Moto G announced

Motorola announced the Moto G, a lower end model of the Moto X today. It's specifications scream "low-mid end phone" and there is nothing particularly good in software as well. But one major plus point is that it brings us stock android with no manufacturer skin(yay!) and Motorola has said in their blog that the Moto G will be updated to Android 4.4 Kitkat in the beginning of 2014.

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Specifications:

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
	SIM	Yes
	Announced	2013, November
	Status	Coming soon. Exp. release 2013, November

BODY	Dimensions	-
	Weight	-

DISPLAY	Type	Capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	720 x 1280 pixels, 4.5 inches (~326 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
	Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass 3

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	No
	Internal	8/16 GB, 1 GB RAM

DATA	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	Speed	HSDPA, HSUPA
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v4.0 with A2DP
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection
	Video	Yes, 720p@30fps
	Secondary	Yes, 1.3 MP

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v4.3 (Jelly Bean), upgradable to v4.4 (KitKat)
	Chipset	Qualcomm Snapdragon 400
	CPU	Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7
	GPU	Adreno 305
	Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity, compass
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML5
	Radio	FM radio
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black (front panel), several color options (back panel)
		- SNS integration - MP3/AAC+/WAV player - MP4/H.263/H.264 player - Organizer - Photo viewer/editor - Document viewer - Google Search, Maps, Gmail - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa - Voice memo/dial - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Li-Ion 1950 mAh battery

Plus points:

• Stock Android 4.3 (and will be upgraded to 4.4)
• New Snapdragon 400 processor
• Interchangeable back covers with multiple color choices.
• Price: USD$179 with 8GB of storage and USD$199 for 16GB of storage.
• Battery life: Motorola is sure famous for their battery life and this is the time to prove. With just a 1950 mAH battery, Motorola claims it can last a day. Let's see...
• Comfortable size: With a 4.5" display, it is not too large and not too small as well.

Minus points:

• Last years specifications. It is basically a Nexus 4 with a plastic back and a smaller display. You can just add 20$ and get a better phone, the Nexus 4.
• Only 720P video recording.
• 5 MP camera. As compared to the Moto X's 10 MP camera.
• No expandable storage.

Watch the Moto G video here. 

Other links: 

Pocketnow

GSM Arena specs

GSM Arena

Motorola Blog
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Android 4.4 Kitkat overview/impressions.

Hey guys! If you have read my previous article on the Google Nexus 5, I will be using the same style of writing and if you haven't read it, go ahead, I am sure you will like it!

Introduction:
Google announced that the next version of Android (4.4) will be named Kitkat around the start of September. Everybody was in for a shock as generally the names of Android versions were of  generic desserts and not brands. Also, it was pretty much confirmed at that time that Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie was going to be the next version of Android. But, hey, this is Google!

The Good:

• Lower Specifications required: Usually when a new operating system comes out, it needs more hardware power and old/legacy devices are left behind. But, this is not the case with Kitkat. Google made sure that almost every Android device would be capable of running 4.4(Noticed how I emphasized on 'capable'? This means that it is not compulsory for the device manufacturer to update it. I will give an example later in this article) 
• UI changes: Kitkat brings the biggest UI change to Android since Ice cream Sandwich(4.0) ICS brought the 'holo' user interface and much polish that was needed to Android back in the day. 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 were pretty much identical visually except for a few minor changes. This dissapointed a major portion of Android users(including me). Kitkat gives us a redesigned Phone application, translucent navigation bar and notification bar and many many more UI changes. 

• Immersive mode: Imagine this and tell me if it sounds familiar. You are playing a game and a text is received. You have to now close/minimize the application to open your notification drawer and THEN decide if it is important and you want to read it or not. With immersive mode, you just swipe down from the top of your screen and BOOM! There are your notifications! Now, if you think it is not important, just close the drawer and continue with your game!

• Better Google Now integration: Google Now was introduced in 4.1 Jellybean. It gives you information you need (like weather, traffic, places nearby, sports scores and many more things)even before you search. It was so useful, many people considered it the best product of 2012. With Kitkat, you just have to swipe right at your left-most homescreen and there is Google Now! Previously, to get to Google Now, you had to swipe up from your navigation bar and it works now as well. Also, as your homescreen itself is Google Now, when you are at any page, just say 'Okay Google' and voice search gets activated.
• IR blaster support
• Wireless Printing support: If you have a HP e-print printer or any other printer that has an app on the Google Play Store, you can print from it wirelessly. This also works with printers connected to Google Cloud Print.  

• Phone App improvements:  The new phone app automatically prioritizes your contacts based on the people you talk to the most. You can also search for nearby places and businesses, your contacts, or people in your Google Apps domain. Also, whenever you get a call from a phone number not in your contacts, your phone will look for matches from businesses with a local listing on Google Maps.

                     4.0-4.3 dialer                     4.4 dialer                    

The Bad: 

• No Kitkat for Galaxy Nexus: This is very ironical to me that Google told Kitkat would be able to run on older hardware but it will not update the Galaxy Nexus.. Seriously, Google?? -_-
• No multiple widgets on lockscreen: I missed this feature even on  previous versions of Android. I don't know why Google doesn't come up with this. Basically, the idea is to use the extra free space in lockscreens. As you can see in the screenshot, I can only add upto 1 widget per page and even if there is tons of extra space, I have to use another page to add another widget.

• No icon pack support in stock launcher: If you have read my article on 'Launchers and icon packs', you probably know that I love custom icon packs. But if I want to use an icon pack, I have to download a launcher first. I know this is a feature of custom launchers but incorporating it into the stock launcher doesn't hurt anyone, does it? Afterall, that is the greatness of open source!
• Offline speech recognition: Offline speech recognition is pretty good if you are not connected to the internet and want to speak out a text message. But, it only works  in certain languages and if you don't want to use English(US), you have to download a language first. I use English(India) for voice search and Google Now but if I want to download that and use it offline, it isn't available! 

I know that the 'bad's I wrote weren't as much bad as 'missing features'.

If you liked this article, please also read my other articles below and share it with your friends who love Android too! Also, if you want to make sure you are one of the first persons to get notified when we write more awesome stuff like this, +1 and follow the blog via e-mail!

Nexus 5 released!

Finally!!!! This Halloween was by far the best one till date for Android lovers like me!

I will write this article in 5 parts: Specifications, my impressions, the good, the bad and the conclusion.

Specifications: 

My Impressions:

First thought when I saw it on the Google Play Store, "Google, take my money!" Yes, I am THAT desperate to get a Nexus 5. I think this is the best phone of 2013.

The good:

• Very reasonably priced: At just 350$ for the 16GB model and 400$ for the 32GB model, this is by far the phone with the most bang for the buck.
• A Nexus device: Being a nexus, it will receive OTA updates directly from Google as soon as a new version of Android is announced. 
• Optically stabilized camera: One of the top Android devices for shutterbugs along with the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and the LG G2. OIS means even if you have shaky hands, the pictures you click will no longer be blurry or out-of-focus.
• The display: With a 4.95" 1080P display, your eyes will be in for a treat with the sharpness of images.
• Android Powerhouse: With a 2.3 GHz quad core Snapdragon 800, Adreno 330 GPU, 2 Gigs  of RAM and with the optimizations of Android Kitkat, you will not be able to break a sweat even with the best of the CPU-intensive apps.
• Wireless Charging: You don't need a description for this, do you? :P
• Connectivity: With Wifi 802.11AC, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC, wireless printing support, HDMI SlimPort support, you will surely not feel detached from the rest of the world.

The bad:

• Online Availability: It will be hard for you to find a Nexus 5 in an actual store because Google just sells it on the Play Store (play.google.com)
• Not very famous: If the Nexus 5 was manufactured by Samsung, you would see huge billboards, online advertisements and even people who are not that much into technology, would know it. Google is not a smartphone seller. This is sad that many people would not even come to know of this great product at this very much affordable price point.
• No Contracts: People in the US tend to buy subsidized phones on 1/2 year contracts. Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons the Nexus 5 might not perform as well as other famous Android devices in the markets.

Conclusion:

You have 2 options. Buy it or envy other people who buy it. I think that the pros overcome the cons by a large extent.

I will write a similar article about Android Kitkat as soon as possible. If you liked this article, please also read my other articles below and share it with your friends who love technology! Also, if you want to make sure you are one of the first persons to get notified when we write more awesome stuff like this, +1 and follow the blog via e-mail!

How to create a music playlist in Google Play Music

If you are like me and listen to music on your android phone, you should know that Google Play Music is one of the best music players. Personally, when I had to create a new playlist except from the favorites, I got frustrated. I had to find a lot and when I finally found it, I thought it was kind of a stupid way..
Note: I have installed a CM12 theme so your Google Play Music may not look the same as mine!

So, lets begin:

1) Go to My Library

2) Go to "Songs".Next to the song you want to add, you will see a 'menu' button, press on that.

3) Select the option "Add to queue"

4) Do this for all the songs you want in your playlist.

5) Swipe up from the bottom.

6) Click on the music like icon(look in the screenshots)

7) Press the menu button and select "Save queue"

8) Select "New Playlist" and give your playlist a name.

Voila!
If this was a help to you, please comment below or follow me or our blog's official page on Google+ to be one of the first ones to know whenever we post more awesome content! :)

Google Chromecast review

So... I have the chromecast since about a month and if I wanted to write the review in one sentence, it would be "You won't use it a lot but it is an added weapon in your 'tech arsenal'(kind of like the ejector seat in James Bond's Aston Martin)"If you guys don't know what the chromecast is, it is basically a very tiny(2.8 x 1.4 x 0.5 inches) device that streams youtube videos and netflix movies directly from your wifi network. 

The main advantages of this are:

• It is small in size, it is so tiny that you will even forget you have it in one of the HDMI ports of your TV.
• Easy to setup
• Open source
• Works with chrome, android and iOS
• It doesn't hog up your device's battery life.
• Your device is just the remote, this means that the video doesn't get downloaded to your device. Instead, the device just sends the commands to the chromecast. 
• It costs just 35$. Yup, you read it right, 35$.
• Google opened the Google Cast SDK for public so now, there will be no shortage of apps and you can even cast your local data as of 03/02/2014.
• You can cast a tab from chrome or even share your laptop's screen on a projector without any cables.

The setup procedure:

1. Plug it into one of the HDMI ports, plug into power with the help of adapter
2. Go to google.com/chromecast and follow the steps. It should take no longer than 3 minutes(5 minutes on the max). 
3. All done, now all you have to do if you have an Android device is, go to the Play store, search for "chromecast" and you will have to install an app by Google. 
4. After installing the app, open it, accept the terms and conditions and you SHOULD see your chromecast if they are on the same WiFi network. 
5. Open the youtube application, you will see a 'cast' icon in the top right corner of the screen, tap on it and you will see a list of chromecasts on your WiFi network. Just select one, play a video, sit back on your couch and relax!

Okay, so here are the disadvantages:

• HAS to be always on(you cannot turn it on remotely)
• It is much more convenient to watch the video on your phone or tablet than to turn on your tv and go to the living room just to watch a 10 minute video.
• Can have problems if you use a dual band Wifi router.

So, that's it guys, hope to see you soon again!

Launchers and icon packs in android

Okay, so if you use Android, you may have heard of launchers and wonder what are they. Well, today we are going to talk about them.
So basically, launchers are your home screens. The part of your phone you look at most of the time while using your phone. So you may ask, "What is the hype about?", "Why are there so many launchers?". Well, the launchers that come built in with your phone are not very customizable. You cannot really do anything exciting with them.
Here is my top list of features custom launchers provide that some stock launchers(anything that comes built-into your phone is referred to as 'stock') cannot:
1) Gestures
 You can set some certain custom gestures to do certain tasks. For e.g: swipe down to open          notifications(this is really helpful incase your phone is too big), rotate counter-clockwise to call someone
 or swipe up to access recently used applications and so on..
2) Icon packs
 Icon packs give your phone a new feel. They basically change the look of all of your icons to your liking.  Please note that most of the good icon packs will be paid and they will only work with custom launcher I  will provide at the end of the page.
 Here are some of the best icon packs for android:

• Minimal UI https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.launchertheme.kxnt.ui
• Click UI https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.launchertheme.kxnt.click
• Goolors https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ds.goolors
• Stark icons https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kov.theme.stark
• Square Icon pack https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.heavyfork.sq
• Nox icons https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kov.theme.nox

3) Customization

 There is a ton of customization options in custom launchers in Android. Here are some:

• Change app drawer behaviour(default is horizontal)
• Change app drawer transparency
• Multiple pages in docks
• Shortcuts to other pages
• Overlapping widgets(if you want to save screen space)
• Hide apps in app drawer

Now that you know about Android launchers, here are some to name a few:

• Nova launcher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher
• Apex launcher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anddoes.launcher
• Themer(in closed beta as of 21/10/2013) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mycolorscreen.themer
• Buzz launcher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buzzpia.aqua.launcher
• Trebuchet (stock launcher of cyanogenmod)
• Solo launcher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=home.solo.launcher.free

There are many more,  if you want search on play store.

Okay, so I think that you guys finally understood what an Android launcher is and hope to see you soon!