Pointly is a location sharing app, where the device sharing location don’t need any data. The device receiving the location, also don’t need data, as long as the Google Maps is cached! All transactions happen through SMS. Completely private. More Android integrated features coming soon.
The app is FREE with no Ads or in-app purchases! Give it a try and give your feedback!
It may be obvious coming from me, but I like Android Auto much better than Apple CarPlay. Android Auto seems much polished and totally customized for the Drive mode than the Apple’s counterpart which looks too familiar and more like looking at iPhone 3G!
It is easy to guess from these Screenshots which is what.
Car maker support is all split for now. But I am expecting most of them to support both platforms. After all, they don’t want a $600 product to determine purchase of their $30,000 or more product!
There is no better way to introduce Android 5.0 Lollipop than these videos published by Google! Cute and funny! A must watch…
Welcome Android 5.0, sweetest Android yet!
I was planning to get an iPhone myself to give it a fair chance. To find out what all this hype is about. Is a mere breakable, bendable, less powerful, expensive piece of electronic worth waiting in line?
This review is too good, that I can now save my $650 + tax.
iPhone grows up, from a Lilliputian to a mature size, from being microscopic to be seen finally in naked eyes! Seriously in 2014, cannot imagine a tiny 4″ screen for a gorgeous UI (no pun intended). The bigger size has potential to change a lot, and it will. All the users Apple lost to Samsung, may come back to mother Apple. That in turn means pressure on other manufacturers and the ones who will thrive in this equal-sized war is us, the consumers!
Meanwhile, what does Samsung has to say? They have a point – “Its not just about big size, its about being more productive”. Let us wait and see how this goes.
Great. This year’s first flagship device is announced. Samsung Galaxy S5. Is it really a Galaxy S4s or is it worth an upgrade? Read on.
DSLR cameras produces awesome ‘bokeh’ effects with blurring the background and highlighting the subject. This background defocussing will definitely make the S5 camera apart from others.
Well, this is not new. iPhone 5S has it. But Samsung adds a twist and its gimmicks as usual. Now you can use your finger print to make payments, at store and online. Also assign different fingers for opening different apps or simply lock the screen.
Water resistant, rather. Nice to have this. You still cannot take underwater photography with this. But spills are alright.
When battery is low and set in ultra power saving mode, your phone turns Black and White and can last in stand by for 24 hours in just 10% remaining juice. That got to be handy.
Galaxy S5 has dedicated heart rate monitor near the phone flash. This feature is a game changer, but surely a nice to have.
Now to improve the download and data speeds in general, the LTE and Wifi can work in conjunction. This also improves the data reliability heavily especially if you have fluctuating data and wifi signals. How does this impact battery? We have to wait and watch. Actually, this is a dream come true feature for me. I have always wondered why this is not done so far.
Should you get one? If you love these features, sure go ahead. But I would wait till few more phones get announced this year like next HTC One or bigger iPhone 6.
A quick video to learn about all these features:
If you have appetite for more, go ahead with this video also:
Anyone rooting and installing custom recovery or ROM in their Android devices would have heard not to take Over the Air (OTA) software update. But why?
OTA may be new to iOS users, but was integral part of Android experience right from the beginning. OTA will be pushed only if you are using the default ROM and don’t have a custom, 3rd party built ROM. That will be the case for many, as most of the folks, like me, will only root and install custom recovery but don’t venture into custom ROMs for stability purposes.
Any OTA will mostly tend to only deliver patches to the System and also possible updates to the pre-installed recovery. OTA does not assume you might have custom recovery.
Most likely root privileges will be lost after OTA. In many cases that is alright assuming you can root the newer software version also. Bigger problem is you will end up in Boot Loop (bootloop) or get stuck in your custom recovery as the OTA will mess up with your recovery installation. More here. I learnt this the hard way for my T-Mobile LG G2 D80110G update. Thanks to XDA developers I am back on track or else my device is, what we call, bricked!
Ok, then how do you get an over the air update when you have installed custom recovery? What is the work around? In safer side, you would have to revert to stock recovery then get the OTA, as long as you have the stock ROM. Or simply wait for someone to deliver an image update which you can flash in your device without hurting anything. Whatever it is, follow your device forum at the XDA developers.
In simple terms clarifying what some of the above jargon mean: (pretty much doing any of these will void warranty of your device!)
Rooting: Process of getting Super User or elevated rights on your Android device. You can do simple stuff like removing unwanted default apps that carriers push or even over / under clock the CPU to your heart’s desire!
Recovery: This is a bootable partition that is used to handle flashing content to your device and also to manage total image backup and restore. Every phone comes with it. You can install custom ones like TWRP and CWM for easier and advanced operations.
ROM: The Android OS, being Open Source can be customized to any level. Any such Android installable is called a ROM. It can be stock, meaning as provided by your manufacturer or custom ROM like CyanagenMod, Omni or Paranoid ROM.
We all know the cell phone plans in the US are expensive and inflexible. How about a carrier in this country that offers a service that is FREE? Yes, totally free. $0 per month. No contract. In comes, Freedom Pop.
Ok, what is the catch? Well, the only catch is that it is a “Freemium” model service where you get base everything free and they will try to nickel-and-dime you for the add-ons. If you are smart enough you can stay with your budget of $0.
What is included in this FREE service? Not bad at all actually. At the time of this writing, the FREE plan includes 200 minutes, 500 text messages and 500 MB of data. Yes, you read that right. This includes data as well.
One flip side is this carrier is a MNVO of Sprint. That means they leech onto Sprint network for their service and you need to have a Sprint based phone for this to work. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
You can get a HTC Evo 4G at eBay for around $50. This phone was crowned best cell phone ever on its hay day (well, 3+ years ago)! Once you get the device in good condition, go to this site, to activate your device to your account. Follow the instructions you get carefully to register the device to the Freedom Pop network and you are all set! There are other phones that may work as well, but HTC Evo 4G is tested by myself to work.
If you are in market for a cheap service for minimal usage, you cannot go wrong with this plan. For some unlikely reason it didn’t work out for you? You can walk out. You won’t sign a contract here!
Google+. Google’s platform for user engagement. Not totally intended to be competing with Facebook or Twitter. But now said to be giving them run for their money with more than 500 Million monthly active users. Google is very proud about this number. But how far is this true? How far does these numbers reflect reality? Read on.
What does an active user mean? This is pretty straightforward for Facebook and Twitter as the users have to log in explicitly (mostly) and do something with their status, photos, posts, comments etc. Definitely can be called as active users.
But Google+ has its shortcuts when counting its active users. If you are a Gmail user, Android phone user or YouTube user, Google+ is there in these places and more. Your app reviews in your Android phone are counted as Google+ activity, so are your actions on YouTube.
Worse, even dismissing any notifications in your profile counts as an active user. To take this even worse, some metrics count Gmail users as active users of Google+.
All these may totally seem unfair. But think about this and read the first line of the blog again. Google+ is supposed to be a platform for user engagement. All the above ones are user engagements. So you cannot sue Google on their numbers. But you just have to take them with a pinch of salt.
Google+ has a huge potential. No doubt. It has millions of professionals interacting and sharing various content from photography to technology. Trust me, I get my daily dose of Technology news from there! But it is going to be an uphill task for it to bring in the Facebook mass; but it doesn’t have to do that. Google+ is good as is for what it is created for!
Came across this cool language feature in two of the most famous Android Keyboards (Swiftkey and Swype). You can type in Hinglish. That is typing Hindi words in English with auto corrections, spellings and ease! Watch the below videos to see exactly what is going on.
If you do type Hindi, you got to say “kewl yaar”!
Swype: (Get it here)
Swiftkey: (Get it here)
Expound Technology 