I have been using the Nexus 4 for about a week now and it hasn’t disappointed at all, its fast smooth, no glitches, they even had two updates since I had it and I didn’t even bother checking why. I have wanted to write a full in depth review about everything this phone can do and just whats different about it being from LG. I will get into that later since I do want to give it justice, just know that if you are getting it then you are going to be very happy. I’m going to make the switch from the Galaxy Nexus to the Nexus 4 by this coming Sunday but my only hang up is one thing, I don’t want to cut my chip or replace it, but it seems that I can’t really use it anymore, I want to keep the old school MTC Vodafone colors, my only two options is either to cut the chip or replace, in this case I think I may just replace it and keep the chip since its for sentimental reasons. The hardware on this phone is top notch and it works that way, I have abused it and the battery is impressive, the build quality is perfect, feels good in your hand. I will follow up with an indepth write up on the phone. Also I blame Apple for my predicament, why the hell do they keep having to change the damn SIM Cards, I don’t think anyone had a problem with that, I also think we can lose them more easily these days.

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Nexus 4, after scouring Ebay for days after selling out. Luckily one Ebayer got his hands on it and was selling it for $475 in North Carolina when everyone else was selling it for $600+ so I clicked the Buy It Now without a second thought.

Firstly the box was very simple to open unlike the Nexus 7 situation, just a charger and wire inside with the phone nothing else. I was happy the phone was fully charged and once I signed in my GMail account it started automatically downloading most of my Apps. One thing that Android does that I like is that it also copies the wireless profiles from your previous Android devices so after the initial wireless connection it seamlessly connects to your wifi from previous saved profiles.

First impressions:

• I’m liking Android 4.2 Jellybean – Nice Improvements and Even Smoother
• The Camera is pretty good in low light shots
• The phone is light, I’m forgetting that its in my pocket
• All the Apps are working with it
• I’m loving the Keyboard

Its gonna take me a day or two to fully configure all the Apps I have on it, I keep using one thing and jumping right into and forgetting to configure the others. Do I think Google made the right decision with LG, well time will tell but as off right now I’m loving the phone and if you are a fan of Android phones then you will love this. I like the Samsung S3 but I’m loving the Nexus 4, the operating system just feels so clean and it just wants to be used. I’m going to write a full review at a later stage but for now this is my first impressions after one night of using it.

This is a prototype unit and usually the Google Nexus gets released around the end of the year so the specifications might change. According to the site that got it’s hands on the prototype it’s rocking a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, 1280 x 768 4.7-inch screen, 2GB of RAM, and just 8GB of storage, all of which matches earlier rumors. It’s also running Android 4.12, but there have been rumors flying around that it will be released with Android 4.2, but we would never really know.

When it came to the choice of manufacturer I honestly I’m not too happy, I was hoping they would go back and try HTC since I love their designs or they could try the Motorolla Razr Android since they were very cool designs, Samsung was always a good choice, but LG? really?

I think the back looks cool, it reminds me of the nexus wallpaper. And yes the screen looks crappy, but I they have the brightness turned completely down. I am very interested in seeing how this turns out. I’ve never had an LG phone but I keep hearing their phones have questionable quality. Im not sure exactly how they pick the manufacturer but I have heard that they put in a bid with a mock up design and it google picks the one they like. Well I just hope Google knows what they were doing, and I know I’m going to buy it because its the next Google phone. In Google We Trust.

Link: Gizmodo

It looks like the end was sooner then I expected, my BB doesn’t even ding anymore, no more group messages no more random questions people. Even the people who have BB left answer me 6 to 24 hours later, never instantly like they used to. My Blackberry 9900 is still functional without any major issues, a few slow downs here and there but overall the thing is working.

My main reason for keeping the BB going was because of “The Diwaniya” Group, the one group that is always beeping and funny things were said. But now it seems like a deserted desert and I’m the last one holding down the fort. People had to choose which phone they wanted and with the arrival of the amazing Samsung SIII it has accelerated the death of BB. Even with their new release of the OS and any great hardware they have in mind, I think its too little too late, people have moved on, they either chose to join the Android Camp or the Apple Camp. It was good while it lasted and I have my BB 9900 1 year to this date but now no one is there, not worth keeping it anymore, from the 200+ contacts and always active BBM down to 30 people and only 6 people who only use it, its not worth keeping it going. I’m probably going to drop it in a couple of weeks.

Everyone is on WhatApp, I’m not on it yet but I will join it later. From what I have seen its not that good, but everyone is on that platform.

Last year and the year before RIM was struggling, now they are just a sinking ship, when a few years before that it was everywhere like wildfire, everyone had a Blackberry. I still kept mine because of our Dewaneya being on it, and honestly it is still the best group communication App out there, I think they should have sold it off as an App in the App Store and Android Market, it would have helped sustain Blackberry on the software side.

They held on for so long and still RIM didn’t turn around at all, and a lot of people got fed up with it, they even switched to Android because some people didn’t want Apple. The whole of 2011 didn’t change anything for RIM, and Android & Apple just kept coming up with more updates and better handsets. People started shifting, it feels odd when people start leaving your contact list, at first its normal but then it just got ridiculous, floods of people disappeared. It was honestly sad some of these people were gone, it was nice to to star in touch with them. To be honest up to this point there isn’t an application that is better then BBM and nothing beats a good Qwerty keyboard but they had their problems and they didn’t progress. We are still stuck with the 10 MB which is pretty much useless when roaming, it gets used up in two or three days at most. I don’t know why but it feels like I was abandoned when I see the status update “BBM OFF – WhatsAPP +965##$##$##”, as if the person just gave up and left.

Now the migration has begun, very few people are left on Blackberry, I’m still holding on to it and using it when I can. I’m not a fan of WhatsApp even though pretty much everyone shifted over to it. I tried ChatON and a few other Apps they weren’t that great either. I think I’m probably going to stick to it until this piece of hardware quits, then I don’t think I will be getting another Blackberry until I see some drastic changes in the coming future.

With the end of the Mobile World Congress everyone has something to show, there is a lot software vendors there but its where all the big mobile players show off their new phones and the line up for Android looks very enticing. I don’t really need a new phone since my Galaxy Nexus is a fantastic phone but damn these phones have amazing specs and look hawt.

HTC One X

As usual HTC come out with powerful machines, they were the powerhouse of Android when it first came out and still come with some impressive hardware. The main issue I had with HTC is that they had too many phones, I didn’t know what was good or bad from them and it seems they learned that lesson so they came up with the HTC One line up, only three phones and the One X is the powerhouse of the bunch. Also I was a huge fan of the HTC Sense User Interface since initially it made things so much smoother with Android 1.6 but over the past two years it has gotten a bit bloated and not simple as it used to be and they are planning to fix it with the new line up which is excellent.

• CPU Speed 1.5 GHz, quad core
• Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4
• Total storage : 32 GB RAM:1 GB
• HSPA/WCDMA:Europe/Asia: 850/900/1900//2100 MHz
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE:850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Sensors: Gyro sensor,G-Sensor, Digital compass,Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor
• NFC3
• Bluetooth with aptX® enabled (Bluetooth® 4.0)
• Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n
• micro-USB 2.0 (5-pin) port with mobile high-definition video link (MHL) for USB or HDMI connection (Special cable required for HDMI connection.)
• Camera with ImageSense – 8 megapixel camera with auto focus, smart LED flash, and BSI sensor (for better low-light captures), F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens, 1080p HD video recording

Sony Xperia S

Sony do know how to design their phones and in this one it seems they got it right. The one part they always do an amazing job with is their cameras, they seem to be the best possible cameras out of all the phones but you never know what to expect. But the design of this phone looks very clean cut, and I had the last Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, it was a fantastic phone so I’m looking forward to their next line up, but I would wait until they ship with Android 4.0, I wouldn’t want it with Gingerbread since I have been using Ice Cream Sandwich and it is a fantastic operating system.

• Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread) (Upgrade to Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich, planned in Quarter 2 2012)
• Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon
• Dual-core 1.5 GHz
• 4.3”, 1280×720 pixels 16 million colours TFTDisplay
• Reality display with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine
• 12.1 megapixel camera with LED flash and Auto focus / Sony’s Exmorâ„¢ R for mobile CMOS sensor
• Front-facing camera (1.3 megapixel, 720p)
• HD video recording (1080p)
• Talk time (up to) 8 hours 30 minutes / Standby time (up to) 420 hours
• Internal phone storage: 1 to 1.5GB / RAM: 1GB / Flash memory: 32GB eMMC
• Networks: GSM GPRS/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900 / UMTS HSPA 850, 900, 1900, 2100Colors: Black / White

Samsung Galaxy S III

No specifications have been released by Samsung yet for this phone, but it seems it might have a Quadcore chip and all the bells and whistles to make it one very powerful phone. The S II surprised the market and Android became synonmous with the S II, even people who didn’t know what Android is they know its Samsung Galaxy SII, so now with the SIII I’m expecting it to be top of the line. At this point they are expecting some news in March and a release date set for July.

Now this was shocking news for Seagate and Western Digital, they have taken a step I wasn’t expecting.

The floods that have taken place in Taiwan has caused a shortage of hard drives across the world, and customers have taken a hit with the price increase, a big one. Now the consumers are taking another hit, and this one is more permanent, these two hard drive manufacturers are cutting back on hard rive warranties, in some instances from five to one. If you buy your hard drive prior to Jan 2 2012 it will retain what ever warranty it has but after that then the hard drive will lose its warranty.

One of the things that I loved about Western Digital is that you could always warranty your hard drive without any issues but this is one bad decision and I really don’t like it. They said they are doing this in order to save money or redirect it to product development, I think its BS.

Zain originally has a 40% or 60% stake in Mada Communications, and it seems they are in the works to make it 100% at this stage. Mada has gotten a lot of good press for their WiMax services which they launch just before summer and the turbulent times of the Data Caps. Overall people are happy with their current services with Mada, they do have their issues when they update the towers, some times it increases speeds and sometimes they decrease the speeds drastically. Overall I think they have somewhat evened out, getting between 5 – 8 MB which is honestly really good but not the initial 10 – 11 MB that we used to get. The way their current system works is that they have a unit attached to every Zain Tower in a concentrated area that they cover, and each one has about a 2KM radius, that is why it is very different from location to location. Their Mada also provides other services but thats for corporate services that they give primarily to Zain. So it makes sense that Zain wants to buy them out but the question is will things change for the users?

Now the item in Question… Data Caps?

Since Zain has them, will they be applied under new management, what are exactly the implications we face. I’m not sure if the management will change but I do know how Zain are about their branding, what is theirs has to adhere to their rules. The system that Mada uses won’t put stress on Zain’s current 3G data network so I hope that they would let Mada’s current policies of no capping to continue and hopefully expand on it. Its always good to see services improve and expand and I hope its the case with this.

Take one fountain, one printer, one monitor, and mix them all up and you end up with one very clever fountain. Thats what they have installed at the Osaka Train Station. I have seen some amazing fountains in Las Vegas but let the Japanese come up with the a very clever and unique fountain. I wonder how much it would take to put together a fountain such as this.

We have all reached a point with our Blackberries when we wanted to throw them at the wall. I got the Blackberry Torch when it first came out and I gave up fixing the issues that it had, my email never worked on it. I didn’t think of purchasing another Blackberry really until there was a lighter one and with solid operating system. Recently my Torch has been restarting on its own and with the announcement of the new 9900 I was looking forward to trying it.

Initially I’m not too fond of the Bolds but I needed a thinner Blackberry and wanted to move on from the Torch. I was hoping that the new operating system would be vastly better then before, and I liked that it booted so quickly. I got to playing with it right away and started moving things around, and I liked the OS and the feel of the phone. Its a solid phone but not too heavy, very good for a 5.0 MP camera since other phones have surpassed that now. I especially love the rubber on the outer edge on the rear of the phone and the carbon fiber back, gives a very clean and light look to the phone. It has more of a brushed aluminum frame then it does a chrome frame, thankfully I hate chrome so it isn’t too bad once you see it. Overall its a very nice phone built by RIM with a nice and smooth operating system, I’m going to put it through it’s paces once I’m done transferring one phone to the other. Got the phone for 243 KD unlocked from outside of Kuwait and that includes delivery, if you are looking for a new BB and you want it light then this the phone for you.

Thanks to TouchOfMeh