Posts by Joe Levi
Joe graduated from Weber State University with two degrees in Information Systems and Technologies. He has carried mobile devices with him for more than a decade, including Apple's Newton, Microsoft's Handheld and Palm Sized PCs, and is the Pocketnow.com "Android Guy". By day you'll find Joe coding web pages, tweaking for SEO, and leveraging social media to spread the word. By night you'll probably find him writing technology and "prepping" articles, as well as shooting video. End of line.
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by Joe Levi | March 25, 2013 7:12 PMGoogle I/O 2013 is only a month or so away, so let's jump right into our guesses and hopes for what we'll see at Google's biggest conference of the year. For those who may not know, Google I/O isn't all about Android -- Google covers a wide variety of technology and services, and tries to cover a lot of everything at the conference. This year we expect to hear more about Google+, Chrome, HTML5 improvements, APIs, Google TV, home automation, and yes, Android will be in there somewhere. Google Now At last year's Google I/O we saw Google's answer to Siri: Google Now. Since then we've seen a ...
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by Joe Levi | March 22, 2013 2:01 PMDear OEMs, we, your loyal customers, have been patient long enough. You've given us some really great smartphones and tablets over the years. Your designs are becoming more practical with every iteration, without shedding their aesthetic beauty. We appreciate that, and thank you. Your batteries, however, have got to change. We recognize that your devices are getting faster and thinner, but we can't use them as long as we should be able to. Face it, a smartphone that only lets you use it for 4 hours isn't very "smart". In fact, it's pretty silly, if you ask us. Of course that's not what ...
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by Joe Levi | March 21, 2013 2:18 PMBack in the day we had "phones". They hung on the wall in the kitchen and usually had comically long cords connected to them so we didn't have to stand right next to the receiver to carry on your conversations -- and they were anything but "smart". Eventually the cord was replaced by an antenna and we were free to walk around the house, phone in-hand, as long as we didn't stray too far from the base station. Eventually someone figured out how to make this "cordless phone" something that we could take with us by placing "base stations" around the city. As long as our phone was within range ...
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by Joe Levi | March 20, 2013 12:45 PMAndroid Jelly Bean has some pretty sweet lock-screen widgets built-in, but they're limited to just one widget per panel. If you want to control your music, see how many missed calls you have, what your battery status is, or check the weather forecast you've either got to have a lot of lock-screen widgets spread across a lot of panels -- which sort of defeats the purpose -- or you need a lock screen widget that packages all these into one. Of course, another option is just to replace your lock screen with a new one. C Lock Screen is a replacement for your stock lock screen that puts ...
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by Joe Levi | March 19, 2013 3:58 PMAndroid-powered smartphones and tablets have some of today's most technologically superior hardware tucked neatly inside their compact shells. Most current models are running at least dual-core configurations with many running four, RAM is plentiful at 2GB, and regardless of whether you have LTE or HSPA, data speeds are pretty darn quick. I look back at my college days when I was running essentially the same configuration in a full-blown laptop and scratch my head. Why aren't things faster? My trusty laptop could crunch numbers in spreadsheets, be used to write reports with powerful word ...
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by Joe Levi | March 18, 2013 2:54 PMIt seems like an eternity ago, but some of you should still remember HTC's first Android-powered device, released in October 2008. It was a collaborative project between Google and HTC that was called the T-Mobile G1 in the States and the HTC Dream elsewhere. For all intents and purposes, the G1 was the first Android. Google and HTC worked closely together and released a smartphone running the "pure Android experience". Today devices like that go by the "Nexus" name. Fast-forward to January 2010 and the duo did it again, this time releasing the Nexus One which served as a reference ...
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by Joe Levi | March 18, 2013 7:45 AMNow that mystery and uncertainty has been lifted from the Samsung Galaxy S 4, it's time to start pondering about what Samsung has in store for us next. Some might cry foul, that it's somehow "not fair" or "inappropriate" to start talking about what's coming next when the current version isn't even available yet. We hear you, but you're wrong -- but not for the reasons you may think. There are an infinite number of improvements that can be made or features that can be added to any product. Those, of course, are limited by pesky things like cost, availability, durability, and sometimes ...
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by Joe Levi | March 14, 2013 1:36 PMSamsung doesn't need to do anything amazing with the Galaxy S IV to have another amazing product that people will flock to buy. I'm completely confident that Samsung could even take the Galaxy S III, upgrade the processor and battery just a smidgen and call it good. And it would sell. Like hotcakes. And I wouldn't mind one bit. Why? The Galaxy S III is already an amazing phone, and it's not really starting to show its age. Not yet anyway. I'm not normally one to put the brakes on the constant march of technology, but there comes a point where processor speed, quantity of RAM and storage ...
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by Joe Levi | March 12, 2013 3:44 PMApple's Phil Schiller recently posted a tweet aimed squarely at Android users: "Be safe out there", followed by a link to F-Secure's latest Mobile Threat Report. That was last week and the talking-heads are already on a roll. Some are claiming vindication, even going as far as saying that Apple has won the war. Others have retaliated against Schiller saying tweet was uncalled for. The source behind the tweet is really at the meat of the issue. It's a 34-page .PDF that outlines the mobile threats in the world today. That report, too, has received quite a bit of coverage in the news and ...
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by Joe Levi | March 11, 2013 4:09 PMNot long ago I told you about my experiences with NFC one year after it became available on phones that I own. In that article I shared how I use NFC and how I don't, but I breezed over one part: making devices talk with each other using NFC. I did that on purpose. I still use NFC almost every day to buy stuff and, as long as the merchant has a terminal that supports it, NFC has always worked perfectly for me. What about those pesky device-to-device transfers that were supposed to revolutionize the way use our devices to talk to one another? Why didn't I cover that scenario? In short: ...
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by Joe Levi | March 8, 2013 8:13 PMDelivered in packaging that states "it's time" and "meet pebble" with cutesy watch face that says "hello" to you in a speech bubble, one might get the impression that the Pebble Smartwatch should be a friendly addition to your family -- and not a wristwatch. However, despite what Michael Fisher showed you in his recent video "Wristwatch, Redefined: Life on a Pebble Smart Watch", the Pebble smartwatch isn't prefect. What's with that strap Michael backed the Pebble project on Kickstarter for $99. I got in just a little later with a $115 pledge. Today, if you want to pre-order a Pebble for ...
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by Joe Levi | March 7, 2013 1:57 PMI'll admit it, when the original iPad came out I was somewhat "critical" of it. You may even be able to find a quote from me floating around the inner webz that goes something like this: "The iPad: it's just like the iPhone, only bigger... and without the phone." Yeah, I know, coming from "Joe the Android Guy" that sentiment isn't surprising. What you may find surprising is that, although I won't retract those words today, I will admit that the iPad and other tablets have come far enough that they've come far enough that they can probably replace your laptop. In the beginning, tablets were ...
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by Joe Levi | March 6, 2013 7:42 PMWe started telling you about Near Field Communications (NFC) about a year ago, and saw smartphones with the "revolutionary wireless technology" built-in shortly thereafter. We showed off some fun tips and tricks with NFC in a few videos, and even opined about what aspects of our lives could made better today though the widespread use of NFC. Then it all disappeared. NFC has all but been relegated to a line-item on a specifications list. Tech sites aren't talking about it and newspapers have stopped running stories about. Where did NFC go? Did it fail? After only one year, do you still use ...
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by Joe Levi | March 5, 2013 10:39 AMShortly after we started seeing Ubuntu for Phones showing up on some of our favorite Android-powered smartphones and tablets, we started hearing rumors and rumblings about its origins. Specifically, people started saying that Ubutuntu for Phones is "based on" CyanogenMod custom ROM. At first blush one might think that based on comments like these: "Indications for Ubuntu porting to other devices is quite simple since it has the same basis as CyanogenMod 10.1 with Ubuntu Interface Touch running in a container and accessed via chroot." That sounds a lot like Ubuntu for Phones is not only ...
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by Joe Levi | March 4, 2013 3:30 PMIf there's one thing I get asked more often than anything else, it's "what's that weather/clock widget in your video?" It's called Beautiful Widgets by LevelUp Studio and I've been using it since the days before it was banned from the Play Store. Banned from the Play Store? It was called the "Android Market" back then, but yes, it was banned. Why? The app came out back when HTC was doing some really pretty things with Sense, and their Clock Widget was the prettiest thing around. Unfortunately, Beautiful Widgets was too similar to HTC's widget. Instead of throwing in the towel, LevelUp ...