter – although it's unlikely that many owners will make use of that.
The Xperia S is an Android phone, and Sony is showing restraint in customising the experience. Many manufacturers subject their Android phones to an interface makeover; few succeed in improving the experience.
As with most Sony (and Sony Ericsson) phones, the inbuilt 12 Megapixel camera is a treat, and Sony has copied the Windows Phone experience – adding a shutter button on the side of the phone that quickly launches the camera.
Sony ships the phone with NFC radio tags – put the tags in your car, your place of work, your living room, and when your phone gets near the tag it changes its behaviour; in your car, for example, it may launch the blue-tooth connection for hands-free talking and get the car navigation ready. Cute, but in all likelihood a rarely used gimmick.
the slim but curvy Eluga marks Panasonic's return to global handset markets
Outside Japan, Panasonic has been absent from the mobile phone market for many years. the Eluga is its Android-based attempt to recapture a share of this lucrative market.
Panasonic executives ooze pride in the company's engineering heritage, and an early pre-production model that I tried is testament to that.
The phone is curvy but very slim (7.8mm), and feels improbably light for its size, a mere 103g despite its 4.3" screen – the same size as the Sony.
That raises the question whether the battery will meet the demands of smartphone power users. Panasonic promises the battery will last the day, not least thanks to some clever energy management software. the 8GB of internal memory may also not be enough for people who want to carry their whole music library with them.
Talking of engineering, as I was shown the phone, the Panasonic exec suddenly grabbed it off me and dunked it in his glass of water. he swirled it around a bit, took it out, dried it and gave it back. still works, he said. It's also dustproof (but waterproof only to a depth of one metre).
It's a good looking phone, no doubt, but Panasonic's success will depend on persuading network operators to stock it, getting the price right, and convincing buyers that the credentials of its consumer electronics brand once again stretch to the world of smartphones.
the HTC One X is the largest in the company's new smartphone line-up
Not that long ago HTC was considered the most innovative of all mobile phone makers. Recently the company has faltered, with sales and profits sharply down.
However, the Taiwanese phone maker is attempting a comeback and its new range of HTC One phones has been very well reviewed.
The star of the line-up, the HTC One X, is a whopper of a phone. to reach the on-off button easily may require a thumb extension. the huge 4.7" screen makes it larger than the Sony Xperia S, but it is also very slim (8.9mm) and weighs just 130g.
Unlike the Sony and the Panasonic, it went on sale featuring the latest version of the Android operating system (4.0 Icecream Sandwich – although Sony and Panasonic are both in the process of rolling out an upgrade).
The phone features a fast quad-core processor (except for the LTE version in the United States) and a massive 32GB of memory.
For several years now HTC has been the designer of the best user experience on Android, and the One series continues that tradition. nearly every action on the phone – from changing settings to using integrated applications – feels a tad easier or more obvious than on other phones.
Despite its slimness, the phone's unibody feels solid and secure, and very pleasing to the touch.
Both on size and on spec, the HTC One X is the closest challenger to Samsung's S3.
Nokia is betting on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software
And now for something completely different. If you are bored with Android phones and don't want to join the iPhone herd, you are quickly going to run out of smartphone alternatives – unless you opt for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system.
There was a raft of new Windows phones when Phone 7 was launched nearly two years ago, but it's been rather quiet since. the big exception, of course, is Finnish phone giant Nokia, which has bet its smartphone house on the Microsoft software.
This year, Nokia is going both premium with its large Lumia 900 phone, and budget with a promise of a range of cheaper and simpler phones (now that the "Tango" update of Windows Phone is becoming available).
Of all the phones I've seen, the Lumia 900 is the one that feels the most solid and hardwearing (having a gorilla glass screen always helps).
But its 4.3" display is not HD quality, the 16GB internal storage is good but not overwhelming, it's not quite slim (11.5mm) and it weighs a rather hefty 160g. the word "chunky" springs to mind.
Still, it is very speedy, has great battery life, all buttons are placed just right and of all the phones I've played with it's arguably the one that feels nicest to the touch.
The deciding factor when buying this phone (or the smaller Lumia 800) may well be how happy you are with Windows Phone 7. As operating systems go, it's probably the nicest around, with a well-thought-through user interface. Its Achilles heel, however, is the still mediocre quality of available apps. the system software holds a lot of promise, but even now most app developers are still lacking the inspiration to take its user interface principles and make their apps fly.
Samsung hopes the S3 will be at least as successful as the S2
And then there is the Samsung Galaxy S3. the Korean phone maker is building on the success of its best-selling S2, and clearly is trying to push well beyond its biggest rival (and key customer) Apple.
A new quad-core processor promises both double the speed and 20% less energy consumption compared to dual-core processors of old.
The phone is in the same "whopper" category as the HTC One X, with its 4.8" HD screen, but just like its rival it is very slim (8.6mm) and weighs just 133g. the 8MP camera is standard, but again software helps to improve the user experience.
With smartphones looking more and more the same, Samsung tries to stand out with functionality and clever software. For example, the phone can be set so that it does not go to sleep as long as the user looks at it.
Voice command programme S Voice promises an Apple Siri-like experience (although this has yet to be put to the test). after taking a picture, the phone will try to recognise the faces of your friends and family, and offer to email the image to them with just one click.
Again, touch is important, with Samsung delivering a similar surface feel as HTC and Nokia.
So if your hands are not too tiny, and you happily live in Google's Android universe, then there is probably not much to choose from between the HTC One X and the Galaxy S3.
Is Research in Motion (RIM) the next Palm or the next comeback kid? the marketshare of its Blackberry smartphones (especially at the lucrative premium end) has been plummeting, and its most recent phones have been poorly reviewed.
The company recently gave a preview of its new – dramatically different – operating system, Blackberry 10.
The software certainly looks promising, but by now RIM is notorious for delayed product launches. Coming to market this autumn, RIM may suffer problems similar to Microsoft: it's really difficult to gain traction in such a competitive and fast-moving market, no matter the quality of your product.
Gadget websites have been buzzing with Galaxy S3 reviews and head-to-head comparisons with other smartphones ever since last week's launch event. overall, the S3 was deemed to match or trounce all rivals, including Apple's top offering, the iPhone 4S.
Apple may dub its screen a "retina display", but it's relatively small (3.5") and not quite HD, and the glass screen is not particularly shatter proof. Short battery life is the constant moan of iPhone owners, and the user interface may look dated compared to Android's active widgets and Microsoft's live tiles.
However, Apple's iPhone 4S is not the benchmark to beat. Rumours abound that the launch of the iPhone 5 is imminent. If true, and provided Apple can raise (or make consumers believe it raised) its game once more, then Samsung Galaxy S3 and its gaggle of rivals will find it hard to prise consumers from the confines of the iTunes universe.
Don't forget: it's not just about technical spec. once you have invested heavily in apps that work only on iPhones, you'll find it awfully difficult to leave the world that Steve Jobs built.
The smartphone battle: Meet the top contestants
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Apple dominates other smartphone vendors in consumer satisfaction
The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index has found, not surprisingly, that people really like their iPhones.
The latest ACSI, which is published quarterly by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and rates a wide range of big-name tech vendors on a 100-point scale, shows that Apple is simply outclassing its competition in the mobile phone market, as its score of 83 bests its nearest competitor by eight points. Apple’s closest competitors on the latest ACSI are HTC, LG and Nokia, all of whom scored 75 on the latest index.
Troubled BlackBerry maker Research in Motion had the lowest score among mobile phone manufacturers on this year’s ACSI, as its 69 rating trailed Apple’s score by a whopping 14 points. ACSI founder Claes Fornell says that RIM’s low ratings shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s been following the news surrounding the company for the past year.
RELATED: AT&T again ranks last in Consumer Reports survey
IN OTHER NEWS: iPad rivals not up to snuff, says Consumer Reports
“Companies with weak customer satisfaction often have weak stock performance,” Fornell says. “RIM’s sales are slumping amid a bevy of problems, from hardware and software issues to server lapses that have caused email and messaging outages. over the past year, share price for RIM has virtually collapsed.”
The latest ACSI has also found that Sprint is tops among major American wireless carriers in overall customer satisfaction, although this may be a somewhat dubious honor since most U.S. wireless carriers have seen their satisfaction score fall over the past year. according to the ACSI, Sprint is leading the pack with a satisfaction score of 71, followed closely by Verizon at 70, and AT&T and T-Mobile, which both scored 69 on the survey. AT&T was the only major wireless carrier to see its ratings increase year-over-year as its 69 score represented a 4.5% increase from the 66 score it recorded in 2011. What’s more, it seems that subscribers at small carriers were significantly more satisfied than subscribers at the big four, as all other wireless carriers had an aggregate score of 76 on this year’s survey.
And finally, Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic service led all subscription television services in the latest ACSI in customer satisfaction with a score of 72. FiOS was the only subscription TV service to top 70 on the latest index and was trailed by the DISH Network, which had a score of 69, and by AT&T’s U-Verse and DirecTV, which each had scores of 68. Charter Communications had the lowest customer satisfaction score among subscription TV services at 59, while Comcast had the second-lowest score at 61.
Overall, the ACSI creates customer satisfaction indexes for 10 economic sectors consisting of more than 200 companies. Each company’s ACSI is based on a sample of at least 250 customer interviews, and the ACSI conducts more than 65,000 customer interviews each year.
Brad Reed covers Google, wireless carriers and mobile applications for Network World. be sure to check out Google Reed-er, a blog filled with his ramblings on Google and whatever else he feels like discussing. Follow him on Twitter at @bwreednww.
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Apple dominates other smartphone vendors in consumer satisfaction
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Categories: Technology Tags: iphones, ross school, stock performance
How to Burn PS3 Games
The PlayStation 3 has a lot of new features which make it one of the most advanced consoles in the World. and it happens that one of these features makes it quite difficult to copy PS3 games. You see, the PS3 uses Blu-Ray, which is a brand new type of disc which uses a blue laser to burn content. these discs are more powerful than standard DVDs and the bad news is that if you want to burn them, you need a blu-ray burner. these aren’t cheap but they are essential for this tutorial to work.
If you have a blu-ray burner, then congratulations, you can burn PS3 discs. to do this, you just need to download a program called Nero. this is available from the Internet, and you can download it by searching Google for Nero Burning Rom. this software allows you to burn blu-ray discs, which is what PS3 games are.
After you’ve downloaded Nero, you then need to have the game ISOon your PC. an ISO file can either be downloaded from the Internet (which is illegal) or can be ‘ripped’ from your original game disc. to rip a PS3 game, just put the original game into your blu ray burner, open Nero and select create image file from disc.
When you have an ISOof the game you want to burn, you then need to open up Nero and then select Burn from Image. this will bring up a screen where you can select the file to burn to a disc, which means that you just need to be able to select the ISO of your game and then let Nero burn it to your disc. Atip here is that you need to make sure the write speed of the program is set to around 4X, which is the speed that has the highest success rate from our experience. BRdiscs are not cheap and the last thing you want to do is to create a coaster.
The trick to this tutorial is to be able to get a working ISO of your game. PS3 game ISOs can be anywhere from 10GB to 50GB in size, meaning that if you try and rip the game and it isn’t that size, you’ve got a problem. although this is the basic way to burn PS3 games, there are some other more intricate details which also need to be done to ensure you can play your newly burnt game on your console.
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Smartphones – What Is a Smartphone?
Chances are you have probably heard about the term smartphone, and to many, this term is somewhat a mystery. What was once only showcased as a prototype in 1994 has now become a phenomenon in the wireless cell phone industry. To learn more about smartphones and what they are, read on below.
So what is a smartphone? if you have held an iPhone or Android phone in your hands, you have held a smartphone. these popular devices are taking not only the wireless industry by storm, but even starting to outpace laptop and desktop computers in sales combined at a phenomenal rate. yes, even computers.
Smartphones first and foremost are cell phones. They make and receive calls like any other cellular device, however there is one main distinction that separates them apart from the rest of the pack of our handy mobile devices. They can run full operating systems (OS). if you were ever familiar with the term PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), then a smartphone is a cell phone/PDA on steroids.
An operating system is exactly what is on your current computer right now. Like Windows XP/Vista/7 for PC or the MAC Snow Leopard for Apple computers, a smartphone runs off of an OS. while the brand of operating system may be varying from the brand names mentioned above, a smartphone operates much the same as a computer. as a matter of fact, you might as well call them a computer phone.
So with these phones you essentially can email, instant message, go on your online social sites, make online searches, edit text documents, take pictures, shoot video, and more all while on the go. The main big fad though that goes beyond these functions is what are called apps.
What are apps? well apps first off are an abbreviated and lazy term for applications. Apps basically are small versions of software compatible with smartphone operating systems. these apps can be anything from a daily weather update, a photo editor, document creator, all the way to a multilevel game.
Currently every cell phone manufacturer has a their version of a smartphone. Some of these phones for 2010 include BlackBerry Torch, Motorola Droid, Samsung Intercept, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, HTC Aria, and more.
Common attributes with a smartphone usually include a touchscreen phone and/or a QWERTY board, large display screens, multimedia capabilities (video, music, etc.), USB plug in, bluetooth (wireless talking), Internet access (Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G WiMax, etc.), a still shot and/or video camera, memory card slot, and sometimes even more.
Smartphones – What Is a Smartphone?
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