Google's newest phone: Nexus 6

The pre-orders of the Nexus 6 have officially started and the phone is set to release. This article is not one to describe the capabilities of the phone but rather to talk about the the decisions that were made in making this phone. The most obvious of those decisions was to make the phone bigger, quite a bit bigger actually. The previous Nexus 5 was about a five inch display and the Nexus 6 is a six inch screen. One wonders if the size of the phone will be a plus for the phone or a negative. Bigger phones in general are not wildly popular. An example of the not so large popularity of larger phones is the sales of the iPhone 6 compared to the iPhone 6 plus. The iPhone 6 is out selling the iPhone 6 plus three to one. Also since we are on the subject of one phone being in two different sizes why didn't Google didn't create two different sizes of this phone it would be a good assumption that two different sizes of this model would draw more people to the phone. However most likely the reason why there isn't a smaller version of the Nexus 6 is it would be very similar to the Moto x that was recently released. Another obvious decision that that was made was the one to make a higher price phone. The nexus 6 is takes a different route than the previous Nexus phones in terms of pricing. The previous Nexus phones were priced lower than that of the competition. However the Nexus 6 is retail priced at $682.99 which is a bit higher than most phones on the market today. From what I have seen of the reviews is that the phone has its advantage but will that mean success that answer is something we will have to wait on.

The War of The Carriers

The War of The Carriers

For those of you who haven't noticed the endless amount of advertisements that the four major carriers Sprint, At&t, Verizon, and T- Mobile have put forth to the general public. The ads all try to depict how they are the company has best cellular service option. I cant help but notice how this is forcing cellular companies to change in a radical way. This is incredible for customers there has never been a time where they have gotten so much for most times just simply being a customer. These freebies include international long distance, international text, and cloud storage space. This continuous need to change ultimately all began when T-mobile announced they no longer were going to offer service contracts a move that took the cellular service industry by storm. A benefit of T-mobile decisions they could list the price of just service in their advertising which most of the general public assume that they had lower prices which in a way they did.  T-mobile because of its genius marketing move started gaining customers rapidly. The other companies were caught off guard by T-mobile’s actions and started to scramble. The scramble led to the companies changing the way their plans were structured especially Verizon and At&t. They no longer offered plans revolving around talk time and started to offer plans around data. Wait, one might ask the question with the wide spread popularity of smartphones since the iPhone 4S (widespread meaning a majority of people had smartphones) shouldn't have the data became the most important part of the cellular plans a long time ago. Well up until a year ago that wasn't the case for the cellular companies. However the elimination of contracts wasn't the move T-mobile made the greatest impact on the industry, It was the introduction of the buy-out program. The buyout program was t-mobile's guarantee that if you switch to them that they would pay off your earlier termination fee. This gave customers the ability to leave their current carrier whenever they chose and thus other cellular companies now really had to worry about losing their customers. Soon after the other companies choose to implement some type of reward incentive to switch to their company. Then on the companies started doing the only other thing they could do which was price cut. Several price cuts have actually been preformed by all the companies. In the end as the current state of the cellular world is great for customers but seemingly not for the companies.

LG's Progression

LG has done what I didn't think they could do with their latest phone the LG G3, they push their name among the elite in the phone world in the eyes of the public. I have always thought LG released great phones. There phones tend to be very progressive have the technical specifications and creative earlier than other companies but at times LG's previous phones seemed to have to many things going on over whelming many people. Now with their new set of phones centered around the LG G3, LG still has a progressive style but the phones now do not feel overwhelming. The phones of LG are now more practical and easier to use making them more appealing to a larger audience and as a result their new lines of phones are doing very well.

Imminent Unveiling : Note 4

Samsung has begun its commercial promotion for the unveiling of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 on September 3rd. What I have been impressed with is the teaser videos that they have released recently on the topic of how the different aspects of the Note series have utilized humans natural inclination to do things such as write and draw mix with something as new to human society as a cellphone. It is not just the topic but the way Samsung relays this message which is in my opinion is nicely done.

If you want to the teaser videos visit the guys at Android Authority through this link: http://www.androidauthority.com/note-4-teaser-creative-516144/

Guido Daniele

Guido Daniele is a hyper-realistic illustrator best known for his body and hand paintings. Most of us have seen his work because of the substantial amount of advertising he has been apart of. His pieces are both simplistic yet integrate. He is one of those artists whose work I loved to look at as a child growing up.

 

 



Samsung’s New Super Model Phone ( The Galaxy Alpha )

 

Samsung recently announced that it will release the Galaxy Alpha. The announcement also included marketing for the phone. The commercial for the phone in particular pretty much sums up where Samsung is going with this phone, Samsung wants this phone to be it’s sexier more visually appealing phone in its line up. Looking at the phone the first thing you will notice is that the phone is metal rather than the usual plastic of the other samsung phones. The images of the phone that have been released show an actually beautiful phone. The size of the phone which is a 4.7-inch AMOLED display is a different from the direction that Samsung was heading with its phone which was bigger is better. The decision to make this phone smaller was a good idea in my opinion . There is a large sector of people that prefer smaller phones and this sector of people is largely dominated by Apple .  I know there are smaller Samsung phones but there simply put dumb down versions of Samsung’s flagship phones with a mini tag put in after the name (Galaxy 4 Mini) .With the Galaxy Alpha Samsung can now truly compete in this sector.  As mentioned the external aspects of this phone are pretty nice but how is the internal aspects. Well the Galaxy Alpha does okay in that department. The phone features a display at 720p HD,  a 12-megapixel camera , a 1,860 mAh battery, and an Octa Core processor. Also one unexpected detail about this phone is that it does not include an MicroSD slot but only the 32GB of internal storage. I personally hope that this is not something that Samsung is planning to do with its other phones. All in all I am excited to see this new addition to Samsung’s ever expanding phone line up.

The painter, Wyatt Mills

Wyatt Mills’ paintings is like listening to a symphony it provokes emotion. In his own words  “I do not want to paint a picture, what I am struggling to accomplish is how to create an image that is not perceived as a picture, but looks like a memory, or experience. I want to incorporate movement, feelings, and a violent sense of instability. What I am dealing with is how I perceive my reality.” His art is one of a kind and is madly alluring.

 

 

 

 

 

Eric Zener

Water, Land, Sleep, Journeys, These are are all collection of work by one of my favorite photo realistic artists. His work has always able to provide the piece that for a person like me who mind is constantly running is not often accomplished. The water collection being my favorite of the four collections is something I often look at to clear my mind. His work isn't the most realistic however that seems to be an advantage of his work.  Many times looking at photo realistic art that is more like an actual photo it gets confused as such. 

Bob Marley (Jam Session)

Today my iPod switch to the Bob Marley song "I shot the Sheriff"  and for the rest of the day I was in a continuous Bob Marley jam session. I was remind how much emotion was in his music. The reason why he is just a beloved artist is you can feel the soul in his music. You feel that whatever he is saying in his songs are a part of him. My favorite Bob Marley song is "is this love" , what is yours?

A poem that captured a movie

One of my favorite poems from one of my favorite movies.  This movie captured the reality of falling for someone so deeply that that it feels like that person took residence in your heart and mind . At the end when this poem was read it utterly captured what the movie was about.  I won't ever get tired of watching Eric Schaeffer' s Fall and listening to the poem that solidified the message of the movie.

Eric Schaeffer- Fall (1997)

" I wanted so badly to tell you that I loved you. The words, each time, graced my lips like an impostor, only to fall away like some great blizzard that was taken out to sea to rain it's fury on the dark ocean, alone, unbeknownsnt to any hearing... And whether that day is tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or next lifetime...I will finally get to tell you to your sweet face. The face I will miss more than I could ever tell, that...I love You. And you'll smile wryly, close your eyes, say 'catch me baby,'...and fall."

Taking the Chromecast to the Next level!

The latest reports from various sources suggest that in the next few days Google will be releasing an update to Chromecast which will include the mirror feature. This feature was first introduce at the Google keynote not to long ago. This feature is for those who have a chromecast a much anticipated feature. One downside  to the Chromecast was that at times if your internet was not particularly strong your Chromecast would not always connect to it. Also for those like me who often find themselves in hotel rooms are often times unable to connect to the Chromecast because of the login page that many hotels have before you can access their wifi. Hopefully with this added mirror feature these problems will be a thing of the past thus making the Chromecast much more of a great product rather than just good.

Fx (The best network today)

Archer, The Bridge, The Americans, Fargo, Justified, Louie, American Horror Story, Tyrant, and Sons of Anarchy all shows on one of the best networks today, Fx. Fx has become the show hit maker of television today.  Part of the success of the network is that the network takes chances with styles of shows like no one else. Louie for example is not a type of show seen in other networks. Honestly it is not a show for everyone. I personally love the show but to some people I have suggested the show to have had opposite feelings towards the show . I imagine this being the case for the american population were some very much love the show while others sit on the opposite end of the spectrum . American horror stories being another example of the networks ability to take chances. The show has a different story line every season that is a crazy concept. If someone were to tell me years ago that this would be a successful concept for a show I would immediately tell them that no network would go for it merely for the risk factor of losing viewers who do not like the current season's story line. Aside from taking risk the network continues to hit homeruns. This year already the network has brought us Fargo a dark yet comical show that had us yearning for more at the end of each episode and Tyrant a show that depicts a perspective like no other.  I personally can't wait to see what FX bring us next.

Smart Watches

Smart watches were one of the most important aspects of the Google keynote with the companies LG, Motorola, and Samsung presenting their versions of soon to be released smart watch models. The models presented LG G Watch, Samsung Gear Live, and Motorola 360 looked great and from the first impressions I have seen from various sites seems to preform great as well. One thing keeps looming in my mind however when I think of smart watches " is it a necessity " after all the purpose of a smart watch is that you do not have to take out your phone every time you want to preform a simple task on your phone. However does it really take that much time to take out your phone out to preform that task. Yes, I know there are those situations when it is much more problematic to take out your phone such as in the case in one recent Google commercial of the smartwatch where someone was riding a bike and instead of have to stop to get the phone out to preform a task she simply spoke a command to the smartwatch to complete the task. My thing is are those moments so frequent that it justifies the need for a smart watch.

Amazon Fire Phone

Amazon has officially put their hat in the smartphone race with the Amazon Fire phone. It is going  to be very interesting to see how this phone does in a industry that is full with players. The Amazon conference showed features that I think will be very useful aspects of the phone. The feature that I am excited to see in action is fire fly. Firefly is basically an identification feature that basically identifies things such as movies, songs,products,etc. This feature seem to be one Amazon's biggest achievements with the phone and if rumors are true the feature is very accurate. The other feature of the phone is that I want to see in action is the May Day feature which promises a customer service representative in thirteen seconds or less that can help you with anything dealing with the phone and in some circumstances do tasks for you. Like all phones it is not perfect, one aspect of the phone I find a negative is the screen size at 4.7 inches but this is more of a personal thing for I am a in favor of larger screens. For more information on the specs of the phone see below.


Rear-facing camera                            13MP with LED Flash
Front-facing camera                           2.1MP
Battery capacity                                 2400 mAh
Weight (ounces)                                 5.64
Internal memory storage                     32GB or 64 GB
Ram                                                  2GB
Processor                                         Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 800