Flipboard Coming Soon For Android?

Samsung’s Galaxy S3 seems not to be the only launch today on a rather eventful Thursday. The most popular reader, ie Flipboard might soon be readily available for Android devices. Flipboard is a famous RSS reader in a totally magazine like unique way for iOS devices. Over couple of months we have totally loved spending our time reading feed of our favorite sites on Flipboard, and it seems like the experience is just about to get broader. The Galaxy S3 is launched with a unique and exclusive version of Flipboard which we are fairly sure would be on the Market very soon. Remmeber that Google has also launched its own RSS feed reader called Google Currents which not to mention did not do too well in the market. The Android version would also enable the users to add a Flipboard widget on their desktop unlike the iOS version. Here is an exclusive shot of Flipboard working on a GS3.

Lock Your Folders On iPhone With Folderlock

It’s definitely very true that people want privacy in whatever they do and so it is very obvious that people using the iphone would love to lock up their secrets in some application or in this case a folder. There are several ways for you to password-protect applications on your iDevice, but what if you just want to password-protect your iDevice’s Folder? FolderLock, an iPhone tweak available for $1.59 in the Cydia Store will let you do just this but it will be free in the other repo’s.

Not only does this tweak help in locking your Folders but, FolderLock also allows you to lock your iPhone’s Spotlight search feature, and your multi-tasking applications drawer which opens on double clicking the home button. If you’re looking for a fully firewalled password protected system for your iDevice, i would probably recommend staying away from FolderLock for now, and to download something like Locktopus. There is no icon added to your SpringBoard with this tweak, and FolderLock settings can be configured in your main Settings.app. To install this tweak you need to follow the steps given below: Open Cydia on your jailbroken iphone. Let the data load. Once the data is loaded go to search and type in “FolderLock”. It’s free in the IHR, insanelyi and sinfuliphone repo. Select it Install it. Respring or reboot your device. You are done to use it. If you know any other tweaks similar to this one or any other tweak which you might think would be useful to iphone users please let us know.

Ice Cream Sandwich And Gingerbread Popularity Rising

One of the biggest issues we have with Android is the lack of same version of Android running on all the devices. For example, there are plenty of phones out there who are still running an Ancient version of Froyo on them. However, with Ice Cream Sandwich Android has definitely tried to get a measure of this problem so that most of the phones run the same version. However, the biggest problem has been the fact that not all the devices have been able to get the updates and recently there was a massive debate on the fact that a five month waiting period for a firmware update is quite long. However, the studies show that the two most latest versions of Android i.e. Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich are finally being adapted by most people on their devices, infact Ice Cream Sandwich is now running on about 5% Android smartphones which is a really positive news. We only hope that in future all the devices can get updated to these latest versions, especially ICS because its truly beautiful and worth the wait. Here is the exact data for all those interested in the percentages:

The Perfect Phone

Very often we sit back and discuss which device is the best and which phone is the single best device out there, and usually we end up just fighting or quiting out, cause very simply a perfect phone does not exist. Usually there are features we may like, but to think of an overall package, its very hard to single out one device that can do everything. So what would the most perfect device have on the planet seeing the technology that is already out there? Here is my pick, feature wise for the most perfect phone.

A 4.5 Inch Display: It is a rather debatable topic as to what is the perfect screen size for a mobile device. Few would argue that the 3.5 inch on an iPhone is too small while 5+ inch display on a galaxy note is too big, so what exactly is the ideal size? In my opinion about 4.5/4.6 inches is pretty much the perfect mobile device screen size. It enables us to read text crystal clear and browse web and yet not have issues navigating the device with just one hand. A 4.5 inch screen is pretty much ideal for all the multimedia playbacks too. LTE Connectivity: Smart Phones are all about data usage on the go, and nothing, absolutely nothing beats a good LTE or a 4G coverage where the downloads are blazing fast and you do not even have to wait for a split second for your favorite youtube videos to load. A Quad Core Processor: Its not any secret that more powerful your device processor is, the better Graphics experience you would get. A quad core processor also makes sure there is totally no lag on the device and also that you have as many applications as you wish to have in the background without having to worry about the phone slowing down. A Quad Core processor has produced some remarkable benchmarks and it would make a lot of sense that a quad core chip is at the core of our perfect device. A 2800mAH+ Battery: We more often than not sit and crib about the poor battery life of devices today. Apart from maybe Motorola Razr Maxx, none of the devices have a battery to drive home. A perfect device could at the very least last on a single charge cycle throughout the day with a moderate to heavy usage without having to dim down the backlight and various other well known battery conserving tricks. A 720P HD Display: I honestly do not care if the display is called Retina or super duper AMOLED, what does matter is that the display must be HD. The Retina display is wonderful and so is The Super Amoled HD, but if the resolution is going to be low, there is not much point esp on such a large display. The true HD display on the likes of Galaxy Nexus is beautiful to look at and it would form the display of my perfect device. A Poly-Carbonate Unibody Hardware: It is very rightly said that any amount of plastic flushed or not cannot match for the feel of pure metal chassis and a neat unibody design. I have been really impressed with Nokia seeing the design of the Lumia 900, and would love it if more companies would try and emulate such designs instead of cheap plastic bodies or an expensive yet very break-able glass exteriors. A Notification Light: A notification light may seem like a small thing, but it is quite an essential thing as far as i am concerned. I love it on my Blackberry when a new notification comes and the red light goes off. This way i do not have to unnecessarily keep checking the device for a notification i may be expecting eating away battery life. It is a nice little feature to keep us going. A Dedicated Notification Center: Notifications are a big part of a smartphone. The iPhone despite its improvements does not quite handle the notifications well, Android is slightly better but not quite there, it seems too cluttery when you see the notifications bar on an Android device. I would certainly have a revamped notification center on my perfect device with subtle features such as marking messages read or delete them directly or having things like quick reply. Wireless Charging: I have totally no clue how someone can incorporate wireless charging, maybe by using one of the magic stones that Palm devices came out for a while or even a touch slab kind of feature, but wireless charging would definitely be a way forward. The galaxy 3 is supposedly coming out with a wireless charging mechanism so that would certainly be interesting. We spend a lot of time with our devices in one corner of the room cause its been flushed into a power socket trying to gain its juice back, it would be quite a relief if we could have wireless charging. An effectively loud speaker phone: I use my smartphone for a lot of business related conference calls but sadly most of the smartphones today have a really low speaker output system. The perfect smartphone would definitely up the audio quality from the speakers. 12 Megapixel Camera With Xenon Flash: I still admire the Nokia manufacture N8 for its camera qualities, similarly the Cybershot series were a favorite of mine too. A good 12 megapixel sensor with a Xenon flash that can easily take pictures in low light conditions is an absolute must for a perfect phone. Needless to say the phone must have video recording in 1280p. An HDMI Port: HDMI is still the most popular way of connecting your device to a larger screen and definitely an essential when it comes to the needs of a perfect smartphone. A 5GB cloud space out of the box: Cloud is definitely the future and there is only a limited amount of space we could have on our smart phones, so having some cloud space right out of the box would be a wonderful way to go. So these for me were the features that my perfect device would have, I have not mentioned anything much software related because this is not essentially discussing the needs of a perfect mobile OS. Do you agree with my choices? Or would your perfect smartphone have a few more features? Do let us know.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Is Finally Here

Samsung has just finished announcing its new flagship device the Galaxy S3 in London. The Galaxy S3 a worthy successor to its Galaxy S2 range of device. A lot of leaks and speculations were floating around before the device was launched and we must say fair few of them were definitely on the spot. Our first impressions of the device while looking at it from a monitor on an internet stream are good, and definitely feel the wait was worth it.

The device is inspired by the nature and is the only smartphone that can read, understand and answer you. To expand this, the device has an inbuilt technology that uses the front camera to see if you are reading something which would prevent the phone from switching the screen off. The phone also has inbuilt voice commands that would let you on the device without any physical contact. The screen on the SGS3 is a gorgeous 4.8 inches, SuperAmoled HD display. The device has curves and feels to emulate the feel of nature, making the phone first of its kinds. It would be available in both white and blue colour. The launch date of the device is expected to be May 29th in Europe. LTE would be on board for the American and Japanese customers, but the LTE version would be available only at a later date. To talk about the specs of the device, the device is powered by a 2100 mAH battery. The processor on board is the Exynos 4, 1.4GHz Quad-Core processor. The phone would ship with an 8 megapixel camera that has zero shutter lag and capable of choosing the best picture of a burst shot of 8. The shutter speed, is approximated at about 3.3 pictures per second, which is indeed impressive. The screen resolution is a mighty impressive 1280×720 which gives us a true HD experience. The device would be available with 16, 32 and 64 GB internal storage with extended support for Micro SD. The sensors on board are Accelerometer, RGB light, Digital compass, Proximity, Gyro, Barometer and the device is also capable of playing just about all the famous video file formats. The device obviously is running Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich OS So all in all it seems like we have a brilliant phone on the hands, and Samsung has definitely come up with a unique design. For continued coverage on Samsung Galaxy S3 and more tech news, stay tuned. And do let us know how did you find the new Galaxy S3 in the comments section below.

How to Run Android Froyo on Windows 7 Computer

If you want to run latest version of Android OS on your computer then you can do this with the help of Android SDK. All you need to do is install a SDK on your computer and try the latest version of the OS right inside your Windows computer. SDK is also available for Mac OS X and Linux OS. This guide will show you how to install Android SDK on your computer and run the Froyo without any hassle. Note: Download and install Java on your computer before downloading Android SDK. First of all, go to this website and download the Windows version of the package. Click on android-sdk_r07-windows.zip to download the file.

After the file got downloaded. Extract the zip file. Open the folder and you’ll find SDK Manager.exe inside it. Double click on it to run it.

A black screen will appear followed by packages to choose. You need to choose those versions of Android which you want to test on your computer. For example,, I rejected oldest version of Android (Android 1.1). If you choose more than one version then it will take too much time to complete the installation process because all the files get downloaded one by one (for each version) from the internet. It is better to select only few versions. After selecting the versions, click “Install” button.

It will start installing all the selected versions of Android one by one, starting from the latest one. You can see the progress in the opened window.

After all the versions got installed, it’s time to create a virtual device. On left pane, click on the “Virtual Devices” and then click on “New” button given at the right.

Give the name to the virtual device. In the dropdown next to Target, select the Android platform (I selected Android 2.2). Choose the size of SD card (virtual card, no SD card required to run the virtual device). After selecting the proper options click on the “Create AVD button”.

After successfully creating the AVD, it will notify you.

To start the AVD (Android virtual device) just select the AVD and then click the highlighted “Start” button.

Keep the “Launch Options” as it is. Click on the “Launch” button to start the device.

Device will launch. You can see ANDROID written on the left side and mobile like buttons on the right. A bar next to ANDROID is blinking which means the device is booting.

After some times, a clear shining Android icon will appear on the left. Wait for some time for the final screen to appear.

After sometime a final screen will appear displaying colorful android homepage. The instruction is written on the page which tells you to click on the launcher icon to see all your pre installed apps.

You can get many apps such as Alarm clock , calculator, browser, email, music, gallery etc. on the application page.

AVD automatically detects wireless networks and connects you to the internet via device. It means if you launch the browser and type the website URL, it actually opens inside the screen. Pretty nice way to test websites on Android.

Click on the Menu button given on the right to set the wallpaper and browse other options. Click “Add” button to go to other options such as add Shortcuts, Widgets, Wallpaper to the home screen.

That is how you can use Android on your computer. The SDK provides you many other facilities to experience Android platform. By using some tricks you can also download apps inside the virtual device. We’ll discuss it in later article.