Month: December 2011

Smart vs. Globe Battle on iPhone 4S

Unbox did actual tests of both networks on two iPhone 4S’s.

Truth is I’m not surprised at all by the results. Smart Communications beat Globe Telecom 8 times to nil. Based on my personal experience, Smart’s 3G network is usually faster as compared to Globe’s, even at the heart of the Ayala Center in Makati, which is supposedly Globe’s home turf. Nevertheless, I just hope Smart could/had broaden its 3G wireless network coverage to include my hometown, in Tigbauan, Iloilo, as I’ll be spending my time there during the coming holidays.

The Android UI Lag

Even for a dual-core 1.2GHz device like the Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2), while running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, I could still really tell the UI lag when scrolling, especially when compared to a single-core device like the iPhone 4.

Take for example the official Twitter app. While swiping your fingers from bottom to top to scroll through earlier tweets in your timeline, sometimes the scrolling would stop at the tweet you last put your fingers to, as if you were trying to select or tap on that particular tweet and not swipe through it. This happened so often it actually got so frustrating.

Andrew Munn has a very good explanation why this is so with any Android device: Continue reading

Instapaper for Android

After more than a month tinkering with my Android device, the Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2), I’ve come to the conclusion that the one app I missed the most about my iPhone is Instapaper.

From the mail app, Evernote, Twitter (Tweetbot), Facebook, to Feeddler (Google Reader) apps, you can easily send articles to read later (and even offline) via Instapaper. Alternatives like ReadItLater are great, but seamless integration with various other apps are wanting, and some articles, although obviously blog posts themselves, are not loading properly in ReadItLater.

To a lot of people, owning a smartphone means a lot of games. I consider myself to not belong to that “lot of people”. The only games I have on my smartphones are those that are really quick games like, the usual suspects like Fruit Ninja, Fling, MasterCode, Flight Control, and some card games like Poker, to pass the time away while waiting for something or someone like in waiting areas of airports, clinics, offices, restaurants and meetings. Continue reading