The Resurrected Nokia

Nokia was the king when mobile phones have started filling the pockets of the young professionals. Existing side by side with the bleeper, it was the cream among other brands like Erickson, Sony and others. Always the first to introduce new features and amassed millions of fans and followers, among all walks of life worldwide.

With the emergence of other highly competitive companies, it seemed that Nokia has raised both hands to concede and embraced the fact that they can no longer sustain their popularity as once the ruler of the mobile world, or maybe they just  lay low for a moment whilst thinking of what other phones hasn't offered yet to the public. 

image from
Image from 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/mobile/emulator/?dcmpid=bmc-src-bing

Microsoft shared the same fate with Nokia, once the "only" software and brand preference among technology users has hidden and buried itself to the unsuccessful products like the internet explorer and the windows variants of operating system. But the emergence of the Windows 10 seemed like the future of Microsoft, as the top operating system and it's new Edge browser will bring the once taken away prestige back to where it was before.

The question is, will the taking over or merger of Microsoft and Nokia can bring the spark back to the pioneer maker of mobile phones and make the top guns of today's mobile brands a run for their money? What are the features that users missed from other popular brands? Here are some reasons why it could.

1. Windows 10 onboard

Windows is making a comeback, not only in personal computing on operating systems but also from internet browser, email client, VOIP(skype), digital personal assistant and many more. Imagine getting all this on your laptop and synchronising it to your phone whilst on the go would mean more productivity for less work.  This is also a great selling factor to people who like to work on familiar environment.

2. Simplicity

Big buttons(tiles) and intuitive menu are components of easy to use phone. Placing on calls, composing text and other messaging engagement can be a breeze with this design. Perfect phone choice for people who are just after the basics and surfing the net. But could be a let down to those who uses different apps a lot as Windows version might not still be out. This is not Microsoft's fault but the developers seem not having interest in making a Windows version yet.

3. Call handling 

There are times that we are tied up to something that it is impossible for us to answer our phone or just really not in the mode of starting a conversation. This phone has the ability to send a customized message instead of the usual conversation, thus saves you from the impression of being a snob.

Image from
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/mobile/emulator/?dcmpid=bmc-src-bing.

4, Essential Application

The mobile flat form is flooded with millions of apps ready to download into your phone. In reality, we just need a handful of them and the rest are just a pile of rubbish lining up with the hope of being downloaded. Popular applications might not have a Windows mobile version but this should not disappoint users as there are many alternatives out there.

Even paid for applications has a better alternative. You can also try a paid app before deciding to buy. But  to be honest, being minimalist in what we download to our phones is a good thing as the lighter the load, it is more beneficial to the phone's response time..

Image from 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/mobile/emulator/?dcmpid=bmc-src-bing.

5. Essential Features.

Windows phones will not shortchange you when it  comes to features. NFC, bluetooth, LTE, Wi-Fi, hotspot host, biometric sensors, removable memory and other essentials too long to mention here are available depending on the model you choose. You can visit this link to get a glimpse of the top of the line Windows phone at the time of this post.

6. Price.

Majority of the Windows phone are not that pricey like the top brands. In fact the selling range is very flexible, it can accommodate users from A to Z budget. The good news is, even the lowest specification  unit can be upgraded to have the trimmed down mobile Windows 10.

The Fire Phone

The latest buzz is official, the amazon's phone flagship has sailed, bearing the familiar name of a variant of it's successfully launched tablet. The Fire Phone, is set to compete with the big names of the mobile industry like apple and samsung. Will it set fire to the high tech departments apple and samsung already hold  or bring a new battle ground for amazon has been known for, price to beat functional and practical products?

So we skip the boring the same "standard" features of a smartphone and jump to the interesting "practical" things the Fire Phone is starting to set fire and aims to lead!

Dynamic Perspective

Loved 3D but do not want to wear glasses and head ache afterwards? First of it's kind, the dynamic perspective feature changes the "perspective" view of a picture by adopting to the location of the viewer's eyes. The phone has 4 camera sensors in front of the phone to do this trick. So the image moves in relation to the viewer's angle of view.

A better alternative to the existing 3D displays that makes the image alive by offsetting two image sources, a "stereo image". But if you close one of your eyes whilst viewing a 3D, this becomes 2D because the other  receiver (the other eye) is not conveying the other signal to the brain.

With the dynamic perspective, it can show you the same output, either you use one eye or two!

Dynamic Perspective Video

Free Unlimited Amazon Cloud Drive

Another outstanding freebie of the phone is the unlimited photo cloud storage. Amazon understands that a smartphone can not live on being smart alone. It needs an ample supply of storage to keep up with everyday use and snapping.

With other mobile brands, you may need to spend arms and legs to get this freebie. No doubt that snapping photos is usually the reason why internal phone storage is easily filled up. And free cloud storage is very limited. This is a selling point to frustrated smartphone owners that are having a problem with low capacity internal and free cloud storage.

Firefly

This is a feature of the fire phone's camera that can recognize anything. It's visual recognition ability can recognize a painting and tells you something about it by drawing data from wikipedia. Or scan an item and it tells you how much it is. Then directs you to Amazon marketplace in case you are enticed to buy it. It's voice recognition feature can give you the title of a song and other information. Text's are also recognised from an image, like a phone number or name and address. It also scans the usual barcodes, QRcodes and URL's.

See Firefly Button at Work

MayDay Button

This is the customer service of the the Firephone. If other phone manufactures let you ring a number for their customer assistents, this one is different. It let's you see the advisor in real time using a oneway video chat. This means you can see the advisor but she can not see you. You can ask any question relevant to the device and expect to be connected to an advisor  in at least 10 seconds or less.

The Mayday Customer Advisor

Random Smartphone Problems

My friends run into different problems with their smartphones this month. And as usual and being curious, I took a closer look on what's causing the problem. Though I am not really a techie person, I had some suspects on why their phones are behaving that way, and simple solutions that remedied the situations.

1. iPhone 5 on O2 network can not go online using mobile data

My friend told me that it was working fine but can no longer connect to the internet while on the move using mobile data. But it can go online using wi-fi connection. 

Her iPhone is showing 3G connection, and she told me that she has a data plan. In my opinion it should be able to go online, as her tariff has an internet allowance. Going into the iPhones APN settings (tap Settings, General, Cellular or Mobile Data, Cellular Data Network or Mobile Data Network) showed the correct APN for iPhone mobiles which is idata.o2.co.uk . Investigating further, she told me that the original tariff is for an android mobile phone that she just ordered a nano sim and ported the number of her original tariff to it. This made me suspicious that the problem might be the APN setting. We've changed the iPhone setting(idata.o2.co.uk) with the original android phone's apn setting (mobile.o2.co.uk) and it worked!

2. Samsung S3's SMS Problem

2.1. Can't send a text message 

Another friend is annoyed one afternoon when she cannot send a sms message to her son telling to get the house key from me because she will be out. A call might be a better idea but she is concerned that the mobile ring will make a disturbance inside her son's class. 

Every time she sends a message from her android phone, the phone says, "failed". It can receive a test message though. And she told me that she the problem just started a few days after one of her children played with the mobile.

What could be the problem?

 I went into the message settings of her android phone  and found out that the message center number is not properly set. It is only showing +44 and it should be at least 12 numbers. She doesn't know what happened but I suspected that somebody has accidentally deleted some of the numbers.

Going to the O2 website, we've updated the message center to +447802000332 and she was able to send messages again without running into failed message alert.

(go to message center by opening Messages, then touch the bottom left soft key and touch Settings, scroll to Text message settings, then tap Message Centre) 

The message centre for sms should automatically be set but if you run into problems with sending a text then it is best to check if it is set correctly. Below are the sms numbers from popular networks.

• 3   (three)                   +447782000800
• ASDA                       +447785014315
• O2 Pay As You Go  +44 7802 092 035
• O2 Pay Monthly       +44 7802 000 332
• Orange                     +44 7973 100 973
• Talk Mobile              +44 7785 014 318
• Tesco                        +447802092035
• T-Mobile                  +44 7958 879 879
• Virgin                        +44 7958 879 890
• Vodafone                  +447785016005

2.2 Long text message is converted into MMS

The fact that the Samsung S3 can only handle 160- character SMS at a time is annoying. If you exceed this, it will be converted into MMS(yellow boxed) and sent through the mobile phone network's internet service. The recipient should also have a smartphone with MMS enabled to read it. Or if you do not want to use MMS or your recipient do not have a smartphone, you need to stop and send your message after the 160th character and compose another with the rest of the message after sending the first one.

To solve this problem, you can download a messaging service app from the play store to get round this. One particular application is Go SMS Pro. This app has additional enhancements that can spice up the rather boring native sms application.

3. Battery is draining fast

Here's a classic smartphone problem, that I admit to continue have experience it from time to time with my S3 phone. With the built in settings to save the battery and other free apps that promise to extend battery life, why the smart phone is not smart enough to manage it's energy supply?

Here's what I have found out. You might be thinking of turned on wi-fi, bluetooth etc, although these contribute to the battery drain, but the real culprit is the handset is kept AWAKE at all time! Symptom for this is it loses it's battery power very fast, that you might need to charge it at least 2 to 3 times a day or more. See if you have an insomniac phone by going to settings then tapping the battery (1) then the battery level(3). You can see that the "awake"(4) entry is continuous. I also suspect that the AVG(2) is stalled or taking time to do what it's doing. You can also see a very fast discharge of more than half it's power in 4 hours.

What I did here was to force quit the application in question by going to Settings, Applications, then to the program in question then force quit(5), and restarted the phone at the end. See the difference of the second batch of screen shots taken the day after. It's been on for 15 hours. The awake button is intermittently turning on and off. You can see that when it is not awake(7), the battery level(6) is flat and when it is continuously awake (9) the battery has a very steep plunge(8).

5 Practical Points to Extend Smartphone's Battery

Have you been charging your smartphone more often recently? A friend of mine says her phone has been fully charged at the start of the day but need to charge it again in the afternoon. It seems that the phone just can't get enough of the mains supply and seems like her charger and phone are inseparable. I admit that I have frustrations as well in terms of power specially when I am on call. What worries me is that I might be getting called back to the lab when the phone is just dead! This makes me thinking of buying another battery perhaps. But what if the phone in question has its embedded battery? Maybe buying another unit is the answer. But before I spend anything, here are my observations why my phone battery is draining fast.

1. Low network signal.

I always get this when I am inside my workplace, and this gets worse when I move into inner corridors. Low signal (zero to one bar) strains the phone to continue looking for a better network signal and in the process draining the battery. Putting away my phone inside my locker whilst on also worsens the problem.

My simple solution to this is to put it into flight mode. This is simply because I am not expecting any personal calls during work and do not usually surf the web. However, if I am expecting a call, I usually divert it to my work phone's number and put the trigger as "when it is not available".

To do this, if you are on android, tap phone(1), then the left hand soft key button, call settings(2), call forwarding(3), voice call(4), forward when unreachable(5), then type in the phone number(6). Be sure to enable (7) before you exit.

For iPhone, go to settings, phone, call forwarding(tap on), then type your chosen phone number. 

iPhone users need to remember to turn off forwarding as there is not much option to choose from not like android that it can receive calls again when flight mode is off.

2. Mind the screen brightness and time out

According to the battery use application in my phone, the screen drinks the most power juice(1) , so most  self helps recommend turning the screen down or putting it into auto mode. But for myself, I find this very frustrating, as I can not see anything in a bright room or when outdoors. And also the fact that my vision needs a better lighting to understand what I am looking at. Outdoors is worst when you are at auto mode, you can not see a thing.

What I recommend is to set the screen setting to a comfortable level according to the user. To know what is comfortable level at every occasion is to set the screen brightness whilst outdoors! In fact when I do this, the maximum setting(2) is my comfortable level! 

Another self help tip is to limit the screen time out into the minimum, perhaps 15 seconds. With this setting, I am also frustrated.  Before I can read a line, the screen becomes black! I am more comfortable in setting it the longest and have set it up to 10 minutes, which is enough for me to read a mile long article without being frustrated.

To compensate for the lavish settings, my simple solution is to mind the power button. I just turn the screen off manually by a simple short touch (not too long that shuts down the phone) at the power button! Like driving a car, auto cars tend to use more gas than manual.

3. Mind your voice calls

This happened to me on several occasion. I called my home number but forgot to end the call. The difference in calling a landline is the call does not terminate automatically when the landline end ends the call. This means, the mobile phone is still connected. It is not only that the battery is being drained, but your calling allowance as well. So be sure to always press the end button when calling a landline. 

There's no problem in calling mobiles as the call is terminated automatically when the other end ends the call.

4. Mind connectivity buttons

These are the major culprits that most of the time I overlook. The wifi, bluetooth, and data buttons. Be sure to manually turn them off when you are out of coverage and not using the internet. Because just like low network signals, the radio buttons of these connectivity interfaces are more active in trying to scan and connect to an available network when there is low to no signal is detected. 

Practical rule for this is, if you are not using it (GPS included) or NOT able to use it (when at off coverage area), turn it off. Being on whilst not using them is pointless. 

5. Mind your browsing habits

I notice this to friends who has battery problems. They are most of the time online. This means the screen is on most of the time plus the phone's processor and ram to run the program. If you are like them and can't help being online, then you need to be aware that loading a page, listening to music, streaming you tube movies and looking at FB pictures use power. Battery power might be easily depleted according to how much you are doing online. So if you are a heavy user, turning the screen brigthness down might extend the battery life.

As much as possible, open only one window or tab at a time, and avoid multi tasking. You can also set your social network(1) and other applications like emails(2) that updates it's contents over the internet into manual mode. This means disabling the sync button. Do this by going into settings, then accounts, and tap the application (4) to change the settings . Live widgets (3)are cool but sometimes it is better to avoid using them when battery is the worry.

So is it just our smartphone habits that are keeping our phones to the charger? Or it might be time to buy a new battery or perhaps a new unit? 

Top Smartphones for the Bargain Hunters

If you are looking for a smartphone but put off by high prices, then read on, you are in the right page. Here are the top of the line budget smartphones from the top manufacturers, and ofcourse, without the high tag price that keeping you out from deciding to have one. Cheaper as they are does not necessarily mean that they can not give you most of the functions of the more expensive versions and will not lag behind in performance as well.

The Mini

Mini me's are becoming popular and for the latest handsets and brands. If you could not get the full blown version because of budget restrictions, then the mini's are the best alternative. If you are a Samsung fan, there is an available mini's of their top selling S3 and S4. The lower specs minis might be short on power, but they are more cute than their big brothers. The trimmed down overall size is more attractive to mobile users who prefer to operate mobiles with one hand.

Best Price for the S3 Mini

Best Price for the S4 Mini

Pay Monthly and Pay Monthly Upgrade = £25 to £26

Pay As You Go= NotAvailable

Unlocked £389

Best Price for the S4 Mini

Pay Monthly and Pay Monthly Upgrade =£15

Pay As You Go £249 + £10 Top Up

Pay As You Go Upgrade £229

Unlocked £259

The "Just Replaced" Versions

Nothing can beat the older version prices specially when a new  variant arrives. They can be cheap as chips, half price, or can be bundled with goodies and extras that are hard to resist. If you are patient to wait until a new variant becomes available, say at least 1 to 2 years wait, then you won't be disappointed. As the price will surely drop. Like the Samsung S3, for those who have waited, this is the time to get one . Now you can get it only for £17 per month monthly tariff from the original £35, or buy it SIM Free for only £287.95 from almost £400 tag price when it first hit the shelves. The catch is, you need to be hurry to get offers like this as they do not last long. Click on the photo below before it runs out!

The Cheaper Alternatives

They are always cheaper than the leading brands but can give users the same specifications and enjoyment, like the Huawei P6. At 6.18mm thickness, it is considered the slimiest smartphone in the world to date. Like the Samsung S4, it has a Quadcore processor running at 1.5GHZ, with 4.7 inch screen. Like the newest apple mobiles, it also takes micro-SIM card. If you like the looks and feel of the all aluminium frame of Blackberry Z10, then you will not miss it with the Ascend P6. It is constructed with aluminium alloy frame and back cover that gives it's very light 125 grams weight. It also has the essential connectivity of most smartphones like wi-fi, bluetooth, and hotspot function except NFC. I am not personally dismayed with this as I do not see much of practical application for this function at the moment. And at only £21 per month tariff with this new release, and a free silicon bumper cover included, it is a sure bargain.

Watch TV and Movies on Smartphones and PC's Part 2

Here's the second part of how to watch live TV on your PC and smartphone. If you've done the instructions on part 1 and already running XBMC media center, then install this add on. This will give you a tidier interface of watching contents like Movies, Television Shows, HD Content, 3D Content, International TV's, Live Streams, Sports and Events, Documentaries, Adventure and Children’s Content.  It is not native within the application so point your browser to 

http://superrepo.org/plugin.video.movie25/

You can use this link to use with laptop and smartphone. The key to no sweat installation is you know where the downloaded file is.

PC's and Laptops

 Download the zip file and remember the download destination. Don't do anything yet at this point. Open up XBMC and go to systems menu. Click the systems menu (encircled) or settings submenu, to get you into the add on browser, 

Click add-ons, install from zip file, C:(Systems) then navigate to where the downloaded file is. If you have not changed the default destination folder for downloads, go to this path, C:(system), users, click your user name, downloads, then look for this folder repository.superrepo.org.frodo.all-0.2.1

Once installed, go back to systems and click the settings menu, get add ons(1) then choose Super Repo(2). This will add mash up in the list of video add ons. Now go to Videos and hit add ons(3), click get more(4) and click mash up(5) and Install it. Mash up will then be ready to use. Click on it(6) to get into the interface.

Watch Live TV

Click live, then my country, choose which country to watch TV from. Existing channels will be shown. 

With mash up, you can now watch live TV. OFW's like me can now watch GMA 7 and ABS-CBN without subscription. The only downside is, you need to watch programs at the same time they are aired. Time difference might be a problem because you'll be up awake at midnight watching a show for a morning breakfast. For the OFW's this is for you.

Watch Video

The HTC One

I like HTC phone mainly because of it's internet passthrough function. Second factor is because of it's  built in sound system, beats by dre. So what's new with the HTC One that can entice mobile users that are already with apple, samsung, backberry and sony phones to get a second look and try HTC One instead?

The  Design

It's body is one of a kind in mobile phone world. It is made from lightweight aluminum metal body with zero gap construction that took 12 years to perfect. The edges are tapered for comfortable and sturdy grip. This makes it look more solid than other smartphones that are made of plastics and polycarbonates. It hits the scale at 143gms and has this dimension of 137.4mm x 68.2mm x 9.3mm. It's display has a decent  4.7 inch total viewable area and offers, full HD 1080p, 468 PPI.

The Innards

Buy Now for £33/month

 from CarphoneWH

Buy Now with £144 Cashback 
from DialaPhone

It is powered with quadcore Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor with clock speed at 1.7GHz, and paired with 2GB of RAM. This specs would run any apps like a breeze and the 4 cores will promise better multitasking functions without lags.  

It's powerhouse has an embedded battery with 2300 mAh capacity. A choice between two storage capacity of 32GB and 64GB is available. It doesn't have any micro sd card slot for expandable memory but the device can be connected into an external hard drive in case you run out of storage. HTC 

Equipped with the usual mobile phone connectivity like Wi-Fi, bluetooth, NFC, and DLNA for wirelessly streaming media from the phone to a compatible TV or computer with a suitable connection. 

The Interesting Bits

The sound quality is powered by Beats by Dre and this time it is more enhanced with HTC Boom Sound, a dual front facing speakers with built in amplifiers. Who needs speaker dock with this?

The HTC BlinkFeedTM, it's all new user interface, delivers a live feed of news, social networks, calendars and apps direct to the home screen and updates easily via Wi-Fi or network data. 

Your photo gallery will no longer be boring with just mere snapshots but "live" images taken with the smart HTC Ultra Pixel camera that captures  more than one image. HTC Zoe shooting mode automatically captures up to 20 photos and a 3-second video to give you the "live" feel when you are viewing it, so your entire photo album becomes a interesting and breathing gallery.

Always fighting which channel to watch and can't do anything because you only have one remote? Why not hide your existing remote and set up the HTC One's Sense TV so that it will work with your TV unit to select TV channels, access program guides, adjust audio and more with simple and easy to follow set up?

The Samsung Galaxy S4

The Galaxy range has wowed us in the past, specially with the S3 variant. It's sleek profile but large screen is more than enough to show us as much detail as possible of a page or a file. This time around, Samsung is ready to wow us again with it's latest discovery in the Galaxy range, the S4.

The looks

At first glance, aesthetically, there is no significant difference between the S3 and S4. They look the same, like twins. But if you take a look closer, or set them side by side, the newer brother is wider at 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm compared to the 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm S3. But despite it's bigger profile, it weighs less 3gms than the 133gm scale of the  S3's. 

This time, the display is made up of Full HD Super AMOLED screen(441 pixel per inch), known for crisp and bright rendering of colours that doesn't necessarily drains up power. And encased in a poly carbonate body known for robustness with heavy scratch resistant component but totally light on scales. And you can have a choice between black and white initial colour offering.

S4  and   S3    img src:
http://asset2.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2013/03/15/Galaxy_S4_and_S3.jpeg

The innards

The real difference and noticeable change come from what's within.  It initially ships with the latest Jellybean version 4.2.2, known to be sleek, fast and smooth like butter! 

The UK version's brain now consist of  a quadcore chip from Qualcomm's snap dragon family, four Cortex-A15 cores with a total speed of 1.6GHz, designed to do the complicated tasks, while the non UK variant has an additional four cores, which means 8 cores???. The second quadcore chip consists of Cortex-A7s clocked at 1.2GHz which will be used for less demanding work. The RAM also gets better this time with 2GB. And the device has plenty of storage to offer, the 16, 32, or 64 GB option plus an additional micro SD card slot that can take up to another 64GB. With the tremendous speed and performance, Samsung put in a removable Li-Ion 2600 mAh battery in it's power house. 

Interesting bits

Enticing the snappers of today is the installation of 13-megapixel rear camera, and 2-megapixel front camera. One fancy bit about taking a photo with this phone is, the one holding the camera can insert his image taken from the front camera with the photo being taken from the rear camera!  That's the dual camera at work. And a more interesting bit is the eye scroll software that can use the camera to track down the position of the eyeball, and the software automatically scrolls the page you are looking when the position of your eyeball reaches the bottom of the page.  This brings a new user interface, the eye control! Click video below!

video src: Cnet Youtube Channel

You can do magic with it's airview functionality, taken inspiration from the S pen that shows the content of a folder or a message by just hovering the pen over it, but this time without the S pen as you can use your fingers to do the trick.

Video Src: T3 Youtube channel

And more surprises

It is also equipped with the latest and fastest 4G LTE mobile internet protocol and the future NFC connectivity interface. Air gesture is another interface that users can use to place a call, or use the internet without touching it's screen. The text to speech application not only reads the message you type in but also translates it into several languages. Whilst you can take 2 simultaneous shots from the 2 cameras, you can also record the sound whilst taking the shots. The drama mode can take 100 shots in 4 seconds and it's up to you to decide the best or make a collage out of it. And if there are S4 users around, you can share this photos wirelessly using group play. As the name suggests, you can also share your games and play with other S4 users around the room. It can even use it's built in  InfraRed Led light to remotely control  compatible TV's, and set top boxes.

Where to get it

 Who wants one? At the moment, all you can do is to register and reserve from the vendor below and be the first to try it's S4 magic!

img src: carphonewarehouse

Smart Way to Choose Mobile Tariff

There are thousands of mobile tariffs available out there which is useful and good. But sometimes they are confusing and not easy to compare and making it hard to decide to choose which one is the best mobile tariff according to one's needs. Tailor fit tariff might not be really attainable but by choosing it simply according to what you do most can trim the thousand choices into a manageable and clearer level.

Just by jotting down what do you do with your mobile, your personality and the way you communicate and other  factors like the number of friends you have which are your regular contacts and the nature of your job also contribute to the decision which contract to have. Considering all of these factors will reduce your monthly out goings and that means savings for your pocket.

If you are a light user who doesn't fancy flashy smartphones and texting is the primary means of communication you make, opting for 500 texts with minimum amount of voice calls, usually 30 minutes in a month, and 100MB of internet will be sufficient. You can get this tariff cheaply for at least £4 a month. See deals here.

If you are a heavy voice call user, say at most 500 min per month usage, then add at least £5 to the £4, around £9 a month, can get you through without surcharges. You still get the unlimited texts and 500MB of internet in a month. See more deals here.

For internet on the go users the least price to pay per month for a 500MB of data, unlimited texts and 100 minutes voice calls is £7.13 cost effective. Cost effective means the total round off price of the total amount of contract less the discounts. The discounts usually are in the form of a cashback where in you need to send by post your monthly bill to a designated address and at a specific date. See more deals here.

If you are a smartphone conscious person and you are always looking for the best deal on smart phones, there are deals that can offer you free for a top of the range products, starting from £25 a month contract. There are also gift giveaways with these like laptops, tablet computing, games console, TV's and many more. Even if the effective costs of these purchases will be the same if you buy these separately, it is still a win situation because, it is like you have paid by credit card, paying on monthly basis but without the interest. Not like when you have paid by a credit card in one go and paying the balance every month plus the interest or by a debit card with no option but to splash the cash in one go.

See smart phone deals here.

 Choose your free gift here.

Practical thoughts

The cheapest tariff may not always be the cheapest deal to everyone, depending on the user's usage. A more expensive deal may still be cheaper in the long run considering what's bundled within the contract. Make sure that the voice call you take and other built in bundles with the contract is sufficient to avoid surcharges. Internet data could be very expensive when you have gone beyond your limits!

Look out and be careful for cheaper tariff on new fancy phones as they are usually bundled with the least voice and data bundles.

When a new device is on sale, it is the best time to grab the former best seller like the phones above. It pays  to wait until the new arrival comes.

Samsung S3's Interesting Features

The Samsung S3 has been around for a while and in fact, the S3 mini version is here, but still there are features and functions that I discover from time to time, which I find interesting and distinct exclusive Samsung S3 features.

Have you heard of the ....

Briefing Alarm

Setting up an alarm with your phone to wake you up in the morning is just a simple  task. All smartphones offer this and even the basic phones have it.  But the S3's alarm has gone a bit further. It will not only wake you up with a nice sounding alarm or melody, but will read you the news headline and the content of your calendar for the day.

To activate this go to the clock application, create an alarm (touch +) or edit the existing alarm, tap the alarm type and choose " briefing ", check the items you want to be as the contents, press OK, then press save.

Here's a video of the sample briefing alarm activated.

Zoom in on Faces

Viewing on photos taken from your smartphone sometimes is a pain, especially when you can not recognise the faces included in the scene because of distance or not so good lighting. With touch screen devices,you can just easily pinch out to zoom in and out but again you need to do this in every picture you wanted to have a better look at. The S3 has a feature to zoom in on faces within a particular picture. The zoom in on faces feature when activated,  lets you see the faces at a close up view during slide show playback, thus saving you time to tap, and zoom out every faces. It does this automatically for you. 

You can enable this by going to your gallery, select the folder where the photos you want to play,  tap play button, select slide show settings, tick zoom in on faces, then tap start.

The slideshow application then zooms in to the faces within the photo, and  making a random panning movement from right to left, top to bottom or vice versa. 

If you are bored of just viewing photos without any special effects, this will surely spice up your experience, especially when connected into a larger screen.

All Share Play

If you fancy sharing of contents from your devices without any wires, then this feature is for you. Anything from a photo, video, music, or document on your phone can be accessed by a tablet, smart TV,  a computer or on another smart phone running the application. You just need to activate both devices so they can share content and play and control it from the other device or vice versa.

Access a computer's content from your phone

You can even access a computer's content from your mobile device, as long as you are connected to the same wifi router. All you have to do is to tap on the all share icon on your S3, then nearby devices, and the name of the devices you want to access. You can access multimedia files like photos, music, and videos.

I have chosen the music file above and to play the content that is in my laptop from my mobile, all I have to do is to tap it, see video below.

Access and control files from another phone.

By screen casting, your S3 can control the playback of another S3's content and vice versa. To do this, both handsets, or all of the handsets involved is connected into the same wifi router.

On the file source phone, tap the all share button, the name of your device, choose which type of file(in this example, I've chosen photos) you want to share and tick them, tap the share button and select group cast, enter a PIN to make your connection secure, then press done. Wait until your files are being converted and after that, press OK.

On the remote phone, tap all share play, then tap the left soft key (left of home button) and tap join group cast. From here you can see the list of shared items, tap it and enter the PIN you have provided in the source device. You can now see the content shared and interestingly, when you scroll through the photos, the other device's screen also scroll it's contents. You can also annotate as you view the photos.

To help you do this trick you can watch the  video on how to set up the source and remote device below.

My thoughts

These features are distinct to the Samsung S3. Some are very useful and some are just there to show the advances in technology that the Samsung S3 can offer. Exploring these features makes the phone interesting each day of using it. This makes it less boring as one can discover and learn a trick or two everyday.

 Have you learn any of the S3's distinct functions lately? No matter how big or small, it is worth sharing and I love to hear from you, too!

The Samsung Note 2 Meet Up

I was invited to see the Samsung Note 2 at the Engine Building at Oxford Circus last Thursday. There was a handful of us, though I've expected many turnouts, but it was not the case.  It might be because of the short notice for the event and the other's work commitments. There were 5 chaps already waiting at the lounge when I arrived. Everyone looks very young, and I felt like the "kuya" among the group.

They sent us up to the 5th floor to wait for the others. And while waiting, there were refreshments available. Four more  young looking lads joined us. After finishing 2 cans of fizzy drinks, the guy from samsung get started with the Samsung Note 2.

 I do not own the Note 1 myself so I did not know what to expect or even what to ask about. The guy from samsung started to talk about the device and the improvements from the earlier design.

The upgrades and downgrades from Note 1

Note 2                                       Note 1

This phablet, a crossover between a phone and a tablet, is almost similar in size with the note 1 at 151.1 mm length x 80.5 mm width  x 9.4 mm thickness. With its bigger but slimmer frame than the original Note, it weighs a little more and tops the scale at around 180 g. It may be a turn off for those who can  not fit the device into their back pockets because of the massive size but those who are fun of crossbreeds between a phone and a tablet would be happy to own this, as it can do all a smartphone and a tablet can do. Creatives will like love this even more,  with the new onboard native apps and hardware.

Battery

One significant upgrade comes to the battery. It is now a 3100mAh capacity which promises a more than sufficient energy to power up the phone and any power hungry applications you can run on it for longer hours. An advantage over to regular smartphones that can be out of breath after playing HD game, surfing the web, watching movies or using productivity applications.

Camera

The Galaxy Note 2’s rear camera comes the same as the Note 1 with 8-megapixel, and surprisingly the front camera is downgraded from 2 to 1.9-megapixel. Nevertheless, the powerful and exiting part on photo processing comes from the software that bundled with it. 

The samsung guy has demonstrated a feature called best face on the device. The idea is to capture a burst shot and choose the best face for the subject. It is like choosing a better looking face from the burst shoots to a specific photo frame take. 

And with the built in photo software, you can virtually flipover the back of a photo and write down or annotate something at it like an ordinary photograph.

Display

This might not be a good news to those upgrading to the device, but samsung decided to dropdown the resolution  from 1,280 x 800 pixels (285ppi), to 1,280 x 720 pixels (267ppi) on the Note 2. However with the slight difference, I could not exactly notice any difference if there's any. The screen is made up from a HD super Amoled screen.

 Processor

Note upgrade begins from the processor. It has quad core processor and 2 GB of ram compared to the dual core and 1 GB original. This specs could measure head to head with a full spec pc or laptop computer.  With the massive computing core, one would guess that the apps and programs embedded into the device are powerful as well. 

Software

The new device is powered by the latest Android OS 4.1, the Jelly Bean, which is said to be the fastest and smoothest version of Android yet. The response of the phone is very fluid, it feels like turning a book's page when swiping from a screen to the next one or launching and switching between applications.

Storage

The external removable memory capacity has doubled up to 64 GB. Another good news to those who download digital media or photo snappers using their smartphones. The internal storage capacity comes on  3 variants from 16, 32, and 64GB. A total storage of 128 GB is possible with this new device.

S-Pen

The mighty S-Pen has a level of 1024 different pressure sensitivities. This is useful in drawing something. It makes your work quicker as you do not go back and forth into the menu to change the colour or thickness of the lines you are using. 

Hovering the S-Pen over folders will activate airview, which can give you a preview of the contents without actually opening it. 

Going to the exact video clip is also easy, just hold the pen over the timeline of the video and you can preview the contents in small popup screen while the same movie is playing. 

My thoughts

One of the features I am personally impressed is the use of the S-Pen and the programs that run with it. As you take out the stylet from the side of the phone, the applications that use the stylet pops up the screen automatically. This saves you from opening up the apps when you want to write something, draw something, etc.

Second is the ability to program a gesture touch within the device to bring up a function or application. Gesture command is a promising help for the visually impaired users to use the device confidently and productively without any help.

Next is the bundle of software that comes with it. Creativity differs from person to person, but the S-Pen and brilliant software within the device will surely motivates the artist in you, no matter what's the level of your imagination. You can always easily experiment and become creative with it's new tools.

Where and when you can buy from?

The Samsung Note 2 will be available August 1, throughout the UK.