Review: The BlackBerry Dakota now comes with the Smart All-In Plan 3500

Today’s coolest smartphones have enabled tech-savvy users to connect to their passions, from socializing through Facebook and Twitter, enjoying music and multimedia content, doing business to surfing the net. Letting users fulfill their cutting-edge passions, Smart Postpaid offers the perfect handsets paired with the perfect All-In Plan that won’t bust the budget.

With sophisticated style and reliable performance, BlackBerry models have always been among the most coveted smartphones among today’s busy professionals.

Their freshest offering, the BlackBerry Dakota, provides power-users with superior performance from its powerful 1.2GHz processor, 8GB of expandable memory, and a newly enhanced version of the BlackBerry OS 7.

Whether sending work emails, messages, or capturing special moments, dynamic multi-taskers are sure to take pleasure in its larger QWERTY keyboard, fluid touchscreen, a 720p HD video camera, and innovative built-in apps that will make work a more delightful experience.

The BlackBerry Dakota now comes with the Smart All-In Plan 3500 – a better, more cost-efficient deal compared to other postpaid plans with the same handset model.

A compact, trendy smartphone that online-savvy teens will love, the Samsung Galaxy Y Netphone Edition is now free with Smart’s affordable Plan 349 with UnliTxt and UnliSocial.

Together with its powerful Android 2.3 operating system and blazing download speeds of 7.2Mbps, the Samsung Galaxy Y Netphone Edition boasts a nifty Social Hub feature that integrates social networking updates, messages and emails into one real-time feed.

Loaded with fun apps and the TouchWiz UI touchscreen that offers a smooth user interface, this handy phone makes connecting with friends and loved ones a worry-free experience.

Available exclusively with Smart’s Data Plan 2000 or All-In Plan 3500, the HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio is now the hottest premium phone for music enthusiasts. The custom-made Beats headsets and virtual surround sound deliver a richer, more enjoyable listening experience.

Combining outstanding sonic capabilities with chic aesthetics, it’s also loaded with all the best smartphone features: an instant capture camera, full HD camcorders with stereo sound recording, multi-window web browsing, a 4.3-inch touchscreen with lockscreen function, and a user interface that offers a hassle-free and intuitive mobile audio playback.

Another Smart exclusive, the new Nokia N9 boasts the impressive technology and solid design have made the Nokia N series the gold standard among smartphones.

The perfect mobile companion for shutterbugs and video buffs, the Nokia N9 lets users take pictures and videos of stunning quality with its 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. It also offers total connectivity and outstanding social networking capabilities with its wide range of pre-loaded apps, letting budding photographers easily share and upload multimedia content. Featuring a vivid AMOLED display and a highly-responsive touchscreen, this attractive gadget brings stunning photos and high-definition videos to life. The 16GB version of the Nokia N9 comes with the Smart All-In Plan 3500 or Data Plan 2000, while the 64GB version is free with the Smart Data Plan 3000.

Smart’s All-In Plans and Postpaid Data Plans offer each subscriber all the needed voice, SMS, and data services in one convenient, affordable package with no hidden add-on charges.

With the newest, most stylish smartphones now available with your Smart Postpaid plan, you can also get the best handsets at the best value for your money.

Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet cost less than the lowest-priced iPad

Amazon.com's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet cost less than half as much as the lowest-priced iPad. But they have smaller screens and fewer apps, their speed is slower and their batteries don't last as long.

The iPad, the heavyweight champ of the tablet world, has summarily knocked out every challenger it has faced since it debuted last year.

The defeated include tablets with names including Xoom, PlayBook, TouchPad , G-Slate and Streak, none of which has grabbed more than a tiny sliver of the $10-billion tablet market over which the iPad reigns.

But now a pair of new lighter-weight contenders are aiming to hit Apple Inc. where it hurts: the price tag.
Amazon.com Inc.'s $199 Kindle Fire and the $249 Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble Inc. retail for less than half the cost of the lowest-priced iPad and are undercutting the prices of nearly every brand-name tablet on the market. If the companies are successful, analysts say, they may be able to put the devices in the hands of millions who have felt that $500 was too much to spend on a tablet.

"These two companies are going to start proving that there's a media tablet market, not just an ipad Accessories / iPad market," said Tom Mainelli, a mobile device analyst at research firm IDC. "Now that some of these devices cost $200, it really throws it open to the mainstream."

But the lower cost of these devices comes with a series of trade-offs. The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have smaller screens — only 7 inches compared with the iPad's more spacious 10 inches — and their speed and handling are more like an economy sedan than the high-performance sports car feel of the iPad. Their batteries don't last as long as the iPad's, they have no option for cellular connections, and the catalog of applications they support is substantially smaller than Apple's.

It bears remembering, in fact, that the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are descended from slower electronic readers — simple devices that do little more than display the text of books that users download from an online store. In that sense, the tablets improve on earlier e-readers, adding access to the Internet and social networks and the ability to listen to music, watch online videos from Netflix and Hulu and send email.

"For users looking to simply read books, watch movies, listen to music and play the occasional game, the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are perfect candidates that will not create a big dent in their pockets," said Walter Galan, an analyst at San Luis Obispo-based iFixit. "But for those looking for a full-fledged tablet, the iPad is probably a better choice in the long run."

If you're considering a tablet, then, it's a simple cost-benefit analysis: Do you need all the fancy features and screen real estate of the more expensive iPad, or can you get by with a smaller, slightly slower tablet with a palette of more basic functions, and pocket the difference?

How to joy with you Windows smartphones?

When buying a new smartphone — or adding one to a holiday gift list — there's just one question: iPhone or Android?

But what if someone out there was doing it better than iPhone and Android?

If there's a company coming close, it's Microsoft, with its Windows line of smartphones.

I've been using the HTC Radar 4G on T-Mobile for a week, which runs the new Windows Phone operating system 7.5.

The updated OS — dubbed Mango — is a welcome upgrade to an already fantastic user experience.
It's the best phone experience that you've never tried.

Where Apple and Android have settled on home screens of small square app icons, Windows has created a vertical column of interactive tiles that display information — unread e-mails, missed calls, weather, etc.

With an easy wipe to the left, you've got all the other options and settings you'd ever want to access.

This vertical organization is echoed in other Windows phone apps. In e-mail, you can swipe left for columns of unread e-mail, starred messages and urgent ones. It's so instantly intuitive that it makes jumping from app to app a breeze. It just works.

Knows the score

The Windows phone platform also boasts the best integration of Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Documents can be stored online and shared using Microsoft's SkyDrive service.
The big knock to the platform, though, is the limited number of apps. But that number is growing, and many of the biggies are there.

Netflix works great. So does Twitter and Facebook. One notable hole, though: no Pandora.
But the app ecosystem now has more than 40,000 titles, according to a study last week by fan site All About Windows Phone, and is rising fast.

Windows Phone 7.5 also includes a voice-controlled assistant, very similar to Apple's much-hyped Siri feature in the iPhone 4S.

It's not quite as powerful as Siri, which can also unravel a user's intent.

You can ask Siri, for example: "Will I need an umbrella tomorrow?"

The Microsoft TellMe service fumbles that request, sending you to a Web search for the phrase.
TellMe does do several things that Siri can't yet, though. You can tell the service to open an app. You can also ask for the most recent professional sports scores. Siri can't do either of those things.

A better way

The Windows Phone platform is a total joy to use.

It makes me wish that iOS and Android hadn't settled on such similar navigation systems.

We should all feel a bit cheated. There are better ways to operate a smartphone.

And, for the first time in a while, Microsoft knows something its competitors do not.

Google relaunched its search for iPad application with several tablet-oriented tweaks

Google relaunched its search for iPad application with several tablet-oriented tweaks Nov. 21. Google Instant plays a big role in the redesign.

Google might not be able to help its Android OEMs sell more tablets, but the company can certainly augment the search experience on Apple's popular iPad.

The company, whose search app for the iPad has been more like the desktop Google Web search experience than a genuine tablet app, has made its search app more visually pleasing and efficient on the larger mobile form factor. See it in action in this YouTube demo video and download it from Apple's App Store here.

Google said Web pages that users land on now load on a new, slide-in pane that will layer over the search results. iPad users can then slide the pane to the right to return to search results, and tap on any image result to use the new image carousel.

More other business:

• iPad Cases 
• ipad Accessories 

In another design change to suit the iPad's 9.7-inch display, the app lets users swipe right to view snapshots of pages they've visited and organized according to search terms.

After users select a result, they can tap the magnifying glass on the top right-hand corner to highlight the most relevant section of the page. A newly added +1 button next to the magnifying glass lets users recommend Web pages to other searchers, and users may share a post on Google+ within the slide-in pane.

Tap on an icon to quickly read an email in Gmail, or share a post on Google+ within the slide-in pane. When you slide the pane to the right, you’ll be right back to searching.

The company also added Google Instant predictive search technology to accelerate the delivery of search results. And the company ported its Instant Previews to the app so users can quickly compare Web pages before they choose their result. These Instant additions follow the company's inclusion of Instant Pages, which pre-fetches Web pages, last August.

"Tapping on an icon in the top right of the screen brings you into a visual preview of the pages for your search result, easy to scroll through with the swipe of a finger," said Daniel Fish, a Google software engineer for the search app, in a blog post.

Providing a great search app for the iPad fulfills Google's need to have placement on the most popular mobile devices and platforms worldwide. At over 32 million units shipped and counting, the iPad certainly fits that bill. Ditto for the iPhone, for which Google just launched its native Gmail app last week.

Top 3 Home Security Mistakes You Shoule to Avoid

We usually like to think our homes, apartments, garages and other property are relativly safe. We talk ourselves into the fact that our neighborhood may be safe, our town or city is safe, or that we have the right equipment to keep it all secure. This may not actually be the case.

Here are our Top 3 Home Security Mistakes:

1. The “Hidden” Key

Most people have a hidden key that they are certain is safe from intruders. The “under-the-rock” or “under-the-doormat” hidden key is one of the most over used security practices across the nation. In almost all cases, you aren’t being sneaky, and that key can be found relatively quickly. Even the most inexperienced thieves know about the hidden key trick (it’s probably the first one they try.) If you are worried about getting locked out, think about other keyless security products that could help you in this situation.

2. Unarmed Alarm System

If you have an alarm system for your home, but don’t ever use it, what good will it do? If you want your home to be safe then be sure to turn your home alarm system on. People who hesitate to turn the system on may fear an accidental incident, and therefor just don’t mess with it. Wouldn’t you rather have a mistaken alarm go off than have no alarm go off during a real home invasion? Even if you are leaving for a few minutes, that is enough time for a burglar to come into your home.

3. Garage Safety

Some people mistakenly think your garage is safer than your home because burglars are less inclined to go there first. This is not the case. Leaving your garage unlocked, or unprotected can be a huge mistake. Leaving your car keys (and home keys) in your garage is only providing a burglar entry into both places and a potential get-away ride.

Blogroll:

House Alarm Systems Tips & Guide – Keep Home Safety

Fake security cameras for the home – a visual deterrent

Home Security Store – Wireless Security Systems Review

Technology for Your Safety: Wireless Home Security Systems

Choose a right home securiy cameras – top-shopingmall.com

Surveillance cameras for home – Get your house and family protected now

Nokia News: will have a tablet running Windows 8 in June 2012

In an interview with French newspaper Les Échos, Paul Amsellem, head of Nokia France, said that the company would have a tablet running Windows 8 in June 2012.

As is typical with this kind of comment, Nokia PR's official line is "we have not announced any specific plans as it relates to tablets"; nonetheless, it seems more likely than not that Nokia will be making Windows 8 tablets.

That Nokia is planning to build a Windows 8 tablet is not surprising. Talking to Bloomberg earlier this year, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that Windows 8 will "change the dynamics" of the tablet market, and that there was a "new tablet opportunity coming." Though he did not announce any plans to produce a tablet at the time, he certainly didn't rule it out either.

Nokia is no newcomer to the tablet scene. Its Linux-on-ARM 770, N800, and N810 tablets were early attempts to produce an Internet tablet of the kind that Apple / ipad Accessories has popularized. With the viability of the tablet market now proven, Nokia's close partnership with Microsoft, and the "new opportunity" by Windows 8, the time is right for the Finns to have another stab at the market with a Windows 8 device.

What is surprising is the apparent timing. Windows 8 is a major update to the Windows platform that's not yet even in beta, with most observers estimating a fall 2012 release. Windows' end-user availability has generally lagged the software's completion and release to manufacturing (RTM) by a month or three. If this pattern holds true, it would put the RTM no later than March or April. This would require a hugely condensed beta and release candidate process, and for a release of Windows 8's scale, that's hard to believe.

The bulk of the interview was about Nokia's phone strategy in France and beyond. Just two years ago, Nokia commanded a 25 percent market share in France. This has now dropped to 16 percent. Samsung, with a 40 percent share, is now France's biggest phone OEM. Nokia hopes to improve its position by targeting the 60 percent of French people who currently don't own a smartphone at all.

Today's release of the Lumia 800 is the first step in this process. Amsellem likened the Lumia 800 to a BMW 5 Series, saying that Nokia would later deliver a lower-end 3 Series and a higher-end 7 Series to round out its offering. The 3 Series equivalent is presumably the Lumia 710 that will be available in Europe by the end of the year. Rumors of a higher-end Nokia offering codenamed "Ace" have circulated for some months. Though nothing concrete is known about Ace's specification or features, the interview does at least confirm that a high-end Nokia Windows Phone is in development, and that the Ace rumors are, at least in spirit, correct.

While it's still very early days for Nokia's Windows Phone offerings, initial indications are promising. WinRumors is reporting that Orange UK has received more preorders for the Lumia 800 than for any prior Nokia handset, including big-sellers like the N95. Nokia has been advertising heavily, and Orange is offering an aggressive promotion that gives qualifying upgrading customers a free Xbox 360 if they order a Lumia 800. Chatter about AT&T picking up Lumia handsets for a first-quarter 2012 US launch is increasing as well.

Review: IBM Replacement Found for New U.S. Supercomputer

The University of Illinois says Seattle-based Cray Inc. will take over construction of the stalled $300 million Blue Waters supercomputer project, three months after IBM pulled out citing cost and technical concerns.
Cray expects to have the computer online next year, keeping the project, which is being primarily paid for by the National Science Foundation, on track to finish on time.

"We clearly had to do it real quickly," said Thom Dunning, the director of the school's National Center for Supercomputing Applications. "NSF's goal was to keep the project on track as much as it possibly could be."

The cost and financing will stay essentially the same, Cray CEO Peter Ungara said. The NSF will provide just over $200 million with the remaining $100 million coming from the university and the state of Illinois.

Cray will be paid $188 million, the equivalent of about half of its total revenue from its most recent fiscal year.
"This is a transformational contract for the company," Ungara said. "It's a very big deal for us. It's a huge contract based on the size of the company and we couldn't be more excited about it."

The design and scope of what Blue Waters should be able to do in the years ahead will change, he said.
Once completed, the supercomputer will be used for a range of projects, including the study of how tornadoes are formed and how viruses invade cells.

Blue Waters was announced in 2007 as a project to build what would have been at least briefly the world's fastest computer and a computer that could operate at sustained speeds of a petaflop -- a thousand trillion operations a second and a long-sought standard that makes massive computational projects possible.
There are now a number of computers capable of faster peak speeds, the fastest being the K Computer in Japan.

Blue Waters will still aim to be able to run at petaflop speeds for long periods, but it will also now incorporate graphics processing units, or GPUs, which will increase its power, Dunning and Ungara said. GPUs have tremendous power to allow them to handle high-demand graphics applications, but they've only seriously been applied to general-purpose computing since the Blue Waters project was conceived, Dunning said.
The incorporation of this relatively new use for graphics technology could also extend the computer's life / batery life , Ungara said.

"I think we're building a system that almost future-proofs it in many ways," he said.

Blue Waters' will have what Ungara called "a tremendous amount of memory," 1.5 petabytes, a quadrillion bytes. Large amounts of memory were something Dunning said researchers told the university they'd like to see in the project as the university looked for a new builder.

Cray competed to be the builder of Blue Waters when the NSF chose the University of Illinois and IBM in 2007, and Ungara said he'd thought a lot about the project since then, "but it hasn't been anything that's been in our plans or even our dreams over the last couple of years."

But as far back as April, officials at the Supercomputing Center said, it was apparent that there were problems that could derail the project.

When IBM / IBM battery backed out in August, it cited technical and cost concerns about the project, but didn't provide details. A $72 million building built just for the project, the National Petascale Computing Facility, was built on the university campus.

At the time, the NSF said there were no guarantees that the project would continue.

Now, Dunning said, 25 groups from around the world, including several from the university, have tentatively been given time on Blue Waters, with perhaps a dozen ready to go when the computer goes online.

"We'll be holding (the projects) back trying to figure out how we schedule them on the machine," Dunning said.

How to Optimize Your Phone for Maximum Battery Life?

Tired of watching your phone die when you need it the most? Here's a collection of tips and tricks for wringing a little extra juice from your Android, iOS, or Windows Phone 7 smartphone's battery.

Do you know where your smartphone is? Unless you're using it to read PCWorld.com, your phone is probably plugged into an outlet somewhere to charge, because the battery stinks. You can find plenty of good reasons why your smartphone battery sucks, most of which stem from the failure of lithium ion batteries to keep pace with the exponentially increasing power demands of rapidly evolving smartphone technology. Thankfully, plenty of tips and tutorials are available to help you wring every last drop of juice from your smartphone battery, and such tricks can be distilled down to two critical steps: Configure your smartphone for maximum battery life, and then download a reliable and trustworthy battery-optimization app.

Optimize Your Phone for Maximum Battery Life

Configuring your smartphone for maximum battery life entails giving up a few luxuries such as GPS tracking and a stunningly bright screen; but after testing these tricks, we’re willing to bet that you won’t even notice the loss. What you will notice is the few extra hours of battery life you’ll earn with simple tweaks such as dimming your smartphone screen, reducing the screen timeout to the shortest available time (preferably 15 seconds or less), and switching off the power-sucking Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios when you aren’t using them. Making those three changes should net you an extra hour or two before your phone dies.

Download Battery-Management Apps

Once your device is running lean and mean, you should download a few good battery-optimization apps to ensure it stays that way. The best app for your needs will vary depending on what sort of smartphone you carry.

Android users have access to a smorgasbord of apps that boost speed and improve battery life, but many of them directly affect your phone's system settings and require a rooted device to function properly. Unfortunately, few apps on the Apple App Store are capable of automatically managing your iPhone’s system settings. If you’re carrying an iPhone and you’re concerned about reports of poor battery life, pick up a system monitor app such as iStat to keep an eye on how your phone draws juice, and use that knowledge to troubleshoot your battery-sucking iPhone 4S. If you own an older iPhone or an iPad, check out our quick fix for the Apple iOS 5 battery-drain issue instead.

If you use a Windows Phone 7 smartphone, update the firmware to the latest version of Mango and try the new Battery Saver feature. This great battery-management utility allows you to automatically disable power drains such as Live Tile and email updates when your battery starts to run low. The typical tips for conserving smartphone battery power are also appropriate for Mango users.

No matter what tools you select, be cautious and avoid bogus battery-saver apps; we’ve seen a recent rash of Android malware masquerading as battery-upgrade utilities. Be sure to install a trusted mobile security app, and consult a few reviews before you download any questionable apps.

Apple's new iPhones are having some stumbles out of the "battery gate"

Apple's new iPhones are having some stumbles out of the gate: recently the new iOS 5 was revealed to suck down more battery than anyone predicted, and the voice-command feature, Siri, became so popular it seems to have stunned Apple's servers.
Apple's response to one problem, but not the other, is typical of the company. I think Apple did the right thing with the battery-life issue, but I'm frustrated by its lack of a public explanation for the Siri problems—and yes, the two issues are different and require different approaches.

The iOS 5 battery drain problem seems to be a complex interaction between a phone's software, a mobile network, and location. We've seen bugs like this on phones before; remember how some of Samsung's Galaxy S devices initially had serious GPS flaws? It can take a while to pinpoint where the problem lies.
Apple reacted here with deliberation and thoughtfulness. The company didn't freak out or say anything rash. It monitored the complaints for a few days, made some calls to affected consumers to get more details, clearly went back into the lab to find out exactly what was causing the problem, and issued a statement that a fix is coming.

I can't see what more people could have asked for here—but I understand why they wanted more, and I'll get to that in a moment. Apple is a bunch of humans, in a building, hopefully working no more than 12 hours a day, with a lot of products in the pipeline. They heard about a bug, they double-checked before saying anything, they found the bug, they're fixing the bug. Case closed.

The recent problems with Siri, on the other hand, are a lot less difficult and ambiguous, because they're entirely under Apple's control. Siri is a service operated by Apple. It's being overloaded under the weight of its popularity. This is similar to the Mobile Me fiasco of 2008.

Unlike with a complex handset bug that needs lots of testing to verify, it's relatively easy for Apple to know its servers are overloaded and issue some sort of quick statement, for instance: "The tremendous popularity of Siri has led to stress on our servers. We are adding capacity to resolve the problem, but for now, be aware the service is in beta."

In a curious twist, Apple seems to have been tweaking Siri's error messages to make her explain herself, telling Apple blogger John Gruber that "my mind is going." That fits with Apple's strategy: if you have to admit the products are fallible, try not to admit their creators are as well.

Apple's Counterproductive Mystique

Apple promotes its products as perfect objects produced by demigods. That is transparently false and in fact impossible, but it has worked for the company so far. That approach only becomes a problem when the human origins of Apple's gadgets turn into obvious bugs.

The company takes a very different approach to PR than other tech firms do. Apple execs generally don't speak at conferences, except when the conferences are run by Apple itself or by the company's special friends. They don't mingle with journalists or consumers on a regular basis, and they don't invite queries. The message is: our products are perfect enough to speak for themselves. That builds a mystique not just around the products, but around the creators. Apple's staffers hold themselves above and apart from the regular folks in the technology world.

The flip side of this approach, of course, is that when the products don't speak for themselves, consumers feel uncommonly let down. When the curtain is ripped away to reveal that their devices are just very good consumer electronics created by a bunch of smart but fallible humans, many people feel subtly betrayed. Consumers expect Apple's Olympians to be better than us, but of course, they aren't. They're just people. They make mistakes.

This marketing strategy is also why Apple's bugs get so much more press than other companies' bugs, by the way. When you promise perfection, any imperfection is news. When you call your products "revolutionary and magical," that's a high bar to set. Nobody else promises perfection quite to the extent Apple does.
I've always felt that Apple could do better by pulling back that curtain just a little bit. I remember when I asked an Apple exec, many years ago, about a missing feature in one of its products. The exec told me: we don't have infinite staff, we have to prioritize, it's a tough problem, it's on the list, we're working on it. If Apple said that about managing Siri's server load, I think most people would forgive the company. And if Apple said that about more things more often, I think Apple's critics would forgive it more often. Humans like to empathize, and Apple's marketing approach invites admiration and even worship for the company, but not empathy.

But who am I to criticize? Apple's strategy is stunningly successful because consumers are looking for something simple and perfect, something to pull them out of their difficult and complex lives, something handed down in beauty from the clouds. The company can clearly take a few blows to the chin to protect that mystique.

Popular smartphones Review- iPhone v. Blackberry

In the year 2011, it's become standard to own a cell phone that can surf the web, download music, and send texts in a matter of seconds. The two most popular smartphones among teens are the BlackBerry and the iPhone.

When the first iPhone / ipad Accessories came around in 2007, it was almost revolutionary.Adults and teens alike were fascinated by the touch-screen technology and the phone's various capabilities. Although the iPhone is fairly simple to use and many new users are familiar with iTunes as well as the app store, many argue that the phone itself is overrated.

A popular opinion about the iPhone is that the touch-screen keyboard is difficult to type with since the keys are spread apart. One of the more popular features of the iPhone is that it functions as an iPod complete with the iTunes store, which makes it simple to purchase music and add it to the iPod without the hassle of connecting it to a computer. Many users also agree that the internet browser is simplified, easy to navigate with, and rarely freezes.

A few years back, many viewed the BlackBerry as strictly a business phone, used by adults and multi-taskers. Today, it's one of the most popular smartphones among teenagers as well as adults. Many teenagers claim that the primary reason they had for purchasing one was to utilize an application that is complete with every BlackBerry -- BBM, or BlackBerry Messenger. The application almost resembles an instant messaging tool, and makes communication between other BlackBerry users simple. It's also free.

Several BlackBerry users also agree that although the interface of the iPhone is quality, BlackBerries can sustain a longer battery life and are less prone to breakage. The e-mail service also allows the user to manage more than one address, which is beneficial to e-mail users with several obligations. However, BlackBerry owners claim that the music application is more difficult to use than the iPod feature on the iPhone.

“I’d rather buy an iPod separately than use the music app on the BlackBerry,” said one tenth grader.
If you're looking into purchasing either a BlackBerry or an iPhone, you should consider what your priorities on your cell phone are. Also, the price of these devices should not be ignored, as both require a separate payment for internet usage and other services.

One 11th grader told us he would not be getting a smartphone any time soon. “My family is tight on money,” he said.

If you are in the market though, whereas the iPhone offers simplicity in watching movies, listening to music, and downloading apps, the BlackBerry is a more sophisticated phone meant for communicating with friends and family as well as keeping things organized.

How to Hands on with GarageBand for the iPhone and iPad

Apple's music-making app goes universal, presents compelling new features

It’s no secret around these parts that we’re pretty fond of GarageBand on iOS. Apple’s mobile music app hits all the right notes, appealing to newbie musicians and professionals alike, offering massive amounts of functionality behind the guise of an easy-to-use interface and playful instrument designs; it’s almost hard to believe the program has only been around since March.

Now, GarageBand is getting its first full update, and it’s a whopper: The app has gone universal, with a brand-new iPhone and iPod touch interface, and has added a bunch of new features, including custom chords for Smart Instruments, an Arpeggiator, new velocity settings, transposition, new time signatures, quantization options, and support for AAC and AIFF export.

I spent the morning playing around with GarageBand on both my iPad 2 / iPad Cases and iPhone 4; here are some initial impressions on the update.

Phenomenal cosmic powers… itty bitty living space

When I first got a chance to play with GarageBand on the iPad back in March, I had little expectation for an iPhone port. While the device's portable size makes it ideal for recording vocal snippets and guitar parts on the go, I was skeptical about the viability of GarageBand’s full feature-set on such a small device. I’d owned guitar and piano iPhone apps before, but found them severely lacking in actual usability, thanks to small screen space and poorly-done interfaces.

GarageBand's iPhone implementation retains every feature from its iPad version.

As of Tuesday, I am very happy to be completely, utterly wrong. Not only does GarageBand’s iPhone and iPod touch version make music creation, editing, and exporting a snap, but the folks on the development team have somehow managed to implement almost every single feature from GarageBand for iPad into the device, and without compromising on design or user experience, at that. (The only missing feature I could find was support for multiple keyboards on one screen—something that makes little to no sense on a device as small as an iPhone or iPod touch / Ipod cases.)

All your instruments from GarageBand for iPad are ready and waiting; all your settings, ready to be tweaked. The design team has made some very clever adjustments to compensate for the iPhone’s small screen: The instruments themselves take up the full length of the screen, saving a small amount of space for the toolbar, which offers all your controls, hidden in several nicely-defined menus.

To access alternate instrument styles, other instruments, or to return to your songs list, tap the upside-down triangle in the upper left corner. If you want to swap back to your song timeline for editing, tap the timeline button immediately next to it. This button is intelligent: When in timeline mode, the icon switches to that of the instrument you have selected; tap it again to return to instrument mode, and it will turn into the timeline icon again.

In the center, you have your standard play controls: A button for returning to the beginning of the song, one to Play/Pause, and one to record. Off to the right, there are one or two icons, depending on the complexity of your instrument. The first—the effects icon—appears only if your instrument has additional toggles that the iPhone simply doesn’t have space to display. (For example, the Autoplay knob and Chord/Notes toggle for the Smart Guitar.) Tap the icon, and the play area will slide down, revealing the extra controls.

Tap the effects icon on the iPhone, and the chords view will slide down, revealing extra controls.
I like everything about this implementation. For one, the effects area still provides you with some access to the instrument (or, in the case of Smart Instruments, their chords) so that you can try out effects without constantly switching views. In addition, the GarageBand designers have been able to have a bit of fun stretching the instrument design metaphor, which leads to really beautiful discoveries: Tap the effects icon while in Smart Guitar, for example, and as the chords slide down, so does the entire guitar, revealing the curve of the instrument.

The last icon in the toolbar—the ever-familiar gear icon—has been multi-purposed here into a single window for track, section, and song settings. (In the iPad version, all three have separate pop-overs.) Like the effects view, you can test out a tweak made without having to leave the screen by tapping the volume icon in the upper left corner; it’ll play a snippet from whatever you’ve been working on.

I didn’t have too much time to play around in GarageBand’s editing mode, but it, again, looks remarkably similar to its iPad cousin. You have full access to loops, support for cutting gestures, and the same eight-track limit for songs. Our full review of GarageBand 1.1 will likely take a closer look at the music-making process, but from the limited time I spent with it, I was incredibly impressed.

Instrument ch-ch-changes

GarageBand's custom chords feature lets you adjust any one of your Smart Instrument chords.
You’d think adding universal support to GarageBand would be enough for one update, but there are plenty of other tweaks. The program’s Smart Instruments—Smart Guitar, Keyboard, and Bass—now offer support for custom chords, something I’ve been itching for since its release. You can adjust any of the eight pre-formatted chords by tapping Edit Chords in the settings pop-over and test them on the fly; if a chord you picked doesn’t work well with the one next to it, you can just adjust it at will.

Smart Keyboard, Keyboard, and the Sampler get an Arpeggiator, a feature that sounds like it should be destroying things in a science-fiction film; in reality, the only thing it’ll destroy is your free time. Based on the synthesizer effect of the same name, the Arpeggiator lets you define a sequence by playing a chord, then proceeds to create an arpeggio from that input. You can add a varied octave range (from one to four) for your arpeggio, change the note order, and alter the speed and note kind (1/4 - 1/32 note, dotted, or triplet).
Those who like velocity-based instruments—Drums, Smart Keyboard, and the Sampler among them—will be happy to hear that there are now some rudimentary controls for adjusting sound. Because your iOS device doesn’t have a pressure-sensitive screen, GarageBand uses the velocity of your touch to imitate force. The Velocity Sensitivity setting offers four options: High, Medium, Low, and Off.

You can transpose tracks made with the Keyboard, Smart Keyboard, and Sampler.From my experience, off presents a default forte) sound with every tap; Low seems to more-or-less provide the same sound as when off; Medium offers two distinctions between taps, forte and piano; and High offers forte, mezzo-piano, and piano options. In English: Off—Loud; Low—Loud; Medium—Loud and Soft; High—Loud, Medium-Soft, and Soft.

Other instrument features include a transposition option for the Keyboard, Smart Keyboard, and Sampler: If you’re unhappy with your track, or want a different sound, you can adjust it by half-steps and octaves. And if you’re a drum enthusiast, you’ll also find a new switch in settings to separate the bass drum from the cymbal.

General tweaks

GarageBand’s instruments have gotten most of the new goodies in this update, but there are a few new general features out there, too: Two new time signatures, 3/4 and 6/8, join the default 4/4; you can change your song’s key without automatically transposing your other tracks to the new key; and new quantization options allow you to correct your song’s timing with swing and triplet notes. Finally, you can export your finished song in two new formats: AAC (from low-quality 64 kbs to iTunes Plus-quality 256 kbs) and uncompressed AIFF.

In short: This is a huge update. I spent several hours digging around, and even then, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer. I certainly like what I see, though, and can’t wait to dig around a little more. Who knows? There might even be some treasure lurking beneath the surface. For that, you’ll have to stay tuned for Macworld's full review of GarageBand 1.1, coming soon.