HOUR 2:
Tech News & Commentary
Richard in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “I want to change my Moto Razr phone to a smartphone and I want to find out which one would work best for my use. I’d like to be able to surf the web, check e-mails, and basically the things I use my computer for. I’d like to have the newest phone available and the one with the best features. Can you give me advice?”
One of the first questions to settle is, are you choosing a network and then seeing what phones you can get, or are you choosing a phone and then you’ll go to whatever network that phone requires? Because it’s difficult to answer your question without knowing how you’d answer ours.
Let’s start at the top, though, with the smartphone that most acknowledge really fueled the fire for the current generation of powerful app-running handheld computers that we call phones–the Apple iPhone.
The current generation of iPhone, the iPhone 4, offers features like the Retina display, a gyro plus accelerometer for advanced motion sensing, sleek industrial design with a stainless steel and glass case, and the iOS with all of its apps and multi-touch display with pinch to zoom. A 16GB iPhone 4 is available at both AT&T and Verizon for $199.00 with a new 2 year contract.
When it comes to Android phones, your choice comes down to the size of the screen vs. the physical keyboard. Generally speaking, the models with sliding keyboards do not have as large of a screen as do the models offering only a virtual keyboard. Examples of the large screen models are the Droid X on Verizon and the HTC Evo on Sprint. Keyboard sliders include the Droid 2 on Verizon and the HTC Evo Shift on Sprint. The Droid X has proven to be particularly popular, with its 8 megapixel camera, 4.3 inch display, swype virtual keyboard long battery life (for a phone with such a large screen, anyway). The Droid X is available for about $149.00 a new 2 year contract.
The Samsung Galaxy S line made second spot on TIME’s ‘Top 10 Gadgets’ of 2010 list. Samsung Galaxy S phones includes Captivate, Vibrant, Fascinate, Showcase, Mesmerize, Continuum and Epic 4G. Although all the Galaxy S line smartphones are good, the Samsung Epic 4G with its QWERTY feature adds an extra touch. The Epic 4G is available on Sprint for $199 with a new 2 year contract.
But all of that is changing right in front of our eyes! New phones are being unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. Dave Graveline and Rob Almanza are at the show this week, working hard to get interviews with the innovators in the mobile world. You’ll want to listen to all of this show’s interviews and then tune in for sure again next week to hear the balance of them. I know, for example, that Samsung rolled out the new Galaxy S II phones with even brighter Super AMOLED screens and dual core processors for maximum performance. Find the “best” smartphone could really be said “best today, and watch out for tomorrow!” Good luck, Richard, and let us know what you choose.
Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Rickey in Columbus, Ohio listens to the stream on the iPhone App and Podcasts asked: “I have a Macbook Pro, a Dell laptop and a custom built computer, along with an iPad and iPhone. I want to know if there’s a way to sync all of my contacts through Outlook with Google Contacts so I can sync them to my phone and my iPad and keep them synced across all of my computers. Hope there’s an answer that either free or cheap.”
Google has their Google Sync program available for download and its completely free. You can use it to synchronize your Outlook contacts and calendar with your Gmail contacts and Google calendar.
On the Mac side, the email and calendar apps that are included with OS X both support Google accounts for email, contacts, and calendars. By using Google as your synchronize point in the cloud, you should be able to stay good with your contacts and calendar across platforms.
Mark uses Thunderbird as his email client on both Windows and Mac OS, and Thunderbird add-ons to give him direct access to his Gmail contacts and Google Calendar. First, he adds a calendar to Thunderbird by installing the Lightning add-on. To synchronize my Gmail contacts with Thunderbird’s address book, he uses the add-on “Google Contacts,” and to use his Google calendar from Lightning, he runs the add-on “Provider for Google Calendar.” All of these add-ons are downloaded and installed from within Thunderbird itself by using the Tools, Add-ons menu command.
Horatio on our staff found several third party options to help you sync contacts, if you don’t like the Google program, the most popular one seems to be GSyncIt, but it costs $20. Then there’s GOContactSync. GOContactSync is open source, you can choose to be prompted when there are conflicts or you can set who “wins” the conflict (Google or Outlook) everytime, you can choose to sync both ways (Google to Outlook AND Outlook to Google) or one way only, and pick how often you want you want the contacts to be synced.
Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.
Mobile World Congress Reports…
| HOUR 2 GUESTS | ||
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| Dave Kennedy, President – appMobi | Philip Vanhoutte, EMEA Manager – Plantronics | Jeremy Forrester, Sales Engineer – Opera Software |
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| Rob Almanza interviewingfoursquare CEO Dennis Crowley | Calisto Smart Speaker Phone with Bluetooth Mic from Plantronics | Powermat Charging Consolein GM’s Chevy Volt |
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| LG Optimus 3D Smartphone(known as G-Slate in the USA) | D Camera on LG Optimus 3D Smartphone (rear camera) |
Dave playing with Samsung’sGalaxy Tab 10.1 – He loves it! |
Carol listens to the stream via the iPhone app asked: “I heard you say on a show a while back that you found an app for the Android that switches Bluetooth off and on without going through several screens. Do you know if there is one for the iPhone?”
Yes and no! Our App Developer Horacio tells me that Apple tightly controls what they do and do not allow on the App Store and they will not make bluetooth controls available to developers through their official software development kit.
What that means for you is that you will not find a bluetooth shortcut on the official App Store, you can however get a bluetooth shortcut if your iPhone is jailbroken.
There are seveal apps that provide shortcuts to bluetooth, wifi, 3G, the phone service itself and several other iPhone features that can be turned off to increase battery life, the most popular one these days seems to be SBSettings, which works with at least iOS 4.0 and 4.1 (we’ll see how it fares with the new 4.2), but different ones come out sometimes and they all do almost the exact same job.
If your phone is not jailbroken, remember that jailbreaking is not illegal (and that comes from the US government itself), but Apple will not help you fix your phone if you brick it during the jailbreaking procedure, and that your jailbreak will most likely go away whenever a new update comes out if you install it, forcing you to go through the process again every time you update your phone.
Some jailbreakers consider that the extra functionality is worth the inconvenience, but if all you’re getting out of the jailbreak is an easier way to reach the bluetooth on and off switch, it may not be worth it for you.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Intuit: TurboTax Deluxe Online — Several Pre-Paid Codes
Radio Shack: Several Weather Alert Clock Radios with SkyWarn
RCA: Several travel chargers with surge protection