One of the features I was pretty excited about when I got my Samsung Galaxy Note II was NFC. I knew that there was a lot I could do with NFC, and I finally had a phone that was capable of it. (If you need some more basic information on NFC, check out my last post).

I started doing some searching on Google, shopping for NFC tags. There were a few different companies selling them, and I came across the Samsung TecTiles. Best Buy was selling them on their website with free shipping. I had a random Best Buy gift card left from over a year ago that had somewhere around $17 on it, and saw that would be more than enough for me to pick up the TecTiles.

The TecTiles come in a five pack and Best Buy sells them for $12.98. However, they are currently sold out online and their website lists them as unavailable in the store. This isn’t really a bad thing, because even though the tags work great, I wouldn’t recommend buying them – but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The TecTiles are a simple one inch by one inch square sticker with the electronic goodies on the back. They say Samsung TecTiles and have the TecTiles logo on the front of the white sticker. I personally would prefer that the stickers just be plain colored, but the logo doesn’t take away from the functionality of the tags.

The TecTiles are sold in a small flat package that includes a set of simple instructions and the actual tags. The tags themselves come in a small blue cover with a warning on the front to remove the tags from the cover before using them. The reason for this is that these tags will not work on metal. The blue cover is made out of something that protects the tags from being programmed in the package before you buy them. Theoretically, if they weren’t protected in the blue cover, someone could have programmed them before you bought them to do something malicious to your phone. The blue cover is a nice security measure to ensure that doesn’t happen.

At $13 for five tags, each tag comes out to $2.60. This means that you are mostly paying for the Samsung name, and that’s why I wouldn’t recommend buying them yourself and also why I only gave them two and a half stars. The TecTiles are the first listing when doing a shopping search for NFC tags, but the third listing is a 15-pack of various stickers that you can get shipped for under $20. That comes out to be 50% cheaper than the TecTiles, plus you wouldn’t have to see the TecTiles logo everywhere you put one because they come in plain gray.

The TecTiles need an app to program them, and of course Samsung has a companion app that will do just that, called Samsung TecTiles. I downloaded the app after getting my tags, and shortly after trying to program my first tag I went searching for a third party app. While the app will program the tags, it doesn’t have nearly the options available as some of the other readily available apps do. The first thing I tried to program was a profile to set my ringer volume to three and my notification volume to zero. The app didn’t have the option to set the notification volume separate  from the ringer volume. I immediately dropped that app and found one that would do what I wanted it to do, NFC Task Launcher.

In the end, these tags do exactly what they are advertised to do, but cost a lot more than most of the other tags available on the market right now. If you have a spare gift card lying around like I did, feel free to pick a set of these up, otherwise steer clear of them.

[Samsung TecTiles | Best Buy]

The post Accessory review: Samsung TecTiles NFC tags appeared first on Pocketables.

There are almost 100 phones and tablets currently available worldwide that are equipped with NFC (check out the complete list at nfcworld.com). On that list, you will find a few of the phones that we have here at Pocketables, including the HTC EVO 4G LTE, the Samsung Galaxy S series, and my personal favorite, the Samsung Galaxy Note II. The list includes Android, Blackberry, and Windows devices – if you own an Apple device, you probably already know it doesn’t have NFC.

Before I can tell you how to use NFC tags, it would probably be a good idea to explain exactly what NFC is. This is how Wikipedia defines NFC:

Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters.  Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi. Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a “tag”.

So, NFC allows you to to take your NFC enabled device, touch it to another NFC device, and make it do something automatically. You are probably familiar with one of the most popular uses of NFC, Google Wallet, which stores your credit card information in an app on your phone. When paying for a purchase in a store equipped with an NFC reader attached to the cash register, you have the option to tap your phone to the reader to pay your bill. But Google Wallet is by no means the only way to utilize NFC.

That’s where programmable NFC tags come in. An NFC tag is a small sticker or key fob that has an unpowered NFC chip. Using an app, you can program the tag so that when you touch your phone to it, your phone will do what you programmed the tag to do.

Let me start with a basic example. Every night before I go to bed, I put my phone into “sleep mode.” This usually includes turning volumes down, changing my screen brightness, setting my alarm, and changing a few other settings. You might already do all of this automatically using Tasker just by plugging in your phone, but NFC might be more appealing to some people: the first NFC tag I programmed was a simple switch. The first time I tap the tag, it activates my night profile for me. The second time I tap the tag it would activate my day profile. The next tap would put it back into “night mode” again, and the cycle would continue. That’s a basic example of one use of an NFC tag.

What you need

There are three items that you need in order to start using NFC tags to do things automatically on your phone: an NFC enabled phone, like the EVO 4G LTE; programmable NFC tags; and an app to program the tags with. Let’s jump right into the NFC tags.

NFC tags

There are a lot of companies that sell NFC tags. The tags I bought are made by Samsung and are branded TecTiles. We’ve talked about Movaluate previously as another dealer of NFC tags, and a Google search for NFC tags will show you a whole lot of other places that make the tags. There are also a couple different types of tags you can choose from.

The first and cheapest type of tag is a sticker tag. These come in different sizes and colors and are made to stick to a variety of surfaces. If you plan on putting a sticker tag on a metal surface, you will want to make sure you buy a tag that is designed for that purpose, as most sticker tags will not work on a metal surface. You can expect to pay anywhere from one to three dollars or more per tag, depending on size, brand, and color.

The other popular form of NFC tag is the key fob tag. This is a tag that is housed in some sort of case and then has a key ring attached to it. These are useful for hanging on hooks, lanyards, handbags, wrist straps, or anywhere else where you might not want to put a sticker. You should expect to pay a little more for these tags than you would with the sticker tags.

When you look for an NFC tag to buy, you will see a capacity listed. This is the amount of data that can be stored on each tag. Most tags have around one kilobyte of storage available. While this doesn’t sound like a whole lot of space, most commands don’t take up much room – four different settings will only use about 100 bytes. Just make sure that when you do buy a tag, it is close to that one kilobyte range, and you should have no issues with space unless you plan on doing some really crazy things with your tags.

NFC tag programming app

Once you receive your tags, it’s on to the programming. To do this, you will need an app on your phone. The most popular one that I have found is called NFC Task Launcher. There are a bunch of others, including NFC Writer and NFC TagWriter. Find the one that you like the best, and go with it. Make yourself familiar with the app you chose, and then you need to decide what you want your tag to do.

For our example, I’m going to keep it very simple. The tag I want to create is going to be a switch that turns my ringer volume all the way up for the first tap, and turns my ringer volume all the way down for the second tap. I’m going to be using NFC Task Launcher to create this tag.

When you open up NFC Task Launcher, you will see there are a bunch of example profiles already loaded. To create a custom tag, tap the plus sign in the top right corner and choose to create a new tag. Tap the add actions button, and you will see a popup with all the different categories you can choose from. Selecting a category will then let you see all the different settings under each category. You can choose as many of the different settings you want to use by ticking the check box by each one.

For our example, just tap the sounds & volume category, and then the ring volume check box, and tap next. Then set the volume slider all the way to max and tap OK. You’ll then want to slide the screen to the left to get to the settings for task two. Tap the add a task button, and then add a new task. You can then repeat the previous instructions to add a ring volume action, but instead of setting the volume setting to max, set it to zero. You are now ready to write the commands to the NFC tag.

When you are done with all the settings you want to configure, tap the save & write button in the top right corner. You have a couple options you can select before writing the tag. You can choose to include the tag name, and you can choose to make the tag read-only. Make your choices, then tap the tag to program it. You now have a programmed NFC tag!

One note about making the tag read-only: This will lock the tag to any further changes. Only do this if you never want to make any changes to the tag again. The only time I would actually do this is if I planned on putting the tag somewhere that other people would have access to it. If it is in a public place, there is the possibility that someone else could reprogram the tag to do something harmful to your phone.

Conclusion

You should now have enough information to get started programming your own NFC tags. Once you start, I’m sure you will find lots of uses for them. This is by no means an extensive guide, but rather just enough information to get you started with NFC.

The post What is NFC and how do I program NFC tags? appeared first on Pocketables.

If you own a Verizon-branded Samsung Galaxy Note II, you will never forget what carrier you have. Verizon went over and above what most other carriers do to brand their phones – not only is there a very large Verizon 4G LTE logo taking up most of the back of the phone, but the carrier also decided to put its logo on the home button on the front of the phone. And it’s been getting a lot of flak for this move ever since.

Luckily, a member at XDA has a solution if you are hating the Verizon logo on your home button. Rockstar52 is making vinyl overlays in 12 colors that are custom cut to fit your home button perfectly. The overlays are made of automobile grade vinyl, which means that it is designed to stick for over six years.

I contacted Rockstar52 and wanted to order a few colors of the overlays so that I could test them out and write a review of them. He decided to send me all 12 of the colors he currently has available, which are:

1. Gloss Black
2. Black Carbon Fiber
3. White
4. Silver
5. Red
6. Dark Blue
7. Pink
8. Polished Silver
9. Chrome
10. Gold
11. Black
12. Diamond Plate

I decided to go with the black carbon fiber overlay for my home button. I wanted it to blend into the rest of the phone, but add just a touch of flair, and the carbon fiber does exactly that.

The vinyl is thin enough that it doesn’t stick up far enough to catch on anything. I also like that the carbon fiber has a little bit of texture to it. As you can see in the picture it covers up that Verizon logo perfectly.

If you want to order your own set of vinyl overlays, you can do that by heading to Rockstar52′s newly launched website, linked below. There isn’t a ton of information on the website yet, but it does have a functional order system. The overlays are $0.95 for a set of five, plus $0.55 for shipping. For $1.50, you can get rid of that Verizon logo on your home button. He also just recently released vinyl back covers as well. The back covers are $2.50 each, and he has the same colors available as the home button overlays so they can match.

[Rockstar Overlays & Custom Vinyl Graphics | xda-developers]

The post Cover up that Verizon logo on your Samsung Galaxy Note II’s home button with a vinyl overlay appeared first on Pocketables.

Thanks to XDA, I learned that all you need to stop receiving OTA notifications is your rooted phone and an app that lets you browse all the files on your phone, specifically the system folder. The app I use is Root Explorer, but there are lots of other apps that will do the same thing.

The two files you will be looking for are fwupdate.apk and SDM.apk. Any changes to other files in this folder could have unintended consequences.

If you’re using Root Explorer, open the system folder and then the app folder. Mount the directory so you can make changes to the files; to do this, tap the button at the top that says “Mount R/W.”

Now find the fwupdate.apk file and rename it by long pressing on the file name and selecting “rename” from the options box that pops up. You can rename it to anything you like; I just renamed it to fwupdateold.old. When you are done renaming fwupdate.apk, scroll down until you find SDM.apk and repeat the same process of renaming.

Some people say that you can delete these files, but I prefer renaming just in case I need them for something at a later date. If I do, then it is just a matter of renaming them back to their original name.

If you are running a custom ROM there is a good chance that the developer of that ROM already removed or froze these files.

Either way, this means that you won’t ever see a notification for an OTA update.

The post How to stop your rooted Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II from receiving an OTA update notification appeared first on Pocketables.

I woke up this morning to a message on my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II that an OTA update was available. I canceled out of it, because I wanted to do some research about what was in the update before I blindly let it install. I’m sure glad that I did, especially after finding multiple warning threads at XDA to not accept the update.

The picture you see above is what you would see if you were rooted and installed the update. Now, most custom ROMs won’t allow you to install an OTA even if you tried, so most people that are already rooted won’t have to worry about it. And if you did happen to install the update and see the image above, there is a fix that doesn’t require you to return it to Verizon like your phone says (the instructions are in this thread at XDA).

I’ve been on the fence about rooting my Note II until now, but this pushes me firmly to the root side. I know that there is a fully functioning root method for my current software version, and with any new updates, there is never a guarantee that a security hole will be found – especially in an update like this, which specifically targets those of us that want to root and have complete control over our phones.

I’m currently reading the instructions on how to unlock my bootloader so I can make sure I can do whatever I want with my Note II. After I have my bootloader unlocked and my phone rooted, I don’t really know what I will do next. For now, I’m leaning towards just keeping the stock ROM on it, since I am currently enjoying the features it has, but who knows what the future holds. More information on what this OTA means for your Note II can be found at the source link below.

[xda-developers]

The post Verizon Galaxy Note II OTA update locks bootloader, time for me to root appeared first on Pocketables.

There were a few reasons that I wanted to root it: First, the WiFi hotspot. I wasn’t about to pay Sprint $30 a month for a feature that I could get for free simply by rooting my phone. Looking back on the last two years, I can see that I used that feature a lot. My wife has a laptop, and on long trips we would turn on the WiFi hotspot and she could happily surf the web as we were driving (well, until Sprint’s 3G signal inevitably dropped out on us). I’m very glad I rooted my phone, if only to get the free hotspot.

But that wasn’t the only reason I rooted. I also wanted to be able to get rid of all the bloatware that came on my phone. Since the EVO was a flagship phone, Sprint loaded it up with bloat. But the day I got my phone, all that bloat was gone and I didn’t have to worry about seeing the little notification telling me I was out of space.

I was also all about customizing my phone. I mean, the whole reason I bought an Android phone was that so I could customize the heck out of it, right? And customize it I did. From ROMs to kernels to launchers to icons – you name it, I customized it. XDA became my most visited site, and I was learning so much. I learned the basics of nandroid backups and how to add a customized boot animation. I even went so far as to change out the word “Sprint” on my lock screen so that it said “Bryan’s Phone” using QPST.

Another reason to root my EVO was to get better battery life. I didn’t want an extended battery, nor did I want to deal with multiple batteries. Rooting allowed me to load custom ROMs that removed the bloat that would suck my battery dry. I could also switch out the kernel for one that was more battery-friendly.

But what about my Samsung Galaxy Note II? I have now had it for over four weeks. I have thought about rooting it, but haven’t come to a definitive answer yet. I would love to get rid of the bloatware on my phone, but it’s not as important to remove as it was on the severely space-limited EVO. Nor is the battery as much of an issue. If you read my review, you would see that the battery on the Note II is way more than enough to get me through my day, plus part of another if need be.

What would I lose by rooting it? In the few articles I’ve written so far about my Note II, I mention a lot of the really cool features that Samsung has added into its software. Would I lose any of those cool features by rooting?

Would rooting allow me to customize some things to remove some of the minor annoyances I have with the phone? I just talked about how great the camera on the Note II is. Rooting would allow me to remove the minor annoyance that is the shutter sound.  But I’m worried about adding some new annoyances just by rooting.

At this point I am open to rooting, but haven’t decided on going ahead with it quite yet. I would love to hear if you have an opinion on me rooting my Note II one way or the other. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

The post To root my Samsung Galaxy Note II or not to root, that is the question appeared first on Pocketables.

Since I have activated my Samsung Galaxy Note II, I have taken 1,154 pictures. At the time of me writing this article, that is an average of just over 41 pictures taken every day. How did I go from taking one picture every third day to averaging over 41 a day? The short answer is because Samsung made their camera app so much fun to use.

I’m going to add a disclaimer in here now and say that I didn’t explore any third party camera apps at all on my previous phone. I barely explored the options in the default camera app that came with my EVO 4G. There is quite possibly an app or setting that could have fixed what I wanted it to, but the issue here is that out of the box, the camera and app on the Note II is miles ahead of what my EVO 4G camera and app were. Now, this of course makes a lot of sense as there was over two years of advancements in between the time they came out. What I’m referring to now has to do with how the stock app and camera work without changing any significant settings.

My EVO 4G had a pretty decent camera, but the camera app itself was nothing fancy. The most annoying  thing was how long it actually took to take a single photo. The whole process of focusing, activating the flash, actually capturing the picture, and then being ready to take another shot took anywhere from three to five seconds on average. For taking pictures of still objects, it was perfectly fine. To try and capture any kind of action shot at all was almost impossible.

For example, my wife likes to do jumping photos. That’s what she calls them, and she absolutely loves them. With my EVO 4G, when she wanted to take some jumping photos, it took some very careful counting and timing to get the shot captured. I would count to three, and she knew that she had to jump on three. But I knew that in order to give my camera enough time to focus and capture the image I had to push the shutter button when I said two, and even then there was a good chance I would miss it. It would normally take us at least five or six tries just to get one usable picture.

All that has changed with my Note II. There are a few ways I can easily take these jumping photos now. The first way is simply by tapping the shutter button repeatedly. After the initial focusing the camera just keeps those settings and lets me take as many pictures in a row as I want. I can keep hitting that shutter button and my phone will keep taking pictures. So instead of taking one picture every jump, I can take four to five pictures in a row of the same jump and am guaranteed to get one that she will be happy with.

The other way I can capture these jumping photos is by using burst mode. Burst mode lets me hold down the shutter button and take a rapid fire group of 20 pictures. Again, I’m almost guaranteed that somewhere in those 20 photos will be one that my wife is happy with.

The third way of capturing jumping photos is by using the camcorder part of the app. Wait, what? Use the camcorder to capture photos? I’m sure almost everyone has seen the commercial of the sheep kicking a guy’s backpack off a cliff while his buddy records it and snaps a picture of it to upload to his favorite social media site. That’s exactly how it works on the Note II.

You can take pictures while recording with the camcorder simply by tapping the camera icon in the corner of the screen. If you have already recorded a video, you can pull a still image out of it as well. While viewing a video you already shot, you will see there is a camera icon in the top middle of your screen. Tap that icon and a still image of that frame will be saved to your gallery.

So there are the three ways that I can make sure I have a jumping photo that my wife will be happy with. Usually the ones that she is happiest with are the ones where she is highest in the air, legs kicked off to the side, hands up in the air, and big smile on her face. Below you can see the progression of the jump from lift-off to landing in the four photos I took.

There are a lot of options on Samsung’s camera app. You have all the different camera options that most people don’t even know what they do like white balance, ISO, metering, and exposure. Then you have a bunch of options that you could only use with a camera on a smartphone – things like GPS tagging, auto-sharing, and one of my favorites, the ability to take pictures using your voice. That’s right, simply enable this mode and you can take a picture by saying something like “capture” or “shoot.”

However the one option that is missing is the one that most companies don’t include, and I don’t understand why. That is the option to not have a shutter sound. The shutter sound is the most annoying thing about the camera to me. The only way to get it to not play is if your phone is in silent mode. Most stand alone cameras have the ability to shut off the shutter sound, so why would smartphone cameras not have that option?

I would love to hear what you think about the camera on your Samsung phone. Does it make you want to take pictures like it makes me want to take pictures?

The post Samsung’s camera makes taking pictures fun appeared first on Pocketables.

One of the greatest parts of living in the time that we is that we have such varied choices technology. You can walk into a Best Buy and choose from all kinds of different smartphones: big ones, small ones, Android ones, iOS ones, Windows ones, ones with physical keyboards, and even ones that come with a digitizer pen. If you want it, there’s a good chance you can find it on a smartphone.

My point is this – with so many choices in things like smartphones, everyone is going to have their own opinion about what is best. I’m personally an Android guy, and I’m not afraid to admit that. That doesn’t mean I don’t think some people just prefer an iPhone; I have a friend who has an iPhone and had a problem. She sent it in for a replacement, and when she got her replacement unit, that one was broken too. Did she want to jump ship and get an Android or Windows phone? No, because she would rather have an iPhone. And I’m OK with that, because she is the one that has to use it everyday. That’s the key to everyone’s choice in technology. They are the ones that have to use it everyday, not you or me. A device that someone else hates might be the best thing since sliced bread to me.

Earlier this week, Aaron told you all about the Samsung Galaxy Note II in his review, but I also got a brand new Note II about the same time that Aaron did. (If you want to know how I ended up with a Note II, you can read about it here.) While the Note II is not the phone for everyone,  in the four weeks that I have had it, I love it and want to tell you some of the reasons why.

Battery Life

I’m going to start with the battery – the reason for this is because the battery life has blown me away in the last four weeks. Granted, the battery is huge in comparison to most other smartphones, but so is everything else. A quad-core processor and a 5.5-inch screen will drain just a little bit of battery if you let it. But even with all of the processing power in the Note II, the battery still lasts what seems like forever.

The first day I got my phone, I fully charged it and then pulled the plug to have some fun. 24 hours later, my phone finally died for the first time, but not before I used the crap out of it. Before it died, I took a look at the battery stats. The screen was on for over six hours at full brightness. Six hours! Under the best circumstances, I could maybe get two or three hours of total screen-on time out of my HTC EVO 4G before it died. I had a charger at my desk at work, next to my bed, in my car, and by the back door. Now I have just one charger and use it sparingly.

Of course, one of the qualifiers for battery life is how it gets used. I am typically not what I would call a moderate or even heavy user of my phone. I probably average 10-15 minutes or less of actual talk time each day. My average number of texts each month is somewhere around the 400-500 mark. The only time I will play games is if I am waiting for something like a doctor’s appointment and have nothing better to do, which doesn’t happen all that often. However, in the last four weeks since I got my Note II, I had quite a few occasions to push it to its limit.

Two days after getting my new phone, I left for Kentucky with a couple of friends. It was a quick trip as we were only down there for one night. On the way back to Michigan, we were using my phone for navigation. We also were using it to stream a local radio station because they were having their Christmas party, and my wife was live on the air. I also used my phone to look up the lyrics to some popular Christmas carols so that one of my friends could call into the radio station and win some prizes while we were hundreds of miles outside of its listening area. And, of course, I was texting my wife, letting her know how great she sounded live on air. This all went on for three or four hours, and when the show was finally over my phone had barely scratched the 50% mark.

Fast forward to the week after Christmas. I was again headed to Kentucky with 25 other people from my church for a youth convention. Before we left, I loaded up my new 32GB SD card I got for Christmas with the final episodes from BBC’s Merlin and five or six movies I wanted to watch. I had Spotify for my music and was all set for the eight hour drive in the charter bus. What happened on the trip down and back I would consider to be heavy usage. On the way down, I streamed some classical music from Spotify for a couple hours while sleeping. Then when I woke up, I watched all five episodes of Merlin. That’s over three hours straight of watching videos at max brightness.

Then on the way back, I watched two full movies plus took a lot of video of the great game of charades that was happening on the bus. An iPhone user that was sitting near to me commented on how crazy it was that I watched all that on my phone and it wasn’t dead yet. Not only was it not dead yet, but it still had close to 50% battery left!

The three images below are some battery stats for you see the proof of how great the battery on the Note II is. The first image is from the trip down to Kentucky on the bus and the second and third images are from the trip back. You can see that I had the screen on for three and a half hours in the first one and almost five hours in the last one.

S Pen

The S Pen is one of the features of the Note II that almost no other phone comes with even the ability to use. The reason for this is quite simple: with screen sizes of less than four inches, no one would want to use one. Andreas has looked extensively into the different styli and pen solutions on tablets, and after playing with the S Pen, I’m sure he would love it. I don’t have the experience that he does, but I have used a couple different styli on my various tablets. While I didn’t not like them, I don’t think they added a whole lot to my tablet experience. The best part about them in my book was that I didn’t have to clean my screen as often from my overly oily fingers.

The S Pen brings the idea of the stylus to a whole new level. I know that I have barely scratched the surface on using the S Pen with the Note II in the short time that I have had it, but of course one of the first things I used it for was to draw on pictures. I remember seeing the commercial with Lebron James’s kid giving him a red afro. So I had to give it a try. On the way home from Kentucky the first time after getting my Note II, I took a picture of one of my friends in the car and proceeded to give him a fluffy white beard, green spiked hair, pink eyebrows, and an orange mustache. I was cracking up the entire time! (He didn’t think it was quite as funny as I did.) I also decided to take a picture of myself, write a quick love note on it to my wife, and send it to her so she could see my smiling face when she awoke that morning.

Drawing on pictures isn’t the only thing the S Pen is useful for however. Since I was at a conference the week after Christmas, I decided to give the Note II a try as a note taking device. I had my iPad with me on the trip as well, but left it in my room most of the weekend so I could try out my Note II more.

S Note

S Note is one of the Samsung apps that is designed to be used with the S Pen. I created a new note for the first session of the conference and got to work figuring the whole thing out. I realized pretty quickly that the S Pen and the Swype keyboard were a great combination. I was very quickly getting the notes down I wanted, much quicker than a keyboard on an iPad, or even just my finger on Swype. S Note lets me organize my notes into different folders, and then if I need to export them I can do it as a PDF. In one session my friend forgot his ink pen, so as soon as the session was over I emailed him a PDF copy of my notes right from the S Note app.

One thing I was having trouble figuring out how to do was handwriting to text. I knew that the capability had to be there in S Note, but for the life of me I just couldn’t find it. Finally, on the second day of the conference, I found where it was. In order to access that feature, I had to long press on the shapes box in order to select handwriting to text mode. I could have sworn I tried that a couple of times, but apparently I hadn’t. After I activated the mode, I started writing out my notes.

I found that by turning the phone into landscape mode, it gave me more room to write. I also found out that S Note had some trouble deciphering my handwriting. This doesn’t really surprise me, as I know that my handwriting is horrible. I would never be allowed to write for this site if I had to submit all my articles by hand. One time I tried writing the word “follow” and it came out on my screen as “+0//ow.” My lowercase F’s are particularly hard for the app to decipher. I had to get in the habit of writing all my F’s as capitals. Once I figured out some of the changes I had to make in my handwriting for it to be translated better, I was taking notes pretty quickly. At this point in my use, I would say that using the S Pen with Swype is faster than handwriting mode, but I could see how, with use, the handwriting mode could be far superior.

Settings

There are a handful of settings available for the S Pen itself. You can choose which hand is your dominant hand, as well as choose whether or not you want your phone to make a sound when you attach or detach the S Pen. You can also choose whether you want haptic feedback when using the S Pen and create some quick commands that you can use.

My favorite feature however is the one called S Pen keeper. If you activate this, your Note II will make sure that you never walk away and leave your S Pen behind. After a certain number of steps without the S Pen attached, your phone will play a sound and a popup will tell you that you have forgotten your S Pen. This is a great little feature that would have not been thought of by a lot of people, but I’m glad that Samsung not only thought of it, but found a great way to implement it.

Annoyances

There have been a couple annoyances that I have discovered with the S Pen. The first is that when the S Pen tip is being recognized on the display, the back and menu buttons are disabled. The S Pen is recognized when the tip gets to within a couple inches of the screen. There are some cool features that you use just by hovering the S Pen over something. I understand that the buttons are disabled so that you don’t accidentally push one while trying to write, but on more than one occasion while trying to write something, I would want to push the back button with the knuckle of my pinky finger because it was already so close to the button. I had to physically move my entire hand with the S Pen away from the screen in order to then hit the back button.

The other thing that kind of  annoyed me while using the S Pen has to do with one of the hover features. If you hover the S Pen over the screen and bring it to the top or bottom of the screen, it will scroll up or down for you. This is a pretty cool feature and one I used a lot, but when I was trying to write in landscape mode it annoyed me to no end. Because the phone was in landscape mode, the top and bottom of the S Note app were very close together. I would pick the S Pen up to move back to the front to start writing again and next thing I know I was scrolled all the way back to the top. I had to get in the habit of picking the S Pen straight up and far enough away that it was no longer recognized on the screen, then moving it back to the front to start writing again.

As I said earlier, I’ve barely scratched the surface with what the S Pen can do with the Note II. I know there are lots of other things that it can be used for, that I just haven’t had the time, or need, to discover at this point. I do know that I love having the S Pen.

Software

The Note II is my first experience with a Samsung device of my own. I’ve briefly used a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, but not long enough to form any real opinions about it. As such, I was excited to see what I thought of TouchWiz. I realize the software on the Note II is a lot more than just the launcher, but since the launcher is so essential to everything you do on your phone, I want to start there.

I’ve had extensive history with multiple launchers and started with stock Sense on my EVO 4G. Since it had been rooted for the last two years, I had many different ROMs on it. That meant that some of them came with Sense, and others didn’t. So others I’ve used include Launcher Pro, ADW, Nova, and Holo, just to name a few. When I was installing apps from the Play Store, I installed the pro version of ADW Launcher EX  just in case I wasn’t happy with TouchWiz. I’ve set up a couple home screens on it, but haven’t completely given up on TouchWiz yet.

TouchWiz

Overall, TouchWiz is a great launcher. It has a lot of features that I really enjoy. I like that it has the ability to hide apps in the app drawer. This was always one of my favorite features of the different third-party launchers because I always thought there was no point in having an app shortcut on a homescreen and in the app drawer. I like that my app drawer only had the apps that I don’t want to put on a homescreen.

Another great thing with keeping Touchwiz and not using another launcher is some of the extras that come with it. One of those extras is called page buddy. What it does is add a homescreen when you do something specific with your phone. The four actions that can trigger the page buddy are taking out the S Pen, plugging in headphones, docking your phone, or if you are roaming. You can deactivate any of these page buddies if you want under the page buddy settings found in the display settings. They are all activated by default when you first get your Note II.

What the page buddy does is create a dynamically changing homescreen to the far right of all your other screens. It will be populated with whatever you use most while that page buddy is activated. For me, the only page buddy I have activated is the headphone one, and you can see what mine looks like in the image to the left. When it activates, I am greeted with the screen you see to your right. The apps that you see are there because they are the ones that I used while on the bus to and from Kentucky. Spotify for music, navigation to see where exactly I was, and Handcent for texting. The video player widget was automatically added after watching a couple movies. I don’t remember exactly what was in its place to start with, but I know it wasn’t the video widget.

Bloat

Being rooted for so long, I had forgotten about the joys that are bloatware. I can’t speak as to whether there is an above average amount of bloat on the Note II or not, but I can speak to how annoying it all is. I can also say that I have no intention of using most of the third-party apps that came with my phone. I wish that I could completely uninstall them, but that is just not possible without being rooted. At least I can hide them from my app drawer so I never have to see them. I guess it’s also a good thing that the my Note II won’t be hurting for storage space anytime soon. If that was the case, like it was with my EVO 4G, it would have made me just a little upset that I couldn’t uninstall the bloat.

Motions

The Note II has a good-sized list of motions that you can use to do certain things with your phone. Most of them you will find on your own when you see a popup while doing certain things for the first time.

You will most likely find the first popup when you try to move an icon on one of your homescreens. The motion you have the chance to activate is the ability to tilt your phone when trying to move an icon to another page. If you choose to activate it, you will have a new way of moving icons. Instead of dragging them to the edge of a screen and waiting for the page to move, you can simply hold your finger, or S Pen, on the icon and tilt your phone one way or the other depending on which page you want to move the icon to. When you get to the page you want it on, tilt your phone back to straight up and move the icon to exactly where you want it.

Another motion is called direct call. When activated, this motion will call the contact displayed on your screen when you take the phone and move it to your ear. Another of my favorites is the ability to mute a call or pause playing sounds when you turn the phone over.

The last one I will mention specifically is another way to take screenshots. The Note II has three ways to capture a screenshot: there is the classic power and home button at the same time method. Then you can use the button on the S Pen and hold it in one spot on the screen to take one. And the last way is by activating the motion to swipe across the screen with your palm to capture what you are seeing.

Those are just a handful of the different motions you can activate on your Note II. You’ll have to take a look yourself to see the entire list.

Annoyances

I have come across a few things that bother me. The first has to do with the layout of the homescreens. They only have a 4×4 layout, which makes me agree with what Aaron said about the Note II being a scaled up Galaxy S III. In ADW Launcher EX I changed the layout to 5×5 and it looked much more natural on the large screen as you can see in the image above. The left side is my homescreen with TouchWiz, and the right side is my homescreen with ADW Launcher EX. Another part of the wasted space is the area in between the dock and the rest of the screen. Samsung could have easily fit another row of icons where the page indicators are.

Like Aaron said in his review, I don’t understand Samsung’s reasoning behind making the WiFi connection a large notification instead of a simple toggle. Between the toggles, brightness slider, and WiFi notification almost a third of the notification drop down is full. It just seems like a waste of all that good space.

Hardware

Aaron went through the hardware extensively in his review, but I just thought I would take a few paragraphs and add my two cents.

The first comment I get from most people who see my Note II for the first time is something in the range of: “Holy cow! How do you fit that thing in your pocket?” I normally just reply by handing them the phone and telling them to give it a try themselves. After they have successfully fit the Note II in their own pocket (unless of course they are the size of a 12 year old girl), they usually remark about how light it really was. Yes, it is one of the biggest phones on the market. No, it’s not like holding a brick to my ear to talk in. And yes, I still love it and don’t regret choosing it for a minute.

I love the way that the S Pen seamlessly fits into the bottom of the phone. It’s not awkward at all. If it was awkward or annoying to get to it would probably get used a whole lot less than it does. Props to Samsung on this design.

I’m still getting used to the power button being on the side, since I was trained by my EVO 4G that it should be on the top. It does feel a little more natural being able to hit the power button without moving my hand to the top of the phone, but that is also easily solved with a simple Widgetzoid widget to turn off the screen without even pushing the button.

I’m also indifferent about the headphone jack being on the top. That’s the way my EVO 4G was, and it never bothered me then. It was only slightly annoying while in a car dock to have the power cable coming out one end and the aux input to my stereo cable coming out the other.

So far, in the time I’ve been using the Note II, I have found nothing to complain about with the hardware. The camera is great, the external speaker is loud enough, using it as a phone is great, heck even the LED for the camera works great as a flashlight! Any cheapness in build quality of the case will be reinforced with my Otterbox, so no concerns there, either.

The Note II has a removable back cover, removable battery, and an SD card slot. I’ve already mentioned the quad-core yumminess and extra large screen. In my opinion, what’s not to love about this phone?

Conclusion

In the last four weeks, I have really enjoyed getting to know my Note II. I know there are a lot of things that I still need to learn about it. I also can see me writing about it quite a bit, which judging by your comments is something that a lot of you would like. I am primarily a weekend writer, so keep an eye out on Saturdays and Sundays for more about the Note II.

If I were to rate this phone, I would give it four and a half stars. It does everything I could want it to do, and more. Is it perfect? No. Is it the phone for everyone? No. Is it the phone for me? Yes!

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.

The post This is why I love the Samsung Galaxy Note II appeared first on Pocketables.

The goal of any good logo design is to make a lasting impression on whomever sees it. The company hopes that whenever a particular graphic or design is seen, the consumer will immediately recognize it and associate it with its product.

Brandomania HD for the iPad puts that to the test in the form of a challenge. The entire goal of Brandomania is for you to recognize a brand based solely on a part of its logo. Sound simple? Well, in practice it can be quite difficult.

When you first open the app, you are greeted with the ability to play Level 1, which is unlocked, or choose from one of three pro levels to play. The three pro levels are cars, luxury, and tech logos. You also have 200 coins available right away when you start the game. You can use the coins to either unlock new levels or buy hints and bombs. (I’ll explain that a little later, but for now let’s jump right into Level 1.)

When you begin Level 1, you will see a page containing 20 parts of different logos. I’m sure that some of them will be immediately recognizable, and others might take a little bit of studying to figure out what they represent. And there will probably still be others that you don’t recognize at all. Every time you open up one of the levels, the logos are shuffled around. When I first opened Level 1 I was greeted with the 20 logos you can see below.

Obviously, some of the logos are very easily identified. On this first page, Facebook, BMW, PlayStation, Android, and Nike jump right out at me, and at second glance I could probably name most of the brands represented on this page.

When you choose which logo you want to guess, you are taken to a screen with just the logo part in the center and a collection of 12 letters, like what you see in the next picture. You are told the number of letters in the brand’s name and you simply have to fill them in in the correct order.

If you choose to use a hint, Brandomania will tell you something about the brand you are trying to name. Using Android as an example, the hint told me it was, “An operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers.” If the hint doesn’t help, you can choose to use a bomb, which will erase all of the letters you don’t need, as well as correctly place the first and last letters of the brand’s name.

Once you correctly guess the name of the brand you will be awarded with a star that tells you how many brands you have solved per level, and you will be awarded coins. The number of coins you receive is based on the number of incorrect guesses it took you to figure out the brand. You then take the coins you have earned and unlock new levels.

Brandomania has seven levels, each with 64 logos, for a total of 448 different brands to guess. That’s more than enough brands to keep me guessing for a while! If you want to see how many brands you can guess, head on over to the App Store and give Brandomania a try. I would love to hear how you did on Level 1 in the comments below. I got 49 out of the 64 logos solved.

Download: iTunes

The post App review: Brandomania HD for iPad appeared first on Pocketables.

About the same time that Aaron was unboxing his brand new Samsung Galaxy Note II, I was also unpacking my brand new phone. A couple months ago, I was talking about the choice to get a new phone. I had been really happy with my original HTC EVO 4G, but its time was done and it was the dawn of a new era in my life – the Note II era. I want to talk about the decision that I made to get the Note II, and how I got to that decision because I know this is a decision that we all make at one time or another, and hopefully my insights will help you make a decision.

Now you might also remember that I mentioned that there was a chance that I might be getting a business phone from the computer company I work for. Well, that is exactly what happened, but I was the one that got to pick out the phones that we were getting. So not only did I get a brand new phone, I got it for free, plus I save money every month on my own phone bill. That’s a win/win/win in my book! It took very little convincing to get my bosses to decide on the Note II. The only real sticking point for them was the actual size of the phone, but they quickly got over that after holding one in their hand at Best Buy.

So how did I come to the decision on the Note II? Let me tell you it wasn’t an easy decision.

Durability/Price

The first thing I had to look at was durability and price. I had my EVO for two years, and every phone before it I also used for two years. That means that any phone I chose had to last me for at least the next two years. For that reason, I only looked at the high end phones. With technology, you almost always get what you pay for. If you get a free phone with a new contract, odds are pretty good that it will be a very simple phone, and also most likely cheaply-made. There are of course exceptions to this, and sales are one of the exceptions. Multiple times before Christmas, you could pick up a Samsung Galaxy SIII for $50 – and that’s definitely a high end phone. So price-wise, I was looking at phones that would cost me over $200 out of my own pocket (or my bosses as the case ended up being). This decision led me to phones like the Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC EVO 4G LTE, and of course the Samsung Galaxy Note II.

Operating System

For some people, the first thing that you look at is the operating system, and I believe it is worth a mention here. For me, the answer to this question was an easy one. While I love my iPad 2 and have come to deal with the things I don’t like about iOS, my phone had to be an Android. There are many reasons why it has to be this way for me, but I won’t go into all of them here for fear of starting another Apple v. Android war.

While I was choosing another new Android smartphone, my sister and her husband were upgrading to iPhones from their EVOs. I talked them into giving the EVO a try over two years ago when they wanted iPhones, and now they are getting their wish because, in the last two years, Sprint has started selling iPhones. A lot of the choice between iOS and Android is a personal preference one, so I would just suggest you give both OSes a try before making your final decision so you will be happy with your choice.

Carrier

Another decision you need to make is what carrier you want to go with. Now, if you have a family plan where everyone got phones at different times you might not be able to switch carriers right away. If every line has a different contract end date, it might cost you a bunch of money to switch your entire family to another carrier. But if you are free to make the switch, you will need to look at the different plans that each carrier offers. One of the biggest things you will need to look at if you are getting a smartphone is how the carrier handles data. Some have unlimited plans, and others will cap you at a certain amount. I spend about 90% of my week connected to WiFi, so even though I was used to unlimited data on Sprint, my 2GB a month limit won’t be a big deal for me on Verizon. However, you will need to take a close look at your data usage to find which plan works best for you.

4G

Also a part of the whole data and plan equation is 4G. I had been with Sprint for more than a decade, but my bosses are with Verizon. Because they had family with different line contract dates, they decided to roll everything into a Verizon business plan. That meant that I had to port my number over to Verizon, which didn’t bother me a bit because as I said before it saves me money every month. As a bonus,f Verizon is the only carrier in my small community (30,000 people) to have 4G available. In the two years I had my EVO I only ever had my 4G turned on once, and that was as I was driving through Chicago. Now I am on 4G every day. If 4G speeds are important to you make sure you take a look at the different carrier’s coverage maps.

The Extras

The last thing I will mention when deciding on a new phone are the extras. I would put in this category things like NFC, Google Wallet, Samsung Share, digitizer pens, Siri, Swype, and lots of other little things like these. To some people, none of these things really matter to them. They just want a phone – a way to check their email and Facebook, and go online every once in a while. I wanted a phone that had NFC capabilities, Swype, and the Samsung Share features. The fact that the Note II comes with a digitizer pen was just a bonus to me.

There are a lot of other factors that you might use to decide on your next phone, but in the end it came down to a choice between the Samsung Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy S III, and I loved the idea of having a different kind of phone than everyone else. In the few weeks I have had it, I can tell you it gets noticed a lot more than any regular smartphone ever does. My decisions led me to the Note II, and you will soon be seeing a lot more about the great features of this phone. Where did your decisions lead you to in the search for your next phone?

The post Why I chose to get the Samsung Galaxy Note II appeared first on Pocketables.

Today the Gmail app for iOS got a much needed update. I had been annoyed with the app and its inability to support multiple accounts, which is something I feel Google has done very well on other platforms. I have at least four email addresses that are run through Google Apps, and I can be signed into all of them at the same time on my HTC EVO 4G, HP TouchPad, or my computer. I couldn’t do that on my iPad, until today.

Multiple accounts is just one of many new features to be released in today’s update. The first thing you will notice after updating is that the icon has been changed, and that the redesign didn’t stop with that. There is a new welcome experience the first time you open the app, and after skipping that I found that the entire app had been redesigned, including the display of Google+ pictures for my contacts.

The search box is now much more functional, with predictions as you type. For example. this means I only have to type poc and then tap Pocketables to see all my Pocketables emails. The inbox will now infinitely scroll, which saves time when searching for that email from three weeks ago.  And the last major change is the ability to respond to Google Calendar invites right from the email invitation. This saves that extra step of having to open up your calendar to accept invites.

Head on over to the App Store to download the newest version of Gmail, and let me know what you think of the redesign!

App Store: Download

The post Gmail for iOS updated to version 2.0 appeared first on Pocketables.

Keep in mind that this isn’t intended to cover every single tablet available on the market today. Instead, I decided to focus on some of the more popular choices. This doesn’t mean that the other tablets aren’t any good, but there is probably a good reason they aren’t as popular, whether it be price, features offered, or the track record of the manufacturer.

You should also note that I’m considering the options with the least amount of internal memory when I choose the budget category for each tablet. For example, the iPad Mini starts at $329 for the 16GB version, which is mid budget, but it has a 64GB version available for $529, which is obviously much more expensive. I’m also only looking at WiFi versions; many tablets have a cellular network version available.

Low Budget ($100-$250)

In the low budget category, you don’t get a lot of choice when it comes to screen size or operating system: You are pretty much stuck with a 7-inch tablet running Android. But not having a choice when it comes to those two questions doesn’t necessarily mean that you are getting a piece of junk. There are some very capable tablets in this range, so let’s take a look at four of the popular ones.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD | Nexus 7 | Nook HD | Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0

Out of these, I would choose between the ASUS Nexus 7 or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0; both are built very well and should last a long time. The Nexus 7 is running the most pure form of Android you will find since it comes straight from Google, while the Galaxy Tab has Samsung’s “improvements” added on top of Android. Some people love what Samsung adds to devices, whereas other people can’t stand the TouchWiz user interface. You need to decide if this is important to you or not.

I personally don’t like the tablets by Amazon or Barnes and Noble for a few reasons. Mainly, they heavily modify Android to a point where it is almost unrecognizable. This means that they pick and choose what features they want to leave in, and which ones they don’t think are important. It can sometimes be impossible to get to certain features like the proxy settings, or even the Google Play Store. Amazon and Barnes and Noble also want you to use their own app markets so that they make all the money, which makes sense,  but can be very annoying when an Android app isn’t available in its store. I have seen some instances where you can get an app for free on the Play Store, but have to pay for it through either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

If you decide to go with either a Nexus 7 or Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, I believe you will be very happy with your choice.

Mid Budget ($250-$450)

In the mid budget range, your options really start to open up. You have a choice of operating systems (Android and iOS), and you can also choose between a 7-inch or a 10-inch screen size. Let’s take a closer look at which tablets we have in this category.

Apple iPad Mini | Apple iPad 2 | ASUS Transformer TF300 | Nexus 10 |Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 | Sony Tablet S | Toshiba Excite 10

As you can see, you get a lot more choices – a lot of companies make really nice tablets in this range. If you are an Apple fan, then the 7-inch iPad Mini or 10-inch iPad 2 is for you. Even though there have been two generations released since the iPad 2, it is still a very capable device, and one that I use every day.

If you choose Android in this category, you have a lot more choices. I’m a huge fan of the ASUS Transformer series, especially if you are transitioning from a laptop to a tablet for daily use. The mouse support you get with Android and the keyboard dock make the Transformer a great choice. But if you need the most amount of memory at the best cost, then the Toshiba Excite might be for you, coming in at $379 for a 32GB version. If you want pure Android, then give the Nexus 10 a look – it won’t come with any manufacturer’s software additions or apps, and it’s got the highest resolution of any tablet in any category, period.

Honestly, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of the seven tablets that I have listed here.

High Budget ($450+)

If you are shopping in the high budget category, it most likely means you are looking for a 10-inch tablet. In this category, you can choose between Android, iOS, and Windows. Storage options tend to be more spacious, too.

Apple iPad 4 | ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity | Microsoft Surface | Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

This group is all about what OS you want to use. If you decide that you want a Windows tablet, then the Microsoft Surface is your answer. It runs the new Windows 8 RT, which has been largely redesigned around the idea of using it on a touch screen device. There are a lot of cool features included in the Surface, and you can read about some of them here on Pocketables.

If you decide you want to use iOS, then your decision is an iPad. Now, you’ll just need to decide whether you want a WiFi-only iPad, or if you need one with 4G LTE. You also have a choice of colors, and how much storage you want your iPad to have. The iPad is a great device, very well made, and Apple supports their devices better than anyone else. If you choose an iPad, you will also get some of the best customer service of any company in the market.

The choice to get an Android tablet in this range leaves you with two really good options: the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity or the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Both of these devices are built very well, and each have a unique feature that sets them apart from the rest of the market.

One of the coolest parts of buying an ASUS Transformer series tablets is the keyboard dock. If you buy one of these tablets, the dock is a must-have accessory in my eyes. It adds another five hours of battery life to your tablet, as well as giving you a full size keyboard, touch pad for mouse control, a full-size USB port, and an SD card reader.

Wrap Up

This guide mentioned nine different manufacturers and over 40 different iterations of their 15 tablets. I hope that this has helped you to narrow down your choices this holiday season, but if you have any questions about a specific tablet, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments section below.

The post Which tablet should I buy? [Holiday edition] appeared first on Pocketables.

There is one question I get asked more than any other these days: Which tablet should I buy for my _____? You might fill in the blank with son, daughter, mother, father, friend, grandma, grandpa, or any other person in your life. And with the holidays just around the corner, some stores are already announcing  Black Friday deals. So out of the mountain of different tablets, how can you possibly know which one to buy?

This question is really hard to answer on its own. Like I’ve mentioned before, there are a couple of prerequisite questions that you need to answer first before you can figure out which tablet is best for you. Some of these questions are dependent on the others, but I’ve narrowed it down to three main ones. Let’s take a look at them below.

1. How much do you want to spend?

If your funds for this tablet are limitless, then you don’t have to worry about this question. However, for most of us, this is the most important question, and can dictate the answer to the next two questions. I like to think there are three categories of tablets when it comes to price: low budget tablets ($250 or less), mid budget tablets (in the $250-$450 range), and high budget tablets (over $450). I could go on about the price, but since it dictates the next couple questions, let’s just move on.

2. What size tablet do you want?

There are basically two main sizes of tablets: 7-inch and 10-inch. While the actual screen size might be something like 9.7-inches it falls into the 10-inch category. The amount that you want to spend weighs heavily on the size you are going to get. If you are in the low budget category, you are pretty much limited to a 7-inch tablet. Mid budget will get you better 7-inch tablets and low end 10-inch tablets. And the high budget range will get you whatever size you want.

7-inch tablets are very portable and more pocketable than the larger tablets. They are very easy to fit into a purse, or even a jacket pocket. Seven inches is still big enough to easily see any app, as well as read any book without having to strain your eyes. They are pretty easy to pull out while waiting in a doctor’s office, or at the bus station, and pick up reading that ebook exactly where you left off.

On the other hand, 10-inch tablets – with their larger screen size – are great for a lot of different kinds of apps. More screen makes it easier to read certain types of materials, like magazines. Using the on screen keyboard on a 10-inch tablet leaves more screen to see while having a larger keyboard to type on. Things like drawing apps are much easier to use on the larger tablet. Granted, they are a little harder to carry around as you can’t as easily fit them into a pocket, but most of the time it’s worth the trade off. When watching movies or TV shows, it’s also nice to have the largest screen possible, at least in my opinion.

As a quick aside here, you can get some tablets that are smaller than a 7-inch, but generally speaking, they are not good tablets. They are a funny size and usually found on the shelves of places like Kohls or Rite Aid. If you can get a tablet for under $100, it would probably fit into this garbage category. They are made cheaply, the touch screens are terrible, they run old versions of OSes and almost never get updated. It is typically a good idea to stay away from any tablet for this price.

3. What OS do you want to use?

The first choice you have to make when deciding on an operating system is whether it matters to you or not. Some people don’t care what OS their tablet has, as long as it will do what they want it to. Some people are also very loyal to a certain OS and won’t stray out of that choice, even when buying for someone else. And some people won’t really have a choice of OS due to their answers to the previous two questions. The three major tablet OSes are Android, iOS, and Windows 8. (At the point, Blackberry doesn’t warrant mentioning.)

Each OS has its pros and cons. If you don’t need something specific like a certain app, any of the OSes will work well for you. If you are like me, who needs use of a certain app, or even a certain genre of apps, you might not have a choice of OSes. You’ll need to find which OS does what you want it to, and then choose a tablet that has that OS. Generic things like games, reading, web browsing and writing can be done on any OS.

Now that you have the answers

In summary, once you find out what your budget is for a new tablet, then decide on what screen size you want, and then pick which OS you want, you are well on your way to picking out the perfect tablet. But if you need even more help, look for our Holiday Tablet Buying Guide, coming soon, for more specifics on exactly which tablets to buy.

The post Questions to ask yourself before buying a tablet appeared first on Pocketables.

I’m not a person who has a ton of money, so therefore any devices I buy tend to be well thought out. For that reason I usually don’t find myself with extra things like smartphones, tablets, or computers. The first smartphone I bought almost two years ago is still the phone I am using today. Before my HTC EVO 4G I used nothing but cheap flip-phones. So when it was time for a new one I had no problem turning them in to Sprint to recycle for a few bucks, or like my last one, hand over to my three-year-old niece to use as a toy phone. But as I talked about a few weeks ago, it’s time for me to get a new phone.

Once I get a new smartphone, the question becomes, what do I do with my old one? I have thought about this for the last few weeks, and haven’t come up with a definitive answer. Here are some of the options that I have thought of so far.

Recycle with Sprint

My brother-in-law just upgrade his EVO for an iPhone and Sprint gave him all of $39 for his EVO. He was perfectly OK with that because for the last year he had been using it with a severely cracked screen. I’m not OK with getting $39 for a device that can do so many things, even without cell service. For some people however this is a perfectly viable choice.

Media Device

An EVO without a service plan could be compared to an iPod Touch. WiFi access, apps, camera, and a lot more. I’ve seen some ROMs that, smartly, are being advertised as media center ROMs for people to put on decommissioned EVOs. Anything to do with the phone dialer has been removed from the ROM. The problem with this idea by itself is that I will have a new smartphone that can do all of that, so I will not want to be carrying around a second device. I could see possibly using it for something specialized, like my next choice.

In-Car Media Device

Last week I showed you someone that installed an iPad Mini in a car dash. I talked about how I loved playing with my car stereo, and always thought it would be cool to have a touch screen in my car. It would be pretty simple to install my EVO into my car as a permanent media device. I could load it up with all my music always have it available in my car. I would have to figure out how to mount it securely in such a way that looks nice, but couldn’t be easily stolen. I’d also want to do it in such a way that you wouldn’t be able to see the cables coming out of the phone. This would be a little trickier because you’ve got the headphone jack on the top of the phone, and the charging port on the bottom to worry about, but it could be done with a little creativity.

Sell it Online

There are quite a few different sites that could help you sell your old smartphone. Ebay is probably the first one that comes to mind. A quick search on Ebay shows me a bunch of auctions for EVOs in good condition selling anywhere from $40 to $100, depending on condition and accessories included. I would describe my EVO as in mint condition and it would come with an Otterbox Commuter case, also in great shape. I could see my phone going for close to that $100 mark, but I don’t know if this is the best option for me.

Donate it

There are a lot of charities and programs that collect old cell phones and recycle them. Pick your favorite charity and there is a good chance you can donate your cell phone to them to help that charity out.

Something Else?

Is there something I’m missing? What did you do with your old smartphone? I included a poll for you to either tell me what you think I should do, or what you did with your old smartphone. I’d love to hear what creative things you did with your old phones.

The post What should I do with my old smartphone? appeared first on Pocketables.

For tech lovers, the Best Buy Black Friday deals might be the best part of that Thanksgiving paper. I know that as my wife and sisters are poring over the rest of the ads, planning their shopping the day before, I look for the blue and yellow ad as the only part of the paper I care about. But as Black Friday sales keep starting earlier and earlier, a lot of companies aren’t even waiting until Thanksgiving day to announce what specials they have. Best Buy is no exception.

Of course, the first section I jumped to was the tablets, to see what kind of deals there will be. I know a few people that are in the market for a new tablet, and if they can get one at a good price, they would probably jump at the thought. I won’t list all the prices here, but the six tablets that are on sale are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 8GB, nabi 2, Amazon Kindle Fire 8GB, Amazon Kindle Fire HD 16GB, Acer Iconia 16GB, and the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300. They also have a few accessories listed – a couple for the iPad, since Apple won’t actually let anyone put a sale on the iPad itself, or any of their other devices for that matter.

If I was in the market for a new tablet, the one on that list that I would buy would be the ASUS Transformer. It is on sale for $100 off the $379 price tag, plus the keyboard dock is on sale for $99. That means for the normal price of just the tablet, you can get the tablet and the keyboard dock, saving a total of $150. This is usually the tablet that I would recommend to people who are looking to replace a laptop for casual use. The keyboard dock is essential because it makes the transition from laptop to tablet that much smoother. Having things like mouse support and full size USB ports, plus the extra battery life, makes this combo a no brainer. And getting it under $400 is an awesome deal.

On the cell phone front, there really isn’t a lot to speak of. The only real deal is the Samsung Galaxy S III. If you didn’t jump at the offer when Best Buy had it for $100 a few weeks ago, you can get it for $50 on Black Friday. There is also another a deal where you can save $100 off a new tablet, ereader, or laptop by signing a new 2-year contract with either Sprint or Verizon. This might be helpful if you want to buy something from that category and it’s time to renew your phone contract, or maybe if you want to buy the Galaxy S III and the ASUS Transformer and save even more money, if they let you do that.

If you want to see all the deals that Best Buy is having, check out the Black Friday online ad at the link below.

[Best Buy]

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When I was younger, I used to love upgrading the stereo in my car. I had everything: amps for every speaker, subwoofers, subwoofer cabinets I made myself, capacitors, tweeters, neon, and lots more. (That was a time in my life when I had a disposable income.) Now, all that equipment is sitting in a box in my basement after I took it out of a truck that got totaled almost four years ago. Life goes on, and even though I don’t have the time or money to do that kind of thing now, it’s still an interest of mine.

That’s why when two things I love get combined, I get even more interested in them. In this case it’s my love of tablets and my love for car stereos. Mere hours after the iPad Mini got released, one got installed in the dash of a car. Soundwaves in Tampa, FL is the company that did it, and you can tell that they had been planning this install for a while. Check the video out and let me know in the comments if you would want a tablet in your vehicle.

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One of the things I really, really dislike about the Apple App Store is that there is no easy refund system in place for apps. On Android, if I am looking for an app to do a specific thing, I will usually find three to four prospective apps and download them all. I don’t worry too much if they all cost money, because I have 15 minutes to get any refunds from the apps I don’t like or want.

The App Store doesn’t have a good refund system in place. I’ve heard of people emailing developers to get refunds, but it is up to the developer whether or not they want to give the refund. Some developers might not even respond to your email request for a refund. You can also try to go through the App Store support department to get a refund, but each refund request has to be approved by someone, so you better have a good reason. Plus, it is very annoying to have to basically open a support ticket for every $0.99 app for which you want to get a refund. So if I want to try an app, I am pretty much stuck paying for all the apps I download until I find the one that does what I need it to. This means that I could end up paying $10 to find the $0.99 cent app that I finally decide to use.

I no longer worry about this. The reason for this is something that Calob talked about a couple months ago, FreeMyApps. After he posted that article, I decided to give it a try. Here it is, months later, and I have gotten over $40 in App Store credits. I can honestly say that nothing negative has come from me using FreeMyApps. I haven’t seen an increase in spam emails. Nobody has stolen my Apple ID information. In short, for just minutes a week, I get free money for apps. The best part, though, is that which I already mentioned: I can now try out a couple different apps before finding the right one without worrying about it costing me a ton of money.

Has FreeMyApps changed the way you buy apps from Apple? If so, let me know how in the comments below.

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Flipboard for iPad is an app that I had heard about a long time ago, when it was being released for Android. At the time, I didn’t have my iPad, and the Android version was nothing special. After I got my iPad, I completely forgot about Flipboard. Then, this last week, I was browsing through Apple’s top apps in the App Store, came across it again, and decided to give it a try.

I have tried a few different apps that are similar to Flipboard and found them to be nothing special. The basic idea behind this genre of apps is a one-stop shop for all your news feeds and social networks. However, with others, I’ve typically found that either the layout of the app is not appealing to me, or some basic functionality is missing. Flipboard is a little different.

First, I really like the layout of Flipboard. Usually when an app has an idea of what looks good in a layout that is different from a native app, it is very much a crap shoot regarding whether the end user will find it attractive or not. I find the Flipboard layout to be very attractive, as well as functional. You might completely disagree with me and hate it, and that’s OK. Like I said earlier, there are quite a few apps that try to fill this genre.

You can see below the grid format that Flipboard uses.

On your first launch of Flipboard, it will take a few minutes to get it setup the way you want it. You will need to give your social networks permission for Flipboard to access your data. You will also need to choose which other categories you would like Flipboard to display. Like most news feed apps, Flipboard has a list of feeds that it pulls from for the different categories. The app will then take your chosen categories and your social networks and display them for you in a book format.

Tap on any article or post, and you will instantly get a full page view of that item. You can then scroll to read the entire article, without leaving that page. A simple intuitive pinch gesture on the screen, and you are back to your feed. Want to update your Facebook or Twitter while you are in the app? No problem! Just tap the icon in the bottom right corner and instantly type a new status. Even when you are in a different category, you can instantly add a new tweet.

I’ve found that Flipboard actually makes me check my social networks more often. Because of the way that it lays my feeds out, I can easily see anything important that is going on in my friend’s lives, and also any new cute photos of my nieces or nephews. Give Flipboard a try if you are looking for a new way to check out what’s going on in the world around you.

Download: iTunes

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Last week Amazon introduced its newest feature in its Whisper series. They already had Whispersync which syncs all your books, notes, and documents from all your Kindles or Kindle apps. They also have Whispernet, which is the free 3G service from AT&T for its Kindles. Now they add Whispercast to its lineup.

Whispercast is an online app meant to help you manage your Kindles. I was really excited to hear about it because of my work with a school that started using Kindles this year in the classroom. It looked to me like Whispercast would help plug some of the security holes for our Kindles. The whole idea behind Whispercast is as a 1:1 management system. Every Kindle an organization owns can be managed and synced from Amazon’s website. You can buy books for each device and send them wirelessly, register multiple Kindles at one time, setup multiple Amazon accounts, send books and documents to other Kindle apps on Android, Apple, or Windows devices, and block factory reset and device deregistration.

To me that last one is the most important one. I mentioned that the newest version of the Kindle software introduced parental controls in August. This was a great step, but there was one major problem. Any student could simply either do a factory reset or deregister the device to have complete access to everything. Now this would of course erase all the books, and the teacher would find out when the next student to use it complained of not having any books, but I wouldn’t put it past a student who was just trying to be malicious. Whispercast should take care of this problem.

It’s nice that Amazon finally has a way for businesses and schools to manage their Kindle devices. In my opinion, this was way too long in the making, but I guess it’s better late than never.

[Amazon Whispercast]

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Last week, I mentioned how I am starting to search for a new phone. I laid out what I would require from my new phone, and also mentioned that I had narrowed it down to two choices: either the HTC EVO 4G LTE or the Samsung Galaxy S III. Well, after a lot of great conversation with all of you, and an interesting conversation with my boss, some things have changed in my search.

I work for a small computer company. When I say small, I mean really small. I am the only employee, and there are two guys that own the company. We are all friends, and it makes for a great work environment. When I mentioned to one of them that I was eligible for a phone upgrade, he started telling me about the benefits of all three of us having the same phone, and he was specifically talking about some of the sharing benefits that Samsung phones have. He really liked the idea of being able to instantly and easily share almost anything from one phone to another, or even automatically share pictures.

Now this is great news for me, because he told me if we all get the same phones, then the company will pay for my upgrade. That can be both good and bad – good because I would save over $200 of my own money for a new phone. Bad because I wouldn’t necessarily have free reign over what phone I choose.

The other good news is that, of the three of us, I am the mobile expert, so they defer to me on a lot of things related to mobile devices. This means that even though I won’t have the only say in what phone we choose, I will be the one doing a good part of the digging, and will basically present my case as to why I think we should get a certain phone.

Now even though my bosses really like the Samsung sharing apps, that doesn’t mean that they are 100% sold on getting a Samsung. However, I have Sprint service, and they both have Verizon. This means that whatever phone we choose will need to be available on both carriers. This eliminates the HTC EVO 4G LTE. Here are some of the phones I looked into this week.

Samsung Galaxy S III

I mentioned this phone last week, and it is still on my short list this week. It has one of the biggest screens on the market right now. It is very fast with its quad-core processor and 2GB RAM. It will be running Android 4.1 by the time we are ready to upgrade. Because of how popular the phone is, there is a large developer community. This is important because chances are pretty good that whatever device I get will be rooted shortly thereafter. Overall, I would say this phone is at the top of our list.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Speaking of large screens, the Galaxy Note 2 is due to be released at the end of the month. I was looking into the specs of the Note 2 this week, and I have to say I am impressed. Quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 5.5 inch screen, digitizer pen, and so much more. I spent 8 minutes watching the video on Samsung’s website, and when it was over I think I was drooling a little bit. This phone looks amazing. The biggest concern I have, however, is the size of the Note 2. While screen size is one of the cool things about this phone, it also makes it something that I would need to get used to. When I talked about it with my boss, the ability to have it fit easily in pockets was very important to him.

The Next Nexus

A few of you commented about the new Nexus that is supposedly coming out soon. You mentioned that if I love Android so much, then I should buy the pure Android Nexus. I am open to this idea, but there is one catch for me. If the rumors are true, LG will be making the next Nexus, and I don’t think I could bring myself to buy an LG phone. I’m sure there are a lot of people that will tell me they love their LG phones, and that’s great for you, but every time I have held an LG phone in my hands, I was never impressed.

November 25. That’s the day that one of my bosses becomes eligible for his upgrade. There’s a very good chance that someone will have a new phone available at Christmas time. If not, well, there are lots of other options out there.

So that’s where I’m at with the search for my next phone. But what about you – what other phones would you look at? What are your opinions of the ones listed here?

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