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#TBT: Mobile phones: Then and Now

November 14, 2013November 14, 2013 Abe Olandres Leave a comment

If you grew up in the 80′s or 90′s, you’d definitely see the huge difference and improvements in the mobile industry. For our Throwback Thursday this week, we look at one of the most popular handset of of the 21st century and compare it with the handset of the 20th century.

We’re sure you still remember the Nokia 5110. It was one of the best phones of the 90′s. We compare it to the Apple iPhone to see what we’ve gained and what we’re missing.

Sometimes, technology doesn’t really improve things — they just make them more complicated.

Inspired by 9Gag.

The post #TBT: Mobile phones: Then and Now appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

#TBT: Mobile phones: Then and Now

November 14, 2013November 14, 2013 Abe Olandres Leave a comment

If you grew up in the 80′s or 90′s, you’d definitely see the huge difference and improvements in the mobile industry. For our Throwback Thursday this week, we look at one of the most popular handset of the 21st century and compare it with the handset of 20 years ago.

We’re sure you still remember the Nokia 5110. It was one of the best phones of the 90′s. We compare it to the Apple iPhone to see what we’ve gained and what we’re missing.

Sometimes, technology doesn’t really improve things — they just make them more complicated.

Inspired by 9Gag.

The post #TBT: Mobile phones: Then and Now appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Apple iPhone 5S & 5C: What We Think We Know

August 17, 2013August 17, 2013 Bob Freking Leave a comment

Everyone’s told that Apple will be holding an event this September 10 to finally reveal new devices. However, it seems that aside from the iPhone 5 successor, we might also be looking at a few more surprises like the alleged iPhone 5C. Read on to see everything that we think we know about Apple’s soon-to-be-announced iProducts.

The iPhone 5S

iPhone 5S 2

1. Same design, different story

We haven’t seen leaks or reports of an iPhone 6, and if we follow Apple’s launch cycle – we’re definitely looking at an iPhone 5S soon. Apple retained the same design when they went from the 3G to the 3GS and from 4 to 4S, and it’s highly likely that the next iPhone will follow this said pattern. The differences however will be seen elsewhere.

2. A 128GB storage option

For so long now, smartphones have been stuck on 8, 16,32 & 64GB internal storage options. Just lately, Apple upgraded the memory of their 4th-gen iPad to 128GB, so we’re guessing the company might do the same for the next iPhone. After all, insiders have already claimed that it will.

3. Better camera & dual LED flash

iPhones never fail to improve their cameras in every iteration. With the iPhone 5S, reports are looking at an improved f2.0 aperture which will take low-light performance a step higher. On top of that, a lot of leaked parts have already hinted at a dual LED flash.

4. Fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanners aren’t a new thing in the smartphone market as we’ve already seen it in phones like the Motorola Atrix, but after that, the trend seemed to have died down. A lot of reports and analysts are now claiming that the iPhone 5S will definitely feature the said scanner, replacing the concave home button with a convex one.

iphone 5s gold

5. A third color option; champagne gold!

Black has been very much a standard color to phones, and Apple is very well known for making white a norm for them as well ever since the iPhone 4. It is possible now that they’re fixing up a 3rd color option. Leaked volume buttons and back panels have already pointed towards this – and it is expected that we will have a champagne gold iPhone 5S to be announced soon.

iPhone 5S change

6. iOS 7, A7… and NFC?

Of course, iOS 7 will be seen here no doubt. The chipset however, will be an improvement to the A6X — the A7, which will be coupled with 1GB RAM. No one is sure if NFC will make it to the next iPhone though.

The iPhone 5C

iPhone 5C box

Together with the aforementioned iPhone, Apple is also expected to release another variant — the iPhone 5C. Now, what ‘C’ stands for is unknown (color? cheap? polyCarbonate?), but speculations are saying a lot more than just that.

5C iphone

1. More color options & plastic construction

The backplate of the iPhone 5C is probably one of the worst kept secrets ever, since by now we already know that it will be made out of glossy plastic & it will be available in many colors. So far, we’ve seen light colors of red, green, blue and yellow, including white.

iphone 5C

2. iPhone 4S-like specs?

Just like the iPad Mini, it seems like Apple is planning to reuse their old internals on their new phone. This time it’s on the iPhone 5C. Reports say that the phone will run the 4S’ 8 megapixel camera & dual-core CPU, although that remains to be confirmed. We’ll have to wait and see.

3. Budget-friendly

On top of everything that we’ve gathered about the iPhone 5C, all of those setbacks in specs and construction is a likely price reduction, probably by as much as $200 to $250 of the flagship model.

September’s going to be a busy month for tech sector as we are nearing the Christmas season. Next month, we’re also expecting phones like the Sony ‘Honami’ and the Galaxy Note 3. In Apple’s camp, on the other hand, that’s all we’ve heard about; not much word on the iPad Mini 2 and the 5th gen iPad.

So, which one are you waiting for?

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iTunes gives me the Blues

May 26, 2013May 26, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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MUSIC ON THE IPHONE. I wanted to copy 4 albums on my Mac into my iPhone and iTunes insists on backing it up first, syncing things before sending the files. I went through the process for close to an hour to find, while I was already out on my run, that the files weren’t copied.

There is a special place in Inferno for iTunes.

A few minutes to my Saturday run this week, I decided on a change in music. I usually listen to NPR podcasts or Bob Dylan, Nina Simone and Amy Winehouse while running but yesterday I wanted to listen to The Lumineers and Madeleine Peyroux.

I listen to songs on the BlackBerry Z10 because its storage is expandable with a memory card (unlike that of the iPhone) and it’s easier to manage songs there — just a matter of mounting the phone’s memory card as a storage drive and adding or removing the songs.

But for running, I prefer using the iPhone because of RunKeeper. The BlackBerry Z10 has an equivalent app — Sports Tracker — but it often hangs and force closes in the middle of your run. Several times, it also stopped tracking the mileage.

I planned to start running at 5 p.m. and attached the iPhone to the MacBook Pro to sync the albums a few minutes before that time.

Manually managing songs on iTunes

Upon detection of the phone, the system went through its cycle: opening iTunes and syncing things and then opening up iPhoto to prompt me to import images on my phone that I haven’t backed up yet.

Because I configured iTunes to manually manage songs and playlists, I had to choose the albums for syncing.

The system then went through that maddening linear process of backing up the files, transferring apps, synchronizing things before transferring the songs.

Since the backing up of files took too long (this was at about 5:10 p.m. of my 5 p.m. run), I decided to cancel it thinking, mistakenly, that the files will still synchronize after the backup is canceled. Wrong.

I did a quick search on “how to add music to iphone without iTunes” and did a cursory browsing of the results. Most involved installing apps in Windows but I didn’t want to deal with it.

I decided to restart syncing again (20 minutes after I was supposed to start my run) and went out for a short run “for warm up,” I told myself. I left the phone to sync and came back after about 10 minutes. It was still on Step 1 of 7, “Waiting for sync to start.”

I decided to give it more time and started my run in earnest. I went back 13 minutes later to find that it was on Step 2 of 7, still “Backing up.”

I continued running and came back in about 20 minutes to find no notifications on iTunes whatsoever. Thinking the sync had completed, I quickly detached the cable, attached the earphones and went out the door for my “long” run.

I sent a few text messages and was already nearing the gate of the subdivision when I opened the music app.

After more than an hour of trying to sync 4 albums of less than 50 songs and it wasn’t there. The only songs available on the phone were part of “The Very Best Of John Lee Hooker.” Curse you, iTunes. I love listening to John Lee Hooker but I looked forward to listening to the other artists for this run. I also found that iTunes had reinstalled some of the apps I uninstalled from the phone.

John Lee Hooker is an influential blues guitarist, singer and song writer.

But there’s no use crying or cursing over unsynced songs. I went on with my run with John Lee Hooker, Boggie Chillin’.

Well my mama she didn’t ‘low me, just to stay out all night long, oh Lord
Well my mama didn’t ‘low me, just to stay out all night long

Midway into my run I was still cursing iTunes. I never use it outside of backing up my phone. To play songs on my Mac, I use Clementine. Android and BlackBerry makes management of songs so much easier: you can just add or remove song files directly to and from the phone memory or memory card.

And as if taunting me a third way into my run, the phone played the song that got me searching for John Lee Hooker in the first place:

It serve you right to suffer
Serve you right to be alone
Serve you right to suffer
Serve you right to be alone
Because you’re still livin’
In days done past and gone

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This is how iOS 7 may look like

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

While Android may be facing just an incremental update in the next Google IO, Apple may be cooking up a major update to iOS. We posted a couple of reports for iOS 7 already, but we still have no idea how these details will be look like on the new OS.

iOS7 2

The reports called for a flatter iOS, with improvements in multitasking and in bringing information. It’s a little hard to imagine all of that on Apple’s platform – but SimplyZesty seemed to have figured it out, and we like every bit of it.

iOS7

They have managed to replace those popping iOS icons with a flatter look without having to look like a Windows’ Modern UI. They also introduced new app designs for the calendar and such. Camera, Siri & other apps looked more cleaner with the lighter elements that replaced the darker ones found in the present iOS.

Changes to the lockscreen are also made, and the designer also thought about a pull-down widget center. You can watch their video to fully appreciate it.

We’re hoping Apple’s software team takes note of this and does something better. Commenters everywhere were stating that the whole iOS 7 concept was like an offspring of Android & Windows Phone; would you agree with that? And is that a good thing?

WWDC 2013 will be coming next month, June 10-14, so stay tuned for more coverage.

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