Category: Mobiles

Does Apple Really Make Premium Products?

iphone_5s_stacked

Often you hear or read comments from bashers and non-bashers alike about how expensive Apple products are especially when there are new products released, just like the recent iPhone 5s. So the question is, does Apple really employ premium materials to their products that they’re worth that much?

I have a 3-year old, network-locked, 32GB (base model) iPhone 4 and a 2-year old unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2). Both were selling at the same price level when they came out (~PHP32K). If you look closely at the spec sheets of both, SGS2 is the clear winner being a more recent smartphone and with a dual-core processor (see the comparison at the GSMArena). But today I can easily sell the iPhone 4 for PHP10,000 (~US$240) while the SGS2 for only PHP5,000 (~US$120). There goes your premium, ladies and gentlemen!

The Features Over and Above Android

Samsung recently released their new Galaxy S4 ad to demonstrate their features like Drama Mode, Air Gestures, Hover, among others. Check out the video below:

Personally, I believe these are the features that the Galaxy S4 owners would enjoy showing off to friends and ignore thereafter. They would hardly find real life applications for those features, especially when those are the same things that drain the batteries fast.

But of course, Samsung was wise enough to leave off the issues that plague their flagship phone, like overheating, unreliability of the system, slow recharging but fast discharging of the battery, involuntary system reboot, etc. That’s Android for you!

The Smartphone Dominion

smartphones

There are a lot of metrics to measure smartphone dominion among different smartphone brands and operating systems. Survey organizations use sales figures, net profit, internet traffic, apps ecosystem, etc., even broken down into different demographics and/or geography, to demonstrate the different systems’ leadership above the rest.

But, really, if you are going to be realistic about it, try going to restaurants, malls, and/or coffee shops around the metro, and observe which smartphones are predominantly in the hands of other people around you, you’ll find that these statistics are not quite accurate.

How To: Sort Folders and Subscriptions Alphabetically in Reeder for Mac?

You can’t!

Not in the settings, not in the available view options, no — nothing.

Users need folders and subscriptions sorted alphabetically because that’s the optimal way to organize them — especially when you switch back and forth between the web-based Google Reader and the Reeder for Mac (Reeder). Google Reader folders and subscriptions are already sorted alphabetically, so getting around favorite feeds is a snap. Reeder’s, on the other hand, are sorted, I believe, by when the feeds were added and the folders created.

There are alternative Google Reader desktop apps for Mac — Caffeinated is a contender. I installed the trial version of this app, and tested until my trial period ran out. Caffeinated organizes folders and subscriptions alphabetically — fine, but it takes a while to update/sync feeds, particularly read and unread items. Font styles and sizes can be modified via Themes, but there are limited choices, as compared to Reeder. Worst of all, the app crashes rather more frequently, and at times when it manifests its erratic behavior, feeds are misplaced in different folders. In short — unreliable.

And I can’t afford paying for another Google Reader app that does almost entirely the same thing.

I posted a review of the Reeder in the Mac App Store, hopefully the developer/s will heed my pique. I also sent an email, tweet, but no response so far.

So I guess I’m stuck with the Reeder for Mac.

Smart Freedom Plan Updated

Plans and/or promos that you can subscribe to under the Smart Freedom Plan has been updated as of October 21, 2012, particularly Data plans. Now it includes various Always On denominations. Check out their webpage for more info.

Would have subscribed to one of the Always On options, but my Freedom Plan SIM was installed in my iPad, which since it’s not yet jailbroken, it can’t send SMS to complete the subscription. Another way could have been through the Account Management page in the Smart Communications website, but there was no option there for Data Packages, unlike when you’re using a Smart Bro prepaid SIM.

So there, another potential revenue gone for Smart.

Tweetbot for Mac

I am a big fan of Tweetbot for iPhone. There’s no denying I would recommend this app to any iPhone user who wants a more robust Twitter client for their smartphone. A price tag is attached to the app in the iTunes App Store, but the price is well worth it. This app is probably the best Twitter client-app out there available to any platform. Unfortunately, Tweetbot is an iOS-only app, which makes it one of the selling points why I choose the iPhone. Continue reading Tweetbot for Mac

USSD Hack that Reset Samsung Touchwiz Devices

Yugatech:

The web hack is actually a malicious code that is hiding inside a web page and gets triggered when visited using the stock browser (except Google Chrome) of a TouchWiz-based phone. The malicious code then spawns the dialer and enters a bad USSD code with the sole purpose of nuking your device back to its factory default.

Now, if you fell victim to this hack, how you’d probably wish you had iTunes that have your data and media files intact, in this case that you have to restore your phone.

And don’t even get me started with Samsung Kies — one word, UNRELIABLE. In my experience, Samsung Kies did not work half of the time because of drivers not found. This happened to me both in Mac and PC.

Now, Who’s Playing Catch Up? — Twitter for Android!

Last month, August 26, 2012 to be exact, I uploaded a video at my Youtube channel (and posted at my Tumblr blog) comparing the experience of using the official Twitter apps for Android and iOS:

Continue reading Now, Who’s Playing Catch Up? — Twitter for Android!