I am a 21 year old Games Development student with an obsession with the latest technology, so I thought by starting this blog I may be able to cure myself of this disease. My plan is to give my views on smartphones, smart watchs, tablets, laptops and any other tech that I think is worth writing about. I’m not going to give full reviews or anything as I won’t have units to test unless they are my own and then I may be a bit biased. Thanks for reading and I hope you like the blog!
Flagships 2015: My Thoughts
So we are truly amid ‘Flagship Season’ with the newest android phones competing with each other. Most recently released to the public are the HTC One M9 and the Samsung Galaxy S6/S6 Edge, and LG are hot ontheir tales with the LG G4 being showcased on April 29th, the fight for the best Smartphone 2015 is really hotting up! Now I think I mentioned in a previous post that I own a LG G2 myself and I find it to be a fantastic phone, though I wouldn’t be a mad fan of the software (still running KitKat with the LG skin over it) but the addition of a launcher solves that issue for the most part. So one would think that I would be excited for the G4, but I find myself underwhelmed by the thought of upcoming release. This is mostlydue to the rumored leaks of a slightly curved screen and the plastic build, now I do not mind the plastic build, I could get over that once it has a nice finish to it, but I just can’t get my head around the look of a curved screen, I’m sure it is comfortable in the hand but I have a habit of typing on a desk so I imagine it’ll rock all over the place! It is possible that I could eat my words when I see the G4 and I could love it ( has happened before). So we’ll just have to wait and see.
Onto the S6 which I must admit is a vast improvement over the S5 where design is concerned, the S5 was just plain ugly in my opinion and the look and feel of Touchwiz on KitKat has never been attractive! The glass design of the S6 is a great addition and makes the phone merit it’s flagship status in my opinion, the overhaul of the Touchwiz interface was also well overdue, I think the material look which it adopted from Android Lollipop looks much more polished and professional and though I have not seenit for myself Samsung have claimed that they removed the bloatware that comes with the phone which is also a welcomed bonus! Android Authority made the statement that the S6 Edge should have been the flagship model for Samsung and I agree with them, it adds something new and unique to the Samsung line and this design should have beenshowcased as their flagship and not as an add on as it seems to be! The curve really makes the phone seem like it is all screen and the additional features seem useful, but I do wonder how cases are going to look and feel on this phone and whether you will have to sacrifice the look of this phone in order to add the protection of a case? But overall I think the S6 and the S6
Edge are very much in the running for one of the best smartphones this year.
In a previous blog I noted that I am not a fan of HTC phones, never have been since I got the HTC Wildfire S, now of course HTC has improved 10 fold since that phone but my distaste has not gone away. I know that the HTC One M7 and the M8 were brillant phones and a lot of people I know have and love their variants of the One, but I won’t be running out to buy one any time soon! The announcement of HTC One M9 did not change my mind about this range of phones, it looks very similar to the M8 and I think the silver with the Gold line is horrendous but I have not seen it in real life so maybe the two colours look better together in real life but they do not photograph well together that’s for sure! I understand that people that love the design of the M7 or M8 will be more than happy with the M9 but is it enough for them to change their phone? That is the question. I have no doubt that the M9 will be near the top of the best smartphone lists but it will remain a non-runner for me!
These is no clear cut best flagship of 2015 so far anyway, I am excited to see what OnePlus release as well as LG who have mentioned a phone that is above the G series, so that is something that may cause a stir to the competition and of the course the Note 5 and the next iPhone are going to make this an interesting year for the consumer where smartphones are concerned.
DalyTechNews over and out.
Android vs IOS
Let me just say from the get go I am neither hardcore Android or Apple, but since watching the Apple keynote on Monday I have this urge to go back to Apple. I remember the first smartphone I had was the HTC Wildfire S and any time I had more than 20 messages in my inbox it would stutter and freeze, so it’s safe to say my first experience with android was not the best. So for my 18th birthday I saved up enough money to pay for a white iPhone 4S and I treated it like a child for the first few months, I loved it! Unfortunately I left it in a taxi after a night out over a year later and never got it back (still makes me sad to this day to think about it) I got a secondhand iPhone 4 to replace it and I never liked it for some reason, this was when I started to look at the new android phones with their big alluring screens. I decided to sell my iPhone and got myself a new phone and it was going to be an android that’s all I was sure of! I started reading and watching reviews of the latest android flagships, I quickly decided that I didn’t like the HTC One or the Samsung S5, I know the HTC is a great phone but it has never appealed to me and I do not like Samsung’s Touchwiz. I came across the Nexus 5 and after watching many reviews on it I decided that this was the phone for me, but when I went to purchase it from the Google Store it wouldn’t accept my card and next thing I was getting a call from my bank asking about fraud so I took this as a sign that maybe I should look again! I came across the LG G2 and loved it as it was somewhat like the nexus with the added quirk of the buttons at the back which intrigued me, so that’s what I ended up with and what I still have now. I must say it’s a very nice phone with a great design, I love the thin bezels that make the phone seem like it’s all screen, I’m not mad about LG’s skin over android, some of the features are just overkill and the notification center is downright ugly! I do like the Knockcode feature for unlocking though. After 6 months I started to get bored with the layout so I started messing with launchers and icon packs ( I haven’t messed with custom ROMs as of yet as I’m sure I’d screw it up in some way). I do like the ability to change the look of ones phone completely from day to day on the androids but I am pretty OCD about the way it looks so I hate when one icon isn’t part of the pack and looks out of place! So this is why sometimes I miss the simplicity of IOS, there’s no worries of icons looking out of place but that’s because you can’t change them I guess! In an ideal world I would have both an iPhone and an Android but alas this isn’t an ideal world, so I have to choose one from the other and at the moment I am very swayed toward the iPhone 6 plus, I get the advantage of the big screen and IOS that I was looking for with the 4S. The new Samsung S6 edge does look very promising but as I said earlier I’m not a fan of Touchwiz but I may wait until the G4 is announced but from the rumors I’ve heard it’ll have a curved screen and I just do not like the look of that so that may be a no to me.
Let me know what you use, is it android or IOS?
DalyNewsTech over and out.
So what about that new MacBook?
I know that this is maybe the most talked about thing for the last couple of days and most people are tired of hearing about it but I want to give my two cents on it. After watching the Apple keynote I was impressed by the effort they put in in order to make the thinnest MacBook to date but after reading more about it my disappointment grew, who would want to pay $1299 for what seems to be a glorified tablet? As this new MacBook has an Intel M processor it will not be able to handle much more than web browsing and watching videos, while I understand that this is all that some people need a laptop does the MacBook really warrant spending that amount? Not for me, in any case if you are able to sacrifice a couple of mm in thickness you can get a an i5 processor in a MacBook Air. I have to admit the gold does look pretty fantastic! I have no doubt that this MacBook will be a success and millions will buy it, but I won’t be one of them. I think that only having one port will be something that most people will be able to get over as 3rd parties will jump on the bandwagon of making cheap adapters allowing multiple connections.
While I am on the subject I may as well talk about the new Apple Watch (why not the iWatch?). I am on the fence about smartwatchs in general, at first I thought they were amazing and I really wanted one but as more came out I realized how little I would use one if I had it as my phone is never really out of reach. I can see the necessity for some though, as my boss used his to accept necessary calls or hand them over to someone else, it is a god send to him but for the average Joe I’m not too sure of the use. Anyway I digress, the Apple Watch is just another smartwatch in my book, it can do what the other smartwatch can do and adds a few small features such as the hap-tic feedback and sending drawings to other Apple Watch owners, but these are just neat add-ons not a necessity. Now I am not a sporty person so the fitness features of the Apple Watch are of no interest to me but I can see that for someone who cycles or runs a lot that a smart watch would be useful and that the Apple Watch is as capable as any other smart watch. So all in all the Apple keynote was a disappointment in my eyes but the innovative features they used in the new MacBook are impressive and I do think that if they can add these to a laptop with more processing power that they will really be onto something.
DalyTechNews over and out.
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