Apple

Samsung Unpacked at IFA 2013

Yesterday Samsung unveiled their flagship Android devices for the 2013 holiday season at an Unpacked event in Berlin, Germany. The Samsung GALAXY Note 10.1 (2014) Edition, Samsung GALAXY Gear smartwatch and Samsung GALAXY Note 3 are going to be tempting you to spend your pocket money within the next month.

 The Samsung GALAXY Note 3 is the 2013 iteration of Samsung's S Pen friendly phablet and has a 5.7" fullHD Super AMOLED screen. The Note 3 is powered by a quad core 2.3 GHz processor and 3GB of RAM and has 16GB/32GB of inbuilt storage which can be expanded with MicroSD cards. Samsung have improved the S Pen functionality and services with features which are also coming on other S Pen devices.

 The Samsung GALAXY Gear is a smartwatch accessory which enhances you Samsung Galaxy experience. Compatible with most of the recent Samsung Galaxy flagships, it is essentially an extension of GALAXY Smartphones/phablets. It can be used to route calls to the smartphone, check notifications, take pictures and monitor biometrics. It also has a camera for fast image and/or video capture. Welcome to the world of Dick Tracy.

 The pixel density enthusiast rejoiced when hearing the specs of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2013 Edition. The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) also comes with a 2.3GHz quad-core CPU (for the LTE version), 3GB of RAM, and 16/32/64GB of internal storage. Its 10.1-inch screen is of 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution, and the 8MP main camera is capable of 1080p video recording at 60fps. I'm very tempted to get one of these...

 After all this shininess has been presented, the ball is in Apple's court. Lets see what happens next week...

Goodbye Flash Player For Mobile

Adobe has announced that it will be discontinuing support of Flash Player for mobile.



In a statement posted on the official Adobe Blog by Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of interactive development, Adobe conceded that HTML5 is "the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms."


Goodbye Flash Player For Mobile, for a while you were an extra competitive advantage of some mobile platforms (QNX, Android, WebOS, etc.) over others (Apple's iOS).


Feel free to leave comments and/or questions.

Archos 80 G9 With Apple iPad 2

Today I snapped a few shots of the Archos 80 G9 with Picc0110's Apple iPad 2 to give the readers of the Todoleo Tech Blog a better idea of its size next to Apple's current tablet.




Granted the iPad 2 is made of better materials and has an exceptional industrial design. The Archos 80 G9 has much more built in functionality, expandibility, a more open OS and comes in at less than half the price of the entry level iPad 2. I'll be writing more about the Archos 80 G9 soon.

As usual, fell free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Social Networks Change Faster Due To Competition

Google Plus is now in Beta, which means anyone can sign up and start using Google's social network. Just go to Google.com and you should see the Doodle promoting Google Plus.
The Google doodle promoting Google Plus Beta



Once you are on Google Plus you get all the excellent features the new social network offers.
Google Plus Homepage
Facebook has just revamped and reorganised its homepage and layout. Many commentators on the interwebs claim that this is a knee-jerk reaction to Google Plus. This concept is pretty plausible and I'm inclined to go with it considering how many new "features" Facebook has rolled out since Google Plus's launch into field trial status. (excuse the pun, it was just too easy!)
The New Facebook Homepage
Identi.ca and StatusNet have had a major upgrade since the weekend too! There were massive changes to the UI, to the APIs and social network. As well as updating your status, you can now post bookmarks, events, polls or questions. It's pretty sleek and an impressive step forward. Well done to Evan Prodromu and everyone involved in the upgrade.
The New Identica Homepage
Twitter hasn't changed much in the last few months. Twitter's users are still getting used to all the "new" fancy UI and features so it may be a while before they change anything.
Twitter's "New" Hompepage
Meanwhile more and more interweb users have never heard of or have forgotten about Myspace, Bebo and Friendster. I believe that Apple's social network is some sort of secret society that even Apple Fanboys and Fangirls have never heard of. Ping?!
Ping. It's a bit like a Secret Society.
As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below. If you "liked" this blog post, why not "+1" it? (yes I do find it funny)

What is MIUI? [Android ROM]

I have often asked myself the question "What is MIUI?" when reading mentions of it in forums such as XDA Developers and MoDaCo. This morning I decided to investigate and noticed the answer to my question had been very close to me for a while.
My MIUI Homescreen on my HTC Desire
MIUI is a CyanogenMod based Android distribution (ROM) with emphasis on creating and implementing a different user interface paradigm from the standard Android one. If you are already using CyanogenMod and/or have ROM Manager installed on your Android device, you may be able to download and install MIUI from ROM Manager. That is the way I installed MIUI on my HTC Desire this morning.
MIUI in the "Download ROM" section of ROM Manager.
Here are some more pictures of the MIUI homescreen with my choice of layout of widgets and apps. The MIUI launcher does not have an app drawer and as you should be able to tell looks like Apple's iOS user interface. The MIUI user interface does keep the classic Android notification pulldown bar, and has its own framework of fonts, colours and UI frames.

MIUI lockscreen. Very sleek!
The version of MIUI I am using at the moment is 1.7.15 which is based on Android 2.3.4. Performance is good, and I'm won over by the shiny and responsive interface. Well done and thank you to all those involved in the development and distribution of this fantastic ROM.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions and Google +1 at the end of the post!