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Showing posts from December, 2011

Verizon Backs Off On $2 Fee For Payments

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What does Verizon Wireless and Bank of America have in common? Verizon Wireless is wisely backing away from the $2 fee set to be imposed on its subscribers, those who can least afford it, after foolishly thinking it could get away with this.  We are after all in the "Occupy Whatever" era with social media becoming a weapon of choice for consumers, vigilante hackers, and those who would seek to overthrown their governments. And what's interesting is that VZW learnt nothing from Bank of America's own bone-headed adventure to raise debt card fees on its customers. I think most readers, my fellow mobile warriors, will agree with me when I say that while the banks are getting a lot of hate from the general American public (or people of the world for that matter), wireless carriers come in  a pretty close second on this "dislike" list.

Galaxy Note Success Shows Any Screen Size Can Find A Market

The Samsung Galaxy Note is a 5.3" Android device with a stylus.  Forget what Steve Jobs and Apple feels about the stylus or the screen size for a sec.  Samsung, the current boogyman of the mobile war as far as Apple fans are concerned, has shipped (not sold) one million Notes and will bring it to the US market. Now, having said that, it's an incredible opportunity.  Would I want a 5.5" iPod touch or iPad?  I would not mind having a go at it and seeing for myself just how such an iOS device would fit into my mobile warrior life and I'm sure that there are many of you out there that are thinking the same thing and agree with me. Obviously, Apple's dogma to conform to the UI and experience likely is going to prevent this from happening.  Fine.  Still, smartphones to tablets with screen sizes from iPhone's 3.5" screen to the 10.1" Galaxy Tab are on the market. Apple has a commanding control of the tablet market for now and it has a respectable 30%...

Tablet: Apple Will Make a Sub-9.7” iPad

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Would you get a $400 (if we’re lucky, $350) iPad with about an 8” screen?  I would in a heart beat if we’re talking about having at least 16 GB of storage.  And I think Apple will make it so.  So, that means I am disagreeing with Steve Jobs on this point. Let’s refresh a bit.  Steve Jobs, a year and a half ago, blasted the 7” tablets that were just beginning to go on sale, in particular, the 7” Galaxy Tab from Samsung.  I would have to agree with Steve that that particular tablet sucked.  It was just a smartphone OS in a tablet.  And even today’s Honeycomb, Android 3, doesn’t measure up to what iPad’s iOS can do and, in terms of usability, doesn’t come close. However, we have to examine what Android 4 means.  So far, we haven’t really seen a tablet with Android installed.  I think it’ll be awesome compared to what we’ve seen from the Android camp so far.  And iOS 6 should look about the same as iOS 5 on the iPad.  But my point ...

Light Versus Moderate Versus Heavy Use

When I read reviews, good and bad ones, of mobile devices, one think I like to concentrate on is the battery life.  And with battery lives, it's very subjective.   There is no universal standard for this.  It is probably easier to do this on the iPhone and other iOS devices but not so with other mobile platforms that have more than one handset.  I'm talking about Android, Windows Phone, and whatever other platforms that are still left competing in the mobile market. So, I find it a bit irritating when reviewers talk about their moderate or heavy use.  I know that I've discussed this in passing on other posts regarding batteries and battery technologies, however, I feel these reviews are a disservice to the end-users of there is no concrete description by the reviews on what these subjective definitions of battery uses are. What has started me on this has been the reviews for Galaxy Prime and, before this, the battery issues that some iPhone 4S users have reporte...