Author: Juan Carlos Bagnell

Juan has been obsessed with consumer electronics since before computers had GUI’s. Out of college he worked on a JIT computing contract which supported DOE facilities in New Mexico. He’s been featured on numerous podcasts and radio shows lending his tech insights. You can also find him in LA directing voice over actors and producing spoken word recording.
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Nokia Finally Officially Unveils the Lumia 1520 For Real, Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 Tablet Unveiled at $499

lumia 2520 22I’m a little exhausted by Lumia 1520 leaks and rumor posts. Thankfully Nokia has made this thing real, so now we can talk about it again.

Soon-to-be-Microsoft-Employee (CEO perhaps?) Stephen Elop took the stage at Nokia World this morning in Abu Dhabi to show off Nokia’s new wares. The worst kept secret in tech made it’s appearance, and we all finally got to confirm what the rumors and leaks have been feeding us for a couple months now. Nokia is making a phablet, and the Lumia 1520 looks like it’ll be a formidable piece of gear.

lumia 1520 02The 1520 will sport a 1080p six inch display, the highest resolution screen ever put into a Nokia or a Windows Phone. The Qualcomm 800 is unsurprisingly confirmed as well, boosting Windows Phone into more current quad-core processors. Along with the GDR3 software update (now called Nokia Black), the screen size has allowed Nokia to add a third column of Live Tiles to the home screen. lumia 1520 03It’ll have 32GB of storage on board and will be the first premier Lumia to finally include a MicroSD card slot for expanded storage (up to 64GB). Nothing like walking around with almost 100GB of flash storage in your pocket to make you feel powerful. The purchase of a 1520 will also include an additional 7GB of Skydrive storage free.

lumia 1520 04The Lumia 1520 sports a new 20MP Pureview camera, something of a halfway point between the Lumia 9xx series and the monster 41MP Lumia 1020. It’ll sport optical image stabilization and oversampling software tech, which means we’ll probably get some of the zoom and crop capability from the 1020, and photos downsampled to 5MP for uploading online should look pretty good. Also of note, the camera app is getting a refresh. Dubbed ‘Nokia Camera’, most of the features from the separate Nokia Pro Camera, Smart Camera, and Video camera apps are getting rolled into one interface. I would expect the horsepower of the Qualcomm 800 to improve on the auto-focus and white balance speed of the sometimes pokey dual-core in the Lumia 1020.

lumia 1520 05

Continue reading “Nokia Finally Officially Unveils the Lumia 1520 For Real, Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 Tablet Unveiled at $499”

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AT&T Locks Exclusive on Nokia Lumia 1520, Will Sell Lumia 2520 Tablet too!

lumia 1520 04AT&T and Nokia have been pretty tight since the first Lumia 900 hit the USA. It seems whenever Nokia drops cutting edge hardware, it’s likely that AT&T will have first crack at it.

It’s now been officially announced that Nokia’s newest handset, the Lumia 1520 phablet, is destined to be on Big Blue’s LTE network. This will also give AT&T the most robust collection of Phablets on the market with the Lumia standing along side the Galaxy Note 3, the LG Optimus G Pro, and the HTC One Max.

It was also announced that AT&T will be carrying the Lumia 2520 Windows 8.1 RT tablet, which will be one of the more affordable tablets to include LTE when it’s released later this year.

No pricing or availability as of yet, but at least now you know so you can plan for your holiday phone and tablet shopping.

lumia 2520 20

(via AT&T)

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Apple Announces iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini – Refreshes MacBooks and Mac Pro

Just a banner day for tech! First, Microsoft starts selling the new Surface 2 and Surface Pro today, then Nokia announces the Lumia 1520 phablet and 2520 tablet, now Apple is getting into the act with refreshes to their tablets and computing lineups.

iPadAir-iPadMini_34B2B_lock-blue_home-nebula-PRINTThe iPad is getting a significant face lift. Now dubbed the iPad Air, it’s thinner, narrower, and lighter than previous iPads. I’m happy to see more rounded corners than the iPad Mini. Measuring just one pound, it’s a significant achievement keeping weight that low without sacrificing battery life. It’ll also go a long ways for folks who might have issues holding onto a heavy 10″ slab. The same pretty Retina Display is up front, but it’s backed up by faster and more powerful internals. iPad Air will retail for $499 for a 16GB WiF model and $629 for an LTE model.

Oddly enough, the iPad 2 will be sticking around as a low cost 10″ option at $299. In this market it’s getting REALLY long in the tooth… Continue reading “Apple Announces iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini – Refreshes MacBooks and Mac Pro”

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Instagram and Vine finally officially come to Windows Phone

lumia 1520 09It was always the ultimate irony. The line of phones from Nokia featuring some of the most advanced camera optics were denied access to the world’s most popular social photo and video services.

No longer.

Announced this morning in Abu Dhabi at Nokia World, official Instagram and Vine apps are finally on their way to the Windows Phone App Store. IG will face some hearty competition from the third party Instagram solutions already in the ecosystem. Personally, I’ve been a big fan of 6Tag for uploading and sharing pics on my Lumia 1020. However, for those of you concerned about third parties having access to your log on, or you just really want that “pure” IG experience, you wont have to wait much longer.

Expect both apps to drop later this year.

lumia 1520 10

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I Ask You: Does Carrier Branding On Your Phone Bother You?

htc one max evleaks carrier branded ATTQuick show of hands, who here knows what carrier their smartphone is on? Pretty much as I figured. If you’re savvy enough to use a web browser to find my site, chances are pretty good you know what carrier you send money to each month for your phone. Good.

Welp, new press images have surfaced courtesy of @EVLeaks, showing the HTC One Max not only for Verizon, but also for AT&T. It looks like there might not be CDMA exclusivity for HTC’s up coming phablet. Neat. Of course, this wouldn’t be internet news without something to complain about, and many HTC faithful checking the renders out are somewhat upset by the fact that on both the Verizon and AT&T shots, HTC’s branding between the home and back buttons has been shoved out of the way for AT&T’s globe and Verizon’s awkward off center check mark thing. I’m serious, for a mutli-billion dollar company, that logo never looks like it’s on straight, but I digress…

This got me wondering, why does this bother people? Is it aesthetics? Brand loyalty? Are you ashamed to be doing business with your carrier? I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts on the matter. Living in an age where everything is branded, clothes, cars, technology, what is it about the carrier logo which might upset folks?

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Quick Review: 2nd Generation Kindle Paperwhite – Amazon Improves on the Best eReader

kindle paperwhite second generation ereader review somegadgetguy (3)This is the second generation of Kindle Paperwhite. The first gen was largely heralded as being the best digital ink eReader you could buy. Not much needed to be changed or altered for the 2nd gen Paperwhite, but Amazon still found some areas to tweak and improve.

Paperwhite stands as an excellent execution of an eReader. If you’re looking at a gadget to primarily read books on, a digital ink display is critical. For years now they’ve near perfectly replicated the printed page. Digital ink is static, and doesn’t refresh 60 times a second like LCD displays do. Once the page refreshes it stays in place until you turn to the next page. This also radically reduces battery drain, as electricity is only used when turning pages.

kindle paperwhite second generation ereader review somegadgetguy (5)In terms of design, Paperwhite is simplicity at it’s finest. There are no distractions. It’s built for one purpose: reading. We’ve even given up on the illusion that eReaders also have to be MP3 players. Nope. Reading is more than enough to justify the gadget’s existence. There’s a power button and MicroUSB port on the bottom. That’s it. You should only care about the screen and what’s on that screen. No buttons or switches or rockers. End of story.

Continue reading “Quick Review: 2nd Generation Kindle Paperwhite – Amazon Improves on the Best eReader”

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The Perils of Monetizing Free Sites – Reddit Convinces Users to Go Gold

reddit goldWhen a service starts out free, then tries to monetize, you can pretty much count on a negative reaction from the user base. It’s an incredibly delicate tightrope to walk. A company needs to make money, but it can’t push to fast lest it turn off its fans. Companies like Facebook and Twitter have been dealing with their evolving markets for years now, but neither has entirely locked their solutions for making money. Traditionally, the first steps towards monetization usually involve serving ads off to the side, and then incorporating ads into the content people interact with. Recently Instagram announced it too would start serving ads into users photo timelines. Responses for the most part were less than positive.

This makes Reddit’s latest turn really interesting. Sure Reddit serves ads in a sidebar, and the top position post is usually a sponsored post, but according to a recent Q&A session, Reddit still found itself often in the red. This galvanized the Reddit faithful, and the site saw an explosion in its premium service subscriptions.

Dubbed ‘Reddit Gold’, it’s a monthly or yearly subscription which unlocks premium content filtering, and provides discounts and extras at a number of partner sites including iFixIt, UPS, and car service Uber. To encourage community participation, users can also gift Gold to other members to reward interactions on the site. It’s an interesting way to push more money through a service without resorting to more aggressive advertising or trafficking in user data.

Well Reddit noticed the increased Gold sales, and now they’re communicating more with their users. Now on their sidebar is a daily Gold goal. Reddit is already somewhat addictive, as there’s a gamification element to submitting news stories. People vote on good stories and users get points to show how effective their participation has been. Now, users can see daily if there are enough Gold sales to help keep Reddit in the black. As the program is fairly new, and a direct response to the Reddit community’s activity, users have been extremely active in buying and gifting gold, easily besting the daily goal.

And that’s all cash in Reddit’s coffers.

(via Reddit Blog)

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PSA: Only Two Years left to Update from Windows 8 to 8.1 to Continue Receiving Support

Screenshot (1)Better get to it folks! The clock is ticking!

Looks like Microsoft is getting a touch more aggressive in making sure consumers stay up to date on OS updates. The Windows 8 support life cycle is scheduled to end in 2023, but to continue receiving support, it looks like Microsoft is going to require people stay on top of updates.

Announced on Microsoft’s site:

Windows 8 customers will have two years to move to Windows 8.1 after the General Availability of the Windows 8.1 update to continue to remain supported under the Windows 8 lifecycle.

Well, “General Availability” started last Thursday, so at the time of this blog post, you have less than 727 days to jump on the Windows 8.1 update to continue receiving support.

It would appear Microsoft is trying to be a bit more proactive in communicating with consumers when products hit End Of Life. There’s still a substantial base of users still on Windows XP, which could create a nightmare scenario for many when support officially ends April of 2014. The fear being that those who create malware for Windows could be waiting for support to end before unleashing new attacks on the XP platform.

So now, Microsoft is not only communicating what the total support time is, they’re stipulating more consumer participation in keeping the Windows ecosystem a bit more up to date. As for those of us on Windows 7 and Windows 8, we’ve got PLENTY of support time left, so long as we keep up with our updates…

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