Is the Nokia Lumia 920 looking more and more attractive?

     Well if you have not heard already the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Iphone 5 have been announced and we have seen some completely different opinions. So far the Iphone 5 has been received with a slightly more negative then positive approach especially in social media. Even CNET had to re ask the question because they said, "Since we have heard so many people hating the Iphone 5 is there anybody who wants it?" Others like Windows8update.com founder Onoura Amobi have said, "The launch was one of their worst." On the other hand the Nokia Lumia 920 has had a mildly favorable launch except for the faked video and stills of the OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) feature. Still Nokia managed to do some pretty convincing damage control and has not had a truly polarizing affect on the bulk of the tech media or consumers. With the new "slimmer, taller, and faster" Iphone 5 comes three major problems. 

• new "Retina" screen. with the new taller 4 inch retina screen they have to letterbox apps. so unless app developers make new apps to take advantage of the larger screen real estate we will have apps looking stretched on your new shiny Iphone. Still it will not be a big problem to all consumers except if the news media says so as usual. 
• It is slimmer because they have forgone the old 30 pin docking connector for a smaller 8 pin connector that will be another cable that looks virtually identical. If you would like to use the old one now you have to pay up $29 for an adapter. With the Lumia 920's wireless charging I think that problem would be irrelevant. Via an article that I saw thanks to a fan people are raising a fuss over it and it will be a legitimate problem Apple will have to face. I can't wait to see how this will go down.
• The faster has posed a different problem that will be only relevant on Verizon and Sprint's new LTE networks. The Iphone 5 unlike other competitors will not offer support for simultaneous voice and data. Thanks to this article by The Verge we now know that you can only call and use data via Wi-Fi with the Iphone 5 even though every other Verizon 4G LTE phone can. 

Now the Lumia 920 even with a half an inch more screen real estate it has a better screen that can be used with gloves and will have no letterbox problems because WP8 apps are made to work and look good on all devices, it may not be slimmer but we will not have to worry about the 8 pin connector, and we do not know about simultaneous voice and data but we will learn later on. What do you think? Say so in the comment section!!!

Acer and Asus potential market shakers

     Acer and Asus are great on the lines of innovation and low price quality tablets, ultrabooks, and netbooks. At this years Computex Acer and Asus have featured some potentially ground breaking devices. Acer has a history of cheap netbooks and great top line Android tablets with their new Olympic Iconia 500. Acer has made a good name in the mobile market most notably for their netbooks and tablets. Asus had a similar fate except they featured the Eee PC line of convertible netbooks which are some of the only of their kind up unto this point. Asus has the most top of the line Android tablet which outweighs the Motorola Xoom and Xyboard and Samsung Galaxy tab series by a mile. The Transformer Prime TF3001 is the latest model to date until the Transformer Pad Infinity comes out in a bit which really proves Android's superior hardware capabilities. These companies are both offering new Windows 8/ RT capable devices with 1366 x 768 minimum screen resolutions (some are higher) and both offer beautiful and in some ways revolutionary designs that really are going to shake up the current market. First the Acer lineup courtesy of Engadget who has the best comprehensive coverage on the ground floor. 

The Acer Aspire series is what I call the worlds "biggest tablet and thinnest all in one" device which truly blows away the I Mac competition. At 27 inches and can be held in your hands it is to me a new concept barring Steve Ballmer's 80 inch in his office.   

It has a capacitive 64 finger touch screen that can swivel any way you wish. so far Acer has been very mum on the details and will come in a 27 inch and 23 inch flavors.  

The Acer W510 and W710 are similar to the Asus Transformer prime with a docking station that can boost battery especially on the W510 (18 hours worth) and up to 8 hours on the W710 which is better than the new Ipad. The W510 is an ARM based tablet  Medfield based x86 tablet at 10.1 inches and a 1366 x 768 Super IPS screen, docking keyboard, SIM card slot, hdmi port, USB port all that kind of stuff with a proposed price tag of $599 - $799 and Windows 8 thankfully since Acer has stated that they want a chip that provides more speed than the current ARM chips like the Snapdragon or Tegra 3. I think this is an excellent deal and would really consider buying this over a traditional laptop. The Acer W710 is the "desktop replacement" and features a dock (no keyboard) that has 3 USB ports and no battery but is great if you want to plug in a keyboard use a wireless mouse, a larger 11.6 inch screen with a 1920 x 1080 capacitive 10 finger full HD screen, aluminum body chassis is a nice touch even if it might affect wifi a bit, a rear 5mp auto focus camera is a great touch and is about equal to the "isight" camera on the Ipad, and Dolby Digital Home Theater is real nice especially since Windows has a Virtual Surround Sound option if you dig deep enough in your sound card settings. The W710 is my favorite by far and is probably the better buy unless you are looking for 3G coverage via SIM slot and need a docking keyboard. Check out the videos done by the Verge 

 

      This is the Asus AIO (all in one) which is 18.4 inches and features a nice touchscreen and at first thought was being able to dual boot into Android and Windows but actually Asus called on Bluestacks and has a rooted form of ICS 4.0.3 with a toggle to go back and forth from Windows and "Android." Not much else except you can detach the screen much similar to the Acer model and use it as a 18 inch tablet which is only slightly more practical. Imagine going to work with that under your arm!!  

     Next up is the Asus 600 and 810 "transformer books'' which are really nice looking Windows 8 running Transformer tablets. Some of the main differences are of course one running Windows RT and one running Windows 8, the RT version is based on the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core chip which is an excellent choice especially the embedded graphics but has 2 GB of RAM instead of 1 GB so it can run Windows 8, also the screen on the ARM model 600 is of a lower Super IPS ++ 1366 x 768 instead of the 1920 x 768 and the Transformer Pad Infinity is supposed to be of an even higher resolution in the ongoing pixel war between the new Ipad and her competitiors. Mainly the specs are the same both sporting 8mp rear auto focusing cameras and a 2mp up front for HD video chatting. The Intel device runs on the Medfield chip and has an active digitizer layer which allows you to use a pen which is a whole lot more accurate than a regular stylus.

Best Iphone 4S Competitiors

I have been hearing many complaints from my base on my partially biased review on the Iphone 4S (biased toward Apple not Android) and have decided to do another review except showing the 3 main phone OS other than IOS which are Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7. I personally am a Windows Phone fanboy but today I am going to give an unbiased review of the top dogs of these respective phones.

#1 Android - Samsung Galaxy Note

     Android is the most popular phone/tablet operating system and the Galaxy Note is a wonderful combination of phone and tablet a.k.a phablet. One of the biggest detractors of the Iphone 4S is the small 4 inch screen. The Galaxy Note has a 5.3 inch screen which may be a bit big for your hands but ultimately comes with alot of perks including a S stylus, faster and more productive 1.4GHZ dual core processor, 8mp rear camera with LED flash and full 1080p video recording, Super AMOLED screen (Active matrix organic light emitting diode) which is far superior in quality and performance, and a suite of apps dedicated to the big screen and perfect for your stylus such as a solid note taking app and the Samsung touch whiz skin layer similar to the HTC sense UI. Also Android is growing quickly with approximately 500,000 more or less apps and games, and with the new Google Play store it features 14 million songs and 100 free songs with a new Google Music account, all the latest and greatest movies available for 24 and 48 hour rental for low prices, and google books has over 3 million books for all subjects and gets 5 stars for research papers especially on Azerbaijan! This is a solid choice even though the 2 year contract price starts at $249 depending on your carrier. If you need a ton of apps and a really large screen this is your best buy.

#2 Windows Phone 7 - HTC Titan II

     This was a very hard choice for me since all of the Windows Phones are the same. Microsoft has done a great job with their propiertary OS especially since it has surpassed Blackberry in 2010 in app count. Market share and carrier availability is low since almost all phones are on AT&T and all the other carriers except T-Mobile have only one. (T-Mobile has two). The big factors for the HTC Titan II is the biggest camera sensor to date a whopping 16mp camera with 1080p video recording, a large screen is also great at 4.8 inches, and all Windows Phones come with Office Mobile apps preinstalled (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and One Note), and it has 4GLTE functionality which the Iphone can only do 3G. The reason I chose this as number two is because Windows Phone has 70,000 apps to date and even though it got a late start among the 500,000 app count giants it still made 10,000 apps faster than anyone in the market even if they were not the first. Also it passed Blackberry in app count in May 2011 and is expected to pick up market share and app reliability when the launch of Windows 8 and WP8. The idea behind this is that you can synchronize your documents, apps, and files all on one account. With this idea developers will come and so will consumers. This is a great phone for $199 on a two year contract with AT&T only unless you buy one unlocked off of Amazon. Also Windows Phones are extremely cheap unlocked some going for $139 refurbished with excellent specs. 

#3 Blackberry - Torch

     This is the only touch screen powered phone by Blackberry and is the only phone on our list which is smaller than the Iphone at 3.7 inches. This is underspecced compared to our other competitors on the list bearing a 5mp rear camera with 720p hd recording, Blackberry 7 also BB10 upgrade able which features an Android emulator so you can run any Android app on your Torch, this is the first Blackberry that is all touch and is aimed at consumers and BYOD (bring your own device) establishments, and features the lowest price on our list at $179 on Verizon Wireless. The Torch is a big step in the right direction for the dying RIM even though they still have more market share than WP7 and has one of the most money making app stores around people do not will not buy it because it is a Blackberry. RIM has to learn how to stop scaring consumers and bring them into the "Bold Fold."

   Wrap-UP

All of these OS are very respective in all that they do and all have similar features that rival the boring IOS. Android features Google Voice Search which is much like Siri which you can ask questions and it will direct you to the right answer and can text by voice. Also live wallpaper brought in by Android 2.3 update is a beautiful touch to the boring row of apps in IOS. Windows Phone 7 has the most dynamic look of all the OS there is. Live tiles show you how many e-mails, messages, missed calls, and facebook notifications you have and are big and bold in color. Also Bing search acts alot like Siri and does the same as Google Voice but can also earn you Bing rewards with each search gathering prizes like $5 Amazon gift cards. Lastly Blackberry has a voice search client and a mostly boring but functional UI. I prefer WP7 since it has Office built in for free and all WP7 phones have 25GB free of cloud storage on Skydrive which syncs with your Windows or Mac pc.