10 Great Ways to Improve Battery Life on an Android Smartphone

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Tuan

The scathingly short battery life of Android phones has really been no secret in the Mobile Phone world. It’s quite a trade-off actually; Android powered mobile smartphones make up some of the most powerful mobile devices out there on the market, yet most of them have an average battery duration that can barely last through more than a day. You’ll get the rare diamond in the rough that could pump out a good 40 or so hours (Think HTC Sensation XL), but many wouldn’t get their hopes up for their phone to have a nice easy simple overnight recharge, before its up-and-go again for work the next day.

There are several factors that could be attributed to the cause of such minuscule battery life. The increasingly thinner design of Android smartphones as of late (i.e. Samsung Galaxy Nexus, in all its flimsy glory) prompts an obvious limiter for the battery space. Other reasons are larger screen displays, increasingly demanding specs, increasing processor speeds, and multiple programs running in the background of the phone. The transitionary shift from 3G to 4G also gets its share in the root of the battery life dilemma.

Although, Android users and fan-goers need not dismay, there are several things you could do to prolong the amount of time the battery life will last before getting some shuteye. This article will be highlighting a list of 10 great things you could start doing right now to help improve the battery life of your own Android mobile smartphone device.

For those interested, check out another article of ours here about Which Android Mobile Phone Device has the best battery life

Before beginning, it may be wise to examine the causes behind what’s making our Android battery life drain away so quickly. Breaking it all down as to what exactly is eating away at the battery, and what function is using your battery life the most. You could do that by (Depending on your phone) checking under Navigate to settings ->About Phone-> Battery. This is how it looks like on a Samsung Galaxy S2, but the navigation and settings should look pretty much almost similar across the Android phones.

1. Disable animated wallpaper and other flashy eye candy extravaganza

As pretty and appealing as they may look, they certainly don’t help your battery soldier on throughout the day. Disable them to save a fair portion of battery life. You’ll never know when you might just need that little extra amount of juice left. Although, if you do really want to have at least some dash of elegance on your Android smartphone, you may be able to find a balance somewhere in between blinding animations but power consuming, or power-saving but completely devoid of stylishness.

2. Re-adjust the screen timeout

It doesn’t make a difference in the moment as far as you could see straight away, but wasted energy on a lit screen that you’re not looking at, or using at the time would convert into meaninglessly lost battery life that could have been well spent doing something useful on your phone. You can re-adjust the screen’s timeout interval by going under the phone’s settings, display and screen timeout. It may take a few tries to select the timeout interval that you’d be comfortable with.

3. Turn off your mobile phone vibration

Not much to say here, but much like screen timeout or animated wallpapers, the phone’s vibration should be kept to a minimum as it does anything but help spruce up your battery life. If able to, it should only be used when your phone’s in silent mode.

4. Set display brightness to adjust automatically

The fact that Android’s phones huge screens helped earn them the reputation as a huge consumer of battery life is a gross understatement. Much of this reputation could be attributed to by the sheer brightness of the screen.

Apart from the all-too-obvious “well just lower the brightness then” response an average simpleton might tell you, you could actually set it to automatically adjust the brightness, so that the operating system would lower the brightness when in a darker room, or dimmer atmosphere, and generally adjust accordingly to how well-lit a room might be. Not only does it save your battery life, but it sure beats the heck out of manually adjusting the brightness all the time.

5. Disable Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is great, but when left to load everything, it can be a real juice drainer for your battery life. The thing with Adobe Flash on your Android smartphone is that, it will automatically run every bit of Flash content on any webpage by default. You can quite easily set it so that it loads only upon instruction, by going into the web browser and (once again, depending on your phone) select On Demand by going into menu, settings, and enable plug ins.

6. Charge your phone at a suitable temperature

This one gets frequently overlooked, but the truth of the matter is, if you charge your phone while it’s exposed to temperatures that are too high or low, your battery could suffer, and you may need to replace it sooner than you would of liked. Direct lengthy sun exposure can harm your phone’s touch screen, and cold conditions can sap the power out of your battery. The most charge-appropriate temperature would be from 15 to 25 degrees Celsius, in a well-ventilated area.

It may also help to take off the cover of your smartphone when charging it up, or else it’ll accumulate a lot of heat which will serve a great detrimental effect to your Android mobile phone device, and ultimately; to your phone’s battery.

7. Disable your Wi-Fi and other connections when you don’t need them

Although, Wi Fi will really help you speed up the process of data access on your smartphone, it would take a fair bit of a plunge on your battery life, if left enabled when you don’t need it.Tricky thing with Wi-Fi as well, is when you’re out; it will keep scanning for all available wireless networks regardless of whether that was your intention or not to do so.

With Android phones you can easily and directly switch it on or off via shortcuts or widgets. Android phone’s usually come with a drop down notification menu that you can just pull down, and so you could also toggle Wi Fi and other connections on or off that way too.

8. Update your apps

An interesting fact that a lot of people don’t know is that you can save a whole lot of battery life just by making sure your apps are up to date. Manufacturers often update their apps; making them more power-efficient and power saving to use less battery life is one such reason why. Some apps can be set to update automatically, while others need to be done manually via Market apps, through My Apps, under the
menu.

9. Reduce email, Facebook and Twitter Activity

This one is quite a biggie.. This and also getting rid of unnecessary home screen widgets that sync and pull in status updates constantly. Don’t even get me started on the built-in email tool with push technology too.. Eugh.. The things a devil.

It is best to set these tools so that you can sync them manually, by hitting refresh whenever you need to read you’re emails. However if you absolutely must need it to sync automatically, just do well to try and make it sync on a lesser frequent basis. This can be done by going into your account settings under the email application, and setting the frequency of email checking to something like an hour, or a day etc. This is much better as opposed to hammering you every 15 minutes or so, as it’s automatically adjusted to do.

These settings are relatively similar for Facebook and Twitter, so you should have no problem setting the activities and notifications for those.

10. Get the Juice Defender App for your phone

Downloading a battery-saving app such as Juice Defender or Juice Defender Ultimate would greatly save battery life and improve its performance, the annoying part about Juice Defender though, is that they greatly limit and restrict Wi-Fi connections and internet, making it a pain in the ass having to switch it on again when it turns itself off.

Juice Defender Ultimate provides somewhat, an alternative around this problem though, with scheduling for when you want to switch your Wi Fi and connections on and off. You could also set up factors and boundaries for a number of aspects such as the location for you to turn Wi Fi/Connections on and off at specific times and places.

Juice Defender has got mixed results and outcomes from different users, with many reporting a distinct difference in its performance in each and every one of their individual phones. Nonetheless, it has proven itself very effective, and I was able to get a good extra day of usage out of using it on my own Samsung Galaxy S2.

Which Android Mobile Phone Device has the best battery life? Part 2

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Tuan

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In the previous part, we started getting a crackdown on the juicy bits and pieces of The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the Nokia Lumia 800, and the HTC Sensation XL’s battery lives. We broke the battery life testing down into four parts, looking at the duration of Talk time, how long you can web browse for, how long you can watch videos for, and how long is the overall usage endurance of the phones.

In part 2 of investigating which Android Mobile phone devices has the best battery life, we will be implementing the same way of analysing battery life duration, this time for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro, the HTC Rezoid, and the Samsung Galaxy Note.

To recap importantly, on what was said before, you simply cannot ask a broad question such as which android phone has the best battery life and get a straight simple answer. There is no single answer for one phone on one particular single function that could generalize it to all parts of the phone. At the end of this article, there will be a list of rankings of each phone for the three activities, plus rankings for the overall usage durations.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro

This phone gets the pleasurable mention of being the only phone in this article that’s not a touchscreen, rocking the classic physical QWERTY keyboard, in all its authenticity. The Xperia Pro’s somewhat smaller screen, compared to most of the other phones in this article, would also spark interest in how well its battery life does as well.

Have to say it, but even with a battery of 1500mAh in capacity, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro’s talk time would probably have to be the most worst in this article. Managing only 7 hours before shutting itself off, it falls behind in the current market competition for sure.

However the Xperia Pro’s web browsing makes up for all of it, reaching a solid 5 hours on automated script. This fares much better than the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which is not a bad effort on its part.

Unfortunately, the Xperia Pro’s video playback duration cannot save it from a terrible fate as being labelled the phone with the overall lowest battery life for most activities in this article. The phone was capable of only being able to only cope up to 5.5 hours of continuous playback of videos.

There is a huge twist in the end though, even though the phone’s performance is very poor in most of the areas of phone activities individually; the overall usage duration of the Xperia Pro actually counteracts the point made above somewhat. The Xperia Pro has a decent battery endurance time of 36 hours before it needs recharge, provided there is absolutely minimum usage of talk time, web browsing, and videos.

HTC Rezound

With its given specifications, amped up with its extravagant multimedia prowess, the HTC Rezound might as well be an absolute powerhouse. The one thing that may make one scratch their head at how well it’s going to perform may be due to the reasonable yet average battery that the Rezound comes with. The 1620mAh; A battery of this size and stature is going to have to endure a challenging job, managing with the beastly specifications.

The HTC Rezound does a sound job delivering a solid 8 hours of talk time before going AWOL. This puts it ahead of the unspeakable tom-foolery also known as the Xperia Pro. An outright decent effort on its own, it still falls behind its older cousin the Sensation XL, along with the other competitors.

Following up just behind its fellow HTC Sensation XL, the Rezound pushes up a fairly decent approximate 5.5 hours of Web browsing time, placing it the second best phone in this article for having the longest web browsing duration.

Sadly, the HTC Rezound’s capacity to playback video couldn’t live up to its substantial capacity to web browse. Checking in at a disappointing 5 hours, this places it the lowest ranking phone in this article for video playback. We could perhaps deduct that the gorgeous HD screen display was far too much for the phone’s battery to handle.

The HTC Rezounds overall usage duration continues from that falling streak and reaches another all-time low. Coming from the fact that this phone is actually quite the juice-guzzler, its standby time is rather average, and with minimal usage of phone activities (Talk time, web browsing, and video), the phone manages an unimpressive 30 hours. Nevertheless, the Rezound is yet another great smartphone from the juggernaut of a company which is HTC. There is no news yet on an Australian release date, but we should hopefully hear something in the not so distant future.

Samsung Galaxy Note

We conclude this article’s battery life reviews with the Samsung Galaxy Note, the smartphone that has gained noticeable buzz due to its large screen. At 5.3 inches, this baby’s truly a behemoth. This as well as a stylus included with it, has led many to describe the Galaxy Note as the customary blend between a smartphone and a tablet computer.

With a gigantic 2500 mAh battery which is certainly larger than that of a regular smartphone, coupled with the power-leeching 5.3 inch screen, it was certainly interesting to see how the Galaxy Note went with the battery life testing. The Samsung Galaxy Note without a doubt takes home the title of the top phone when it comes to talk time, demonstrating an astonishing feat of almost 13 hours continuously.

For web browsing, there was a rather unusual drop in battery life performance which would leave many of you jaw dropping, flabbergasted. Barely making it above the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the Galaxy Note only managed to pull 3.5 hours out of it before throwing in the towel. Quite a surprising turn of events really.

The Samsung Galaxy Note’s revival from its slight fall from grace lies in its excellent video playback durations. Gallantly brandishing a solid 8.5 hours out of continuous video playback, this puts the giant back to the top of the competition.

And now for the overall usage endurance of the battery life. The Samsung Galaxy Note was able to reach at least 38 hours of usage before another recharge session, Landing it second place in this article for the phone with the longest overall usage duration time. All in all, quite an impressive performance all together from the Samsung Galaxy Note.

Rankings

Here are the rankings for how each phone’s battery life fares with each other. (According to talk time, web browsing, playback of video, and the overall usage time).

Talk Time

1. Samsung Galaxy Note (13 hours)

2. HTC Sensation XL (9 1/2 hours)

3. Nokia Lumia 800 (8 1/2 hours)

4. Samsung Galaxy Nexus (8 1/2 hours)

5. HTC Rezound (8 hours)

6. Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro (7 hours)

Web Browsing

1. HTC Sensation XL (5.5 hours)

2. HTC Rezound (5.5 hours)

3. Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro (5 hours)

4. Nokia Lumia 800 (4 hours)

5. Samsung Galaxy Note (3.5 hours)

6. Samsung Galaxy Nexus (3 hours)

Playback of Video

1. Samsung Galaxy Note (8.5 hours)

2. HTC Sensation XL (6.5 hours)

3. Samsung Galaxy Nexus (6 hours)

4. Nokia Lumia 800 (6 hours)

5. Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro (5.5 hours)

6. HTC Rezound (5 hours)

Overall Usage Time

1. HTC Sensation XL (40 hours)

2. Samsung Galaxy Note (38 hours)

3. Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro (36 hours)

4. HTC Rezound (30 hours)

5. Samsung Galaxy Nexus (24 hours)

6. Nokia Lumia 800 (24 hours)

Conclusion

It is perhaps should be made clear and already quite understandable, that the duration of battery life for these phones don’t actually remain constant, and can fluctuate with time, the amount of usage, and other forms of conditions. Not to mention resolutions, adjustments of brightness, sound factors, and the fact that we used wireless connection to test web browsing also played a part. Nonetheless, these will give you an accurate figure as to what to expect and keep in mind when on the look for your next phone to buy.

Which Android mobile phone device has the best battery life? Part 1

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Tuan

There is no doubt; Android makes some simply fantastic mobile devices out there on the market. There is also no doubt, of a huge discrepancy in the battery life between the different Android phones.

There are many factors to preserve battery life that comes into play. All the small things such as switching data and instant updates when not using them, and switching the Wi-Fi and/or 3G off helps prolong the overall run time of the phone. In some cases however, many people have expressed that they don’t mind turning those functions off when not in use. It’s just the fact that the phone they may desire has an overall battery life that falls short of any brilliance.

The estimated battery life according claims from the manufacturers are often somewhat very inaccurate and misleading. The following two-part article is an in-depth look at the battery life of some Android mobile phone devices that have been released in the last few months. We will be analysing the duration of each phone’s battery life in terms of the amount of its usage, and the function you’re using it for; such as watching movies, web browsing, or just simply having a chat to your friends and family.

Because the question of which phone has the best battery life is yet another broad one, at the end of this two-part article, we are going to list the rankings for each phone, and allocating them in terms of Talk time, Web Browsing, playback of videos, and the overall usage time.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

We kick off part 1 of this article with the latest flagship release from Samsung. The Galaxy Nexus is currently the talk of the town, being the only phone on the market at the moment, sporting the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS.

Although being a sexy and stylish new smartphone that’s already racking up some noise from the masses, the 1750mAh battery life of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus isn’t particularly that great. Much like its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S2, the Nexus at its best would generally only clock up to 8.5 hours of talk time at most. That is when it’s fully charged, and even though this actually lived up to the manufacturers claims; it would still only score the Nexus a place in the mid-range of a smartphone competition.

When it comes to browsing on the web, the Galaxy Nexus unfortunately suffers significantly, being only able to reach 3 hours on automated script, placing it as the phone with the least battery life in this two-part article for web browsing.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus duration for playing videos makes up for its abysmal web browsing prowess though, scoring in a little over 6 hours of continuous playback, it’s actually not a bad trade off.

Overall, even if the phone was predominantly in standby mode, with little talk time, and usage of internet and movies, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus would still only last a little over 24 hours before needing to charge it again.

Nokia Lumia 800

Very much like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the Nokia Lumia 800 fairs up for a good 8.5 hours (and slightly above that as well) before it calls quits and switches off. The Lumia 800 is fairly above the Nexus in terms of web browsing though, being able to manage at least a little over 4 hours on automated script. That’s about almost comparable to the web browsing duration of Samsung’s previously released Galaxy S2.

The 1450 mAh battery of the Lumia 800 appears to drain quicker with a large amount of browsing and downloading though, resulting in the phone’s screen shutting down just mere seconds after dimming.

When it comes to video playback on the Nokia Lumia 800, it actually doesn’t strike so badly. Almost measuring up to the Galaxy Nexus’s standard, give or take a few odd minutes… But yeah.. We know what you’re thinking, this phone was built more for you to socialise and stay connected with friends rather than watching movies.

There was a slight problem Lumia 800′s earlier users were experiencing in the first few months of its release, and the issue was that the mobile devices’ battery life was indicating lesser battery capacity than what was expected of it. There was a software update to fix that earlier this year, which allowed those phone’s that were affected to reach its full battery life potential.

The overall battery life is slightly below average if anything. You’d get a good day of usage out of it, provided you make minimum amount of talk time, web browsing, movie, games and other activities. For this very reason, corporate users who operate within business would possibly find it hard to preserve the battery life throughout a full work day.

HTC Sensation XL

The HTC Sensation XL is one of the two HTC smartphones on the market, which came about under HTC’s business partnership with world renowned rap producer Dr Dre. With specifications such as the one’s on this phone (a feeble mix of a 1600mAh battery and a 4.7″ LCD screen display), you wouldn’t really suspect it to do that well in terms of its battery life, but it actually delivered quite a few surprises when it was tested.

The Sensation XL put up an outstanding result of about 9.5 hours talk time before switch off. This would probably rank among some of the top phones on the market at the moment, in regards to duration of talk time.

Now onto web browsing, and once again the Sensation XL proved us wrong. This time it demonstrated a remarkable performance coming face to face with a gruelling simulation put up by automated script. It lasted almost 5.5 hours with the amount of browsing being done. In fact, this would place the phone as the phone with the longest lasting battery life in this two-part article for browsing on the web.

Playback of video is where the performance fell short of excellence and somewhat disappointed a bit here. However, it wasn’t too bad, stretching out to 6.5 hours before standing on its last legs still brings this one on top of other current phone’s on the market. Notably the Samsung Galaxy Nexus tagging a close 20 or so minutes behind it.

And now, you all would be curious as to how the overall usage duration of this phone would end up, and would be pleased to know that with minimum usage of activities, you can get in a good approximate 40 hours of run time. So that’s almost 2 days before you need to charge it up again.. What an absolute trooper.

Click here for part 2 of this two-part article: Which Android Mobile Phone device has the best battery life? Part 2

10 reasons why you should get an Android Phone

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Tuan

There are plenty of reasons why you should get an Android phone. Now many of you cynical types out there that may ask “why should I buy one?”. Unfortunately, most of the time, you’d get retorted back with a generic, not-so-snappy answer like “oh, their more convenient and reliable”, “their cheaper”, or “everyone’s got one, their so popular”.

There has been some considerable debate these last 12 months or so as to whether the Android phones would make a better buy than the iPhone of which runs on ios. The ios has been a leading figure in mobile operating systems for quite some time now. But the significant boost in popularity and the tremendous rise in the market share for Android within just three years of its inception; has made it increasingly obvious which is now reigning, and which would now be an ideal buy.

In this article, we will be breaking it all down and looking at 10 reasons why you should get an Android phone as opposed to getting an ios phone (iPhone).

1. Expandable Storage Space

Android phones provide users the flexibility to expand and exchange the storage space by removable SD cards. This proves quite helpful, because it allows those of you who’d like more storage capacity than the amount of space your phone came with; for movies, music, games and applications.

2. Larger screen display

Overall, the screen displays of Android phones are fairly larger in size than the 3.5inch standard screen of the iPhone. Web browsing, reading articles and emails becomes much clearer and easier, not to mention both the resolution and the quality of playing games and watching movies on your phone is simply quite superb.

3. Android is an Open-Source Operating System

Being an open-source operating system, Android gives larger support for developers on cultivating and expanding for their platform, always giving it room for continual growth and improvement. The same can hardly be said for iPhone users, of who are stuck with ios’ closed source proprietary OS. Not only is that greatly restricted and limiting as far as programming goes, but in not enabling developers to help flourish the OS, apple takes the matters of the ios completely into their own hands. This is the reason it has taken so long for the ios to develop certain features and functions to keep up to date with the demands of the market, which by the time they’ve rectified their out-dated tools; Android would have already accelerated ahead of the game.

On top of Google’s already rich and resourceful Android Market; Android has several app stores by the bucket load, and you also get the freedom of installing apps from non-market applications, as well as from any third party sources outside from Android. Given this being the case, you can also program and write your very own apps, and then give them out to your friends and family.

4. More Versatile range of keyboard options

This point partially relates to the previous point of Android being an open-source operating system. The thing is, if you’re not a huge fan of Android’s run-of-the-mill keyboard, there are still a wide range of alternative keyboards you can install developed by third party developers. From some nifty options such as Swype to a bunch of stylish keyboards, you can also have the choice to purchase an Android-exclusive handset with a genuine physical keyboard. On the other side of things, if you’re not too keen on the keyboard of the iPhone, you’d have to jailbreak it just to be able to do the same as you could do on an Android.

5. Android can play HD movies on your big TV screen

Several of the Android devices on the market have ports with HDMI capabilities, so you can plug your mobile device into your TV, and stream your favourite HD movies, music and other media on the big screen. As far as can be said, the iPhone has not yet sported the same similar ability of the Android to watch real HD media on TV, and some would wonder if it ever would. Instead, the iPhone comes with the average iPod connector of old.

6. Android’s don’t crash as much like IOS does.

Androids don’t crash as much like IOS does. One of the latest studies conducted by Crittercism, the mobile application monitoring company, reveals a series of rather eye-opening stats. According to Crittercism’s sources, Apple’s IOS operating system crashes much MUCH more frequently than the Android operating system. 23 different IOS versions were tracked in the study, as well as 33 different versions for Android.

(Source: Phonearena)

It was noticed that the percentage of the crashes that mostly happened, were on the iOS 5.1.

(Source: Phonearena)

According to the stats above, in the top quartile for apps; Android’s apps crashed only 0.15% of times they launched, as opposed to apps from the ios crashing 0.51% of the time.

It can be seen in the second quartile for apps, that ones from the Android crashed only 0.73% of the time while the apps from the ios crashed twice that amount at 1.47%.

Finally, looking at the third quartile, apps from the Android crashed only 2.97% of the time, whereas iOS apps crashed 3.66% of the time.

7. The Flexibility of Widgets

The beauty of widgets on Android Phones is that you can display whatever it is you want to put, anywhere, and anytime. You can get full coverage and quick access to updates on matters that are the most important to you. Media player controls, emails and messaging, sporting event updates, news, and other functionality can be adjusted, customized, and changed in whatever way you wish to easily fit your needs. Basically, this puts you in complete control of your Android Device.

8. The diversity of hardware

Android was pretty much made with the customer in mind, and comes with a huge range and variety of phone choices for everyone. Whether you’re a music-fanatic, movie fan, text-aholic, or a user with mobile multi-tasking needs, Android will have you tended to. From 3D and 1080p Video Recording, fantastic screen display, wireless TV streaming capabilities, dual cameras, or removable batteries; whatever it is you want, they’ve got it.

9. Voice command functionality

If there is one thing many users have complained about the iPhone, is its limited system-wide voice command functionality.. Or lack thereof. The Android’s voice command on the other hand works quite splendidly, and carries out every command with utmost clear and concise precision. Voice command on the Android is made so convenient with text and email transcriptions. Whenever you may need to search for anything on the spot, on the road and have something that needs writing down, or just to send a few text messages, the Android phone’s voice command can execute the command and get it done there and then (You could also get directions by just speaking into the phone.. how handy is that?).

10. Pricing

Unlike the iPhone’s steeper hefty price range, Android has phone’s that start from as low as $67 to as high as $1000. Whether you are on a tight budget, or got plenty of cash to burn, there is always sure to be a phone on the Android market that would suit your financial situation. On top of that, Android actually provides to you much more options and features to fit in with your budget.

Top 10 best apps on the Android Market for business

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Tuan

Last year had been a spectacular one for arguably the world’s most popular mobile operating system, the Android, and things just keep getting better and better. The wide range of Android apps on the market is continually expanding and growing ever so larger. Fantastic new games come out every so often, photo apps to give all those snapshots of your a slight touch up, and dozens of kids apps to educate and entertain the little ones. Young or old, there’s something for everyone in Android’s 400,000 plus choice of apps on the market.

In this article we will be looking at apps that the corporate-minded and business-orientated can make effective use of in order to make their tasks much easier. We’ve compiled together the top 10 best android apps for your smartphone that will help you be more organized, productive and efficient for business. Where you could be in the office, conference meeting, or on-the-go, you’re sure to find something you need from this selection of great business apps. Some of these apps are free to download, while others have a price. You can find them all from the Android Market.

10. Goods Order Inventory System

GOIS is an inventory management system application that you can download from the Android Market for free. Ideal for individuals and users from small businesses, you can use this app to administer and control Orders, Inventory, and Sales. With a range of reporting capabilities, it allows the freedom of managing the orders, the products, the inventory and sales in a perfectly consistent manner. Overall, it’s a nice application. Though it is rather lacking in help topics, and the fact that it requires registration before you can start using it, which is a pain in the ass.

9. Business Ledger

Business Ledger is a program with a multitude of features that lets small business owners, and those of a self-employed proficient background to keep informed of their expenses, their time, and their mileage. The program comes included with Excel or CSV email export features, multiple account options, archives, GPS distance tracker, and account summaries. While Marklar Mobile claims you will be saving money with this app. It has no support, no updates, and the company doesn’t respond to emails. At $9.99 to download the full version of the Android Market, it may leave some to doubt on whether it’s worth the money, but you can feel free to try the free demo version. Ostensibly, it’s a decent application for the small businessmen.

8. ThinkFree Office Mobile

ThinkFree Office Mobile is an application that allows you to have instant and spontaneous productivity, with some great office mobile functionality and a user-friendly interface. The app comes with features such as file management, which includes synchronization capabilities. This enables you to be able to synchronize your documents with your computer, and it allows you to open up, create and organize those documents quite easily as well. Some other aspects of this app include office on-the-go, and the ability to share and collaborate your documents with others, which makes all the more convenient and efficient to use.

7. OfficeSuite Pro 5

Elaborate, efficient and elegant. The professional standard document development app, OfficeSuite Pro 5 showcases a range of office mobile solutions for developing, viewing, and editing Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other well-known document formats. You can also view PDF files right from your smartphone. Spread sheets, slideshow presentations, word processing, it all gets much simpler with using this app. File browser also comes with Officesuite Pro 5, and its integration with Google Docs makes it a two-part feature that is absolutely fundamental in managing and organizing remote and local files.

6. Quickoffice Pro

Acknowledged as a top developer by Google, Quickoffice delivers one of the most inclusive and unified office suite apps available for Android mobiles out there. Compatible with highly-used document formats such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can also access files casually and conveniently with the app’s improved and expanded Connected File Manager. It allows you ease of access and sharing of files from your smartphone, and/or accounts from other services (Such as Dropbox, Catch, Huddle, Evernote, Sugarsync, Google Docs, and MobileMe). An excellent PDF viewer software is also thrown into the package at no cost.

5. Box

Box is a free application on the Android Market that allows you to view files, and to share them from wherever you are. Great when you’re not in the office and you’re on the move; Box has a simplistic interface, and sharing of files from one place to another is very secure. You can store the files online, send large files relatively fast, and gain access to content on your smartphone device, all very quick and easy. Some other features that you may find some good use for include the ability to download files straight to an SD card for usage offline, and widgets you can add to your phone’s home screen to receive file updates from your collaborators.

4. Exchange by TouchDown

Exchange by Touchdown is a genuinely put together app which features most of the mobile email tool any user would need when connecting to Microsoft Exchange Servers. This app includes full-on capabilities with Email, Contacts and Calendars (Though it would have been good if they included an email search and Tasks feature). Using the app’s ActiveSync Push technology, you can send and receive emails as though you were actually using your desktop client for Outlook Express. Exchange by Touchdown also notifies and gives you alerts whenever an event pops up, using its convenient calendar sync features. This App could shape up to be one of business user’s must have apps on the Android Market. It breaks the boundaries for enabling you to receive corporate emails in real time, on a G1 or an Android smartphone.

3. File manager

Developed by Rhythm software, File Manager is an excellent fully-featured Android file manager. This Android app gives you a contemporary new UI design for your phone, as well as more user-friendly features. You can browse through all your files and folders in an extremely easy and intuitive manner. It has massive support for many resolutions, support for diverse sorting and selecting, as well as sets of commercial icons for over 60 different file types, menu items, and toolbars. The app also detects file types automatically, and designates icon matches before that file, and on top of that, you can connect to your computer files system from the office via VPN to copy and manage files.

2. Documents to go

Another must-have business application from the Android Market, the bestselling productivity, Documents to go showcases a range of premium feature with an interface that’s not only prestigiously-designed but extremely user-friendly. This app includes full support for Google Docs, excellent file browsing, support for two way file syncing, advanced viewer edition, and plenty of other fantastic features. What hindered this app from making the number 1 position in this article is the fact that it didn’t allow copying and pasting of images and rich text which comes as a major inconvenience for this. Nonetheless, whether you’re a Student, Business corporate, or an individual who’d like to increase their productivity and work efficiently, this is the app for you.

1. Splashtop Remote Desktop

As the only remote desktop application on the market to be able to stream excellently sleek, high resolution video and audio from your personal computer; Splashtop Remote Desktop also wins the top 1# position in this article of best business apps on the Android Market. Enabling you to fully interact and engage with PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook Express, and many more, you can also access your desktop computer software, multimedia resources, and with Wi-Fi and 3G or $G network. With the utmost minimal of setting up, you can gain full access to your desktop computer with just a click of a button. You’d never have to bring your computer anywhere ever again, when you can just use your smartphone with this amazing Android app, that’s also extremely cheap and affordable at a price of only $4.99. Apart from a lack of a tool for file transfer, so that you could email yourself some files from your own remote computer; this is hands down the best app you can download from the Android Market for doing Business.

Click Here to check out the 10 best smartphones that will maximise your efficiency and productivity for business

What is the best mobile phone to buy in Australia at the moment? Part 2

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Tuan

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In the previous article we started looking at some of the latest phones to have been released in the last few months, and what they were best for (business, social, or all-rounded). We looked at and reviewed the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and the HTC Sensation XE. In this part 2, we will now review, pinpoint the highlights and the drawbacks of the Nokia Lumia 800, the Motorola Defy+, and the Blackberry Torch 9860.

Nokia Lumia 800

Right from the get-go, it’s hard not to agree upon the elegance and simplicity of the Nokia Lumia 800. It also happens to be the first smartphone to run the new Windows phone 7.5 OS, courtesy of Nokia pairing up with Microsoft.

The default black theme of the user interface resonates beautifully with the AMOLED display screen of the phone, and everything about the Lumia 800′s design just shouts quality.

The battery life doesn’t leave much for one to praise about however, clocking in at just a little over a day of minimal to average usage, corporate business users may find it hard to preserve the batteries duration to a full day of work. The 800′s external speaker is also rather quiet, and this makes it quite hard to hear when a call is received on speakerphone when you’re in a loud atmosphere.

The Lumia 800′s performance is top-notched, and web browsing on it is considerably speedy. Despite only coming with 512MB worth of RAM, everything is wonderfully rapid and smooth, from navigating around the interface’s start screen and list of applications, viewing in and out of websites, and flicking through the latest applications on the Windows Marketplace.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is all about being more socially connected and to make things more personal at the same time. From the setup of the phone at the beginning, the 800 creates a cloud-based contacts list founded upon Linkedln, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live, among other accounts from various other services. You could set all these up with info combined to make a combined single list. The easy suggestions to link people can be put in with just a tap of a button, not to mention the overall intuitive linking of contacts, makes it all the more convenient.

All in all, the Nokia Lumia 800 leans mostly towards the more social side of things. Sure it also comes with an Office Hub for work productiveness on-the-go, but its range of multi-tasking from social networking integration of Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedln, deeper integration of Microsoft’s cloud service SkyDrive, and an integrated inbox with support for multiple Exchange accounts, tells you without a doubt that the Nokia Lumia 800 is best for staying socially connected, and in touch with friends and family.

Motorola Defy+

The Motorola Defy+ is the successor of the Motorola Defy, the first Android Smartphone ever released way back in the last few months of 2010. It is highly doubtful whether ‘successor’ would be the right term to identify the Defy+ by though, given there isn’t that much major changes from the original model. It still retains the 3.7 inch touchscreen of old, and its jagged look and feel remains unchanged. The Gorilla glass also remains intact for the touchscreen. The Gorilla glass enables the screen to be resistant to water, scratches, and dust.

Something that should noticeably have been different for the Defy+ is its software and performance. Partly true, the Defy+ DOES have a more powerful processor; 1GHz, which is fairly faster. There were a couple of fixes and upgrades to the phone’s Motoblur software too. Despite these though, there really wasn’t much of a significant improvement in terms of performance. Not only that, but there are times when the phone will become quite slow and unresponsive, even through some of the most smallest tasks like exploring your home screen, or turning on the Camera application.

On the slightly brighter side of things, the Defy+ comes with a small bunch of new features and apps that do enhance the experience for the user. App menus can now be sorted and categorised by all apps, recent apps, or downloaded apps, the three icon shortcuts that you find on the home screen dock also happens to be customizable.

In respect to applications, the Motorola Defy+ comes with several nifty apps that cater for all your business, entertainment, and many other leisure needs. Coming pre-installed on the phone are apps such as Media Share for music and video playing through a television that’s compatible with DLNA. Quick office also comes loaded, which will be really handy for business and work on-the-go. Other apps like File manager and the cardio trainer (An app that logs your workout activities with use of a pedometer and a GPS) are also included in the library.

The Motorola Defy+ has a special distinctive media player. For any given song you have in your music library, the media player will automatically go on the web and sought out the lyrics and album cover art for that song. The media player also comes with a unique feature of song identification, which we’d imagine would be useful when trying to identify that certain vague tune that’s been doing your head in.

Being quite leaning towards all-rounded general use, it still can be acceptable to say the Motorola Defy+ is also a bit of an entertainment phone. The most important highlight of this phone however, probably comes from its fantastically low price. You can buy it outright from leading Telstra shops for only $299, which is an incredibly cheap price. Despite that though, it’s hard knowing whether it may compel one to buy it, given that there is little improvement overall from the previous model.

Blackberry Torch 9860

Like every blackberry phone that has been released on the market by RIM. the Blackberry torch 9860 offers unsurpassed security protection, unprecedented push email features, and gives you complete connectivity with the office. Everything that a business user would value is all in there.

The Blackberry torch 9860 looks and feels quite comfortable, and at 120x62x11.5mm, it is a fair size. There are several mechanical buttons that integrate well with the 3.7 inch touchscreen, things such as a device lock on the handset top, as well the usual ensemble of navigational keys, side by side on the handset’s optical track pad.

The Blackberry Torch 9860 is quite user-friendly. The use of distinct images with vibrant colours help proves a point here. They make each of the icons more definable from others.

Unlike most other Blackberry phones, the 9860 does not make use of a physical QWERTY keyboard. This may in fact be a disadvantage when faced with competition from other phones In comparison with the other phones that of which run Android Operating Systems (OS). The Blackberry Torch 9860 is greatly lacking in the apps department. There aren’t a whole lot of apps on there that make full use of the phone’s touchscreen either. But that would hopefully change and pick up the pace over time.

Now while the phone is quite user-friendly, and it looks simply sleek and fantastic, at a price of $598, or around $29 on a 24 month contract, it doesn’t come exactly cheap. But it all depends on you. The BlackBerry Torch 9860 is great for business. But unless you work in an office and need to stay connected to it while on-the-go (via all the tools the phone offers), you’re better off with an alternative phone.

What is the best mobile phone to buy in Australia at the moment? Part 1

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Tuan

Defining what is the best

Well, for starters. Asking someone “what is the best mobile phone to buy?” is already far too broad a question. How DO you define what is the best? Some folks could be after a phone that would help them with business. Others might just like to stay connected with their friends and family while their on-the-go. Whatever it is people are after, a phone with a multitude of nifty apps, top of the range security features, and a sublime keypad always win points in everyone’s books, especially for those looking for a business phone.

A quick Google search will tell you that the Android Devices (Smartphones) make up most of the preferable options for mobile phone these days. This comes as no surprise, given that the market share for Android phones has rose tremendously from 0.6% to 52.5% in just 3 years. Not to mention also the large feature set, ease-of-use, and its open-source nature makes it truly formidable in respect to other phones on the market.

But I seriously digress. Hit up our article titled 10 reasons why you should get an Android Phone for all the specifics on Android smartphones.

Because new mobile phones come out every so often, it could be hard to keep up-to-date with what’s current at that moment, For the sake of this article though, we will be looking at some of the latest mobile phones that have been released over the last few months. We will be briefly reviewing their pros, their cons, and pinpointing the phone’s highlights (Whether they are best for work & business, social & entertainment purposes or generally all-rounded).

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S

From first glances, it will be quite obvious that this phone is almost no different from its earlier version, the Xperia Arc, released in early 2011. Like a re-release or so to speak, with the addition of a faster 1.4GHZ processor as well as compatibilities with Next G.

Like its predecessor, The Xperia Arc S is one real slim, sleek and stylish phone. Its 4.2 inch WVGA resolution LCD screen packs a rich image screen display too. The only thing we could find that could spoil the otherwise near flawless look and feel of this phone was the awkward position of the headphone sockets.

Despite it running on only a single-core processor and its relatively low 512MB RAM, The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc fairs quite nicely with loading up pages in the web browser, and launching many great apps that have been released in the last year. Though this may also raise the question of whether the phone will still retain this ability of running the apps being released this year, given the phone’s low specifications.

With the rich blend of a superb screen, HDMI Capabilities, and its Bravia Engine, the Xperia Arc S was definitely built to cater for entertainment. Movie, music, and other forms of media presented on the Xperia Arc S will captivate and intrigue users. Now if Sony Ericsson had only provided a larger amount of memory storage for storing movies and music on, the Xperia Arc S might as well have been all the rage for entertainment lovers everywhere.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first smartphone to operate using the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a lot more than just another pleaser to the eye. You can boot it up, shut it down, run apps, play games, surf the web among other things very rapidly. It fairs fantastically with multi-tasking, which isn’t half bad at all, given the phone runs on a 1.2GHZ Dual-core TI OMAP processor with 1 GB RAM. It is less powerful than the Galaxy S II’s Exynos processor however.

The Super AMOLED screen displays of Samsung have proven to be immensely popular, and hence wouldn’t come as much shock that the Galaxy Nexus has one as well. Samsung has a new trick up their sleeves though, based upon Pentile technology, they’ve managed to compress more pixels from the same amount of dots to get higher resolutions and improve battery life for the Galaxy Nexus.

The Nexus remains on top of the competition for now, being the only Smartphone on the market at the moment that runs the Ice Cream Sandwich OS. The interface of this operating system is by far the most user-friendly on an Android device. Responsive and speedy, the Ice Cream Sandwich still contains everything people love with Android applications. It also comes with some superb apps from Google already installed on the OS straight from the start. It takes some time to learn how to use this new OS though, and be able to get used to it. Even long-time Android users may need to play with it for a little while before they know their way around it.

Despite the improvement with Pentile technology to prolong battery life of the Galaxy Nexus. It’s still not as great as it could have been. You can chew through a good 12 or so hours with normal to heavy use. Heck, the phone still tells you to connect your charger, even after half a day of very little use.

The Ice Cream Sandwich OS being the key highlight of the Nexus, really contributes to it being an all-rounder. It is Google having a shot at creating an Android, which isn’t just more technologically advanced, but also more spontaneous (More people friendly). It is designed to engage with people on a more personal level, with people apps that’s default right from the start, Google Plus for staying socially connected, and some pretty trippy video effects.

Technology-wise, The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is quite powerful. Equipped and fully loaded with some sensational features, such as a nifty data management tool, NFC (To share videos and photos from two phones by just tapping both of them simultaneously), as well as a photo-editing tool built in.

HTC sensation XE

Still only fresh off after the launch of the immensely popular HTC sensation in early 2011. The company decided to push forward and maintain their momentum, by releasing the HTC Sensation XE, which not only is another beautifully crafted piece of technology, but could possibly be the most musically-deviated smartphone to date. It is one of the first smartphones to come with Beats Audio features and qualities, as a result of HTC’s new partnership with world renowned rap producer Dr Dre.

Check out this reviewing article here, If you want to see how the HTC Sensation XE measures up alongside its twin-counterpart; the HTC Sensation XL.

The Beats Audio earphones that come with this smartphone is definitely hands down the best to have come with any phone so far. Music fanatics will love the significant improvement in the quality of sound. The special software that also comes preloaded on the smartphone enhances the audio experience even further, giving you some luscious, extravagant, deep bass.

But of course, music isn’t the only aspect HTC had improved over the previous model. The phone’s performance is a lot faster, now that the original Dual-core 1.2Ghz Processor has been bumped up to a powerful 1.5GHz. The outcome of this tremendous power in a processor is an extremely sleek and polished user-interface, which is not only smooth, but snappish and jerk-free as well. Also, the Sensation XE seldom ever gets overloaded, even with several apps running at the same time. This definitely gives the Samsung Galaxy Nexus something to worry about, not only that, but this earns the Sensation XE a stable and solid position at the top of best performing smartphone for months to come.

Where the Sensation XE outruns the Galaxy Nexus in performance, may it be reminded that the Nexus is the first Android phone running the latest Ice Cream Sandwich OS. This therefore means the Sensation XE’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread will soon be out-dated and an update of software would have to take place sometime, though that probably won’t be very likely until a couple more months.

The Sensation XE comes with an 8GB Micro SD card, which is generally enough space for music fanatics to store many of their favourite tunes. But if you ever happen to want to store HD movies and such, it may be wise to invest in a Micro SD Card with larger storage capacity. They come relatively cheap nowadays too.

Camera and recording of video are simply excellent tools on the Sensation XE. While the 8MP camera with dual LED flash, auto focus, and 1080p video recorder remain indifferent to the original HTC sensation. Some of the new HTC camera software features include face recognition, geo tagging, and auto enhancement. The standard and the quality of images is fantastic, and there is barely any delay between a bunch of shots.

Just like the camera, recording video on the Sensation XE is brilliant. The movies you capture run at a very smooth 30FPS, and looks simply gorgeous on the phone’s 4.3 inch qHD display. You can also hook up the phone to a HD TV set via the phone’s DLNA capabilities, and stream all your home movies on the big screen too.

The HTC Sensation XE is without a doubt, a most excellent smartphone for entertainment purposes. Especially for all those who love music, the Beats Audio earphones and software built in to the phone will take their listening experience to a whole new level. The Sensation XE also makes a great choice for those looking for a phone that stands on top when it comes to speed and performance. Put quite simply, The HTC Sensation XE could be considered one of the company’s most top-notched accomplishments so far.

Click here to proceed onto what is the best mobile phone to buy in Australia at the moment? Part 2

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