Smartphones: DON'TS and DO’s of the office

Work habits: Don’ts

• Don't download too many addictive apps to your phone. I can imagine if your boss were to find you by the water cooler playing “Angry Birds” minutes after you went to the ladies room.

• Don’t have adult content on your phone – The embarrassment the bubbly secretary might cause you when she accidentally plays an x-rated movie on your phone while browsing for ringtones for her newly acquired Smartphone doesn't bear thinking about..

• Don’t have push notifications turned on – The sound of your phone vibrating every two minutes gets to peoples nerves eventually

• Don’t have sensitive data saved on your phone – The boss wouldn’t really mind if you lost your phone with photos of you in Mombasa on holiday...but try losing your phone with confidential work-related documents on it!

• Don’t have offensive ringtones – Here, you might risk upsetting the boss whole at all times thought you were a “jubilee” person whereas your ringtone suggests that you are “corded”

Work habits: Do’s

• Do use collaborative apps like Office suite, Quick office etc, sync your outlook and access mobile VPN. Chances are, if you forget something, no need to panic, normality is restored by your Smartphone.

• Do make use of the flexible working that the portable communication allows. This means that even if you are out of the office attending a meeting etc, you are not really “cut off”. You can still respond to your pretty secretary’s questions and make decisions

• Do use your Smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. You don’t have to be confined by the length of the Ethernet cables, be creative, think!!!!

• Do use the maps and location services on your phone not only to tell the location of your spouse. You can use it to make sure you never get lost on your way to a meeting at some weird location!

• Do maintain your improved posture. Now that most of you don’t have to carry around your 3 tonnes laptops just to access Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, your backs should return to the normal upright posture now!

Blackberry 10 Making a Comeback!!

It was exciting yesterday when blackberry released the blackberry Z10 that runs on a new Blackberry 10 platform. A comeback for blackberry that aims at transforming mobile communications as a whole as well as its business brand. IOS and Android have dominated the market for the past five years and one wonders if the launch of this new OS is a bit too late.

Unlike its predecessors that ran on RIM, BB10 platform was specifically designed to run completely on touchscreen with new user experience. So, what makes it different?

• A software keyboard that swipes words to the keyboards and enables prediction and mimics the physical version experience.
• The BB Hub is a universal inbox that offers you a chance to get all your messages from emails, twitter, Facebook, linked In which can be navigated through swiping because it does not have a physical home or back button.
• BBM now allows video calling because of the BBM video and voice features. 
• BBM balance that allows users to separate their personal and work life.
• BB world store that has over 70,000 applications for its users. Not only does it have apps, but video and music as well with popular apps such as twitter, angry birds, Facebook and Skype available.

Specifications overview:

Design	Size	Height 130 mm / 5.12 in Width 65.6 mm / 2.58 in Depth 9 mm / 0.35 in
	Weight	137.5g / 4.85 oz
	Navigation	All-touch screen, with intuitive gesture based navigation
	Keyboard	On screen BlackBerry Keyboard (portrait/landscape), featuring contextual auto-correction, next-word prediction, and a personalized learning engine that gets to know the way you type
	Dedicated keys	Volume Up/Down, Mute, Lock (for Power On/Off)
Display	Resolution	1280 x 768 resolution, at 356 PPI 24-bit color depth
	Screen size	4.2" diagonal 15:9 aspect ratio
OS & desktop software	Operating system	BlackBerry 10 OS
	Desktop software	BlackBerry® Link software for your computer to enable synchronization of data and media
Performance	Processor	Dual Core 1.5 GHz
	Memory	2GB RAM 16GB Flash
	Expandable memory	Removable microSD memory card – slot under battery door (Up to 64 GB)
	USB Ports	USB 2.0 high speed port – allows charging and data synchronization of the device with a USB cable
	HDMI Port	Micro HDMI for connection to your HDTV or projector
Power	Battery	1800mAH removable battery
	Battery Life	Up to 10 hours talk time (3G) Up to 13 days standby time *Note: Battery life claims are for Model STL100-3
Camera & video	Rear camera	8 megapixel auto-focus camera Back Side Illumination for better low-light performance 5-element F2.2 lens Dedicated ISP (image signal processor) with 64MB frame buffer Flash, continuous and touch to focus, image stabilization Enhanced Super Resolution Digital Zoom (5x) 1080p HD video recording 4 DOF (Degrees of freedom) video stabilization Time Shift mode for pinpointing and adjusting individual elements of your picture
	Front camera	2 megapixel fixed-focus camera Image and video stabilization 3x digital zoom 720p HD video recording
Multimedia	Image formats	BMP, WBMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, SGI, TGA
	Audio & video formats	3GP, 3GP2, M4A, M4V, MOV, MP4, MKV, MPEG-4, AVI, ASF, WMV, WMA, MP3, MKA, AAC, AMR, F4V, WAV, MP2PS, MP2TS, AWB, OGG, FLAC
	Audio & video encoding/decoding	H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC, MP3, PCM, Xvid, AMR-NB, WMA 9/10, WMA10 professional, WMA-LL, VC-1, VP6, SPARK, PCM, MPEG-2, MJPEG (mov), AC-3, AMR-WB, QCELP, FLAC, VORBIS
Apps	Pre-loaded apps	BlackBerry® Hub, Contacts, BlackBerry® Browser, BlackBerry® Calendar, BBM, Text Messages, BlackBerry® World, BlackBerry® Remember, Docs To Go™, Pictures, Music, Videos, Story Maker, Facebook®1, Twitter®1, LinkedIn®1, Foursquare®, BlackBerry® Maps, Games, YouTube®, Voice Control, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Compass, File Manager, Box, BlackBerry® Connect for Dropbox, Print To Go, Smart Tags, Settings, Adobe® Reader, Phone, Camera/Video Camera/Time Shift, Setup, Help, SIM Toolkit, Search
Security		Password protection, screen lock, and sleep mode BlackBerry® Balance™ offering dedicated profiles to keep work and personal data separate and secure
Alerts & notifications		Tone Vibrate On-screen or LED indicator
Voice input/output		Integrated hands-free speakerphone Hands-free headset capable Bluetooth headset capable
Network & connectivity	Network bands	Z10 Up to 4G LTE Quad band LTE 2, 5, 4, 17 (700/850/1700/1900 MHz) Tri band HSPA+ 1, 2, 5/6 (850/1900/2100 MHz) Quad band HSPA+ 1, 2, 4, 5/6, (850/1700/1900/2100 MHz) Quad band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) Z10 (4G - Verizon) Up to 4G LTE LTE Band-13 (700 MHz) CDMA Cell-band and PCS-band (800/1900 MHz) WCDMA Band-1 and Band-8 (2100/900 MHz) GSM/EDGE Quad Bands (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
	Wi-Fi®	802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz 4G Mobile Hotspot
	Bluetooth®	Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (LE)
	GPS	Assisted, Autonomous and Simultaneous GPS Preloaded with BlackBerry Maps application
	NFC	BlackBerry® Tag with NFC technology enables communication between BlackBerry smartphones and other NFC-enabled devices with a tap
Sensors	Advanced Sensors	Accelerometer Magnetometer Proximity sensor Gyroscope Ambient light sensor
Accessibility		BlackBerry® Magnify, for customers with partial vision - Learn more Adjustable screen brightness, scalable fonts Teletypewriter (TTY) Support

Tips & Tricks to help you save your battery life.

Data hungry mobile android and iPhone users are having severe issues with the battery life they have to deal with. for an interesting comparison of data user trends, click here. to ensure data usage and battery drainage are minimized, here are relevant things to keep in mind:

   

• Bluetooth: ensure that its always off if you are not using it. this way, battery life is conserved. 
• Charging : When charging your phone, ensure you do it frequently rather than waiting for it to be close to dead; this is because when it is almost charge-less, the battery will do more work during the charging.

• Applications : Stay wary of the applications that  forward you with non important messages and keep on blinking or displaying messages on your screen. in so doing, you save a lot of charge.
• Data hogging applications should also be avoided. A good example is GPS. it will run alongside applications such as twitter for geolocation services. if you have it installed, ensure its off when not in use.
• Location Applications: these applications will often look for places you currently at and pinpoint it out for the sake of social media mostly. when not in use, turn them off or visit the application settings and turn off location tracking.
• Syncing Applications : these are the apps that use the push technology eg. email. the best way to deal with this is to ensure that syncing is done less frequently by setting the period to as least frequent as possible.

• Ringtone Vs. Vibrate : Vibrations tend to use up more battery power than having a vibrant ringtone. therefore  avoid being on vibration at most times.

• Screen Timeout : Ensure that it is set to the minimal time out period available. the option to set your timeout is on the Settings Menu. this particular setting ensures you dictate the amount of time your phone takes to stay lit after a tap, after receiving input or any other kind of usage.
• Brightness : Lowering the brightness of your screen will save your charge a lot. this can be done through the settings (Menu> display> Brightness.)

• WiFi : Ensure that your WiFi is constantly turned off to avoid sniffing on the network since a lot of power is used/ lost through this.

• Lastly, always monitor your battery performance and usage.( Settings > About phone > Battery use ) This helps in making the best choice concerning what actions to take to save your battery life.