SOMM Soapbox

In December of 2011, Google chairman Eric Schmidt let out a big announcement in an interview, “In the next six months we [Google] plan to market a tablet of the highest quality”. I had a long discussion awhile ago with good friend and fellow blogger (Lasha of Onefusedlife.com) during the release of the first wave of Android powered tablets that Google, itself would have to enter. Google would have to do for Android tablets, as they had with Android smartphones with their Nexus line. Do them justice.

Samsung, with its bestsellers thus far in the Galaxy S II smartphone series, is now openly mocking Apple and its sub-culture through a funny new commercial.

It seems I may have angered the Android gods with my last entry, the five things I hate about Android, as my HTC EVO 4G will no longer take a charge. Instead of buying a new EVO or using my upgrade (I’ve been eligible for an upgrade for 5 years now), I went back to my Blackberry Curve 8330. So I thought I would start a short miniseries of blog entries that will document my readjustment to a phone I once loved. Could my misfortune allow RIM to win me back?

I am a strong advocate of Google’s Android mobile operating system, but I assure you I’m not a totally blind zealot. Android has matured but still features its fair share of problems. Some of these problems are nerve wracking and could have caused me to leave the Android ecosystem if there were any viable alternatives (in my eyes).  From bugs to security, Google has a lot of issues to solve and here’s hoping that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) does that. Until I get ICS in hand, here are five things I hate about Android.

Much time has gone by since we parted ways. I won’t lie and say I don’t miss your superior messaging or e-mail experience. Lest not forget your amazing battery life either, others counted in hours, yours in days. The problem was I couldn’t continue to spin those positives into the faces of friends and family when your negatives are so overwhelming.

Apple, Inc has more ammo to use against Android in the mobile war and it’s a feature almost all smartphone users are familiar with, ‘Slide-to-Unlock”.

The days of getting the most for your gaming dollars are gone. A trend brought on by the digital age. The digital age was once herald as the end of high costs for many products and their respected industries, especially videogames. I fondly remember reading an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) as a teenager about how digital content would forever change gaming. Buying video games digitally would be much cheaper and would allow developers to release patches, game expansions (remember those?!) and other digital content to you quickly. The article was partly right on the latter part, but as for the cheaper prices, we’re still waiting

One of Call of Duty: Black Ops's many DLC packs.

Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder and master of all things Apple, has passed at the age of 56 yesterday. We at Sliceofmymind.com, want to extend our condolences to his family and friends. This is an extremely sad day for the entire tech sphere, regardless of your tech preferences or alliances.

Now it all makes sense. It is made completely clear. With the announcement of the iPhone 4S by Apple yesterday morning, we can see why Apple has gone after Samsung and its Galaxy S II (and Tab tablets) smartphones. Is it because Apple truly believes Samsung copied its designs? Or. Did the Galaxy S II surprise the hell out of Apple?

Apple is set to reveal the next iPhone today at 10:00AM PST, but rumors and reports persist that the “next” iPhone is nothing more than a minor hardware upgrade from the iPhone 4. The minor upgrade is said to be the Apple A5 processor (same processor in the iPad 2) and more RAM, noting there is nothing about a radical change in neither the phone’s screen size nor its resolution over the iPhone 4. What does this all mean?

How many features can someone put into a product before they come off as superfluous bullet points? In a new series I am dubbing the Superfluous Tech Top Five, I take a look at tech categories, single products and everything in between to find product “features” that are overwhelmingly superfluous fluff.

The product I am examining today is produced by a company that has a history of overzealously placing superfluous bullet points to “features” that are most of the time common in their competitors’ products. If you haven’t guessed the name of the company by now, it is no other than Apple Inc and the product is iOS 5.

There is a new trend going on in the game industry. This trend is to curve or somehow destroy the used game market. GameStop Inc is enjoying huge success and most of it is due to the sales of used video games. On one side of the coin are publishers and developers looking to find any way to slow down the sale of used games and on the other are consumers hurting from an economy that just won’t pick up and are trying to get the best value for their dollar.

Google’s music service joins a new wave of cloud-based offerings that have the ability and leverage to turn the music industry’s business model upside down on its head…again. Not since the dawn of the MP3 and file sharing has the music industry faced such a major threat and this time, it’s legal (for now).

Imagine purchasing an album one time and with a few clicks, have that album be made available to you on any computer and/or device at anytime. This scenario while possible now isn’t quite legal due to the restrictions imposed by modern digital music services like iTunes. Sure, music downloads don’t have the Digital Rights Management (DRM) embedded into their files but the terms and conditions you agree upon when you download still place restrictions on how and where you can use your music. This is set to change with services like Music Beta by Google.