With over 50 million units sold, chances are you have an Apple iPhone. If you do, you might want to start worrying as just last Wednesday, two security researchers discovered that the iPhone keeps a detailed record of everywhere you go and have gone since you first activated your phone. Yikes.
Sony's New Mobile Gaming Beast
Can Sony's new NGP be king of the portables?
Robotic Animals: The SmartBird
Look at this photo. Be honest, if you hadn’t known that it was a robot, you would of really thought that it was a really bird. The new nature inspired SmartBird can take off, fly, and land on it owns able to flap its wings in realistic and judging the video, even turn its head.
In today’s society, technology is always becoming a larger part of our lives. It’s difficult to do anything without some sort of technology monitoring us or tracking us. However, in the case of Sahas Katta of Skattertech.com that might not be such a bad thing.
While Katta was driving, he was pulled over by a cop for going 40 mph in a 25 mph zone, however, Katta claimed that he was not but what is his word over a policeman’s? Katta says, “At the time I was in a panicked mental state and simply handed over my driver's license, insurance, and registration information without asking any questions." But then we had a chance to thing the situation through, he remembered that that he installed My Tracks by Google, an app that tracks your GPS data on a map that includes time, speed, distance, and elevation.
Katta then took his speeding ticket to court to dispute the ticket. After asking a few question, it appeared that the police officer didn’t remember when he last went to radar gun training or when the radar gun was last calibrate. He finally showed the judge his GPS information and won the case.
Everyone loves Apple announcements and all the hype building up them is so talked about that it’s almost ordinary for people to get so excited for them. The upcoming Apple event on March 2nd will expect to have a few new things, the iPad 2 being one of the biggest and most talked about. In addition, the BBC is hosting an event at the same day and time as the Apple announcement so one could predict that there could be some Facetiming between the two events. There have also been rumors of some new things being added or taken away from MobileMe. There is speculation that MobileMe will no longer be available in physical form, a possibility seeing how Apple seems to be trying to kill the CD with the release of the Mac Store and rumors that OSX Lion will only be available through download.
There have been a lot of rumors about what the iPad 2 is going to have so to clear things up a bit, here is what we know:
The Insides Last year, when the first generation iPad came out, it was packing Apple’s A4 chip which then showed up in the iPhone 4, the iTouch 4g, and the new Apple TV (would it be called Apple TV 2g?). So it wouldn’t be surprising to see that Apple followed the same pattern with releasing the new A5 chip on the iPad 2 and then bringing it to the iPhone 5, iTouch 5g(?), and the next generation Apple TV(3g?).
What exactly is the A4 chip? The A4 is a custom system-on-a-chip (pardon the jargon) built around an ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 1GHz. Most likely, the iPad 2 will be packing an A5 (no word if this will be the official name) built around ARM’s next generation of processors. The multi-core capable ARM Cortex A9 has already been incorporated in to many devices that are already out today and has been seen in configurations up to a dual-core running at 1.5GHz. A 1GHz dual-core A9 is already powering Nvidia’s Tegra 2 which is in Android 3.0 tablets such as the Motorola Xoom and the coming generation of smartphones like the Atrix 4G and the Droid Bionic.
Retina Display There have been rumors that the iPad 2 will feature a retina display due to some clues in iBook 1.1 and 1.2 that showed some artwork in double resolution (2048x1536). However this seems unlikely as the iPad 2 simply doesn’t have enough hardware power to accomplish this.
HTC has released a known bug on how to double your battery life by changing your charging routine. The different routine is as follows: 1. Charge for 8 hours or until fully charged. 2. Unplug and turn off and plug back in and charge while off. 3. Unplug and turn on for 3 minutes. 4. Turn off again and plug in and charge for another hour. 5. Turn on. After doing all this it should maximize battery life. I tried it myself and it did significantly increase the battery life. What concerns me is why would HTC program the phone to use the battery to its full extent. Instead people have to waste at minimum 3 hours to get the most out of their battery. Is it worth it? Now that I think about it if I have the time it is worth it instead of buying an extended battery. But it does pose the question if android will somehow use the software to fix this problem/bug for this phone so its features can be used without fear of the battery dying.
Well if you have a Droid incredible from Verizon I’m sure you are aware that there is a 3G Mobile hotspot available. Well first of all you need to know what that does. A 3G mobile hotspot allows you to setup a wireless internet connection for up to 5 devices using the internet from your phone. Of course since its Verizon they want to make you pay for it, so they charge you $1.99 for each Mb or $20 a month on top of a $30 month charge. This to me and many other people is very expensive seeing that we already pay $30 a month already. I have found a very good solution to use it for free. Well the way the Verizon tracks your data is by sending it all to a server specific to your number. Doing the same with the data used by the mobile hotspot so they can know the difference, the solution? Let’s make the servers the same so they think all the data is normal data that is covered by the $30 a month unlimited data. We can start by calling ##778 and you’ll be asked "view mode", or "edit mode" in this instance you should select edit mode. Now don’t panic because you will see a screen asking for a password, but the good thing all the passwords start default at 000000. After you enter scroll down and find the option "M.IP Default Profile" select that. Now you need edit the DUN NAI to be the same email address as NAI. It should look like this:
This way Verizon will think that all data used from the mobile hotspot is normal data. Enjoy your unlimited mobile hotspot. Disclaimer: I’m not responsible for any over charges if this does not work.
There was a time when a computer weighed over 30 tons and took up over 680 square feet of space…those days have long gone and now computers are so small that they fit INSIDE OF OUR EYES! Scientists over at the University of Michigan have created a tiny wireless pressure sensor that was developed with glaucoma patients in mind.
The one cubic millimeter device includes an ultra-low-power microprocessor, a thin-film battery, a solar cell, memory, a pressure sensor, and a wireless radio with an antenna. This makes this the first complete computer on the millimeter scale. AS you may have guessed the solar panel is used to charge the device. The processor uses an "extreme" sleep mode to keep it napping at 15-minute intervals and sucking up 5.3 nanowatts while awake, and its battery charges fully off 10 hours of indoor light or one and a half hours of sun rays.
As I mentioned before, the researchers’ intentions was to use this device as a method to monitor the pressure levels in Glaucoma patients. Glaucoma is a condition which leads to damage to the optic nerve, the nerve that carries information from the eye to the brain. This damage to the optic nerve is usually caused by increased pressure in the eye. The minicomputer sits inside the eye and could theoretically send pressure measurements to a special receiver or maybe even your cell phone!
To tell you the truth I’m not really that excited about this whole pressure sensor thing but what I am excited about is the concept. The fact complete computers can be made so small opens a world of possibilities. In the future we may have mini cameras built into our eyes that record everything we do or we may have a minicomputer implanted into our brains that allow us to control various other electronics. This prospect seems farfetched but I’m hoping with technology like this keeps getting worked on, mind control will soon be a part of everyday life.
Every day we all hear about the human race (America especially) using too much energy and how we should cut it down. The well known culprits for this problem are transportation, heating, lights, etc. Some researchers from Bristol University in the UK have proven that something that most of us cannot go a couple hours without is a major power consumer. Data. Whether it be watching a YouTube video on your computer or phone, watching your favorite show that you missed last night or reading your favorite blog, Gizmo-teched, you probably use a lot of data through the day.
The researchers decided that by 2030 all sources of media will be stored in the cloud, which means even television will be streamed from a server somewhere just like the internet is now. If the amount of data usage (including TV) stays the same as it is right now, by 2030 each person will be using about 3 gigabytes of data per day which amounts to 2,570 exabytes of data per year for the global population. I think this number is so vast that we have nothing to compare it with so let me break it down for you and make some comparisons to more familiar things. One megabyte is, nowadays, a pretty small measure of data. 100 megabytes might hold a couple volumes of Encyclopedias. 600 megabytes is about the amount of data that will fit on a CD-ROM disk. The next unit is the gigabyte which is about 1000 megabytes. 1 Gigabyte could hold the contents of about 10 yards of books on a shelf. 100 Gigabytes could hold the entire library floor of academic journals. The next unit is terabyte which is about 1000 gigabytes. One terabyte can hold about 300 hours of good quality video or hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ten Terabytes could hold the printed collection of the Library of Congress. The next unit is petabyte which is about 1000 terabytes. This is the point where the volumes of data become hard to comprehend as we really have nothing to compare it to but one example is a petabyte can hold about 13 years worth of HD video and 50 petabytes could hold the entire written works of mankind in EVERY LANGUAGE! Finally we come to exabytes which..you guessed it, is about 1000 petabytes or a billion gigabytes. Now there really isn’t anything to compare to but it’s said that 5 exabytes would be equal to every word ever said by the human race.....let me let that sink in....wow.
Now back to the problem at hand. Think about how much energy it would take to move around all that data. The researchers estimate it will take about 1,175 gigawatts of electricity to do this. To put this into perspective, New York City, aka. “The city that never sleeps” uses about 22.5 gigawatts of electricity (or 1/50th of the amount of electricity NYC) per day…again, let me let that sink in……!!! It takes a large coal power plant to produce just one gigawatt of energy, so imagine 1,175 of those on top of all the other plants needed for other things such as lights, heating water, and other electronics.
This realization has brought upon the “green IT” movement and there are some people who have presented ideas at the “IEEE CloudCom 2010” convention trying to push greener thinking when it comes to data usage. For example, one way to cut down data usage is for website makers not to use high resolution images when a low or medium resolution image would be enough. There is still a lot of research and data needed in this topic for it to become more public but in our present “information age”, this is bound to become a very big problem in the very near future.
Well the first thing you can do is change that boring old, vanilla, lock screen. The default iOS lock screen doesn’t do much other than telling you the time and date. With a jailbroken iPhone the possibilities are endless. You could have it display the weather and maybe even show what new emails you have received. On top of all this, you can make it in any style you want as you can choose from the wide array of possibilities that are out there.
For this tutorial, I will be using a nice, clean, and easy to customize lock screen that has the ability to display the time (of course), date, and local weather in a simple and elegant manner. Once you’re through, yours should like the one displayed above however, with accessibility of jailbreaking, you can easily customized however you wish.
Things You Will Need
Before you begin, you will first need a couple of things. First of all, you will need some sort of iPhone file explorer. This will allow you to browse the files within your iPhone via your computer, Mac and PC. You will need this so you can insert the theme files into your iPhone. I recommend you use iPhone Explorer (I appreciate the self-explanatory name) as it is 100% free and seems to be the most popular. You will also need to install “Lockscreen Clock Hide”, “Winterboard”, and “CleanStatus” from Cydia.
Step 1
Download the theme that corresponds to your iOS version number. Click here if you are running iOS version 4.1 or below. Or click here if you are running iOS 4.2.1.
Step 2
Once you have downloaded the correct theme, unzip it and find “LockBackground.html”. Open it up with a plain text editor (Notepad for Windows or TextEdit for OSX) and look for “var locale: Los Angeles, California” and replace “Los Angles, California” with your own location. This will allow the weather widget to give you the weather for your local area.
Step 3
Use your iPhone file explorer, in this case iPhone Explorer, and find click on “Root”, “Library” and then “Themes”
Step 4
Copy the folder within the zip file called “iOS 4.2.1 – Custom LS” to the “Themes” folder within your iPhone.
Step 5
Now go to your iPhone, open up Settings and scroll down to the “Clock Hide” section. Once in, enable it and it will now hide the default time and date on the lock screen.
Step 6
Now go back to Settings and click on “CleanStatus”. CleanStatus is an easy way to manage what is displayed on your status bar, the bar that displays your signal strength, time, battery life and other miscellaneous stuff. The program allows you to hide which ever icons you do not want to be shown. Enable CleanStatus, and for now, switch “Carrier Name” to on. This will disable AT&T for example, from being shown on the status bar.
Step 7
Click on the Winterboard App (it will be located either in your Settings menu or on your springboard) and go to “Select Themes”. Click on “iOS 4.2.1 – Custom LS”
Step 8
Click back to Winterboard and hit the "Respring" button. This will basically do a quick a reboot of your iPhone's springboard, the place where all your apps are store. After respringing, the changes should of taken place.
Congratulations! Your lock screen is now customized! If you want to change the lock screen background, simply overwrite “background.jpg” in the theme’s folder with any picture of your choice.
When people ask me what phone they should get I always tell them, "Whatever HTC phone is available on your network." This is because HTC is the best Android phone maker. Here's Why: First of all Android trumps all other Operating Systems because of their open source, Google integration, and their very wide selection of phones. After you realize that Windows Mobile and iOS can't live up to Android we need to find the best phone for Android. Sometimes spec of a phone don't tell the whole story on how good it is. For example the Motorola Atrix and the HTC Inspire. These are the two leading Android Phones for AT&T and many think the Atrix is superior to the Inspire just because it has a better processor that automatically makes it better but the truth is it really doesn't. True it might be nicer to have a big processor but people don't realize that Android's UI (user interface) changes sooo dramatically from phone to phone that it can be a deal breaker compared to a higher processor or no keyboard etc. Motorola in this case has Motorola Blur and HTC has HTC Sense. HTC Sense makes the phone feel alive and put the user in control and allows data to be pushed to the widgets on the home screen. Motorola, Samsung, and LG can't match up with HTC Sense and how it gives the phone so much more sense, no pun intended. That's just the software side of things and when we look at the hardware side of things HTC is also superior. Even in the case of the Motorola Atrix and the HTC Inspire, the Atrix has a better processor and a front facing camera but still doesn't match up to HTC because the inspire has a 1 Ghz processor which these days is more than enough and the way that HTC builds their phones is in a very durable way. Most of them are built with a mesh metal material and they provide a lot of support for the phone not to break. This is why HTC logo is "Quietly Brilliant" because all these small enhancements with each other make beautiful phones that trump all phones out there.
Well as over time the ear headphones become more and more popular, artist have endorsed many of them and I will show you which is which and whose are the best.
Beats By Dr.Dre:
These are the headphones that started it all because they were endorsed by Dr. Dre and they were very high quality. These headphones were built by Monster and have quite a range of capabilities. They come with two different wires for a normal headphone jack (3.5mm) and also a studio jack. The amazing feature that these headphones have is the fact that you can unplug the wire and replace it if it ever gets ruined. This way you don't have to replace the set of headphones saving you time and money. These headphones also come with amazing noise cancellation powered by 2 triple A batteries. After testing it out I can attest that it was quite exceptional. The headphone jack wire also come along with control talk which allows you to use it as a headset. These headphones retail at $349.95
Sleek By 50 cent: Although they are not available yet they show much promise. According to Sleek Audio it will have a revolutionary ability to receive audios from up to 50 feet away by way of Kleer lossless wireless technology which is thought to be like a vamped up Bluetooth. Although we barely know anything else about these headphones they are sure to go head to head with the Beats by Dr.Dre. The price for these headphones are unknown for now.
Signeo Soul By Ludacris:
Honestly for me these will be my favorite because of my love for Ludacris as an artist. Signeo released a statement that he won’t come out with only one pair of head phones but 5, the High Definition Professional SL300 Powered Noise Cancelling headphone, High Definition On-Ear models SL150 and SL100, and the SE99 and SE49 High Definition In-Ear headphones. Each gets noise cancellation technology and “ultra precise audio mix balancing." I think these headphones will be the most promising from a business point of view because they will probably be more practical and less expensive.
The truth is the only one actually available right now is the Beats By Dr. Dre so for now it is all we can say is the best but the other products show lots of promise and show they can put up a fight.
I'm sure many of you have heard about Apple’s big event next week on the 2nd,and the most talked about device that is expected to be released at this conference is the iPad 2. Here are a couple features that are likely to appear on it:
Two cameras would be the most obvious choice to add on to the iPad 2 as it is one of the biggest disadvantages the iPad has against its competitors.
Apple's newest A5 processor which hopefully will be a multi core processor to help speed it up
A dedicated graphics chip which will make it the best gaming tablet out there. That will be appropriate as the iPhone is the most popular mobile gaming platform at the moment.
It may or may not have a Hi resolution retina display because they are expensive to manufacture
A dedicated SD card slot. Like the camera...or the lack thereof, is one of the biggest drawbacks to the iPad when compared to other
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the the iPad 2 will be sleeker and thinner which is probably an accurate guess becasue most new gadgets are sleeker than the ones they are replacing. It is also being speculated that since the iPhone is now available on both AT&T and Verizon that the new iPad 2 will have a dual GSM/CDMA chipset that will enable it to work on Verizon's as well as AT&T's 3G network. Hopefully the iPad turns out to be exactly what we are all looking for by having all these features!
Have you always wanted a segway but have been put off by their size and their lack of portability....oh and also have $1500 lying around? Well now the perfect gadget for you has arrived. The Solowheel.
The Solowheel is basically a segway with only one wheel and no handle. It has two pegs on either side of the wheel on which you stand and the built in gyroscopes help balance you. Unlike its two wheeled counterparts, the Solowheel is very light at only 20 pounds and is still able to reach 12 miles per hour using its electric motor.
The Solowheel uses a large lithium-ion battery and on a full charge (which takes about 45 minutes), the Solowheel lasts two hours—but the battery actually recaptures energy when going downhill just like hybrid cars do.
There is a catch though – besides the price of course – it has a rather steep learning curve. The folks over at Engadget tested it out and failed quite horribly. But the upside is once you do master the art of Solowheeling (video), you will have a economical way to get from place to place and people won’t stop you and ask if you need help getting back to the segway tours booth or ask if you’re a cop.
Admit it. No matter how revolutionary, convenient, or efficient a Segway is, there just too geeky. The Solowheel might not be a solution to that problem but it’s definitely more compact. The “self-balancing electric unicycle” takes the challenge out of riding a unicycle by using a gyroscope to keep the Solowheel upright and is powered by a 1000 watt motor and features a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. According to Inventist, the company that created the Solowheel, it has a two-hour battery life and can be fully charged in 45 minutes. The battery also gains power by recapturing energy when going downhill or when slowing down. Weighing in at only 20 pounds making it extremely portable with only two foot rests to fold up; you could easily put in your backpack or slide it under your desk at work. There’s also a handle for easy mobility.
However this brings into the question the usefulness of transportation like the Solowheel and Segways. Yes, they’re faster than walking but are we really that lazy? The Solowheel really isn’t that viable once you get to areas more populate than your average suburb as dodging people on foot is hard enough let alone a self-balancing unicycle. Plus you still look goofy riding one.
Do you remember that scene in James Bond “Tomorrow Never Dies”? The one where Bond is corned by bad guys and has to drive his signature BMW with his cellphone?
Yeah that one.
Well Nokia Asian hired to two Chinese software programmers; An Jiaxuan and his associate, to create a program for the Nokia C7 that can remote control a BMW 1 Series. While it might not control fancy Bond gadgets like missiles or road spikes, it certainly more impressive than Pandora radio integration.
According to the programming team, it took them 20 day of software coding and development and testing on various platforms such as remote control toys to air conditioning units. After coding and testing they moved on to the real thing; setting up the BMW to communicate be controlled by the Nokia C7. After that they tested the system in a vacant lot and it seemed to work pretty well.
The only thing I could think of during the whole demonstration was how Mythbusters already did it except they used a remote control system to physically control the steering wheel and not the car itself.
HTC unveiled many new devices at the 2011 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain. So let’s dive in.
Incredible S:
This new phone is the successor of the popular HTC Incredible on the Verizon network. It will sport a new 1.3 MP front facing camera and it will lose the trackball button on the front of the phone. The LED buttons on the front also rotate when the phone senses its position to be moved. The unique thing about the back of the phone is that all the cut outs will be lined with a black metal. This makes the phone look a lot better than its predecessor that had a red camera with look a bit corny. Another main change to the phone is the software because it will come with the new Sense and eventually the Gingerbread 2.3 with HTC Sense.
Desire S:
Much like the Incredible S this is the successor of another phone known as the Desire for U.S. Cellular. They have revamped this phone by taking away all physical buttons on the front and adding LED ones that also rotate when the phone is shifted. They've also added a 1.3 MP front facing camera for video conferences and etc. They have also changed the color and made the phone black. This phone will also eventually receive Android Gingerbread 2.3 software, and just about everything else is the same.
Wildfire S:
This small social network phone has been revamped that much from its predecessor the HTC Wildfire. The main differences include the removal of the optical track pad, and they also upgraded the processor to 600 MHz. They have also added Android 2.2 (froyo) and will not likely receive Gingerbread.
HTC Flyer:
These phones show much promise to the smartphone world and many will probably think when will, "HTC come out with a device for the tablet world?"
They have and it's called the HTC Flyer.
The brand new HTC tablet has many very good specs. This new 7 inch tablet has a 5MP back camera and a 1.3M front facing camera. The processor on the device is an amazing 1.5GHz and has 1GB RAM. This tablet can do just about anything and has Android Gingerbread 2.3 and with the new HTC Sense specially made for the Flyer. Unlike other tablets like the Samsung Galaxy tab and iPad this has a stylus. Everyone thought the stylus was extinct but HTC brought it back in a brilliant fashion. When browsing on the web or through any HTC application you can use the stylus to take notes on the screen and it takes a picture of your notes. If you aren’t on a HTC application then when using the stylus it simply takes a snapshot of the screen. I can easily see this device overpass the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy tab. That’s all I have now for HTC but once these devices come out I will post more about each individually.
The white casing for the HTC Incredible has been an accessory that I’ve always wanted and I finally mustered up enough will power to buy one. It cost me around 15 bucks plus shipping and handling fromAmazon. It came in the mail and I was very anxious to see the results. I would have to say I love the product, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants more color on the incredible without sacrificing cheesiness. The downside to this new backing is that it is shinny which makes in a little bit slippery compared to the soft grip able default backing. But all in all it is a very good product and has made me very happy.
So you have yourself an iPhone or iTouch and you’re not quite content with all the features that Apple has given you. Good thing for you is now it’s easier than ever to jailbreak your device with click programs like greenpois0n. Heck a how-to-guide might not even be necessary but for those of you who need guide, here’s the best guide on how to jailbreak your iPhone (or iTouch).
Why Should You Jailbreak?
Jailbreaking your iPhone (almost everything applies to iTouch as well so don’t be discouraged) frees your device from restrictions that Apple has set. The iPhone is far from a perfect device and jailbreaking allows the iPhone to have features that would not normally be available such as customizable user interfaces (changeable backgrounds have only just been incorporated on the “official” iPhone), emulators, and customizable lock screens only to name a few. In addition if you do jailbreak your iPhone, you will be able to join a unique community of users who are eager to help you customize and get the most out of your iPhone.
Why Shouldn't You?
In Apple’s defense, they know what they’re doing. The ability to multitask (well, true multitasking) has not been implemented because of the huge impact it has on battery and iPhone processing power. The people at Apple control these little details so you don’t have to (or maybe you want to…). There also is an extremely slim possibility that jailbreak your iPhone could brick it, however there have been few reports of this happening. Also, each time Apple releases an update (which actually isn’t that often) it removes the jailbreak as it reformats the iPhone. However, greenpois0n team has proved to be unbeatable as they provided a jailbreak for the update almost within 24 hours. Inevitably, jailbreaking your iPhone voids the warranty so if something did happen to your iPhone Apple won’t help you. That being said let’s begin to jailbreak your iPhone.
Note: The steps described are instructions for jailbreaking an iPhone running version 4.2.1 and the corresponding version of Greenpois0n. Future versions may vary.
Step 1
The first thing you’ll want to do is back up your iPhone in case anything was to go wrong or if you wanted to restore to its previous state. To do this, connect your iPhone to iTunes and right click (or ctrl-click on mac) on your iPhone. A menu should come up with the option "Back Up". To restore your iPhone select your device in the iTunes screen and click on the "Summary" tab and select the "Restore" option. For a more detailed explanation of how to backup and restore, click here to go to Apple's support page.
Step 2
Next download, Greenpois0n (as of writing this, their website seems to be down...) and open it up. Connect your iPhone and click the Jailbreak button. As soon as it starts hold down the sleep (lock) button for three seconds. After 3 seconds, hold down the home button while at the same time, still holding down the sleep button. Continue this for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds you can let go of the sleep button continue to hold down the home button for another 10 seconds. As soon as the Greenpois0n logo appears on your computer, you can let go. Now, "Complete!" button should appear on your screen. Click that and you can now disconnect your iPhone from your computer.
Step 3
The iPhone will still have some things it needs to take care of and will need to some time to boot up and may even boot a second time. Once complete you should be taken to your iPhone home screen and a new icon should have appeared called "Loader". Open it and if the jailbreak worked, there should be a button called "Cydia". Click that and then click on "Install Cydia" and it will install Cydia. Congratulations, you successfully jailbroke your iPhone! Now you can use jailboken apps to your heart content. Click here for how to customize your jailbroken lockscreen!
If you are looking to buy a new smart phone you may consider phones made by Apple, HTC, Motorola, Samsung and the list could go on but one phone manufacturer that probably won’t be on the list is Nokia. Nokia completely dominates the smart phone market everywhere in the world except for in the United States. Why is this and what are they doing about it? Read on to find out!
Nokia is a multinational communications company based in Finland. They are the world’s largest smart phone manufacturer employing over 132,000 people in 120 countries and selling their products in over 150 countries. As of May 2010, Nokia held 37% of the global market compared to Apple’s 3%. Nokia is also continually voted as one of the most admirable companies in the global market. So why is such a big and respectable company have no place in the US markets? Well there are multiple reasons.
First off, there are two types of communication standards, CDMA and GSM. Nokia doesn’t focus on their CDMA phones which are most common in the US. Nokia is heavyset on GSM primarily because almost everywhere in the world GSM is the most prominent. They have converted a few of their phones to CDMA but they have refused to convert their higher end phones.
Secondly, Americans expect more from their phone than it just making calls. We expect our phones to have apps and multimedia features like the iPhone and Android phones have. Nokia saw this and decided to release their own version of an app store called “Ovi” which had apps, games, videos and other media. Unfortunately many users had problems accessing it and it crashed more often than not. Nokia blamed this on “extraordinarily high spikes of traffic” but that was not a good enough explanation for consumers. Besides the fact that it didn’t work half the time, when compared to Apple’s app store or the Android Market, the volume of apps is quite pathetic.
Next, Nokia has a problem with partnering with cell phone service providers in order to provide phones at cheaper prices with contracts. A few of Nokia low end phones are avail bile for low prices with a two year contract but all of their nice phones are only available unlocked for their full price which is usually around $500-$600 which puts it well out of the budget of the average American consumer.
Next, Nokia phones are not aesthetically pleasing to Americans. Since Europe and Asia are Nokia’s largest market, they design their phones to what they want. Unlike Americans, Eurasians do not demand their phones to be as thin as possible or either be a flip phone or have a touch screen.
Finally, one of the biggest put offs about Nokia phones was their “Symbian” operating system. Symbian is well known for being very slowly and complicated. To change something as simple as the ringer volume you have to navigate through a maze of menus which to the current generation of consumers is completely unacceptable. But if you noticed, I said “was” not “one of the biggest put offs about Nokia phones IS their “Symbian” operating system”. Thankfully Nokia has just announced that they are going to get rid of Symbian completely and go with either Android or the Windows 7 mobile platform to try and enter the US markets.
In the end, Nokia ended up deciding to switch to the Windows platform as their first move to enter the American market. Many see this as suicide as Windows has already been marked as a failure compared to iOS and Android but there are a few reasons why Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO, chose Windows.
One of the biggest reasons is that Nokia has a tradition for being different and standing out; If Nokia was to go with Android, they would just become another of many manufacturers selling an Android phone. Nokia has always been able to distinguish themselves because of their phones’ build quality and the amount of features available. With manufacturers such as HTC and Motorola, Nokia would be hard pressed to stand out.
One of the biggest problems with Windows is that their app store is quite pathetic compared to iOS’s and Android’s. This is because developers who make apps, make apps to make money. If they think a certain operating system (OS) has a large market share (ie. iOS and Android) they will make apps for that OS because there is more of a chance that someone will download their app. With Nokia onboard with Windows, many developers may start making apps for them because of the amount of phones that Nokia cells worldwide. As I mentioned before, Nokia is the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer selling nearly twice as many phones as its biggest competitor, Samsung, in the global market. Since all future Nokia phones will be Windows based this opens a huge market up to developers.
This transition will take a few years but hopefully Nokia’s plan works out and they become a major competitor in the smart phone market. This may be bad news for Apple and Android phones but for us the consumers, more competition will only mean better phones for cheaper prices!
Recently, Porsche’s community fan page on Facebook reached one million fans. To celebrate this achievement, the company unveiled one of their 2011 911 GT3 R Hybrid racers, sporting a unique Facebook and color scheme and the names of over 27,000 fans. They also launched a website to commemorate the occasion where you can zoom in on the car for a better look and where you can search for your name if you were, presumably, one of the first 27,000-ish fans. The car is set to be on display at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, the home of Porsche and many other famous automobile companies. According to Porsche, the 911 GT3 Hybrid was chosen for their “extraordinary signature-gathering campaign because it impressively embodies the future of motorsport – with Porsche Intelligent Performance. The all-new hybrid system developed specially for use in a racing car has little in common with conventional hybrid systems as far as its design and componentry go.” Porsche’s fan page was the fastest to achieve 1,000,000 Facebook fans in automotive history.
Recently Audi showed of the newest iteration of its flagship model the A8. Among many other things that has won it the title of “most technologically advanced car of the year” the 2011 A8 had 4G LTE technology built in. Is this just a gimmick or is it really useful? Read on to find out!
Audi mainly showed off the use of internet through video conferencing. If you are a very busy business man (which you probably are if you can afford a car like this) then this is perfect because with LTE’s super high download speeds, the video quality will be crisp and clean. Other than video conferencing I am not sure if I will really sue this very much. Unless the A8 came with a normal Windows computer built in with a keyboard and mouse, I probably would stay away from browsing the internet because cars do not exactly have the cleanest interfaces.
One feature I love is that the car uses its LTE connection to become a wireless hotspot for any of your devices such as tablets and cell phones. That is something I would pay for!
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