Smartphones Cause Rapid Human Evolution

Size of the ideal smartphone screen size is limited by human hand. Couple of years ago, Apple did extensive tests and found out that 3,5" is the perfect size of smartphone screen. However, latest research revealed something amazing.

New iPhone has half inch bigger screen, yet it also perfectly fits human hand. How is that possible? There is only one logical explanation: human thumb grew by half inch since the introduction of the original iPhone. But why?

Hidden force behind that are Android phones. Bigger and bigger screens forced people to stretch their thumbs more and more. As this is repeated hundreds of time per day, human thumb become longer. The most amazing thing about this discovery is that such huge change happened in such short timespan, while typically it would take life forms with more rapid generation shift than humans to evolve so fast.

Photo credit: Apple/Youtube

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Faster, Higher, Stronger. I am not a sports fan and I never really understood why is it important that some guys can run faster or jump higher than last year's guys. It is not like they will pull whole human race to a new level. When that motto is applied to mobile phones, I am equally puzzled. It makes iPhone 5 an awful phone. Everyday I am bombarded with comparison between phone X and iPhone 5. It has only two cores where everybody has four, it has only 4" screen where everybody closes or surpasses 5", and it doesn't have NFC.

Hand Me That Supercomputer

Yes, I know. Publishing day quietly slipped from Tuesday to Saturday. When I just wrote blog and watched "Big Bang Theory", I managed to do everything on time. First signs of troubles started to show up when I decided to do some cycling in the evening. Then I do some more to collect money for Hope Relay. Croatian TV started to air new episodes of "Lie to Me", and few weeks later they added "Mad Man", too. And then came the final blow: application for Coursera on-line course.

Apple Defeated Samsung. Yay!

"Ooh, that's gotta hurt". If Duke Nukem was reporting from the Apple vs Samsung trial, that is how he would describe more than billion dollars in damages. While many people are unhappy about verdict, they shouldn't be. Apple played fair and square by American law and won. Now let's forget about the case and let's start to think how future will look like. I will try to present different aspects of Android ecosystem and how verdict impacts them.

Samsung's Hope Relay Anti-marketing

I usually write new articles on Tuesday evening, but this time I had more important stuff to do. I am participating in Samsung Hope Relay charity. For every three kilometers of running or cycling, Samsung donates 0.94 EUR / 1.17 USD to SOS Children's Village Croatia. All you have to do is to download application that will track your run.

Android at the Speed of Lightning

What to do to make Android run faster? Faster processor, of course, and faster GPU - not. As more experienced desktop users already know, main bottleneck is usually one less obvious component: memory.

Writing with Thumb: Android Keyboards

Can you get your smartphone and write article as long as this one without losing your nerves? If your answer is no, you may want to read this. It comes from the guy who did it more than once. If you have smartphone with small screen, low specification or both, there is a hidden gem for you.

For serious writing on the smartphone, you want keyboard that is super-efficient while you use it, but moves out of your way when you don't. After many months of writing on the touchscreen, I compiled a list of most desirable keyboard features.

Readability: Nexus 7 vs iPad the 3rd

Love to read? Me too. Sometimes it is a novel, sometimes it is one of those super-thick technical books or downloaded PDF. I got tired of dragging books around, and reading in front of the screen is not very comfortable, so I made a small test to find out which mobile device is best for reading technical literature.

Updated: Jelly Bean on Nexus S: Butter or Margarine

After couple of days with Jelly Bean, I made small update to original article. If you didn't read it already, go to the original article; if you did, here is the update. In day-to-day use I found some parts that I am not happy with, but nevertheless I am happy with the upgrade.

Jelly Bean on Nexus S: Butter or Margarine

Butter(y). Google used this word in Jelly Bean About page no less than five times. Google for Jelly Bean, and you will find butter all over the place. Focus of Project Butter is to make Jelly Bean fastest and smoothest version of Android yet, and after trying it on Nexus 7 I must agree. It probably runs nicely on Galaxy Nexus, too. How smooth it is on oldest device that gets upgraded, Nexus S?

Android's Fastest Browser

This is last part of the "updated for Google I/O" series. In previous installments, I discussed Google+ and Currents; in this one, I will test key ingredient of every modern operating system: web browser. Rather than talking just about latest Chrome update, I will try to find which browser is the fastest. Today's contenders are: stock ICS browser, Chrome, Firefox, Opera Mini and Mobile, and Dolphin.

Currents, Google's Mobile App I'm Happy With

I never understood what is the big deal with RSS feeds until one day I experienced Epiphany, crammed everything in Google reader and never looked back. But RSS readers are so last decade now; new breed of tools can make nice electronic magazines out of feeds and even allow you to produce one by yourself. Not long after release of Ice Cream Sandwich, Google released its own magazine application, Currents. Last time I grumbled about mobile Google+; this time, I decided to review application that I am really happy with.

Fun with Mobile Google+

I was on vacation for the last two weeks, far away from my desktop, so I decided to check how much I can do with smartphone. It was great time to do that because Google released updates of many applications for I/O. I'll start with Google+; prepare for battle of epic proportions.

Android Pride

Apple managed to ban Galaxy Nexus sales in US. It is not the newest device (it is 7 months old), so why Galaxy Nexus and why now?

How Do You Feel After Google I/O?

After seeing Google I/O keynotes, how do you feel as Google user? There is a reason why I ask this question. A lot of negative rumors could be heard recently: Samsung is investing in their own mobile OS; Kindle stole Android's market, which was anyway small because of iPad; Android platform is fragmented; nobody uses Google+; and gremlins were found in most products. And then I/O happened.

Is Nexus Tablet Right Choice for Me?

Today Google announced Nexus 7 tablet. With decent screen resolution (1280 x 800, 7"), quad-core processor, latest version of Android - 4.1 Jelly Bean, and $199 price tag, it is very appealing device for every gadget lover, but how it will work for regular user? How it will work for me?

MightyText, Fake Android iMessage

Quick one: press got all excited about MightyText, the iMessage for Android. iMessage become famous because it transparently allows you to use free Apple protocol instead of SMS. If recipient supports iMessage, he will get iMessage. If not, he will get SMS. Carriers were quite angry about this, but they couldn't afford not to sell iPhones with everything that goes with it. It also allows you to do the messaging from Mac desktop.

Android Plays, bada on the Bench

Take couple of stepchild Linux-based operating systems, stir well, and you might get one of the biggest threats to the Android platform.  Samsung plans to merge bada and Tizen to replace the Android. Samsung is biggest Android vendor in the world and most profitable one, so why the switch? Taking a look at the big picture, what is the bada's purpose?

Can Android 4.0 Match New iOS 6 Features?

iOS 6 presentation reminds me of new iPad's: unexciting, but will make Apple users happy. It seems that Android and iOS are running the dead heat.

Google Maps with turn-by-turn navigation were one of the main selling points for Android in US and couple of more countries. Even if you liked iOS more, free satnav could change your mind. Enter Apple Maps. It will not just take part of Google's revenue from maps, but also from Android sales, at least in US.

Flipboard and Instapaper Came to Android, But Do I Care?

Apps. With small screen, battery, processor and everything, you need the right apps to squeeze the most from your smartphone. iOS enjoyed some of the best mobile apps, being more mature platform with more money pouring into store. Developers couldn't be bothered to develop to newcomer Android and its cheap users. Although platform grew in both size and depth of the user's pockets, some of the best apps still remained objects of desire, with Flipboard and Instapaper being most notable examples. They are here now.

Where Language Stops and API Starts

Oracle vs Google trial is finished and everybody, except Oracle, felt relief as it finished in Google's favour. But there is one thing that struck me during the trial: different treatment of language and APIs. While language is considered mostly un-copyrightable, it is open question can you copyright an API.

Comfortable iPhone 5 Screen Size

Legend says that size of the iPhone's screen is chosen to fit perfectly average female hand. As there are more and more rumours about larger screen, I wondered how large screen can be squeezed in the case of the same size.

PenTile Math

Every launch of the great product contains seed of disappointment. After all the excitement what it could be, harsh reality of the real thing hits us hard. Samsung Galaxy S III was not different: why, oh why they had to put awful PenTile display in? How bad is it?

Megasomething Overkill

If you want to sell something to men, just give them continuously improving numbers in specifications. We want more power, less distortion, higher frequencies and longer runtime, even if we don't really need them. They are easy to compare and it's easy to prove that we have something better than the other male.

Every now and then, something becomes such overkill that nobody cares about it anymore. Take camera resolution. My first camera had two megapixels. With such resolution, you could only do standard size photos without too much cropping. With every next generation of cameras, resolution went up. Somewhere around eight megapixels people stop caring. It was good enough for all practical purposes.

Specs are Less Cool Part of Samsung Galaxy S III

Don't get me wrong - specs are top of the line. But what was more amazing during today's presentation were new features and services. It is mixture of what Samsung forgot to copy from iPhone last time and new and original stuff. These I liked the most:

Face recognition. On cameras, it meant that camera can recognize where faces are. On mobile, it recognizes whose face it is, like on social network. That gives some cool features. You can:

• open person from picture
• share picture with people who are on it
• group gallery by person

Right UI for All Hands

In my last post, I argued that problem with big smartphone screens is not in their size, but rather in unsuitable user interfaces. I also promised that I will reveal my special tool for UI calibration.

Tool will collect your biometric data and then present optimal UI layout.

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.

Worst of Both Worlds

In the recent article about zero day exploits brokers, I found something that surprised me a bit: iOS exploits are better paid than Android ones. iOS is a closed source operating system; although it is harder to learn about its inner workings, it is also harder to fix it quickly. On the other hand, Android is based on Linux, which is open source; hundreds of eyes are looking at potential security holes in code and new versions are "released early, released often". OS should be as fortress and exploits should be rare and expensive, but it is quite opposite.

Western Customers, Chinese Workers

Mike Daisy did a great deal of damage not just to "This American Life" radio show, but also to Chinese workers by fabricating the facts about work conditions at Foxconn. Now it would be harder to convince people about poor working conditions there, although other journalists observed the same.

So does Apple deserve bashing or not?

Three Months With Ice Cream Sandwich

I heard many complaints about "bloated" Android versions made by phone vendors. Here is the thing. Before I got Nexus S, I occasionally used my wife's mobile with TouchWiz. It was quite nice. When I got plain vanilla Gingerbread it felt like crap. Design was ugly and accompanying applications left a lot to be desired.

Upgrading to 4.0 was huge step forward in every respect. Whole platform got new, fresh design. It didn't look like visual ripoff of something else, but rather it had look of its own. Most parts were enriched and felt like a mature product.

But in most relationships, as time passes, you start to notice little annoyances, asking for quarrel.

Windows 8 Has a Lot of Apps Already

"There's an app for that", says old iPhone commercial, and yes, today's mobile world is unimaginable without apps and stores. Success of platform is measured by the size of its "ecosystem", and many wonder is Windows 8 coming too late to create one.

But why do we have apps in the first place? Before smartphone boom, we had applications on desktops so it makes sense to have them on mobile. However, there is one important step between: web applications. Dynamic HTML applications are replacing more and more of traditional desktop applications and they are becoming better at it. Heck, most of mobile application that I use have web counterparts that are even better. So why apps?

Facebook and Google+, Please Reduce Clutter

One of the reasons why I hate Facebook is noise. I joined because I wanted to know what's going on with people that were dear to me, but with whom I lost contact. What I got is:

• dozens of funny and "funny" pictures
• bunch of posts about articles somebody is reading now
• YouTube and everybody else's tubes
• children games played by adults

Are Twitter's Days Numbered?

I must admit that I'm latecomer, I signed up only this year. I found some friends, added some more people who I found interesting, read some tweets. And I just don't get it. I found exactly the same type of people as on the other social networks and exactly the same type of messages: look at this funny picture, big thanks to my fans, our product rules, here is my new blog .

In the old days, when feature phones were rarity and social networks young, some ingenious guys came up with idea how to make (micro)blogging on dumb-phones viable. Twitter allowed two-way communication within people using short and simple text messages, available on every phone. Although it started as blogging platform, Twitter exploded with the rise of the social networks, thanks to its low entry threshold.

Smartphone Patent Wars as Wildlife Documentary

Ants are hard-working, dogs are loyal, foxes are cunning. We tend to match patterns of animal behavior with human ones and label them so - we anthropomorphize them. However, animals are neither good nor bad; they just are. Each species found ecological niche for its own survival. We also tend to anthropomorphize everything else, companies included.

So companies are greedy or inventive or "not evil" or patent trolls. In reality, they just try to survive. Main purpose of the company is to make money. People often forget that and expect companies to be noble, fair, or consistent. That's not purpose of the company; don't be disappointed if they behave differently.

Dawning of iPad 3

Apple will today announce their new device so I don't really see a point in writing about anything else.

I'm not so interested in hardware; I wonder what will Apple add to new version of iOS. There were couple of features missing that are must for serious tablet OS.

It is really convenient to have tablet at home. Instead of going to another room with PC or holding hot and bulky laptop in my lap, I can enjoy surfing in a more civilized way. We can all share it as needed. We could share it if had some notion of users, but it doesn't.

Not So Mobile Google

The maker of the Android must be awesome mobile company.

Tried Google+ on mobile? Nice for reading, not so nice when you start to create content. Try URL sharing. Web client, when you share URL, makes a nice thumbnail and a summary. Mobile client just spits plain URL. OK, something to improve in the next version. I'll just edit it and it'll be fine. Wait! No editing! Not for mobile post nor desktop posts. Once you create it, it stays like that until you reach desktop. If you screw something, it stays screwed, unless you delete it.

Ubuntu for Android vs Cloud

Ubuntu for Android idea is simple: your smartphone is pretty powerful computer that you already have with yourself. Plug it into the nearest dock with display and keyboard. Have your applications and data wherever you are.

Does last sentence rings any bell? Have your applications and data wherever you are. Tell it to somebody, and he will probably think that you are talking about cloud services combined with HTML 5 applications. Both solutions are competing for the same market. What is the advantage of one over the other?

What privacy?

Feeling naked in front of ad providers?

If I owned very evil malware company, I would make ​​an application that needs access to both contacts and Internet for some legitimate purpose. I will suck all the data that I can. If the user revokes the rights, he will lose functionality, and if he grants them back, application will continue sending his private data to me for my evil plans.

That's what I wrote couple of days ago as preparation for one article. And then the reality caught me.

British Sunday Times published, as some say, typical tabloid article about Android Facebook application with excessive rights; it can read your text messages and snap a snapshot of your surroundings whenever it likes (article is not free, so check this). Facebook opposed these claims fiercely. Not going into discussion what they really did or didn't do with the data, this scenario is perfectly plausible. Be it Android or iOS, once you allow certain permission, application can use it at its own discretion until you uninstall it (Android) or revoke the permission (iOS).

Permissions Scientific Way

If we put together everybody's 2 cents about improvement of iOS permissions from both visual and logical perspective, it would be huge pile of money. My 2 cents included. However, some people actually did some hard work to figure out how good is the current approach and what could be done to improve it.

University of California, Berkeley has Securtiy Research Lab, and that lab runs Smartphone Security project. These gals and guys took problem very seriously and made very interesting publication titled "The Effectiveness of Application Permissions" (don't be repelled by its dull scientific formatting). Key part is analysis of permissions of almost thousand Android applications and thousand Chrome plugins, trying to discover how permissions are used in the real world. I'll stick to the Android part.

To GetJar or Not To GetJar

The original purpose of this story was to show how app markets and vendors try to introduce hidden cost in apps, but in the end it turned into story about their poor communication skills causing distrust between them and their customers. Anyway, it will show you have to avoid some dirty tricks while buying applications.

I consider myself price conscious person so I wanted to spare couple of bucks on smartphone apps. After some research, I decided to try famous GetJar site. They claimed that they provide some of the top payed applications for free. They were even declared one of the best start-ups of 2011 in Finance and E-commerce category by The Telegraph.

Disinfected for Your Convenience

Social application Path took contacts data impolitely, without asking first.

We know that because somebody snooped unencrypted data, but it was almost OK because it is social application. There are some others applications that did the same. What we don't know is how many application with totally unsocial purpose passed App Store's manual checks and sent data somewhere encrypted without being detected.