When You Were Young: A Look at Life Before Smart Phones

Can you even remember what life was like before you had a phone in your pocket at all times that is capable of doing just everything? Well, you should be able to remember it. It’s not like it was that long ago, Alzheimer Jones. What we struggle with is remembering that there are people out there who don’t even know there was a time when cell phones were bricks and text messaging was something you did with your Sky Pager. This infographic is especially for those people.
Here’s a quick look at what life was like before smart phones…

Via When You Were Young: A Look at Life Before Smart Phones

Acer W4 hands-on Favorite

Via Video

Nokia 701 hands-on Favorite

Video

Gameloft Giving Away Free Games This Labor Day Weekend And All Games Only 99 Cents!

Apparently, the guys over at Gameloft have lost their minds seeing they are practically giving away their ENTIRE lineup of Android games all for only $1 as part of a “Back to School Sale.” To receive this discount, you have to visit a special promo link that I have provided for you here.
But that’s not all — starting today and lasting throughout Labor Day weekend (Sept. 5th), Gameloft will also be giving away some of their top selling Android games for absolutely FREE. The announcements will be made via their Twitter and Facebook so make sure you can a close an eye on both those accounts. Games will be announced at random and you will only have 2 hours to snatch them up without having to pay a single red cent.
If you’re a gaming junkie like me and have some time to kill this weekend, there has never been a better time to try Gameloft’s entire line of premium, full featured mobile games. Sorry kids, you won’t find Doodle Jump here. I don’t know about you guys but I wont be waiting around for the announcements. My wallet is about to get a whole lot lighter.
[Via Gameloft and Twitter] Gameloft Giving Away Free Games This Labor Day Weekend And All Games Only 99 Cents!

Samsung Nexus Prime Confirmed Twice Today

Every once in a while there’s a day when a device you’ve been waiting for for what seems like an eternity (since the last Nexus device came out, even,) where you get a dash of sand in the face. Today is that day, and it’s happening twice. It’s as if Samsung is saying – look, not only do we have this ultimately awesome device coming out, we’re going to confirm that fact two times today, both times in completely separate manners and both times without so much as a peep as to what this device’s specifications are really going to be. Harsh!

The first appearance of the Nexus Prime today has been a Wi-Fi certification note. While I suppose this does actually give a “peep” as to what this device’s connectivity over Wi-Fi is going to be, every device under the sun essentially has 802.11 a/b/g/n these days. Instead the treat here is the fact that the device (Samsung GT-I9250) is indeed inching nearer and nearer a real life release. You know a device is going to be a big deal when seeing it appear on the Wi-Fi certification page is worth a news bit!
The next appearance comes in the form of an easily faked cease and desist letter apparently handed over to the folks at GEEK – or at least handed over to them by an anonymous source perhaps. This letter appears very much to confirm the existence of the so-called Nexus Prime by calling out the recipient as having illegal possession of data files (in this case the firmware) directly relating to the smartphone in question. Of course, once again, this could very easily have been typed up by any schmo on the street just as easily as it could have been typed up by Samsung, but we can dream, can’t we?
Click thumbnail for full view of supposed letter:


Is this only the latest in a long line of Ice Cream Sandwich-toting Nexus Prime teasers leaving us wishing for more? Yes, yes indeed.
[via Ubergizmo] Samsung Nexus Prime Confirmed Twice Today

LG Enlighten Exposed in Promotional Renders

What you see here is Verizon’s LG Enlighten a mid-range handset that best fills the hole left by last year’s LG Vortex Otherwise known as the LG Gelato Q, the Enlighten features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 800MHz processor, and 3.2-inch display. Rumors place the phone on Verizon’s shelves come August 25th with an attractive $100 (give or take) price point.

[via PocketNow] LG Enlighten Exposed in Promotional Renders

Free Android Apps for Everyday Use

It can be difficult to stay organized nowadays. We demand so much of ourselves, in fact, that we often just go with the flow and have little control over our own lives. However, this is the beauty of modern technology. With the advent of smartphones comes a revolutionary way for all of us to keep our lives organized. Check out these free Android apps that will help you keep your life in line.

1. Reverse Lookup by eMobile

When solicitors and telemarketers get a hold of your phone number, their calls are nothing short of annoying, mainly because they always call you at the worst times. With this reverse phone lookup app, you can track the number of the person calling you down to their location, then block the number from ever calling your phone again.

2. Out of Milk by Capigami

This useful little app allows you to get rid of using paper lists and organizes your tasks, shopping needs and current food supply into one easy-to-use app.

The first function of Out of Milk is the task list. It's simple; you type in a task, then tap it to mark it off when finished. You can even manage multiple task lists, if you're one of those people who has more than one.

The second function is the pantry list. You can keep track of what food items you have in your pantry, simply by typing them in or using the integrated barcode scanner.

The third function, the shopping list, works the same way. You can either type in or scan the items you have on your shopping list, then do the same to mark them off. If you're planning a party that requires a specific shopping list, you can create a new list to match all of your shopping needs. Out of Milk will also keep a running total of the items you grab; all you have to do is scan each item.

3. TripIt

The TripIt app will organize your travel itinerary into one user friendly app. We often juggle paper itineraries along with our tickets and passports and can get even more frustrated than traveling already makes us. This free app will keep your itinerary in the palm of your hand. If you use Google Mail, TripIt will also sync with your email account to automatically generate flight itineraries for you.

4. Bump

Bump has made file sharing easier than ever. If you're tired of writing down someone's contact information, or even taking the time to type their number into your phone, Bump has allowed that to be easier and more time-efficient as well. All you need is two phones with the app open, then files and contact information can be shared simply by bumping the two phones together.

5. My Cars

With My Cars, you can keep track of your car's progress, and when you need to seek maintenance. All you have to do is plug in your car's information, and your mileage each time you fill up your tank. My Cars will automatically generate statistical information about whether you are getting the most out of your car each time you fill your tank. You can even manage multiple vehicles in this one app.

If you are ready to get your life organized, check out these and other free and useful apps on the Android market.

Via Free Android Apps for Everyday Use

Top 10 Awesome Android Features that the iPhone Doesn’t Have

Written by Whitson Gordon
We love both Android and iOS, but the open nature of Android just means it can do things others just can’t. Here are our favorite Android apps and features that you won’t find on its Apple-clad brethren.
We didn’t hold anything back in this list: rooting, jailbreaking, editing system files are all fair game. If there was some way to do it on the iPhone, we left it out. So, while there are a lot of great things about Android that don’t come out of the box on the iPhone—like free turn-by-turn navigation or pull-down notifications—there are still ways to get those features on the iPhone. So here’s our list of the ten features you just can’t get, no way, no how, on a jailbroken or non-jailbroken device.
A note on flame wars: We love iOS, and obviously it has many of its own things going for it. This post isn’t meant to flame or troll the iPhone; it’s more of a "If you’ve decided to go Android, make sure you’re taking advantage of these awesome exclusive features, since they’re part of what makes Android great" post. Please keep the flame wars to a minimum in the comments.

10. Alternate Keyboards

From text predictors like Swiftkey to theinnovative like Swype and the downright adventurous like 8pen, you have a lot of different keyboard choices on Android. Typing on a tiny phone keyboard isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, so it’s great that Android provides so many options to make it as painless for people as possible, and super easy to install. The iPhone has other keyboards, but they’re usually separate apps that require you to import text to another program—it’s just the kind of system-level functionality that’s hard to get around.

9. Automation

One of the most powerful, useful Android apps around is Tasker, the automation program that lets you turn your phone into a superphone. You can turn settings on and off for certain applications, by location, time of day, and pretty much any other condition you can think of. With the right commands in place, Tasker can access the deepest and darkest settings on your phone, which is something you just can’t do on other platforms. Be sure to also check out our second list of Tasker setups, three handy Tasker profiles from our readers, and how to roll your own "Find my iPhone" for Android. Similar apps like the battery-saving JuiceDefender would also fall into this category.

8. Custom Home Launchers

While iPhone users can customize their home screen quite a bit if they’ve jailbroken, they don’t allow the kind of customization that you can get on Android with custom home launchers. Third party launchers can add all sorts of extra features to the home screens of your device, like gestures, different kinds of shortucts, and even low-level settings that can help speed up an older phone. Whether you’re using the super-fast LauncherPro or the insanely customizable ADWLauncher, third-party launchers add a ton of configuration to your device.

7. Widgets

Sure, they take up a bit of space, but there’s no substitute for the convenience of having a big weather widget right on your home screen, or a music widget to show you the currently playing track. Even more useful are the to-do list widgets, that take an "in your face" approach to productivity, which is not only effective but necessary from people, as they don’t require you to actually look for your to-do list—they’re always reminding you of what you need to do. If you’ve jailbroken, you can get widget-like apps for the iPhone, but you can only put them on your lock screen—not the actual home screens that you’re always swiping through.

6. Removable Storage and Battery

It isn’t part of the Android software, necessarily, but Android’s open nature allows for quite a few hardware advantages too—namely the ability to take out, swap, and upgrade your battery and SD card. If you find that you’ve maxed out the storage on your iPhone, you’re pretty much out of luck, whereas with an Android phone you can pop in a new SD card and have gigabytes more storage to play with. Similarly, you can swap out a spare battery for longer trips or even get an extended battery that’ll help your phone go longer without charging. Photo by Hiroyuki Takeda.

5. Wireless App Installation

Browsing for and discovering new apps should be fun, not challenge to make it through a tiny app store with your sanity intact. The App Store and Cydia App Store aren’t exactly fun to browse on your phone, but you either have to download apps on your phone or plug it into iTunes to sync them all over. With the new Android Market, or with third-party sites likeAppBrain, you can find a cool app, hit the install button, and it’ll be on your phone the next time you pick it up. It doesn’t get much more convenient than that.

4. Custom ROMs

While there are a lot of third-party apps that give you advanced features on Android, one of the coolest parts about the entire OS being open source is that people can take it, tweak it all over, and install their version instead of the one that comes with your phone. Whether it’s the feature-filled CyanogenMod or theinterface-overhauling MIUI ROM, there’s little limit to how much you can tweak your Android experience. As with launchers, these give you a lot of system-level tweaks that you just wouldn’t be able to get this easily on other platforms—and it puts them easily within users’ reach. Whether it’s tweaks that speed up your phone or features like FM radio, custom ROMs are without a doubt one of the biggest advantages to Android’s openness around.

3. Controlling Your Phone From Your Computer

This one’s a little more out there, but we’ve featured quite a few apps that let you actually control your Android phone from your PC—whether you just want to send texts from Chrome or access any of its other functions right from a web browser. Yes, you can VNC into your iPhone, but it’s not the same as using a separate app that accesses its baser functions.

2. Flash

Say what you want about Flash, but it’s everywhere you go, and when you’re forced to view the web without it, you realize how much you actually rely on it day-to-day. Whether its accessing fully Flash web sites, watching Flash videos, or playing games like the ones on Kongregate, having Flash installed on your phone and tablet let you access a lot of things you otherwise couldn’t have. We may grimace when we hear its name, but it’s too prevalent to go without. It just feels like you don’t have the whole web at your fingertips.

1. True App Integration

Google Voice may finally be available for the iPhone, but the experience will never be the same as it is on Android. Other iPhone apps always direct you to the default dialer and visual voicemail apps, so even if you want to use Google Voice full time, you have to manually navigate it to yourself. On Android, apps like Google Voice integrate directly with the operating system—if you want to make calls with Google Voice, every call you make from the phone’s dialer goes through Google Voice. When you click on a phone number in your browser or in Google Maps, it goes through Google Voice instead of sending you to the wrong dialer. True app integration like this makes using custom phone, SMS, voicemail, and even browser apps absolutely seamless on Android, which is something you won’t find on the more locked-down iPhone platform.

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We do love the iPhone here at Lifehacker, but we also love tweaking and hacking our phones into oblivion, and Android just does it better than any other platform. These are just a few of the many tweaks you can make to an Android phone, but they’re certainly some of the most special. Got any of your own favorites that weren’t featured? Be sure to share them in the comments below.
Bonus:Cast away.
Via Top 10 Awesome Android Features that the iPhone Doesn’t Have

Paperphone: A Phone with a Flexible Electronic Paper Display

PaperPhone is the world’s first nextgen, thin film smartphone and interactive paper computer. It is based on a 3.7″ flexible electrophoretic (E Ink) display that does not consume electricity when it is not refreshed. Thinfilm sensors allow the phone to respond to bending of the screen to navigate pages in ebooks, play or pause mp3s, make phone calls, or navigate apps. A flexible wacom tablet allows users to draw on the screen with a pen as if it were a sheet of paper.

Via [Youtube] Paperphone: A Phone with a Flexible Electronic Paper Display

Nokia sucks at Photoshop

Oh man, is this the new version of Symbian? If so, it looks magical.

[Thanks, Jaris]

Nokia N0

2011-03-31 21:02 UTC with score -10

Cute Comics That are Kinda Crazy (20 total)

If you're looking for a few good laughs, check out Brainless Tales, a once-a-day comic by a man named Marcus. He calls it 'weird daily art masquerading as a daily comic.' Search through his archives and you'll find some hidden gems, especially when he sneaks in some internet/pop culture references.

From his website: 'Cartoons and games are fun to make, but they also consume a great deal of time in their construction, like building a dam with sticks and beaver tails. I wanted some instant gratification for my pen work, and so Brainless Tales was born in 2007.

'Each comic is drawn with a Micron Pen on paper, then scanned into the computer, and modified as needed before moving to the website for your viewing pleasure.'







































Brainless Tales website"

Sony puts a price margin on Xperia Play games

Sony Ericsson have lifted the lid on the price of games for the PlayStation-certified Xperia Play, due to launch in the UK at the end of this month. Titles for the device will range from £1 – £10, UK marketing boss David Hilton has revealed.

Speaking to MCV, Hilton said: “The main thing is to offer something different. iPhone is a hugely popular product and Angry Birds on iPhone is a delight.

“But now the hardware allows you to play far more complex games. You don’t want to be playing these with your fingers all over the screen. You want full visibility and the ability to control the games with the sort of interfaces you have on your games console.”

Hilton also spoke on a new app that would allow customers to easily find games on the Android service: “As soon as you slide open the phone, the screen will go into a game finder app that will show you all the games you own and all the games you can download. What we have heard about Android is that locating games in the marketplace is a struggle. So we have created this app to easily navigate through the games.”

Will you be lining up for an Xperia Play? Or will the 3DS suit your handheld needs?

Mysterious New Motorola Device Hits FCC, Possibly Droid X 2?

A new Motorola device has hit the FC bearing model ID IHDT56MJ1, but thanks to a confidentiality request on behalf of Moto tracking down the identity of the handset might be a problem. Aside from the naming convention matching that seen on recent Motorola handsets like the Atrix 4G, what we do know about this mystery device is that it will get CDMA, EVDO, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The CDMA radio suggests it might be headed to Verizon, but it is unlikely we are looking at the Droid Bionic.

A 180 day short term confidentiality request might hint at when the device will be released, right around mid to late summer. This would be a year from the release of the Motorola Droid X Could we be looking at an early filing for the Droid X 2? The details of that handset remain a mystery themselves, but it is expected the phone will carry a mix of newer innards such as a dual-core processor and a possible 4G LTE radio with the stylings and size of the original.

[FCC via Electronista]

Flip Phone Concept > Again

Un concept de smartphone imaginé par Kristan Ulrich Larsen avec ce téléphone à clapet doté de 3 écrans tactiles et souples, qui peuvent être alignés de plusieurs façons selon les besoins. Equipé de verres résistant super amoled, flexible et complètement modulaire. Explications dans la suite.