Edward Kiledjian

Blackberry has announced a deal with 12 small OEMs building Android devices to bundle BMM with their base device.

These are international manufacturers you have probably never heard of in Canada, the US or Europe but they are still recognized brands in india, Indonesia, Africa and the Middle East.

Blackberry still has to figure out a way to monetize BBM but their primary concern seems to be finding ways to aggressively increase their user numbers (even if these are BBM users on non Blackberry devices).

Source: Marketwired

I have tested over 20 styli this year ranging from $80 precision devices to cheap $4 ones from china. Most seem to have a similar look so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the Cosmonaut from Studio Neat.

It looks like a giant crayon and made me feel like a kid again.

Why a stylus?

Readers often ask me why they should use a stylus with their tablets:

• it provides much greater control than your finger (more detail)
• it moves your finger away from the screen (greater visibility and less oily finger marks)
• it allows you to use your tablet as a high powered digital notebook

The Cosmonaut

It is a fairly compact stylus (compared to the its main competitors like the Jot from Adonit). It is a very solidly built product with a nice grippy soft touch rubber covering. This pen is easy to hold. The manufacturer describes their pen as:

"The perfect tablet stylus is one that feels like a dry erase marker: fast, simple, low fidelity. " - Studio Neat

The tip is also made of a rubber-like material that provides just the right amount of friction against the screen. It is a thicker pen so it won't appeal to everyone. I passed the pen around the office and wanted to get feedback from as many people as I could. Most of the younger professionals found it just a little too thick for their liking but older adults seemed to love it. A couple of my testers had slight mobility issues (like arthritis) and fell in love with the Cosmonaut. They said it was the first stylus they could use comfortably.  Another tester that loved the pen was my 3 year old daughter. She loves drawing on my tablet with it.

I love it and it found a permanent place in my work bag.

Accuracy

As for the accuracy, it was one of the most accurate styli I have tested in the last 2 years, This really surprised me. With its thick tip, I thought it was going to be a brute writing instrument but it ended up being a superbly accurate work of art.

Because of the design and thickness, I found I was holding the Cosmonaut higher up on the barrel (compared to other styli) which meant my fingers and palm were less likely to rub against the screen (aka I didn't have to deal with unwanted artifacts).

Build Quality

I find manufacturers building cheaper and cheaper accessories. Users are willing to pay $600 for an iPad then want to use a $5 cheap plastic stylus with it. The Cosmonaut is basically an aluminum core wrapped in a premium grippy rubber, 

This stylus is built like a tank and I am sure you'll get many many years of use from it. It is one of the best most robust and well built styli I have ever tested.

Verdict

3 words will sum up my verdict: " I loved it". It is a well designed, well priced stylus that performs incredibly well. It is accurate enough to take notes, draw or sketch. It is comfortable enough to use for hours and compact enough to travel easily in a bag.

Source: Cosmonaut

Breffo really chose a great name when they called their universal flexible smartphone stand the Spiderpodium. Why you ask? It looks like a spider and holds your smartphone on a podium... Anyway its a great name...

As you can see, it has 8 flexible legs  that bend easily yet stay in place very solidly. The product is covered with this soft touch grippy rubber material. It is wonderfully delicate with your smartphone (won't scratch it) and provides enough friction to hold it in place on plastic, aluminum, wood, glass and stainless steel.

When you look at the different suggested designs on the box, you get a little intimidated. I did anyway because I was never good in art class. At first I kept getting frustrated because I couldn't reproduce the perfectly sculpted recommendations provided by the manufacturer so for the first couple of days it sat on my work desk waiting. Eventually I realized that I just needed to mold it as best I could and it became immediately useful.

The more I used it, the more uses I found for it. I started using it to

• hold up my smartphone (playing Netflix) while on the treadmill in the gym
• hold my smartphone on the headrest of the car to entertain the little one during a short drive
• hold my smartphone while using facetime video conferencing
• hold my smartphone on the shopping cart at the store

The slit in the middle of the base plate is used to slide a charging cable through.

At first you wonder how strong this product is. Can I trust it to securely hold my $800 iPhone 5s? The answer is yes. I mounted it to the screen of the elliptical trainer and watched a movie the entire time I was exercising. The machine was shaking (the gym probably needed to adjust it), nevertheless the Spiderpodium held my iPhone snugly and securely.

I wanted to test how securely it could hold my device for an extended period and hung an iPhone 4 (didn't want to risk my iPhone 5s) with a Mophie battery pack from the fridge door for 24 hours and it didn't budge.

I then performed the same test in the car (hanging it from the rear view mirror) for 24 hours in colder -5 degree Celsius temperature overnight and again it had held the device in place.

Negatives

There is no "easy" way to carry the spiderpodium so I kept it in the pocket of my everyday use jacket. It is small and thin but you still notice it's there. Even though its an extra thing to carry, It went everywhere with me for 2 weeks.

This thing is reliable secure but sometimes it bent when I poked my smartphone to stop a video or answer a call. Its not a major issue but a slight annoyance when it happened.

What about the knockoffs?

When I do these types of reviews, I am often asked to compare the original (usually more expensive) to the Chinese knockoffs you can buy on sites like dhgate and aliexpress.

To answer honestly, I ordered one which is why this review took longer to publish. It took the Chinese seller almost 3 weeks to deliver my "Universal car bike mobile phone spider stand holder for iPhone 5s 5c 5 4s s Galaxy Note 3 Note2 S4 S3 S2 Portable Mount."

Differences between the original Breffo Spiderpodium and the Chinese knockoff I bought for $6:

• The knockoff has a less grippy rubber material and didn't hold it as securely
• The kockoff had similarly rigid legs but after 3 days of use, one of the legs became limp and could hold itself anymore

I understand the need to find a bargain but in this case, the Chinese knockoff proved to be less than adequate to securely hold an expensive smartphone.

Verdict

At first I thought this was a useless gimmick but the more I used it the more uses I found for it. It is now part of my standard every day kit and will definitely come on all my business trips.  My rating for the spiderpodium us 8/10 and a recommendation of buy.

Source: breffo

If you're a Canadian that travels to the US for work or fun then you should know about Roam Mobility. These guys can usually save you 40-75% on US phone and data charges (compared to Rogers, Bell, Telus, Fido).

If honor of US Black Friday, they are discounting their service fees by another 50%.

The only deal condition is :

" is schedule your plan to start between November 28th and December 2nd. The discount will automatically be applied to your shopping cart and you're good to go. Limit one per customer."

Plans include unlimited nationwide talk, unlimited global text, free long-distance calls to Canada, unthrottled high-speed data (where applicable), plus free voicemail and caller ID. 

Related Articles:

• Rogers' US Roaming versus Roam Mobility

• Roam Mobility offers competitive US roaming for Canadians

• Roam Mobility Liberty WIFI Hotspot Review

My carrier contract was recently up and I had to chose a new device to crown as my daily driver (aka main everyday phone). Although my last device was an iPhone 4s, I have used most Android devices released in the last 12 months and was fond of the features they provided to a tech geek like me.

After considering all my options, 3 phones made it to the Edward smartphone finals:

1. Apple iPhone 5s
2. Motorola Moto X
3. Google Nexus 5

Here is why I chose the iPhone

1. Consistent Functionality - The iPhone may not have as many bells and whistles as an Android device but you can be 100% certain most features work as you'd expect. Case in point is device rotation detection. On the iPhone, device orientation is detected perfectly every time and changes are almost instant. Most android devices take a while to detect any change in orientation (sometimes up to a couple seconds) and otherwise rotate when you don't want it to.
2. Keyboard - I love Swiftkey on Android and install it on every Android device I buy. I make sure that it goes through my GMAIL, Tweets and blog to customize its auto-correct database specifically to my writing style. But it still makes mistakes. Lots of mistakes (same thing with the default Android keyboard and Swype).  These replacement keyboard really speed up text entry when they work but are a pain when they keep getting the predictive auto-correct wrong. In my testing, I've found that the iPhone provides consistently better auto-correction.
3. App Sandboxing - Android is such a great environment because apps can go in and make changes to the operating system default configurations. This is what allows apps to take-over default functionality from built in apps. And then once in a while something goes wrong and the only way to fix your device is to restore to factory default and restart from scratch. I have had apps "break" SMS/MMS functionality. One app broken my APN config which stopped all data functionality (until I finally figured out what had happened). 
4. The Camera - Even hardcore android fans admit the iPhone camera is superior to every Android device. Android devices have fantastic hardware so the culprit is likely the Android camera software functionality and we have heard rumors that Google is working to release an all new improved camera sub-system (which may even have RAW support). I'm hoping this finally closes the imaging gap with the iPhone but for now, the iPhone's camera reigns supreme.
5. Quality of apps - Android has an incredibly healthy ecosystem of apps and the top-tier ones are beautiful, well designed and superbly functional. Then you have everything else. Many of the apps on Android feel unfinished with ugly UI and operational issues. I own Pocket Casts on IOS and Android. The one for IOS works perfectly every time, refreshes the catalog quickly and downloads automatically. The Android one has a design that is close but not as beautiful. It doesn't always automatically download my podcasts (even though it is configured to do so) and just doesn't feel as good. This is the same experience I have with other cross platform apps.
6. Accessory compatibility - Samsung has done an excellent job bringing cool new accessories to its devices but there are simply more add-ons for the IOS platform. Many fitness trackers (like Nike Plus) are iPhone only. The amazing Bluetooth enabled Jot Script stylus works with IOS and brings the one feature that makes handwriting notes on Android impossible (palm rejection) to the IPad.
7. No maintenance - My Android device requires constant maintenance to keep it humming. As an example when you uninstall an Android app, it often leaves behind orphaned files (which have to be cleaned up). There is no maintenance required on an iPhone, IOS takes care of everything in the back end for you automatically.
8. Support - Android has a fantastic online community full of people ready to help you but Apple has hundreds of stores staffed with employees who can help me with almost any issue. I can walk into an Apple store anywhere in the world and without an appointment an Apple "Genius" will fix my issue within minutes and send me on my way

My issues with the iPhone

Even though I chose an iPhone, its not all rosy and perfect.

1. I love the customizable "home screen" and replacement launchers on Android
2. I love the tight OS integration of Google Now. Sure most Google apps seem to work as good or better on an iPhone than on most Android devices but the one think I love right now is Google Now integration into the OS (especially on the always listening Moto X).

Verdict

I really wanted to justify getting an Android instead of an iPhone. As a tinkerer, there is so much more that I could do with an Android device but at the end of the day, I wanted a device with minimal fuss, with a great camera and apps that would simplify my life. Apple won this round again but I remain incredibly interested in the Android community. If I had to pick one android device that really excited me, it has to be the Motorola Moto X. It is the one Android phone where the designers wanted to create something that augmented your life through simple and clean features. I love it and that would be the Android phone I would buy today if I decided to switch.

Knowing that there is a brand new shiny update to Android but being damned by the Google gods to wait is frustrating. You bought a Nexus device because it came with the promise of quick and plentiful updates, yet 3 weeks past the release of KitKat, still no sign of the automatic Over the air (OTA) update.

So you search the interwebs and find a trick. A neat trick that many claim has magical powers to quickly deliver the wonders of Kitkat (even if the Check for update button didn't work). But should you be dabbling with the dark arts (clearing the Google Service Framework data)?

A Google engineer has taken to Reddit (Dan Morrill) to inform users of the risks associated with this trick. By wiping your Framework Data, you are invalidating your push notifications (minor issue but could be very annoying). Dan says that the preferred method to accelerate the update to Kitkat for Nexus devices is to use adb sideload but this is for the more experienced users.

Reddit 1

Reddit 2

Google has finally released its Nexus branded Qi based wireless device charger (which ships on or around November 22). The charger is compatible with the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and the Nexus 7 (2012 & 2013).

Last year's wireless charger was this funky orb shaped half circle that was a pain to use. This years is a nice flat charger that makes sure the device stays put. The devices comes in a choice of colors: black, black or black.

It comes with built in magnets to ensure your phone or tablet stays in place/ All of this can be yours for only $49.99 (on the Canadian and US Play Stores). Link to store.

Samsung has announced a US only promotion, that runs until January 6, which will give you a $50 Google Play store credit. All you have to do it go to the promo page (link), enter your information (IMEI, name, address, email, etc).

The offer is open to US Samsung Galaxy Note 3 only and is open to anyone who has already bought a device (until Jan 6).

Note: They do check the IMEI allocation and will block all non-US IMEI numbers from the promo( even if you fake the address).

We all love Youtube and watch hundreds of millions of videos a day but do you wonder how it all works? If you do then this is a a great video otherwise just ignore it ;-)

It explains how they provide the best possible video quality possible. It talks about that buffering spinner and much more.

Google executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has announced that the company will be taking concrete steps to rids itself of search results related to underage sexual abuse. It seems Google hired a team of 200 to find a solution and their work has already removed over 100,000 potential queries.

These improvements are thus forth limited to the English only versions however you can expect these changes to roll-out to the other Google supported languages in the coming 6 months (aka 158 languages if you were keeping tabs).

I think Google deserves a pat on the back for its efforts to curb child abuse related search queries and I hope this is the start of many more such improvements to protect the next generation.

Source: Daily Mail

Incase is a super popular accessories maker that Apple fans love. Now you can get 50% off their Apple accessories by "buying" a free voucher from LivingSocial. Vouchers will be distributed for 3 days and there is a limited quantity so get it while you can.

As always, I have no financial benefit by writing about this link. I do not get any compensation (financial or otherwise). I am providing this information as a service to my readers.

We knew Google Play Music was coming to IOS and now its official.  For $9.99 a month, you get millions of streamable songs and you can even cache them for offline listening. 

The service is flexible enough to stream different qualities of music (you decide) which could be useful when on a bad network or when using too much bandwidth.

Unlike Apple's iTunes Radio service, it is cross platform (important if you live on both ecosystems). It's now available in 21 countries (my native Canada is not included):

1. Australia
2. Austria
3. Belgium
4. Czech Republic
5. Finland
6. France
7. Germany
8. Hungary
9. Ireland
10. Italy
11. Liechtenstein
12. Luxembourg
13. Mexico
14. Netherlands
15. New Zealand
16. Portugal
17. Russia
18. Spain
19. Switzerland
20. United Kingdom
21. United States

Smartphones are great but they all have 1 major flaw, limited battery power. Sure we have USB plugs all around us (most of the day) but how many of us carry USB or lightning cables necessary to top-up our power hungry pocket monsters?

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the upcoming Plusus Lifelink. 

Now Nomad wants to offer something a little different via its IndieGogo campaign. An always with you charging cable for your device (USB or lightning) that looks like a key and lives on your key-chain. For $US40 your get one of each. 

I think this is a great option but Plusus has a 50% off discount on their solution (link is in my original article) which means you can buy a pair for $28  (instead of $40) plus the Plusus one has a length of 7" which means you will be able to use it in more situations.

I think the chargeKey is clever but based on pure specs, my money is still with the Plusus Likelink. 

Moto X isn't the fastest, lightest or most feature packed Android smartphone but it is the one I like the most. It is a near stock Google experience but comes packed with incredibly useful little features that make the experience fantastic. The most exciting feature is the always on voice control which no other phone has been able to match yet.

The Motorola Moto X was launched in Canada on Rogers for $189 (with a 2 year contract) and now the price has dropped to $99. Of all the Android phones you can buy today (excluding the Nexus 5), this is probably the best deal out there for an icnredible phone.

Roger

Fido, a Rogers sub-brand also has the Moto X for $99 (if that is your provider of choice)