Budget Phone: Samsung Galaxy S Duos 3

Samsung Galaxy S Duos 3 is the newest product in the line of Samsung’s Galaxy S Duos series. It runs on KitKat the latest OS from Android. It also has TouchWiz Essence user interface by Samsung.

Other specification are almost the same from the Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 S7582. It is equiped with a 4 inches display, WVGA screen 480 x 800 pixels TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors. The processor of the smartphone is 1 GHz dual core Cortex-A7 with 512 MB of RAM. The phone storage is 4 GB of internal memory that is expandable with microSD card. The back camera is 5 MP shooter 2592 х 1944 pixels with autofocus, and LED flash. The front camera is VGA. Samsung Galaxy S Duos 3 is powered by Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery.

Discounted Moto X Units .edu email Users

Motorola is promoting their newest flagship smartphone Moto X to students and educators by giving discounts to .edu email users. Moto X, and other new products of Motorola like Moto Hint Bluetooth and Motorola Turbo Charger are available for pre-order on September 16. If you have a .edu email address, you can get $50 off for the Moto X smartphone for only $449.99, the regular price is $499.99. 

If you are interested in availing the .edu discount you will need to complete a form on their site and register your .edu email address to get the promo code. This promo cannot be used in conjunction with other discounts that Motorola is offering. The .edu promo Moto X will not have a contract with any carrier.

Facebook Video

Facebook have now added a view counter to public videos, you can now find popular and trending videos and monitor your own video if people are viewing it. Facebook said that they are serving about a billion video views per day and about 66% are from mobile users. The advantage of Facebook Video against YouTube is that Facebook is social media and the clip have the potential to go viral more rapidly.

Facebook has tapped video ads as an important part of their revenue stream. They have acquired video ad company LiveRail to help generate more income.

Smartphones Kill Switch California

To curb crimes involving smartphones and cell phones, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a historic bill last Monday August 25, 2014 that mandates all phones and smartphones sold in California to be equipped with a “kill switch”, that will turn it inoperable if lost or stolen.

Under the new law, it states that smartphones or other connected devices sold in California must have a method to remotely lock and erase information from a phone, that will render the device useless if stolen. The law will take effect on July 1, 2015. It was passed to curb the rising number of smartphone theft in the California.

If the owner of the phone recovers the device, the owner will still have the capability to restore the functionality and data of the device.

The law will also require the makers to develop a technology that will prevent the device from being requiring for the owner’s identification. It will also require the phone makers to educate and inform the consumers about this new technology.

Samsung Galaxy Alpha

The new Samsung Galaxy Alpha is a very thin, metal-framed Android smartphone it is Samsung's thinnest Android phone.

Samsung's sales is struggling despite the smartphones sales growing by about 27%, this time Samsung wanted a more elegant and more sturdy casing for their Samsung Galaxy Alpha. The smartphone casing is a metal frame and it is 6.7mm thick making it the thinnest Android phone of Samsung. Samsung's Galaxy S5 is 8.1mm thick. The phone is also light weighing just 115 grams.

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha has a 4.7" HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. It is powered by an Exynos processor with four ARM Cortex-A15 cores that runs at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores running at 1.3GHz, or quad-core 2.5GHz processor.

It runs on Android 4.4.4 (KitKat). It has a 12 megapixel rear main camera and a 2.1 megapixel front camera. It is equipped with a 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, but the storage is not expandable with a microSD card slot. The LTE connection supports download speeds up to 300Mbps, as long as there is a network that can handle it as well. You can also connect through WiFi, USB, and Bluetooth. The smartphone is also equipped with a fingerprint scanner.

The battery is not that impressive, it has a 1,860 mAh battery.

The back panel is removable with a tactile pattern. The colors available are Charcoal Black, Dazzling White, Frosted Gold, Sleek Silver, and Scuba Blue.

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha will go on sale on September.

Asus Transformer Pad TF103

Asus Transformer Pad TF103 is designed to have the mobility of an Android tablet and the function of a small notebook. It is a slick hybrid which has a 10.1-inch display that has a keyboard with a hinge which makes it foldable like a notebook. You can also unhinge the keyboard using a quick release button to transform it into a tablet. It weighs 545 grams and ist 9.9mm thick. It weighs at 985 grams and 19.8mm thick with the keyboard attached.

Asus Transformer Pad TF103 runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with a very clear 1280x800 IPS LCD screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio, vivid colours, wide viewing angles and amazing contrast.

It is powered by a 64-bit Intel Atom 1.3GHz quad-core processor with a 1GB of RAM. It is also equipped with a full-sized USB port for the detachable keyboard. You will also find a micro-USB port on the tablet itself which is also use for charging. It has a plastic body. It has  Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi at 2.4 and 5GHz.

The storage is 16 GB Embedded MultiMediaCard and expandable using a micro-SD slot. Max Supported Capacity is up to 64 GB.

If you are looking for very mobile notebook that can act as a tablet this is a very attractively and affordable choice. It has a low starting price at $299.

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.