Samsung Galaxy S7 Rumor Roundup: 10 Leaked Features Reveal Spectacular Changes

By AllTechAdvisor

When Samsung revealed the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge flagship smartphones in April 2015, the designs and features were drastically different from the Galaxy S5. Samsung did away with expandable storage, the removable battery and water resistance from the Galaxy S5 to the Galaxy S6 in favour of aluminum edges and a glass back. Even though Samsung got rid of favourable features that distinguished its Galaxy devices from the iPhone, the Galaxy S6 received very positive reviews. And the curved screens built into the Galaxy S6 edge clearly proved that Samsung knows how to innovate. Now rumours about what Samsung will be doing for its next line of flagship smartphones have been pouring in. Here are 10 leaked features that are expected for the Galaxy S7.

World's best learning content Your child's brightest buddy!, A Small Tablet For Your Smarter Kids

By AllTechAdvisor

Eddy has been designed to give your child an all-rounded exposure to ensure multiple skill development. It aims at inculcating reading, musical, mathematical, and analytical and technology skills to give your child the smart edge.

The different Eddy tablet models give access to loads of content

• Library of 1000+ children's books including beautifully-illustrated fairytales, folktales, read-aloud books, classics etc.
• Pre-installed apps carefully chosen and curated by educators to boost your child's learning abilities
• Apps mapped across different learning areas- English, Maths, Science, Creativity, Music and General knowledge
• Videos of their favourite Ben10 episodes and art, craft, music and dance activities on the M.A.D show by Rob
• An exciting collection of kid's most loved games.

9 Ways Your Cellphone Can Save Your Life

By AllTechAdvisor

You’re lost in the woods. Stuck on a dark road with a flat tire. Have a chronic medical condition like diabetes or asthma. Or are just wondering about that odd mole on your leg. In these cases and many more, your smartphone could get (or keep) you out of trouble.

Here are nine ways to use your smartphone to prevent problems and help in an emergency.

1. Add some “ICE” to your contact list

Short for “In Case of Emergency,” the letters ICE in your phone contact list tell emergency responders who to call if you’ve been in an accident. Add ICE before a person’s name, for example, ICE Mary Smith. If you’d like to list more than one emergency content, add numbers, such as ICE1 Mary Smith, ICE2 Bruce Jones. ICE apps are also available for iPhone and Android.

6 Hidden Ways Your Cell Phone May Be Harming Your Health

By AllTechAdvisor

The debate may continue for years over whether cell phones cause cancer, but meanwhile, a growing stack of research has uncovered other, more immediate ways your mobile could be a health menace. Read up on these six hazards then hang up when the time is right.

1. Talking (even hands-free) or texting behind the wheel

At least 2,600 traffic deaths and over a half-million accident-related injuries are caused by drivers using their cell phones, according to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. If you think your hands-free device makes talking or sending voice-recognition texts safer, think again. A University of Utah study found that drivers performed equally poorly with hand-held and hands-free phones. The mental effort it takes to hold a conversation with someone who’s not in the car and doesn’t know when to stop talking so you can merge or avoid an unsafe situation is too distracting, the researchers note.

Texting is even worse. When they text, drivers take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds long enough for the car to travel the length of a football field, federal safety officials warn. When editors at Car and Driver magazine did their own informal study in 2009, they found that reaction time tripled from a half-second to nearly 1½ seconds while reading or receiving a text. At 35 miles an hour, that’s equal to traveling an extra 45 feet before slamming on the brakes. Their performance while texting was worse while texting than drunk, they discovered after downing vodka and orange juice before getting behind the wheel of a Honda on a closed roadway.

What Facebook’s Latest Privacy Change Means to You?

By AllTechAdvisor

Facebook users have gotten used to changes to the social media giant’s privacy policy, which it tellingly refers to as its “data use” policy. Taking effect January 1, the updated rules clarify what Facebook considers public data that is, information over which the company assumes control for its own purposes, such as advertising and market research.

The social network mainly has rejiggered its definition of what makes your information “public” in the first place, mostly to make it easier to understand.

The new language reads

Public information is any information you share with a public audience, as well as information in your Public Profile, or content you share on a Facebook Page or another public forum.

5 Smart Ways to Choose and Manage Online Passwords

By AllTechAdvisor

Since the earliest “You’ve Got Mail” days of the Internet, we’ve been dealing with passwords, those annoying strings of letters (and numbers) it now seems every site requires to access the goodies we love about the Web.

It used to be just your email account. Then it was your online bank and credit card accounts. Now you have to log in to get your car serviced, pay your telephone bill and check up on your kids’ grades at school.

The proliferation of sites that require passwords is meant to increase our security. But if you have bad password habits, they could be making you less, not more, secure.

Here are five pointers on how to create, use and manage good, strong passwords online.

8 Ways to Protect Yourself on Social Networks

By AllTechAdvisor

Using sites like Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn help people stay connected. But 81 percent of us don’t feel our private information is secure on social networking sites, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.

We’re probably right to feel this way: It takes only a few pieces of personal info, including your name, birthday and hometown, for someone to steal your identity. More than 12 million Americans were victims of identity fraud in 2012.

One of the most important things you can do to protect yourself is to not over-share information, say cyber security experts. When creating public profiles, you don’t need to enter all of the information a site is asking for. Include only your name and e-mail address.

Even sharing seemingly innocuous details, such as your favorite sports team, can tip off a hacker to a possible password, says cyber security expert Gary S. Miliefsky, founder and CEO of the counter surveillance software company SnoopWall.

What Happens to Your Facebook Account After You Die?

By AllTechAdvisor

Facebook made news recently by adding what it calls a “legacy contact” option to your profile. In short, you can now choose to give a friend or loved one some control over your account after you die.

The decision formalizes an existing trend: people logging into the accounts of deceased family and friends to run them as “memorial accounts,” or online gathering places for those who wish to grieve and pay their respects.

Facebook’s move helps to finally answer a question that should have been obvious from the start: What happens to your online life once you log off for good? It’s a nagging problem as social media enters its second decade (Facebook as we know it began in 2005).

Some people wish their account would simply die with them. Social media sites want empty accounts to go away, too. Their networks serve ads, and it doesn’t help to push content and advertising toward someone who’s not there. The more dead “users,” the worse for Facebook. The option of adding a legacy contact is a compromise for the social media giant.

4 Places Never to Keep Your Cell Phone

By AllTechAdvisor

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably worried about dropping and breaking your cell phone, leaving yourself incommunicado. But you may not have thought much about the battery. Cell phone batteries are pretty durable, but if something goes wrong, they can malfunction and overheat with surprising consequences.

Though your cell phone probably won’t explode, it might get damaged. “Batteries pack a lot of power into a small area,” says John Drengenberg, consumer safety director at UL. “If something does go wrong, causing a short circuit, the battery can pass a current internally that can heat the internal chemistry of the battery,” he says. What’s more, says Drengenberg, heat causes expansion, and that can cause breakage internally.

“That’s why a lot of batteries have a mechanism to notice heat pressure and allow it to escape, like a teapot that whistles.” Your cell phone battery isn't going to whistle, but having this feature enables the phone to cool down more effectively.

Related: 6 Hidden Ways Your Cell Phone May Be Harming Your Health

From the lab of the absurd: 2015’s oddest inventions

Science is about ideas, innovation and application. Discoveries that are all three make headlines. They also make researchers rich and famous.

And then there’s other work that almost makes news, because it is unusual, quirky and outlandish. Here’s our pick of oddest inventions and weirdest research of 2015.

1. GREEN ENERGY: WASTE NOT

Wearable urine-powered wireless transmitter

A pair of socks embedded with miniaturised microbial fuel cells (MFCs), fuelled by fresh urine pumped by the wearer’s footsteps, can power a wireless transmitter to send a signal to a computer. This is the world’s first self-sufficient system powered by a wearable energy generator running on MFC technology, which uses bacteria to generate electricity from waste fluids by tapping into the biochemical energy used for microbial growth. Soft MFCs embedded within a pair of socks are supplied with fresh urine circulated by a person walking, where the action of the feet pumps the urine over the MFCs to generate energy. Soft tubes, placed under the heels, ensure frequent fluid push-pull by walking.

The wearable MFC system successfully ran a wireless transmission board, which sent a message every two minutes to the PC-controlled receiver module, report scientists from the Bristol BioEnergy Centre in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics (bit.ly/1lOcoCX).

Apple in 2015: Hits and misses

 

By AllTechAdvisor

Apple had a very busy 2015. We got new iPhones with a twist, an iMac that looks at the future, a refreshed MacBook, an iPad that wants to refresh the category, new software products and a lot more. And as with Apple, the numbers made for interesting reading. Here is a look at what worked for Apple in 2015, what didn’t, and how that could impact decisions heading into 2016.

The numbers: more than a wad of cash

It is hard to not look at these numbers in awe fiscal 2015 was the most successful for Apple, as revenue grew 28% to close at $234 billion.

In the first quarter, Apple recorded the highest quarterly sales for iPhones (74.5 million) and Macs (5.5 million), and also shifted a lot of iPads (21.4 million). In the same quarter, the company’s App Store also enjoyed record sales till then.

In the second quarter, Apple reported selling 61.1 million iPhones, 12.6 million iPads and 4.5 million Macs. The App Store sales too beat the previous quarter. If you thought things would slow down, you would have been wrong. In the third quarter, Apple reported selling 47.5 million iPhones, 10.9 million iPads and 4.7 million Macs, and App Store sales recorded their highest-ever numbers.

Top 10 tech companies to work for in 2016

By AllTechAdvisor

Company review website Glassdoor has published its annual list of best places to work in 2016 and undoubtedly, tech companies form a major chunk of the coveted compilation.

The annual list, curated on the basis of employee reviews received on the site, ranks AirBnb as the best company to get hired at in the coming year. The home rental startup has dethroned the likes of Google and Facebook for the top spot.

Following AirBnb is Guidewire- a California-based software publisher which ranks third on the list but comes second in the list of tech companies. Facebook ranks 5th followed by LinkedIn and Google at 6th and 8th positions respectively.

Interestingly, Apple and Twitter feature nowhere in the top ten list with their 25th and 26th positions respectively.

Here’s the list of top 10 tech companies to work at in the New Year:

1. Airbnb

Ranked 1 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.6

2. Guidewire

Ranked 3 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.5

3. Hubspot

Ranked 4 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.4

4. Facebook

Ranked 5 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.4

5. LinkedIn

Ranked 6 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.4

6. Google

Ranked 8 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.4

7. Zillow

Ranked 10 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.3

8. World Wide Technology

Ranked 12 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.3

9. MINDBODY

Ranked 14 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.2

10. Expedia

Ranked 16 on the Glassdoor list with a company rating of 4.1

You can check the complete list of top 50 companies to work at in 2016 here.

You could soon pay bills via Twitter

By AllTechAdvisor

Twitter users in India may soon be able to pay their bills though the micro-blogging site, the media reported.

The company has announced a partnership with India-based start-up Lookup to enable users send a direct message to @lookuplite in order to book appointments, inquire about services and make transactions with businesses, Techcrunch reported.

Lookup lets retailers and consumers chat with each other through direct messaging. It boasts of 1.2 million registered users despite listing merchants from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Currently, users can buy directly within the social network thorough Twitter's 'Buy' button.

In the new arrangement, orders and payments would be fulfilled separately and offline with Twitter simply facilitating the conversation.

Lookup will use Twitter's API, as well as its monitoring capabilities, to handle connecting the customer to the prospective merchant.

Instead of connecting users through phone numbers, Lookup instead uses Google Maps to give users a view of all the retailers in their area.

Mark Zuckerberg's Internet gift to India looks like a trap

By AllTechAdvisor

China doesn’t allow Facebook. Just because India does, that doesn’t mean the country should welcome Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to carve the Internet into pocket boroughs, let alone his preaching that this is a great way to connect a billion people to their digital future.

 Facebook’s “Free Basics” service, which gave some wireless subscribers in India access to a clutch of pre-selected websites without having to pay data charges, was put in abeyance recently at the request of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Activists say the programme threatens Net neutrality, the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible. The regulator is yet to decide whether a differential pricing regime for some websites or applications will be allowed.

The world's 'most powerful' smartphone isn't, but it's still good

By AllTechAdvisor

One smartphone maker is learning the hard way why you shouldn't promise more than you can deliver. Yu (partly owned by India's Micromax) has unveiled the Yutopia, which it bills as the "most powerful phone on the planet." There's only one problem: it isn't. You'll find plenty to like in the Cyanogen OS handset between its 5.2-inch quad HD display, Snapdragon 810 chip, 4GB of RAM, 21-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel front shooter, fingerprint reader and 3,000mAh battery. However, you've seen all of this or better in phones released months ago odds are that you bought a Galaxy Note 5 or Nexus 6P if you were determined to get the best specs.

However, you might forgive Yu's stronger-than-usual marketing bluster when you see the price. The Yutopia will sell for 24,999 rupees off-contract, or about $377, when it reaches India on December 26th. Given that even Motorola's fine Moto X Pure Edition costs $399 in the US, you're getting a whole lot of phone for the money.

5 Features Apple NEEDS To Steal From Android Marshmallow

By AllTechAdvisor

The debate about whether iOS or Android is the best platform has raged on since, well… forever. Android is the biggest platform in the world by quite margin, but Apple makes the most money and Google likes to get almost all of its services up and running on Apple’s iPhone, which means you can switch from iOS to Android pretty damn easily. Go the other way, though, and things get a little dicey. 

This is because of Google and Apple’s divergent business models which, while appearing rather similar on the surface, are very different once you get into the guts of how each functions and the end results both are after. Google, for instance, is ALL about advert revenue, Google Play and its suite of services Google Maps, YouTube and the like and wants to get these apps and services up and running on as many devices and machines as possible. This is why you get access to Google services on iPhone and MacBooks but don’t get things like Pages or iBooks on Android, for instance. Apple is ALL about hardware and software and uses the former to generate cash through the latter; it controls every aspect of every device and transaction inside its iOS ecosystem.

Apple’s ecosystem is a walled-garden, one you gain access to by buying an Apple product like an iPhone, iPad or MacBook. Once you’re inside Apple’s ecosystem, however, you’re locked in and it is rather hard to access core services iTunes stuff like films and music, for instance on non-Apple machines and devices. Google does things differently, however, and lets you access most of its stuff on either Android or iOS. Google has a much more open approach to this type thing compared to Apple but, again, this is down to how both companies go about making their money. Google is essentially in the advertising business, while Apple is more or a straight-up technology company.

Neither platform is better than the other, really. Both are excellent and both have their ups and downs. I use two handsets at present, the Google Nexus 6P and the iPhone 6s, and switch between then as the mood takes me. Traditionally, I am very much an Android user I love Google Nexus phones. But I also love Apple’s iPhones too. I know, quite a paradox. After using iOS 9 and Android Marshmallow for a few months, though, I have found a TON of features on Marshmallow that Apple is sorely missing aboard its iPhone. 

With that in mind, I decided to put together a post detailing which Android features I’d love to see inside iOS 9 or iOS 10, which is the next big instalment of Apple’s platform that’s due out mid-way through 2016. 

New smartphones for 2016 - most exciting upcoming phones

With a new year upon us, I thought I'd run down the handsets that are going to make the biggest splashes in 2016. Whether you're looking forward to your next straightforward upgrade or thinking of jumping ship to a different manufacturer I'll summarise what's coming when and whether it's worth getting excited about. We've gone with the flagship handsets here, as those generally attract the most attention before release and we've stuck to the big guns too, rather than include niche or unusual designs that will probably never see the light of day.

Can't wait for a new handset? Here are the best smartphones you can buy today

1. Samsung Galaxy S7 - March/April

Samsung's handset plan for 2016 is as predictable as Apple's. The Samsung Galaxy S7 will follow the current Galaxy S6 as night follows day. The timing of the announcement might be edged forward a little in the year but I can't see the phone being available much before March even then and I wouldn't be surprised if it came out in April as usual.

With the move from plastic to a metal chassis handset in 2015, I'm not expecting another radical redesign this year. A bigger question is whether Samsung will continue to produce standard and curved screen variants of its flagship handset. Personally, I'd like to see the current design tweaked to make it less slippery, as it's very hard to get a grip on at present.

There's also talk of a 4K display, but given that there's no support for such resolutions in Android at present, which caused problems for us in the 4K Xperia Z5 Premium, I can't see that happening quite yet. Other rumours point to a return to a Snapdragon chipset, at least in some regions, as Samsung again confuses us with multiple iterations of the same handset - see Qualcomm Snapdragon 820.

Xiaomi Mi 3 review: 18 months on there is no need to buy an expensive phone anymore

By AllTechAdvisor

In July 2014, Xiaomi entered the Indian smartphone market with the Mi 3. At that time, the Xiaomi Mi 3 had almost top-of-the-line specifications, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 5-inch Full HD display, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, 13-megapixel camera, 3,000mAh battery, and Android 4.4 KitKat. Crafted in a steel body and priced at just Rs. 14,000, it seemed like a deal too good to be true. I, like many others, took the plunge and bought it.

It has been 18 months since that launch. Every week, I see new phones being launched with high-end hardware and surprisingly low price tags. The OnePlus One or OnePlus Two, Xiaomi's own Mi 4, Lenovo's Vibe X2, Moto X Play, and several other phones seem great and I keep looking for reasons to upgrade. But honestly, even after a year and a half, the Mi 3 is going strong and I don't actually need a new phone or an upgrade.

If you had told me in 2014 when I was buying the Mi 3 that a power user like me wouldn't feel the need to upgrade the phone come 2016, I would have laughed in your face.

And yet, here I am, ready to meet the New Year without being able to convince myself to buy a new phone.

Top 5 Must Have Music Apps of 2015

1. Apple Music

By AllTechAdvisor

A collection of more than 30 million songs spanning different genres of Western and Indian music, this music streaming app is must have for any music lover.

vailable for Android and iOS, Apple Music lets you create playlists, explore Indie music and Featured content by artists, listen to Radio and do much more. 

2. PowerAMP

Do not like the way inbuilt music playing apps perform and play your 320 KBPS mp3 files? PowerAMP can be your savior.

With sleek, intuitive interface and 10-band graphic equalizer, this music playing app lets you listen to your music the way you like it.

Both iOS and Android support PowerAMP and will definitely heighten your entire music experience.

The list of 50 Best Free Games On PC

By AllTechAdvisor

Free games are diverse, which of course means there’s hundreds of extremely good games that we haven’t featured on this list. We may therefore one day expand it, but until then you can help by writing your own entries in the comments. Write a few sentences about why a thing you love is great and toss in a link, and we can all help lead one another to a better, freer tomorrow.