Da-Banana

Most people, when they think about phones, think about a carrier. That's because almost everyone phone currently on the market only work on one carrier and has all sorts of influence on the phone from the carrier. These are mostly geared towards things working out better for the carrier than the customer. The big exception to this rule is the iPhones, as they are carrier independent, have no bloat or changes specific to a carrier. No features integrated into the device that talks back to the carrier saying when you activated certain features, like tethering. In buying their phones, you also get stuck with all their apps and services they are pushing, which usually means they force out competitive items, for instance, Verizon blocked Google Wallet from there Galaxy Nexus because it competed against their Softcard service. On top of that, each carrier get special made phones for their network, that has hardware that works on just their network, meaning that if you want to ...

There are a bunch of tablets out there with many variations and options. I made my decision on the Nexus 7 for its price and features. Plus the fact it runs stock Android and gets updates fast made it a clear choice. There are also very few tablets out there with cellular capabilities and the Nexus 7 shines in that category. First off, lets talk about the hardware. With the quad core Snapdragon S4 Pro, it has plenty of performance and the 1080p IPS looks great and is very crisp. The tablet is light and thin making it very easy to take on the go. The main feature this device offers that most tablets lack is cellular connectivity. This tablet offers LTE capabilities to Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. This makes this tablet very useful on the go and not tied down to the home. For T-Mobile and AT&T it also supports there HSPA and Edge networks so you have a very wide range of support. At the price of $350, this offers a price lower than most iPad models that lack cellular ...

Google has released there new product which will be rolling out over the next few days to all Android 2.3+ devices. This addition has had a lot of hype and has a lot of good changes and qualities about it. Basically, this new move brings all of Google's different chat methods into one unified system. So, now you can get the new extentions for Chrome, Gmail, Google+ or phone apps, and they all works seamlessly together for chat, voice or video communications. The best feature about the new system is the notifications. Once read on one device, it is taken away as a notification on your other devices, so you don't have to disregard messages you've already read somewhere else. This is something that has bothered me for years and am glad to see a solution, that in my short testing, works very well. The Chrome extension is very interesting. It runs and give a pop-up window on messages, which stays persistent across tabs. This is a great improvement over Gmail built in chat,...

I've had my Samsung Galaxy Nexus for over 6 months now and I've realized a few things in that time. First is that the software on the phone, is much more important than the phone hardware. I would rather have Jelly Bean on 1 year old hardware, than Ice Cream Sandwich on the latest phone hardware. This is why the Galaxy Nexus was a good choice for me because with it, I can be on the latest version, though I do have the Sprint version, which does lag a little, but ultimately isn't the reason I moved too Cyanogenmod. I ran Cyanogenmod on my previous phone, the Sprint EVO 4G. That made a huge difference and was much more pleasant than the stock HTC Sense interface which could be slow, though it did have some nice features to it. This time, having the Galaxy Nexus, even though it was the Sprint version, and being stock Android, my desire and need to move to a custom ROM was very small. Ultimately, the reason I moved was for just a few features that I wanted. The first thi...

I recently upgraded my phone on the Sprint network to the Galaxy Nexus. My HTC EVO 4G was still doing well for me but it lacked Ice Cream Sandwich. When looking at phones on Sprints network, I noticed they had the Galaxy Nexus. This is supposed to be a phone from Google with the pure android experience. The Galaxy Nexus was out for close to a year but I liked it better even though it had older hardware. This was largely in part due too having Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean has a super smooth interface and is very fast and fluid on the Galaxy Nexus. The screen is 4.65 inches and is very bright. The phone has no static control buttons but uses the new soft buttons that became an option with ICS. This is nice because you don't have space consumed by static buttons. Instead, they are a part of the screen and can disappear as part of the running application, for instance a movie can consume the entire 1280x720 pixels. It also has a hidden LED for notification that has 3 different color...

Apple has really made tablets popular with there iPad's, but they weren't necessarily the first to the market and they aren't the cheapest. There are a lot of cheap Android tablets out there and I decided to get one to see if they are good or just a complete waste of money. I decided to go with the iView 760TPC which I purchased from Newegg.com, the place I go for all my electronic needs. For $120, I received the 7" tablet, charger as well as a leather case, headphones and USB cables. iView 760PTC 7" Capacitive 800x480 Resolution Processor: Cortex A8, 1.2GHz (Allwinner A10) OS: Android 2.3 / Upgradabe to 4.0 ICS RAM: 512MB DDR3 Memory: 8GB Battery: 3500mAh HDMI 1080P Just to make it clear, this is by no means a alternative to an iPad. This is a low end inexpensive tablet. That however doesn't mean it is useless as it does work well and has its purpose. I have had mine for over a month now. The tablet itself is very durable and is comfortable ...

Android has really grown and no matter what carrier you go too, they have a pile of phones running this OS. Android 2.2 was probably one of the largest and most popular releases of Android bring a host of features to the phones as well as many speed improvements. Each phone maker customizes the Android interface to there own liking as well as each carrier throws in there own applications to the stock phone. This can sometimes slow down the phone and take up unwanted space. This is why there are numerous custom versions of Android available for people to install on their phones in place of the one provided originally. These are commonly referred to as ROMS. Cyanogenmod 7 is a popular ROM of Android which is for the most part a base Android, but with a few custom features and small enhancements to make it faster.  I've been running Cyanogenmod for over 6 months now. Moving from Android with HTC Sense I noticed a huge speed improvement right away. I also very much liked the...