Moto 360 - The smart watch is here.

Motorola has announced the launch of the Moto 360 watch powered by Android Wear. It will be available in summer this year.

The watch features a round face and is made with "premium materials" (not sure what that means) available in a number of styles. It responds to your voice, for example, users say “Ok Google” to ask questions to search and to start other functions including scheduling an appointment, sending a text, setting an alarm or taking notes.

I am really looking forward to trying it out. Dick Tracy's watch has become a reality.

The Nokia X family

Looks like one of my wishes has finally come true. Though it sounds impossible, Nokia has finally come out with Android powered phones. Don't get me wrong. I love my Nokia Lumia 900 and the Windows operating system. However, the fact that several popular apps including Instagram, Vine, etc are not available for the Lumia 900 has left me quite disappointed. As I have discovered, not having the Candy Crush Saga app can influence the choice of mobile phone for a number of people.

Apparently the apps are available for the newer Lumia phones powered by Windows 8 OS but not for the Lumia 900 and apparently the OS in the Lumia 900 cannot be upgraded to Windows 8 (the current version is Windows Phone 7.8) because "Windows Phone has been re-coded from the ground up for Version 8".

My contract runs out in a couple of months and I have been thinking of a suitable replacement. My budget is a maximum of £200 and
I have a few candidates in mind, namely the Nexus 5 and the Moto G. However, the new Nokia XL which is priced at €109 is a strong contender.

All three of the new phones are powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual Core processor and are Dual SIM. Several third-party apps comes preinstalled, including BBM, Plants vs. Zombies 2, Viber, Vine and Twitter.

Other extra features in all phones include HERE Maps with turn-by-turn navigation and offline maps are included, Nokia MixRadio, Microsoft OneDrive with 7GB of free storage space and Skype with a month’s free calls to international landlines in selected markets.

The Nokia X is the entry level phone, with 4-inch IPS LCD screen, 512MB RAM and a 3-megapixel camera.

The Nokia X+ has similar specs to the Nokia X but has 768MB RAM and a 4GB MicroSD card is included in the box. Both the Nokia X and Nokia X+ are available in green, black, white, yellow, cyan and red.

The Nokia XL has a 5-inch screen, 768MB RAM,MicroSD card. It has a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, as well as a 5-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and flash. It is available in green, black, white, yellow, cyan and orange.

Google Glass

Google Glass detail

(Source http://www.flickr.com/photos/azugaldia/7457645618

Author Antonio Zugaldia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.)

Seems like every is now talking about Google Glass (stylized simply as GLASS). This augmented reality wearable computer with a head-mounted display (HMD) is being developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project.


According to this concept, you have access to the Internet and computers everywhere you go (at least where there is a connection) and which you can control via hands-free voice commands. It uses the Google's Android operating system.

The amazing thing is that this project has already generated so much publicity and most of this was via Twitter and other social networks.  According to a recent article on Forbes, Google copied Apple's strategy creating a “demand before supply” and  "using a more understated strategy centered on exclusivity and community".

I definitely cannot wait to get my hands on one and try it out. Hope it lives up to the hype.

Samung Galaxy SIII launched

One of the most eagerly awaited mobile phones is finally out and No! it's not an iPhone. It's the Samsung Galaxy SIII.
It will be available later in stores this month. No info about price though.
I haven't had the chance to get my hands on one as yet, so here are some reviews:

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: 1st with Android Ice Cream Sandwich

The World's first smartphone with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is finally here. Ice cream Sandwich brings together features from Android Gingerbread (phones) and Honeycomb (tablets) - BTW, don't you love those tasty sounding names.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes loaded with some amazing new applications including a facial recognition system to unlock the phone and Google Beam – which allows simple content sharing using built-in NFC (Near field communication) (updated: 29/11/2011)

The phone is powered by a 1.2GHz dual core process. Thus I was curious as to what that would mean for the battery. Well Samsung claims that the phone has up to 1060min (2G) and up to 500min (3G) Talk Time and up to 290Hours (2G) / upUp to 270Hours (3G) Stand-by Time- which is not really impressive.

It features a contoured screen with 4.65" HD Super AMOLED display and 280 x 720 External Resolution. The 5MP camera with LED flash offers fast image capture, panorama shot and HD video recording.

However, was very disappointed when I found out that it does not have a SD card slot and you only get 16GB internal storage to store all your data.

Fast and accurate typing with the Sony Ericsson Experia Pro

It's not new but I just found out that that the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ Pro was found to be the fastest and have most accurate typing according to usability tests carried out by an independent test institute, beating the HTC Desire, Nokia E7 and Blackberry Torch.

This Android 2.3 Gingerbread powered smartphone (dimensions: 120 × 57 × 14 mm) comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

It has a 8.1MP camera capable of recording HD videos and a front-facing VGA camera as well.

For those who love to listen to music on their phones, the Xperia Pro has 31 hours of music listening time.

The Xperia Pro is available in three colours (Black , Silver , Red) and is available on Amazon UK.

For more information visit the Xperia Pro features/ specifications page.

Faster typing on your android

Though I love Android phones, typing on the touch screen can be a pain sometimes. Anyway, I found out about the A.I.Type with it's amazing text prediction. According to the website, AItype uses a unique technology which combines Artificial Intelligence and complex mathematical algorithms and promises to help you type faster and better. When I last checked it only offers English predictions but hopefully support for other languages will come out later as well.

This Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) based keyboard for Android 2.2 is totally free. I was reading some of the reviews on the Android Market site and most of them were quite positive.

3D Assisted Tours on Android

By Malik Arman Morshidi

Interactive digital map

A couple of weeks back, I went to Oxford for a day out with my family. As usual, my wife researched the “must visit” places around the area a few days before the trip. Upon arriving there, I took out my new HTC Desire HD which I bought last January to test an application called Locations.

This app is the perfect travelling companion and you never have to worry about carrying your guidebooks or maps around anymore. Nearby “Places of Interests” are sorted according to distance and are indicated by arrows pointing out from where ever you are standing. If you tap on the “Show on map”, you will be shown the map of the surrounding area. What is even more appealing is that as you turn around, the map will automatically reorient itself. So, you don’t have to worry about finding which way to turn, thanks to the built-in compass and the GPS receiver. Without them, this application won’t work.



3D assisted tour

Another appealing feature I used during the tour was the map with virtual 3D buildings.

The Maps application on my HTC Desire HD, features the latest Google Maps 5.0 for Android. This version supports 3D mapping, vector-based mapping, offline rerouting, and navigating. I was so amazed by this app as I walked down the streets in Oxford. It can show you the exact location of where you were standing with the virtual 3D buildings surrounding you.



Now, in case you are wondering, how on Earth Google manages to model thousands of buildings on the surface of the earth? I will be blogging about that in my next post.

Malik Arman Morshidi is an entrepreneur who loves technology. He is currently researching 3D object tracking at the School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry.

The New Google Nexus S

The Nexus S is Google's latest mobile. It is the first to run Google's new OS, Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Featuring the gorgeous Contour display with curved glass screen, this phone has a 4.0" WVGA (480x800), Super AMOLED touch screen with anti-fingerprint coating.

The Nexus S is powered by a 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor with 16GB iNAND flash memory to take all your pictures and videos taken via the 5 megapixels (2560x1920) camera or the front facing one VGA (640x480). The back facing takes videos with 720 x 480 video resolution and
H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording.

They have packed in loads of stuff in the phone including a Three-axis gyroscope, Accelerometer, Digital compass, Proximity sensor and Light sensor.

However, what I was really concerned about was the battery life. Well, according to Google, the phone has a Talk time up to 6.7 hours on 3G (14 hours on 2G) and a Standby time up to 17.8 days on 3G (29.7 days on 2G). That's quite amazing if it's true.

Check out the full specs here.

HTC Evo 4G

Consumers in the US can now pre-order the much awaited HTC Evo 4G. This top end Android powered mobile phone comes with high resolution  4.3-inch WVGA touchscreen, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and 4G/WiMax network - in fact it is the first mobile phone designed for 4G mobile broadband networks. The phone comes with 1GB built-in memory and 512 MB RAM. The list of features doesn't end there. The phone also comes with a 8MB camera with flash. I want this phone.

The HTC Evo will be available on the Sprint network for US$199.