Category Archives: Technology

Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Technology

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 First Impressions

Enter Galaxy Note 8.

There is a lot of chatter about this phone; however, one statement that is not being put out into the atmosphere is, “This is not a good device.”  The Galaxy Note 8 is a wonderful device through and through.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Hardware

The Galaxy Note 8 feels great in the hands and it is simply amazing that Samsung managed to package a 6.3″ screen into a body of this size (close in size to an iPhone 7 Plus).  Since the device has a glass front and back, it is very grippy and easy to hold — so although it’s size may be unwieldy to some, is easy to hold in one hand.  Additionally, although the screen is large, it is slimmer than most devices coming in at only 74.8mm wide.  We are looking at a smartphone that has 6 GB of RAM, 12 MP dual-camera system (OIS on both sensors), USB-C, a headphone jack (yes, I have to mention it), S-Pen (more on that later), IP 68 water and dust resistant, a bottom firing speaker that actually sounds really good, Fingerprint scanner (in the wrong place right next to the camera,  this is the only part of the design that is flawed, which ruins the look of the back of the device) along with a Super AMOLED display that is simply one of the best, if not best, in the business.

Performance

You can put the best specifications in the world, the most RAM the fastest processor and still have a terrible smartphone experience, many Android OEMs have been guilty of this in the past, including Samsung.

Not this year.

With my time spent with the device, the phone flat out screamed from the moment I picked it up, until I put it down.  One area of the operating system in Samsung’s “Samsung Experience”, renamed from TouchWiz that appeared to be much more optimized was simply opening the Camera app.  Nearly all Samsung phones of the past would experience a little lag when opening the app — yes, it’s a big deal a moment is exactly that, a moment and something that you do not want to miss out on one.  Opening apps, closing apps and multitasking were absolutely painless making  this phone very performant.  One of the only pain-points I saw in regard to performance was swiping to the Bixby page at the left of the launcher, nearly every time (even when it was loaded into RAM) it opened the phone was met with stutter and dropped frames.

Samsung Experience

Most Android OEMs add a few apps, launcher changes and more to differentiate their flavor of Android from it’s competitors and Samsung does it in a very tasteful and refined manner on the Note 8 with highlights on two in particular.

Edge Apps

Because of the Note 8 screen technology, wrapping over the edges to meet the bezel, Samsung makes use of this with “Edge Apps”.  Edge Apps allows to to select from certain “predetermined” apps on the device and create shortcuts to those from anywhere in the operating system.  Really love that Samsung Notes app?  Put it in the edge and you’ll be able to take notes from anywhere in an instant.  Additionally, we now have App Pairs, which were introduced with the Note 8 and this allows you to pair commonly used apps together in a “pair” that will be launched together in split screen mode (6.3″ screen here, really making use of the extra real estate).

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Samsung “App Pairs” shown, above. (Note: In my experience the device did heat up a bit when two apps were on the screen in App Pairs.)

S Pen

While it is unknown of the actual usage statistics of Samsung’s S Pen, it is certainly a valuable addition to the device and where it gets its “Note” name from.  The S Pen makes it easy to jot down notes quickly and efficiently.  The phone doesn’t even have to be awake.  Need to capture some info?  Pull out the S Pen from the device, and start writing on the screen with “screen off memos” — these will be saved to a new note ready for you to reference later.  The S Pen does have it’s drawbacks, as the input lag is real here when drawing lines on screen and is somewhat intermittent when swiping between homescreens.

Source: Tim Schofield

Camera

Since when have you ever known of Samsung to slouch in the camera department?  It started this year, kidding.

The Note 8 takes fantastic shots.  With my experience, under Best Buy lighting, the pictures were crisp, focused and contained plenty of detail.  Video capture was nice and smooth as well; however, playback appeared slightly choppy on the Note 8.  Check out this very thorough camera review below:

Source: Andru Edwards

Nitpicks

There is so much to like about this device; however, I’m yet to have a perfect smartphone experience (seen my rants on iOS 11 lately?).

Let’s get this over with:

  • Smaller battery than the smaller Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus (likely due to battery issues in the Note 7)
  • Some photos appear to be over saturated, while pleasing to the eye, these pictures are not the most “true to life”
  • Disappointing S Pen performance lag

TLDR

Right now, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is the best Android phone that you can go into a store and buy, period — no questions people.  The overall package of performance, camera quality and excellent build make it an all-around winner.

Technology

Apple Watch Series 3 Impressions

Anyone seen the roadrunner?  Of course, you haven’t, because it’s on my wrist.  The biggest upgrade with the Apple Watch Series 3 is it’s responsiveness and battery life improvements.

Overview

Coming from the original Apple Watch (lovingly known as Series 0), the speed increase is huge with Series 3 with GPS.  Not only is the hardware much improved internally, watch OS 4 brings out the best in it.  From an improved workout app, Siri on board and a carousel of complications — this is a solid upgrade.  It is also reported that the speed increase is even notable from Series 1 and Series 2.

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Speed

Speed increases are the biggest and best thing about the new Series 3 watch and is seen from the moment you raise your wrist from the moment you lower it.  Even the most mundane and simple tasks such as swiping from watchface to watchface, opening an app and more — say goodbye to frame drops and hello to a perfectly smooth smartwatch experience.

watch OS 4

What does watch OS 4 bring to the table besides the very useful “Now Playing” complication?  First off, Now Playing is an excellent addition and automatically puts your media front and center on your watch when there is something playing on the iPhone, just makes sense.

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PocketCasts app shown above.  The Now Playing screen is similar and accommodates to media coming from your iPhone.

With Siri here, she can actually respond to you with her voice, which is only due to the new processor in the Series 3 device.  Apple Watch is an industry leading fitness device and the OS upgrade brings updates to the Workout app with more workouts to choose from an integration into new machines that will be coming to a gym near you.

Battery Life

Unbelievable. The upgrade from Series 0 to Series 3 is massive in this respect. Since purchase, I’ve gone to sleep after having it off of the charger all day with the battery at 84% and woke up with the battery at 77% — that is with light to moderate use the previous day. Just note that if this was my Series 0 it would’ve bit the dust overnight….

TLDR

Apple Watch Series 3 with GPS or with GPS and LTE are both considerable updates to the Apple Watch line and highly suggested if you’re in the market for a new wearable device.

Technology

Is iPhone X Justified?

Last week Apple announced a flurry of revisions and updates to it’s famed iPhone product line. Not only did we get updates to the iPhones 7 and 7 Plus, we got an all new $999 iPhone X (pronounced ten). Not only is the X a beautiful device (overall), it makes compromises left and right due to the choices, made by Apple, while now developers and users must pay the cost (literally) to use this new product.

Design

In an attempt to fully utilize the entire screen, iPhone X has two notches at the top of the screen that wrap around the Depth Sensor array and speaker at the top. Apple makes to attempt to hide this notch and creates two “ears at the top of the device that alters the experience unlike any other iOS device (more on that later). So while the screen at 5.8” is the largest screen ever on an iPhone, it will feel and react more like an elongated iPhone 7 or iPhone 8, not a Plus due to resolution. Let that sink in.

Software

iOS is arguably the easiest and simplest mobile operating system to use and get acquainted with and the iPhone X, albeit polarizing, does not change that fact.

Usability

iPhone X changes the paradigm, completely, in regard to how the screen displays information. So, first off, Springboard, which is Apple’s homescreen “launcher” remains the same — but let’s dive into the specifics of the hardware notch containing the True Depth camera array. This notch throws a wrench into a normally beautiful viewing experience and is considered by my technologists in the industry a design flaw, myself included. The issue this creates is that developers have to take into account this notch for all of their apps. Do they code around it? Or do they black out both “ears” surrounding the notch and just completely disregard that space? (Option number 2 is not recommended by Apple) So, will we enter an era of screen elements potentially ending up is strange positions around this hardware notch? You bet we will.

Additionally, this brings to light Apple’s claim to being edge to edge. Does it really count in this case? I’ll say that it does, but only because I’m trying to be nice. There are other phones on the market that still give us edge to edge but still have a small bezel around the device, look at LG V30. My question here is why couldn’t Apple push the sensors in the array further up, then give us equal parts of minimal bezel at the top and bottom of the screen? THAT would’ve worked…..

Should you buy it?

This is the tricky part, if you are using an iPhone 6 or 6s — go for it, if you can deal with a first generation product (not the first iPhone but the first in a brand new design).  Value or worth is completely subjective to the person that’s willing to swipe their precious card — $1000 is a lot for a smartphone (Apple, Google and Samsung); however, when thinking realistically we use and rely on our smartphone more than any other computer we own.  We want it to always have power, look nice, keep us in contact with friends and family — at the end of the day, the phone just needs to be worth the price tag.

The answer to this question is solely resting upon the shoulders of the buyer.

Technology

Apple iPhone Event 2017 Recap

This has been a long year of leaks and speculation about Apple’s latest iPhone and other devices that are released in the fall.  As usual, whether you have them or love them, the world has been on edge for what our friends in Cupertino are going to do and what all will be released.

Will it have a bezel?  Will there be a mac Mini?  Will it have wireless charging?  How much is it going to cost?

Your questions and more were answered on September 12th 2017 — and let’s hope that all of the leaks didn’t spoil all of the goodies Apple had planned for us.

Steve Jobs Theater

Apple’s latest campus is one of the last things that Steve Jobs worked on, from detailing the type of trees that were needed and more.  The Steve Jobs Theater was the place in which this fall Apple Event was to occur and as Tim Cook noted, “It was only fitting that Steve should open his theater” as we watched a very heartfelt video, seen below:

Source: cnet

This marks a great point in the history of Apple and it was no other way to start this event by words from a true visionary.

Apple Watch

Smartwatches, many of us have them; yet, many still do not.  Some view them as a necessity, while others view them as a trivial child’s play thing — needless to say, the Apple Watch is the #1 selling watch on planet earth and touts the most used heart rate sensor of any device.

Let that soak in for a minute.

The Apple Watch has changed lives from making people fitter, more aware of their surroundings and saving a life or two, watch their stories here:

Source: Apple

Today, we met Apple Watch Series 3, one that’s faster and one that has built in LTE (plus GPS) so that you can make calls while you’re away from your iPhone.  Usually phones get thicker when LTE radios and SIM cards are introduced (hello LG) — not this smartwatch.  Apple has integrated the cellular antenna directly into the watch screen itself, while incorporating a tiny eSIM on board the device.

Now that the Apple Watch is faster, featuring it’s W3 chip — we now have Siri on board, but we already had that right?  Now Siri can actually talk to you.

Source: Apple

Prices start at $329 for Series 3 with GPS and $399 with GPS + LTE

Apple TV 4K

Apple has made minor updates to the current Apple TV model and is introducing Apple TV 4K, bringing it inline with 4K content (albeit a small library) that is available today.  The new Apple TV has an upgraded CPU in the A10X Fusion (same chip that’s in the iPad Pro) that is twice as fast as the old with a graphics processesor that is four times faster that the previous model.

Additionally, Apple is bringing 4K content to iTunes and all of your previous HD content that you’ve purchased will be automatically upgraded to 4K, free.

Source: cnet

iPhone

Let’s get to the star, or shall I say, stars of the show — shall we?  For the past 10 years the iPhone has been an icon in the mobile space that has truly changed the world, from the way we interact, to the pictures we take, from the way we authenticate, how we consume apps, media and more — it is a truly iconic device.  Today, Apple built upon that with 3 brand new smartphones to take us into the future.

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus (yup, skipped S this year) are our successors to iPhones 7 and 7 Plus from last year and there are upgrades brought to each model.  Each device is now sandwiched between two very sturdy panes of glass, allowing for wireless charging — a first for an iPhone supporting the standard Qi, which means existing chargers made by Belkin, Spigen and others will work.  Each device is color-matched to an areospace-grade aluminum bezel and are splash, water and dust resistant IP67 certified.

Top features:

  • New Retina HD display with True Tone (if you’ve used an iPad Pro, you’ve witnessed the greatness of True Tone, shifting to tone of the colors on the display based off of your current lighting situation — this is different from Auto Brightness)
  • A11 Bionic SoC with 6 cores featuring 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, integrated with the first Apple designed GPU for up to 30% faster graphics performance than on previous models.  The A11 Bionic is named “bionic” because of it’s “world tracking” and “scene recognition” abilities, making this vital for AR Kit, which is instantly the world’s largest augmented reality platform.
  • Updated Portrait Mode with new Portrait Lighting, which dynamically changes the lighting on the subject and provide a completely different feel to the photo all done while in the camera app itself
  • Updated speakers to be louder and deliver more bass
  • Bluetooth 5.0 enabling pairing of multiple devices at once
  • LTE Advanced

Source: Apple

Starting at $699 for iPhone 8 and $799 for iPhone 8 Plus at the 64 GB configuration, available for pre-order on 9/15 and available on 9/22.

But wait, there was one more thing…..

Meet iPhone X (ten), the future of the smartphone.

Source: Apple

The screen on the iPhone X stretches from top to bottom and features the same glass on the front and back as the iPhone 8 devices with the surrounding band made of surgical grade stainless steel, meeting the glass in immaculate fashion.  Retina, move aside, iPhone X has an all new Super Retina Display that is 5.8″ diagonally with over 2.7 million pixels and has 458 PPI, the highest resolution ever put in an iPhone and it’s OLED.  This is the first OLED display that has met Apple’s high standards to be placed into a device.  Additionally notes is that the display features HDR, Dolby Vision, one million-to-one contrast ratio, color accuracy, 3D touch and True Tone.

But let’s talk camera…or cameras.  The iPhone X features the dual camera system, which sports Optical Image Stabilization in each lens and now, Portrait Mode can be used on the front-facing camera as well.

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Source: Pocketnow

Gesture Based Navigation

Since the iPhone X does away completely with the iconic home button of old, there has to be a way to get around the operating system.  The home button is replaced with a thin bar that is accessible at the bottom of the screen at any time.  With a series of swipe gestures you can get to where to need to go, quickly.

  • Swipe up — Home
  • Swipe up and hold — Multitasking

Source: cnet

Face ID

A whole new way to unlock your device, which is actually more secure than Touch ID.  Let’s clear something up here, Face ID is NOT just your ordinary “Face Unlock” seen on phones in the past that essentially compare a picture of your face to what is seen in the viewfinder of the front-facing camera.  The iPhone X features complex depth senors in Apple’s new “True Depth” camera sensor located at the top of the device’s display that actually analyze 30,000 invisible dots on your face — meaning that it really recognizes your face, really.

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iPhone X depth sensors.

That is regardless if you change hairstyles, add glasses, add hats and more — your iPhone X still knows who you are on a new level.

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iPhone X, Face ID — a technology that truly analyzes your face that replaces Touch ID on the latest high-end iPhone.

It’s a natural and effortless way to access your device that works even in the dark.

Features:

  • Easily setup
  • Specialized neural networks for your security
  • Face data protected by the secure enclave
  • On-device processing (not uploaded to Apple servers)
  • Requires user attention to unlock (eyes must be open and looking at the device)
  • 1 in 1,000,000 chance of another user unlocking your iPhone X
  • Works with Apple Pay
  • Adapts over time

View all features and specs of the new iPhone X that I might’ve missed, here:

Source: Apple

Key Takeaways

After watching and reading about one of the biggest announcements, since iPhone — there is nothing to be underwhelmed about here and the iPhone X dominated the show, although it was the last item to be debuted.  Apple Watch Series 3 has continued to build on the path set forth by it’s predecessor, while the Apple TV gained what the market wanted it to so badly have, 4K.

What are your thoughts on Apple’s latest announcement?  Get involved and join the conversation, tweet me @Dexter_Johnson, I’ll be there waiting.

Technology

Stop VPN and Tor Bias

In an age where governments spy on it’s own, common carriers such as AT&T and Comcast want to sell your data for profit and the NSA can spy on every communication channel that we have — is it so much to want a taste of anonymity online?

VPNs, Tor and other privacy tools have become synonymous with the “dark web” and online hacking; however, these tools are built to protect users; however, intelligent individuals can also use them to get away with certain activities online.  But what about the sophisticated user, who simply wants to protect his internet traffic from prying eyes and be safe online?  Why do some look at those people as if they are doing something wrong when they aren’t?  It’s simple: they are biased and ignorant.  Not only are they biased, they may not fully understand the technology if they only limit it to one side of the equation.

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I’ve spoken in depth about how VPNs (Virtual Private Network)s work and how I really don’t believe you should connect to the internet, especially any public WiFi without first being connected to one because it sends all of the traffic from your device through an encrypted tunnel to another host that allows you to browse the internet in that fashion, making your traffic look like a jumbled mess to anyone trying to snoop.  (Of course remember to sign up for a VPN provider that doesn’t log, such as Private Internet Access).  So, what is Tor?  Tor is a protocol that was actually implemented by the US government that sends your traffic, encrypted, through a series of relays (relays are formed from machines that are volunteered to the Tor network), usually thousands before reaching the final destination.  Usually browsing the web through Tor is a little slow because of this.

The one thing that a VPN and Tor has in common is that when viewed on a network where no one else uses these tools, your network traffic will look quite different, which could lead to someone believe that you are doing something insidious; however, now that you know how these tools work, you won’t think that way anymore, right?

TLDR; Since our electronic landscape is becoming scrutinized more and more to serve us ads, track us down and garner our personal information without our consent, users have the RIGHT to protect themselves, we’re not all hackers, most of us just want our information we transfer online to be private — deal with it.