1. You notice that you pay more than usual for your mobile phone bill
This is a sign that some trojan might send SMSs or make phone calls to super expensive phone numbers, sometimes even oversees. The problem with these calls is that it is very hard to prove that you didn’t manually and intentionally made them. Most of the time the mobile phone operator will ask you to pay first and then explain later.

 
2. Data usage increase
Malware usually sends back your private data to the cybercriminals that created it. If you notice an increase in the data usage or if your provider is slowing down your data transfer because you consumed too much in a month, it might be a sign that malicious software communicates without your knowledge.

 
3. Calls are interrupted often and SMSs don’t reach their destination
Even if you see that you have maximum reception sometimes the most basic functions of the phone don’t work reliably. Sometimes malware tries to intercept the calls and even re-route them to more expensive numbers or through proxies.

 
4. Battery consumption grows unexpectedly
If without using your phone more than usual you notice that the battery drains, there might be some program that is residing in the active memory. Such programs can be trojans that try to intercept the calls and SMSs you make.

 
5. Bad overall performance of the smartphone
If your smartphone becomes slower than usual and apps take much longer to start and function, something might be using the CPU and the memory of the phone. Review the last apps you installed and try to uninstall them to check whether one of them is consuming the resources. However, note that this might not solve your problem if you installed a malicious app. Most of the malicious apps install backdoors in your device and will download additional payload without you noticing.

 
6. Apps crash unexpectedly
If apps that usually worked without problems and didn’t get updated lately, suddenly start to crash, might be a sign that something is interfering with their functionality. It could also be that your smartphone doesn’t have anymore resources to run the app because something else is using it (see 5).

credit goes to http://techblog.avira.com/2013/04/29/is-your-smartphone-infected/en/

You rely on your smartphone for many things. One area that is lacking is integration with your TV watching. At best, the smartphone was used as a simple remote control to change channels. New apps make use of your phone as a search tool and scheduler. Finally, the phone and TV might really work together.

DirecTV Taps Into Your Phone

This summer, DirecTV will release into beta its latest app, DirecTV Voice. They have been working with Nuance, creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, to create a voice controlled app to search DirecTV channels for your favorite shows. Their goal is to finally get rid of scrolling through the program grid displayed on the TV screen to find programs.

By using voice recognition, they are trying to also get away from pushing buttons or sliding through nested menus. Nuance is the county’s premier voice recognition specialists so they plan this release to have a high rate of success with this voice-driven application. Think of it as Siri with infinite knowledge of TV shows and movies.

Continue reading »

There is no doubt that iOS is in desperate need of upgrading. It has been around too long in it’s current state. Android and more specifically Windows Phone have a much more intuitive and modern look. Apple even borrowed some of Androids notification goodness in iOS 5. Now it seems that Apple may borrow some of Microsoft’s Metro UI flava for it’s own in the upcoming release of iOS 7. 9to5Mac is stating that multiple sources are claiming the new interface and general design will be “very, very flat”. While other sources are stating that the new design "loses all signs of gloss, shine and skeumorphism"

Jony Ive, who is now in charge of the iOS design team is said to favor the Metro minimalistic style and bring elements of that UI into Apple’s new UI that should be previewed at the WWDC 2013. Macrumors has a pretty cool mockup of the new UI and I can already tell you I am not a fan. What makes the “flat” style work on Windows Phones is that it is now tunable to your own desire by being able to make the truly live tiles bigger or smaller and move them around at will.

If these formerly called icons could be more like Android widgets and have the scalability of Windows Phone I think it would be more of a hit. It is also being stated that the "new panels [that] swipe from the left and right side of an iOS device’s display."

So it could very well possibly be that iOS 7 falls flat in a good way, but Apple better have something more up it’s sleeve than the mocked up image or it could find it’s not so shiny new UI falling flat in a bad way.

The popular Android personal assistant has not come to the iPad and iPhone but I don’t look for it to replace Siri anytime soon. Even though I have a love hate relationship with Siri there is a deeper integration that with Google Search which is where Google Now is buried. First thing is to fire up your iOS device and head to iTunes and either download or update Google Search. Once downloaded and you fire it up, the Google Search screen is pretty boring. At the bottom of the screen there are some notifications that you can lift up (swipe) and will display multiple cards. The cards will appear based off your location results and selections for example with sports and teams. When you are done with a card you can swipe it the heck out of there. Which is kind of neat. I’m still working with Google Now for iPad but so far I am pretty underwhelmed and the Android experience with Google Now is much better.

Apple outs their new iPhone 5 commercial heavily advertising the wonders of the 5′s camera. For years now, Apple has been leading the industry in camera quality, starting with the 3GS and really coming to fame with the 4.

But, today, things are a bit different. With the Lumia 920 leading the industry with the best overall shooter, the HTC One right behind it with only a 4MP rating and the brand new SG4 calling it a close tie with the iPhone 5, things are surely different.

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Q&A with Eric Schmidt hosted by WSJ’s AllThingsD, it’s long so here are the takeaways.

An audience member notes that Windows Phone chief Terry Myerson of Microsoft just accused Google of mobilizing to  squash Facebook Home, that he “’wouldn’t be shocked if Google were trying to block out Facebook Home right now,’ but what’s to keep you guys from removing it from removing the app from the store and having people sideload it instead?”

Schmidt cuts him off, “Why are you listening to Microsoft’s statements about Google? … So you’ve now constructed using Microsoft a scenario that’s highly unlikely, why don’t you ask Microsoft some basic questions about their products and their strategy? [Blocking Facebook Home] would be counter to our public statements, our policies, our religion – anything else? I want to make sure I’ve answered your question. The answer is no.”

Argh this is taking too long to transcribe, just watch the thing if you’d like, slow but interesting, also that way you can get a better read on Schmidt’s intonation and inflection to further understand his genius and pricelessly dry sense of humor:

From the Jailbreak Community for the iPhone comes a new app that will give your lock screen some more functionality missing from iOS 6. It’s called Atom and it allows you to add 6 icons to your lock screen that you can open by dragging a grabber button over the app icon you want to open right from your lock screen. You are limited to just 6 icons on your lock screen at this time but can customize it with any app you want.

It is available at the Big Boss repository for $1.99.

[9to5mac via @the_gadgeteur]

Today is World Book Day. No, I can’t say I’ve heard of it, either, and I’m a bookworm.

But in any event, in case you’re in iPhone or iPad user, and you have kids, today ONLY you can get StoryToys’ apps FREE.

So GO! Share the love of books with your wee geeks.

(Note, since I don’t have iTunes on my laptop, and refuse to install that piece of junk, I copied the link above from totallytarget.com. You can find the original article here, and if my copy of their link doesn’t work, try it directly from their site.)

We all know how brutal Foxconn is  with its employees, but every once in a while a disgruntled “staffer” will leak information about the climate inside the tech manufacturing giant for Apple. While this is just rumor and unsubstantiated,  The Register cites a report in China Business that anywhere from 5-8 million unidentified handsets where rejected by Apple and sent back. It’s not clear what version of the iPhone it was, whether the iPhone 5 or 4S, but at an estimated cost of $200 bucks each, Foxconn is going to have to take a huge hit worth up to $1.5 billion.

Now, there is no doubt the total hit would be that much for Foxconn as most of the components should be able to be reused. It is said that the rejected iPhone were sent back “due to appearance of substandard or dysfunctional problems.”.

With Apple stocks up 6% to 405 this morning, rumors even as shaky as this cannot help the 800 pound gorilla much.

First things first. I don’t have a Blackberry Playbook, HP Touchpad (I sold it). I don’t have Android Tablet with ICS or up installed. I sold them on eBay and bought a nice Surface Pro for me. That puts my tests incomplete, but they gave me a basic idea. Since Playbook and Touchpad have minimal market, I decided not to worry and test against them, unless some great soul loans me those. I might get a Galaxy Note Tab in a few days and I will update this again.

Here I am not talking about App Ecosystem (iPad and Android). I am not talking about MS Office availability (Windows RT). I am not talking about fast boot approach like browser as a OS (Chromebook) or wide choice of devices (Android). I am also not worried about cloud sync, because almost all these devices are capable of syncing to cloud through natively or 3rd party apps. I am also not talking about which lasts longer on a single full charge or which is lighter to carry around.

I just want to be able to sync my smartphone through USB to the tablet I have, and explore it and sync the content. This is just because most of the media and good number of great analysts of Wall Street, IDC and Gartner are talking about death of PC or Post PC devices and even some of them say Microsoft is doomed and it is going to die tomorrow. If that happens, my PCs will not work because a dead company can’t release something to support my devices. I should be able to USB sync my devices, because if I can’t pay for internet for unforeseeable circumstances, the so called cloud services will not be there for me and I really can’t touch my media in the cloud.

Yes, with this type of economy an average Joe like me should be prepared for the worst come and in this case it is having a media backup locally instead of in the cloud would save the day.

Anyway keeping the rant at bay, I tried USB sync iPhone 5, HTC EVO 3D with Android ICS, Windows Phone 7.5, and Windows 8 with Surface RT, iPad 2 and Chromebook.

Here are my findings:

Host/Device	iPhone 5	HTC EVO 3D	Windows Phone 8	Windows Phone 7.5
Surface RT	Photos/Video	Disk Drive	Total Sync	No
iPad 2	Photos/Video	“Connected USB Device Not Supported”	“Connected USB Device Not Supported”	“Connected USB Device Not Supported”
Chromebook	No	Disk Drive	No	No

 

Note: I erased or blurred some parts of the screenshots, as they are not necessary.

Surface RT or any Windows RT tablet could USB Sync with iPhone 5, Android, and of course Windows 8. In the case of Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft said it needs Zune Client, which is a legacy Windows app developed for x86/x64 compatible processors not ARM compatible processors. Windows RT runs on ARM processor, so which is understandable and you have to use SkyDrive to sync.

When you USB sync your iPhone with Windows RT tablet here are the sequence of events that happen on your Windows RT Tablet.

It shows a dialog box on the upper right corner of your tablet like this:

and then once you tap that you will be presented with this:

If you select “Import photos and videos”, it opens the Photos app and you can import the pictures and videos from your phone.

If you select “Open device to view files”, then the Desktop App gets opened and within desktop Windows Explorer application gets launched like the following:

Once you tap Internal storage, it gets expanded and all you see is the DCIM folder and that’s where your photos and videos taken from iPhone Camera’s gets stored:

If you Sync your Android with Windows RT, once you USB sync your phone you will see something similar to the following. Please note the following are similar screens presented on your Android phone even if you USB sync with your Chromebook:

Once you tap Charge only, you will see something similar on your phone. Please select Disk drive option and tap on Done:

    

Desktop App on your Windows RT tablet gets launched and it opens the Windows Explorer application and you could see that your Android device mounted as external drive. And you could transfer files between your Windows RT Tablet and Android device. Please wait for 15 to 20 seconds to see this:

Now let us do Windows Phone 8 USB Sync. If you have already done that, you might have Windows Phone App already installed on your Windows RT tablet and it takes care syncing between your phone and Tablet. But if you are doing it for the first time, you will similar to the following screens:

Once you tap, it starts downloading and installing the Windows Phone app from Windows Store. Once it is installed you will asked to change your phone name and option to automatically import media to your computer. Click on All Done and you will taken to Windows Phone App and you could see the pictures, videos, and options to sync music etc:

Ok now let us see iPad 2 sync with various devices. With iPad, of course you have to use iPad USB Adapter to sync with your iPhone, and it opens the Photos App on your iPad and allows you to import pictures/video from your iPhone. Surprisingly iPad doesn’t work with any of Android, Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8. It threw an alert box saying “Cannot use USB Device. Connected USB Device Not Supported.”

Once you USB sync your iPhone 5 with iPad2 using USB adapter (purchased separately from Apple), you will see the Photos App launched and you will given an option to Import and delete pictures/video from your iPhone 5 like this:

But if you USB Sync your Android device or Windows Phone (7.5 or 8), you will see something like this:

 

Now let us see how Chromebook works with iPhone, Android Phone and Windows Phone (7.5 and 8).

Once you USB Sync either your iPhone or Windows Phone (7.5 or 8), you will not see any action on the Chromebook. I waited for more than 10 minutes nothing happened. I opend Files App on my Chromebook and still I didn’t see anything, except for Downloads and Google Drive folders on that:

Chromebook can be synced with Android devices using the Disk Drive option once you USB sync your phone. And since it becomes an external drive, you could transfer files, media between devices like it did with Windows RT tablets. I synced my HTC EVO 3D with ICS and it launched the Files App and I could see my phone listed as USB Drive:

I am planning to get an Android tablet and see how it syncs with various phones. I don’t have a Blackberry or Symbian phones. If someone provides me those, I could run these again and see how they could be able to sync up with Tablets.

Now if Microsoft could provide a way to sync the stored contacts, text messages using USB, then that would complete it.

To me personally, Windows RT tablet is more savvier and appealing than competing tablets. It comes Microsoft Office for RT, which is much better than many Office like Apps for Android, iPhone/iPad or Google Drive. The Windows Store is growing and it already has good number of applications, currently looking at 50,000+ apps and Xbox Games. Windows RT tablets come with USB port support and HDMI support. Of course you could do the same on Android and iPads too. They also have support for various sensors and cameras like higher end Android tablets and iPads. Support for RDP is there like Android Tablets, and iPads. And I could connect to variety of cloud services just like other tablets. The factor for me is having Lync support. I use Lync most of the day to communicate with my peers at work.

Don’t you think Windows RT tablets are better than competing platforms?