smartphone | Maggie Fox

All posts in “smartphone”

Dabbling on the Darkside: An iOS’ers Android Confession

January 25, 2013 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Personal Opinion

Jordan Benedet is a Manager on the Client Strategy and Innovation team at Social Media Group. Follow @jbenedet.

I’ve been an iPhone owner since 2008 when the 3G first came to Canada, although my initial experience with iOS came slightly before this when I bought, and quickly sold, a first generation iPod touch. At this time most people had a simple flip or candy bar phone with highly advanced T9 text input and battery life of over a week. A smartphone was a BlackBerry, and having one meant you were a rich and powerful businessman who needed to be able to tap out important emails on a tiny keyboard 24 hours a day. Things have changed since then, mainly due to smartphones achieving the fastest adoption rate in tech history.

I’ve also been an iPhone / Apple evangelist, enlisting friends and family to jump into the iPhone world. My wife used to say she would never like or use a phone as much I do, but now I see her continually switching between her second iPhone and an iPad all evening while relaxing. It is not surprising to hear that 84% said they could not go a single day without their phone, and 60% of people would rather lose their wallet than their phone.

A Spark for Change

After years of living in the iOS ecosystem, I found myself a little bored. Normally when getting a new gadget I get excited to learn and tweak it, but when I got my shiny new 4S last year I felt like nothing had changed. The feeling was correct, because in my opinion nothing substantial had changed; it just had a better camera, in a faster and thinner phone. When iOS 6.0 came out the feeling continued; it had brought absolutely nothing new to the table that particularly interested me. Late in 2012, I started seeing many others writing about the same thoughts I was having, the most notable titled “An iPhone Lover’s Confession: I Switched To the Nexus 4. Completely” from Ralf Rottmann on Gizmodo. I felt the urge for change, and decided that I needed to dabble on the metaphorical dark side. After validating that my key IOS apps now had Android counterparts (something that was not the case last year), I was officially ready to take the plunge.

Jump Right Into It

It only took a day before I had explored Android, and customized the phone to my liking. It wasn’t long before the phone was rooted and I was installing a variety of custom ROMs. The big screen and larger phone took a bit longer to get used to. I still find it very awkward and cumbersome to reach the frequently used top left corner of the screen while holding it with only my right hand, but viewing anything on the large screen is quite amazing. I now realize that I would not want a phone any bigger in dimensions than the S3, and I would actually prefer if the width was shaved down a few mm as well in order to fit in my hand better.

I also liked how 3^rd party apps can easily be made default for specific actions. The notification centre was a dream, allowing quick access to anything from music controls to system settings. It took me a while to get used to the “back” and “menu” buttons, but it wasn’t long before they became second nature. When I first picked up my old iPhone after a week with the Galaxy, I found myself trying to clumsily press a non-existent back button.

The Bad

Both operating systems are not perfect, and they both have pros and cons. I really like the Galaxy S3 because of the flexibility / customizability of Android, using the large screen real estate, and the hardware back button. The negative side of things for me really centres on the battery life. Using the phone drains the battery much quicker than my 4S did (with LTE off too), and it also drains much quicker in standby. Micro managing background apps and resources also can be a pain because you never know if a background app is just sucking your battery dry.

What I Miss

I do miss my iPhone for some very specific reasons.

The first is iMessage; most of my friends and family all have iPhones so group text chats are now much more difficult now. Replacement 3^rd party apps just aren’t the same since Apple introduced the blue text bubbles!
The second is battery life. I don’t care if it is not user-replaceable, my iPhone simply had a longer lasting battery during every day usage.
Lastly, I do miss the passive multi tasking and push notifications that iOS uses. This definitely helps battery life, since I find Android apps that utilize notifications require a background service to be always running sucking up CPU cycles.

I haven’t decided if I will stay on Android permanently, but I’m definitely keeping both devices as it allow me to become an expert on both platforms. I’m going to wait patiently to see what IOS7 offers up – your move Apple.

Take an Unplugged Vacation

August 31, 2012 / 1 Comment / Posted in: Blog, Personal Opinion

Jordan Benedet is a Manager on the Client Strategy and Innovation team at Social Media Group. Follow @jbenedet.

As a lot of my previous posts have illustrated, I really like technology and gadgets. I’ve had some kind of Smartphone since I graduated school and began my career many years ago, giving me the ability to stay in touch, and up to date on both personal and professional issues. I liked how it made my life easier in so many ways. Fast forward a few years, and Smartphone adoption has happened faster than any other major technology shift in history!

These days almost everyone has a smart device and thus the ability to leave the office without the fear of missing that important email. On the other hand, always being connected means that your work can follow you even after you leave the office. Always being connected means that information overload can occur, causing a person simply burn out.

This is where unplugging comes in. Over the last five years, I have not really taken a formal vacation where I completely unplugged from work. I recently got married, and thanks to Social Media Groups’ unlimited vacation policy I was able to disconnect for over two weeks and have a fantastic honeymoon in Europe. This hiatus meant I didn’t touch any email, and rarely ever logged into any social media site – I was as far off the grid as I have ever been, and it felt surprisingly great (I still did reach for my phantom Smartphone for the first few days though).

Disconnecting is becoming common among all level of workers, even Executives! Many employers are starting to recognize the benefits of allowing employees to unwind without having to feel like they are still tethered to the office.

The Huffington Post reported last month that FullContact, is now offering to pay employees $7,500 per year to go on a vacation, that’s on top of their normal salary. There are only three rules for this offer; you have to go on vacation, you must disconnect, and you can’t work in anyway while on vacation. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal!

Overall, I think some of the most important reasons to unplug on vacation are:

1. Gives a person the chance to spend more quality time with the people they are with
2. Provides a much more relaxed experience and improves mental health
3. Allows a person to avoid burning out, and a chance to recharge the batteries

As the line between work and personal time becomes increasingly blurred, I think it is very important for everyone to achieve a proper and sustainable work balance.

What is Google+?

July 5, 2011 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Blog

Recently I’ve been thinking that social networks are getting a little too messy. I’ve felt it’s time for another big shift in how people communicate, and I’d love to see companies start to pull all the small pieces together – That’s why I’m so interested in the new Google+ project.

Google has attempted many things to encourage users to spend more time using Google products doing activities other than searching. While Gmail, Chrome and Android have been very successful, we all remember the flop known Google Wave. On Tuesday, June 26^th, Google started a very limited field test for their latest social network project, Google+,and unveiled the first five features: Circles, Hangouts, Instant Upload, Sparks and Huddle.

Please see the video below for a quick tour:

Everyone is saying that the project is Google’s answer to Facebook. However, there are couple of signs showing that it could be much, much more than that. Google+ could be the centerpiece to Google’s entire strategic map to link search, social, and mobile together in a seamless and intuitive package.

Google+ was developed by Google’s internal team, unlike Google Wave, which was outsourced to an Australia-based team in 2009. Google+ is the result of a year-long project led by Google’s SVP of Social, Vic Gundotra, and hundreds of Google engineers. It involves almost EVERY Google product. Google is already showing a very strong commitment to this project.

Google made significant changes to its user interface (UI), likely in order to accommodate Google+. And remember, historically Google has been really conservative in changing their minimalist webpage, adding a black navigation bar at the top is definitely a big step for them.

Google+ is also a mobile app. By making use of Android’s dominance in the mobile OS market, Google+ has the potential to become an integral part of the Android experience, and will easily end up in the hands of all the existing users.

The key for Google is to figure out how to leverage the huge number of Gmail users. They have to identify and focus on people’s real needs for a social network, while providing the best product experience that links social, search and mobile together.

Here is the question I’ll leave for everyone: Do you think you that you will ‘hang out’ more on Google than Facebook?

P.S. Check out the Google+ virtual tour to see more videos and experience it yourself !

Social Media Roundup for October 1, 2010

October 1, 2010 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

Influence and Popularity Not the Same on Twitter

(via Mashable):

Kim Kardashian isn’t the most popular celeb on Twitter. She’s a couple million followers behind the heavy-hitters of Internet-savvy entertainers; however, she’s accomplished something no other individual celebrity has done: She’s the celeb who gets the most traffic referrals from Twitter.

Kardashian’s stats prove that popularity and influence — quantity and quality — are two different things. And we think the ability to direct web traffic is a pretty big part of influence.

Nokia Ships New Smartphone

Thursday, Nokia began shipping their new smartphone, the N8. Intended to compete with the Blackberry and the iPhone, the N8 is the first to run on the Symbian OS. Also of note is the 12 megapixel camera, in comparison to the 5 megapixel cameras available on Blackberry and iPhone.

(via HuffPo):

Nokia said deliveries would begin immediately for pre-orders of the touch screen model, which had received “the highest amount of consumer pre-orders in Nokia history.” Worldwide availability would be “in the coming weeks” and will vary by country, Nokia said.

The N8, which looks like an iPhone, features a 12-megapixel digital camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a 3.5 inch display. It is built on a new version of the Symbian software with photo uploading connections to social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

SAP & B2B Social Media Marketing Excellence

Our friends and clients over at SAP wrote a great post this week over at Social Media Today. It offers four steps for best practice in setting up a B2B social media marketing strategy.

The Value of Facebook Likers

On Wednesday, Facebook released more information about “likers.”

People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active and connected than the average Facebook user. The average “liker” has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook — they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user.

As publishers work to identify the best ways to reach a younger, “always on” audience, we’ve found that the average “liker” on a news site is 34, compared to the median age of a newspaper subscriber which is approximately 54 years old, as reported by the Newspaper Association of America.

Google Takes Street View to Antarctica

While you probably won’t need to use it very often, it is pretty cool to get a street level view of what’s happening on Half Moon Island. The normal street level view icon of a green man is also replaced with an icon of a penguin.

(via The Daily What):