How To Activate USB Debugging Mode In Nexus 7 2013

December 1, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash 4 Comments

If you want to root your Nexus 7, one of the main prerequisite is to enable the USB debugging mode. If you don’t have USB debugging mode activated, you might see an error like this when you try to reboot bootloader:

abhishek@itsfoss:~$ adb reboot bootloader
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
error: device not found

How to activate USB debugging mode in Nexus 7 2013:

While I performed this quick tutorial in Nexus 7 2013 WiFi model running Android Kitkat, I think similar steps can be performed on other Android devices as well. To activate USB debugging mode in Nexus 7, follow the steps below:

In your Nexus 7, go to Settings->About Tablet->Build Number
Tap 7 times on the build number. This will enable the Developer option
Go back to the main screen of Settings. Move to the bottom and look for Developer Options.
In Developer Options, move down a bit to find USB Debugging option. Check it to activate it.

That’s all you had to do to activate USB debugging mode in Nexus 7 2013. Next time you connect to your computer you’ll prompted with a message about allowing USB debugging with the connected computer. If it is your own computer, check on Always allow to avoid future prompting of this message.

I hope this quick tutorial helped you to enable USB debugging option in Nexus device. You might want to check how to unlock bootloader of Nexus 5 tutorial. Any questions or suggestions are most welcomed. Enjoy

NVIDIA’s Tegra Note 7: A Great Gaming Device For $200

November 25, 2013 By ishayat Leave a Comment

NVIDIA has recently surprised us by unveiling its very own tablet with Tegra 4 inside. Finding a good tablet is nothing difficult nowadays but finding an affordable one with good specs can be difficult. Google’s Nexus 7 has been doing a good job as a $200 tablet so far but now NVIDIA is ready to compete with the $200 tablet with its Tegra Note 7. We saw Tegra 4 in a handheld gaming console called “Shield” before but now it’s time to see how NVIDIA presented the Tegra 4 in its own device.

Hardware

The Tegra Note 7 doesn’t look attractive comparing to the Google Nexus 7. The front looks too plain while the back looks busy because of its three-segmented look. There are total 6 open places, microSD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro-HDMI port, micro-USB port, a holder for optional smart cover and the stylus holder. The colors look washed out when you compare it with the sharp display of Google’s 7-inch tablet.

7-inch tablets are currently ruling the market and NVIDIA is now ready to be a part of this market with its 7-inch Tegra Note 7 that features 1280×800 IPS LCD Display. The tablet includes a quad-core Tegra 4 chipset as mentioned before blocked at a single core clock of 1.8GHz. The tablet took advantage of the latest NVIDIA tech called DirectStylus and comes with a Stylus unlike the Google Nexus 7. Moreover, the tablet weighs 320g which is huge comparing to other 7-inch tablets. The Tegra Note 7 is wider and thicker than the Nexus and is heavy too. However, NVIDIA wanted to focus more on the gaming part so let’s see if they managed to do so by making it less elegant or not.

Software

The NVIDIA tablet comes with Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 out-of-the-box and also promises to release Android 4.3 update next month. When users take out the Stylus, they will see two new apps, a drawing app or a note-taking app. The best part of this stylus mode is its human touch disabling feature. You can disable human touch when drawing so that your touch doesn’t ruin your drawings.

The tablet is also preloaded with apps from the maker itself and a special camera app aside from the Stylus apps. The Google KitKat update (4.4) is also on the way so its great news for Android lovers as lots of existing Android devices won’t receive a KitKat upgrade. Other notable features are 5-megapixel rear camera, 0.3 megapixel front camera, 1080p video capture support, 1GB RAM and 16GB internal storage.

Performance

As mentioned earlier, NVIDIA tried to focus more on the gaming part and it really shows when you spend some time with the Tegra Note 7. The high-end Tegra 4 chip with 1.8GHz Cortex-A15 cores manage to handle apps and games faster than the Nexus 7. You will notice the difference when loading apps and performing your usual tasks. Its battery life is also not bad. You can expect to play games for 4-5 hours, watch standard videos for minimum 9 hours and expect to pass 2-3 days without charging if you don’t use your tablet every now and then.

The stereo speakers on top of the device works perfectly when watching movies or playing games. It’s not good enough to give better performance in noisy environments but there are always headphones to help you in such places.

Overall, if you are looking for a good tablet to play games or if you look at the device hardware-wise, it’s good. If you are ready to overlook the cheap build quality, you can give the Tegra Note 7 a try.

Nexus 7 Follows Eric Schmidt to India! Available for Rs 15,999

March 26, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash 1 Comment

It seems Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s visit to India is followed by more good news. Google’s flagship 7″ tab, Nexus 7, is now available in India. The product is available in Google Play and can only be ordered online which is very unlike the traditional way of buying retailers in Indian market. But keeping in mind the trend of online shopping in India, especially the urban youth, the ‘online only’ selling should not harm the sales.

The price tag for 16Gb Nexus 7 is Rs 15,999 (excluding shipping charges). Though the product can be ordered starting from today, the website says that it will only be shipped by 5th April. Here is a quick look at the specifications of Google Nexus 7:

Google Nexus 7 Specifications:

Screen

7” 1280×800 (216ppi)
HD IPS

Dimensions

198.5 x 120 x 10.45 mm
340g (WiFi Only), 347g (32GB + Mobile data)

Cameras

1.2MP front-facing camera

Connectivity

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth
NFC (Android Beam)

Processor and memory

16GB or 32GB internal storage (actual formatted capacity will be less)
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 quad-core processor

Features

Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)
4,325 mAh battery
Accelerometer
GPS
Gyroscope
Microphone
Magnetometer

5 best tablets under $200

March 12, 2013 By ishayat 2 Comments

Tablets are getting very popular nowadays and are working as an alternative to notebook and laptop for full web browsing experience, watching movies and playing games. It is easy to find good and budget friendly tablets now and here we are going to talk about 5 great tablets that are available for under $200.

Google Nexus 7

Nexus 7 is the perfect $200 7-inch tablet with almost everything you expect to see in your tablet. The tablet comes with Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB internal storage, 4,325 mAh battery and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system for buttery smooth performance. This thin, light and portable tablet is good enough for playing all the games available for Android tablets, watching movies and to enjoy full web browsing experience. This great budget tablet supports 8 hours of HD video playback, 10 hours of web browsing or e-reading and 300 hours standby time. If you are interested to buy the 3G version, you have to pay an extra $99.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD

is another 7-inch budget friendly tablet that comes with attractive HD display, Dolby audio with dual-driver stereo speakers and ultra-fast Wi-Fi. The second generation of Amazon’s Kindle Fire offers 7-inch HD LCD display, Dual-core 1.2GHz OMAP 4460 processor, optional 16 GB or 32GB storage on device and battery offers 11 hours of continuous use.

It’s great for watching movies, reading and surfing the web. However, if you want to enjoy big games like The Bard’s Tale and Shadowgun THD smoothly in your Android tablet, you should go for a Tegra 3 tablet.

Barnes & Noble Nook HD

Nook HD is a good $200 from Barnes & Noble that offers brilliant HD display and extra-long battery life that supports up to 10.5 hours of reading and up to 9 hours of video. The 7-inch screen supports HD 1440×900 display which is bigger than Kindle Fire HD, 1.3Ghz dual-core processor (more powerful than Kindle Fire HD), Wi-Fi, 4,050 mAh Li-on battery and optional 8GB storage. However, it’s a tablet under $200 that supports expanding storage using Micro SD card slot.

This budget friendly tablet runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich but it’s heavily customized. Moreover, you won’t find any Google apps inside the tablet and it struggles when playing heavy games or apps. Nook HD is not the best tablet available under $200 but you are going to love it if you love Barnes & Noble products.

Acer Iconia Tab A100

Acer Iconia Tab A100 is an old 7-inch tablet that offers HDMI-out and expandable memory option like Nook HD. This tablet offers a full Android Ice Cream Sandwich experience and also features NVidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, 5-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi. The tablet comes with Honeycomb out-of-the-box but is upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0

If you are a Samsung fan, you can try the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. The tablet offers a nice Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich experience, dual cameras, PLS LCD capacitive touchscreen, Dual-core 1GHz processor and Jelly Bean operating system. It’s better than the Kindle Fire HD if you want the extra features like microphone, Bluetooth and expandable storage. It was available for $250 earlier but now it’s available for $200 in some places.

The Biggest Tech News Stories of 2012

December 2, 2012 By ishayat 2 Comments

Like last year, the stories that captured the attention of all the major tech news websites this year were mostly about Apple and Google. After following hundreds of stories, we are presenting here ten biggest news stories of 2012 for us tech geeks.

Angry Birds Space NASA announcement (8 March)

Rovio unveiled a new version of Angry Birds called “Angry Birds Space” this year in the most unique way possible. The company enlisted National Geographic and NASA as their launch partners for Angry Birds Space and released a video where we saw the first ever game announcement and gameplay footage from space.

Samsung Galaxy S3 (May 3)

If you are into smartphones or technology in general, then you might already know that this year was all about Samsung smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been a blockbuster hit since its launch back in May and broke sales record by reaching 20 million in just 100 days. The company also released Galaxy Note 2 and Ativ S this year but when it comes to the “biggest news stories” of this year, the Galaxy S3 takes the cake. The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has sold more than 5 million units worldwide.

LinkedIn Hacked (July 3)

2012 is considered as a bad year for online security breaches as we saw some high-profile security breaches in big companies like LinkedIn, Yahoo and Last.FM. The security breach at LinkedIn resulted in 6.46 million user passwords leaked and the security breach at Yahoo! Resulted in over 450000 account password leaked.

Google Glass: Live Video Skydiving (June 27)

Google demoed its Project Glass with a crazy stunt that is considered as one of the most insane thing done at a tech event. The company showed live video skydiving with Google Glasses during their Google I/O event. Our next big news is also related to this event.

Google Nexus 7 (June 27)

Google Nexus 7, the best-selling Android tablet ever is our big news no 5. Google unveiled this cool tablet at its I/O developers conference and released it in July. The 8GB version was available for only $200 earlier but now the 16GB version is available for the same price. The device comes with Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage for only $199. Google also released the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 this year but the Nexus 7 is a complete package with an affordable price tag.

Ouya Android Gaming Console (July 3)

Ouya is a new Android based gaming console that is planning to enter in the gaming console market soon with an attractive price tag of only $99. Julie Uhrman, CEO of Boxer8 announced Ouya on July 3 and started a Kickstarter campaign on July 10 to see how many people are actually interested. The project was an instant hit and the fundraising goal was raised within 8 hours.

Microsoft changes logo after 25 years (August 23)

Microsoft released their very own tablet this year, Surface and a new operating system, Windows 8. But we are not counting those as a big news story as the company also did something surprising, they changed their logo after a long 25 years. The new logo matches with their new tile-centric Metro interface.

Apple vs. Samsung Patent Case (Verdict August 24)

Apple has filed a number of lawsuits against Android device manufactures like Motorola and HTC but the company’s patent case against Samsung is considered as the patent trial of the century. The case began on April 15, 2011 and the verdict came out this year on August 24. The jury found Samsung guilty of infringing Apple’s patents intentionally and awarded Apple $1.05 in patent case.

Apple iPhone 5 and iPad Mini

Apple released the long awaited iPhone 5 and the 7-inch tablet, iPad Mini this year. The internet was filled with iPhone 5 and iPad Mini rumors before the release of these devices and now they are creating news by breaking sales record.

Google’s October 29^th Tech Event Cancelled

After Google I/O’s keynote presentation, we were really looking forward to see what Google has in store for us this time. However, Google cancelled the big Android event due to Hurricane Sandy. They unveiled all the new gadgets and Android 4.2 “Key Lime Pie” in a blog post.

Google unveils another Nexus phone, larger tablet and 3G Nexus 7

November 7, 2012 By ishayat 1 Comment

Apple has recently released the iPhone 5, a new 7-inch iPad called “iPad mini” and iPad 4 and now Google is ready to compete with Apple with a new Nexus smartphone made by LG called the Nexus 4, an iPad-sized tablet called the Nexus 10 made by Samsung and 32GB Nexus 7 with 3G option. The search engine giant rolled out these three new devices last week with the latest version of Android operating system, Jelly Bean 4.2. The company unveiled them in an official blog post as the special event was canceled as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Let’s see if these devices are really worth adding to your holiday shopping list or not.

Google Nexus 4

The Google Nexus 4 made by LG is here to replace the aging Samsung Galaxy Nexus so let’s see if the latest Nexus smartphone is offering a massive upgrade or not.

The LG Nexus 4 is actually heavier than the old Nexus smartphone at 139g while the iPhone 5 is only 112g. The new Nexus smartphone offers 9.1mm thickness while the old one was 8.94mm and the iPhone 5 is only 7.6mm. However, the iPhone 5 features only a 4-inch LED-backlit IPS screen with 326ppi and 640×1136 pixels while the Nexus 4 features a larger 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus screen with 318ppi and 768×1280 pixels. If you compare the LG Nexus 4 with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, it’s not really a massive upgrade. But if you compare it with the iPhone 5, LG Nexus 4 is clearly the winner here.

Now it’s time to see what these devices are offering under the hood. The Nexus 4 offers a major hardware upgrade with an outstanding 1.5GHz Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB RAM. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is still capable of handling the apps released nowadays but Nexus 4’s hardware is one of the best by today’s standards. I am not comparing the LG Nexus 4 with the iPhone 5 as the old Nexus phone is still good enough to compete with the latest iPhone.

Both the Nexus devices offer a pure Android experience. However, the LG Nexus 4 will be the first smartphone to offer Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with new and upgraded features. Other notable features are: 8MB rear-camera, 1.3MP front camera, SlimPort-HDMI, Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi and a 2100mAh to power up the device. Where the latest smartphone really shines is its affordable price tag. The Google Nexus 4 will be

available in the Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, UK and US on November 13 for $299 (8GB) and $349(16GB) unlocked version.

The Nexus 10

After the huge success of Nexus 7, Google is ready to enter in the 10-inch tablet market with the Nexus 10. Apple is also ready with the new iPad 4 so let’s see if the Nexus 10 is ready to compete with the pricey iPad 4.

The Nexus 10 is Google’s first 10-inch tablet and is the second tablet in the line of Nexus tablets. As Samsung is the manufacturer behind the Nexus 10, this tablet features a different design to the previous Nexus 7 made by Asus. The iPad 4 and Nexus 10 are not available in the market yet so I am just going to compare the specs of both devices here. The Nexus 10 comes with a complete 10-inch WQXGA screen with 2560×1600 resolution and 300ppi while the iPad 4 features a 9.7-inch IPS LED screen with 2048×1536 resolution and only 264ppi. Both iPad 4 and Nexus 10 have good processor but the Nexus 10 comes with 1.7GHz processor while the processor used in the iPad is only 1.4GHz. Moreover, the Nexus 10 features 2GB RAM instead of 1GB RAM, two NFC chips, a front facing sensor with more MP and still weightsless than the iPad 4.

If you are not worried about your budget, the iPad 4 is available with three different storage options,16GB, 32GB and 64GB with optional 3G. On the other side, Google is only offering Wi-Fi versions at the moment with 16GB and 32GB storage options. The Nexus 10 is available for $399(16GB) and $499(32GB) and the iPad 4 prices start at $499 so the Nexus 10 is clearly the winner here.

3G Nexus 7

After lot of rumors and speculation, the Nexus 7 3G is finally here with bigger storage. And that’s not all; the 16GB ‘Wi-Fi only’ version is now available for only $199 and the 3G 32GB Nexus 7 will be available for $299. People who are not interested to buy the 3G version can look for the Nexus 7 32GB Wi-Fi only version in a range of retailers.

Apple’s iPad Mini is here: Everything you need to know

October 25, 2012 By ishayat 1 Comment

After months of rumors and speculation, Apple has finally taken the wraps off its long-rumored gadget, the iPad mini. It’s two-thirds smaller than its very popular 10-inch iPad and is lighter and thinner than its competitor, Google Nexus 7.

The new iPad mini “isn’t just a shrunken-down iPad, it’s an entirely new design,” that’s how Phil Schiller unveiled this device at the special event in San Jose. Let’s see if the long-rumored device has managed to fulfill the expectations of the Apple fans or not.

Features & Specs

The new iPad mini comes with a small 7.9-inch screen like its name suggests with 4:3 aspect ratio unlike the other 7-inch tablets out there. It’s two third smaller than the current iPad but offers the same resolution as the iPad 2, 1,024×768. The best part of this resolution is, you can enjoy all the apps ready for the iPad and iPad 2 right away and the developers don’t have to modify their apps. However, there were rumors about no retina display in the rumored iPad mini and it turned out to be true. If you are a retina display fan, you may not be satisfied with just 163 pixels per inch (ppi).

The new device sports an A5 chip, the same one used in the iPad 2 and the latest iPod Touch. It has a front-facing FaceTime camera that supports HD FaceTime calls and a 5-megapixel rear camera that comes with the same iSight technology we saw in iPhone 5. The latest iPad mini also includes the recently unveiled Lightning connector that we saw on the iPhone 5. Apple claims it to be “Every inch and iPad”. Other attractive features include Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity, iOS 6, Siri and 10-hour battery life to enjoy all the other features.

Availability and Pricing

Customers can order for their new iPad mini from this Friday and it will be available on the market from November 2. The iPad mini starts at $329 for the Wi-Fi only 16GB version which is only $30 more than the current iPod Touch. I was expecting to see a price tag of $250-$300 to compete with the likes of Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7 so I was really disappointed to see a $329 price tag. Apple used their old pricing strategy here. This is the only thing that disappointed the analysts. Erik Gordon, professor of University of Michigan told Bloomberg News, “At $329, it won’t draw people from Kindles and Nooks”.

Some analysts believe it was a chance for Apple to step on “the throat of Amazon and Google” but the company decided to follow its old pricing strategy. This is the same strategy they applied 10 years ago when they tried to compete with the cheap MP3 players with the original iPod.

The iPad mini is about $100 more expensive than the current leader of the 7-inch tablet arena, the Nexus 7. The iPad 2 also costs around $399 which means it could be the end for the iPad 2. Apple also unveiled the 4^th generation iPad in the special event in San Jose.

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