Large Screens Small Hands

I like to use my phone single-handedly. That leaves me one free hand to carry or do something or just to keep balance while walking. Don't laugh - typing with two hands and walking could be daunting task. That goes well until I try to use that new ICS application back button in the upper left corner; it is located exactly opposite to my thumb. I need some juggling to reach it, risking to drop the phone. Screens become too big for our fingers.

Every Second Windows Counts

After frightening us with announcement of at least eight different version of Windows 8, latest news from Microsoft are a bit more sensible: there will be only four. It is doomed anyway.

Cheap Plastic Phones

I remember story from my youth about super-sturdy Russian car called "Volga". Its chassis was so stiff that you could hit a tree without denting it. The downside was that all the energy of the crash would transfer to you body and you would die.

Car manufacturers are smarter these days; in addition to all other safety features, cars have so-called crumple zones, which absorb the energy of the crash. I saw more than one car with completely crushed front part and untouched cabin. This lesson has yet to be learned by phone users and manufacturers.

Here Be Dragons - Using Stuff in Less Popular Country

Not much space left for label

I live in one of those small countries that nobody heard about until they appear in TV show. OK, there is more that that, but we are slightly off the grid. Nevertheless,  we are up-to-date with technology. Although vendors provide Croatian on almost anything (Windows, mobiles, TVs), I personally prefer English because labels are pretty standard. If you take any vendor's mobile phone, options are named similarly. For Croatian, everybody has its own naming convention, so it takes some time to get used to it.

Size of the Android's Fragments

Everybody knows that Android fragmentation is killing the platform. Android devices come in so many different forms that it is impossible for developers to cover them all, costs are killing them, and many already decided to switch to more homogeneous platforms.

Knowing that, Google's decision to make fragmentation data public seems to be completely unreasonable. That can only repel developers. To speed up this process, I took data from Google's Android dashboard and Nielsen statistics about smartphone marketshare and did some math.

Ad Providers Containment Chamber

No application is really free; it is always paid from either yours or somebody else's pocket.

You pay for paid apps; advertisers (usually) pay for free apps. Last year's explosion of cheap Android phones brought to Market many people who are not willing or able to pay for application. Logical solution for developers was to introduce in-applications ads, but now iOS owners would like some stuff for free, thank you. With ads came privacy issues.