Category - OS

New Features of Blackberry OS 10

February 10, 2013

3 min read

Research in Motion(RIM) threw the last throw of the dice by unveiling their latest Blackberry version 10 Operating System. Packed with some nifty features, it seems Blackberry has an outside shot of regaining some market share. In Sri Lanka where most corporates still use their Blackberry as their official device, this has good chance of taking off provided that devices would be available by at least mid Q2.

Blackberrry 10 will be available with the Z10 fully touch phone and the Q10 touch and keyboard phone. So if you are a fan of the Blackberry physical keyboard or a touch screen fanboy, there is phone model for you.

So lets take a look at some of those new features that make up Blackberry OS 10. Do you think with these features whether Blackberry has a chance against iOS and Android?

Blackberry Flow and Peek

Blackberry Flow is is the BB10 UI. Just as its name suggest, they have designed the UI interactions to a smooth flow. Simple swipes have been introduced which once you get a hang of, will let you easily navigate through apps and other BB10 features.

With a small swipe, BB10 will allow you to take a peek at all new notifications. From there you can go deeper into messages and get back to what you were doing in no time. For example your watching a video but want to check whether an important mail as arrived; with a matter of swipes you have checked your inbox and back to watching the video without having to move through individual applications.

Blackberry Hub

The blackberry Hub will be your universal inbox. You can configure it to receive all you email, SMS, appointments Social media updates so that you have a view of all that in one place. And you can reply to any of those messages directly from the hub itself. You wont have to open multiple apps, as everything you need is in the Hub.

Blackberry Balance

Blackberry Balance essentially gives you two profiles, work and personal. Through the flow UI, with a swipe you can switch between these profiles. While at work you will have the apps and shortcuts for your professional work while at home you can switch to your personal mode to have quick access to games and family photos

The new Blackberry Messenger

Two new features have been added for all you BBM fans. One is the ability to make video chats, and the other is screenshare which lets you quickly share your screen with one another. The screenshare option would be quite useful where you quickly need to show a doc to colleague or client, without sharing the document.

Camera Time shift and Story Maker

How many times have you taken multiple group photos where in each someones face is looking awkward? Well with time shift you can take multiple photos and then choose the faces that look better, enabling you to have group photos where everyone is looking good.

Using photos and videos in your phone, you can quickly create a collage video with music using Blackberry Story Maker. You can create such videos of an event, a vacation, or a wedding in order to cherish those moments a little bit more.

The C, D, E of Android

December 28, 2012

TechWire

4 Comments

3 min read

Now you must be wondering why it is the CDE s instead of the standard ABC s when discussing Android. This is not about the basic ABCs of Android. Rather it is about the Google Android version alphabet. We are still searching for the answer to why A and B have been missed (but we have a guess*) and you are most welcome to share any info on that.

Down below is how Google alphabetically and interestingly introduced their Android versions.

C for Cupcake

D for donut

E for Éclair

F for Froyo

G for Gingerbread

H for honeycomb

I for Ice cream sandwich

J for jelly bean

And K for Key lime pie

Now we will discuss flavor and taste of the desserts from C to J which are already served on the table while waiting to discuss about dessert K which Google is still cooking inside the oven…

Android Versions

	Android version	Release date	Key features introduced
Cupcake	1.5	30 April 2009	Interactive widgets on home screen Inclusion of copy and paste in the browser Auto-rotation of the screen
Donut	1.6	15 September 2009	Multi-lingual speech synthesis engine Introduction of WVGA screen resolution, and kicked off the trend of the ‘large screen’ phone.
Éclair	2.0, 2.0.1, 2.1	26 October 2009	Live wallpapers Turn by turn directions in GPS High resolution screen with better contrast ratio Support for HTML 5 Tighter integration of Exchange and Google services
Froyo	2.2.x	20 May 2010	USB tethering Wi-Fi hotspot feature Full desktop experience’ in web browsing Voice dialing
Gingerbread	2.3 – 2.3.2, 2.3.3 – 2.3.7	6 December 2010	Improved UI design with increased simplicity and speed Included support for screens with even higher resolutions improved compatibility of sensors, gyroscopes and barometers Universal copy/paste functions Near Field Communication (NFC) support
Honeycomb	3.0, 3.1, 3.2.x	22 February 2011	Optimized tablet support with a new virtual and “holographic” user interface System bar and Action bar for fast access Multiple browser tabs replacing browser windows Support for video chat with Google talk
Ice Cream Sandwich	4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.0.3, 4.0.4	19 October 2011	OS compatible with both smartphones and tablets ICS was fast, fluid, and elegant Refined look of UI with eye-pleasing Roboto typeface Soft buttons for phones Face unlock feature NFC payment with Android Beam Simpler folders Integrated screenshot capture
Jelly bean	4.1, 4.2	9 July 2012	Smooth UI with ‘Project Butter’ Better alternative to IOS Siri with Google Now Expandable notifications Multiple user accounts (Tabs only)

*’A’ for Apple pie and ‘B’ for Banana Bread? Since Google is silent on this, we are really not sure though.

Any guesses of the features of the dessert in the oven, the Android Key Lime Pie?

Key Lime Pie: The next Android version

December 11, 2012

TechWire

1 Comment

2 min read

Back in 2009 Google released the first Android phone called HTC Dream with Android Cupcake version 1.5. Few months later they released an update called Donut 1.6. After that we saw some decent amount of Android devices with 2.1 Éclair. In 2010 Google released Android version 2.3 Gingerbread with more improved features, which is currently the mostly used Android OS. At that time vendors like Samsung and HTC started to make their own skin on top the Gingerbread. Amazingly within a short time period Google Android became one of the worlds most powerful OS. Recently Google CEO announced that they are receiving 1.3 Million activations per day and there are 480 Million devices out there.

The latest Android release was Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean which has so many superb features but what about the next version? Most of the rumors believe it will be Android 5.0 and Google will name it Key Lime Pie. Yes! Finally we can say that the rumors are true because recently a Google software engineer shared an image on his Google+ page which showed the roadmap of the Android OS. As you can see in the picture below it started from Cupcake and it ends with Key Lime Pie. Another important thing to see is, the first cartoon shows how Android is started at the beginning and final cartoon shows how Android is performing currently. So what are the features you expect in Key Lime Pie?

Key Lime Pie

Unofficial Android 4.2 Jelly Bean update for Galaxy S

November 28, 2012

admin

2 Comments

2 min read

Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) launched back in 2010. At that time, Galaxy S was the king of Android Smartphones; it featured a 4inch Super AMOLED display with 800×480 resolution, 512MB RAM, 8GB/16GB internal storage, 5 mega pixel camera with Geo-tagging and 1GHz single core Cortex A8 processor. It was powered by Android 2.1 Éclair with Samsung’s proprietary custom skin called TouchWiz version 3. Most of the Galaxy S’s internal parts are manufactured under Samsung’s own roof. The 1GHz Samsung’s Hummingbird processor had the best performing PowerVR 540 GPU inside, which can push up to 20 million triangles per second. One year later Galaxy S received the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update which made the device run super-fast. The device received many positive feedback and reviews. Down the line Samsung decided to put a stop mark on the Galaxy S, by not making it eligible for the ICS update. However, thanks to third party Android developers, this device didn’t die, cos after a few months CyanogenMod released a ICS update for Galaxy S which ran pretty well.

I have seen so many Galaxy S owners having installed ICS for their daily driver and they are really happy because they didn’t buy a new phone to experience the perks of ICS. Seems the development on Galaxy S didn’t stop there, as yesterday I saw a post in XDA developers forum that CyanogenMod released an Android 4.2 update for Galaxy S. It’s still beta version and some people have complained having trouble with WiFi, and for others the APN is not working. I’m pretty sure we can expect a stable release within a few weeks. I think this is a great chance for Galaxy S owners. So if you are geek enough to root your Galaxy S and if you know how to install a custom ROM then you must visit the below links.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2004118

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2013707

Firefox Mobile OS beta released as a Firefox Addon

November 25, 2012

TechWire

1 Comment

3 min read

Few months ago Firefox promised that they will make a mobile OS of their own, and two days back Firefox announced that they have released a beta version of the OS and consumers can install it as an add-on for Firefox. This Mozilla’s operating system coded named “Boot to Gecko” based on HTML5 web standards which is good news for developers. ZTE, Alcatel and some other vendors have already announced that they are already developing ARM based hardware for this OS. However, I have major doubts on how Mozilla is going to survive from the huge mobile OS war.

Even for Windows Mobile, although their developers are giving their best against Android and Apple, they can’t see any big improvements. Recently Newegg said “Windows Mobile phone sales are slow” at the same time Nokia lost $1.27 billion in last 3rd quarter and its sixth quarterly loss for them. This shows just how hard it is for a new OS to break through in to the market. However Mozilla strongly believes in success, according to “the Guardian” website, Director of Research & Development at Mozilla Corporation Andreas Gal recently said “We wanted to break out of the “silos” presented by competitors like iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. We think we can change this by doing the same thing we did on the desktop,” that’s good because more competition means better products for us.

Firefox Screens

Firefox Screenshot 2

Before writing this article, I experienced the Firefox OS add-on so I can write what I personally think. The first moment I saw the OS I was like what? Is this Android? Yes it’s very similar to Android, it has a pull down notification bar where you can see your notifications and your toggle switches. If you long press the home button it will bring up the multi-task menu so you can close them by swiping up. There is no dedicated app drawer so if you swipe left you can see the app icons which already installed. Swiping right brings you the search menu and it’s bit similar to iOS search menu. I don’t think that’s a good idea for Mozilla to have similar features like iOS considering the latest legal battles. Anyway this is not the final version and who knows, the final version may be drastically different. This add-on version of Firefox OS is so sluggish, but no worries because it’s still a beta version. Firefox uses the Nokia maps for their map services. I don’t know why they chose Nokia Maps instated of Google Maps. This beta version already has a Marketplace built-in. I installed Twitter and it worked pretty nice. I hope we can see more essential apps from Mozilla when it’s available for consumers. According to Matthew Key, chair and chief executive of Telefónica Digital, the first Firefox OS based mobile devices will appear in Brazil in 1st Q2013. So next year we can see how it’s going to perform against other operating systems giants.

You can check out the Firefox Add on Here