Motorola Touchless Control App Update Unlocks Your Phone With But A Spoken Word

They say that a spoken word can be extremely powerful, although it is also understood that a curse which has no place will not fall on anyone. Some people follow the school of thought of speaking things into reality, but why not let technology ensure that this happens every time, all the time? Motorola has recently introduced a new update to its Touchless Control app over on Google Play, which would ensure that your smartphone will be more versatile even when it is in a locked state, as extra Google Now commands should now be able to jive with your smartphone when it is idle and locked. You will be able to unlock your PIN simply by speaking it out, and Touchless Control will do all the rest. A new tone is also introduced when you say “OK Google Now.” Apparently, this particular update does seem to be made available only to devices that have Android 4.4 KitKat as the operating system of choice, which pretty much rules out the recent DROID family, at least until Motorola and Verizon do something to remedy that situation soon. Speaking out your PIN is fine and dandy by me, but it seems to be a function that is worth using only in private, coming in most handy when you drive and need to concentrate on the road.


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Galaxy S4 Review

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has arrived to America, and if you have been eagerly waiting to know how it feels to use the Galaxy S4 in the real world, the wait is over. Since its predecessor sold more than 50M units worldwide, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has to live up to rather high anticipation and expectations. You may have followed our first hands-on review of the S4, so you may know a fair amount about this smartphone. for this complete review, we have had more time to use the Galaxy S4 as a primary smartphone, and needless to say that on paper, it improves upon all aspects of the Galaxy S3 with which you may have seen or played with. If not, don’t worry, we’ll provide a good picture of what the S4 is. Now, the question is: how does it actually behave in the real world, and is it a smartphone for you? Samsung Galaxy S4 Specs (powerful) First of all, let’s go over some critical specifications of this new smartphone (a Sprint unit), just to have a frame of reference: Galaxy S3 iPhone 5 Galaxy S4 HTC One Weight 133 112 130 143 Display Size 4.8 4 4.99 4.7 Resolution 1280×720 1136×640 1920×1080 1920×1080 Pixel Density 306 326 441 468 microSD 64GB max No 64GB max No OS Android 4.1 iOS 6 Android 4.2 Android 4.1 Battery mAh 2100 1440 2600 2300 Battery removable Yes No Yes No Infrared blaster No No Yes Yes Camera (F) MP 1.9 1.2 2 2.1 Camera (B) MP 8 8 13 4 Thickness (inches) 0.34 0.3 0.31 0.37 Note that there are a few variants of the Samsung Galaxy S4: this one is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor at 1.9GHz, but the two others feature a Samsung Exynos Octa 5 4+4 cores that I have described at length in my Exynos Octa 5 post. The Samsung chip may embed 8 cores, but it should be considered to be a quad-core chip (in code execution terms) since only 4 can run at any given time. Samsung used the big.LITTLE architecture from ARM, and if you are curious, check what I think of big.LITTLE, it’s pretty neat. Update: experts say that the GS4 is also “easy” to repair. Many of you have asked “why” Samsung comes up with these hardware variations, and although none of the companies involved would usually comment on this hot topic, my guess is that carrier certifications end up being what’s driving those choices. Since the Qualcomm communications software stack works obviously much better with their own processor/modem combo, and given that US carriers (AT&T in particular) have tested and approved Qualcomm, it’s likely that Samsung has chosen Qualcomm to have a faster time to market (Samsung may not have time to qualify their own chips) in order to hit a worldwide market at launch. Although you may hear a lot of noise about the hardware differences, the user experience of both platforms is largely comparable. That’s my opinion after playing with an “Exynos version” of the S4 recently. Context We all use our phones differently, so it’s important that I tell you what I do with my smartphone(s): I typically check email often with the built-in email app (via Microsoft Exchange), and reply moderately because typing on the virtual keyboard is tedious. I browse the web several times a day to check on news sites, but rarely watch movies or play music. I don’t call much – maybe 10mn a day, if at all. On the “apps” side, I have a couple of social networks (FB, G+), a receipts manager and random apps (<20), but I rarely play games or do something super-intensive like video editing. This usage pattern will affect battery life and the perception of what features are useful. Now you know where we’re coming from…

source-ubergizmo.com

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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs. HTC One Google Edition

You knew that those devices were coming: the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition (GPE) was announced at Google I/O and the HTC One Google Play Edition followed shortly after that. There are even unconfirmed rumors of an XPERIA Z Google Edition (loaded with the stock Android OS, without modifications), but so far only two have finally landed in our offices: The S4 and the HTC One. You may wonder why Google does sell those devices, and the reason is quite simple: Google wants the general public to be able to experience Android as it was originally developed, on the best possible hardware. In this review, we will focus on the Android aspect, and if you are not yet familiar with the industrial design, performance and other critical aspects of those phones, I recommend reading our in-depth Galaxy S4 Review and HTC One Review articles since they will provide a lot of details.

source-ubergizmo.com

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Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie Release At Google I/O Reportedly Delayed

A lot has already been rumored about Google’s I/O conference. It is believed that the company will announce a revamped Nexus 7 and a 32GB LTE Nexus 4 instead of a next generation Nexus 5 smartphone. Google was also expected to announce the next major Android platform update, Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie. Its release has now reportedly been delayed by as much as four months to give ample time to OEMs so that they can keep up with the new Android version. Another reason for this delay could be the launch of Motorola X smartphone. The company’s top executives have sung its praises, perhaps they’ll merge both announcements together? At the moment 29.3% of Android devices are powered by Ice Cream Sandwich, in second place comes Jelly Bean which powers some 23% devices. Pushing back the Key Lime Pie release will aid both OEMs and Google itself. Despite being announced at last year’s I/O, many manufacturers and carriers are still rolling it out to Jelly Bean deprived customers. Launching a new version would further increase the fragmentation, and if this rumor is anything to go by, Google looks intent on avoiding that.

source-http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/04/android-5-0-key-lime-pie-release-at-google-io-reportedly-delayed/

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iPhone 5 16 GB Factory Unlocked to cost $649

If you have been waiting for the factory unlocked iPhone 5 to come to the market, your wait seems to be coming to an end soon. This is because a new report on Apple Insider has a screenshot from the official US Apple online store which lists the factory unlocked iPhone 5. Apple Insider reports that over the weekend, when the online publication tried the search string “iPhone 5 factory unlocked” on the US Apple online store, and got the prices for the respective models.

The prices for these factory unlocked iPhone 5 smart phones remain the same as the prices for the factory unlocked iPhone 4S smart phones. You can get the 16 GB model for $649, the 32 GB model for $749, and the 64 GB model for $849. In some countries, the Cupertino tech giant releases the factory unlocked version of the iPhones soon after the release of the wireless carrier locked version of the smart phone. But in the United States, that is not the case. In the United States, there will be a delay of at least 6 weeks between the release of the carrier locked iPhone and the factory unlocked iPhone.

For example, the wireless carrier locked iPhone 4S was launched in early October. The pre orders for the factory unlocked version of the iPhone 4S started in early November. And the shipping of these factory unlocked iPhone 4S smart phones did not start until the third week of November, which is exactly 6 weeks after the launch of the carrier locked iPhone 4S.

Now, we are well into 6 weeks after the release of the wireless carrier locked iPhone 5. So we can expect the Cupertino tech giant to start taking pre orders for the factory unlocked version of the iPhone 5

source-tuaw

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Motorola Atrix 2 — How To Print From The Device

Motorola just recently updated their Atrix 2 handset to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. With the update we got a slew of new features such as App Locker and Smart Actions. Among those new features is a certain one embedded in the system settings. Yes, we Atrix 2 users can now enable a printer on our devices. To access this feature you need to go into the Settings of the Atrix 2, scroll all the way down, and under the System Settings, you will find the Printer settings. Before enabling your printer on your Atrix 2, keep in mind that you won’t be able to do any print over your mobile data, you have to connect to your home Wi-Fi, the same Wi-Fi that your printer is connected to.
What your going to do, is select the Printer Settings, and then select the “Find Printers” button under the auto search tab. It will prompt you to connect to your home Wi-Fi, and after you do that, it will auto search for printers that are connected to that Wi-Fi connection. If your phone can not find a printer on the Wi-Fi, there are some other options to add the printer manually as well. This, of course, still requires you to be on the home Wi-Fi as well, but is a tad more complicated than the auto search. I was able to add my printer straight through the auto search, so things were very simple for me, but maybe your Wi-Fi is a bit more locked up, and it just isn’t liking your handset. In that case, manually adding the printer will have to be the way you go.
If everything else fails, you may have an issue with your printer or it is just not fully open to your Wi-Fi network. When it comes to that, I am no network genius/guru, so you may need to call someone about that. In fact, Motorola Mobility has a support area where they usually are more than willing to help you set up your printer on your Wi-Fi network. On the other hand, these Printer Settings options should be available for most devices running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, mainly their newer devices like the DROID RAZR M.
Now, I do have to warn you that their built-in printer software is actually really weird. Sometimes it just outright refuses to print for some unknown reason. Usually a reset of your phone fixes this, but Motorola really needs to add a bit more stability to the option before it becomes the main place you print from. Still, it is wonderful when the printer options do work, especially when you find something that you would like to read later on whilst browsing the web. Sure you can always bookmark things, but those are a bit more tedious on your smartphone, so printing would be the ideal thing to do.
Has the printer options been working well for you, or are they a bit clunky as I described? Let me know in the comments below!
Tags: Atrix 2, Motorola, PrintCategory: How To
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