Indecisive about which tablet to buy? Having trouble narrowing your choices down from the down? Want to pick out the good ones from all the technological mediocrity out there? Well, we’ll do it for you.

iPad Air 2:
First and foremost, IPad Air, hands down one of the best tablets ever manufactured. Its successor may arrive this year but the exact details are not known. It is common knowledge that the iPad Air isn’t cheap but it’s a tablet which lasts long gives its users the ultimate tablet experience that so many other just fail to match up to. It is definitely more portable than its predecessors, has a 9.7 inch display and is quite powerful too because of a 64 bit A7 processor with an M7 motion co-processor.

ipad-air-2

iPad Mini 2 With Retina Display:
Second on our list, and this may annoy some of you, is the iPad mini with retina display! As the name suggests it’s obviously smaller than the iPad Air. The retina display is 7.9 inches, the overall small size makes the iPad mini more portable. It comes with the same processor as the iPad Air and some models are able to connect to a 4G LTE network which facilitates extremely fast speeds of internet.

ipad-mini-2

Nexus 7:
The Nexus 7 is also quite an impressive option, and it will save you some money compared to the Apple tablets. Nexus 8 is set to be released by the end of the year so this phone, in some ways still has the stage. It comes with a sleek black matte design that is both, desirable and ergonomic. Furthermore, it comes with a quad core processor, 2 GB RAM, a rear camera and Android’s latest operating system called Android 4.4.2 Kit Kat.

nexus-7

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX:
Next up, is definitely Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX. It has a 7 inch display and is capable of competing with Nexus 7 and even the iPad mini retina display. Interestingly, it doesn’t use an Android OS but a rather modified version of Android which is connected with Amazon’s services. Oh and another attraction; it cheaper than the other tablets.

Amazons-Kindle-Fire-HDX

The Galaxy Tab S:
The Galaxy Tab S is also a contender on the list and why wouldn’t it be? It’s got an 8 inch screen with an astoundingly beautiful display, a great camera and it has the company’s Magazine UX instead of the Samsung Touchwiz, which is a significant improvement if you ask us.

galaxy-tab-s
We hope these consideration will help you decide more reasonably or at least get you a little closer to deciding.

Many people now find their iPhone invaluable when it comes to business matters and managing finances, and it’s easy to see why when you look at the range of apps on offer. From scanning documents to money-saving tips, check out the next few pages to see which apps could help organize your life…

iphone-business-appsapps-for-business

NatWest Stockbrokers App

An app for customers to access their Stockbrokers Brokerline account and trade on the move. The ability to view orders, track portfolios and create a watch list, this app provides at-a-glance account summaries, up-to-the-minute trade prices, real-time quotes on stock you are monitoring and a detailed breakdown of your portfolio, current holdings, market value and overall gain or loss. It’s also highly secure to use.

This app combines an attractive and accessible interface with a high level of detailed information that is relayed very effectively, even on the small screen. But there’s still room for improvement. We would have liked the landscape orientation to have been utilized to allow users to interact with graphs to see the prices at specific points, and the option to transfer money in or out of your account is lacking. A promising start.

Price: Free Developer: RBS

DebtMinder

Getting into debt is never a pleasant experience, and without essential planning it’s possible to let the problem get out of control. DebtMinder is an app that can analyze a user’s financial situation, develop a payo_ plan, and help dig them out of a hole. DebtMinder offers simple and effective data synchronization between iOS devices via the cloud, perfect for keeping team members updated on the current situation.

Data can also be synced with sister app BillMinder. Syncing data is reliant upon setting up an account, but if you don’t want to do this it is not required, as the app still works fine as a standalone product. DebtMinder calculates payo_ plans based on interest rates, starting dates and opening. The progress of a plan can be viewed in the Reports section of the app where line graphs and pie charts visualize your current financial status. For someone looking to wrestle some control over their vanishing finances, DebtMinder is an ideal app for turning the tide.

Price: £1.49/$1.99 Developer: return7

Divided Bill Splitter

When dining out with friends, splitting the bill can be a time-consuming pain and a cause of disagreements. Instead of breaking out a calculator app, Divided Bill Splitter can be applied to effectively split the cost. The straightforward interface allows for totals to be calculated with or without a tip, also making it more functional than the built-in calculator. If a straight split isn’t ideal, it’s similarly possible to apply separate costs for individuals within a group.

Divided Bill Splitter is a simple yet perfectly functional app that we would certainly recommend.

MoneySave Debt Calculator

Debt is never a fun situation, but in order to fix the problem it is necessary to meet it head-on. Using the free MoneySave Debt Calculator app, incoming funds can be compared against regular outgoing financial commitments. The simple questions provided by the app make it possible to create an action plan that can help remove unwanted debt. There’s some useful information on offer here, but the results generally tend to skew towards calling the team behind the app for extra advice – which, of course, isn’t free.

Price: Free Developer: Snowchicken. Limited

Learning on iPhone is fun as well as informative. Here we present the best brain-feeding apps

apps-for-businesseducational_iphone_apps_highscool

educational-apps-for-iphone-ipad

ABC Spy

ABC Spy is certainly a little different from many education apps aimed at early years, in that it actually encourages activity as a source of learning. Through the app, children are challenged to use the iPhone’s camera to take a picture of something for each letter of the alphabet. As well as being a fun activity that keeps kids on their toes, it serves as a great way to consolidate knowledge of the alphabet. On top of the alphabet-based challenge, kids are encouraged to show off their creative side by choosing a frame for each photo and sizing the picture to fit, with trophies being awarded for every photo challenge completed. All in all, this is a great app, with plenty of bright colors and easy-to-use controls to keep children entertained for hours. There’s plenty to do and for the price, it’s incredibly great value – a worthy download for teaching the basics of letters and the alphabet.

Price: £0.69/$0.99 Developer: Stealth Education

Microsoft Office 2010 Pro

Microsoft Office 2010 Pro provides a great resource of video tutorials to help you master Microsoft Office without the need for hefty manuals or long-winded step-by-step instructions. Upon launching the app, you’re presented with a somewhat limited set of tutorial categories. Tapping on any of the different categories will bring up a playlist of videos that form an entire tutorial, conveniently these are split up into sections for more focused learning, but it would be nice if they were a little more comprehensive.

There’s a few options within the app to purchase additional tutorial files, but for the cost of the app, it would have been better to see a little more included in the first place. That said, the video tutorials are clear, concise and easy to follow, making this a great app for beginners and novices alike. Well worth downloading if you’re looking to learn and understand Office in a flash.

Special Words

Special Words helps children with learning difficulties get to grips with words, pictures and sounds, and the thought that’s gone into the app really shows. Everything from the plain background (children with Down’s syndrome and autism can be distracted by colorful or moving backgrounds) to the lockable options bar has been purposefully designed to aid in the learning process, and the result is something that’s effective, easy to use and fully featured. There are four different games to choose from, involving matching pictures to pictures, words to words, pictures to words and vice versa. All of these can be customized by adding, deleting or editing entries to the universal words list, meaning that the opportunities to expand this great learning tool are endless.

The app may seem simple to most, but its simplicity allows it to be universally accessible to children with all manner of learning difficulties and levels of development, and that’s something that only a few educational apps can boast.

Interactive Telling Time – Learning to tell time is fun

A fair few methods can be employed when it comes to teaching kids to tell the time, and Interactive Telling Time has certainly included a number of them in this great app. Making full use of the iPhone’s touch screen interface, ‘Set The Time’ allows you to move the clock’s hands to the time that’s displayed, whereas ‘Tell The Time’ requires you to read the time and set on the standard iOS barrel-option wheel. These two methods combined would be enough to teach most children the basics of telling the time, but there are also three different games to choose from that make the process a lot more fun. The app itself is bright and colorful yet clear and easy to use, meaning little adult supervision is required to get it set up. There are plenty of options to increase or decrease the difficulty of the tasks too. Few apps offer so many features in this price bracket.

Chirp! Bird Songs Europe +

Chirp! Bird Songs Europe + provides an interactive, audible encyclopedia of birds and their birdsongs from all around Europe. Fire up the app and tap on a country to get started. From here you can preview sounds by bird name in alphabetical order or even by commonness. There’s an attractive slide show of bird images and sounds to entertain, and a birdsong quiz to test your knowledge. On top of this, a single tap takes you to the Wikipedia page for each bird.

Google acquired Motorola several months ago and few months back Motorola under Google released its first mobile the MOTO X. The MOTO X looked totally different from the way we have seen Motorola devices before and it worked way different and much better. Still is Moto X really a dependable phone fit to be in the competition in the android race? Let us analyse.

It’s no doubt that Motorola has turned much better than it was before after it was acquired by Google. Google closed a lot of Motorola’s branches around the world kept the company in a low profile and by the middle of 2013, came back to the market with a new device the Moto X.

Although the Moto X’s components were not a match to the then best smartphones in the market like the Samsung galaxy S4, Google introduced the phone claiming it as a high-end smart phone and marked the price at around $199. The phone’s resolution was not a match to the high end phones and the screen size was just content and it had a 10mp camera.

moto-x

SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro

CPU: Dual-Core 1.7 GHz Krait 300

GPU: Adreno 320

Display: 4.7-inch HD SuperAMOLED

Memory: 16/32 GB

RAM: 2 GB

SIM: Nanosim

Main camera: 10 megapixels + LED flash

Secondary Camera: 2 megapixels

Weight: 130 grams

Dimensions: 129.3 × 65.3 × 10.4 mm

Software: Android 4.4 KitKat

The features are no different and are less standard than the high end devices except that the Moto X can be customised with the MotoMaker.

Preliminary analyses of the device indicated clearly revealed that it has followed the steps of Apple’s iPhone where user interface is given the main importance.

Moto X though using an android OS has some additional features like active display and touch less control making it stand out from the other android devices.

Many devices have been released since the Moto X’s release upgraded with the latest versions of software and other features. Is Moto X still worth a user’s money and performs well enough to be in the race? Let’s find out.

Design

As we discussed earlierMoto X is the first phone after being acquired by Google and the hence the design has been carefully done. Moto has followed iphone steps in deciding the size of the phone, neither too compact nor too big. Moto X’s has dimensions 129.3 x 65.3 x 10.4 mm. This is a little longer then the iPhone 5S and the phone weighs about 130gms.

Owing to its small compact size and the design, the Moto X is really comfortable both in the hand and the pocket.

The volume control, power button, camera, headphone jack are in the usual position. The one most important thing that Google has added is the motomaker with the use of which uses can customise the colour of their MotoX. But this facility is only available in the US.

Screen

Moto X has a great and attractive display but it is not simply the best we could see in a smart phone. The phone use super AMOLED technology display and grants many advantages and of course disadvantages too.

The maximum brightness of the Moto X is much lesser than the other Smartphones like the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy 5s S4.The screen offers good viewing angle but a blue hue appears when you exceed 180 degrees. The same issue prevails in the LG flex too which is not a surprise since both the phones use AMOLED technology.

Performance

As far as the performance of the Moto X is concerned there can be no complaints. Moto X performs smoothly and the apps open to speed. Thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 SoC Pro and there are two more cores which are responsible for the touch less control and quick camera.

Camera

Camera is one of the major disadvantages of the phone. Moto X has only a 10 mp camera with clear pixel technology. In good lighting conditions the camera is capable of taking good pictures but after a particular point of zoom the clarity in the images is lost.

The camera is almost of no use at all in low light. It is not worse but the camera in other smart phones is far better when compared to this.

On the whole Moto X’s camera is good but is not even close to the smart phones in market.

Software

Moto X comes with the latest version of android. Software is one place where Motorola has put more thought into. No disadvantage can be put forward in terms of software in the Moto X.

In addition to this Motorola also offers additional features like the active display and touch less control.

Touch less control

This is one of the best features of the phone. It uses Google voice search. The phrase ‘Google ok now’ activates the control. The best part is that the voice control recognises only to one voice.

Active display

With the use of active display users can see notifications without even having to unlock the device, similar to the one found in the iPhone. The AMOLED screen displays only a part of the display lights when the notifications are displayed saving battery power.

The best feature would be the Moto assist. This assists in controlling the profiles and other controls for example when the user has added a business appointment Motoassists takes a note of the appointment and the phone is placed in the silent mode automatically.

Autonomy and sound

Moto X uses a 2200 mAh battery and with moderate use the battery holds for the whole day. But with extensive use of the phone the battery does not stay for the whole day.

The battery life of the device is good but it does match the battery of the high end devices.

The sound system of the Moto X is pretty good with good quality but still does not match to the high end devices.

Advantage:

Software: The phone uses the latest version of the OS.

Performance: Performance of the device is good it works fast and fluid.

Sound: Motorola known for good sound and has shown their standard in Moto X too.

Disadvantage:

Display: Though it uses a super AMOLED screen much improvement is necessary.

Conclusion

On the whole the Moto X is a really good phone and is fit to be in the race with the smartphones. But a lot of improvement is necessary to meet the standards of the really good smartphones ruling the market.

Last year Nokia has started a broad range of phablet named Lumia 1520 and this time they upgraded the previous one and made a new lumia 1530.

It is regarded as an excellent substitution of Nokia Lumia 1520. It is designed by Sheikh Imaduddin who presented one of the most famous I phones, I phone 6. It has a 6” phablet with 1080 p Ips display. It has 3 GB of RAM, 32GB of storage 20Mp camera on the rear of it prepared with OIS.

nokia_lumia_1530

Like all the other phablets it is dust and water proof which would not let you worry about the minor problems related to usual phones. Its appearance and format is more like the Lumia1520 apart from the different spacing of Windows phone tiles. It has top and bottom covering, which is a bit unusual for Nokia Lumia series, of luxurious black colour along with a line of red colour. As far as its cost is concerned it is certainly heavy on the pockets of the customers.