Opinion: The OnePlus One lottery.

   The beautiful device which you see pictured above this text is the OnePlus One. The company is made of a few people who used to work for Oppo, you can probably tell given the similarities between this device and the Find 5. But, looks aside the OnePlus One is a powerhouse with the Snapdragon 801, Full HD 1080p 5.5" screen, 3GB of RAM, 16 or 64GB of internal storage and a 3100mAh which should last you pretty well. 

   The best thing about the phone though is the price. £229 for a 16GB version or £269 for the 64GB variant which simply blows everything out of the water in terms of price to performance ratio, especially when you consider that the device will be kept up to date by the guys over at CyanogenMod, this thing becomes a very interesting beast for people who like to buy their phones sim free.

   So what's the catch? Well seemingly nothing with regards to the phone, the problem though is that it's nothing short of a lottery to get hold of one! We know the problems that some companies (I'm looking at you Google) have when they try to launch a new device and people can't wait to get their hands on the shiny new toy as soon as possible. To alleviate this issue OnePlus have decided that they will release a very limited stock onto the market and then from there you will be able to get hold of a phone by invite only.

   On the surface this is a good way of managing demand while the early production issues, which there will inevitably be with a new company and new device, get ironed out. But, where does that leave the consumers, the people who actually want to buy this phone. Well, in a bit of a predicament. Why would someone who wants a new phone try desperately to get hold of this phone by bribing someone for an invite or smashing their old phone when they can just walk into the nearest Carphone Warehouse or navigate their browser straight from here to Google Play or Amazon to pick up the Nexus 5 or any other device they want? 

   Yes, the price is the only reason why you would wait for this phone. The problem for OnePlus is how quickly they can go from these 100 phone smashing incidents to taking the money from everyone who wants to carry one of the 'Ones' in their pockets. If they take a few months something better will come out, but they have a couple of months to scale things up and if they can do it fast enough, then they'll stand some sort of chance of having a successful product.

   I think the phrase to finish this off with should be slightly ominous, so I suppose 'time will tell'.

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Editorial: 'The giant phone quandary: What is the sweet spot?'

   We live in a world where phones are getting bigger and bigger every year, the only company who seem to be resisting the trend is Apple. While every major Android manufacturer has their flagship device sitting at 4.7" or bigger the iPhone is standing firm at 4". Smaller phones aren't for everyone though and some times we start thinking to ourselves that the 4.7" Samsung Galaxy S3 is a little bit too small.

   That leaves us with a bit of a quandary: Do we go for something like the Galaxy Note, which is 5 and a half inches or do we really push the size and go for something like the Asus FonePad to use as our daily driver?

   That's a big problem because the Galaxy Note 2 is something which people would recognise as a phone, but the Asus FonePad is essentially a 3G tablet which you can make calls from. That's where the Samsung Galaxy Mega comes in. It's right in a sweet spot between the two, let me explain why.

   The Galaxy Mega 6.3 is set to offer great performance from its dual core Cortex-A15 processor, it has a good 720p screen, it will have a removable battery, it will have a good rear camera and most importantly it will have the bezels which you expect to see on a smartphone! They are thin and that extra difference will be enough to make it a 'phablet' and not merely a tablet with phone capabilities.

   The Asus Fonepad on the other hand is a tablet, the bezel is just like a tablet would have. It's wide all the way around and it's hard to hold in one hand when we got to play with one.

   The problem is noone has got everything right. The FonePad is a snip at £180 and it performs admirably, but we need our phone on us to pull out when we get our WhatsApp from our friends in Australia. That's what the Samsung Galaxy Mega offers us, but it's £460 if you want to pre-order one. That gulf in cost simply can't be justified by the addition of a slightly better processor and a rear 8MP camera.

   So our request tech companies is that we want a phone which will fit in your pockets, which will have a rear camera for the spontaneous snaps and for the price of a 7" tablet. We're not asking too much are we?

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Editorial: What we want to see and what we expect from the next version of Android!

   With Google's little green robot seemingly on an endless march to world smartphone domination, it's time to turn our eyes towards the future and more specifically the next version of Android. In the last few years the platform has come a heck of a long way. The transition in style from 2.3 Gingerbread was carried forward and built upon through Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and now we're on the latest and greatest of the two versions of Android Jelly Bean! Throughout the whole process Google has tried to keep things light and nippy and Jelly Bean was undoubtedly a triumph in that regard, making everything 'buttery' smooth and adding a good set of features with every release. 

   The real question now is where Google takes their operating system. It seems that we're at a bit of a crossroads; on the one hand Google needs to continue to innovate and extend the features for their smartphone users, but they also need to offer a more compelling solution for the tablet space because there's Microsoft and Apple working to make their tablet offerings the best too. This divide is the best way to split this article, so we'll start with what we want to see Google bring to the mobile phone side of Android and we'll perhaps throw in a few rumours here and there too!

Mobile Phones!

   Android is most fundamentally an operating system designed and targeted at mobile phones and
Google will be all too aware that they need to keep their focus on this arena. With the next iteration of Android we really, really want to see what Google does about unifying all of the accounts you have on your phone, and yes some people have called this 'Google Babble'.

"The rumours call it Google Babble,

We call it a necessity!"

 
   According to the rumours, Babble is meant to be Google's answer to Skype and to a certain extent iMessage and BBM. People will automatically point to Google Talk as the obvious solution here and we think that it is. What we'd like to see is Google's version of Skype, specifically for mobile phones. We want VoIP, video chat and instant messaging (with delivery reports) all bundled together. Obviously you can get all of this from Google's and third party apps already, but we're confident Google could do a better job by bundling their services together into one simple app!

    Perhaps a good way of managing this would be through the creation of a new messaging Hub. Take a look at the 'People' hub on Windows and Windows Phone and then look over at what Blackberry have done. Both are great solutions and the amount of time and inconvenience Android users currently have from clicking in and out of apps to see our notifications at the moment is silly. We've already seen Google start to head down this path when they chose to integrate GMail directly into the notification bar and we fully expect and want to see Google take this further with Facebook, Twitter and other email services!


   Those are the two main things for us at the moment, but obviously others things like 'performance profiles' seem to be very popular at the moment and indeed Sony are investing heavily in their 'battery stamina' optimisations at the moment and you might have noticed that Qualcomm are working on their battery stamina apps too, so we expect this to be important in the next version of Android whether Google implement any special settings or not.

   There's smaller things like a child or guest mode and password protection on individual apps which we'd love to see, but we expect that Google will be more keen on building on their lockscreen widget offering, especially since Facebook Home has launched, as well as things like Google Now improvements, speed optimisations and more generally making sure everything is seamless!

Android Tablets!

   When it comes to tablets it's a whole new ball game! Google have serious competition from both Apple and Microsoft in this space as tablets and computers are becoming one and the same! You might have seen the advert for the HP Envy X2, which truly is a tablet and computer in one and that's precisely the sort of device which Google has to challenge with the next version of Android.

   With that in mind we expect Google to work really hard on the tablet interface, we're not really sure the best way for Google to solve the issue, but the dock at the bottom of the screen used to be fantastic, perhaps some sort of gesture could call the 'Home, Back and Recently Used App' menu up, that would be an excellent feature.

   We're not too sure what else Google can do to the Android interface without jeopardising the You might have seen some of the reports lately which have seen Intel saying that Android is prime for inexpensive notebooks and we full expect Google to make this happen with the next version of Android!
touch experience and the individuality of Android. One thing is for certain though and that is that Google will start making plans for companies to use keyboards and detachable docks!


   Another thing which we still want to see Google implement is a cross device messaging service. We want to be able to reply to our SMS messages without swapping between Phone and Tablet all the time and perhaps Android 4.3 or 5, whatever it is eventually called, will have this feature on board!

 

   So that's what we want, now it's your turn, tell us what you want to see in the next version of Android in the comments below! You never know if we get a few good ones we might make a follow up 'What fans want from the next version of Android' article!

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Editorial: Why I don't want a mobile phone without Samsung's Touchwiz!

  

There's not normally a company who can lock me down when it comes to my technology. Let me give you a brief overview of my current set of devices so that you can see my distinct lack of brand loyalty:

   This is something which runs through my phone history too (You can see the full history written during my time at Coolsmartphone here); there's only one brand which can keep me relatively locked down and that's Samsung.

   Why Samsung? I hear you ask, well there's one very good reason for that and that's Touchwiz. Yes you did read that correctly, the only thing which stops me from buying another manufacturers phone is Samsung's Touchwiz. I'm fully aware people despise this piece of software; it slows down updates, it makes the annoying 'blub' sound and it brings with it a host of apps with silly 'S-something' names, but it's the best thing about my Samsung Galaxy S3.

"It slows down updates, it makes the annoying 'blub' sound and it brings with it a host of apps with silly 'S-something' names, but it's the best thing about my Samsung Galaxy S3."

   Let me explain. Touchwiz does things not everyone else's phones do and these next three things may seem menial and rather unspectacular, but for me and how I use my phone, they make my day so much easier.

Swipe to Call or Message:

   This is perhaps the best thing other manufacturers have missed from their Android skins. It's unbelievably simply and it works a treat.

   The premise is that you head over to your contacts list you locate the person you wish to contact and then if you would like to call them you pull across their name from left to right and if you would like to send them a text message you pull from right to left. It's flawless and it definitely builds on Google's 'swipe to dismiss' idea very well. Although, credit has to go to Samsung for implementing it as far back as the original Galaxy S.

   This is without a shadow of a doubt something which only saves a couple of clicks, but it is a great addition and was something which I sorely missed when I trialled Windows Phone.

Sensor controls:
 
   Secondly, there's my sensor controls. With these there's a bit of a learning curve and I'm not sure I know all of the 'moves' or that I ever will know them all, but they again help to make things simpler and quicker.

"Direct Call: It's unbelievably simple!"

   My favourite and most used is undoubtedly the 'Direct call' or more accurately the 'Phone to ear' move. Essentially what happens is you get a message from your friend, perhaps they want to meet at the pub in half an hour, but you can't make it for an hour and you want to find out who else is going or sometimes you just want a little chat with them! Well fear not, you've already opened the message to read it, so you put the phone to your ear and like magic it rings.



   It's unbelievably simple, but noone else has thought to do it before, which makes it totally brilliant. I would say I use this five or more times a day! It make it a lot easier, instead of backing out to your messages and swiping left or right as described in the 'swipe to call or message' section. Or if you use a normal Android phone you'd have to return to the main menu and head into the contacts app to place the same call.

   Samsung also added an easier way for you to take screen shots and being in the tech world it's a lot easier to swipe across you screen with a full hand then it is to press a combination of two or three buttons. But, this is something you have to already use to appreciate the change here.

   There's a list of other little things here too; you've got a choice to move your palm to the front of the phone or you can flip the phone over to mute a call (the latter was unashamedly borrowed from HTC's Sense). Or you can double tap the top of your screen to whip back to the top of a long webpage. Or you can shake your phone to rescan for a Wifi or Bluetooth connection instead of clicking away on the screen until it works! There's a few other things too, but these are the only one's I've ever discovered!

Voice commands:

   Google had a good set of Voice commands running on Android a while before Siri turned up with a genuinely compelling organisation and voice command suite, but this isn't quite on the same level as Siri or Google now, instead it's more simple and surprisingly useful.

   The one voice command I've found myself using more than I thought I would. This time it's making the phones cameras take pictures without pressing the on screen button! I think we've all been there; we've got a group photo coming up, maybe we're using the front-facing camera but reaching for that shoot button blurs the picture as you reach for it. The same could perhaps happen as you move to take a shot with the rear camera, sometimes that small movement blurs the picture. So Samsung kindly lets you say 'shoot' to take the picture. It works flawlessly about 90% of the time and I don't mind saying it twice to get it to work if it means I get that perfect picture! There's a couple of things you can say; "picture", "photo", "cheese" and "shoot" will all work!

The Wrap-up:

   Perhaps manufacturers get a hard time from people in the tech industry; sometimes they deserve it for releasing shoddy software and never fixing it. Sometimes they deserve it for back tracking on their promises and sometimes they hide behind a their Android overlays and use them as the excuse for not updating to latest version of Android. But, in this case I appreciate Samsung's offering and although I don't use the home screen, it's the other little touches which make Touchwiz. I definitely wouldn't willingly choose another phone over the Galaxy S3 at this moment in time.

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Editorial: HTC please reconsider!

HTC please reconsider your policy on Beats headphone bundling.

   HTC announced this week that they don't plan to bundle Beats headphones with their upcoming phones from now on. I know they have had a rough couple of quarters but they need something distinctive to encourage people to buy their phones and I'm going to tell you why the company should reconsider.

   Let me explain; if you walk into a phone shop to buy a new phone and you know you have £35 a month to spend on your contract, but you're undecided on which phone to buy... All you know is that you don't want an iPhone. This is why HTC needs to bundle headphones; if you get a choice of two phones, lets say for the sake of argument they are the HTC One X and the unannounced Samsung Galaxy S3. They both have comparable specs, they both have pointless launchers added on top of Android (Touchwiz and Sense) and they are both stunning in appearance. What will help you decide?! HTC are offering a free pair of Beats headphones and that is the deciding factor right there. This is exactly why I can't understand HTC's decision at all.

   The company's official line is this;

"An accessory like the headphone doesn't factor in when someone is buying a smartphone... If they want a Beats headphone, they'll buy it directly."

   I couldn't disagree more. Everyone knows Beats are £50 upwards here in the UK, which in reality is a substantial amount of money, so if the headphones are bundled in the box it is a genuinely attractive proposition to potential customers. After all HTC needs to sell some phones to get themselves back on track.

   The thing is the headphones don't cost HTC a lot to produce and bundle and giving them away with phones helps people choose HTC over other companies. HTC please wake up and see what you're doing, reconsider or soon you'll be quietly brilliant broke!!!

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Editorial: Why did GAME fail?!

   This is the picture you're greeted with if you visit GAME's website today, quite a sorry site. But, on the plus side you're reward points are now alive and kicking again!!! 

 Why though has this whole mess happened? How has a company which is pretty much a staple on every major high street across Britain managed to end in a position where its shares are worth £0.01 each and it's had to close down nearly half of it's outlets, just to become more attractive to potential investors? 

   I think we have to go back quite a way to find out the reason for this and it's quite a fundamental issue which will have repercussion further down the line if and when GAME gets bought out (the rumour today is that RBS are interested in the company?!). The issue is that people don't go to GAME any more. And why would they? Your local supermarket will likely sell the newest Call Of Duty or Mario Kart release so why would you want to journey out of your way when you can pick it up nearby at potentially a cheaper price.

   I can remember from personal experience when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released Saisnbury's decided to launch it at a lower price of £26, if I remember correctly every one of my friends flocked there with their parents after school because the parents could get shopping and we could get our game. But, even since then the times have changed, a large amount of people pre-order games from the online giants such as Amazon and Play or whoever else is offering the best price on the game.

   Aside from these fundamental changes in the way people shop, there are wider issues with the economy and one of the reasons GAME frequently cited for their issues was that they had had a poor Christmas season and as such they went into the quiet post-Christmas season, quiet for game released and sales, in bad shape. This is not an issue just affecting GAME, everyone is feeling the effects of the times and in for a Computer games retailer in such a niche and arguably a luxury market, GAME is always likely to feel the affects more than other sorts of retailers.

   The last issue is that GAME has repeatedly stated that publishers have been very unwilling to negotiate more reasonable prices with them for new titles. This is the most important part of their industry and if they are having long-term issues with supply then only new ownership will be able to assist with this issue.

   The rumour today is that RBS is considering buying out the ailing company, but again this gives me very little hope for the future because  I believe GAME is not is a good position for the future. They have only one source of revenue, from one market and I for one do not think the company can go anywhere. I genuinely hope I'm wrong because there are real people who work at GAME who could potentially lose their jobs in the future and British high streets will lose another iconic brand, but as long as there are people in the world, there is hope!

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Editorial: Why Google should have kept it as the Market

   Google have this week rebranded the Android Market as Google Play; something we all initially thought would be the name of the Google Nexus Tablet supposedly coming from Asus, but alas we were very wrong. I for one am very unhappy with this change and for me it makes little or no sense at all.
 
   My first difficulty with this change is the fact the market is no longer a market; it does not make any sense to go on to 'Google Play' to download a productivity suite app or a note taking app, it seems much more logical to head to an 'Appstore' or maybe a 'Marketplace' for this type of app. This means that fundamentally Google is unintentionally misleading consumers, consumers who do not need any more problems navigating around their Android device. These difficulties are proven by the fact that so many people have taken to Twitter to report that their phone has 'lost' the Android Market! This really is something Google overlooked; first they should have advertised the change of naming scheme instead of assuming people actually keep up with the news relating to Android and secondly the rename makes little or no logical sense. (I'll explain this bit in a minute).

   Ok, so I am not a big fan of the rebrand, but even I can see where Google are trying to go with this. They are trying to highlight the fact that the Market is not just a place to get apps, instead you can buy movies, books and everything else that I don't buy, but maybe some people do, from the Market. But still the word 'Play' to me evokes notions of gaming primarily, similarly it also evokes notions of video watching, but it certainly does not evoke images of reading, productivity, creation and business, all of which are also in the Market on Play.

    Call me stupid because I'm not the leader of a worldwide, multi-billion pound corporation but I just cannot see why the Market should become Play, although there is one exception and again I look to my limited knowledge of Apple products for the logic behind this decision.

   To the best of my knowledge Apple has an 'Appstore' for apps and they also have the iTunes store for movies, books, etc which you can purchase through separate apps (ie not the Appstore) on your IOS device. Now that is a model which makes sense, the reason I bring this up is because perhaps Google is going to fork what was the Market to an appstore on one hand and a video and music service on the other. This would make sense somewhere down the line, but for the moment they saw it best to promote just 'Play'.

   This is all pure speculation and perhaps I couldn't be further from the point but the word Play fundamentally does not cover everything Google offers us in the Android Market and that is why, I am not and probably will not be convinced or happy with the rebranding of the Android Market to Google Play.

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Editorial: Why Apple needed to ditch the 3 from the new iPad

   If there's one thing we know as techies it is this; Apple products create serious hype and never was this more true than with yesterdays announcement of the 'third-generation' iPad. And those three words at the end of the last sentence are what I found hard to comprehend from yesterdays announcement; the whole time I was sitting there saying to myself, 'so we have a new iPad but what is it called?!?!'. Yes I was sitting there actually getting frustrated that they weren't telling me because I was hoping to liveblog it but I didn't have a name for the post, so instead I took the easy way out and gave up. Shame on me.

  But back to what I'm meant to be considering... Apple have been clever, very clever in fact and I'm going to give you the pair of reasons why.

1. They have removed all distinction between the iPad's. Apple's thinking is 'what does is matter what version you have as long as you have an iPad'. They did exactly the same with the iPod and it worked so well because you either have an iPad or you don't. Much to my frustration you will either go shopping for a new tablet OR an iPad, somehow they have created the iPad as it's own category and that is a testament to how successful and powerful Apple's branding really is.
2. They have pre-empted the ridiculous situation that can occur when you add one number per version. The iPhone is already on 4S and when it starts nearing double figures it'll sound ridiculous, 'ohhh look at his iPhone 11, I've got the iPhone 12'. That's what Apple wants to avoid, it the reality is that it doesn't matter in their eyes, both parties have the iPhone and that fact will keep Apple's coffers ticking over.

   There we have it Apple knows how to market a product and create an iconic and lust-inducing brand and they could have called this iPad anything and they would still have sold millions, but they've proved again that they're the most valuable company in the world for a reason.

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Editorial: Why WebOS does have a future!

   Finally, WebOS has a future; it was announced WebOS would be maintained as an open-sourced platform. This is precisely the reason why the platform will have a relatively successful future, even if it doesn't grow to become the biggest ecosystem in the world.

   For anyone who has ever used the platform they will know it is simply a pleasure to use; it's fun, it's interactive and it's nice and simple. Lets start with the fun aspect; WebOS has gestures and they are great. swipe up to minimise an app and then just flick it off the screen to close it. It is just such a nice satisfying feeling and there's something about interacting with a screen that is fun and makes the whole process more immersive, which is exactly the reason I would much rather use my tablet to browse the internet than use my laptop. (This is also where the Blackberry Playbook excels; it's just fun to use.) This fun aspect is something the OS has over Android and even iOS.

   Secondly, WebOS is going Open Sourced so anyone can use it, so maybe a manufacturer will pick it up and make a couple of devices for it and we'll see how they sell. But, even if that doesn't happen WebOS will run on the Linux kernel so the OS can be utilised by enthusiasts and undoubtedly it won't be long before there is a commonplace dual boot option for WebOS/Android devices. This will grant us the possibility to mess around with WebOS on ourAndroid tablets and phones and it may gain some traction from the custom rom community. After all, Linux does always have a small group of enthusiasts and WebOS can always be kept alive by them at the very least. 

   But, sometimes people just get bored; just like Android has surged into fashion, it might surge straight back out and WebOS can assist iOS and WindowsPhone fill the potentially gaping hole left in the market the hypothetical crumbling of Android marketshare.

    Hypthesising aside, WebOS has already quite clearly influenced RIM and their QNX/Blackberry Playbook OS with the flicking apps of the screen to close them, touch sensitive gesture areas, to name but a few.

   Either way I really wish WebOS the best, Palm really made a great operating system and it's such a shame that Palm and HP both failed the software, but hopefully there is still a future.

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Editorial: The Future of Phones!

Nokia's Morph: A wearable dream of the future!

   The image above gives you Nokia's vision of the future of smartphones and undoubtedly it looks cool! Samsung share a similar vision and are also aiming for the bendy, unbreakable screens for tomorrows world. But, I'm not sure that is where the future lies. I think that's just the future for PDA's or maybe smartphone accessories.

   Let me explain; things like watch attachments for your phone, which give you a snapshot of what's going on on your phone, without you actually physically taking it out and having to look at it, would be insanely useful. Imagine a touchscreen watch which is essentially a notifications area that will let you control music playback, reply to emails and texts in a fun, bendy and interactive way that you can attach around your wrist, like the Nokia Morph concept above.

Dockable devices like Asus' Padfones will be the future.

   This is where I think companies have a big part to play in the future of phones; they will want to keep the device divide like this; Smartphones-Tablets-PC, each one of them in a market of their own. It makes sense, they earn money from three separate devices.

   I have a different plan for the future and in my head I merge the ideas of Asus, with their Padfone and Motorola with their Laptop Docks and then I take it even further! In my future the phone is the brain of all of the operations, the phone will have the specs and processing prowess of the computers of today or maybe even more (they're getting close already). They can be any size you want, depending on the amount of hard-drive memory you want, the size of the screen you want, the quality of the camera and any other feature you can think of, so in that regard they remain similar to today's.

   This is where the laptop dock, tablet dock, watch notification area/remote control display and ultimately a desktop PC dock all come in. Whatever accessory you want to view your 'phone' on is only a connection, physical or wireless, away. An example would be, if want to do some browsing all you have to do is dock your phone and hey presto you have your phones display on a tablet screen, laptop screen or desktop computer screen and your work can begin.

   Your phone becomes your digital world, you work, relax, play and do your other 'habits' with your phone and if you don't want to do it on the phone itself you have a full set of accessories to use with it. This completely eliminates any need for multiple devices. Think of it another way, you don't need an iPhone, iPad and a Mac. Instead you need an iPhone, an iPad dock and a Mac dock.

   At all times your information is exactly where you left it, there is no need for syncing because it really all is in one place, this is truly post PC, because your PC is with you in your pocket and it handles everything.

   The implications in my mind are endless. A good example to explain exactly what I'm on about is that you have a movie on your phone. If you're in bed and you want to start watching it then you place your phone into your tablet dock and can easily hold it and watch it in your hand, held above your head, if that's your preference. You fall asleep watching the film. The next day you're sitting on a train, you're bored but your laptop doesn't have the film synced to it, in today's world. That's not a problem when your phone is your computer. You whip out your laptop dock and watch it on the table on your laptop with your phone docked in it. Then you arrive at work, your boss isn't in yet and you have ten minutes of the film left, but at the moment your work PC doesn't have the film on it either. No problem, in the future you can just dock your phone and finish of the last ten minutes before he turns up late at 9:05, he's the boss no one shouts at him and he can't tell you off for cheekily finishing off your film.

   Ok, that was a silly little story but I think it conveys the point, phones can be so much more and I think they should be. The future's coming and at the moment Motorola and Asus have the vision but they don't quite have it in them to fully commit to a full tech revolution. I really hope this could be the future and for some reason, if this were to come true, my money would be on Apple to deliver it.

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