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Color Psychology: What your phone color says about you

March 11, 2013March 11, 2013 Bob Freking Leave a comment

We have those simple dilemmas with picking the color of your phone. However, it is said that these choices are either conscious or subconscious. These little things might have a lot more meaning than you think. Let’s have a take on the things we aren’t aware of, shall we? Read on to see what your phone color might say about you.

color

It was phones like the iPhone that brought white into the mainstream and the Lumia that brought bright vibrant colors to the spotlight. Moreover, people are starting to become more expressive, and we are becoming less aware if the little things. Nokia Conversations posted an article on the meanings of phone colors and we confirmed it with other sources. Take a look at what these colors say about you.

Red is for people who enjoy taking action. These are the ones who are passionate and bear strong emotion. It could also express excitement and youth.
Orange symbolizes optimism and warmth. These people are friendly, warm and confident. *cough* people who like Yugatech *cough*
Yellow shows optimism for the most part. It’s somewhat close to orange on the spectrum, and it says that these people possess warmth.
Green only highlights one thing -growth. These people could be the ones who enjoy development & peace on a lot of aspects.
Blue gives the impression of trust, loyalty and integrity. The color goes for the people who are dependable.
Purple/Indigo unveils vision, idealism, creativity & imagination.
Pink/Magenta goes to the people of love and nurturing – no, not just women. These people could be deeply emotional or are just feminists.
White shows completeness, purity & perfection. However, it also shows sophistication.
Ah, black, the color of most phones. Just how most people keep treat their phones, it shows that they have something hidden, secretive and unknown. They enjoy being shrouded by mystery and they really like having security.

There are a lot more colors, but we decided it wasn’t much to pay attention to. You can do your own search on this if, for example, your phone is colored gold.

Back in the days, we have black, gray, bronze and other dark colors as our choices. It was only recent that we had different bright colored choices. Even colors such as white weren’t even abundant back then. Now, if you have one of those generic looking phones, you can just go and buy yourself a case.

So, did it match for the most of you guys? What are your says on this? There’s a reason why technology is holding onto these color schemes and try not to go far beyond the horizon with rainbow-themed gadgets. Our devices become an extension of who we are, and simple things like the color could tell a lot about ourselves.

{source 1, 2, 3}

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Is Google worried about Samsung’s Android dominance?

February 27, 2013February 27, 2013 Bob Freking Leave a comment

Android belongs to Google, and is basically free. Samsung is going on a killing spree with its Galaxy line of devices running Android, and is continuing to do so in almost all fronts. As a result, ut poses a threat to Android itself because of Google’s mobile-ad business.

In case you didn’t know, Samsung sells about 40% of all Android phones in the world. From the company’s perspective, that’s a good thing; but for Google, that is a whole other story. Andy Rubin, Android’s head, praised Samsung for the things that it brought upon the ecosystem, but subsequently, he also said Sammy could be a threat when it dominates the market. If this continues on, Samsung and Google’s partnership may change terms… or worse.

google samsung collide

This is could be one of the reasons why Motorola was bought by Google — to balance everything off and to help maintain an equal footing with the rest of the manufacturers that uses Android.

Let’s take this from another perspective and why this is an important topic: Samsung relies heavily on the Galaxy brand. Without Android, what else is their next cash cow? Samsung needs Android, but does Android need Samsung as much?

This could be the reason they have Tizen as a backup. It’s the same reason why Samsung kept on holding on to their own Bada OS for the longest time. We can now see how Android is slowly fading away as a brand and being replaced by the Galaxy branding, at least from the eyes of Samsung. This is what Google is trying to avoid.

xphone

We have no idea what will be the future relationship of these two companies, but we have some things in mind though. Don’t expect the next Nexus phone to be from Samsung, and Motorola’s X Phone might be just the killer push Android needs.

{source}

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Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt: The story behind the Core

February 21, 2013February 21, 2013 yuga Leave a comment

So one of the more curious issues behind the recently launched Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt is the type of chip (SoC) they used with it. We dug a bit deeper into that so we can easily explain to you the details in a more condensed manner.

Actions Semiconductor is practically an unfamiliar name to most of us. We’ve been accustomed to hearing the popular Snapdragon brand from Qualcomm, the Tegra brand from NVidia and the Exynos from Samsung. Some might also be familiar with the TI OMAP chips from Texas Instruments and then there’s Mediatek which has been a popular choice of a lot of local and Asian brands (Alcatel, Lenovo, O+, Cherry Mobile) because they are much cheaper compared to the popular ones.

So how did the Fusion Bolt ended up with an Actions Semiconductor quad-core chip? This is probably because Ainol and Actions had a previous arrangement that a number of the new tablets from Ainol would be using the dual-core and quad-core chips from Actions. This move is primarily driven by cost of the chips. Mediatek has recently announced they also have a quad-core chip but maybe the ones from Actions is cheaper (or faster to market, or a combination of both).

From my previous discussion with CM, they’ve confirmed that they have some sort of licensing agreement with Ainol (probably the same way with other OEMs of their phones). This means they can take any one or more of their devices in the product line and re-label them straight out of the factory. You can only do this if you order in the thousands (it’s normally between 1,000 to 10,000 depending on the cost of each unit).

In the case of the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt, it was a re-labeled Ainol Novo 7 Venus Lite. The processor used is an Actions Semiconductor ATM7025 quad-core processor with a clock speed of 1.0GHz. There’s a lot of evidence (including the CPUID) that it is based on a smaller, and slower Cortex-A5 architecture and not the A9. It’s still a quad-core chip and will certainly benefit apps/processes that can fully utilize it. However, there are bench results that even a dual-core Cortex-A9 can almost match its performance.

Probably, the most questionable component of this chip is the Vivante GC1000 GPU. It is less known than Actions itself and with merely a dual-core graphics processor, is most likely the source of the bottleneck. It is also based on the 40nm process technology with a frequency of 630MHz.

Compare that to the popular ones like Mali-400MP which has 4 cores and is widely used by Samsung in their Exynos chips or the PowerVR SGX-554 quad-core GPU used in the new iPad 4 3 and the ULP GeForce on the Tegra 3 has 12 cores. And that’s just at the surface. We don’t want to dig deeper in too much technicalities here. We just want to point out that a good CPU should also be paired with an equally good GPU for more consistent performance.

We will soon find out once we get the final benchmarks and really see how this new chip combo really fares. More on that in our full review of the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt.

Updated: We published a complete set of synthetic benchmarks of the CM Fusion Bolt here.

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What is your mobile phone history?

February 9, 2013February 9, 2013 Louie Diangson Leave a comment

Most of us have owned a number of handsets in the past but can you still remember all of them? I tried recalling my mobile phone history, starting from the turn of the century when Nokia was the king, all the way to the present glory of Android and iOS smartphones. Here’s what I came up with:

mobile-history

The list below are the mobile phones I owned, the year I owned them, and how they ended up after owning them. Some were passed down to me, bought for me and acquired by my own means.

Nokia 3310 (2000) – dad smashed it to bits (if I remembered correctly he threw it on the floor three times before it was completely obliterated)
Nokia 8250 (2000) – stolen
Nokia 2100 (2003) – passed down
Sony Ericsson T230 (2003) – passed down
Nokia 3650 (2003) – swapped
Nokia 6610i (2004) – sold
Nokia 6230i (2005) – passed down
Nokia 5310 (2007) – passed down
Nokia E51 (2007) – passed down
Nokia 5800 (2008) – sold
Samsung M140 (2008) – passed down
Motorola RAZR Maxx V6 Ferrari Edition (2009) – broke down
Samsung GT-E1080F (2010) – passed down
BlackBerry Curve 9300 (2011) – passed down
LG Optimus L3 (2012) – sold
iPhone 4S (2012) – passed down
HTC One X (2012) – stolen
BlackBerry Torch 9860 (Present)

How about you guys? What is your smartphone history? Take a trip down memory lane and list them down the comments section below. Kudos to the person who has the oldest mobile phone.

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What these symbols on your gadgets mean

January 21, 2013January 21, 2013 Louie Diangson Leave a comment

We see these symbols printed at the back of almost every electronic gadgets we use such as smartphones, tablets, digital cameras or device chargers, but rarely do we pay attention to what they actually mean. So if you want to make sense of it all, please read on.

iPhone_FCC_CE

FCC

FCC – This independent US agency is probably the most popular because this is where almost all upcoming wireless technology including smartphones and tablets gets dissected and reviewed before it gets released. The FCC’s responsibility is to make sure that a wireless device is working as expected and doesn’t cause any problems with other wireless technology. If a device is not FCC cleared, then it won’t be allowed to be sold in the US market.

WEEE

WEEE – If a gadget gets printed with a symbol of a garbage bin with an X on it, this means that the manufacturer complies with the European Union’s WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive which is to “reuse, recycle and recover” electrical and electronic equipments to reduce electronic waste. This is also a reminder that broken devices such as the iPhone should be disposed off properly rather than buried in a landfill.

CE – This acronym stands for “Conformité Européenne” which roughly translates to European Conformity. This marking, in itself, doesn’t necessarily indicate product quality but rather a declaration of the manufacturer that it’s conforming with all of the legal requirements to achieve CE marking and therefore ensuring validity for their product to be marketed and sold throughout the European Union. These requirements include but not limited to safety, health, and environmental protection.

CE Alert

Alert Symbol (!)- Officially known as the CE R&TTE Directive “alert symbol,” this supplements the CE markings and indicates that the device violates the restrictions of one or more member state of the EU. Class I devices or devices that work on “harmonized frequency bands” don’t have this symbol. The iPhone, for example, is considered as Class II and has this symbol because it violates the French regulation that all wireless devices should operate on frequencies between 2.4GHz and 2.454GHz when used outdoors.

Underwriters Laboratories (UL) – This one can be found on BlackBerry devices. Underwriters Laboratories is an independent safety consulting and certification company that certifies, validates, tests, inspects, audits a wide range of products sold in North America and Mexico. A UL mark denotes the product’s safety and reliability when operating under normal conditions.

TUV_GS

TÜV Rheinland GS Mark – This one I found on an HTC charger. If the CE marking indicates that a device has passed EU regulations, the GS Mark is another indication that the device has been tested by TÜV Rheinland for quality and has complied with Germany’s safety regulations.

Additional info: GS stands for “Geprüfte Sicherheit” which means Tested Safety. While TÜV stands for “Technischer Überwachungs-Verein” which means Technical Inspection Association – a German organization that validates the safety of products of all kinds to protect humans and the environment against hazards.

china_rohs

China RoHS – RoHS is an acronym for Restriction of Hazardous Substances, and is a Chinese government regulation to control certain materials, including lead. Products that contain hazardous substances are marked with the Environment Friendly Use Period (EFUP) value in years. Environment Friendly Use Period (EFUP) is the period of time before any of the RoHS substances are likely to leak out, causing possible harm to health and the environment. In the case of my Canon IXUS 300HS which was released in 2010, it has a symbol of a circled 10 which indicates an EFUP of 10 years. That means that it should be safe for use in the next 7 years.

And there you have it folks, the meaning of the symbols commonly found on your gadgets. There are so many out there that it would be too much to cover so, these will do for now. At least, now you have an idea what your beloved gadgets have gone through before you bought them.

{sources: FCC, WEEE, CE, Underwriters Laboratories, TÜV Rheinland GS, China RoHS, Gizmodo, ArsTechnica}

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