December 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Windows Phone 8: the third wheel or a genuine contender?

The growing popularity of Android and iOS has some people worried that we are facing an era of mobile monopoly, but with two major players dominating the market. It is hard to judge if this is a big problem because having two companies dominating is not a constrictive situation in most industries.

In the mobile industry, however, it means that the best apps, accessories and news coverage will gravitate towards those two platforms and this puts the others at a disadvantage which is not easy to recover from. With RIM struggling to bring relevance to the BlackBerry platform, we are left with Microsoft to try to break the stranglehold that Google and Apple have at this time.

I have spent the past week working with Windows Phone and come to some conclusions as to where it is at currently, what could be improved and what potential it has.

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December 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Quick Review: HTC 8S

I wanted to spend some quality time with Windows Phone 8 and also needed a phone running the platform for some projects, so I phoned Clove and ordered an HTC 8S. It looked like a decent entry into the world of Windows Phone and I would not be blowing my bank account to test it out.

The 8S is available for £224.99 which is low for any smartphone and you would be forgiven for ignoring it on that fact alone. With high-end smartphones passing £400 regularly it is easy to presume that to get a decent mobile experience, you need to spend roughly twice the cost of the 8S. The 8S has proved to me that this is not always the case- you can experience a practical and engaging smartphone experience without spending a fortune and there are many reasons why the 8S shines-

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November 19, 2012 By

Windows Phone is calling me

As you may know, I have been a long time iPhone user and the recent release of the iPhone 5 has re-affirmed my iOS loving stance. But then I watched the launch event for Windows Phone 8 and a spark went off in my head that said “That looks good.” I am not sure what jumped out at me, but it was probably some or all of the following-

The hardware looks great- it is distinctive, unusual and there are options from big screens to smaller screens, from red to blue and from HTC to Nokia.

The software was fantastic in the previous version and Windows Phone 8 has built upon that without damaging what was good before. The home screen in particular is now much more usable and considerably more obvious when capturing useful information with a single glance.

It is smooth as silk and offers all of the stability of iOS with the potential to customise a little more and have choices in the future. In many ways, it could be considered the perfect centre-ground between iOS and Android.

And so my thoughts continue to swirl and the more I think about it, the more Windows Phone calls out to me. You know that feeling when something feels right before you even try it? Like a car, a house or even an item on a restaurant menu. That’s the feeling I have and suspect that Windows Phone will be my next mobile adventure after potentially too long with iOS.

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October 3, 2012 By

You got the device you always wanted, now what?

Remember those times fiddling with HotSync on your PC. Trying to get your Pocket PC device to connect to anything. The constant wired transferring of information between a desktop computer and your PDA. It was time consuming, manual and extremely frustrating, but we put up with it because it was all we had.

Fast forward a few years and we have everything we always wanted. Thousands of games and apps, constant connectivity and the ability to replicate almost everything we do on a desktop with the great looking device in our pockets. It feels like a dream for those of us who trudged our ways through the PDA years, but it is now reality.

Just think about what you couldn’t do a few years ago and you realise that every single usage has now been miniaturised to work on a device that fits in your pocket. But still we are not happy and we always want more. Faster processors, bigger screens, inventive software solutions and everything else that is possible or even impossible.

It’s human nature and that is something that will never change. We crave something, we get it and then we crave some more. This is why smartphones of today are remarkably complete and powerful and why they will never be good enough for those of us who have been searching for the perfect mobile device for a decade or more. There is no such thing as perfect, just better.

August 28, 2012 By

Do you really need LTE?

I am going to be a luddite now and suggest that you do not need LTE. Continue reading to find out why.

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August 2, 2012 By

How important is an eco-system?

The big players in the computing industry are racing to build eco-systems that tie users in to their products and services. Apple is trying hard, and largely failing, with iCloud and Google is following with the Nexus Q and the many recent changes made to Google Play. Where Google wins quite easily is in its ability to provide web services that work at speed and more importantly in harmony. Microsoft is also trying hard, but is struggling a little to deal with the disparate nature of Windows and the fact that so many users are using different computers, different versions of Windows and the free-for-all that is the Windows app industry.

The key to a useful eco-system that can tie people in is in making it work in the home and Apple has led the way here. I always thought that Apple TV was a gimmick until I bought one and was able to tap a button on my iPhone and watch the movie on the TV without doing anything else. It’s all wireless, instant and rather magnificent in its approach. It can play movies and music stored on my iMac in an instant and it all just works. iCloud is way behind this experience and this is where Google leads. I can go to Google Play on my desktop and install an app to my phone without even touching it. Google Calendar, Gmail and all of its other online services are instant and reliable and streets ahead of everyone else.

So, Apple leads in integrated hardware and Google in software, but they both face the same problem in trying to grow their respective markets. They need to tie users in while at the same time letting them be free to make their own choices. Apple is particularly bad at this and often comes over as ruthless in its approach to competition. Google is particularly good at this, but requires a lot of personal information for us to make the most of its services.

Eco-systems are the future and we are poised at a ‘very’ interesting point in their development. As to who will win, let us know your thoughts on the issue.

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July 17, 2012 By

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2: The tablet nobody is talking about

How does Samsung’s new tab square up to the Nexus 7?

The Google Nexus 7 is seen as the Jesus tablet of the Android world and it is true that it is gaining lots of attention from the mass media, consumers and those in the market for an affordable tablet with a good screen and decent specifications. There is, however, an alternative.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 follows a fairy long line of Android tablet efforts from Samsung, most of which I haven’t enjoyed at all or considered to be too expensive, but this one surprised me a lot.

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July 17, 2012 By

What swayed you?

This is more of a question than an article, but it is one worth thinking about. What made you choose a particular smartphone?

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July 16, 2012 By

Streaming

Spotify, TV, news, YouTube, multi-player games, web browsing, video calling, streaming live events.

Think about it for a second- we consume huge amounts of data every second of every day and never stop to consider that our phones are mere portals for everything that is out there. Take away the internet and you have a product that can make phone calls and send and receive text messages. It can take photos and play games that would have to be downloaded by a computer which is attached to your phone with a wire. How awful.ID-10078103

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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July 9, 2012 By

Everyone is taking a bite out of Apple

Apple has for the past half-decade dominated the technology headlines, the design press, tablet sales and given the smartphone industry a huge kick up the you know what. The share price has rocketed and so have quarterly financial reports, but this could all be about to change.

They say that when you are at the top you can only go one way and small chinks are appearing in the aluminium armour that Apple has polished so carefully in the 2000′s. The iPad is of course selling well, but the Microsoft Surface has a big chance considering that 90% of the world’s computers run Windows. Indeed, consider Windows 8 on a smartphone, tablet and desktop and you can see where Microsoft is heading. I would bet that Microsoft will get there before Google or Apple in building an identical eco-system between all three form factors. And then there is the Nexus 7, a tablet so cheap and at 7″ it is the right size for a tablet (in my opinion). It could gain substantial ground before Apple releases the smaller iPad.

The Galaxy SIII is a fantastic smartphone and so is the HTC One X and the Galaxy Nexus. All are arguably better than the iPhone 4S from a hardware point of view and if the rumours surrounding the iPhone 5 are correct, they still will be. Apple needs to think bigger in terms of smartphones to keep pace because a new phone that is similar to the 4S in stature will not do what the previous models have done, nowhere near.

And then there is iCloud. Google does web integration better than Apple and so does Microsoft. I use an iMac every day and at no point does it feel the same as my iPad or iPhone- some of the features such as Photo Stream are useful, but Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs are my weapons of choice to get stuff done. Everywhere I turn, I see red flags for Apple and green flags for Google and Microsoft. I may be wrong and in a way I hope I am because one thing Apple does well is drive the entire industry, but those red flags keep coming back to me.

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