Let's Talk Tech
There still aren’t a lot of rugged and water-proof cases built specifically for the iPhone 5S. Thankfully, the changes between the 5 and 5S aren’t so severe that you couldn’t use a 5 case on a 5S, but there will be a few compromises.
The Ballistic Hydra is ready to go! Let’s take a look at how someone might better protect their shiny, pretty iPhone from drop and water damage!
Shop for the Ballistic Hydra rugged case on Amazon.
More info on Ballistic cases at: http://www.goballisticcase.com/
Today this little gadget came in, so let me introduce you to the RAVPower Luster Mini 3000mAh Lipstick Charger. The RAVPower weighs in at a mere 3oz so it is very light in your pockets or messenger bag. It even comes with a clip, a very shiny chrome clip so you can put it in your shirt pocket on pants pocket. These little yet very functional gadget measures 4.6 X 0.9 X 0.9 so you can pretty much say it is very compact. The RAVPower Lipstick Charger comes in a few choices of color such as black, pink, silver and a champagne color.
This is what comes in the box:
The RAVPower is going to be one of your best friends when you are out and about and don’t have access to your wall charger. One of the very useful features of this lipstick charger is that it doubles as a flashlight and lights up with an intense 8 lumens! Drop your keys in the dark car? Grab your RAVPower lipstick charger and let the light shine to find your keys amongst those butterfinger wrappers under your seat!  When you use the flashlight, the RAVPower has 3 modes: high, low and strobe. This would come in handy if you are a bicyclist and your headlight happens to go out, you could easily use this as a backup light so you will not get a ticket from the local Police. Continue reading “Gadget Review: Ravpower Lipstick Charger and Flashlight”
Whether you are going to the DMV to register your new car or waiting patiently for your flight, you have a multitude of options to occupy your time on your cell phone while waiting. You could read some news, grind away at a game, or you could expand your knowledge of a subject through fun trivia bits. The Trivia Buff app from Dapper Panda may just be the cure for you!
The Trivia Buff app let’s you search for favorite topics. Just out of curiosity I searched for BMX as I used to race BMX bikes here on the east coast and I found out that Slash from GNR used to race BMX back in the day! How cool is that! With the Trivia Buff app you can start training your brain to collect all the info necessary to crush the next trivia night at your local pub.
The app pulls info from a variety of sources (though you will see a lot of wikis), so it’s only really limited by your own curiosity.
The Trivia Buff app is a no frills, straight forward app for your Windows 8 phone. There are no dark or light theme options. You can opt to buy the ad free version for a mere $0.99 to help support the fine folks over at Dapper Panda. Â The options of the Trivia Buff app are few but very useful. You can change the font size, you can choose to show or not show the logo on the live tile and speaking of the live tile, you have 3 sizes, small, medium and large, and the last option is that you have a choice of browsers to use.
You really cannot go wrong with this app especially if you love to learn!
Trivia Buff is available for both Windows 8 phones and Android:
Trivia Buff for Android Continue reading “App Review: Trivia Buff for Windows 8 and Android phones.”
Each generation of smartphone ushers in improvements to the cameras on the backs of our handsets, and now they’re starting to rival what we can do with traditional point and shoot cameras.
I’ve even seen some claim that our phones now compete with SLRs, so I felt it was time to take a look at one important aspect of photo and video performance: depth of field.
For this shootout we’ll be comparing the video output from the iPhone 5S, Galaxy S4, HTC One, Optimus G Pro, Lumia 1020 and comparing it to a Samsung Galaxy Camera P&S and a Canon 7D DSLR.
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”
Phonly is a sweet Feedly RSS reader created by Geek Industries. I actually stumbled upon this app in the Microsoft App store, and I decided to download this highly rated app to see what all the buzz was about.
I’ve never really used a feed reader before but what better time than now to try it out! Soon as Phonly finished installing I opened the app up to give it a go. The first thing I did was create a Feedly account and start adding feeds. Adding your favorite feeds is pretty straight forward as you can enter a URL, title or topic to find your favorite sites or find a new feed. You can also create custom categories to keep all your feeds neatly organized.
Phonly has a ton of options on how you would like your feeds to be displayed. To refresh your feeds, a simple swipe down on the screen and Phonly will automatically refresh all the sites you’re subscribed to! The free (ad-supported) Phonly has a fluid modern UI with a light theme. The dark theme can be purchased in app, which also removes ads. Both the Light and Dark themes are very easy on the eyes.
Some of the key features of Phonly: Continue reading “App Review: Phonly RSS Reader for Windows Phone”
It’s time folks. I was there for the iPhone 5S launch day. I’ve played with the phone for a while now.
It’s time to talk iPhone.
I have not used an iPhone since the 3G. I’ve recently become a fan of Windows Phone, and I still use Android as my daily driver. iOS7 has brought some pretty significant changes to the Apple ecosystem, and now we have the first generation of iPhone purpose built for this new software.
Let’s see how it holds up to the expectations and ramblings of an angry smartphone geek.
Related:
Our comprehensive iPhone 5S camera and speaker tests!
I’m almost wrapped up with my full long term review of the 5S, but I thought I’d tease some of the videos we’ll be using to showcase the performance of Apple’s newest handset.
Starting off with the most comprehensive camera test you’ll find on this phone online, shooting in a variety of scenarios including bright outdoor scenes, low light, indoor, night time, tracking movement, and we played with slow motion video. If you’ve been curious to see how this new image sensor stacks up against Nokias and Androids, we have a ton of samples to show off!
Also, no discussion of a multimedia phone would be complete without some speaker tests. The iPhone is a svelte slab of phone. I was really curious to see if Apple could cram in a speaker which would be able to compete against recent outings from Nokia and HTC. I was very surprised by the results of our speaker test, and you can hear the iPhone playback movie clips and music in our video below.
Be on the lookout for our full long-term review in the coming days!