Low end smartphones

Budget devices

Not everyone is a geek or willing to pay more on their mobile phones. Some people really want their devices to be cheap and just functional. By functional I mean a device which does all necessary tasks (web browsing, social networking, phone calls and bit of casual gaming) without spending a hefty sum of money. This category of mobile is known as Budget phones (The devices which comes under the price bracket of 8 thousand Indian rupees). This category of phones have tough competition over dozens of manufacturers are in this competition and every one of them are trying push the devices with the maximum specification in the budget or trying to give the best user experience. Only Android operating system stands out the best in this segment of phones due to its reliability and for massive variety of devices. Other choice can be Windows mobile which can give you some low end devices under this price bracket but I would only recommend Windows mobile to only those people who doesn’t know anything about technology cause Windows phone provides a very easy and limited user experience. If you are into Windows phone then only buy from the Nokia Lumia series don’t go for another brand if you want Windows phone. But if you are bit more into apps and experience then there’s no competition with android under this price bracket. There are plenty of devices to choose in android, but you have to be very careful before buying a device as many of the manufacturers earn money by the additional bloatware apps bundled into their phones. They force you to install certain apps without your permission and posts adware into your device which gradually decreases the overall user experience and performance overtime. 

Specifications- 

Now you should know what kind of minimum specifications you need for a budget android device. Not all the time, the highest specifications means the fastest user experience. So you should keep that in mind.

Screen: 

The size of the screen is totally up to your personal preference. Today most of the devices comes with a 5inch display which is pretty much the standard size of today’s standard. But the story changes completely when it comes to display resolution because it entirely decides the density of pixels in your screen. Therefore you should look for a device with decent resolution so that the individual pixels are not visible with your naked eyes. If you prefer a 5inch display then go for a device with a minimum resolution of 720p (i.e. 1280 x 720 pixels) or if you prefer a 4.5 inch display then go for a device with a minimum resolution of  480p (i.e. 480 x 854 pixel). Display technology is also important under this budget you will find devices with TFT or IPS technology. You should only go for IPS display because they have high brightness feature and have decent viewing angles. 

RAM: 

 Random access memory is a very crucial part when it comes to multitasking. Without sufficient amount of RAM you can’t use two or more applications simultaneously. Under this budget you should go for at least 1 gigabyte of RAM which will enable you decent multitasking for your apps.

Processor:

just like computers the processor is the main hardware of a mobile phone. More cores and higher clock speed ensures good performance in android. Under this low budget you’ll only find entry level processors with limited amount of processing power but still they can handle well when it comes to casual usage. There are only two mobile processor giants in the market one is the premium QUALCOMM and another is Mediatek. QUALCOMM is the best when it comes to high end processors but I really have to say that in the budget device market Mediatek excels very department of processing power. Although you still can get mobile devices which comes under budget, they are made of premium materials which are usually found in high end devices. This makes them more long lasting than other chipset vendors. But things change when it comes to performance per buck Mediatek chips provides better performance in a tight budget. Both of them provide chips with quad core technologies boosting from a clock speed of 1.2 gigahertz. Some devices under low end budget devices also comes with 8 cores (which is a rare case) provided by Mediatek. Some of the newer devices also comes with 64bit processors (only Android lollipop is a 64bit enabled OS).

 Camera:

This department is totally up to the user, whether the user likes photographs or not. Most of the manufacturers try to provide at least a 5 mega-pixel sensor on their devices. 5 mega-pixels is like 2011 but you can compromise if camera is not your biggest priority. You can also get a device with an 8 mega-pixel sensor which can provide some decent shots. And for the front camera go for a phone with at least 2 mega-pixel sensor. Although the quality of the camera totally depends upon the manufacturer of the lens installed in the device. (Sony is the best when it comes to camera lens).

Operating system:

In 2015 only go for a device which comes with Android lollipop (i.e. Android 5.0) out of the box. Don’t buy any phone which doesn’t comes with Android 5.0 right out of the box. Also ensure that the phone comes with minimum amount of bloatware with it. I would highly recommend stock android over any kind of custom UI or skin. Cyanogen mod is one of the vendor of custom Rom which ensures smooth and intuitive user experience in low end phones. 

Battery:

Nobody wants their phone to run out of juice when they need their phone. So battery life is also necessary to consider before buying a device. Normally in the low end phones the battery life is quite good because of the low end components which consumes less power as compared to high end devices. So any over 1900mah would be sufficient for a device with a 5inch display. Similarly anything over 1750mah would be sufficient for a device with 4.5 inch display. 

Storage:

though many low end devices still comes with 4 gigabyte of internal storage but it’s not sufficient in today’s date. Cause as the time passes the system updates will eat up your storage and you get back that memory. So it’s highly recommended that you buy a device with at least 8 gigabyte of system memory. Also additional storage capacity via micro sd card is extremely recommended, as it will enable you to move some apps and games to the sd card and will allow to store media files, data and images etc.

Additional tips: 

 Never buy an outdated second hand mobile, even it is a high end mobile priced under the low end budget. Because the reason is you’ll always feel outdated and always miss crucial software features which launched recently within 1 year of time. At first it may look a good deal but you’ll be only left with good hardware nothing else. Read the user reviews in the e-commerce websites which will help you to summarize a device well (but beware some people criticize the devices unnecessarily). Only expect casual gaming like temple run, candy crush, subway surfers etc. High end gaming may or may not be a good experience on these kind of devices.

So ultimately this gives a pretty good idea for buying an entry level device with functional performance and user experience. Bigger brands may seem reliable choice but it’s not the same with all the big brand in the market so choose wisely. Don’t just judge a phone on the basis of brand tag. And try to avoid the brands which are not listed in the e-commerce websites. E-commerce websites don’t sell the brands which may affect their national reputation for reliability.   

Notepads and Android

Notepads and android

If you type the phrase notepad into the Google playstore search box you will get over one thousand results. All of them serving the same purpose with more or less functionality but only a few of them stands out of the crowd. Instant note taking on mobile phone instead of traditional notepads have become a trend, after all who wants to carry additional items in their bag pack. People like to create digital notes, to do lists, itinerary, even reminders on their mobile devices. So which application is the best for note taking purpose??

Google keep is the best note taking app in terms of functionality and simplicity. Google keep makes it easy to create and manage notes easily with their clean material design interface. Additionally you can use it with various devices all of them will be synchronized with each other. It’s simple and clean but lacks high level of productivity.

Evernote is the big daddy of note taking application with a tons of features and functions. It comes with good device support available on all major platforms like Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows phone etc. Organization of notes is very convenient in Evernote (you can arrange notes by creating different notebooks). Full size desktop Evernote app is also available on Windows and Mac Os. Creating Voice notes is also possible with Evernote. Although in the free version the user is given a limited storage for a month (additional storage can be purchased by spending few bucks). All over it’s great but its bit complex for new users and amateurs.

Microsoft One Note, it is only recommended for those users who use Microsoft’s office suite. It’s very similar to Evernote but it comes with a deep integration with Microsoft office. The Notes are shared with Microsoft’s OneDrive, cloud makes it easier to find the files manually in OneDrive. The OneNote app has nice and cool animation effects which might require good specifications in the device installed.  Although it’s an awesome alternative to Evernote but it may not appeal to some audience. All over the One note app gives more professional like experience than Evernote but it still lacks some functionality. 

Torrent Download

The first thing that I want to inform you about Torrent download is that it’s not completely legal or completely secure to your computer. It is vulnerable to your computer’s security and privacy. But it has bright side to, which is so bright that it washes away the dark side. In India downloading from torrent sites is legal for private purposes while it’s completely illegal to download torrent files in the US only the content which is not protected by copyrights is legal to download. Open source media and files are legal to download (like Ubuntu, Centos. Torrent downloads provides Movies, games, applications, Ebooks, Audiobooks, Music albums and singles, Tv shows, Images etc. Some of the different categories have their individual websites for downloading, while some websites have integrated them all at one place. 

Utorrent and Bittorrent 

To download any content from the torrent websites you first need to download the program called Utorrent or Bittorrent from their websites (Both works the same, the choice is yours). Both are available for Windows and Mac os. Install them to your computer, during the installation make sure to unselect any kind to additional download or software (commonly known as spam).

Security issues

If you are using a Windows machine make sure that you have a proper antivirus installed on your machine. Keep the antivirus up to date, update its virus definition database (For Mac os just avoid downloading any zip file as you don’t know the real contents for the zip file). Create a separate “download” folder (To make it organized) anywhere in your local disks.

Downloading the files

To download any file using Utorrent or Bittorrent you need to visit the host website first. Then you need to search the content you need then open a search result. Now comes the important part if you want to download your file at a good speed then you need to check the number of seed(ers) and leech(ers). The number of seeds must be higher than the number of leech. Click on the download torrent icon and it will download a small file of 4-6kb. Now open the file using the Utorrent or Bittorrent application it will ask you a download location, select the download location according to your preference and then the download should begin.

Concept of seeders and leechers:

Seeders are people who have already downloaded the file and are uploading them. The more seeders the faster the download will go. 
Leechers are people who are sharing what they have and are downloading what you have.
When searching torrents, always get high seeded torrents. If there are no seeders, you will never finish the download, no matter how many leechers there are!

More leechers there is the slower the download, so try to find a file with many seeds low leeches .

Torrent downloads are awesome as compared with other downloading sites which provides media and software with spam and adware. Comparatively torrent downloads provides high quality content where as normal downloading sites never matches the quality and the proper organization of files. For Example you try to download a music album from an ordinary website with file hosting (Normal downloading site) you will never get the real ID3 tags (Tags which identifies Album artist, genre, year ,metadata etc) of that album instead you’ll get the custom ID3 tags edited by that host website (They do so to promote their website) which is very annoying especially when you have to manually edit them back but on the other hand in torrent downloads the ID3 tags are real made by the creator of the albums, so there’s no need to manually edit the ID3 tags to organize them. Torrent downloads are just ripped from their real version which are available on digital stores like Itunes, Amazon etc.

Additional tips

Before opening any file after the download just go the download folder where you have downloaded the file and scan that folder with the antivirus installed in your system (Works with windows, Mac is more secure so no need for this step). Check the results of the scan make sure there’s nothing unusual in the results (Antivirus doesn’t include Windows Defender as it’s very basic to detect high level of infections). Although the following step is only for those users who wants to assure their computer’s security. Torrent downloads are usually non malicious, thousands of users downloads content using torrent but it’s good to ensure security. It’s recommended to read the comment section of the torrent files before downloading anything.

Watch this video for further reference: 

 

Android and office

OFFICE

Since the beginning of android it was possible to edit word documents and spreadsheets. But it was a total miniature version of the real office suite. In the early days of android only editing of docs was possible, you can’t create new documents within the applications. Many application supported the functionality of creating documents with in the application but they all came at high price or a subscription basis. But things have changed now you get all the featu

res for free without paying a single penny.

In the early smartphone days it was widely believed that mobile phones have insufficient power to process docs and spreadsheets. But today you can even create high quality presentations with android devices. You don’t need a full size computer to create docs, spreadsheet or presentations all you need is a decent phone with good hardware support. In the early days of android there were many competitors for office suite software with similar functionality. Thinkfree office, WPS office, office suite by mobi systems, Polaris but today the competition is very limited. Today only google office suite and Microsoft office suite are the biggest rivals in android.  We all know Microsoft’s office suite is the king of office suites in pc. Even they came with their suite for android late but they instantly dominated the Google playstore. Microsoft has three separate applications: Word, Excel, power point meant for word processing, spreadsheet management, managing presentations (respectively). All of them looks and perform magnificently well in android devices. Microsoft’s office suite looks best with android tablets with high range of functions which almost feels like the desktop version. All though the application size after installation is huge which might be a problem for entry level devices with low memory. But Midrange devices and High end devices works like breeze with Microsoft’s office suite. Microsoft released their office suite late into android, because they wanted to make their office suite a selling feature for the windows phones but all their efforts on windows phone have failed miserably. The factor which made windows phone unique is no more a unique factor now it’s general to all the people. The ironic fact is that the android version of the office suite has more features than the windows phone version.

Google on the other hand also put their effort to make a functional office suite for android. Their office suite first came as a single application but recently they divided it into three major standalone apps (Google Docs, Google sheets, Google slides). They all feel native to android with Google’s material design and app integration. The Google’s initiative towards mobile office suite is also very effective although most of the feature of their apps are based on a working internet connection thus they are also very lightweight on the android devices. The user experience of their office suite is very clean and basic, highly recommended for new users or armatures. On the other hand Microsoft’s office suite feels more professional and complex so it’s totally up to the user’s personal preference. Both are well equipped with cloud technologies, Google works with its Google drive and Microsoft works with their own One drive (formerly skydrive). Any other application than these two is a complete ripe off. It is highly recommended to use from these two only. Any other subscription based office suite will be a complete waste of precious money. 

That’s all folks

Music and Mobiles

Since the inception of the original iphone and android portable music players have seen a massive sales drop. Apple’s ipod and Sony’s Walkman have limited their sales and started to more immersive mobile market. Smartphones are more versatile and more productive than portable media players in any segment. Music formats have a wide variety starting from WMA, AAC, flac but MPEG-3 (also known as MP3) stands out as widest used format among the users. It’s famous because of its high compression rate and higher quality overall. The MPEG 3 also comes in various bitrates 64,128,256,320 Kbps which promises increasing quality respectively. In the Old golden days people had to buy the Music CDs and side load them manually but in today’s digital age the users can digitally download the tracks (with or without payment options) and side load them into their devices. For digital purchases ios is considered as the best of them all, simply because it comes with built in software (itunes) which enables the users to automatically sync their music across different devices instead of any manual effort to sync them. But you have more user control over the android devices as you directly can browse the files without any need of extra software which makes it possible to sync illegal tracks to. Although itunes every other music player for mobiles unfortunately it’s only available for ios. Whereas the default music player in android devices literally sucks but thankfully android has so many alternative music players to choose. Playstore is full of alternative music players but beware only download the player which has over 500,000 downloads to avoid spam and buggy music player. Also if you own an android device then you can also download additional equalizer which increases quality and enables you to fine tune the audio settings in your device (use headphones for best experience). 

Video format and android

Android with video playback and support. 

If Pc and Mac are considered as the king of video format support then android is the prince. Open source makes it more compatible with almost all the video format than other mobile operating systems. Even if a particular android device doesn't supports a video format then also the user can download additional codecs from the Google play store. Codecs are available for all chip-sets. Additionally video players are also available for better taste and preferences. 

But among them only one stands out to compete even with a low end pc. That is the legendary Mx player. It is the best feature rich proper video player like Vlc media player on PC and Mac. Unfortunately the android version of Vlc media player literally sucks because of lack of codecs and limited hardware support. whereas Mx player is player which supports every kind of chipsets (ARM,x86 etc) even low end broadcom chipsets are supported as well.

 The major improvement of video format support in android came after the release of Android Ice-cream sandwich (4.0) which enabled hardware as well software acceleration in video encoding in android. I have used all blackberry, Windows phone (which sucks), Iphone, Symbian devices none of them have that much video format support which android consists. Mp4, AVI, MKV, WMA, FLV, Xvid, H.264 all works blazing fast on android. In addition side-loading of  videos is too simple as drag and drop (or copy and paste).  Although earlier when mobile phones were on their rise we had to manually convert the videos to the supported format of the devices but today it's very convenient and easy.
That's all.       

Security solutions for Android devices.

Security and android

Android is the most open operating system to the user. But this openness creates security issues and bugs, most of the issues are adware and junk-ware. You'll rarely find any kind of virus in android OS although any kind of external storage device like micro sd card can get infected with android. Which later causes spread of infection whenever they are attached to Pcs or laptops. So what is the solution to security issues.

First of all: Every antivirus in the playstore is completely useless and they themselves causes adware issues and junk file issues. Applications like DU speed booster, Clean master, AVG , CM security Avira and every other app like are completely useless and full of adware and junk. Moreover battery optimizing apps are also junk and adware. They promises that they will optimize phone performance and battery but they just kill all the background running processes for couple of minutes but all of the killed applications gets restarted instantly after the kill. And the process of restarting of background apps causes heavy load on the device components which gradually results in battery life degradation.

Secondly:  Some of the  android antivirus applications comes with subscription. I'm telling you if you ever purchase them then you are a baboon with a disguise of human, They are complete useless and unworthy. They are just a ripoff of the PC antivirus software. 

So what's the solution to the security problems and bugs ??

Just keep your phone away from any kind of optimizing or antivirus program in the playstore.

You can download Clean master from the playstore BUT  uninstall after the clean up of your device. If you keep it in your mobile then it will drop junk files and adverts into your device. Even it has the capability of dropping a advertisement video into your gallery. It can cause you additional data charge by downloading unnecessary ads so be aware if you are low on data. Install it ,clean the phone and uninstall three simple steps.

To make sure that your micro sd card is not infected just turn off your device and take it out and use a card reader to connect it to a windows Pc with a legit antivirus program installed. You just need to manually scan the sd card. After the Scan eject it safely and put it back to your device and guess what you are done.

If you ever feel that your device is not working upto the mark then there's only one solution to it i.e, Factory reset. Just backup your contacts and installed applications and do a simple factory reset.

So that's all for security of android devices.

Things to consider before buying an gaming phone

Mobile gaming 

It is widely believed that mobile gaming is just limited to candy crush and temple run (Mandir mai Daud) but it's utter nonsense. Why would you compromise when you have desktop grade power inside your phone. The quad cores and Octa cores are not just for rubbish candy crush. Then what's the worth of buying so powerful phone on the first hand merely just for show off ? 

 It was the 2012 when game developers realized the real potential of mobile gaming. Mobile gaming is the reason that faded the sales of portable gaming consoles like PSP and Nitendo DS. The Play store and the Apple app store got bombarded by games after 2012. So let's discuss what to consider before buying a gaming smartphone.

For gaming purpose the main things that you should consider is the Processing power, GPU, display and the amount of RAM installed in the device.

• CPU Processor: Early days it was possible to handle any game with a simple dual core CPU but today it's not sufficient to power up heavy games. Quad core or Octa core should be the priority for gaming. Also check the clock-speed of the processor, for gaming anything over 1.6 Ghz should be enough/adequate. The company of the processor is also factor currently Qualcomm is the leading brand in mobile processors then comes the Mediatek and Intel.

• GPU: (graphic processing unit) this is the main thing to be considered before buying a gaming phone. As it is the main unit which is responsible for rendering high quality animations and transition of games. Adreno is the leading GPU in the mobile market. Anything above Adreno 330 should be adequate for gaming (the higher the number the better the GPU). PowerVR chipsets are good for gaming.

• RAM: Today 2 gigabytes of RAM is enough for gaming. RAM decreases the loading time of a game effectively. If you want more than 2 gigabytes of RAM then you have to pay a hefty amount of money just for the sake of extra RAM. In the market there are plenty of phone with 2Gb of RAM but there are only few with more than 2Gbs that makes them rare and overpriced

• Display: All of this power is useless without a good display. Cause an average display can't show all the minute details and effects thus making an bad impression. So it is recommended to buy phone with nice display. 720p (1280x720) displays are decent for gaming anything up to 1080p (1920x1080) can be considered as well. But over 1080p is not recommended, the thing is the more the resolution the harder the processing units have to work to maintain performance. Screen size totally depends on personal preference but I would say anything above 4.7 inches upto 6inches is ideal for gaming. Amoled panels are best displays for gaming but they costs much than normal displays. LCD panels should be adequate for gaming.

• Battery life:  For longer gaming sessions it is recommended to buy a phone with decent battery performance. Anything above 3000Mah should be adequate for a 5 inch device. Although you can look for higher capacity 2.

• Storage: Heavy gaming requires high amount of storage space. It is recommended to buy a device with 8gigs or above storage capacity. SD card option is high recommended on a gamin g phone. Before purchasing the device do ensure twice that the apps and games are movable to the external Sd card. If it supports a SD card then buy a high capacity card (over16gb) and the card must be a class 10 card for higher performance.

• Heating: Gaming causes heating, there's nothing to panic about that because intensive gameplay creates load on the processing parts which generates heat. It is common with the Pc gaming to ,the only difference is that PC has fans and heat-sinks but mobile doesn't have any of them. The only solution is to buy a device with a plastic build as metal and glass body conducts more heat than plastic which gives a higher sensation of heat compared to plastic body. You can also buy a case or cover to minimize the sensation of heat.  

• Additional tips: Never install any kind of antivirus or speed booster in your cell . As they only consume space and dumps adware into your mobile. Also don't install any kind of battery saver application as the consequences are exactly the opposite of their real purpose. prefer youtube videos as a guide to your device and prefer online shopping instead of real shops to save some extra bucks. Also check the OS upgrade capability if you want to make your device future proof. Although Ios has the maximum number of games but still I would recommend android cause it provides more choice and it's easy to sidelaod games on android. 

So that's all you need to consider before you buy an gaming phone. Hope it was helpful.

Battery myths !!

5 battery myths that you should be aware of 

Maybe they are not complete myths but still I believe that these are myths.

1. You shouldn't charge your device overnight : Now modern devices today are able to protect themselves from overcharging or overheating for the most part but here is the another part to this myths ideally you want to extend the battery life of your device to the maximum, you don't wanna charge your device to 100 percent nor drain the battery to zero percent this is because doing so will shorten the life of your battery. Now do I do it ? No I have life I just charge it and just don't worry about it, it's really not that big of a deal unless you really want to use this battery or the device for about 4-5 years otherwise you'll never have a problem.
2. Don't use you device while it's charging:  This myth is really been perpetuated by reports of phones blowing up in someone's hand or face while they were using it or charging for the same time. Although this can happen it is by the the exception not the rule because you just charging it and talking or using it. It is recommend that you always use the branded batteries in your device.
3. You shouldn't use third party chargers: Well you should know that there are some great quality even reliable 3rd party chargers out there but it is generally accepted that the 3rd party will not charge as well or as fast as the proprietary chargers directly from the phones manufacturers. you also wanna be careful that the charging capacity of the charger is consistent with the needs of your phone. Sometimes there could be a mismatch there and it could lead to problems. The other issue with some 3rd party chargers is the quality issue you can have a wire that's frayed or frays very easily and now you have a whole fire hazard, so you wanna be careful with that just do your basic diligence check and reviews, do a research and you could find a very good quality 3rd party charger. 
4. It won't hurt the device to leave it in a car or exposed to elements: Alright seems painfully obvious but clearly a issue to some people, you do not wanna leave your device in a car exposed to extreme temperatures whether it's extreme cold or extreme hot  obviously you don't want any rain or even condensation to get in the device because over time that may short out the electronics in the phone and you wanna be careful with that. At least if you gonna keep your device in the car in a very very hot sunny day keep it under the seat or under the covered where it is not exposed to the sun otherwise it will not survive it.
5. You have to drain your battery into zero percent if you can charge it again:  Well it seems that this myth comes from rechargeable batteries (AA,AAA) , well those really have to be drained before you can recharge them again doing otherwise will lessen the capacity of that battery's charge but batteries have evolved that is not a issue anymore you most certainly do not need to need to drain your battery to zero percent before you charge it again on the contrary you want to avoid draining to zero percent as much as reasonably possible. 

The Fall of Nokia

The end of a legacy 

If you grown up in, or lived through the 90s you must have heard the name "Nokia". It is a universal name when you think about cell phones, essentially for mobile telephony, the first name that came to anyone's mind was Nokia. With the Microsoft launch of the Lumia phones, Essentially, the end of Nokia as a smartphone company, as a Mobile manufacturer has officially come about.

Nokia welcome screen

Nokia was not always an electronic manufacturer. Back in the year 1865 Nokia started as a small paper mill. They grew in business and started the second mill around the town of Nokia. The name "Nokia" comes from the river: NokianVirta, which is in Finland. So, paper was not essentially Nokia's style and they started working with rubber, electricity and cables and they got large government orders and in the year 1960 is when the company decided to get into electronics. Like any other corporation in the world (like Garmin) Nokia started working with the military in year from 1969- 1979 Manufactured and developed a lot of electronics for military use, for use by govts. Which is what made the company bigger and stronger to reach what it could do in the future. In 1979 Nokia took it's first steps in telephony by creating MOBIRAOY  a joint venture with Finnish television maker "SALORA" . They also created Nordic mobile telephone services, which was later called NMT. It was the first telephony company service which was going to be wireless. In the 1970-80 Nokia launched a device called the Sanomalaitejarjestelma which was essentially a message based communication device. It was for sending messages. This was used by the Finnish military and they used this to send encrypted text messages between one and other, this later on transferred  into something that we use on a day to day basis called the short messaging service or SMS. Nokia also launched the first car phone called the MOBIRA SENATOR. It was the first wireless communication device that was ever installed on a vehicle. In 1987 the MOBIRA CITY MAN became the first portable cell phone from Nokia which could be carried around on person. It was lightweight roughly 800gms for the time and it was relatively cheap (sarcasm) costing about 6000 USD at the time for a device that could make calls while on the go was an innovation, was a revolution and this device was one of the first to do that. For all those who really read into politics in that day Mikhail Gorbachev was found using this device and the phone was nicknamed the GORBA in Finland because basically the person who disassembled the USSR was found using it. From mobility in the 80s Nokia decided to get into personal computing and they designed their first device called the MikroMikko, they were designed to be personal computers. This division was later sold to Fujitsu who converted it into their laptop version, which you still can buy in certain markets. Nokia tried to make laptops again with the Nokia Booklet 3G in 2009 and this attempt was as futile as the first and they dropped making laptops after this one.

The iconic Nokia 3310

    In-fact the first device used to make a satellite call in 1984 was a Nokia device. The world's first GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia supplied network by the prime minister of Finland. who can forget the classic Nokia tune which was made to become the brand image for the company. First introduced in the 1990s in Nokia 2100 phones. Nokia also popularized mobile phone photography at one point of time it was the largest camera supplier to the world because of the camera in it's mobile phones, which were being used by everyone. So, at one point of time Nokia was the largest vendor of cameras. Nokia has also been a trend setter so to speak, The Nokia 1100 was the highest selling mobile phone ever made over 250 million units of the device were sold which set a benchmark for many devices to come. At the peek of it's existence in 2008 Nokia sold over 475 million handsets which is a record yet undefeated.  The Nokia 3310 was an iconic phone it was launched in September 12 2000, it was one of the most durable phones that was ever made for a consumer. This phone would fall and break apart into pieces, but you could basically put it back together and start using it again. Infact even today after the invent of several smartphones, several metal made phones the Nokia 3310 is believed to be one of the most robust phones. It is essentially a cult centre and has become a cult favorite where people makes internet memes and lots of jokes around the Nokia 3310 that it would survive a tsunami etc but, the Nokia 3310 has become an icon and will remain an icon for the generation who has seen it. The Nokia 1011 was the first phone, which was a mass produced phone for general markets after it's army and military appliances. Nokia came into the market with it's first consumer friendly device phone it was the 1011. The memory could hold 99 phone number at the time and it sold for a whopping 1600 USD. The design of the device was really iconic and a lot of manufacturers I'm guessing from China copied the design and made pencil boxes for kids that looked like the phone. In 2002 the Nokia 3510 was the first phone that could process data over GPRS  that basically led to the use of data over mobile networks.The revolution that we have today with 3G and 4G networks, the 3510 was on of the first devices to do GPRS over wireless network. In 2007 Nokia acquired a Chicago based mapping company NavteQ, they were the largest manufacturers for navigation data for the automobile industry. Nokia acquired this and later made this into what we know today as HERE maps. It is one of the largest mapping technologies that is available in the market today, they sell their data to a lot of companies including Garmin, Amazon.com , BMW for their navigation equipment.Despite it's sale to Microsoft as a smartphone company. Nokia retains it's Here maps business and will continue working on it and supplying several independent apps for ios, Android as well as microsoft phones or Windows based phones as Here maps as an independent application which is known to be loved by users however, the interface was not appreciable on ios and android and Nokia is working on redesigning their eco-systems. Nokia networks which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the company will also stay back with the company. It's a multinational data network and telecommunications equipment company and provide costumer care support, fixed mobile convergence, hosting, iPTV, mobile TV WCDMA frequencies and a lot more to governments, railways and other big institutions. Anyone and everyone who follows Nokia, is also aware of the MeeGO operating system, when Nokia announced that Microsoft will be acquiring Nokia the whole MeeGo division quit and formed "Jolla". Which recently launched Jolla phones in India as a starting stage this OS is supposed to be the next promising OS that is going to change around the about the market strength from Android, iOS and Windows phone. Let's see what the future holds. But Jolla is an independent company. Another company that's a lot of people are with is Vertu. Vertu is a luxury, sort of, division of Nokia where they would manufacture luxury phones based on symbian. Recently the company shifted it's focus from making Symbian phones to Android Smartphones continuing what they used to do with luxury devices. This division also remains independent and has not been acquired by Microsoft.
Well whatever the future of Nokia maybe, this 10 year agreement between Microsoft and Nokia essentially marks the end of Nokia as a brand that used to manufacture phones. Whether after Nokia  after 10 years Nokia re-tries the mobile market, whether it attempts to remake phones is yet unknown. But what happens in the next 10 years will essentially decide what the resultant of Nokia phones is going to be. Will Microsoft be able to continue Lumia phones, and sell them ? Because they have been cold since their launch/inception of windows phone, they have not been very well appreciated in the market. Will Nokia get to see the future again ? 

USB OTG

USB ON THE GO 

Geeks always want more and more from their devices. Even their device has limited features they still want more. USB OTG is another thing which is made for geeks. 

 OTG allows you to attach several USB peripherals into your device through micro USB to full size USB adopter. The basic idea is to use more input devices than just touchscreen and limited on board storage. Suppose you are on a tight budget and you are thinking to buy a smartphone with non expandable storage then a OTG can save you couple of bucks, just plug in a regular USB thumb drive and store whatever you want in it. You can use it right away anywhere. So by this way you can carry many USB drives according to your file needs. Now let me tell a more spectacular story, there are couple of devices in the market that allows you to connect a external hard drive into your smartphone
that makes it so astonishing. Which enables you to use high amount of data anytime. Having OTG support means that you are more secure as you can store your confidential/sensitive data material into a external USB stick which prevents from misuse of it. You can also backup your entire phone apps and settings through Titanium backup (device must be rooted) and store the image file into a USB stick to prevent data corruption or data loss.
  OTG is not a new thing, it's specification was first used in late 2001. But they became more popular with the smartphone era, Nokia's N8, C6-01, C7, Oro, E6, E7, X7, 603, 701 and 808 Pureview were one of the first generation devices to have this functionality in their device. Later Blackberry also came up with this on their Blackberry 10.2 OS. In android it was first introduced with the Honeycomb 3.0 OS. later all the newer versions got this functionality. An adopter is required to attach USB peripherals to the devices.

  The story is not just limited to storage options (USB and hard drives) there are different aspects as well. Using physical keyboard and mouse with OTG cable is also possible. I know using a mouse and keyboard as input devices with smartphones is not an intelligent thing. But think about the tablets.Everyone admits the fact that they like to type on physical keyboards rather than on touch screen. In tablets attaching keyboard and mouse gives you more precision on work and offers better reliability. It creates a desktop like experience on the tablet. Gaming with joysticks is also possible with smartphones, you can connect various gamepads to the devices through OTG cable. A regular Xbox 360 joystick suits the best to most of the devices although you can connect PlayStation joystick and others also. Joysticks provide better control than ordinary touchscreen based control. It's just like a car with a automatic gearbox and a car with a manual gearbox, the user will always have more precision with manual gear box. Similarly Joysticks gives you more clicky, tactile feel over touchscreen. Most of the high end games are compatible with joysticks and works at their best with them. 
Hence having a OTG functionality over your device is a big plus point to the user. More functionality makes the devices more cooler.     

Windows phone, The lightweight operating system.

Windows phone, the new emerging competitor

 

All though windows phone was present from the 2005. But this got changed with their modern live tile UI. Personally I still don't like windows phone but things are changing at a good pace. 

Let's begin with the main reason why windows phone os still lacks in the competition with the leading operating systems. 

App support- Windows phone store is very far behind from giants like android and ios. Yeah they are emerging at a very good pace but still I don't think that they will catch up with them.

Lack of openness - Customization in windows phone is very limited to folders and tile size arrangement but in operating systems like android you are getting a tons of options like widgets, scrolling animations, icon packs, UI customization.

Side loading of apps- Windows phone doesn't have this functionality because of some security reasons. But this feature was present on android since the day one. 

But if we consider the non- geek people who just like to use their phones as day to day driver not as a power house or an arsenal of features then windows phones are very well. Due to the openness of  android, it is more prone to bugs and security attacks where as simplicity in windows phone makes it much safer and efficient to use. Windows phone is just like the next generation of blackberry, as they have less features but they are so secure and have a class in them. The biggest advantage of having a windows phone is that you are assured to get updates for at least 2 years from Microsoft. But in android you're always doubtful about the assurance of future updates until you got a nexus device. But Microsoft makes sure that every windows phone user gets their latest version of OS. Microsoft always makes sure that even their low end devices ( With 512mb RAM) will get the latest update. Unlike their desktop version of operating system windows phone is one of the most securest platform.

Nokia has been the pioneer of windows phone. Couple of months ago Microsoft made their Windows phone free of charge, meaning that no manufacturer will be charged for installing windows phone os on their devices . This decision was made because of the falling sales of windows phone in the global market. So manufactures like Micromax, lava brought some windows phones to the market but they failed very poorly that now they are thinking to discontinue their windows project. So here the question comes why a user should buy a windows phone ? 

Well everyone have their different tastes and choices so windows phone is for those particular type of person who uses their phone for day to day use or mediocre usage. Windows is perfect for photography lovers and music lovers. The lumia series of windows phone offers phones for every budget. Windows phone is also suitable for the people who uses a lot of Microsoft services, although alternatives are still available in android.

All you need to know about SSDs (Solid state drives)

The fastest medium of data storage

Solid state drive is it useful or just a gimmicky name? To understand them at first we need to focus on what they really are?

  Solid state storage devices store computer data on non-volatile “flash” memory chips rather than by changing the surface properties of magnetic or optical spinning disk. With no moving parts Solid state drives (SSDs) are also the future for almost all forms of computer storage. It is widely believed that solid state drive are likely to replace spinning hard disks in most computers. Several manufacturers are now offering hard disk replacement SSDs. These are often very fast indeed, extremely robust and use very little power. Unfortunately the prices of solid state drives are currently high as we compare them to the traditional hard disks. They come with the lowest capacity of 30 gigabytes and range up to a massive 4 terabyte (SanDisk's new 4TB Optimus MAX SAS SSD).  

Due to this high price they are not present in every computer. People can buy a hard drive of more storage in the same cost of SSD. But on the other hand if we forget the pricing issue then SSDs are superb, they are very fast in comparison with traditional drives. Average reading and writing speeds in SSDs can range up to a 200mbps. Additionally SSDs doesn’t have any moving parts so they are less power consuming and they work very silently. SSDs are more rugged and durable than traditional disk drives. Today new high end laptops and Pcs are already equipped with them. Thus providing more user friendly experience.

So what can we do if we don’t have enough budget to buy a high capacity SSD? Surely there’s an answer to it you can buy a Small capacity SSD of 32 or 64 Gigabytes and then use It as the primary drive on your system. Try to install all apps and programs into it. Store all of your media files into a secondary traditional hard drive. Thus this setup will finally result into rapid increase in performance of your Pc. Making it faster than before. Hence SSDs soon gonna change the storage game if they become cheap which I know they will be.  

All about SD cards

 

Sd cards, the compact generation of storage.

 

 
With the introduction of more compact technology Sd cards became the most popular medium of storing data on compact devices. They can be found everywhere taking from mobile phones, tablets, Mp3 players, digital cameras, camcorders, voice recorders and many more. Although their function is same but their specifications are quite different from each other.
For a start SD cards comes in three physical sizes. These comprise standard-size SD cards (first developed in 1999), smaller mini SD cards (introduced on some mobile phones in 2003), and the even smaller micro SD cards. The latter were invented in 2005 and are becoming increasingly popular on smartphones and tablets. While the larger cannot fit in smaller card slots, so adapters are available to enable micro and mini SD cards to be accessed by any device that accepts a standard size card.
The SD card comes in three capacity types known as SD, SDHC and SDXC. The first of these can store up to 2 gigabyte of data. SDHC (SD high capacity) cards are then available in capacities of between 4 and 32 gigabyte, while SDXC (SD extended capacity) cards range from 32 gigabyte up to a theoretical 2 terabyte (although at present only 200 GB cards are on the market (SanDisk)).
Because SD cards now come in three capacity types, not all SD devices can access all SD cards of the same physical design. While standard SD cards can be read by any device, SDHC cards should only be inserted into SDHC or SDXC devices. SDXC cards must then only be used with the latest SDXC hardware. Even if you try to use an SDXC or SDHC card in a device that does not support it then you may suffer from loss of data or even damage the card itself.
SD cards have different classes, different classes have different read and write speed. These classes are known as Class 2, Class 4, Class 6, Class 10, and UHS-1 (ultra high speed 1). Many manufacturers also label cards with multiple that compares them to a CD-ROM drive. Absolute data transfer ratings are sometimes also included. However, in practical terms it is the speed class that really matters. The higher SD card's speed class, the faster it be but the more it will cost. For most purposes class 4 or class 6 cards are fine. Class 10 or UHS-1 are best for high definition video or when otherwise handling large quantities of data. Also there are UHS-2 cards which are best of 4K recording. Currently SanDisk is the pioneer in the SD card market, they have all kind of Sd cards.

Here's some useful charts:

 

How to resolve battery draining issues on android

How can we squeeze more juice out of our battery

 
Smartphone market has evolved rapidly. Every year we see new revolutions with screens, processors, rams, form factor and OS but the main thing which still lacks is the battery life of the devices. Still we are stuck to 1 single day of active usage whereas different factors like processing power has improved a lot but the battery life is still the same as 2012. We know there lots of new technologies like wireless charging, quick charge technology etc but in the end of the day you will just pray to have a lot more juice in your device. So how we can sort out the problem of battery life? Well we can perform some tricks which will help you get some extra juice out of the battery. Although the tips won't increase the battery life with big numbers but still they are quite useful.
Here are some tips and tricks that you can easily perform on your device to get more juice:

• Try to avoid installing apps from unknown sources. Always install the apps from the Google play store. Side loading of apps can cause spyware, adware issues which can let to serious battery problems. But there's one more argument against this point i.e, "How will I install pirated apps and games?" , If this is your question then try to verify the apk installation by google setting app.
• Read this article from Cnet to know which app is consuming the battery the most. http://www.cnet.com/news/whats-killing-your-battery-androids-top-10-performance-sapping-apps/
  
• Turn off the auto sync option. It will save you a lot battery as it will stop the synchronization between the apps. If you still want to synchronize some data between apps then manually turn it on for a while and then turn it off when you're done with your work. This option is one of the well-known method to save battery and mobile data, this option also cuts and restricts the background data to a limit which will cause less mobile data consumption.
• Set the brightness manually. Yes today the devices have auto brightness sensor but the sensor also takes some juice out of the battery to make it work properly. The best way is to toggle the brightness manually according to the lighting conditions. You can install a widget to toggle the brightness if quick toggle is not available in your device
• Try to set a minimum screen timeout time in order to get sufficient consuming the battery life. Set it to 10-15 seconds and you will get an additional boost with this trick. Usually when the user leaves his/her device the screen is left on for additional seconds which can cause high battery drainage if the user is frequently using the device with several intervals.
• This tip is for the pro users, go to settings then developer settings, then select the transition effects and lower it down to 0.5. This will make the phone look bit faster and also will provide less stress to the GPU of the device thus finally resulting in extra battery life. This works as the transition effects are bunch of cool animations which requires the GPU to work and if you lower the effects down then less power will be required from the GPU.
• Try to uninstall unnecessary apps that you never use. Installing apps on android is quite fun everyone likes to keep more apps in their smartphone but the problem is the more you install the apps the higher the Ram space is eaten by them. High usage of Ram means that there is now more stress on the Ram than it used to so gradually resulting in serious battery drain. Try to keep checking the free Ram space on your device after installing app your phone, at least 350 Mbs should be free to make it work faster and without any extra stress. Keeping a track on free Ram space will let know that how many apps you can install on your device.
• If possible then you should factory reset your phone in every 4-5 months. This method will make your refresh and will get rid of malwares etc. Also it will clean up the Ram and will make it work like the day 1 when you bought the device. You can restore your contacts and some data using google account.
• Try to use 2g networks when you're not using mobile data on your phone. This method is quite useful in the countries like where 3g bands are still hard to catch on the devices. Disconnecting from 3g and connecting to 2g will be big increase in your battery bar. You can always switch back to 3g when you are up to use mobile data.
• Carry a separate battery or a power bank if you can. This is the ultimate solution to battery problem in the modern era.
• You can install battery saver apps like DU battery saver to extend some battery. Although I'm not a big fan of installing an extra app to save some battery. Maybe it could work but I personally think that it's just bunch of adware on your device.
• Try to turn off the Gps on your device. Set it to battery saving mode, that mode is also quite precise compared with high accuracy mode. Manually turn it on when you are to use some navigation application.
• Always kill the application after using it. Go recent apps and swipe away every single app to completely dismiss them, sometimes apps shown on the recent apps menu may be opened in the background and also consuming battery unnecessarily. It's better to destroy every single activity after using the apps.
• Try not to install the apps or games which shows advertisement in them. This is because as those ads will continuously get updated even when you are not using that particular app. usually new ads banners are downloaded in the background. Thus all this background processing will eat up some extra battery power.
• Although the micro USB is made for universal charging but still I would recommend to use the proprietary charger of the device. This will keep your battery healthy for a long time. Never use faulty charger as they may damage the battery or even can cause fatal explosions.
• Always try to keep your home screen simple and clean. Adding too many widgets can cause high battery and performance drainage. Widgets are cool but they eat up a lot battery. If you still want to use widgets then increase their refresh time as increasing the refresh time will make them update less frequently thus you will save battery.
• Try to avoid 3^rd party launchers. Surely the launchers look awesome but they are also responsible for battery drainage in devices. In most of the devices when the user is using a 3^rd party launcher as the main launcher that time the default launcher of the device is also running behind the 3^rd party launcher.
• Whenever your battery is at 10-15% don't play any heavy game as they require too high processing power. Ultimately will result into a battery drain of about 3% in just one minute of gameplay.
  
   
  So there you have all the tips I know so far. I prey to the manufacturers to build some new technology for the battery, every day I see revolution in every field except this one. Hope soon will be another revolution.

Why you shouldn't buy a samsung entry level device!

Top reasons for not buying an entry level Samsung galaxy device as your first android device!!!

 I am not an anti Samsung, my first android phone was also a Samsung. Samsung is currently the leading brand in the android market, but there are some considerations that you should consider before buying a Samsung device. Samsung’s market share is rapidly decreasing in the entry level segment as the users are getting better specifications in lower price point. For a light or regular user Samsung devices works well but when it comes to gaming on entry level Samsung devices it simply sucks. Due to the heavy bloat ware and custom UI a huge amount of RAM is being consumed hence heavy gaming becomes a catastrophe on a entry level Samsung device. But on the other hand the high end Samsung devices like the S series and the note series are the top end performing devices in the world as they have the top end specs and high optimizations with apps and games. The developers and Samsung really try to test each and every apps and games on the top end devices. So the optimization are far better. All these things creates a misconception that android devices are laggy and insecure. Although the feature rich apps requires high end hardware thus they perform well on flagship devices but not in entry level devices. Here are some reasons for not buying an entry level Samsung device

·         Samsung has some core services like google ( ex- Samsung store, music hub, games hub, movie store), which are completely useless to the entry level users.

·         Bloat ware is one of the big issue on Samsung devices. Some devices comes with preinstalled games and apps which can’t be unistalled.

·         Samsung’s touchwiz (custom skin/theme) creates a misconception for the new users that the user interface of google’s android is as it looks on their entry level device.

·         Due to extra features inbuilt on Samsung devices users may experience a lack free RAM space availability. This results to poor multitasking and low performance. Even though those extra features can be installed on any android phone by installing a third party app from the play store.

·         Poor display, yes you heard it right. On the entry level segment the display panel are still poor TFT, also the resolution and ppi are relatively very low. Outdoor visibility is hideous and you should also forget about the auto brightness thing on some devices, switch with manual toggles.

·         Battery life maybe a problem for you when it comes to entry level devices by Samsung. I’ve read so many articles about this thing and finally came to a conclusion that this fact is true about these device. This is just because of the customs apps and skins.

·         No future updates. Buying an entry level Samsung device means that you are totally stuck with one version of android and there will be no updates given to your device. Samsung gives occasional updates to these devices but they are only some bug fixes nothing else. Whereas some devices at the same price points offers OS updates.

·         Poor apps and games support on these devices. Yes we can play mediocre games on these devices but new games which require higher system requirement are not compatible. Even some apps are incompatible.

So what's the verdict of this discussion, simply here you simply can't go for a brand factor. You need to consider the specifications instead of a brand name. Otherwise you have to be ready to dump your phone after a year or you'll have to suffer the sluggish performance afterwards.