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Survey says iPhone 6 won’t cause Android users to jump ship

Surveys are just that, a representation of the massive totality based on the opinion of a representative few – albeit with scientific research foundations. How much stock we put on their reliability changes from person to person, but the results usually stand proud regardless of your doubts or approval. This specific one leans it favor towards the Android ecosystem – that only 5% or less of Android users will jump over to iOS with the upcoming iPhone 6 launch.



The survey was done by an outfit called Survata – a survey group that has clients among Fortune 100 companies. The method was pretty straightforward – approach respondents on sites around the Internet and ask if they want to complete a survey to unlock premium content on those sites. The company was honest enough to report a 3.3% margin of error, but believes that the method is solid. The respondents also reported what phones they currently own.


The main conclusion is this, that there is an “utter lack of interest in Android owners to switch over to the new iPhone”. The “utter lack of interest" in Apple's upcoming device is represented in a number – only 5% will surely make the jump to the new iPhone 6 if given the chance. If you ask me, I will admit that I’m biased as heck and would not even touch the box of an iPhone with a stick. But the data speaks for itself – Android users are pretty much content with the technical environment they’re in right now. Does this piece of data speak for all Android users?


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Surveys will tell you that these are representative data – in this case, it will be accurate to over 96% of the market. Do with the data what you will. I won’t make that jump – and I know of other people who won’t. What’s you take on it? Ping us back on the comments section and let us know your thought on this.


VIA: CNet





Infographic shows how much screen your smartwatch is using

Bezels – hate them, but can’t do without them. Bezels do serve their purpose, but we want less and less of them and more screen, right? Now, with a nod to the original infographic for phones, this new one shows us which smartwatch gives you more screen usage for your money.



No prizes for guessing which comes first – it is Motorola’s Moto 360, which give us around 71.5% screen usage for its whole round-face aesthetic. The Moto 360 has been the runaway leader of the smartwatch market this early in the race, and it is because of that classic round design – and maybe the fact that Motorola opted to use more screen. In comparison, the LG G Watch R – a belated round-face design that tries to match with the Moto 360 – only uses over 51% of its round screen.



smartwatch infographic



As with the phone infographic, the author says that the measurement starts from edge to edge and takes into consideration all of the things on the device’s face. The lowest percentage for a smartwatch’s screen usage belongs to the Pebble, with only 32% -- which means that over 75% of the watch’s face is all bezel. That’s just poor.


We dig that bezels are sometimes essential to the workings of our devices – although the Sharp Aquos Crystal phone begs to disagree – there’s just no excuse for them occupying more than half of our device’s front screens. You can maybe check out the phone infographic as well (linked above) to see how your devices stack up.


SOURCE: REDDIT





Amazon Prime Instant Video is finally available for Android, baked into its core shopping app.

Amazon Prime Instant Video is finally available for Android, baked into its core shopping app.


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Textra SMS now has Android L Material Design

The Android L (Lollipop? Lemon Meringue? Lime Key Pie???) is still a month or so away but already several apps have been adapting the the basic look of it. Textra SMS, an alternative messaging app for your Android device, is the first one among the apps of the same ilk to have adapted Android L’s Material Design and from the looks of it, it is indeed a beauty.



If you’re bored with your phone’s default messaging app, chances are you’ve looked around at several alternatives and maybe Textra SMS was one of those you considered but maybe didn’t go with. The latest update to the app though might make you reconsider, that is if you’ve already started falling in line with the Material Design that Google has been slowly rolling out to its native apps. It now has color theming so you can choose how your inbox would look like, thematically.


Aside from the look and feel, the update also brought several changes to make it easier to handle messages. To compose a new message, you can just tap on the plus icon located at the bottom right corner of the app. You can also do a quick compose message from your notifications drawer. To see the other options for the message (forward, send as email, lock), you long press the conversation bubble and click the settings button. If the floating notification for a new message appears, you can just right swipe it and it will be mark as read already, if you don’t have time to actually read the message. If you want to read it later, you can swipe up to dismiss it but it won’t be mark as read.


While the new look has definitely improved the app at least design-wise, some have complained that some of the previous features are no longer working (they might just need bug fixes though). But if you want to try the new look Textra SMS out, you can download it for free from the Google Play Store.


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Practice football skills on a wearable with SPS: Football

If you have dreams of becoming the next Lionel Messi, well at least digitally, then you better start practicing those football skills on your smartwatch now. Super Party Sports (SPS) has released the wearable edition of their Football game, exclusive for those that are running on Android Wear. The game is simple enough to run on a smartwatch but it claims that “boredom will have no chance” against the game, as long as your wrist doesn’t get tired from all that action.



Just by the mere action of tilting your smartwatch, you can train your football avatar to keep their head in the game, or rather, keep the ball on their head. That’s basically the main objective of the game, to get as many points as you can by continually hitting your head against the football (or soccer ball, if you prefer), collecting coins along the way and trying to beat the high score.


You can even get the help of teammates and other balls through power up balloons that pop up every once in a while. And if you are able to do some tricks and combinations, you can get more points. Arm movement is the key to letting your avatar run, jump and head the ball, all within the frame of your smartwatch.




The game is compatible only for wearables running on the Android Wear platform, particularly the Samsung Gear Live, LG G Watch and the newly-launched Sony SmartWatch 3. We have no idea why the Moto 360 isn’t included in the list though. SPS: Football is available for free download from the Google Play Store.


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Rumored Meizu MX4 Pro to launch with 4GB RAM, better proc

Just nary a week has passed since Meizu took on all comers (well, specifically the Xiaomi Mi4) with the announcement of the new MX4, and now we’re hearing rumors of a new, more robust version? The rumored Meizu MX4 Pro is purportedly coming out with 4GB RAM and a better processor. But the leak has some problems with the designated processor combo that it supposedly put out.



The new smartphone is supposedly coming out with a whopping 4GBs of RAM, but that will only be beneficial to a processor that can fully use all of that wonderful random access memory. To be sure, a 64-bit processor would be called for, but the leak shows an A17/A15 big.LITTLE octacore configuration. That is a 32-bit processor, which would be held back by being able to use only 3GBs of RAM at any point in time.


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There is a device out there – the Tronsmart Orion R28 set-top box – with this configuration and they leveraged the 4GB RAM by allowing the processor to support "Large Physical Address Extension", a technology that allows access to more physical memory. Industry hacks speculate that there might have been a typo – and that the processor could be an Exynos 5430 octacore chip with A15/A7 big.LITTLE configuration, an ARM V7A processor that would be able to use the 4GB RAM.


That aside, the MX4 Pro will supposedly come out with 5.4-inch 2560x1536 display – way better than the current MX4’s 5.36-inch 1920x1152 display. We’re pretty sure that more details would come out as the launch nears. Also, if you don’t fancy shipping out from China, move along now, nothing to see here.


VIA: Talk Android





Samsung to come out with ‘all metal’ mid-range phone?

If people have one complaint about Samsung’s phones, it’s that they’re too “plasticky” to be considered as real premium gadgets. And then they go ahead and buy them anyways. Well, Samsung may be saying “Enough of the plastic complaint already!” – if the recent launch of the Galaxy Alpha (with the metal side binding) was to be any indication. The next phone in the Alpha series is rumored to be an all-metal affair, with the name code SM-A500.



The SM-A500 – according to the sources that the fellows at SamMobile are talking to – will have an all metal finish, including the back and doing away with the faux leather that Samsung seems to be using in all its premium phones to date. The phone will also go solid on the back, meaning that the rumored 2,330mAh battery will not be removable.


Other than that, all the other specs point to mid-tier – a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, 8MP/5MP camera combo, 16GB of internal storage and a 5-inch 1280x720 Super AMOLED display. Unlike the Galaxy Alpha, though, this phone may have a microSD slot – actually a hybrid one that also incorporates that nano-SIM slot.


Typical of Samsung to not want to disturb its current design language and just create a new line of products to test out the mid-tier/premium finish combo. Because, hey, the more phone models out there, the better for us all, eh? NOT. We certainly wouldn’t fault them for this new Alpha series of phones, but they sure found a safe – if not a more expensive way – to do their market study.


VIA: Sam Mobile





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