iOS5’s Top Ten “New” Features That My Android Has Had FOREVER. [TECH REVIEW]

So the “NEW” iOS5 is rolling out and the tech blogOsphere is, like normal, kissing Apple’s big white shiny…well…Apple, but the “newest”, “coolest” features of iOS5 are not all that new or cool. Unless of course, you have been living in the dark ages of iOS4. So below is an article written for Gizmodo and I am sure paid for by Apple, about the best 10 new features that the iOS5 offers, and i can tell you this my android phone has been able to do all of these things for at least 9 months. my comments are in [ ] after each listed item. Also if you want a good review of the iPhone 4s look HERE

iOS 5: The Top 10 New Features

The new iOS 5 goes live soon, bringing with it revamped notifications and more than 200 new features for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. These are the top ten, and then some more.

Some of these features you already had in your iPhone or iPad. They just came in third-party apps.

If you used apps like the must-have WhatsApp, which allows you to message in an extremely easy way with all kinds of phones for free, you already were enjoying something like iMessage (even while iMessage adds important services, like device-wide conversation synchronization). If you had the awesome Instapaper, you already had some of the features of the new Safari. Or if you had something like Remember the Milk, you already had a great reminders service.

However, there are features that weren’t available before; either because they are completely new or because they are system-wide. And there are real jewels too.

Things that may sound silly, like using the volume + button as a shutter in the Camera app. Or more important stuff, like well thought Notifications and the ability to run your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad without having a PC. Your iDevices are now completely autonomous.

All these features put iOS on par again with some of the features that you could already find in Android, Palm or Windows Phone 7. Some of their implementations, surpass those platforms. But even while none of these new features are extraordinary per se, all of them together are quite impressive.

1. Notifications [This is actually a direct copy off the notification system that has been on android since the beginning, it would not surprise me if this causes law suites.  However if Google really wants to stick to its open source policy, they have to let Apple use it, I guess.]

The first big feature is notifications. At last, Apple will get rid of the annoying popups that break your flow. And with “annoying popups” I really meant “stupid dumb boxes that makes me want to smash my f*cking iPhone against the wall when I’m playing a game or chatting with strangers in the night”.

They have replaced those with a new app called Notification Center. It’s very similar to Mobile Notifier, the iOS notification app—which makes sense, since Apple hired its developer a while back. It not only includes app notification, but mini-widgets that show live information from apps like Weather and apps.

The notifications extend to the lock screen too, so you can see more stuff right away without unlocking your phone. Sliding your finger on it will automatically lead you to the app that generated that notification.

Notifications are clearly and by far the best part of iOS5—particularly coming from the stone age pop-up mess of previous versions. Everyone on staff who’s used iOS5 is in love, and the upgrade is the must have feature.

 

2. iMessage [On Android this is called Google Talk, or if you have set up a Google Voice# you could use that as well. Google Talk is also an open source messaging system which means that you can talk for free to people who have any type of phone with any OS not just Android to Android or like with iOS5 Apple to Apple.]

Another new useful feature, which will hurt Blackberry and the telecommunications companies wanting to sell you stupid SMS and MMS contracts: Apple has implemented a new messaging system called iMessage.

It works between all iOS 5 devices, allowing you to leave conversations on your iPhone and continue them in your iPad (again, I will not be surprised to see this integrated into Lion at a later date). It comes with delivery notification as well. However, unlike WhatsApp, it doesn’t work with other non-iOS devices. Maybe Apple thinks your Android and Blackberry friends are not worth talking to for free.

 

3. New Camera app and photos [The iPhone 4s has a decent 8 mega-pixel camera and the ability to record in 1080 HD, however the new Android phones are looking at 10-14 mega-pixel cameras and Google+ fully integrates Picassa into the phone offering much better photo management than iOS5 or any Apple device will ever be able to offer.]

The new Camera up gets two of the most-requested features in the history of iOS. The first is a shortcut in the lock screen to access the camera right away, so you don’t have to unlock and then click on the Camera icon, which often makes you lose the moment.

The other one, which is something we have whined about endlessly, is using one of the volume button as the shutter button. Just press + and that’s it: CLICK! This is a very welcome addition.

The new app also includes basic photo editing. It includes quick enhance—which basically sharpens your image, making shadows and highlights more detailed, and correct color automagically. It also include red eye reduction and cropping, both welcome additions to those who don’t have the Camera Plus already.

4. Newsstand [Again this is almost a direct copy off another service Google has offered for years. GOOGLE BOOKS.  And Google Books allows you to access your books on any internet connected device either through a built in app or through the web app through most browsers…lets see iOS5 do that]

Apple has built a virtual newsstand right onto iOS 5, very similar to the iBooks app but exclusively for magazines and periodicals. It looks like a cross between iBooks and a folder view, actually.

5. Twitter integration everywhere [I am not quite sure why the chose to integrate twitter into their phones, most likely because Google has Google+ and Microsoft and Facebook have been getting pretty cozy, but this too is nothing new.  Android integrates all social platforms on their devices.  At any point in time you can share from any app or webpage or picture to a wide variety of social platforms right from the in android options.  For Apple to boast this as a new feature makes me wonder if they have ever even used an Android phone.  From a development standpoint this is child’s play.]

iOS 5 will have Twitter integration everywhere. Apps like camera will be able to directly post the image to Twitter. The YouTube App, Safari or even Maps will support direct sharing in Twitter. It also adds a new Twitter address field to your Contacts application.

6. A new Safari [HOORAY, a new version of the same old flash-less crappy web browser that can’t even come close to competing with the Android version.  Not to mention the new Ice Cream Sandwich release is going to have a mobile version of Chrome as the browser. And I would love to hear someone even try and argue that Safari is as good of a browser as Chrome…LMFAO, lets look at one key feature listed below, the ability to reformat a site on the fly, Google calls this re-flow i believe and the very first android phone that is 4 years old now was able to do that, thanks apple for finally joining the party but you are still way behind.]

Safari has been revamped with new features. Reader will allow you to reformat a site on the fly, taking out ads and reformatting text so it looks better on your iPad or iPhone screen.

This feature flows into Reading List, which is a way to save those pages for later offline viewing, keeping them synchronized between all your iOS devices and Lion. Presumably via iCloud.

Apple’s web browser also adds tabs in this version. Your open pages will line up right below your address bar. According to Apple, switching between pages is “lightning fast,” so perhaps they have made some magic with the memory management to reduce the reload of pages in older devices.

7. New Reminders app [Do I need to say anything to this besides Google Calendar…I think not]

The new Reminders app makes it easy to make to-do lists. The interface is very simple and it’s synchronized between iOS 5 devices and your Mac OS X desktop or notebook.

The really cool thing about Reminders is that it’s location aware. Imagine you add that you need to buy milk, but then you forget about it. When you pass by the grocery store, the app will tell you that you need to buy milk.

8. New Mail app [I would love anyone to argue that their is a better web mail service than Gmail.  Please try to in the comments.  I will be able to you one argument for the entire time.  Gmail can do anything you can do, but it can do it better. Beside iOS mail is terrible, this was the first thing I noticed when I switched to an android phone. Yes i was a loyal Apple fan Boy for the first years of smart phone development, but i left and joined the android takeover and hve never looked back. ]

Mail includes a barrage of enhancements

• Rich Text Formatting, which will allow you to annoy the hell out of everyone bolding every sentence in your mails.
• Indentation control, which allows you to control the level of indentation of your quotes from other messages.
• Draggable email addresses, which allows to drag and drop email addresses into to, cc and bcc fields.
• Message flagging to call your attention over a particular mail later.
• Swipe to Inbox, which makes it very easy to access the list of message in portrait mode on the iPad, instead of clicking on a button for a weird pop-up dialog.

9. No PC required [WOW, has android ever required the use of a PC.  Also just and FYI for you Apple users if you want to update to iOS5 you will need to buy lion in order to sync your phone to your iTunes, just a little trick apple uses to squeeze out some extra profits from their loyal fan boys who are to blinded by the whiteness of the apple to realize they are getting ripped off.]

At long last, the most important feature of them all: You will not need iTunes and PC anymore to use your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Apple has caught up with Android and Windows Phone 7. The new iOS 5 will allow you to set up your new device easily: Turn your new gadget on and a Welcome screen will appear. All software updates will happen over the air.

All the applications will now be completely autonomous. You will not have to go to iCal or some other desktop app to create a calendar, for example. There is no need for a desktop or laptop anymore, for anything.

10. New Game Center [I love how Apple has been spewing PR to try and say they are going to be the gaming system of the future. That gives me a good laugh every time I read it.  For starters since when has Apple been good at gaming? If any phone OS company can make that claim it should be Microsoft not Apple. But for the purpose of this article can anyone tell me where Apple is better at gaming than anyone?  This seems like a completely worthless #10 to me, its like the author of this article was paid by apple to come up with a list of 10 things and he struggled to get 9 so he just pulled the 10th right out of their ass.]

The have enhanced Game Center too. Unfortunately, they have not renewed its awful casino interface, which looks as dated as always. But they have added much needed concepts from Xbox Live and other gaming systems:

• Achievement points.
• Access friends of friends, so you can compare and play with a wider range of people.
• Photos in your profile, so you can flirt with other nerds pretending to be women online.
• Game discovery, to play with whoever wants to play with you at any given time.
• Game downloads within Game Center.
• Support for turn-based games like Words for Friends and Scrabble.

 • iTunes synchronization over Wi-Fi [Again this is at least 2 year old tech but glad apple thinks its “NEW”.]

• Advanced gestures: It will allow you to pass from app to app on the iPad by using a simple swipe gesture, without having to use the home button. This was a feature has been in testing for a long time and, trust me, once you try it you will not be able to live without it. [This is because of the lack of built in gestures that android has at the bottom of the device.  In order to counter this Apple has you making complex geometric shapes with your finger on the screen. I can see the problems now… I want to go back to my email from this webpage, “is that a star, a polygon, or a triple finger drag,  lol again makes me laugh.] 

iPhones Are Not Cool Anymore. [COOL FACTOR]

According to today’s college youth iPhones  are no longer cool because lets face it who wants to have the same phone that their parents have.  Apple has gone the way of the cool local bar.  When it first comes out it is the hot spot, with great live music and cheap drinks. Then somehow all of a sudden it changes into the local cougar bar where no young people want to hang out.  This is where the iPhone is now.  Yes its iOS is extremely user friendly and makes the phone a viable option for even the least tech savvy of users, (YOUR MOM), but this also makes the device less cool. Part of what young people like and think is cool about new technology is that the OLD PEOPLE can’t use it with them.  This is the same with why Facebook WAS cool and why it is not anymore. This may also be the reason why androids fragmentation is an advantage to the company on its coolness factor. It allows for young users who are concerned about the hipness of their phone to continue to quickly advance away from devices their parents start to use which in turn allows them to feel like they are ahead of the curve and therefore more COOL.  I however think iPhones aren’t cool anymore for different reasons like, the lack of freedom, the lack of features, the lack of customization, just to name a few.

ARTICLE BELOW ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

Don’t tell anybody in my Los Angeles neighborhood, but iPhones aren’t cool anymore. The president of HTC says so.

During a presentation at the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle, Martin Fichter, acting president of HTC Americas, said that he discovered that the kids don’t think the iPhone is cool anymore after he spoke with the dormitory friends of his daughter at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and informally polled them on their smartphone choices. According to a story fromMashable, Fichter found the students having skipped Apple’s devices as belonging to the previous generation.

‘None of them has an iPhone,’ Fichter said, ‘because they told me: “My dad has an iPhone.” There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacturer’s devices.’

That’s an interesting viewpoint, and skipping over the not-minor detail that HTC is a major competitor of Apple’s, if the kids don’t think iPhones are cool anymore, it doesn’t seem to be hurting Apple any.

In fact, the release of the iPhone 5, expected in the first week of October or thereabouts, seems set to break some records. Rumor has it that both T-Mobile and Sprint could be carrying the iPhone 5 this fall. The iPhone 4 is currently the best-selling smartphone there is worldwide, and Apple has reportedly been making some big orders in preparation for the launch of the new device. Rumor has it the company has made orders of its suppliers somewhere in the order of 26 million iPhone 5’s (or whatever it ends up being called) for the end of the year, with another 30 or so million iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS models. That’s a heck of a lot of “uncool” iPhones.

While it’s possible the iPhone is “Dad’s phone” in Portland, it’s certainly still hip everywhere else in the world. Much of the growth of the iPhone has been fueled by new markets. Rumor has it that Apple is adding another carrier in China, much like it did with Verizon in the U.S., which could seriously drive sales in the country. China has already been a huge market for the iPhone, and Apple has also expanded elsewhere in Asia and South America.

Fichter might not be altogether wrong, though. As Mashable reports, a recent analysis from recommendation engine Hutch finds that the iPhone is popular among older, more affluent people. Android devices are attracting a younger, hipper audience, and are popular among people who have a high school diploma but not necessarily much higher education. That does, in many respects, drop Android owners right in the middle of “cool,” as marketers see it.

Still, and not to sound like an Apple fan or anything, but it seems highly doubtful that the sales numbers will bear out Fichter’s opinion this fall. Perhaps he is seeing a growing trend as far as perception, but the iPhone still is hugely user-friendly. It’s absolutely bristling with games. It includes more apps than any other available platform. Those are things that surely help to circumvent the perception of Apple’s device being the smartphone of choice for the uncool generation.

Facebook Adding Circles And Is Still Playing Catch Up With Google+ [REVIEW]

Who would have thought that a social network that has only been out for 3 months would have the social network king Facebook scrambling so hard to keep up. Today Facebook announced it is going to add new friend features that resemble Google+ circles. I hope that they can come up with a better strategy than copying the good features of Google for their sake.  Either way if you are still using Facebook remember one thing, YOU ARE USING A SECOND RATE SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLET.

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

 

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a modern-day dilemma: You really want your Facebook friends to see that wild party photo of you wearing bunny ears. But you’re not so keen on explaining it to your mother-in-law.

Well, Facebook aims to make life easier.

Beginning Wednesday, the social network will make it easier to share photos, posts and links with smaller, isolated groups of people. While the site has allowed users to separate their friends into lists since 2007, this option took quite a bit of work and only a small fraction of Facebook users took advantage of it.

Now, Facebook will automatically group your friends based on whether they live near you, went to your school or work with you. You can read posts or share updates with specific groups instead of dozens, or hundreds, of “friends” at a time. Facebook will use the colleges, workplaces and geographic locations that users share on the site to organize people into groups. Called “smart lists,” the feature is optional to use, and the lists are customizable.

“Users don’t really want to spend a lot of time creating and maintaining friend lists,” said Naomi Gleit, the director of product at Facebook who worked on the feature.

In addition, you can create your own friend groups with as few or as many as you would like, based around hobbies, work projects or relatives, for example.

Listing people as “close friends,” meanwhile, will ensure that you will see the posts and photos from the dozen or so friends you care about the most. Updates from these people will feature more prominently in your news feed and you can opt to receive email notifications every time they post something on Facebook, Gleit said.

Conversely, those categorized as “acquaintances” will feature less prominently on your Facebook page, and you will see just big news, such as marriages and new babies.

Facebook’s latest move takes a page from Google Plus, the fledgling social network launched this summer by the online search leader. Google’s service so far has not threatened to unseat Facebook as the world’s biggest online social network. But its sleek design and innovative, privacy-focused features piqued the interest of many Facebook users and critics, helping to foster healthy competition among these Silicon Valley neighbors.

 

 

 

 

 

Google Music Is Better Than iTunes Here Is Why. [REVIEW]

Finally all of the Apple Fan Boys will realize what they have been missing. Google Music is way better than iTunes.  There are a few reason why that you can realize right from the start.

1st– The service itself is free.  Apple is going to charge for their online storage service and you won’t even be able to stream the music live you will have to download the files to play them on your iPhone and will still need to take up valuable space on your phones internal storage.

2nd– Google Music let you stream you cloud music directly to your phone.  I used to worry about the space available on my phone.  I would carry around between 8-16 gigabytes of music with me everywhere I went just in case I suddenly had the urge to hear a song that may not have been on my phone.  This problem is fixed with Google Music.  I now keep about 1000 songs downloaded to my phone at a time just for when I am out of service. The rest of my 15,000 song library can be kept on the cloud of Google Music and accessed whenever I get that one obscure song stuck in my head.

3rd– Forget wireless transfer like what will be finally offered with the next iOS update.  With Google Music you can transfer music to your phone over cellular data.  If for instance i know i will be going somewhere that has bad cell service i can set up Google Music in the App to make more of my Online Library available offline and save it onto my phone. Apple is at least 2 years behind on this technology and is one of the best features.

4th– FREE MUSIC. Google Music so far has given me about 500 free songs.  Most of them are great and quite a few of them were from bands i had not heard of. Which is pretty impressive considering the massive size of my library.

5th– This may be one of the most important feature of Google Music.  The actual software and programming is better.  No it doesn’t look as clean cut and as polished as iTunes does, but it works way faster.  The Google Music app can stream music faster to my phone than my iPhone could play it off the internal storage, And I don’t even need to get started about iTunes.  If you have Chrome on your computer iTunes can’t even compare.  Google Music is just a website you log in to and start playing your music. A Full functioning player based on the web, iTunes could take a few minutes to load up and do all of its check before it runs smoothly this is just simply not the case with Google Music.

OVER ALL IF YOU HAVEN’T SIGNED UP FOR GOOGLE MUSIC YET YOU ARE LIVING IN THE DARK AGES OF MUSIC MANAGEMENT.

Google Music Comes to iOS with a Pretty Decent Web App

Google seems to pick and choose when they’ll make a native app and when they’ll go the web route with iOS. For Google Music, which is still in beta, they chose the web app route and it’s actually still pretty good.

It’s all powered within the Safari browser, you can swipe left, swipe right to jump between categories like Artists, Albums, Songs, etc. The songs stream from the cloud and even play in the background even when you close Safari. [Google Music viaTechCrunch]

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I received the below message from Google in my email suggesting I check out another service that has been piggy backed onto Google Music called Magnifier.  When I got to the site there was a ton of free music to download. Most of it was selected do to how my ratings were picked in my Google Music library (Thumbs up or Thumbs down).  It also has featured artists and was an all in all pretty good music review blog. Bur I will admit it was the FREE? MUSIC that made this trip worth the while.

Announcing Magnifier, our new music discovery site

When we launched Music Beta four months ago, we wanted to help users fall in love with their music again by removing the hassles of digital music management. We’re now taking that idea one step further with the launch of Magnifier, Music Beta’s new music discovery site.

Each and every day, our team of music experts will highlight new, free music on Magnifier. Sometimes it will be songs you haven’t heard of by artists you have. Sometimes it will be new artists we think deserve more attention. And sometimes there will be video interviews and live performances.

But you can always count on the following:

• You can add any or all of the songs to your Music Beta library instantly
• You can do this for free
• The artist is being featured because someone on our team thinks they’re pretty great

— Tim Quirk, Head of Music Programming

Android Is Still More Secure Than A PC

Symantec Study Finds That Android Is Still More Secure than a PC

Despite all the security breaches and malware scares we’ve had these past few months with the Android Market, Symantec, of Norton Antivirus fame, is still giving Android and iOS the advantage when compared to the security on desktop/notebook PC’s.

Symantec performed a mobile device security study and found that Apple and Google mobile OS’s are still more secure than Microsoft’s Windows at preventing “drive-by” app installs and malware often can’t obtain as many privileges as their desktop counterparts. Also, the fact that both mobile OS’s use signatures on their apps adds a layer of security you don’t normally see on PC’s.

Of course, Apple’s iOS still comes on top as being most secure with the rigorous screening of security threats for all their apps. Of course, we’ve all heard the complaints a lot of developers have regarding the flexibility of iOS apps and it’s one of the reasons many turn to Android. While, it would be very difficult to make malware apps that could compromise iOS, Symantec says it’s not impossible.

Now in regards to Android, Symantec is saying that the company’s deliberately looser app certification process, permissions for non-Market apps and vague permissions systems are all contributing to the OS’s rapidly growing malware problem. Device fragmentation is also adding to this problem. The majority of devices being released today are not running Android 2.3 which has patched up many of the exploits malware apps have been taking advantage of. Google’s business model for their Market hypothetically leads to more variety in apps but that has lead to vulnerabilities that could now require antivirus apps. 

And they have the charts to prove it.

With the presence of so many viruses and malware, it’s one of the reasons I’ve actually switched to a Mac for my personal home computer and I’ve been considering an Asus Transformer instead of a cheap netbook for my little cousin. I’m over this virus/malware stuff and I don’t feel like its something I should have to worry about in a computer or mobile phone.

But what do you guys think? Can you see Android becoming the next haven for malware and viruses or do you have faith that Google will somehow be able to prevent malware from entering the Android Market? What do you think should be done (if anything)?

[Via Electronista]

I found this at –> PhanDroid,com