All About Google Chromecast wireless streaming

By Vijay @ 09:34am

Just as exciting as Android 4.3 and the new Nexus 7 tablet, is Google’s latest device, the Chromecast.

  A tiny HDMI dongle, the size of a thumb drive delivering endless YouTube, Netflix, Google Music, Pandora, and web content to your HDTV for streaming anything and everything. Easily stream content to your big screen for only $35. Andriod Community have had some hands-on. So take a peek after the break.

As you can already tell from the images, the Chromecast is a 3-inch dongle the size of most USB thumb drives. It has micro-USB on one end (for power, FYI) and the other is a full-size HDMI plug to stream 1080p video right to your TV and home theater. You’ll need micro-USB to power it, which wasn’t mentioned. Overall it’s small, and extremely portable, but we’re worried the bubble on the end will waste two HDMI ports, which could be an issue for some.

The size aside, which hopefully isn’t an issue, this thing has some serious potential. Plug in the micro-USB for power and start throwing HD video, Netflix movies and anything you’d like right to the television for the entire family to enjoy. Using a Wifi 2.4 GHz band (no 5 GHz) to talk to your smartphone, tablet, or laptop, the Chromecast will let you instantly stream things to the big screen.

Chromecast has some serious potential, and we’re looking for more details (such as mirroring) but for now it only works with a select set of apps. Those being YouTube, Netflix, Pandora Radio, Google Play Music, TV, and Movies, and of course full browsing using Chrome. The idea is dead simple too.

If you’re familiar with controlling any of those on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, it will be a breeze on the Chromecast because you use the device for controls. Our Android phones can truly control the entire experience now.

One important aspect is the Chromecast works on all devices, and is built to scale perfectly too. You can go from streaming a video from your Nexus 7, to swapping it out and “casting” a tab from Google Chrome on your iPhone 5 in seconds. It does it quick, accurately, and scales perfect. It works in sleep mode so you don’t waste screen time and battery life. So that’s a plus. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s indeed real!

For $35 this is a steal. Buy this amazing little addition right now for only $35.

Play Store Link

Source: Andriod Community

Have Nexus 4? Wants to update to 4.3? Here it is…

By Vijay @ 08:27am

 It’s important to remember that not everyone’s a whiz when it comes to the command-line aspect of Android.

The over-the-air update that brings the Nexus 4 to Android 4.3 is pushing out now. But if for some reason you haven’t gotten it yet and you don’t want to wait any longer, Phalgun Gujjar in Andriod Central forums has a nice little tutorial for sideloading the update. No, it doesn’t root your phone, and it’s really no different than just waiting for the update to push out. It’s quick and it’s easy and it’s a great way to learn one of the basics of working with your Android phone with the command line.

• How to update your Nexus 4 to Android 4.3

 

Top 5 Deals of the Week

By Vijay @ 10:41pm

1)HTC Desire 600

Normal Price: Rs 26,860

Deal Price: Rs 23,713

HTC Desire 600 was launched this week itself in India for Rs 26,990.

 The Desire 600 has a 4.5-inch Super LCD2 display with 960×540 pixel resolution natively. It packs 1 GB RAM and Snapdragon S4 quad core processor to run smoothly the Sense 5.0 layered Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system. By default, the phone packs only 8 GB on-board storage.

Weighing 130 grams, the Desire 600 measures 9.26mm thick and also features a memory card slot capable of accommodating up to 64 GB. Besides, it has an 8 megapixel rear camera, 1.6 megapixel front camera, 1860 mAh battery..

 The deal is available on Tradus where you have to apply a coupon code, MYSMART10, while checking out on the normal price of Rs 26,348.

2) Xolo Play T1000(Best Phone for Gamers)

Normal Price: Rs 15,999

Deal Price: Rs 13,859

This Tegra 3 based handset has just recently been launched in India for Rs 15,999. However, you can get this smartphone for as low as Rs 13,859 from Tradus. To avail the deal, you have to enter a coupon code – MYSMART10 – while checking out.

The Android Jelly Bean 4.1 operating system based Xolo Play T1000 comes with a 4.7 inch IPS display with high definition resolution. It has an 8 megapixel rear auto focus camera with BSI sensor, 2 megapixel front camera, 1 GB RAM, 4 GB built-in memory which is expandable up to 32 GB and a 1900 mAh battery. Besides 3G, Xolo Play supports, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS/A-GPS.

3)Nokia Lumia 720

Normal Price: Rs 17,000+

Deal Price: Rs 15,395

This too is available on Tradus and you have to apply a coupon code – MYSMART10. Note that most other retailers are selling the Nokia Lumia 720 for around Rs 17,000.

The Nokia Lumia 720 comes with a 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen, WP 8 operating system, 8 GB internal memory, 64 GB expandable storage slot, 1 GHz dual core processor, 512 MB RAM, 2000 mAh battery, 6.7 megapixel rear camera and a 1.3 megapixel front camera. With this offer, we can expect the recently launched Nokia Lumia 625 will be priced very competitively.

4) LG Optimus L7 11 Dual P715

Normal Price: Rs. 14,999/-

Deal Price: Rs. 13,368/-

This is also available on Tradus and you to directly login into their account to know further information about this deal..

The LG Optimus L7 11 Dual is new Dual-Sim Mobile from LG. The Phone has a 4.3-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 480a800. This phone features Andriod 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1 GHZ Dual Core Cortex A5 Qualcomm MSM8225 Snapdragon CPU and 768 MB Ram. Optimus L7 11 has an 8MP Camera with LED flash. The device has a 2460 mAh Batery, which gives more than 12hrs of talktime on 3g. It has 4GB of internal storage, which can expand upto 32GB.

5) ITS already mentioned in my previous post, not Phone but the best Tablet. NEXUS 7… @ just Rs. 11,999/-

 

 

Wants to Know, how much faster the 2013 Nexus 7 is, compared against last year’s Nexus 7

By Vijay @06:01pm

 The new Nexus 7 (officially listed as 2013 Nexus 7) brings a lot to the table. It is not just the first ‘Retina’ compact tablet, it also brings the sharp display and upgraded silicon at an extremely affordable price.

It’s a big upgrade over last year’s Nexus 7 which already was brilliant. The new Nexus 7-incher is thinner, lighter and has a narrower bezel, making it more comfortable to hold.

Most importantly for geeks, though, it is more powerful. The 2013 Nexus 7 swaps the Nvidia Tegra chip from last year with a shiny new Qualcomm Snapdragon, and the difference is massive. Android Police was the first to run the cross-platform Geekbench test o the Nexus 7 and compare the results against those of last year’s tablet. The difference is staggering. We’ll leave the images speak for themselves.

 

 

The new Nexus 7 is nearly five times faster on sequential reads, 2x faster on random reads, and about 1.5x faster on both sequential and random write operations. SQLite performance appears around double that of the first gen N7, as well. That sounds promising.

 

One More Android 4.3 bonus: Better Photospheres

By Vijay @ 09:56am

One of our favorite features of Android is Photosphere imaging. Let’s face it, panoramas are what your parents used to shoot, and Photospheres are flat out better. It’s a 360 degree photo, there isn’t much to dislike about that. Frankly, Photospheres were a bit tough to master in Android 4.2, but they have gotten a big boost in Android 4.3.

 Previously, it was quite awkward to get Photospheres right, there would be some jaggies or odd stitching, but the team behind the feature at Google have made some serious improvements. Evan Rapoport, a product manager at Google detailed the improvements on Google+, saying that the team has worked hard to improve alignment and stitching, so horizons are flatter and there are generally fewer errors throughout the image. Also, exposure correction has gotten a big boost to make the colors more even.

So their is one more reasons to look again into your Nexus phone’s notification area..

Next generation Google Nexus 7 listed as ‘Coming Soon’ on India Play Store

By Vijay @ 09:22am

Yesterday, Google announced the much-awaited new Nexus 7 running on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Besides US, the other countries to get the Nexus 7 would be UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Japan, Korea, and Australia. Though India is not on that list, Google India’s Nexus 7 page has gone live with a big ‘Coming Soon’ badge, which is the surest indication that a launch is not that far off.

To remind you, the new Nexus 7 is being offered in three variants— 16GB Wi-Fi, 32GB Wi-Fi and 32GB 4GLTE (US only model). The Wi-Fi versions will go on sale by the end of this month with the 4G model soon to follow.

Talking of specifications, the new Nexus 7 flaunts a 7-inch full HD IPS (1920×1200 pixels) display and is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor clocked at 1.5GHz and paired with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Other features included are a 5-megapixel rear camera, 1.2-megapixel secondary camera, dual stereo speakers, 3,950mAh non-removable battery that is claimed to deliver 9 hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of web browsing.

It’s difficult to speculate how much the new Nexus 7 would cost when it goes on sale in India. But in the US, the 16GB variant is priced at $229 (Rs 13,500 approximately), the 32GB at $269 (Rs 15,800 approximately) and the 4G version at $349 (Rs 20,500 approximately). Currently, the 2012 Nexus 7 costs Rs 15,999 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and Rs 18,999 for the 32GB Wi-Fi model.

Source: BGR…