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Reasons to Buy and Not Buy Google Nexus 4

December 12, 2012September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Nexus 4 is Google’s fourth generation smartphone running Android operating system. The phone is as usual high end and the first product running Android Jelly Bean 4.2.1. It is also the only high end smartphone priced very competitively (that is if you purchase the Google Nexus 4 from Google Play store, not from a carrier). The price of this Google smartphone starts from 299 dollars (that is the base model). This is also the first time Google is teaming up with LG for smartphone manufacturing.

Do you need further reasons to buy Nexus 4? Here they are. Also, there are a few reasons not to purchase this smartphone.

Tech Specs

First up, the technical specifications.

Property	Value
Dimensions	Height	133.9mm
	Width	68.7mm
	Thickness	9.1mm
	Weight	139 g
Connectivity	Besides GSM & GPRS, 3G UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSPA+; HSDPA at 42 mbps; no LTE
The Display	4.7 inch; LCD IPS; 1280×768 px; 320ppi
Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass 2
Microprocessor	Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.5 GHz (quad-core)
Memory	2 GB
Graphics card	Qualcomm Adreno 320
Storage	8 GB / 16 GB
Operating System	Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean
Battery	2100 mAh Lithium-Polymer
Camera	8MP (1080p HD) main; 1.3 MP (720p) front facing
Extra features	NFC SlimPort HDMI (Mobility DisplayPort or MyDP) via Analogix ANX7808 transmitter Barometer Gyroscope Wi-Fi Hotspot Wi-Fi Direct USB Tethering Wireless charging

As you can see the phone is fully packed with pretty amazing features. In terms of hardware, the Nexus is at a commanding position. Processor is fast and highly evolved with quad-core power. The display is amazingly large and runs LCD IPS technology that gives truer colors. Battery, camera, and the system memory are above par. System memory of 2 GB is probably the highest you can get among the smartphones available today. Besides these, there is Near Field Communication (NFC) and a number of other nifty features.

These are reason enough to buy Google Nexus 4.

Features that You Will Love

Wi-Fi Direct technology gives this smartphone the ability to connect with any other device by Wi-Fi without having to go through an access point. This technology works through a built-in app as well as through the NFC capability.

You can share your phone’s Internet connection through Wi-Fi (while the phone acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot) or through USB through USB tethering functionality.

Wireless charging is another interesting reason to buy Nexus 4. The technology for wireless charging comes from electromagnetic induction. LG has made available wireless charging pads for you to purchase.

Wireless charging the smartphone:

[Courtesy: Phandroid]

MyDP (Mobility DisplayPort) is a type of HD video out for mobile devices, and Google Nexus 4 is the first smartphone to have this technology. It uses ANX7808 SlimPort transmitter. This is an amazing technology; with proper adaptor, it can convert the micro USB port of your smartphone to virtually anything (audio and video out) such as HDMI, DVI, VGA, etc. This means you can connect this phone to any kind of TV you have, whether it is HDTV or the regular TV or a computer monitor. And this supports extremely fast connectivity.

Connecting SlimPort adaptor:

[Courtesy: AnandTech]

The Price Truth

According to early reports, Google Nexus 4 sells hot. Right now, the play store is empty and customers have to wait for new stock to arrive. This probably has become the most successful Nexus to date. And the major reason behind this is the price of the smartphone.

You cannot find such competitive pricing among smartphones. While Apple iPhone 5 is making huge profit, Nexus 4 is selling almost at the price of its parts. When you are purchasing the phone, however, look no further than Google Play Store. Carriers have come up with locked and unlocked Nexus 4 at higher prices in order to take profit from the phone’s low price from Google. For instance, O2 sells the Pay as you go Nexus 4 at 399 pounds.

What Lacks in Google’s Smartphone

The Storage

We have seen the great features of this smartphone that would attract any smartphone geek. However, there are a few reasons why people may not buy Google Nexus 4.

Firstly, the silly thing; LG doesn’t provide a microSD card slot to expand the storage of Nexus 4, which already has only a limited amount available. While 64 GB of storage has become quite common and pretty much a standard these days, LG has decided to go with 8 GB and 16 GB models. My old smartphone of 2009 came with much more space than this Nexus 4.

In fact, the actual available storage will be much less than 16 GB due to the existing Android Jelly Bean files. We have seen the actual available storage of only 12.9 GB, which is not quite enough for storing your files, I suppose. Also, without any means for expansion, you may be stuck with cloud storage for storing your files (and of course Google Drive is available by default in this phone).

Also, imagine what will happen to your battery and monthly usage bill if you continue to use the cloud storage. If this is in any way a Google trick to popularize Drive, then it’s evil!

Google, LG, Where Is LTE?

With network operators popularizing the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology in all their networks, converting the existing infrastructure to this fast IP-based network for connecting users at ultra-high speeds, this technology has become not an option, but a norm in new handsets.

And yet, Google Nexus 4 comes without LTE support (however it includes a dormant LTE chip as found by AnandTech). The previous version of Nexus, Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus did come up with an LTE version. In a recent interview with The Verge, Andy Rubin, the chief of Android, mentioned that a lot of the networks with LTE capability are actually using hybrid networks (containing both 3G and LTE the true 4G technology). This is one of the reasons why LTE (which should actually take much less battery power) currently takes too much battery on your device.

According to Google, non-inclusion of LTE is quite reasonable. Nexus is intended to be carrier-independent. In order to support LTE networks, they have to come up with an alternate version of this smartphone.

However, going forward in the future, when LTE becomes completely nationalized, I suppose it is best to have it in a handset. Also, by that time, we will be seeing tremendous advantages of LTE communication such as extreme speeds, need for fewer towers, highly reliable communication, and savings in battery power (yes, LTE takes much less battery than HSPA or any other technology).

HSPA+ speed given by Nexus 4 is pretty good at 42 mbps. While several carriers are providing HSPA+ at 21mbps only, T-Mobile has 42mbps capability in its widely available HSPA network. T-Mobile will transition to LTE soon, and AT&T already has the best nation-wide LTE network in the United States.

Addendum: Here is the world deployment of LTE technology:

If it had LTE capability as well, more people would love to purchase Google Nexus 4. We may as well await an LTE-enabled version of the handset in the coming days.

Conclusion

With an appropriate price, Google Nexus 4 is a wonderful purchase indeed. However, without LTE support, the handset may not be as future-proof as it needs to be. The features available and such a remarkably low price distinguishes this smartphone among the likes of iPhone and Microsoft Surface tablet. So, our vote is positive. If you love the design and features, go ahead and buy Nexus 4.

Embed PDF Files on Your Blog

November 30, 2012September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Have you noticed our PDF documents appearing on some of our blog posts? I create a PDF file (which may be a public speech or any other important document available in the public domain) and I upload that PDF to a storage service. I then make the file available in a blog post by embedding a specific piece of code. In this post, let me tell you ways you can embed PDF and by extension other files (spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) on your blog.

Let me make a riveting thrilling story from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle available to you through a PDF embedded file on this post. As a first step, if your document is not in the PDF format, you need to convert it. You can use any of the freely available PDF converters out there. Some popular PDF printers are CutePDF, BullZip Printer, PDF Creator, etc.

Once you have the PDF file ready, you can use any of these services to get it uploaded – Slideshare.net or a cloud storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox.

Slideshare Method

Slideshare is a platform for sharing document files, such as PDF, presentations, Word documents, spreadsheets, etc. Go to Slideshare and create an account. Alternatively, you can log in using your Facebook or LinkedIn account. Afterward, you can simply share documents with this service.

As a first step, upload your file to Slideshare.

Once uploaded, Slideshare will convert the file; optionally, you can input the information that identifies the document, such as the tags, description, etc. This will enable the document to be indexed and searchable by search engines.

Once uploaded, the file will be available in My Uploads section. Click on the file and select the option ‘Embed’. It will give you the code for embedding it into your blog. You can remove the unnecessary links to Slideshare from the embed code and tweak it for width, height, margin, etc. Here it is:

<iframe allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” frameborder=”0″ height=”511″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ mozallowfullscreen=”mozallowfullscreen” scrolling=”no” src=”http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/15424875″ style=”border-width: 1px 1px 0; border: 1px solid #CCC; margin-bottom: 5px;” webkitallowfullscreen=”webkitallowfullscreen” width=”479″></iframe>

And you can paste the customized code on your blog’s HTML and show the PDF file to your visitors. Slideshare also gives you a shortcode that you can use directly with your WordPress blog.

Using Cloud Services

If you have a cloud account with Google Drive or Dropbox, you can upload and embed PDF documents. It works with any PDF-compatible cloud storage service.

As a first step, upload your PDF file to the cloud provider. For convenience, I will show you Google Drive interface here.

google drive interface of uploading files

As the second step, you need to get the URL of the uploaded file. This is the direct link to the file. In Google Drive, you don’t even need this as it gives you the embed code directly from the ‘File’ menu of a PDF file. You should use that link in order to display the PDF.

In case of Dropbox, you should get the link of the file after uploading.

In Dropbox, after uploading the file, move it to the ‘Public’ folder so that it is accessible to anybody. From here, you can get the public link of the PDF file.

Modify the following embed code to include your link.

<iframe height=”480″ src=”Put your link here” width=”640″></iframe>

Adjust the width and height and you are done! This will properly display your PDF file on your blog.

There is one other important consideration to this method. If your user’s browser doesn’t provide support for PDF, they will not be able view the file. It is necessary to instruct the customer to download the PDF plugin for their browser. Once it is done properly, you will get an end result similar to the following:

What You Need to Know About the New Google Chromebook and Chromebox

October 19, 2012October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Google Chromebook is a lightweight notebook from Google that uses the Google Chrome operating system. Yesterday, in an event conducted in San Francisco, Google unveiled the latest Chromebook, manufactured by Samsung that retails for just 249 dollars

Here is a video from Google:

The notebook is entirely based on the cloud computing platform of Google known as Drive, operated through Chrome OS. In this article, let us look at the details of Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

Samsung Chromebook

Look at the images of the current Samsung Chromebook from various angles. Along with Chromebooks, Samsung has released Chromeboxes that compete directly with Apple Mac Mini.

Ports on your Chromebook

Special keys on the keyboard

Samsung Chromebox

Google Chrome Operating System

Chromebook runs entirely on Google Chrome OS. The notebook is not only thin and light, but it contains absolutely no bloatware. All you get with it is the operating system based entirely on Google Chrome browser. Chromebook’s OS contains a media player and a file explorer similar to Windows Explorer.

Google Chrome OS used to be a part of the Chromium open source project that is based on Linux. Chrome OS, however, evolved and became an independent operating system that gets released directly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Anything you do generally on a Chromebook has to be done over a network that provides cloud computing services. For instance, if you are creating a presentation, you have to rely on Google Drive that has Google Docs apps incorporated. Alternatively, you can go for any online app that provides document editing capabilities. In the same way, you can do anything that you normally do on a computerâ€”only that advanced tasks on Chromebooks require fast and always-on internet connection. However, apps that install offlineâ€”the ones you normally download from Chrome Web Storeâ€”will work fine without internet access.

Chromebooks run entirely due to cloud syncing that synchronizes the data on the cloud server and on the computer so that apps always have access to the most current information. The operating system updates automatically unlike the Chromium OS project that requires to be built manually.

Hardware

The latest Chromebook released is priced at just USD 249. It is thin and lightâ€”at 2.43 pounds, lighter than the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air, heavier and slightly shorter than the 11-inch MacBook Air; much lighter than other Ultrabooks from Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo, etc.

The Samsung Chromebook runs under ARM architecture with Samsung Exynos 5 dual-core CPU clocked at 1.7 GHz. The screen is 11.6 inches HD LED with resolution of 1366 by 768. Ironically enough, Samsung didn’t fit an AMOLED display to it. Most of the portable electronic gadgets from Samsung have AMOLED screens (except for larger screen devices).

With a standard memory (RAM) of 2 GB, Chromebook is extremely capable of running offline apps. However, the internal storage given is just 16 GB solid state drive (SSD). This could have been higher. Google Drive cloud storage service is available on the Chromebook by default. Samsung has made available 100 GB of free online storage through Google Drive for free with this new notebook.

Besides these, almost all of the standard features on a laptop are availableâ€”HDMI & VGA ports; memory card slots for SD, SDHC, SDXC, etc. The battery power is perhaps one of the most attractive features of this thin laptop. Chromebook is expected to give you 6.5 hours of operation from its Li-polymer battery.

Due to such light operating system and standard Ultrabook hardware, Chromebooks boot much faster than any other laptop. The proclaimed boot-up time of Samsung Chromebook is around 10 seconds. The prototype tested by Google during the beginning of the development of Chromebooks used to boot in just seven seconds.

Security

Google says multiple layers of security are built into the laptop, rendering it unnecessary to install any antivirus application. On the top of that, with a laptop like the Chromebook, security settings change drastically. Most of your data resides probably on the cloud, not on the laptop itself. Hence it is the cloud that has to be secured.

With Chromebook, the cloud service choice is Google Drive, and it provides the necessary encryption and security that your data needs. It is not known whether other cloud services can be used with Chromebook. There is an assortment of cloud storage services including Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, Dropbox, Sugar Sync, etc., that you could use for storing your files online. It would be great if Chromebooks extend support for these services as well.

Conclusion

In short, Chromebooks are not for high-end computing. For such purposes, only a computer that is capable of running offline versions of productive application suites can be used. This, however, is a perfect replacement for Ultrabooks that include major offline operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X.

With a highly portable computer, a highly portable operating system is a good choice. This is where the Chrome OS and this new computer design make its mark.

Chromebooks are great for various purposesâ€”using online services for image editing, document creation, file management, design tasks, etc. However, the current heavy demand for tablet computers and their ultraportable nature (which exceeds that of Chromebooks) may create a hefty competition to Google’s venture.

How to Send Email in Your Own Language Script Through Gmail?

October 14, 2012October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Have you ever had trouble sending an email to a distant relative who speaks a different language altogether? It has never been easy on email applications to send messages in other languages. Google’s popular email service, Gmail has come up with transliteration tools and other language input tools to make the service much better. You can type using Gmail interface in any language that you want.

First of all, you need to select the languages that you want to use in composer. For this, go to Gmail settings and you will see the â€˜Language’ option under General. Here, go to advanced language options and put a check mark to â€˜Enable input tools’.

Here, you can transliterate (type in English the words in other languages to have them appear in correct script), use a virtual keyboard, or edit your input method with the help of a regular keyboard to convert words into other alphabet. Transliteration feature was available although limited in Gmail. Select the input tools from the list by double-clicking it (virtual keyboards are represented by a tiny keyboard icon).

After this has been enabled, save the settings.

Now open up the composer in your Gmail interface, and type words in the language that you wish to use. On the top right-hand corner you will see the input method selection. If the icon is depressed, it means the input method is selected. Just select the language you want and compose the email.

The input method selector works better with a fast internet connection. Otherwise, it is better to go with regular email as the Google transliteration works through the server and takes time on slow connections.

How to Externalize Your Blogger Stylesheet?

September 5, 2012September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Do you want your blog to load much faster than it does now? In that case, you can go for external CSS stylesheets. In this tutorial, we will deal with externalizing the stylesheet on Google’s Blogger platform. I have been working on putting the stylesheet on my blogs on an external server for some time. Here is the tutorial for you.

Blogger Template Stylesheet

For analysis, let’s look at this blog: RedBugle (redbugle.blogspot.com). The basic design of the blog is this right now:

I have used the Awesome Inc., template of Blogger as you can see. The goal is to achieve the same look and effect after externalizing the blog’s stylesheet. By the way, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a part of the HTML markup that contains the information as to how the blog displays on different user agents (browsers). In Blogger, the entire stylesheet that you can customize and change according to the need is contained in between these two tags: ‘<b:skin><![CDATA[‘ and ‘]]></b:skin>’. So your first task is to find these tags. Look at the image below:

Several bloggers and technicians out there have been advising to cut the data in between these tags (<b:skin><![CDATA[ and ]]></b:skin>) and paste it into an external file to create the stylesheet. Say, you followed that advice, then your blog will look like this (we will come to hosting and other stuff later).

As you can see, the blog has no design whatsoever. The external stylesheet simply didn’t work.

The actual stylesheet of Blogger is not between <b:skin> tags. What goes in between these tags is just a precompiled version of the CSS that has some Blogger specific code.

Why did this happen? Because the actual stylesheet of Blogger is not between <b:skin> tags. What goes in between these tags is just a precompiled version of the CSS that has some Blogger specific code. You can get the actual stylesheet only from the page rendered on a browser, from the HTML source code. Go to your browser, and get to the source code of the blog. You will find <style> </style> element in here. What goes in between these is the actual CSS stylesheet that you need to use. Copy this code.

Now, create a text file on your desktop and name it whatever you want. Just put the extension of the file as ‘css’ instead of ‘txt’. (You can see extensions of files by going to Control Panel->Folder Options->Uncheck’Hide extensions of known file types’). Paste the entire CSS code into this text file and save it.

Hosting the CSS File

In order to host the CSS file, you can either use your hosting service provider (if you have one), or you can get it hosted for free with Google Sites or a cloud storage service like Dropbox.

1. Google Sites

If you are using Google Sites, just sign into the service and create a website. Click on ‘more’ on the top from within your site, and click on’Manage site’. Here, click on ‘Attachments’ and you will see the upload button. Upload your CSS file into this hosting server.

Now, just right-click on’Download’ and get the public link of the CSS file. This is the one you are going to use for the external call.

2. Using Dropbox

If you are using Dropbox, just download the application and set it up. Sign up on Dropbox, and enable syncing of the Public folder (this will be automatically created by Dropbox). Just copy and paste your CSS file into this folder and it will be automatically synced with Dropbox server in a few moments.

From the Public folder, right-click the CSS file and from the Dropbox menu, get the public link of the file. This is the URI of the CSS that we are going to use with the blog.

Putting Stylesheet Into the Blog

As a first step now, just delete everything between the <b:skin><![CDATA[ and ]]></b:skin> tags. Find the closing of the head tag; search for </head>. You need to add a link tag over here. The link element you are adding here is the one used to call an external stylesheet. The completed code looks like this:

<link rel="Stylesheet" href="StyleSheetFile.css" type="text/css" media="all"/>
 </head>

‘StyleSheetFile.css‘ should be replaced with the actual link to your CSS file. Save the template.

There you go! Now, just check the blog in all browsers and see if the CSS is showing up properly. The external CSS file will increase the blog load time for subsequent page views, as the CSS file gets cached once it has been loaded into the browser.