Mobile Phone Blog – Mobile phone reviews and news

If it is that time of the week for you and your friends to spend some quality time down at the local pub, then it would be hard to avoid leaving behind your mobile phone. After all, having a handset around will be pretty handy when you need to call the local cab service to pick you and your otherwise indisposed drinking buddies back home.

One of the nicest suggestions that we could give is to download a pub-search app. There are plenty of these kinds of apps that focus on various locations in the UK; there are several that will give you a quick rundown of suggestions for the coziest and most impressive places to catch the World Cup Matches or simply a nice quiet pub where you could talk your worries away with friends.

Another great feature about these pub search applications is that they not only provide you with the names of pubs, but also how to get there. By using a phone’s GPS features, users will be given the fastest routes to the desired location. Some apps will even provide transportation options as well, with various cab services that can be called upon when needed.

Another important tip is to bring a small bag that you can sling around your shoulders or tie around your waist. This provides people with a means to store phones and other things without having to worry about losing track of the items. As long as the bag is on your body, you can be sure that you would not be leaving anything behind.

Lastly, keep an alarm. As fun as nights out can be, nothing is worse than lacking moderation. Set an alarm on your mobile phone to remind when to call it a night and start heading back home. And before you do, it would be wise to schedule next week’s meet up and decide whose turn it is to pay for the rounds.

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There are plenty of pubs that men would recommend to each other. Maybe for its great ambiance, or the friendly and personable bartender, or maybe for having some of the lowest prices in town or simply for having the tastiest shrimp available; whatever it may be, these places tend to get by on word of mouth and while this an effective form of advertising, the accessibility of the internet and smart phone technology has moved the concept of personal recommendations into a whole new field.

Before, word of mouth simply meant that the friends and family members who would actually listen to your recommendations would actually try it out. But with today’s technology, even a complete stranger might be heading off to your favorite tap on account of a properly posted Tweet.

Good customer reviews, combined with easily usable references such as recommended items on the menu, location directions and the use of technology such as GPS makes things a whole lot easier –and more encouraging for people to try out new places that they have never seen.

The presence of location based applications also affects plenty too. Foursquare not only keep track of the number of times people go to a location, but that are also ways for people to leave their virtual remarks and reviews of a store.

Of course, reviews can go bother ways. As many stores have seen how valuable getting good internet rep can be, criticisms can also mean bad news. As many of you might realize, it is far easier to discourage than to actually encourage others and if people originally had not known of a location, the less they would care about it if all they hear are complaints.

In this regard, stores these days find themselves being more rewarded and successful for being the best that the can be. Gone is the notion of having to cut down on services to save costs –the small time and energy investments to improve a store are paying themselves back more than twofold.

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So you own a mobile phone, almost everyone does, and while each mobile phone model has its own unique features, brand and style, there are some basic necessities that people should not do without. Here is a quick checklist of things that you might want to keep handy if you want to make the most out of your smart phone.

First up, a micro fiber cloth; these things are best recognized as eyeglass cleaning cloth. They are great for wiping out oil and grime from the large screens used in many smart phones. They also tend to be small, so anyone can carry one around without too much trouble.

Next are battery and power accessories. Simply put, you need these when you travel or go out of the house. As expected, smart phones come with at least one charger. But it would better if you bought a spare charger for work and if you have a vehicle, a car charger. Some might want to consider bringing a spare battery in the event that charging is not available outside. For those planning several days of being out, a portable charging station is also a good idea.

Another great item to have is a Bluetooth headset. Now this is a prime piece of accessory, and they come in different forms and styles too. Since almost all smart phones support Bluetooth devices (even some basic 2G handsets do so too), this will help you keep your hands free while making a call –of course, if you rarely make phone calls, then this might not be a good investment.

While not an accessory, a screen protector is always a great thing to invest in. These thin clear plastic stickers will keep the very surface of your device protected from basic scratches. And if you are not too sure of your own abilities to stick it on, some of the stores that sell these will also offer to apply it on your phone for a modest fee.

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If you use a smart phone, chances are you use the device to check the internet often, view your social networking account and sometimes, check the occasional uploaded media. Email is checked regularly, even if not on an everyday basis, but it will still be part of life. This is not the future that Sheryl Sandberg predicts.

To be precise, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg stated that Email “is probably going away”.

Before we believe such predictions, the important point here is to get to the bottom of the argument. According to the Officer, teens of today are projecting the web usage patterns of tomorrow. That by itself is a pretty logical argument.

Now, Sheryl expands her predictions by stating that teens do not use email daily –that only 11% of teens do so. And with that being said, she predicts that eventually, nobody will use email. Actually, going by her own example, in the future, nobody will use email “daily” –and that is the key point that she missed.

Using email daily meant using the web communication tool for writing to friends and family, this is a function that is slowly being moved to the private messaging functions within Facebook. But at the same time, email is still used for registrations and other similar functions, and in this regard, it will not be phased out.

Take physical billing addresses, while the advent of email phased out mail based correspondences, the mail service still thrives until today and is a vital part of society, though its casual usage has been drastically reduced. Email will also follow the same path.

A basic example of this is by checking one’s own email contacts list, and the friends list one has in Facebook or in other social networking website. Often, especially for many adults, email accounts are tied up to friends, family, co-workers, clients, business contacts and other similar matters. It also hosts registration information for forums, online stores, banks and similar sites –things that people would not want to be tied up to a social network account.

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Smart phones store plenty of information. With all the features and capabilities of the average smart phone, users can store thousands of important personal information –information that can be lost or even stolen if the device is not taken care of properly. And while it takes careful preparation, awareness and vigilance to keep a device safe from theft, the same cannot be said from other dangers such as software issues, viruses, and the occasional phone accident that often ends with a smart phone soaked in beer, soda or some other liquid.

This is why it is important for anyone with a smart phone (and uses it often) to consider coming up with a data backup plan and sticking to it. One might think that simply running the data sync function to a computer is already enough, but unless this is done regularly, the measure is pretty much pointless (much like restoring data that is several months old).

Having updated, regular backups gives anyone the confidence to wipe clean a mobile phone for repair or other similar uses. This cannot be afforded for anyone without backups –as the pangs of worry regarding data loss would prevent anyone from fully wiping clean a phone’s memory.

Software issues are also plenty. Many operating systems rely on patches and updates in order to bring new features and capabilities to smart phone users. Sadly, some of these patches could possibly wipe a phone’s memory clean with the installation of an all new operating system. While developers would add in a warning with the update installer, it would save everyone plenty of time and energy to have backups ready.

The last great reason to back up data is when you want to retire your mobile phone. Most stores offer great deals for trade-ins, even some network operators have similar deals. Of course, transferring data from one handset to another will be a whole lot easier if all your phone data is already backed up.

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Mobile phones are important, even children need it these days. Having a handset means that you can contact your child at any time and be sure of how they are doing and where they are. A single text message is discreet and unobtrusive, and children feel at ease answering these digital notes.

Of course, having a mobile phone is much more than that. While it is easy to control what calls a child can make (some phones can be locked and some network operators have special family plans –as well as the ability to cut off call functions once the duration goes past the monthly allowances), there are other phone functions to consider, most importantly, the ability to access the internet.

What makes mobile phones –smart phones in particular a bigger issue than computer is the fact that children do not always have access to the home computer at a very young age, and adding a password is quite easy. Mobile phone access on the other hand gives the child warrant to go online almost anytime, anywhere, and this, if stopped abruptly, could prove to be a difficult decision to bear with.

Teaching children about using web access properly starts with teaching them to have a conviction of their own, and the strength to stand up for their own belief. With their peers most likely on social networks that they too will be joining, it is important that a child understands that the web is not a place that will tell you what is right and wrong, and that it is up to each user to determine what should be done.

Of course, a little guidance along the way help, but over surveillance could lead children to start hiding things. The most important thing to do after teaching a child is to actually trust the child to follow what was taught.

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It is not surprising that many app makers and OS developers are cashing in on the World Cup –it’s a big event and everyone want to be in on the latest news and happenings. And while some people can afford to actually attend the matches at South Africa, the rest of us are stuck living our day to day lives hoping that England’s matches are not scheduled on our busiest moments.

Of course, that is pretty hard to avoid, but thanks to mobile phone technology, getting access to all the big happenings at any time is a piece of cake. One simply has to connect to a WiFi or 3G network and all the big updates are available. The only consideration now is finding the best places to grab the information you want.

And when it comes to info about the World Cup, it is all about the current games, scoreboards, player profiles and other statistics –and the World DroidCup app has it all. The app not only has all the information in a very concise and easy to read format, but it looks really good too. The best part is that the DroidCup app is also free.

But if you want to do a little more reading as opposed to getting just a quick overview of the latest stats, then you might want to tune in to the news. With a no-nonsense, graphic-minimal layout, the EvriThing World Cup app is the instant news feed for you. All the information is laid out in a chronological order and gives readers a good insight on the latest things that are happening. As with the DroidCup, this app is also free!

Rounding up our list of free apps is a standard issue app for any sports fan: BBC Sport News is a major free app that gives users all the big stories and highlights of matches regarding the World Cup and everything else. No fan can afford to go without this.

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Smart phones are pushing technology forward, thanks to the fact that handsets, by nature, are devices that people will tend to carry around the most; it also provides the biggest room for feedback, study, analysis and direct user-reactions. Even the manufacturers themselves have one or two smart phones in their pockets all the time.

For the past couple of years, the emergence of better WiFi and 3G network technology has allowed the growth of the internet thanks to continued access from smart phones, and social networking sites such as Facebook and microblogging site Twitter has grown to new heights thanks to instant access from mobile phones.

Now, the smart phone-internet combination is getting another important new addition; GPS. Location based services for smart phones are not new, but in the past few months, they have been growing a lot. Apps such as Foursquare have become major hits as they not only allowed people to connect online, the level of interactivity also begun to involve the places they visited.

Some location based services are even taking the service one step further. While Foursquare and other similar apps offer virtual rewards, Looptstar promises actual, real life rewards to users. Ranging from free downloadable content to store discounts, Looptstar has made plenty of store deals that would make anyone’s daily errands a whole lot more rewarding.

At this point, location based networking is still at its early stages, and not many people are too keen about checking in to have this presence logged. But as the services begins to get more and more ties ups with actual establishments and more people start using it. Peer pressure is actually a lot more powerful than what one might imagine. It will have the same pull as Facebook – people have to join because opting out equates to being left out.

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Technology provides plenty of conveniences, with the emergence of smart phones, 3G networks and better web browsers; it takes little more than a few button presses to get online and find any bit of information that you may need. The same goes for sports, whether you are sitting at home or in a packed stadium, all you need to do to see the current stats would be to take a quick glimpse on your mobile phone.

However, as impressive as technology may be, it still comes at a cost. While the cost usually entails staying within the allotted bandwidth allowance, this consideration changes plenty when people leave the country –just a quick visit to Paris without minding the web usage will net you serious charges, and this gets even worse if you are planning to head to South Africa for the upcoming World Cup.

Sure, it would be great to get a quick streaming video of that last goal you missed, or if you simply need to get a closer look at the action that is happening. The more common things to look up for are player rosters, stats and current game specifics, but viewing just a few pages get easily reach up to 1MB in just 20 page views –and that will get your bill up by about 8 GBP.
If a user fails to keep track, the overall bill could reach hundreds in just a span of a few hours.

Anyway, anyone planning to see the World Cup better make a quick trip to the closest office of your network provider (or just make a quick call) and ask about the international rates so that the bill will not surprise you when you get back home. Of course, the event is expected to be fully optimized for the many expected attendees, so it would be really tempting to hook up to an online network.

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The argument may seem pretty simple, after all, it is the Taiwanese company Hon Hai that hosts the seats of the big bosses whose decisions directly affect the working conditions in Foxconn’s factories; but with most of the money pouring in coming from companies such as Sony, Hewlett and Packard, Apple, Samsung, IBM and others, it seems quite likely the media would eventually expect some form of reaction from Foxconn’s foreign clients.

There is no doubt that many of the spinners at Sony, HP and others are already working out a good angle to handle the media fallback; other companies such as Apple are simply turning a blind eye to the whole mess (in fairness to the Cupertino based company, they already have a lot on their plate to handle), but the general consensus is that what Foxconn is doing is wrong.

Indeed, there is something morally lacking when companies find themselves having to pay for extremely cheap labor practices and still sell their devices for expensive prices. But if Foxconn does change its company rules –increase salaries and benefits, as well as improve the working conditions, the financial repercussions of such a move will certainly drive up the manufacturing costs. In the long run, this will raise the retail value of many big name brand products.

The many employees of Foxconn work 12 hour shifts for extremely low salaries, hardly any benefits and live lives that practically turn them into nothing but mindless drones churning out bits and part of gadgets that will eventually be assembled (most probably by their other colleagues). According to reports, they eat their meals in a very military like manner and the overall atmosphere is tense and depressing.

The most ironic thing is that this has been the standard way of life for many workers in many other manufacturers; but with the continuous growth of suicides in Foxconn, the spotlight on this manufacturing company is not going away any time soon.

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