News, Nokia

Nokia just announced a 7.9″ Android Tablet, the Nokia N1

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Nokia is estopped from making a smartphone till the end of 2016, but that hasn’t stopped the company from releasing a brand new tablet. Say hello to the N1, a brand new Android 5.0 Lollipop powered tablet. The tablet ships with a design that closely resembles the iPad Mini, and features top specs including a 7.9″ 2048 x 1536 IPS screen, ‘retina’ if you will. It is powered by Intel’s 64-bit Atom Processor clocked at 2.3 GHz and comes with 2GB of RAM. The N1 is crafted from a single piece of aluminum, and packs an all new reversible USB connector.

Nokia N1

The end result is that Nokia has a tablet that’s thinner and lighter than Apple’s iPad Mini, and better spec’d too. An 8MP rear camera, and a 5MP front facing camera are the other highlights. Coupled with its $250 price tag and the fact that it runs stock Android with the Z launcher on top of it, it makes for a very compelling device.

The only bit of bad news is that the tablet is expected to hit China around the Chinese New Year in February, and there is no word on where else it is headed for now.

Nevertheless the Nokia of yore is back, and if the tablet is any indication, don’t be surprised if Nokia holds a press event the day their embargo on smartphones lifts. Full tech specs and pictures below.

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Android, Apple, Applications, Tutorials

iMediaShare: A must have free app if you own a Smart TV

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The best part about owing a Smart TV is that you can play back locally stored content like photos, movies, home videos wirelessly on the large screen without moving a muscle. But sometimes the implementation isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Modern Smart TVs support technologies like DLNA and Miracast, and most newer phones can take advantage of these. All you need to do is install an app. While Android has a few more choices for DLNA apps that act as servers, the choice is slightly more limited on iOS. Most people just give in and buy an Apple TV. But you don’t necessarily need to do that if mirroring your iOS device isn’t the intention, but playing back photos, video and audio is.

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Enter iMediaShare, available both for Android and iOS as a free download.
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Android, Apple

Fix iMessage: Here’s the first thing which you should do after switching away from the iPhone

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A major annoyance when to move away from the iPhone is that you suddenly stop receiving messages. This happens because your friends’ iOS devices think that you still use an iPhone, so regular text messages are sent as iMessages, and thus never delivered.

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Fortunately there is now a fix for this. You can de-register from iMessage here. Apple’s been slow to sort this mess out, but better late than never. Continue reading →

Tizen

Demo: Active Share In A Tizen Powered Home

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A very cool demo of Active Share in a connected home powered by Tizen. You can starting watching a movie on the TV, that is stored on your phone and seamlessly transition to watching it on the refrigerator, and back to the TV when you’re done with the kitchen. You can also playback media stored on the phone wirelessly to the fridge or the TV.

The refrigerator that you see is a prototype based Tizen and Tizen powered TVs are expected to become commercially available in 2015.

News, Samsung, Tizen

Highlights: Tizen Developer Summit Shanghai 2014

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The story of Tizen has been filled with ups and downs. Just when you think that the OS ready for prime time, there is something or the other that prevents that. At first the Samsung and Google’s broad ranging patent agreement threatened to put a shadow over it, but at the last Tizen Developer Conference in June, Samsung took the wraps off the brand new Samsung Z. Since then it has also announced other Tizen products such as the Gear S smartwatch and NX 1 camera. It is another matter that Samsung decided not to release the smartphone, as the ecosystem to support it wasn’t ready yet. One advantage that Tizen does enjoy is that while Samsung’s smartphone efforts may be on the proverbial backfoot, it is also an OS for TV’s, cameras, smart homes and more.

Tizen Summit Shanghai

With that backdrop, we step into the Tizen Developer Summit, Shanghai. The Tizen Association just announced that 16 new companies have signed up, taking the total number of members to over a hundred. More highlights below.

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Android, Tutorials

How to tell your Android device you’re tethering from a portable hotspot and save data

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Data caps are a real thing now and the concept of unlimited data is a thing of the past. While manufacturers have realised this and implemented settings that restrict downloads/streaming to WIFI, there still exists room for improvement.

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Fortunately for Android users (at least ones on the newer versions) Google has added a setting where you can tell the device that the ‘WIFI’ connection you’re on is actually a portable hotspot, so it shouldn’t go crazy downloading Play Store updates or anything else that will consume copious amounts of data.

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