Amazon Fire Repairability Rating 3 According to iFixit

iFixit gave Amazon Fire a score of 3 out of 10 when it comes to reparability on their Teardown Scale since the smartphone has a lot of wires and other constraints that makes it harder for the user to tear it apart then pull it back together. The cables, connectors and glue are just too messy. It will be a nightmare for the repair department.

That's to be expected since Amazon Fire is not an ordinary smartphone. It phone has 1280 x 720 pixel display and a screen size of 4.7 inches. It is equipped with 13MP main camera and a 2.1MP secondary camera. The internal storage of the phone is 32 GB, you can also opt for a bigger storage of 64GB. It has 4 IR cameras so that it can detect the users face to give the screen a 3D effect. The smartphone is powered by quad-core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 application processor and a graphic processor. It runs on Android Fire OS 3.5 operating system. The 32 GB is priced at $199 with a contract. 

iFixit discovered that the phone uses WCN3680 chipset which supports Bluetooth LE 4.0—a technology. So the BLE (Bluetooth low energy) are incompatible with the Fire Phone.

Samsung Rolls Out "Galaxy Apps"

Samsung wants get in the "Google Play" market and challenge their dominance by rebranding their app store with "Samsung Galaxy Apps." They have presented last Friday July 11, 2014 their new  Galaxy Apps store, it will be offered to over 130 million users in over 161 countries.

Here is their blog post message:

"Samsung Electronics launched Samsung Galaxy Apps, an app store that offers hundreds of apps exclusively available to users of Samsung Galaxy mobile devices. An improvement upon its predecessor, Samsung Apps, the new app store features apps that will allow greater customisation of mobile devices and will also function as a platform to offer various promotions and discounts."

The new Samsung Galaxy Apps store has an intuitive user interface and is composed of 3 sections:

Best Picks - this section allows the users to look for recommended apps and promotions with ease.

Top - this section shows the most popular apps, and they can be viewed and arranged according to their popularity, date, and price.

For Galaxy - this section is further divided in 4 sections.
    Galaxy Gifts - offers premium apps exclusively for Galaxy devices.
    Galaxy Essentials - delivers must-have apps for Galaxy devices.
    Apps for Professionals -it is the home of business focused apps and other services that fully utilize the features of Galaxy devices.
    Galaxy Specials - here users can download apps specifically created by using Samsung SDKs.

Introducing the New Sony Xperia C3 smartphone the Selfie Phone

Check out the new Sony Xperia C3 smartphone that is design primarily for the selfie people. Sony have seen the predicament of a lot of people who loves to take photos of themselves which is best known as selfie. Oftentimes, using the primary camera of the smartphone is pretty difficult since you need to extend your arm and pray that you press the correct button. If you want it easy and use the secondary camera it will give you dim and grainy photos since it has no flash and it is a low megapixel camera.

Now with the new Sony Xperia C3 smartphone that is designed specially for taking selfies, say goodbye to those predicament. The new phone is equipped with a big 5-megapixel camera in front with flash. It has also a main 8-megapixel camera also with flash at the back. The front camera has a wide-angle lens that would be best for group selfies with your friends and family.

The phone is not just for taking selfies since it runs by a very powerful 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM and the Adreno 305 GPU that is great for playing games and watching movies. The display is 5.5 inches 720p IPS that is supported Sony's signature Bravia 2 Engine and Triluminos display tech.

It is powered by 2,500mAh battery. The 8GB of internal memoryis a lot of space for all your photos and videos. You can also expand it using microSD. You can do a lot with your pictures since the phone is loaded with Vine app, Portrait Retouch, TimeShift-burst, Picture effects, Movie creator, Social Live, Sweep Panorama, and Superior Auto. It is also LTE supported. It runs on Android 4.4 KitKat.

The Sony Xperia C3 will first be release in China in August and other countries will follow.

The new Android L

 
Android KitKat is the latest Android platform that has great features and improved performance but Google is not resting on their laurels. They now previewed their latest platform with even better performance and more features, the Android L. It was presented at the Google I/O developer conference that was held last June 25 – 26 at Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, USA.

The Android L will have a new look and it will be bold and a complete overhaul from the previous Android platforms. It will have a uniform design for mobile and desktop. It features new iconography and typography. It will also have bright and striking colors. Android L also offers 3D animations, new themes that has real-time shadows.

Google promised that Android L will have better notification process which you can launch by double tapping or get rid of it by swipping them away.

Android L will be equipped with ART. ART is the latest runtime complier that processes applications more efficiently. It can support cross platform and can give faster performance. It will also have an Android Extension Pack to give more detailed graphics for games.

The best thing about Android L is the promise of an improved battery life. They will be introducing a feature called Project Volta that will make sure that the battery performance keeps up with the rest of the operating system.

Project Volta is created to enhance the overall battery life through optimization of the subsystems of the device. It also offers a Battery Historian tool and a Battery Saver mode.

Battery Historian shows the list of programs that drains your battery while Battery Saver will let you clock-down CPUs, turn down refresh rates and shut off background data to save your battery.