HTC Releases Butterfly S Phablet Into the Wild

HTC's latest handset has emerged from the proverbial cocoon, but it's no tiny newborn. Rather, the Android-powered Butterfly S has "phablet" proportions, meaning it's larger than the traditional smartphone but smaller than a tablet.

Packed with a quad-core 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor, a 3,200mAh battery, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage, the nascent device sports the 5-inch HD screen common to the emerging phablet class of devices.
Announced on Wednesday in Taipei, the device -- which is actually an updated version of the original HTC Butterfly launched last fall -- will be available in select Asia Pacific markets starting in July.

HTC did not respond to our request for further details.

The Specs

It addition to its oversized 1080p display, the Butterfly S features front-facing Boom Sound stereo speakers and runs Android 4.2.2 "Jelly Bean." Also included are a quad-band HSPA/WCDMA radio and an HTC UltraPixel Camera with HTC Zoe and Video Highlights, which provides 300 percent more light than traditional smartphone camera sensors while also offering advanced editing capabilities directly from the device, HTC says.

The handset also offers a 2.1-megapixel wide-angle camera on the front. Its battery is apparently the highest capacity battery in any HTC smartphone.

Pricing is expected to be about US$766.

'Bigger is Better'

Coming hard on the heels of reports that Apple may be considering launching a line of phablets as well, HTC's latest addition suggests continuing momentum for the category.

"Like with so many things, bigger is better, and that is particularly true with screen size," Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics, told TechNewsWorld. "You are trying to go as big as possible while still fitting into pockets."

The target market for such devices is primarily video enthusiasts, Entner added: "Bigger screens are particularly valuable for video viewing," he explained.


Spawning Accessories

The appeal for other consumers, however, is less certain.

"The average consumer isn't going to use this, and it isn't a mass stream device," Wayne Lam, senior analyst at IHS iSuppli, told TechNewsWorld. "These devices barely fit in the pocket, and it has gotten so big that these are spawning accessories."

Included among those accessories, for instance, is "a smaller handset that pairs with Bluetooth," Lam added. "It is very much like the joke that it has its own moons and planets."

'There Is a Market for It'

Still, the phablet could find a place where users can't necessarily go with both a tablet and a handset, whether for reasons of cost or space. In this way it could solve a problem, especially for those on a budget.

"There is a market for it now, especially in parts of Asia," said Lam. "That was a natural extension of that form factor, especially in areas such as the developing markets where people can't always afford a tablet and a phone.

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The First Facebook Phone: A Little Too Much Information

Do you use Facebook a lot? Like, a lot a lot? If the answer is yes, then the HTC First may be the smartphone for you. It’s the first to include Facebook’s new mobile software, called Home, which attempts to remake the smartphone experience around your friends’ Facebook activity. If, on the other hand, you’re not a heavy user of Facebook, then the First, and its new interface, may leave you rolling your eyes or scratching your head.


Home, which Facebook unveiled last week, hides the array of apps that dominate most smartphone home screens and instead puts Facebook activity front and center. Home runs on top of a newish version of the latest iteration of Google’s Android software, Jelly Bean. It will be available Friday as a free download for a handful of newer Android phones or preloaded on the HTC handset, which I was able to test out.

Home splashes status updates across your entire lock and home screens, making it easy to see and respond to your friends’ posts. It also makes Facebook’s messenger application ever-present with little “Chat Heads” that follow you from app to app and make it easy to keep up conversations.

Home is a big deal for Facebook as it tries to address the fact that its users increasingly access the social network from smartphones and tablets, where ad revenues are more elusive. If Home resonates with these users, they could spend a lot more time on the social network, generating more data to help Facebook improve its ad targeting. For HTC, which has struggled to remain relevant with smartphone buyers, being the first handset maker to include Home from the get-go is a nice coup.

There isn’t that much to say about the First’s hardware. It looks like other nicely designed midrange smartphone, with rounded corners and a soft-feeling plastic back and sides. The only physical indication that there’s anything different about this handset is a tiny Facebook logo on the back, alongside those of HTC and AT&T. It has a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a ho-hum five-megapixel camera, and it generally felt zippy over AT&T’s 4G network. For $99, with a two-year AT&T contract, it’s a decent smartphone.

Turning it on, however, makes clear that this is not your average Android phone. Facebook status updates fill the home and lock screens with text, links, and images; you can either let them rotate on their own or swipe to see the next one. A quick double-tap lets you “like” a post, and you can tap near the bottom of the screen to post a comment.

The coolest part of Home is the tiny, circular “Chat Heads” that appear on the screen when you’re having a conversation via Facebook Messenger or SMS. They conveniently stack on top of each other when you have several conversations going at once, and you can tap on the stack to get back to a conversation, or swipe to move it somewhere else on the screen (they always stick to the margins, though). Chat Heads remain overlaid on any app you’re using, so you can look up directions or check e-mail without having to find your way back to the conversation. This is especially helpful when you need to hunt down information online during a chat.

But Facebook’s Home is not without problems. The first thing I noticed was the age of the status updates—frankly, they seemed pretty stale, with many from several hours ago or even the previous day. Tapping on friends’ user icons to get to their full profile within the Facebook app revealed newer updates that Facebook, presumably, thought weren’t as relevant to me or weren’t appropriate to be displayed prominently on my phone.

Parts of Home also feel needlessly complicated. For example, accessing several main functions requires pressing a finger on a tiny, circular version of your Facebook profile photo that resides near the bottom of the screen (if this is an image of yourself, then you’ll be staring at your own face throughout the day) and then dragging it in a particular direction to select the function. Dragging up, for example, selects Home’s app launcher, which houses your favorite apps and offers shortcuts for posting Facebook status updates. It seemed a shame that Home has relegated all my other apps to oblivion. And wouldn’t it be easier to just let me double-tap or slide my own face downward to update my status?

It also seemed odd that by default Home obscures the network signal, battery icon, and clock at the very top of the screen. For me, this is pretty important information—more important than even a cute photo of my friend’s baby.

Fortunately, you can make some modifications to Home, such as bringing back the status bar and showing the First’s Android lock screen rather than the Home version. You can even turn Home off completely, if you so desire.

Thanks to Facebook Home, the HTC First makes it very easy to see and respond to status updates and carry on conversations with friends. With more than a billion Facebook users out there, no doubt plenty of them will be willing to install Home on their Android phone or buy the First. But I suspect that for the majority of us, the app’s immersive social experience—much less a phone devoted to it—will feel a little unnecessary.

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BlackBerry Z10 - First Phone to Run BB10 OS

When it comes to buying a smartphone today, there are countless of options to choose from. However, the list continues to grow as many manufacturers want a share of the huge smartphone market. Among them is Blackberry, which is all set to woo users with its latest Blackberry Z10 smartphone.



The BlackBerry Z10 features a 4.2 inch high-definition touchscreen display which boasts an amazing resolution of 1280x768. As a result, the pixel density of the Z10 lays waste to the popular iPhone 5. When it comes to camera capabilities, the BlackBerry Z10 features an 8 megapixel rear facing camera as well as a 2 megapixel front facing camera. One of the most interesting features of the camera app is that of Time Shift. It gives you the ability to scroll forward and backwards by milliseconds to adjust each face in a group photo to make sure that everything is perfect.

The BlackBerry Z10 features a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor which is backed by an impressive 2 GB of built-in RAM. The phone also features 4G connectivity which means that you will be able to connect to not just the slower 2G and 3G networks but also any of the latest high-speed 4G networks that are available. This ensures that you are able to get a fast connection to the outside world whether you want to watch movies, have a video conference or any other possibility.

When it comes to choosing the BlackBerry Z10 one of the first things that anyone notices is that there are more than 70,000 applications that are available for use on the smartphone. On top of that there are countless movies and other advanced features just are not available on any other smartphone in the world. One of these features is known as Screen Share which allows you to share your screen with any person that you are having a video conference with.

Of course there are some downfalls of choosing to go with the BlackBerry. One of them is that it feels a bit less premium than many of the other smartphones available on the market today. For starters, the phone's body doesn't have the premium looks and quality of the iPhone 5 and HTC One X. Nevertheless, since the smart phone is a BlackBerry and makes use of its own proprietary mobile operating system, there are many excellent features which you will never find on any of the other smart phones available on the market today.

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Moonberri - Quickly and Privately Transfer Files

Have a file that you need to send to colleague or to a student, but is too big to attach to an email? If so, give Moonberri a try. Moonberri is a free service for privately transferring files. To transfer a file upload it to your Moonberri account then set a password for accessing it. Give the link to the file and password to the person that you want to be able to download the file. Moonberri will store your files online for up to 30 days.

Applications for Education
If you have students creating videos or large audio files often those files are too large to attach to a school-issued email account. In those situations a service like Moonberri could be a good tool for students to use to send their files to you.

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Be the first to know when results are out - VTU

Visvesvaraya Technological University students have always had the problem of not able to check their results fast as the server goes down due to overload whenever results are announced. Another problem being students are not able to view their VTU previous semester results. Now there is a new site which solves these problems and provides a few more useful features.

It is Vigzing's VTU Results.

Click below link to visit the site
Vigzing's VTU Results

Students can just get results with a couple of clicks. Just enter the USN and click submit.

Be the first to know when results are out: Vigzing's VTU Results posts a message on its facebook page very quickly whenever results are announced. To get the notifications all you need to do is like its facebook page.
Like Us on Facebook

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A BEAUTIFUL STORY: Self appraisal

A little boy went to a telephone booth which was at the cash counter of a store and dialled a number.
The store-owner observed and listened to the conversation: 

Boy : "Lady, Can you give me the job of cutting your lawn? 
Woman : (at the other end of the phone line) "I already have someone to cut my lawn." 
 

Boy : "Lady, I will cut your lawn for half the price thanthe person who cuts your lawn now." 
Woman : I'm very satisfied with the person who is presently cutting my lawn. 
 

Boy : (with more perseverance) "Lady, I'll even sweep the floor and the stairs of your house for free.
Woman : No, thank you.

With a smile on his face, the little boy replaced the receiver. The store-owner, who was listening to all this, walked over to the boy.

Store Owner : "Son... I like your attitude; I like that positive spirit and would like to offer you a job." 
Boy : "No thanks, 

Store Owner : But you were really pleading for one. 

Boy : No Sir, I was just checking my performance at the job I already have. I am the one who is working for that lady I was talking to!"

This is called……..

"Self Appraisal"    

--

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How To: Download Facebook Photos

I have found great tool to download all of your photos that are on your facebook to your computer.  If you’re like me your friends tag you in a ton of pictures that you want to keep but it is a lot of work to save each one individually.

It’s also perfect for someone who had the unfortunate happenstance that your computer crashed and you want all of your photos back.  Be proactive about that and always backup your data to a cloud or an external hard drive.

The program you use to download your Facebook photos all at once is called PhotoGrabbger.

Download PhotoGrabber to your desktop and choose which version you would like for either Windows or a Mac.

Install the app and give it access to your data on Facebook (through Facebook authentication) and choose Myself.

You can then:

Download all photos where you are tagged in
Download all albums that contains photos of you
Download all albums uploaded by you
Download comments and tagging information of the photos

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IndiaBIX for Engineering Students

Are you a student? For working of your brain sharply, time to time enhance logical aptitude. That work is being done by IndiaBIX.

In this site menu, there are separate wings for General Aptitude, Verbal and Reasoning, Programming, Puzzles, Online Tests etc. There is special wing for General Knowledge too. For job trails there is a separate wing Interview and Technical Interview - Short Answers. There are special wings for Engineering, Medical / Science students as well. Go visit indiabix.com

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HTC One shortages rumoured for launch

HTC One is due to launch next week but rumours suggest it could be in short supply due to a lack of parts

Rumours circling the company's new device, the HTC One, claim that according to sources the voice coil motor and compact camera module used in the One's Ultrapixel snapper are in short supply.

The follow up to HTC One X and HTC One X+ this new flagship smartphone is set to be released with a host of top-end features. However, part of the marketing of the phone was its use of 'ultrapixels' and this has been signalled as the main cause of shortages and potential delays.

According to a KGI Securities analyst, the yield rates are down to a possible low production of 800,000 - 1.2 million over the next few months.

Having recently reported their worst financial results in three years, this release is its main hope of solving their slump. The company are already facing fierce competition from the Samsung Galaxy S4 as it launches just a day before.
If all goes to plan, the HTC One is set to be released globally on 15 March costing around £500 in the UK.

Source: BriefMobile

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Say 'Good Bye' to Unnecessary services

Activation of the Internet on your mobile device. 10 rupees has been lost. Thank you for using it in the 'play' when you register for the project are issued. Decreased for 30 rupees a month. Thank you message comes.

After seeing it you will be in disorientation. How came the message that even not registered but the money is reduced by the day or month. Does not matter if you know English. People who doesn't know english not knowing what the message was read. Only money goes.

By unknowningly or matter of English if you are losing money, here is a good news.
To stop all the services activated unknowingly by yours, a number has come in ie 155223. It is common for all mobile phone companies. You can call to this number to stop for unnecessary services. If you call to this number you will get all the details regarding what are all the services provided to your number automatically.
Service activation of any complaint within 24 hours of a call to customer service, the company will repay the loss of money to customer, but not after a 24 hour call back.


Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the implementation of this system.

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