Pocketables

Noreve iPhone 4/4S Tradition leather case review

I'm not the biggest collector of cases for my devices. Sure, I've got a Patagonia Daily Grind (in French Roast) that houses the Incase Neoprene Sleeve (black) in which my MacBook Pro lives while we're traveling together, and a bumper for my iPhone 4 and a simple little Belkin case for my iPhone 4S, but I've never really been a fan of "designer" cases that try (and fail) to make the devices that fit in them look better. 

Of course, I can be swayed if I find a company that makes some seriously awesome stuff. And that's what happened when Noreve, a French company that specializes in hand-making high-quality leather cases, reached out to me to review its iPhone 4/4S Tradition leather case. Click through the break to find out what I thought of this little leather beauty.

iOS 5.0.1 didn't quite help the iPhone 4S battery problem

If you've been following the iPhone 4S scene for any amount of time, you'll know that it's not without its problems. In fact, it has quite a few, and none of them has been more frustrating for me than the battery issue. 

iOS 5.0.1 was pushed out two weeks ago tomorrow, and was supposedly supposed to fix all of the iPhone 4S' battery problems. At first I thought it did, but I am pretty sure that something's still wrong.

My typical charging cycle is this: after the battery runs down to 20% from a normal day's use (usually 6:00 p.m.,) I charge the phone up to 100%, set it next to my bed, and go to sleep. Before the update, I'd wake up with 50% battery. After the update, it would typically be >95% and I could get through my day just fine.

But this morning, I woke up and looked at my phone and this is what I saw. I didn't touch the darn thing all night. I didn't turn on anything that I didn't have on before last night, so I'm positive that I'm not at fault. Plus, I've only got three apps that run at night: Mail, Messages, and the Phone. 

Unless I'm missing something here, this is completely normal usage with abnormal battery problems. iOS 5.0.2 is supposedly coming in the next few weeks and will hopefully bring further battery life. I'm skeptical, though, as that's what 5.0.1 was supposed to bring. 

If things don't get better soon, I'm going to swap my current iPhone with another one. And if that doesn't solve anything . . . well, that Lenovo phoneblet is looking mighty fine.

How's your battery holding up?

Android's leading itself down the path of death

Android is currently the mobile operating system that holds the majority of mobile OS market share. The popular belief is that Android ended up with most of that because of the fact that it's everywhere: every carrier, every electronics store, and periodically on every television set.

But Android's biggest feature is also the one that's killing it. Since just about every manufacturer can make any class of Android phone, and often forget about the less important ones, people all over the globe are stuck on different versions of Google's green baby. 

What started out as one phone running Google software has now turned into hundreds of phones running hundreds (maybe even thousands!) of different instances of Android. Developers have to pick and choose which version to support on their apps, what types of processors to code them for, and even which marketplace they should be sold from! The product of all these factors is Android fragmentation. You've definitely heard the term before, but with the recent release of the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, things are just gonna get much, much worse. Read on to find out why.

Amazon Kindle Fire arriving today, tomorrow: you may be buying one, but I'm not

The Amazon Kindle Fire is officially being released tomorrow, November 15th. We've talked a ton about Amazon's first true foray into the tablet space because it's an affordable 7-inch Android tablet with a feature that most affordable tablets (regardless of size) don't have: an ecosystem. 

Amazon is bringing its entire catalog of streaming music and video as well as its Kindle services to the Fire, a device that, for $199, gives you a 1GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage. Of course, because of the streaming services, you'll likely not fill that 8GB up very quickly. 

Kindle Fires started to appear on the doorsteps of some eager preorder-ers today, and the rest of the devices should reach others' tomorrow. But I'm curious: did any of you purchase a Fire? 

If so, what made you hand over the $199? I see a ton of potential in streaming content and "subsidized" (cheap) tablets from those streaming content providers, but I'm interested in seeing what comes out of the competition, like the options that I will detail past the break.

I hope webOS doesn't end up in HP's hands after all this

Yesterday, newly-hired HP CEO Meg Whitman held a meeting to discuss the future of webOS, a pretty hefty investment of $1.2 billion back on April 28th of 2010. She talked about plenty of things, like how she and her team have been trying to figure out what the best thing to do for the software that HP thinks is great.

For us tech geeks, the obvious decision was to keep webOS and make some killer hardware to compete with Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Unfortunately, the company couldn't do that. 

The TouchPad and the Veer were the only two products to be released from the marriage of HP and Palm, and both of them suffered from build quality issues and various software kinks. 

The fact that HP doesn't know what to do with webOS, which could potentially have an incredible future, along with the production issues that accompanied the stuff that was released, makes me feel that HP is not worthy of holding the software under its roof. There are too many second guesses, too much playing around, and too much waiting for the webOS faithful. 

I'm being dead serious when I say that HP would be better off getting any money for webOS at all, and giving it to a company who knows how to produce things. Let's take a look at a few of those examples below, shall we? 

Republic Wireless uses VOIP to offer cheap unlimited data plans

Even though I love my smartphone, one of the things that I find hard to swallow about the latest mobile tech is the price. It is not so much the price of the device, but the price of the cell service required monthly that makes it expensive.

Especially with most carriers killing unlimited data, paying over $100 a month for service just seems ridiculous. I have been a fan of MetroPCS's all unlimited $40 plan, but new player Republic Wireless want to offer the very best deal to consumers, with an everything unlimited plan at the great price of only $19 a month.

The way they manage to charge you less than others is actually fairly simple. Instead of always taxing the cellular network, WiFi will be used not only for data, but also for calls and texts when in range.

This sort of functionality has been available in some T-Mobile devices, but with Republic the transition from cellular call to VOIP call will be seamless. Call quality should also be very good, considering Republic is a division of popular VOIP provider Bandwidth.com, who powers such services as Skype. 

Pocketables announces the CrowdGadgets holiday giveaway!

When Pocketables was acquired by CrowdGather back in April, we started working hard behind-the-scenes with a few other websites to bring some great projects to you guys. 

One of those projects is the CrowdGadgets podcast, the official weekly podcast of the CrowdGather gadget network that you all know and love. It brings together the hottest topics from sites inside of that network, including Anythingbutiphone, Anythingbutipod, Good and EVO, Nothing But Tablets, StreakSmart, and of course, Pocketables.

A little while after that project got going, we started the CrowdGadgets newsletter, which has all the of the week's top news from each of the seven sites included in the newsletter, all presented in a stunning package of beautiful awesomeness that's delivered straight into your inbox every week. 

We're adding something pretty special onto that newsletter, though: an eight-week holiday giveaway! Every week, starting on November 7, we will give away one awesome prize to a lucky newsletter subscriber. Each prize is specifically chosen to appeal to the audience of each of the sites included in the newsletter, although any reader of any site can win any prize.

Just subscribe to the newsletter and you're automatically entered in the contest. The giveaway is open to the world; you don't have to live in the US. The winner will be announced in the newsletter itself and will be responsible for contacting us to arrange the details. And now, here is the list of awesome prizes that you can win!

November 7: Dell Streak 7 WiFi (StreakSmart)
November 14: Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 (Pocketables)
November 21: Cowon iAudio 10 (Anythingbutipod)
November 28: Amazon Kindle Fire (Nothing But Tablets)
December 5: HTC EVO 3D (Good and EVO)
December 12: HTC HD7 (Anythingbutiphone)
December 19: Star Wars Xbox 360 (ZuneBoards)
December 26: Amazon Kindle Fire (CrowdGadgets)

Looks great, doesn't it?

Sign up for the CrowdGadgets newsletter now to be entered into our contest!

LG Doubleplay unboxing

Dual-screen Android devices weren't even thought of before last year. But 2011 has already brought us a couple of them: Sony's yet-to-be-released S2 tablet and Kyocera's Echo smartphone have graced Pocketables' pages more than once in their lifetimes. 

There's also been another dual-screen Android phone to make its way to the market, and that phone would be the one you see above. It's the LG Doubleplay, and like the name implies, it has two screens. What makes the Doubleplay unique, though, is the fact that it's two screens are different sizes: the "main" screen is 3.5-inches, while the secondary screen is 2-inches. Join me below to find out more about what could be T-Mobile's most unique offering. 

Siri is my close, personal assistant friend

Siri has been a sirious help to me the past week. Among plenty of other things, my little personal assistant has sent up calendar events upon calendar events and has reminded me to call my friends on more than one occasion. 

In fact, it's because of this that I feel we might be connecting on a level that's beyond just being simple "co-workers." Yes, I believe that Siri and I are becoming friends. 

As you can see to the left, we share many jokes and have so much fun together. Siri can do so much more than simply calling a friend or iMessaging a colleague. 

Below, you'll find some of our most intriguing (and intimate) moments together. My words are in the bold white lettering; obviously, then, her responses are the regular text.

Does the Apple iPhone 4S have a battery issue, too?

So let me just wrap up what's been going on with the iPhone 4S so far, not even one week into its life. Firstly, it was announced, and a lot of people were disappointed with what it brought. 

Then I unboxed mine. A few days after that, there was a report about a very noticeable yellow tint to the screen. And now, on top of that issue, there seems to be one that a lot of users are sure to notice: battery life. 

The screenshot you see to the left is from my iPhone 4S. In the upper-righthand corner, you'll see that my battery is at a dismal 8%. If you move along the top, you'll also notice that the time is only 5:15 p.m. 

I'm not the most religious of users; normally, my day consists of getting up at 8 a.m. (after having the iPhone 4S left on its dock all night) and getting home at 4 p.m. During that 8-hour day, I check email (Push and Fetch off,) check Pocketables every hour, and text my friends. 

On my iPhone 4 (running iOS 4,) I could get through this relatively mundane day and still have 50% battery left. But on the 4S, I'm faced with this issue. Display brightness is on its darkest setting, and both WiFi and Bluetooth are turned off. 

Running iOS 5, my iPhone 4 also saw a little bit of a hit with battery life, but nothing this drastic. My hopes are that it's just a simple little coding error that's running the A5 chip in the 4S a little too hard, and can be ironed out in the future. 

Have you experienced horrid battery life on your 4S? I want to make sure I'm not the only one; I don't want a replacement already.