Tag: smartphones

Article

Samsung opens up Knox security platform to all consumers

From the horse’s mouth

Samsung

Product Page

Lookout

Press Release

Product Page

My Comments

With the increased trend for BYOD and smartphone/tablet-based computing, there has been the call for mobile device management and mobile application management in order to achieve the goal of corporate data security.

Typically the solutions that are being offered out there are very costly and require an in-house information-technology team to manage them. This also includes the requirement to implement corporate messaging systems like Microsoft Exchange ActiveDirectory and use them as data hubs for these systems. This kind of situation may not appeal to personal users who value the security of their personal data. Nor does it work well for small organisations where one person is effectively the “chief cook and bottle-washer” for that organisation. You may be lucky to benefit from this technology if you deal with an IT value-added reseller that works with these systems and pitches them to these organisations.

But the security realities are still the same, especially with personal data or if your business hub is your briefcase, a corner of a room at home, a small office, or a small shop.

Here, Samsung has opened up the Knox security platform for their Galaxy-based Android mobile devices in a manner that makes the platform available to everyone by partnering with Lookout . It implements sandboxing so you can corral private data and have it treated more securely compared to other data. This includes allowing applications that you pre-approve to touch that data and limit what they can do to the data. For larger business setups, it could allow business data to be “wiped off” the smartphone when a user leaves the business without personal data being affected, but this context could be implemented when a smartphone is being retired from active service or you effectively “hand the keys over” to someone else as, per se, part of selling your business.

One question that may need to be asked is whether this solution may allow many data corrals so you as a small-business operator or professional have greater control over data such as intellectual property that pertains to different contracts or a person who has business work but also does volunteer work for a charity.

At least Samsung have taken the step to offer enterprise-desired security solutions to the “rest of us” rather than fencing it off for the “big end of town” and is something that could be encouraged for data security or similar application classes.

Article

Stream Google Play Music Songs To Any UPnP Or DLNA-Compatible Receiver | Lifehacker Australia

Cast To UPnP/DLNA for GMusic

Download link from Google Play Store 

Demonstration Music in video

Song: Earth Wind & Fire – Can’t Hide Love

Album: Earth Wind & Fire – Greatest Hits

My Comments

If you are buying music through the Google Play Store and want to get it out through some decent speakers, you don’t need to use Google’s Chromecast dongle and an HDMI-equipped TV. Rather, as regular readers will know, DLNA-compliant playback equipment in the from of stereos, home-theatre systems, wireless speakers and the like are more commonly available than the Google Chromecast HDMI dongle.

Instead the “Cast To UPnP/DLNA for GPlay” app adds the list of UPnP AV/DLNA media-renderer devices to the list of playback clients available for playing out your Google Play Store music. This can be a boon with home-theatre setups where you specifically don’t want the attached TV screen to light up every time you want music to play.

It is available as a time-limited free program but drop $2 within the program to guarantee it full functionality.

You have just bought that new smartphone or tablet and want to make sure it is complete when it comes to accessories. These are about charging that “do-it-all” device up or running it from external power; connecting the device to other devices like speakers or car stereos; or simply allowing you to operate your device safely and protecting it from unnecessary damage.

Power supply

Each charger should have at least one USB Type-A socket so you can connect the smartphone, tablet or other mobile device to it via its USB data cord. Some devices that use a DC plug or other connection form can be connected to these chargers using a USB power-adaptor cable which may come with the charger or can be picked up as an accessory.

As for power capacity, I would recommend using a charger that works at 2.1 amps if you are using a tablet or are likely to charge two or more devices at once. It is also worth noting that you can use a charger as a way of powering the phone or tablet in a manner to conserve battery runtime. This comes in handy when you are, for example, using your phone for navigation or music as you drive or using a smartphone as a network access point.

AC-USB charger

AC-USB charger

You never can have too many of these chargers especially if you need to top up a phone or tablet that is always running out of juice or being used heavily.

The small USB chargers can be useful as part of a small accessory bag that you take with you when you travel, even as you go out and about. Similarly, there are the USB chargers that have an integrated AC socket as well as the USB sockets. These are very handy if you come across situations where lamps and appliances are constantly unplugged by people wanting to charge up their smartphones or tablets or run these devices at home without compromising their battery runtime.

On the other hand, a self-powered USB hub with its power supply can serve as an AC-USB charger for up to four or seven devices.

Cigar-lighter-USB car charger

USB car charger which plugs in to a vehicle’s cigar-lighter socket

The USB car chargers that plug in to a vehicle’s cigar-lighter socket can be very handy whether you drive a vehicle or not. In some cases, they can come in very handy with other accessories that work on the same voltage such as Bluetooth audio adaptors and most of these are as big as a thumbnail thus not occupying much space in your accessory bag.

External battery pack

USB external battery pack

These accessories come in two forms – a rechargeable battery pack that is charged by a USB connection or a battery holder that takes two to four AA batteries and converts the power from the batteries to USB power for your phone.

There are variants of this device that are designed for the older Apple iPhones which use the legacy 30-pin dock connector. Here, these units can be charged from an Apple-compliant dock and be clipped on to the iPhone they are to power. Further variants of this device come in the form of a case that the iPhone sits in rather than a battery pack that clips on to the iPhone.

Similarly, some of the rechargeable battery packs may use an integrated or accessory solar panel to allow you to charge them from the sun. These typically are to allow you to operate your phone independently of the AC power and are sold on an “eco” or “green-living” promise, but they take a long time to charge up fully from the sun and require the charger to see bright sunshine.

Lower-capacity devices may work well for charging up a smartphone once or “boosting” (adding power) to a 5” smartphone or tablet. This is compared to higher-capacity devices which could charge up a smartphone two or three times or a tablet once or twice; or simply be effective in providing “long-run” power to the smartphone or tablet.

It may be worth noticing with some of the rechargeable battery packs that have two or more USB output sockets in that if they are connected to a charger and switched on, they could supply power to two or more devices. This can come in handy if you want to cut down on the number of AC or car chargers you take with you.

Cables

USB data cables

USB data / power cable

This cable is essentially how you get power in to your phone or tablet and it should have a Type A USB connector on one end and the connector that fits your device on the other end. This typically will be a MicroUSB connector for most non-Apple devices, a 30-pin Apple Dock connector for older Apple devices or the small Lightning connector for new Apple devices. You could get by with one or more cables that have the Apple Dock connector and some Dock-Lightning plug adaptors if you have a mix of Apple devices that have the different connectors.

Audio connectivity

For any portable audio device, I consider the following cables as essential to keep with the device:

• A cable with a 3.5mm stereo mini phone plug at each end
• A cable with a 3.5mm stereo mini phone plug at one end and two RCA (phono or cinch) plugs at the othe end
• A cassette adaptor which slots in to car cassette players and connects to your phone or tablet

3.5mm to 3.5mm stereo audio cable

The first cable comes in handy with an increasing number of car stereos, home-theatre receivers and other AV devices that use a 3.5mm (1/8”) mini phone jack on the front. This is to allow you to walk up and connect portable audio devices to these units and have them play through the system’s speakers.

3.5mm stereo to 2 RCA plug audio cable for most audio equipment

The second cable comes in handy with connecting your phone or tablet to just about every piece of home audio equipment, including some mid-range and higher-end “ghetto blasters” made through the 1980s and 1990s just by using any vacant line-level input i.e. a “tape”, “CD”, “tuner” or “aux” input.

A cassette adaptor that allows you to use your smartphone with a cassette-based car stereo

Some of you may see the cassette adaptor as a dated accessory especially with an Apple iPhone but it still has its place with your smartphone or tablet. For example, you may be using a late-70s / early-80s classic car that is kept “true to its era” and have tracked down and fitted a cassette player or retained the factory-supplied cassette car stereo in the dash of that car to keep the car that way. Similarly, some of you may have kept a cheap old car radio-cassette stereo with that “fast-forward / eject” button in that old car because you are in a risky neighbourhood and a nice car stereo would be asking for a brick through the window. You may also deal with a late-80s or mid-90s car that has an integrated cassette car stereo and you can’t substitute it easily with aftermarket car audio equipment. Here, the cassette adaptor effectively converts the cassette mechanism, hence the cassette slot, in to an auxiliary input through the use of a head mounted in the adaptor that inductively couples with the cassette player’s playback head to pass the sound to the player’s amplification circuitry. This means that even if the mechanism was prone to “chewing” the tape when it played tapes, it can work with these cassette adaptors.

With a cassette adaptor, you can play your smartphone or other device through this old car stereo

Other accessories

Removable windscreen mount

Another accessory that I find very important for smartphone users is the removable windscreen mount. Here, this device “grips” the phone and sticks to the windscreen (windshield) using a suction cup so you have the phone in a stable position. This is important when you are using the phone with a good maps app for navigation, as a music player / Internet car radio, or want to be sure whether to answer that incoming call when it rings. The fact that you can remove the removable windscreen mount is important if you need to take your device between cars that don’t have a phone mount, such as rental or borrowed vehicles, or want to conceal the phone mount thus avoiding the chance of your car being broken into.

Bluetooth audio adaptor with microphone.

Now these good headphones or other audio device can work as a stereo Bluetooth headset for your smartphone with a Bluetooth audio adaptor

A device that can come in very handy with any smartphone or tablet is a Bluetooth audio adaptor like the Nokia BH-111 or a recently-issued Kogan Bluetooth adaptor. These devices effectively work as Bluetooth handsfree kits by supporting headset or hands-free operating modes as well as the A2DP media-streaming operating mode, but are connected to headphones or external audio equipment for their audio output.

This can be handy with temporary setups where you want handsfree telephony or audio playback through existing equipment such as with home or portable audio equipment or rented or borrowed cars.  For car use, they may be best secured to the middle of the dashboard with double-sided tape or a good amount of Blu-Tack.

A lot of these devices will have an integrated microphone so you can speak to your caller during that call. There may be some good Bluetooth portable-handsfree kits which have an integrated speaker that may also have a 3.5mm stereo mini phone jack as an audio output especially when streaming music content from your device. This kind of setup may feed the Bluetooth Headset / Hands-Free Profile audio to the integrated speaker and the Bluetooth A2DP stereo audio to the external device.

Wraps or covers for your device

Any of the wraps or covers that are available for your particular phone or tablet work well in protecting the device as well as conveying your sense of style to your device. Some can range from a simple vinyl finish to a luxurious leather finish which has that look of that special wallet and, of course, the more you pay the more likely it will last for a long time. But, if you use an NFC-capable Android phone or tablet, you have to make sure that the wrap or cover doesn’t interfere with the NFC functionality. Similarly, you may find your Android device thinking it has cottoned on to an NFC device if you store your “touch-and-go” transport card or security pass in your billfold-style device cover with your device.

Conclusion

When you equip your smartphone or tablet with these accessories, you have the ability to gain more flexibility out of your mobile device. This is whether to avoid compromising your device’s battery runtime or have your device highly available; or to make it work with a wide range of computer or audio equipment; or simply be able to use the device safely and protect it from damage.

Article

Smartphone Cameras v Point And Shoot Digital Cameras | Photography

My Comments

Often we think of the cameras that are integrated in the typical smartphones as competing with the traditional compact digital cameras. Typically the smartphone and tablet cameras win out on integration in to the device we carry around frequently and immediate access to the online world for sharing what we have taken, whereas the compact cameras, especially those modelled on the 35mm compact camera, win out on the body shape, optics, sensor and electronics being tuned for the act of photography.

Taking images further

The main obstacle was taking the images that you took with the camera further using mobile-computing apps and Web sites. This is to do things like “throw” a copy of that image you took to the subject for them to take further or simply to share that image with your friends via Flickr, Picasa or Facebook.

Some newer trends have occurred where the cameras have been equipped with Wi-Fi wireless, Bluetooth or integrated wireless broadband in order to facilitate sharing of images held on the camera. The connection is augmented with front-end apps for image-sharing, cloud-storage and social-network services installed on the camera. There are even a few cases of digital cameras which have the Android mobile operating system as their operating system, with access to the same Google Play app store as you would have on an Android smartphone. This setup allows one to use the apps that exist for the Android platform such as the Dropbox and Facebook mobile front-ends with these cameras.

It is to mitigate the common situation where images have to be downloaded to a computer before they can be shared, whether through the camera being “tethered” to that computer or one removing the “film” i.e. the memory card from the camera and inserting it in the computer.

On the other hand, those of us who have newer Android smartphones and tablets could use a USB “On The Go” cable and either the camera’s USB cable or a card reader to “get at” the images we took with our cameras. Similarly Apple sells an iPad accessory kit which offers this similar function for the iOS devices.

Similarly, cameras that work with the “Eye-Fi” cards can allow you to share the images to your smartphone or tablet so you can take them further with the apps on these devices. They could utilise mobile NAS units of the likes of the Seagate GoFlex Satellite or the Kingston Wi-Drive as extra storage for the images and footage.

How I see this

I see the compact digital cameras existing as a way for those of us who value good-quality images to take these images on the go, including working as an auxiliary camera for big-time photographers.

Whereas the smartphone cameras would work more like the entry-level “quick-snap” cameras of the ilk of the Kodak Instamatics, the Polaroid instant-film cameras and the fixed-focus entry-level 35mm cameras where the goal is simply to grab a quick snapshot of the moment. They would also serve as a tool to create images they can refer to when doing tasks such as dismantling an item or grabbing reference numbers.

Article

Why You’ll End Up Wearing A Smart Watch | Gizmodo Australia

My Comments

With the increase in smart watches being developed by various companies including Google, Apple and Samsung, there has been optimism and doubt about whether we will start wearing these watches on our wrists.

What is the smart watch?

The smart watch is an extended-function watch that works with a smartphone as a wrist-based display for the phone. These watches are in a similar vein to the 1980s-era digital watch where the more functions it had, the more you could impress others with it. In a lot of cases, these functions served many practical uses like being able to time a process or log the duration of events like races.

It would tell the time using a customisable analogue or digital display but would be able to show up notifications from your smartphone. As well as being the clock, calendar, stopwatch and timer, it could also work as a remote control for your smartphone such as navigating the music that you are playing, selecting a contact to call or text or answering a call while you hear and talk to the caller via a Bluetooth headset. Another advantage that these would offer would be the ability for us to have a discreet glance at the watch if a message comes in on our phone.

Some doubters suggested that the smartwatch wouldn’t take off because of the fact that most young people don’t wear watches anymore. Instead they use the smartphone to tell the time or, if they have to have a watch, they would wear a quartz-driven dress watch. Of course, I would expect to see the smartwatch be considered as a wearable accessory to the smartphone and can evoke a level of curiosity from other people as we wear one of these watches just like it did with the digital watch.

What I would expect of the smartwatch would be to make use of Bluetooth 4.0 and similar technologies so it can run for at least 6 months on regular watch batteries. This is in addition to having a ladies’ form factor with similar functionality but appealing for the women to wear.

As well, it should be able to keep time independently of the host smartphone device yet use that device as a master clock for setting itself when initially started and when you cross time zones or whenever we change between standard time and daylight-saving time.

Personally, I would see these watches come on the scene as a viable practical mobile accessory for our phones rather than just a fashion accessory.

Article

Fujitsu tech takes your pulse with your camera phone – popular science, mobile applications, mobile, Fujitsu – PC World Australia

My Comments

The platform smartphone or tablet is starting to play an increasingly important role on personal health and wellbeing without the need to be dependent on extra peripherals. It is becoming increasingly relevant for these devices so you can keep an electronic record of observations or easily send the data to a doctor or clinic via email or cloud data service. This would lead to these devices becoming part of various home-based healthcare setups like management of chronic illnesses or catering to the idea of “ageing at home” where older people can stay at home independently or under the care of their relatives, friends or paid carers.

Previously I reported on the use of a smartphone camera and app that implements machine vision for “reading” certain urinalysis sticks, avoiding the need to check against confusing charts. I even put forward the idea of using similar “fluid-analysis” sticks and a smartphone app to check other liquids like drinks for “spiking” or “loading” or to check the pH level in a swimming pool.

Now Fujitsu has developed software code that makes a small digital camera like that installed in a smartphone or tablet as machine vision for taking someone’s pulse.This may be seen to displace the medical skill where you “pinch” the patient’s wrist near their hand and count the beats that you feel for a minute measured by a stopwatch or watch with second hand.

This concept works on the fact that the brightness of one’s face changes slightly as their heart beats and uses the presence of green light to look for haemoglobin which is part of the red (just oxygenated) blood cells. The procedure requires 5 seconds versus a minute with the orthodox method and the software can assess when patient is still for improved accuracy.

Fujitsu hopes to commercialise the technology in 12 months but there are questions on whether they will implement it in their own equipment or license it to other developers. For it to be popular, they would have to license the algorithms to other software developers to integrate in to their projects and / or release a finished software product to the platform app stores for people to use on their devices.

They also see this technology as facilitating unobtrusive measurement of one’s pulse using the camera on a PC, smartphone, smart TV, or tablet this being part of long-term observational-healthcare situations like chronic illness management.

What I see of this is the ability to use the cost-effective and ubiquitous hardware i.e. the multi-functional smartphone, tablet or Ultrabook to work as part of remote health care and allied applications with minimum need to use extra peripherals.

Article

Urine sample app lets users detect diseases with iPhones | Cutting Edge – CNET News

My Comments

I was amazed about the concept of having a smartphone’s camera along with a special app “read” a urine analysis strip to provide a better analysis of diseases and other issues that can be determined through urinalysis. This can allow for the in-home diagnosis that these strips provide but allow for improved accuracy in these tests. The end user doesn’t have to add any peripherals to the smartphone or tablet for these strips to work with the software nor does the device come in to contact with the fluid in question. Rather they use the camera integrated in this device to provide the “machine vision” for the software to do the analysis.

This app could also allow for further analysis for other illnesses and conditions by the developer programming it further for these different conditions.

But I would also like to see the concept taken further beyond health tests. For example, the use of a fluid analysis strip along with an app that “reads” the strip could come in handy as a tool to help with safe partying. Here, a fluid analysis strip could be placed in a hot or cold drink, then read by an analysis app which uses the smartphone camera for machine vision to determine if the drink has been spiked with drugs. The analysis app could also determine if a drink has been “loaded” with too much alcohol, by referring to a device-local or online database of known “alcohol ratios” for many drinks including the mixed drinks and cocktails.

Similar "analysis-stick” chromatography that uses a Webcam, smartphone camera or similar machine vision, can be taken further for consumer and applications like checking the condition of engine and battery fluids in a vehicle which can betray the truth about the condition of that used car he is trying to sell, or checking the condition of the water in a swimming pool so you can keep that pool in order.