ZTE Open: The First Firefox OS Based Smartphone is Here!

July 8, 2013 By ishayat Leave a Comment

Firefox is all set to compete with the likes of Android and iOS with its very own Firefox OS for smartphone. The first smartphone featuring the Firefox operating system, ZTE Open, will be available this week in Spain for only $90 (69 euros). Mozilla did say earlier that they are planning to release cheap Firefox OS featured phones but we weren’t expecting a $90 price tag. Let’s see if the first Firefox OS based phone is worth trying or not.

Firefox OS

The user interface looks quite similar to iOS and Android’s user interface. There are four main function buttons in the bottom of the screen to access phone, messages, email and browser. You can customize these icons if you want. Applications are also arranged on a grid style like we see on other smartphones and users have to scroll left and right to see other installed apps.

All the commons apps like music player, camera, photo gallery, video player, FM radio are available in the OS. Some third party apps are also available like Facebook, Twitter, Accu Weather, Poppit and other necessary apps can be downloaded from Firefox Marketplace. The app store is not filled with apps which is going to be a big challenge for Mozilla if they really want to compete with Google Playstore or Apple App Store.

Hardware

The ZTE Open comes with 256MB of RAM and 512MB of on board memory. It’s not good enough to run a phone without lag but this phone did quite well in the short test. All the installed apps worked quickly and the touchscreen was also good. It’s good comparing to the “Gingerbread” running phones. However, these are just entry level phones so don’t expect the high-end smartphone like smoothness from it.

Specs

The first Firefox OS based phone features a 3.5-inch HVGA TFT touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, 4GB microSD card and other common features like FM Radio, email reader and built-in Firefox web browser. Apps like Wikipedia, Time Out and Huffington Post are already available in the app store but you have to wait for a while to get all the popular apps from other stores.

Price and Release Info

Mozilla’s first Firefox OS based phone will be available at an attractive price tag of $90 (69 Euro) in Spain and Telefónica is launching the ZTE Open with another Mozilla OS based set from Alcatel called One Touch Fire. “This is just the beginning as we plan to bring a wide range of Firefox OS devices to our customers”, that’s what the CEO of Telefónica España, Luis Miguel Gilpérez said when launching the device. It’s not confirmed yet when Mozilla is planning to release them in other markets.

Some more Firefox OS based handsets are also on board and big companies like Sony and LG are currently working on it. If you are not interested to try the Firefox OS in an entry level handset, you can wait for the upcoming Firefox OS based high-end smartphones.

Make Your Android Keyboard Look Cool and Colorful

July 7, 2013 By Satwant Singh Leave a Comment

Are you bored of those simple looking keyboards of our Android device? Need something new and cool? Then let me tell you guys that our Android Market has everything anyone desire for (well almost). Yes, there are a number of different keyboard apps present in the market. And in this article, I’ll be talking about the best one I use, the “NeoKey: Neon Keyboard”.

The NeoKey Neon Keyboard makes your android device’s keyboard look beautiful and colorful. You can customize your phone keyboard with different colorful themes available like Blue Neon, Purple Neon, Green Neon and Pink Neon. It is very easy to switch to any of the Neon theme and the keyboard is really easy to use.

Getting Started:

Download this app from

Once downloaded, install the app and launch it. You’ll see a “License Agreement”, accept it by tapping on green accept button at the bottom.

Now tap on “Enable KeyNeon Keyboard” option on the main screen of the app.

You’ll see some instructions to follow. Read them (if you want) and tap on “OK”.

Now as it was mentioned in instructions check the “NeoKey Keyboard” option.

You’ll see an “Attention” message that this app will collect all the text you type like passwords, credit card numbers etc. Tap on “OK” and you’re Neon Keyboard will be enabled.

Now to make the Neon Keyboard as default keyboard, tap on “Select NeoKey as Default” option on the main screen of the app.

Select on “NeoKey KeyBoard” and done. Now your default keyboard is set to NeoKey Keyboard.

You can select themes from “Select Keyboard Theme” option.

There are four themes available for you to choose. Choose the one you like and tap on back button. The theme is set.

The four themes are shown below with screen shots:

Blue Neon:

Purple Neon:

Green Neon:

Pink Neon:

To disable the NeoKey Keyboard, tap on “Disable NeoKey Keyboard” option on the main screen of the app.

Users have loved this app, and rated 4.5 out of 5, which you can see from their comments in the screen shot below.

Over all it’s a great app for Android users to get a cool and lovely keyboard. So what are you waiting for? Grab this app from right now and show off to your friends. Readers are warmly welcomed to comment their views about this app below.

Make Your Android Device Look Like Windows Phone

June 28, 2013 By Satwant Singh Leave a Comment

Are you bored of your Android UI? Want something new and fresh on your Smartphone’s screen? You have seen Windows 8 UI on Nokia Lumia 520, haven’t you? The Windows 8 UI is so different than Android or iOS and has a refreshing feel around it. In this article, I’ll show you how to make Android phone look like Windows Phone.

Android market is full of various amazing apps. And one of those is “Launcher 8” by developers “QiHang Dev Team”. This launcher is best to experience the Windows 8 UI on your Android Smartphone. It’s a smooth and beautiful customizable launcher which will give you proper feeling of having a Windows phone.

The “Launcher 8” is available for download on . I don’t think I need to tell you how to install this app. But I’ll certainly show you how to use it.

Changing the look of Android phone with Launcher 8:

Full Windows 8 UI:

Just like Windows phones, your Smartphone will also have a Windows 8 UI.

Add Different Size Tiles:

The sizes of tiles are adjustable. Just hold the tile for a while and you can change the size of hat tile by tapping on arrow at the bottom right of the tile.

Save and Restore the Theme:

There are various themes available for you to download. Go to menu and tap on “Theme”. Now tap on “Save and Load”. If you swipe left or right, you can download and save various themes.

Edit the Start Screen Layout:

You can also edit the layout of the screen. Go to menu and tap on “Edit”. Now you can adjust the layout and other settings.

Set the Current Background Style:

The Background style and color can be adjusted. From menu, tap on “Themes” and then on “Background color”. There you can set the color “White” or “Black”. You can also set the “System Wallpaper”, which you can adjust from “System wallpaper” option under “Theme” options.

Switch the application list style or grid style:

If you swipe the home screen from right to left, you will see all the applications in the list style. You can set style to grid from menu.

Hide apps:

You can also hide the apps. When you’re on list view, choose “Hidden apps” from the menu. From there you can select the apps you want to hide.

Add Android widgets in the Tiles:

From the main screen, go to menu and tap on “Add”. You can add widgets, apps, shortcuts and a new folder.

Set the wp8 style lock screen and status bar:

Again go to “Theme” option in menu. There swipe from left to right and you’ll see “LockScreen” options. There you can set the Launcher 8 lockscreen and manage other related settings like Lockscreen wallpaper, font color, sound, password and styles.

You can also set the Status bar from there. Tap on “Statusbar” and then on “Notification app”. There select the apps you want to receive notifications from.

Select more than One Hundred kinds of Theme Colors:

You can also set the colors of the tiles from “Theme” options.

Add special features tiles, like tile time, flashlight, pictures and contact photo:

There are some special features to add. Go to menu and tap on “Add”. Now tap on “Add others”, there you can some special features like OneKey Locksreen, Time tile, Live Contacts, Live Gallery, Flash light etc.

Overall this launcher provides various amazing features just like original Windows phone. For more information, visit here. Did you successfully made your Android phone look like Windows phones? Feel free to hit the comment section for any help or questions.

How To Enable Swipe Delete In Gmail Android App

June 15, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash Leave a Comment

The official Gmail app is definitely one of the best Android apps from Google. The official Gmail app provides loads of cool feature. Swipe gesture is one of such awesome feature. The default setting is that when you swipe over an email in the Gmail app, it gets archived. As you know, archive is not deleting the mail. If you like a quick access to delete the unwanted mails, you can change the settings to use swipe to delete an email.

In this tutorial we’ll see how to enable swipe delete in Gmail Android app.

Enable swipe delete in Gmail Android app:

Follow the steps below to change the swipe action:

Step 1:

Go to the Gmail app in your Android phone. Go to the settings options. And then go to the General Settings option i.e. Settings->General Settings.

Step 2:

In General Settings look for Archive & delete actions. By default it is set to Show archive only.

Click on Archive & delete actions and change the option to Show delete only.

That’s it. You can go back to the inbox now. Now if you swipe (left to right or right to left), it will delete the email. Of course you will have the option of ‘undo’ just after the swipe delete so that you can revert your actions.

I hope the tutorial helps you to enable swipe delete in Gmail Android app. Questions, suggestions are welcomed.

Google’s 10 Android App You Should Be Using

May 19, 2013 By ishayat 5 Comments

If you are a new Android user who is looking for some free but not malicious apps for downloading, Google might have some great free apps for you covering almost everything from music to document organizing and other stuff. Here, we have gathered 10 best android apps from Google just for you.

Google Now

, an app which is often compared to Apple’s Siri, is a complete search application with some cool tricks up its sleeves. It can monitor your Google calendar and then show you the current traffic condition and a navigation option to the appointment’s location which is a really unique feature. It can also prepare cards according to your needs. It’s the best search app available at the moment that can give you a fast and easy way to find what you need on the web.

Google Drive

is a free file storage and sharing app with ~~5GB of storage~~ 15 GB in total together with Gmail and Google Plus where you can store all your files and share them with others easily. You can upload your images, videos, documents and other files directly from your Android device and share them with your contacts. Google Docs, another popular app from Google is now a part of Google Drive.

Google Maps

is a complete map application for Android with navigation feature. This app also features detailed maps with 3D buildings, GPS navigation with turn-by-turn instructions, live traffic information and other useful stuff. If you want to quickly find a good place to eat or retail stores near you, Google Maps is what you are looking for.

Google Translate

If you use every now and then from your PC, you can do the same now from your Android phone. You can use your voice, handwriting or camera for translating and save your favorite translations if you want. However, the offline translation feature and camera input works for Android 2.3 and above devices only. The app currently supports translating text and speech between more than 70 languages.

Chrome Browser

is known as one of the fastest web browsers out there and now it’s available for your Android device. It looks quite similar to the desktop version and also allows you to open an unlimited number of browser taps. This app also features accelerated page loading, browsing in incognito mode, scrolling, and history syncing from your other Chrome browsers to let you pick up browsing right where you left off.

My Tracks

is a GPS tracking application that can monitor and record your path, distance, speed and elevation while you are hiking, biking, running or doing other activities. It can also announce your progress while recording and show you your data live. Once you are done recording, you can share your data with friends or export it to external storage.

Google Play Music

is a great app for music lovers that make it easy to play, share and discover music they love. There are two ways to get access, All Access service (US) and Standard. Using the new All Access service, you can access to millions of songs on Google Play, create custom radio using your favorite songs and get smart recommendations. However, the unlimited streaming of millions of songs is only available in the USA for now.

Google Current

is a Flipboard like app where you get all the latest news from popular publishers in a beautiful magazine-like way. You can save stories, add your favorite blogs and feeds, get breaking stories and scan unread stories quickly using the fast scan feature. It’s a great app to get fresh news right on your Android device. This app is also known as one of the best apps from Google.

Google Goggles

is an image recognition application that can search by taking a picture. You just have to point your mobile’s camera at a painting or what you want to search and Goggles will try to look for it in its database. It can also read text in different languages and translate it for you. Users can also use it as a QR/barcode scanner, Sudoku solver and text scanner using Optical Character Recognition.

Google Keep

is a notepad like app where you can store whatever comes on your mind. Create a checklist, create notes with photos, voice or text and get access to them from both desktop and your Android mobile. All your voice notes can be transcribed automatically and you can keep it as a widget in your homescreen to get quick access.

I hope you liked this list of best Google apps in Android. Which one you like the most?

Recap: Things You Should Know From Google I/O 2013

May 17, 2013 By Arshdeep Singh 3 Comments

So yesterday was Day One of Google I/O 2013 and most of you might have watched the entire keynote or even attended it. It was held at Moscone Centre in San Francisco. Android reached 900 million activations in 2013 which was 400 million in 2012. Google Play Store hits 48 billion app installs also revenue generated for developers is increasing at an incredible rate.

There are many other big announcements let’s check them in detail:

New APIs:

This time Google announced three new API’s these tools help developers to make great applications and even existing ones better. Basically API helps to determine location of the operator of device in various ways whether by using GPS, network or Wi-Fi so to make this even better they added new APIs named as: Fuse Location Provider, Geofencing and Activity Recognition feature. Fuse Location Provider helps to acquire location more swiftly and uses 1% less battery per hour. Second one is GeoFencing it allows developers define a virtual fencing around a particular area and find location of user easily. Third one is Activity Recognition Feature it helps to track physical activities, it senses whether one is walking, cycling, driving and will do it without even using GPS which saves a lot of battery juice.

New Android Studio for developers:

This year’s I/O is largely focused for developers taking this into care Google launched new Android Studio, an integrated development environment based on IntelliJ platform. It has great interface in which a developer can see how his/her application will look like after development and on even different screen sizes. Android comes with live code updates and even font changer tool too.

Google Play Games Service:

We all heard lot of rumors about Google releasing Play Games which is no more a rumor but it is officially live. This Game service is available on cross platform too means you can enjoy gaming with your friends those are on iOS and web. This service offers cloud save feature means syncing game saves, statistics, leader boards, achievements, matchmaking and even multiplayer across various devices. Multiplayer feature is managed by Google Plus means other person should have a G Plus profile.

Google Play Music All Access:

Basically Google Play Music All Access means ”radio without Rules” and it focuses on music discovery when user clicks on single track Google will recommend playlist and radio station based on your selection. This service is currently available in US but will soon come to UK and more. This service comes at price though i.e. $9.99/ month but if users in the States signup by the end of June they will receive for $7.99 only.

Stock Samsung Galaxy S4 is real:

Google launched Samsung Galaxy S4 with stock Android providing all updates thus giving it a Nexus like feel plus Google will sell the 16GB version of the device in Play Store which comes 4G LTE, unlocked bootloader and will be available for $649 from June 26^th in US only.

Google Plus New Layout:

Google Plus got a major overhaul new layout, new design, auto Hash tags, auto- awesome photos, new stream and new hangouts. It’s been two years that Google launched Google Plus since then it didn’t get any major update. Google Plus now has support for three columns with lot animations. This layout fits itself according to the size of display and chooses the best viewing mode. Hangouts got a separate application available on iOS, Android and Web from now only. One can see when new member joins and even see when one is typing and this hangout now saves history. Hangout now replaces you GTalk on your device.

This is not the end of the story:

There are many more things and new services which are launched at this Keynote and yet more to come in coming days. Some of the other new updates are: one tap Checkout Button means if you want to buy something in store then you need to simply tap the purchase button your payment and address will be automatically added from wallet information. Google Play for Education here applications will be made for students, teachers and related to education. Google Now got new cards and reminders some new services are announced which you will get to know when you will use it major added features are knowledge graphs and more. Google Maps will get Zagat Integration this includes 5 star rating for restaurants, hotels, cafes, bars and more.

So these were some major announcements at Google I/O yesterday. So did you guys liked it or not do tell in comments below.

Note: All Images hold their respective rights.

Motorola X Phone visits FCC, Looks Like Early leaks

May 13, 2013 By Arshdeep Singh Leave a Comment

Here is a quite surprising and head cracker move for all other companies that have been fighting to make their device faster than one another, Motorola’s X Phone model number XT1058 made a visit to the FCC recently as reported by TechCrunch.. Motorola was earlier bought by Google for Billions and since then they have not even released a single device yet.

There are the sketches of the device and they closely resemble the earlier leaked X Phone which was leaked by @EvLeaks earlier this month. Phone is found to be of AT&T carrier and had LTE bands of the carrier.

If we closely look at both the devices in above pictures we will notice similarity in both Motorola Logo one and sketchy one such as position of camera, flash. Even the speaker grill is at same place also the position of Logo of device. Also the placement of headphone jack and even Lock/Unlock button is same.

All we have to do is wait for Google’s annual I/O developer conference which is rumored to show off the refreshed Nexus 7, a new chat system rumored as Babel, new Google Maps, New refreshed Nexus 4 probably 32GB as a new smartphone will probably is not for this year. Android 5.0 notebooks, a Google smartwatch and a Google TV is also expected this year.

Now Carry Your World of Knowledge & Information With eBooks

April 26, 2013 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

The world is converting into a digital space rapidly. It has been more than a decade that the culture of eBooks has become popular among readers. EBooks or electronic books are digital forms of books, which are otherwise available in the printed versions. You can save them in more than one mobile device, such as eBook readers, smartphones, iPads, Palmtops etc. There are several advantages of eBooks; you can save uncountable numbers of books in the device depending upon the storage space, carry them with you anywhere you go, and read them anytime you want. Let us know more about these eBooks in details.

History of eBooks

With a view to decreasing the number of books the pupils carry with them to school, Ángela Ruiz Robles, a Spanish teacher from Galicia patented the first electronic book in 1949. This is the official starting of eBooks. Now the eBook industry has become a multi-billion dollar marketplace, where major players like the amazon.com are coming with numerous innovative approaches. You can find thousands of books under more than thirty broad categories of eBooks. The most important aspect is the price factor. Where the traditional books cost you up to some hundreds of dollars each, the eBooks are available with minimum price, even in cents and some are completely free of cost.

Development

The concept of eBooks has greatly impacted the associated software and hardware technology. A whole new range of applications and devices are developed specifically keeping in mind the eBook adaptability of consumers. Amazon, Google, Sony, Apple Inc, and others have come up with their own innovative marketing models to extend the best possible reading experience to the readers, with more and more new and prominent entrants marking their strong presence.

Advantages

Advantages with eBooks are many. People now have better and smarter option of creating and owning their own digital libraries. The technology has opened up a hope to restore the old heritage of mankind by creating eBooks of ancient manuscript, which after few years may get ruined. Now you can get a copy of the rarest of the rare manuscript – which is impossible to get in the physical form. Other advantage is the variety; starting from text books, epic stories, novels, biographies, to health, travel guides, and many more, you can create a complete collection of reading stuffs.

The biggest of all is the environmental concern. Imagine thousands of books consisting of millions of pages are saved in an eBook reader that rests on your palm. Management, maintenance, cleanliness of space for such a big volume of collection is other area of concern.

Disadvantages

Apparently no disadvantage; however, some readers do not get the same feel reading eBooks in a mobile device that they get while reading a printed one. Compared to the advantages, the disadvantage seems to be nothing.

Practically speaking, eBooks are the future of knowledge and intellectual endeavor of smart readers and a readily available source of information at all time. School and college students, researchers are definitely the ones to reap the most benefit. In the coming time, better readers-friendly technology and devices will make the reading more fun.

Author Bio: Mohit is a seasoned online marketing professional with more than 7 years of experience. He also writes on various topic of his interest including technology, computing, Internet marketing, SEO, telecom, ecommerce, and many more.

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