Androidifying

In Android 4.4, you may have noticed there’s a new option in settings. Just under the networks section there’s the Home option. In that setting you can actually change your launcher on your device. Now that’s nothing new, well it sort of is, let me explain. Prior to Android 4.4, if you downloaded a new launcher and then pressed home, it would ask you which launcher you wanted to use. Well that’s still there. But what’s changed is that before, you would have to go into Settings > Apps > and delete the data or defaults from the launcher to go back to the original one. Now Google has made that a whole lot easier. Basically under the Home section in settings you can choose which launcher you want and also uninstall them all from the same screen. Which is a great addition to the OS. How to Switch Launchers Go into Settings Tap on Home Tap on the Launcher you want to install It’s literally just that easy to do it. If you need more help we do have a video down below to help you out, w

Navigating with your iPhone just got a heck of a lot easier. A new app called Hudway for iOS turns your iPhone into a SAT/NAV device with a heads-up display. The app projects theiPhone screen on to a vehicle’s windshield, so that you don’t have to keep glancing at your device while driving. The app requires you to set your destination and then simply place on the dashboard, where the app will beam driving directions, the vehicle’s speed and the distance of that next killer turn on to the windshield. No special film or modification is required. Users can operate the app without a data connection, provided you load the map via Wi-Fi before embarking on your trip. This would be a great use of that old iPhone you’ve got lying around. The app also allows you to share routes with friends and family. Since most of the shots of the app in action show dark and foggy conditions, we’re not too sure how well the feature will function in the daylight. It sure is cool though, and makes driving a l

The Nexus 5 hopla is finally settling down after a little more than a week – tempers are in check and reason is entering back into the picture.  Reviewers are reviewing, analyzing, and reporting their findings…all pretty much what we expected – camera and battery questions keep coming up, but from what I have seen the pictures look pretty good.  The jury is still out on the battery life, but it doesn’t look like even Android 4.4 KitKat is going to make it last much longer than the Nexus 4′s.  So now, all we have left to do is to make that purchase and where you buy your Nexus 5 will depend a lot on how much you pay. While Google Play may not be the only place you can buy a Nexus 5, it seems that it is certainly the cheapest place to purchase your next Nexus “baby.” For instance, in the U.K., Google is selling the 16GB variety at £299 ($481), but some retailers are charging as much as £425 ($643)! It is not entirely the retailers fault, as the price on Google Play is actually less than

The Chinese company, Xiaomi, has been in the news recently for several reasons and they can add one more as their first Red Rice (Hongmi) smartphone, a mid-range model, sold out its  100,000 devices in four minutes  on the internet, which is the only way you can purchase a Xiaomi product. Last month they released a flagship device, the Mi-3, and sold out the 100,000 devices in less than a minute and a half!  Their phones use the Android Operating System, but is heavily skinned and customized by Xiaomi. They aim to sell a high quality product at a reasonable price – the Red Rice smartphone sold for only $130 and included: 4.7-inch 720p display 1.5GHz Quad-Core MediaTek Processor 1GB of RAM 8MP Camera The other reason Xiaomi has been in the news is because they have been called the Apple of China, although they prefer to think of themselves as the Amazon of China. They want to sell directly to the customer, at a competitive price, and then make their real money with add-ons, such as soft

  The Nexus 5 is yet another device that you’re more than likely going to be cracking open and installing all sorts of kernels, ROMs, mods and tweaks on to. Which is a whole lot of fun – nobody can deny that – but sometimes things can go wrong. Maybe you flashed something in the wrong order or removed the device from the USB port too soon. No matter what the cause, there’s an easy way back to stock when it comes to the Nexus devices. These lie in the Factory Images provided by Google, essentially a big folder of files that restores your Nexus 5 to how it was before you took it out of the box. This is a great way of wiping the slate clean and getting your device back. Here, we’re going to tell you how to restore your Nexus 5 using the factory images provided by Google. If this is the first time using your Nexus 5 on your PC, then you’ll need to download the drivers and install the Android SDK in order to get fastboot installed onto your computer. Once you’ve done that, you

On the  Mozilla Blog today , they made the announcement that Firefox for Android will “bring an amazing web experience to users.”  They also pointed out that their Firefox browser will be included on the new Kobo Arc Tablets and the  GIGABYTE GSmart Simba  SX1 smartphone – could they get a longer name? Karen Rudnitski, Senior Product Manager for Firefox for Android said: We are pleased to partner with Kobo and GIGABYTE to offer Firefox as a pre-installed Web browser on Kobo Arc tablets and the GSmart Simba SX1 smartphone. Firefox is dedicated to offering users the best and most personal mobile browsing experience and we are happy to be able to bring that experience directly to users, globally. Firefox has been around a long time and Mozilla continually refines and updates their browser.  It does have an intuitive design and Mozilla claims it offers “the most powerful customization support of any mobile browser and leads the industry in pioneering privacy and security features like Do

Since the Nexus 5 was announced, everyone has been asking about the camera. Which was expected since that’s normally the sore point of a Nexus phone. Yesterday, I posted some samples from the Nexus 5 and I thought they were pretty good. Now I don’t think they are better than the Galaxy Note 3 or even the LG G2. But they do seem to be pretty good. Yesterday, I was asked to do a camera comparison between the Galaxy Note 3 and the Nexus 5, so that’s what we are here to do today. I’ve taken a few pictures with both cameras. Outside, and a couple in low light, which you can all see in this post. (above, Left is Galaxy Note 3, and Right is Nexus 5) Remember that the Galaxy Note 3 has a 13MP camera while the Nexus 5 has a 8MP camera with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). Also Samsung’s cameras have always been pretty good, so I kind of expect it to be better. But I’m not going to say which one is better, since we all have different opinions. So we’ll look at the two of them side by side an