AT&T has confirmed that the Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone will go on sale April 8th for only $99 with a two-year contract. This is big improvement over the $800 bundles Nokia was selling the Lumia 800 for.
The phone goes on preorder this Friday with two colors—black and cyan—available. We’ll see if this aggressive pricing fairs well for the Windows Phone flagship.
The Samsung Galaxy Note is big…relatively speaking. It’s the biggest smartphone currently on the market and has been dubbed by some as a phablet—part phone and part tablet.
The larger screen is meant to make writing with Samsung’s stylus, called the “S-Pen” easier. Hence the note in Galaxy Note. The idea sort of makes sense; smartphones and tablets do a lot of the same things, so why not combine the two and cut down on your techy clutter? Unfortunately, the Note doesn’t seem to perform well as a smartphone or a tablet, so it might be a while before the phablet becomes a fad.
Haiku Home Automation for HAI
Developer: Nullriver, Inc.
Price: $49.99
Compatibility: iPad and iPhone
Description: Haiku combines HAI’s proven home automation controllers with iOS’s unbeatable user interface experience and versatility. This leverage brings the consumer a solid, user-friendly and convenient home automation interface that is as usable from anywhere in the world as it is from the comfort of your couch.
Pros: Frequent updates, intuitive layout, great interface, easy setup
Cons: No version for Android, reports of crashes after updating
SnapLink Mobile
Developer: Home Automation, Inc.
Price:$49.99
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone, Android.
Description: Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a whole home remote control. Homeowners and property managers with an HAI control system can view and adjust lighting levels/scenes, temperatures, security settings, surveillance video, audio, and more.
Pros: Lots of control functions
Cons: Buggy
Crestion Mobile Pro
Developer: Crestron Electronics, Inc
Price: $100
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone, Android
Description: Crestron Mobile harnesses the power of 3G and Edge networks to stay connected to the home or office when you’re on the go. View alarm status, adjust lights and room temperature while lying on the beach or sitting in traffic.
Pros: Quick load time, theme options
Cons: Pricey, reported crashes
Control4 MyHome
Developer: Control4
Price: Free to download, $99.99 licensing fee
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone, Android
Description: The MyHome family of software apps allows you to access and control the lighting, temperature, music, movies, energy, security and more from a wide range of devices in your Control4 enabled home. By turning your existing smart phones, tablets and PCs into additional interfaces, Control4 MyHome offers you an affordable and convenient way to access and manage your system.
Pros: interface, updated graphics
Cons: misleading pricing
R2 Control for Crestron
Developer: id8 Group R2 Studios
Price: $99
Compatibility: Android
Description: R2 turns your Android device into a fully functional Crestron touchpanel!
R2 enables residential and commercial customers to control AV, lighting, thermostats, security systems, and thousands of other products via their Android device from anywhere in the world.
Pros: lots of options, speed
Cons: can be hard to configure for some users, price
Android users have long maintained that their phones offer many more options than the iPhone and now that list of options includes becoming an iPhone.
The new Espier launcher perfectly mimics the iOS home screen on your Android phone and even includes some gesture controls.
Of course, the real question is why you’d want an Android that acts like a iPhone, but at the very least the launcher can give you some (more) bragging rights over iPhone users.
The internet is filled with stories of cheating spouses done in by their social networking accounts, but Apple may have set a new record for the fastest breakup due to an app. Merely four days after its release, info from the new Find My Friends app is being claimed as evidence in divorce proceedings.
Find My Friends (FMF) is like a blend of Facebook and Google maps: you send someone a request through the app and, once they accept, you can see their location on a map. It sounds a little creepy to me, but Apple’s description makes it sound rather benign and even useful (assuming everyone you know also has an iPhone). Their examples include things like keeping track of traveling companions or making sure your kids got home from school. You could probably also enlist the app to track down a lost or stolen phone or, you know, just stalk someone…not that Apple would ever condone that.
Still, FMF will undoubtedly be used for amateur sleuthing and may have already been used to catch a cheating spouse. A man posting on the MacRumors’ forum claims that he secretly put FMF on his wife’s phone when he started to suspect that she was having an affair and used it to catch her in a lie.
“I got my wife a new 4S and loaded up Find My Friends without her knowing. She told me she was at her friend’s house in the East Village. I’ve had suspicions about her meeting this guy who lives uptown. Lo and behold, Find my Friends has her right there.”
There are a lot of problems with this story and many people doubt it’s even true, but it’s still an interesting look at the role technology plays in our life.
The true measure of a smartphone isn’t how great the camera is or how many apps it has—it’s how durable it is when dropped.
And it will be dropped. No matter how careful you are, it is the fate of every expensive gadget to be dropped (or worse) at least once in its lifetime.
Luckily there are people out there who get a kick out of “testing” to how much abuse certain gizmos can take before they bust. Here’s SquareTrade’s iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II drop test.
This might be a little painful to watch for technophiles, but remember that it’s all done in the name of scientific experimentation.
Spoiler: The iphone doesn’t fare too well…but it’d almost be worth it if Siri was programmed to say “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Apple sold 4 million of their new iPhones in three days, smashing the already record sells of the iPhone 4.
It’s no surprise that people are excited about Siri, Apple’s AI assistant, voice-control has been on consumers’ home automation wish-list for a while. If Siri proves to be a success and not just a gimmick, we’ll no doubt end up seeing the technology used on a larger scale.
Just to show that we aren’t completely obsessed with Apple products, here’s a short video of me fooling around with the lights using Josh’s new Samsung Galaxy S II and the SuperLink Android app.
Stuff.tv has a neat demo of the iPhone’s voice-controlled personal assistant, Siri.
The general consensus seemed to be a that people were disappointed the iPhone 5 turned out to be the iPhone 4S, but that hasn’t stopped Apple from selling one million of them in 24 hours.
Apple says that this is the fastest selling first day for any Apple product, ever, beating the previous record holder, the iPhone 4, which sold 600,000 units on its first day.
Maybe Siri, the iPhone’s new voice-recognition assistant, will prove to be a killer app after all and may find some usage in home control…or a precursor to Skynet.
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