IPhone 6C, 7, 5Se rumours...

Officially, nothing is known about the next iPhone. For all I know Apple might have decided that enough is enough and they're just gonna focus on cars and new MacBooks. Rumours and speculation are always rife and here's a few I've heard going around which may or may not be true...

iPhone 6c

Basically a plastic 4 inch version of the iPhone 6 with mostly the same internals only a cheaper build, and more budget friendly price point. Seems feasible.

iPhone 5se

Rumored to be an updated iPhone 5s with a 4-inch display, A8/M8 chips, the 8/1.2 megapixel cameras from the iPhone 6, and Apple Pay.

Seems to be a weird name, but maybe it could stick. Perhaps it's a code name. Certainly the premise seems like it could fly.

The end of the headphone jack

A fair amount of rumours out there that suggest the next major release of the iPhone is going to do away entirely with the 3.5mm headphone jack in favour of relying on a new set of bundled EarPods which work wirelessly over Bluetooth.

Sure, why not, right? Except all your existing wired earphone would be rendered useless overnight. 

On the positive side though, the lack of an opening in the iPhone body for headphones could make it easier for....

Dustproofing and waterproofing 

Could the iPhone 7 really be entirely waterproof? It is known that the existing iPhone can resist a fair amount of H20 exposure. 

Could Apple be making this official? It's something that the general public would certainly be looking for. A very very useful feature.

Wireless charging

A technology that has existed for a while, and a chance for Apple to milk it with selling accessories!

Redesigned form factor

As with each major release (ie. Not an 'S' release), this is the norm. Sorry no clue what though. Perhaps slimmer if there's no headphone jack.

Storage starting at 32gb

With Apple's fairly successful foray into the rented and subscription based media scene, users are dying to get that additional storage on the Low range model in order to take full advantage. A 32gb base model seems the logical step.

OLED display

OLED means thinner, brighter and lighter devices. That makes sense. 

Better camera

Some Rumours have emerged that suggest there could be a second rear camera to simultaneously capture pano and zoomed shots. This kind of thing is unseen. Who knows?

That's the round-up anyway. Let me know your thoughts in the comments...

Microsoft Lumia 550 - Windows 10 Mobile on a budget

When I was back in the UK this Christmas, I was doing some supermarket shopping and happened to stumble upon the Lumia 550 on the shelf advertised for £99. I'd already heard of the device, knowing that it would be debuting with Windows 10 Mobile installed on it alongside the higher specced 950 and 950XL.
I asked to purchase one and was told that it was locked to a network and that they have to remain locked for a year before they will unlock it officially.

I went away and decided that I needed to get one of these somehow to try out the latest iteration of Windows 10 Phone/Mobile/for Mobile. Friend of mine was coming over from Chicago, so I asked to pick me up an unlocked version. Retailed at $139 (USD), and came out at $153 after taxes added.


So now I have one in my hands, and I got the chance to start it up, play around with it and use it as my daily driver for a few days. Here's what happened:

1) The device is packaged well, with just a charger. No earphones, no removable USB cable, nothing. But what would you expect for this price. It's a bargain.


2) For the price, the screen on this phone is excellent. Bright colours, not too bad viewing angles.

3) Despite being a budget phone, the performance of this device is not bad at all, and is 4G LTE.

Those three points had me feeling pleasantly satisfied with myself for investing in such a great value phone. Maybe I'd sell my iPhone, maybe I'd subscribe to Groove Music, maybe  I'd consider an upgrade to a 950 or 950XL at some point....


Then, Windows 10 Mobile happened.

I've loved the concept of Windows Phone and their live tile interface since it came out. I had a Samsung Omnia 7 and thought it was great. It really is awesome. However, since the days of Windows Phone 7, things haven't really moved on in terms of the platform. I mean, how long do you want to fill the app-gap? Its not as noticeable anymore, but it is noticeable.

Also, if you're going to release a new operating system, make sure it's ready for primetime. Windows 10 Mobile is nowhere near ready. It had 38 updates waiting for me right out of the box. And those updates took over an hour to download, install and finish. Then after that, there was an entirely new OS update 10.0.10586.29, which took about 2 hours to download, prepare to install, then install. Not good Microsoft, not good at all.

Anyway, I finally got to using the device and it looks very pretty. But, it isn't always responsive, and then there's the settings app which looks much nicer than the settings of Windows Phone past, and matches the desktop settings app, but, still is confusing for finding some things as basic as changing the timeout time for the screen turning off.

Alongside that, I set the alarm to wake me up in the morning, and it just flat didn't work. Didn't go off at all. The settings were right but it didn't go off. Annoying.

Then I downloaded WhatsApp, and tried to use it with my phone on silent. But, when WhatsApp notifications arrived they still made a noise.

I could go on more about irritations of Windows 10 Mobile, it just doesn't seem to be finished. It feels like beta software.


Another slight annoyance with the device is that it is a fingerprint magnet (I believe the white version wouldn't be so much though).

After everything is said and done, even after one or two days I'm longing for my iPhone 6S Plus again. And I will definitely go back to it, feeling ultra disappointment that Microsoft STILL has not got their act together.

Despite this, if you're in the market for a cheap phone that does the basics just fine, then this wouldn't be a bad device to go for, but comparing it to the 640XL of my friend's, I would suggest you go for that at the moment, because Windows 10 Mobile just isn't ready yet.


UPDATE:
Several other reviews suggested this device has all day battery life. I can confirm that for me this hasn't been the case. With intermittent use such as Facebook, Twitter and a few other apps, the battery was down to 5% before 6pm. Whereas my iPhone which had not been charged since the day before was still at 12%.

Apple, back in the game...

So WWDC has been and gone, with some interesting insights into what is coming in the near future from Apple; at least from a software perspective!

I was actually expecting to see some hardware announcements there, whether an iWatch or a refreshed iMac or Macbook, or whatever. Just expected to see something.

I was disappointed.

But then after looking at what's coming in OS X 10.10 "Yosemite", and iOS8 I quietly forgot about my absent-hardware-invoked sadness.


First up, OS X "Yosemite". A new simplified, more iOS-esque flat design. Gone are the drop shadows and reflections and rounded window corners. In are a flat aesthetic, gradient-less colours, revised cartoony icons as well as a nice feature which allows the user to go for a dark background to the finder bar.
Also present is a new Spotlight search which appears centre stage when activated. A rejigged notification centre which allows more customisation and reorganisation by the user to see the most relevant content at a glance.  I'm currently awaiting the link to the beta of this... Hope it comes soon!

iOS 8, has a stack full of new features and refinements which take it to the next level, and in some minds a step way ahead of Android. Notifications can be handled from the notification itself e.g.  users can respond to messages right there in the notification. Notification centre itself has be improved much like Yosemite to allow 3rd party functions as well as user customisation. iMessage now acts much like WhatsApp with media and location data incorporated. Users can make use of 'Continuity' which allows them to work on the iOS device, then 'handoff' the workflow to a Mac to resume the work; This also works with users being able to field calls and messages from their Macs as well. There's also iCloud Drive, like Dropbox, there's improvements to Siri with music recognition powered by Shazam, Health apps, as well as an improvement to Spotlight... Many features and enhancements.

As well as all this, Apple also announced 'Swift', a new programming language for Mac and iOS.  The image below shows the main highlights, but this probably needs a post of it's own at some point!

So I'm not disappointed, I'm excited by these new pieces of software and can't wait to get my hands on them.  Given the improvements to iOS, I might even be convinced to go for a new iPhone too (when they finally announce/release it... ;) )

iOS 7 - Evolutionary not revolutionary

So the rumours all said that we'd be seeing a cleaner, stripped back UI from Jonny Ive.  Some said it'd be black or white, some said there'd be a move toward Microsoft's simpler plain-jane theme.

Now it's finally here, well, it is cleaner, stripped back, and has several nods not only to Windows Phone, but also to Android in some areas.
The new iconography is easy on the eye, they really do look like beautiful icons.  Great.  But, I wanted more than this, a bigger change.  Because when all is said and done, Apple has made several enhancements to iOS, and yes it IS the biggest change to iOS since the first iPhone as Tim Cook put it, BUT, to me it just feels like the same old thing. It is still just a whole set of icons that you can between.
Where are the widgets?
Where is the data at a glance?
They introduced the "Control Center" by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, so it's a little like Jelly Bean's quick settings access from the notifications area.  This was expected, rather than an innovative new feature.
They've organised the "Notifications Center" a little better and tacked like a 'today' view or something to it.  Did they fix the ability to dismiss individual notification?  Have those user concerns been addressed?  Well?
The lively wallpaper thing in the background sounds cool and looks cool on screen, but I have a feeling it's going to be make people dizzy.

It's flatter looking, no skeuomorphism.  Good.  It's about time.  Skeuomorphism should be outlawed, punishable by having to watch Will Smith's After Earth on repeat for 24 hours.

I could go on all day about all the little tweaks and changes that have been made but, this is version SEVEN of the iOS, and it's taken this long to get to this.  But after all is said and done, it's still the same operating system, I don't think anything revolutionary has occurred here, just some small overdue evolutionary things.

Even so, I can't wait to get it in the Autumn.

What I wanna see at WWDC 2k13

Let's keep this really simple.  What do I wanna see at the WWDC today from SF?

1)  iOS 7 with a super funky UI refresh.  I wanna see it made available immediately, although I assume it'll be a week or so later.  The colours on the WWDC logo might relate to things here, though they remind me of Google's GMail Android app refresh.  (I like this concept idea from SimplyZesty on YouTube)

2)  Macbook Air/Pro refresh with Haswell processors.  If I'm honest, I've got a little fetish for the Macbook Air, and I'm in the market for a new laptop in the next month or two.  Would love to see a retina display on the Air alongside those spec upgrades.  By the way, please make 256Gb SSDs the bottom line standard, 128Gb cant fit all my shizzle on it, especially if I decide to use Bootcamp for my Windows 8 fix.  I know Cloud storage is funky and cool, but I still like locally stored shizdiz.  Yep.

3)  I saw in the schedule for WWDC that there's something about bringing apps for iOS to OS X.  Hmmm, is this another step towards the Windows Phone/8 unified-ness for Apple?  I hope so.  But I hope it's not a lame tacked on effort like 'Launchpad'.

4)  The new Mac Pro device to actually be a super phenomenal high powered hybrid beast.  I know this isnt gonna happen, but I'd like to see some new hardware in terms of totally new.

5) iRadio, I don't care.

6)  At least show us whether it's gonna be an iPhone 5S or an iPhone 6, or tell us the specs.  Just give us something.  Please Tim, please.

7)  Phil Schiller.  I love your enthusiasm, but your voice is annoying.  Please don't do a Keynote.  Cheers.

There's other things I wanna see, and I'm reallllllllly hoping that Apple will wow me and make it worth staying up late to stream it live.  Time will tell, and in less than 12 hours, I should be satisfied and gratified in a non innuendoish way.  Yes that's a made up word.