Category: Iphone (Page 2 of 2)

How to choose your next Smartphone? My standards!

I’m a guy who had dozens of phones, tons of form factors and companies you haven’t even heard of, I’ve owned it, blogged about it and eventually sold it on OpenSooq for the highest bidder, with that being said, here are my requirements for the next smartphone.

1. Screen size

I’ve been very strict about this point, almost always going for 4.5‘ screen Smartphones, which was good and also limiting! Those phones are known as mini, usually come with one gigabyte of RAM and don’t preform as well as they should, but now I realize that 5′ is the least you should go for, and the more screen real estate, the better! Just don’t go for above 7′ screens, you would look like you are talking into a food tray!
Smartphone Screen
Smartphone Screen

2. Battery power

Who hates having more juice? The more the better, right? Well that’s exactly the case, with phones becoming faster and bigger, so does the need for bigger batteries to support all that high tech and some more, without having to sit by the charger all day, I would recommend to go for not less than 3000 mAh, and the more the better. Especially if you live somewhere with an electricity crisis.

 

 

3. Operating system

This is dedicated to Android of course, Windows Phone is dead, and I don’t have an iPhone, and probably never will, I recommend that you go for the highest version of Android you can get, and go for a company that has a good history of updating the phone, if you go for a Google phone for example, you will get the latest update always, amazing!
Android P logo
Android P logo

4. OTG support

This goes without saying for many modern day phones, but it’s good to check because this feature expands the capabilities of your phone with all sorts of peripherals, you can even connect a joystick and play games! If your battery is big enough you can turn it into a battery bank and help a friend in need.
Some companies like Huawei likes to skim on this feature on the mid-range smartphones, so you might want to double check if OTG is a selling point for you.

 

USB OTG Logo
USB OTG Logo

 

5. Accessories

Make sure the Smartphone has accessories in the market, even if it has the latest Gorilla glass technology, it will be scratched with time, and having a cover can take a bump or two and save you from a dreaded trip to the repair shop, will also improve resale value, a tip from a compulsive phone hopper!
Phone case
Phone case

These are my top requirements in a Smartphone, there are some optional ones which I will list down below

  •  Custom ROM

Having the ability to flash a custom ROM is a great idea – if done correctly – and it really expands options and gives a new refresh for the Smartphone, if not, don’t do it as it will ruin your Smartphone.

LineageOS logo
LineageOS logo

In case you got tired of your smartphone, sell it and get a new one, someone will think it’s good and make their lives a little better!

What are your standards for a new phone? What are you looking for? Please share these with me in the comments section below.

Tech news digest (September 2016)

In this post I’m collecting tech news from all over the web, too small for separate posts, but I guess that everyone is up for a treat with a digest like this!

The Samsung galaxy note 7 catching fire!

Samsung has called a worldwide recall of the smartphone on complaints of catching fire and exploding while charging. So if you got one I recommend you to check with the closest Samsung reseller.

Samsung galaxy note 7
Samsung galaxy note 7

And tests that involved Galaxy Edge 7 show that it catches fire and explodes as well.
It is so serious that the Australian airlines banned the use of Galaxy Note 7 because it’s a security concern, and the FFA warns the passengers not to use the phone on planes.

Apache Openoffice maybe put to rest!

The project may be put to rest due to lack of volunteers working on it, as most of them moved to to work on LibreOffice in 2011.

Apache OpenOffice logo
Apache OpenOffice logo

 

Apache open office has been very slow in development and the last stable update was issued in October of 2015. Bug fixes weren’t issued and the developers fear a major denial of service attack, and Apache’s advice was to use Microsoft office or convert to LibreOffice!
This comes as a shock for many people, Apache open office has a big user base of over 100 million users, I’m sure many people will be upset over this. Personally I had a pleasant experience using Apache Openoffice, and conventing wasn’t the easiest call to make. I hope someone stands for Apache Openoffice and saves it from a horrible feat, and maybe change the Apache license and give it more code freedom!

Whatsapp users will be receiving advertising messages

WhatsApp will start sending advertising messages in the following months, as it shares its data with the parent company facebook, raising high security concerns, I personally advise moving to Telegram for a secure texting experience, I’ve blogged about this as soon as it happened, but it doesn’t hurt to inform the people of the potential security risk.

Whatsapp logo

Those who share your data today will sell it tomorrow!

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus are released

Apple has released the highly anticipated iPhone 7 recently, while the iPhone 7 still keeps the 4.7′ screen size that iPhone 6 had, the iPhone 7 plus will have a 5.5′ screen, an Apple first, and will be running on iOS 10.

 

iPhone 7
iPhone 7

 

Apple has doubled the internal storage space on iPhone 7 and 7 plus, but no SD slot available in this model too, and no battery capacity information was released yet (as long as it doesn’t blow up, it’s fine by us!).
The latest iPhone is also water resistant, a delight to Apple fans worldwide in case thier phone falls into their overly priced mocha latte!

Google Fuchsia

Google has added a new project to github the leading open source code repository code named Fuchsia.

 

a little is known about this project as of now, but there are reasons to think that it’s the new operating system that Google is developing to ditch android and the Linux kernel altogether, and to install it on a wide range of devices and wearables.

 

Yahoo announces the biggest security breach so far

In the latest trend of major companies announcing security breaches, Yahoo said that a breach affected the data of 500 million users, making it the biggest security breach to be announced so far.

I hope you enjoyed this tech digest of news, please let me know what do you think of this bit? Should it become a regular post on my blog? I will add more news as needed to this digest.

Waiting for your feedback in the comments section below, and share this post with your friends on social media 🙂

 

 

Tech news digest June 2016 (Linkedin sale, OnePlus3, snaps for Linux and more)

This week had many interesting news happening all over the tech world!
Let’s take a look at this digest and catchup really fast!
Microsoft is said to buy the enterprise social media site Linkedin for a record 26.02 Billion dollars in cash, the deal is trending worldwide with people shocked over the size of the acquisition, it’s a bold business choice to say the least!
The current S.E.O of Linkedin Jeff Weiner will report to Satya Nadella the C.E.O of Microsoft, as Microsoft is looking to reach to the 433 million users of Linkedin to expand it’s business and products such as Office 365 and cloud solutions.

 

Microsot’s logo

In other Microsoft news the Windows 10 “free upgrade” will expire on July the 29th, so if you are planning to update you better put that on your checklist and fast!

OnePlus is ready to launch the third smartphone of it’s famous “flagship killer” series: OnePlus3, the highly anticipated phone will come with a 64GB internal memory and 6GB of RAM! (specs according to GSMarena).
The countdown is almost done and the launch event will be presented in virtual reality via a The Loop. A special App available on the Google store.
More details will be available as soon the smartphone is released.
Here is the official unboxing video.

 

Apple’s logo

Apple annonced at WWDC 2016 the release of it’s latest update to iPhone and iPad: iOS 10. Which brings many improvements to iPhones such as a redesigned message app, lock screen and the ability to delete many pre-installed apps, the update will be shipped this fall. (for more details check the Apple site from here)

 

 

It’s not a Snap! Just a package icon!

Now we take a tour of the Linux world:  Sanps are the hottest thing in the Linux world today and for a good reason! Snaps were first announced as a feature of Ubuntu 16.04 that installs programs easily without needing to install dependencies (as it’s packed with the binary) or use command lines to install, these snaps can run virtually on ANY Linux distro! Meaning you can use Ubuntu apps anywhere you go on Linux: Desktop, server or cloud!

The main advantages of Snaps are security, speed and ease of use as they are easier to create, install and update! And many of the major open source projects like LibreOffice and Ubuntu will use them very soon as the standard way to deliver software.

This has been a dream for Linux users for many years because different distros use different package managers, meaning that Debian software won’t work on Fedora and vice-versa.
I’m glad to see that happening finally, learn more about this awesome new technology!

Fedora’s latest release: Fedora 24 was supposed to be released today, but due to some bugs not being fixed it was postponed, Fedora is ready when it’s ready! Checkout the bug list if you can’t wait!

Finally the Linux oriented blog it’sfoss is celebrating it’s fourth anniversary (does it ring a bell?) by throwing a giveway, the prise is the awesome Raspberrypie3.

It’s F.O.S.S’ logo

Here is my lucky link for you to enter and help me win, because if I did I’ll make a video review of it and many posts about it! 😉

Raspberry Pi 3
The Raspberry Pi 3 as shown on the giveaway site!

 

 

That was the tech news of the week segment, I hope you enjoyed this quick digest, let me know what you think in the comments section below!

WhatsApp is now free, no subscription fees what so ever!

WhatsApp is changing it’s payment policy to become totally free, before the first year was free and you had to pay 0.99 cents each year, but that is long history now!

In a recent blog post, the company addressed the current payment plan, they admitted the plan wasn’t going well, as many users didn’t have credit cards or debut cards (I for one don’t have one of those), and those people were wondering if they were going to lose service after the first year. This lead to the change we all witnessed, WhatsApp is free now!

You might be wondering, and it’s a very legitimate question, how is WhatsApp going to pay for it’s services?

It’s not going to be paid by ads, it’s paid by “testing tools” for communicating with organizations and companies, so in another way WhatsApp now is a beta and you are the tester!

It’s not bad, my concern is the privacy policy as it’s owned by Facebook, if you want a truly secure messenger, there is Telegram.

I think a head to head post is due between Telegram and WhatsApp.

Until then, how do you feel about WhatsApp becoming free?

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