android vs apple

Here on BHT I'd love to get my hands on and review every single phone that comes out (yes even Apple ones lol), but thats just not feasible. Luckily I can reach out and rely on friends and family (and flexible return policies ;) lol). I recently helped out my friend Chris, Law and Journalism MA student at Miami U,  as he made the great exodus from the limited world of iOS to Android, grabbing one of my favorite devices of 2013, the HTC One. He was kind enough to provide his impressions of this top tier smartphone. Check out his quick review of the main features (with a few of my tips sprinkled in)! For full details check out HTC's site.





BASIC SPECS

• Size: 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm
• Weight: 143gDisplay
• Display: 4.7 inch, Full HD 1080p, 468 PPI
• CPU: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 600, quad-core, 1.7GHz
• Platform: Android with HTC Sense™ with HTC BlinkFeed™
• SIM Card Type: micro SIM
• Total storage : 32GB/64GB, available capacity varies
• RAM : 2 GB DDR2
• Network:  AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile (World Phone support)
• GPS: Internal GPS antenna + GLONASS and Digital compass
• Sensors: Gyro sensor, Accelerometer, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor
• Connectivity: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, DLNA® for wirelessly streaming media from the phone to a compatible TV or computer, HTC Connect, Support consumer infrared remote control, micro-USB 2.0 (5-pin) port with mobile high-definition video link (MHL) for USB or HDMI connection (Special cable required for HDMI connection.)
• Sound Enhancement: HTC BoomSound™ Dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers, Studio-quality sound with Beats Audio™

CAMERA

• HTC UltraPixel Camera, BSI sensor
• Pixel size 2.0 µm, Sensor size 1/3'
• Dedicated HTC ImageChip 2, F2.0 aperture and 28 mm lens
• Optical Image Stabilization (OIS)
• Smart Flash: Five levels of flash automatically set by distance to subject
• Front Camera: 2.1 MP, 880 wide angle lens with HDR capability
• 1080p Full HD video recording with HDR Video
• HTC Zoe™ with Sequence Shot, Always Smile and Object Removal
• Gallery with Video Highlights and HTC Share
• Continuous shooting and VideoPic
• Slow motion video recording with variable speed playback 

MULTIMEDIA:

• Audio supported formats:
• Playback: .aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9)
• Recording: .amr
• Video supported formats:
• Playback: .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv (Windows Media Video 9), .avi (MP4 ASP and MP3)
• Recording: .mp4

BATTERY:

• Embedded rechargeable Li-polymer battery
• Capacity : 2300 mAh
• Talk time: Up to 18 hours for 3G
• Standby time: Up to 500 hours for 3G

Best Buy exclusive blue HTC One

CHRIS's REVIEW:

Sound = A+: 
Beats audio makes a big difference, especially in your car. It is clear and the bass is significantly louder. If you have noise cancelling headphones - even non-beats headphones - there is a noticeable difference with beats audio. Also, playing through the phone speaker with headphones unattached is loud and clear.



Music Player = B+: 
I absolutely hate that the Android music app does not let you sort songs by title once you are in a playlist. You have to search by artist, which really sucks because most people know the song name instead of the artist, and even once you find the artist you have to search for the song you want. If you have downloaded music (not bought), the artist may be saved under a different name so it can be frustrating. I feel that this is the worst part of the phone if you use your phone as a music player with multiple playlists.

Luckily I stumbled across the Power Amp app and it let me sort by title. It also allows you to manually adjust the tone, bass, and treble, and save your settings under preset settings, which is amazing. I have a setting for my car and one for my headphones. My car, 2012 Camaro, already has nice factory audio as is, but the beats audio plus power amp makes it sound AMAZING. It is a very noticeable difference.

One thing I love is how quickly the phone downloads album art that you don't already have, and you can even select the option to display the song lyrics as the song plays! Very sweet and seamless.

HTC Sync allows you to easily transport media from your computer or iTunes so if you like your old media player you can edit things there and then just launch HTC Sync and transfer it to your phone. Simple.

Messaging = B:
The autocorrect is not as smart as it was on iOS. If often puts accent marks when the letter "a" stands alone and it took a week for it to consistently capitalize "I". However, after about a week the phone became better at recognizing words, namely because I would manually select the word I want it to autocorrect (the phone gives you options) and it apparently recognized my typing style. Also, after calibrating my finger with the screen the phone became better at selecting the letter my finger landed on, resulting in less typos. If all else fails using your voice to text by holding the voice icon is very effective and the phone rarely misspelled words I said when spoken clearly.

(I'd add to this that the beauty of Android is that it lets you change your default keyboard (or any system app for that matter), I've been using Swiftkey for about a year now, and have never looked back since!)

Speed = A+:
Very fast, faster than my laptop, and it made no difference when launching classic or mobile sites.

Customization = A:

You can pick your news sources (e.g. ESPN, CNN, Huffington, IGN ... a bunch) that will quickly launch and refresh by simply pulling the screen down. You can pick your widgets and apps and easily select what screen they are on and where. However, I don't like the limited choices for text messaging letter colors. You can pick a background for your text messaging screen, but it's hard to read the messages with the colors they give you.

(Again, as you play with Android you'll find text messaging apps you like better, I rarely use manufacturers text apps. Its an adjustment from iOS, but anything you don't like you can replace with an app of your liking in the Play Store. I'd reccomend popular apps, Go SMS and Handcent SMS they're both super customizable!)

Button Placement = B:
If you are right handed, when messaging or generally holding the phone it is a good chance you will incidentally hit the volume up/down button with your right thumb because of its placement. It is also awkward that the power on button is at the top left of the phone instead of top right, because again you have to stretch your finger really far to power on/off.



Camera = B:
Very good effect options after taking pics. It has some pretty cool lighting options to dramatically change the pictures you take and download. Before snapping effects are decent, but not too exhaustive. You also lose quite a bit of clarity when you zoom in. The camera is good, not great.



Overall = A-:
Very solid phone. The pros significantly outweigh the cons on this phone. It looks good, feels good in your hand, it's smooth, fast, trendy, the LED display is large and beautiful. The beats audio is what really sets this phone apart. If you really utilize music on your phone it will likely be your favorite feature, and it gets even better with the Power Amp app ($3.99). There are things about this phone to dislike - awkward button placement and at times ineffective autocorrect - but I can't imagine too many phones on the market are better than the HTC One and it is hard to imagine a better phone will be released at least within the next year or two.

Ok those of you who know me or have been reading the blog know that I don't care much for the iPhone. In my recent post about the new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c I tried my best to be unbiased and just give the facts about the new devices, but when I saw this video I knew I had to share. It truly sums up what Apple does with it's new devices and a few of the many reasons why I don't like iPhones (and love Android).

Check out the hilarious video below:

The Google Chromecast is finally back in stock in the Google Play Store, after selling out in minutes when it was announced a few months ago and then subsequently being sold on eBay and Craigslist for up to 2x the actual cost.

The Chromecast is an amazing little device, slightly larger than an USB jumpdrive that plugs into your TV's HDMI port and allows users to instantly stream content from YouTube, Google Play Music, Google Play Movies, Netflix and tabs from your Chrome browser to your TV. The device is small enough to hide behind most TV units and draw power from a simple USB port. The $35 price tag made it one of the most irresistible impulse buys of the year. It easily does a large majority of what most people need from a smart tv device at a fraction of the cost, with even more features promised to be coming soon (including Hulu and rumors of HBO Go). The Chromecast is controlled via an Android Device, iOS Device or even a Laptop running a chrome extension. The fact that it supports multiple platforms instead of being locked into a certain manufacturers ecosystem is a huge selling point in my book.

I was able to find two in another state at Bestbuy and others are saying Amazon has them back in stock now also. I highly recommend grabbing one if you use any of these services. I've been loving mine and will be posting a review soon. This is one of those devices that is priced so well you can't afford not to grab one.

Today Apple launched 2 new iPhones, the flagship iPhone 5s and the colorful, budget friendly iPhone 5c. The 5c is Apple's attempt to reclaim some of the lower end of the smartphone market, where they are currently losing ground to the seemingly endless number of cheap Android devices. In a nutshell it is a colorful cheaper remake of last year's iPhone 5 with iOS 7 and a few tweaks.



These tweaks include cameras enhancements, iOS 7 out of the box, increased battery capacity and support for more LTE bands. The most noticeable change is that the phones casing has gone from metal and glass to colorful (and cheaper) polycarbonate plastic. Apple's new design allows them to slash prices for the iPhone 5c to $99 on a 2 year contract for the 16GB version, or $199 for the 32GB ( $549 and $649 off-contract).



The iPhone 5c will be offered in 5 new colors blue, white, pink, yellow and green and will also launch with a variety of equally colorful cases for $29 each. It will be available for preorder and sale along side it's more feature packed brother the iPhone 5s on September 13th and 20th respectively. The iPhone 5 will be discontinued.



Are you interested in a colorful cheaper iPhone 5c? What about a iPhone 5s? Both? Neither?

 

 

 

What's up?!!! It's been a minute, I know. I'm back though, by popular demand. I've been really busy with work, preparing for my wedding, life and debating if I wanted to continue with the blog. But as more and more people have been asking about the blog I realized more people were checking out my post than I thought and that maybe it was time to start back up! Not to mention there have been soo many changes in the tech world. I got the new EVO LTE and didn't even do a post or video review which is unheard of since I've done every EVO since the OG dropped and actually launched BHT!

All the recent tech news is just too much for me to resist commenting on lol. So new post are on the way. I'd like to thank all of you who have read my posts and watched my videos in the past it means alot to me! I'd also like to ask you all a favor. Many of you have commented on my posts in the past, but typically you comment on whatever social media site you see me post the links to the blog on. It would help me TREMENDOUSLY if you could post comments here on BHT. This keeps all the discussion in one place and lets readers who get updates through different methods to converse with each other in one spot. I'd love to see convos started right here on the blog. I'll also be honest in that it helps me to generate more traffic here on the site!

Again thanks for all that have read, commented and given me words of encouragement on/regarding Brown Hands Tech!

Well its been a while since we've taken a break from tech-related news for a mix-tape break. My homie Sterling is back again with his mixtape picks highlighting the top mixtapes of 2011 so far. Some of these are my favorites as well and a few are new to me too.  Hope you enjoy; download links attached (Click Mixtape name).....

One of the nice new features many people may overlook on their shiny new Evo 3D's (or T-Mobile's HTC Sensation pictured above) allows users to get Swype-like functionality right on the stock HTC keyboard! I've never been the biggest fan of Swype, preferring HTC default keyboard; but now there is no need to choose (unless you are a die-hard Swype fan).  I'm not sure if Trace matches all the intricacies of Swype's functionality, but I've always felt that it could be useful in certain situations if integrated into HTC keyboard and apparently they thought the same and decided to swype the design from their competitors.  I'm curious to hear from die-hard Swypers; how does it measure up to Swype?



  

The day has finally come and my Evo 3D is in hand and I must say I am thoroughly impressed thus far. I've only had a limited amount of time to play with it so here are my initial impressions so far:

The Actual Phone:



Picking the phone up it immediately feels better than the Evo 4G. Its a bit more narrow and a smidge longer but this redesign in shape makes it more comfortable to hold. The build quality seems better too. It just feels a bit more solid and the battery door (which wraps around the enitre phone) seems to fit more snug than its predescessor and feels like it is built better. The Evo 4G battery door felt flimsy and cheap in my opinion, whereas the Evo 3D's door is solid and has a nice textured design on the back which feels great and adds grip. I will say that the huge dual camera bay is going to take some getting used to; there really is no way to hold it with out having your hands all over the camera(s), aside from this however the phone feels great in hand! I have no complaints about the power button like I read in some other early reviews/previews. Weight seems to be very close to the original Evo and overall it feels a little better in my pocket (most likely due to it being slimmer).

Screen:
The Evo 3D upgrades the display form the Evo 4G's TFT display with 800 x 480 resolution to a 4.3" 960 x 540 resolution display and it is immediately noticeable.  The E3D's screen is more crisp, colors seem more natural and because of the increased resolution it can fit more onto the screen. So for example, when looking at a list such as contacts you can see more on the screen (10 contacts versus 7) which means less scrolling is required.  The screen is really impressive and is one of the main reasons I wanted to upgrade; it really keeps the E3D on par with other next-gen super-phones.

3D:
When the Evo 3D was announced the 3D feature initially was a turn off for me and almost made me skip this phone. After seeing the other specs I knew I couldn't pass it up, but 3D was still not a deciding factor for me. I honestly feel like 3D in general is a bit of a gimmick. With that out of the way, I'm actually impressed by the 3D functions on the Evo 3D... I'm not sure if that will wear off over time or not but it's something I think I'd rather have than not, especially since it can easily be cut off.

The 3D is kinda weird to look at, and everyone has a different reaction. Some say it hurts their eyes, it doesn't bother mine but it is a little trippy.  You have to be looking at the screen at just the right angle and it sort of pops into focus! The Evo 3D comes with a demo for a Spiderman 3D game, Green Hornet in 3D and some sample pics that all look and play great! They really do an excellent job of showcasing the E3D's 3D capabilities.  I also watched some YouTube videos in 3D that where really impressive. I am actually looking forward to utilizing the 3D capabilities of the phone. Now if Netflix would just get some 3D movies...

Edit: I got a chance to take some more 3D movies and pics and... WOW!!! I am very impressed this is something I definitely can see myself using more!

HTC Sense 3.0:


I'm a fan of Sense and despite some of its short comings I tend to prefer it over other alternate launchers available in the market; Sense 3.0 makes this even more true! I feel that HTC does a great job of offering extended functionality and allowing customization that is easy to use and doesn't require rooting or advanced tweaking. It adds nice cosmetic improvements like 3D-ish transitions between screens and nice new weather effects.  HTC Hub lets you download themes, widgets, apps, various ringtones and notifications, wallpapers and skins to customize your phone; even down to details as small as the highlights when you make selections on your phone (which is something you typically need to root and or do advance tweaking to do). The lock screen is amazing with new animated lock screens such as weather or floating pics from your albums and customization quick launch options for up to four apps! There are a lot of small tweaks that really make it an even more enjoyable experience; like the ability to quickly access important settings and recently used apps from the notification bar. Another nice tweak that must be turned on in settings is the ability to activate Swype-like features right in the stock HTC keyboard. I haven't tried this much yet, but I think it is a feature that I will really enjoy. I always thought Swype could be useful if I could easily switch between it and my stock HTC keyboard and now I don't have to its built right in!