Let's Talk Tech
Just a quick hands on video for your viewing pleasure. The HTC One is a gorgeous phone, but it can be a bit nerve wracking to use if you’re trying to keep it free from scratches. Plus, sometimes it’s just fun to personalize.
Slickwraps covers are adhesive plastic guards which cover just about every surface on your phone. Available for a number of devices, in a number of styles and colors. Let’s see what it looks like on the most attractive phone in the Android ecosystem!
I love movies. I used to host a movie review show. My pals at Skype got in touch with me to see if I would like to attend the Hollywood premiere of Thor: The Dark World, and I of course said “Hells Yes”. I had on the blast on the red carpet hanging out with Amy Dallen from Geek and Sundry, and I got some great candid photos of the film’s stars being interviewed for the event.
The film was a lot of fun (I liked it better than the first one), and I’d like to thank Skype for hooking up a great moment! Catch my shots in the slideshow below. Fair warning, Google embedding is broken, so it’ll take you to my G+ page in a new tab, but the slideshow will continue here on the blog.
No sooner do I finish up a monster camera smartphone comparison video, than this photo beast gets announced for the United States. Typical.
The S4 Zoom is an interesting beast. One part mid-range phone one part zoom point and shoot. While companies like Nokia went with huge megapixels and cropping to simulate zoom, Samsung just bolted a mechanical zoom lens onto the back of a smartphone. Learning from their experiences in building the Galaxy Camera, now you can have a similar experience which is a touch more pocket-able.
The phone side is decent enough, a qHD 4.3″ AMOLED screen is a bit low res these days, but should help performance stay snappy when paired with the dual core processor on board. There’s 8GB of storage built in and you can add more via MicroSD. All in all somewhat ho-hum for an Android phone these days.
Where Zoom gets interesting is in the camera hardware. A 16MP BSI CMOS point & shoot style sensor is paired up with a 10X hardware zoom, which is controlled via a manual ring. There’s even a proper Xenon flash on board for low light and indoor shots. Sammy makes some decent camera gear, so this pairing looks like it could be formidable. Slamming Android into a proper camera experience is a fun way to shoot, edit, and share photos while you’re out and about. Adding support for LTE on AT&T’s network is just icing.
This adds to AT&T’s increasingly interesting device portfolio, and Big Blue now stands as having one of the widest selection of Android and Windows Phones around.
The Galaxy S4 Zoom is available starting November 8 for $199 on a two year contract. The Zoom will also be eligible for AT&T’s current promo where you can snag yourself a free Galaxy Tab when signing up for a new plan. More info at:Â www.att.com/galaxys4zoom
Full PR and a video hands on after the jump.
Continue reading “AT&T scores exclusive on Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom”
The cold war between these two tech giants is heating up fast.
Google is taking an extremely aggressive stance towards Windows Phone. None of Google’s services are currently officially available for Microsoft’s mobile operating system, and Google has been very vocal about not developing for the platform. Recently Google forced Microsoft to remove a nice and functional Youtube app from their Phone Store and replace it with a lame browser based version. Now Google has set their sights on 3rd party Google Voice apps.
As their Hangouts app looks like it’ll become the single backbone service for all of Google’s text, audio, and video communication they’ve issued a notice that all GV apps must be shut down by May 1st of 2014. Google Plus Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal had this to say: Continue reading “Google escalates war with Microsoft, Shutting down 3rd Party Google Voice apps on Windows Phone”
From one of our readers using our contact page:
Hey,I have an older quad core AMD desktop running Windows 7 and was going to put in a SSD. While I was doing that I thought maybe I should upgrade to Windows 8. I don’t have a touchscreen though, so I was curious if you thought that would be a good idea? Thanks, Alex
First of all, I run an older quad core in my workstation, and installing a solid state drive (specifically a Kingston HyperX) made my system feel brand new. I think you’ll really dig it.
The upgrade to Windows 8.1 is a slightly trickier question. It’s pretty obvious that Microsoft is using this new interface as their first attack on tablets and touchscreens. Microsoft’s job moving forward isn’t to “save” the PC market, but redefine the what a PC is. If you’ve read much on this site, you would know that I’ve been fairly positive on their progress so far.
Stepping outside the tablet-y stuff however, I think Windows 8 can offer up some benefits to non-touchscreen users as well.
First of all, boot times are seriously improved. The combo of Windows 8.1 and an SSD will feel like an absolute screamer compared to Windows 7 and a spinning disc hard drive. My low power Windows 8.1 ultrabook with an SSD cache boots in about half the time as my desktop did with Windows 7 and a proper SSD. My Lenovo absolutely destroys my Nexus 7 in a cold boot race.
Second, I think Microsoft has made some solid improvements to file management. It’s not the sexiest aspect of an OS upgrade, but you get substantially more info when moving files, better estimates for completion, and the entire file browsing experience has been more stable. I would run into issues on Windows 7 with folders that had tons of files. As my computer would scan through creating thumbnails it would occasionally just get stuck on a file and never finish the scan. What ever file it would lag on would just become completely inaccessible, and I’d have to jump through CMD prompt nonsense to fix it. I haven’t had any issues like that with Win8.1 so far (knocks on wood). Continue reading “Ask Juan: Should I Upgrade my Desktop (non-touchscreen) to Windows 8.1?”
Getting a little cheeky and I like it.
Amazon is showing their appreciation to the FAA for opening up the restrictions on electronic devices. As long as they’re in Airplane Mode, our favorite glowing rectangles may now be used during take off and landing, and several airlines are already allowing passengers to geek out.
Today only, Amazon is running a coupon for Kindles, and if you use the promo code “ThnksFAA” at check out you can chop 15% off the price of a tablet or eReader. Well done FAA. Well done Amazon.
Get at it folks! Sale runs through today only!
Related:
Kindle Paperwhite Review
If you want BIG performance you have to start looking at exotic builds.
Storage is a big deal right now. Consumers routinely pick up thousands of gigabytes for cheap, and we’re all flirting with cloud storage which requires companies to run tons of redundant back ups. We’re creeping up on the maximum density per platter that physics will allow for packing info on a spinning disc, but other concerns can limit hard disc storage as well.
Namely air turbulence.
Yep. High performance drives spin up quickly. That 7200RPM badge on the side of your drive is commonplace these days, but that’s still pretty incredible when you think about it. Every second the platters are rotating 120 times. Those platters are designed around a certain fault tolerance and thermal envelope. Run them too hot too long and they’ll fail.
We’ve already posted about the new “shingled” array that Seagate and WD will look to use to pack more info on a drive, but that comes with certain sensitivities. Also, with each improvement in storage density comes the risk of losing even more data in the event of failure. HGST looks to improve run time and durability by hermetically sealing the drive in an envelope of Helium.
Helium is lighter than air, so there should be less resistance and turbulence. Less turbulence means less power is needed to spin the drive up, which results in less heat generated and a cooler operation temperature. Cooler temps should deliver long life cycles. It’s a very interesting solution for providing a more robust storage architecture. This kind of big storage affects every kind of service we use online today from social networking to streaming video.
HGST says the drives are “generally available now”, but bxpect the first applications to be for corporate storage. I wouldn’t be surprised to see these drives trickling out into consumer grade workstations next year.
Full PR after the jump. Continue reading “Western Digital owned HGST turns to Helium for 6TB hard drive”
Go! Go! Go! It seems like all of us are on the go and multitasking throughout the day. Sometimes we overlook a simple or important task. I believe some organization is called for and the Top Task List app for Windows phones is here to do the trick!
Top Task List was created by Vladimir Pogrebinsky who really thought through of all the details for the functionality of this app. For each and every task, project or reminder  you can organize them by color, date and order of importance. You can pin your task as a tile to your home screen for a quick view to see what needs to get done as well as choosing a custom color for that specific tile. As far as creating your new task is concerned, I will tell you that it is easy breezy! You simply press the add button and begin creating your new task. When creating your new task you will see plenty of options to organize your new task. You can name your new task then add a note and even add a specific person or place to your new task. Another great feature is that you can take a quick photo to add to your task and the ability to add a specific task or a folder to the lockscreen. Continue reading “App Review: Top Task List for Windows Phone 8”