Let's Talk Tech
I’m just starting to find my sea legs on Android Wear, and one of the things that puzzled me was the persistent notification on my phone. What the hell does “Connected, running sync loop” mean? Here’s the answer!
Shop Android Wear on Amazon.
Shop Android Wear on Google Play.
Review: Asus ZenWatch
Review: LG G Watch
Review: Moto 360
Review: LG G Watch R
Got a question on my iPhone Camera review from viewer Huber, who writes:
What’s up with the black bars when taking a picture with the iPhone?There are two black bars making the picture small, kind of like a square. All of the other phones the image takes up the whole screen.
That’s called “pillar boxing”. You know how some movies are SUPER wide screen and you see thin horizontal black strips on the top and bottom of your TV? That’s called “letter boxing”. Pillar boxing happens when the aspect ratio of a photo or video isn’t wide enough to completely fill the format it’s being displayed in.
In this case, the video window is 16×9, which is a pretty wide rectangle, but the iPhone shoots photos in 4×3, which is a really squarish rectangle. As that chunky pic can’t fill the whole video window, the software showing the photo adds the pillar boxing. If it didn’t do that, you would either have to crop and zoom in (which would defeat the purpose of me showing the pics in this video) or you would have to warp and stretch the photo to fill the widescreen view.
Cameras like those found on Samsung phones use natively 16×9 image sensors, so both photos and videos are automagically wide screen. Most other phones use an almost square sensor, so any widescreen photos or videos are the result of a crop.
Hope that answers your question Huber, and for more examples of pics and vids taken from all the phones we test here, make sure to follow on Youtube and Instagram!
We recently covered the news that California will become the second state to mandate a smartphone kill switch on all new smartphones sold after July 1, 2015.
Of course, that’s almost a year away, and for you folks using an Android here’s how you can better protect your phone or tablet today!
Got a great viewer tip from the comments on one of my other videos! This is how you can move an app from your phone’s storage to a memory card in Windows Phone’s Storage Sense!
This is why I love the comments you folks post!
File management sounds boring, but it’s a really big deal, giving us control over what pics, vids, and documents live on our phone and who we can share them with. It’s something Android users take for granted, and now Windows Phone owners have the same capabilities!
Best of all, for people using Nokia handsets, this Files app finally gives us access to the full resolution pictures on our phones to back up and share online!
Quick pro tip for you fine folks rocking the Galaxy S5. Even though it’s one of the most powerful phones on the market, doesn’t mean we can’t tweak it!
Here’s a handy trick to tighten up the animations so transitions will feel a little faster. All we have to do first is turn on the developer options in settings…
Another sign that we might be getting close to the public release of Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has published a Help site for those curious about Cortana’s capabilities.
Divided into different sections, it’s a detailed overview of Cortana’s various features and what voice commands you can give her.
If you haven’t already updated your Windows Phone using the developer preview, you’ll be in for a treat soon. We have a full overview of WP8.1 below!
We posted a reminder yesterday that Google will soon be pulling support for 3rd party Google Voice clients. No big deal for people who use Android and iOS, as the Voice will likely get rolled up into the Hangouts app.
However Windows Phone users are getting caught in the cold war crossfire between Microsoft and Google, and it’s unlikely we’ll see a “Live Tiled” version of Hangouts any time soon. In the meantime, here’s how I’ll continue to use Google Voice on my Windows Phone…