Tech & Co.

It has been over a year since we first started Mobile Tech Note. We have seen many new advances in mobile technology such as Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Android Jelly Bean, quad-core processors, and 1080p displays. Laptops have gotten even thinner, faster, crazy high-resolution displays, and they can flip and twist in all sorts of ways. To those of you that have been with us this whole year, thank you very much. If you are reading for the first time, welcome. We have some news for you. We will admit, or website did not look very good. It wasn't elegant, smooth, or pleasant to look at. It had a dated design, even though we found it during many design changes. We know that some of you out there like our writing and regularly read our articles, so we decided to update our website's look. Now our website has a brand-new flat design. The rounded green buttons looked bland so we turned them into flat, transparent black buttons with green wording. This transparent look adds a...

The iPhone has always been one of the most coveted smartphones on the market. Millions of people around the world buy them, and even more people want to buy one. Since so many people want the iPhone, but can not afford it, Apple made the iPod Touch and has sold millions of them. Many Android competitors compare their devices to the iPhone, and try to say that their device is better than it. Needless to say, Apple has has a huge success story with the iPhone. This year's iPhone mixes things up by being, design wise, a mash up of previous iPhones with the glass and aluminum body. The iPhone also gives in to recent trends by increasing its screen size. Is Apple's new design an improvement over the 4's and 4s's? Is the new four inch screen any more useful than the previous 3.5 inch screens? Find out the answers to these questions and more in our review of the iPhone 5. Hardware The iPhone has almost always been the definition of a premium design.  The original iPho...

Almost ever since Android was released, hardware manufacturers have been putting their own spin on the mobile operating system. Most hardware manufacturers have made skins for Android to differentiate themselves from other companies. Some of these skins improved Android in its early years, but they have been lagging behind stock Android lately. Most of the skins that companies put on their Android smartphones today are cartoonish, drastically different from stock Android, and slow down the phone itself. These faults with skins have made many people, tech savvy and not, want companies to do away with skins on their Android smartphones and let stock Android's light shine. Installing a stock Android ROM is a way to solve this problem, but you should not have to go through the troubles that come with flashing ROMs to get stock Android on your phone. Samsung, Google, and HTC have attempted to solve this problem by releasing versions of their flagship devices, with stock Android 4...

HTC just recently showed off their new Android flagship, the HTC One. After last year's HTC One X, S, V, SV, XV, XL, and many other variants, HTC decided to try again at making a single flagship. HTC is taking some bold steps with the One by introducing their four megapixel "UltraPixel" camera, and the new BlinkFeed home screen. Is the HTC One the Android phone that we have been waiting for? Are these bold new features enough to keep HTC a known brand? Scroll onward to read our scoop on it. The HTC One is the most beautiful Android phone on the market. Period. While the One X had a unibody polycarbonate design, the One has a machined aluminum design with polycarbonate accents. It has a back similar to the pyramid/upside-down smiley face back of the Droid DNA and J Butterfly, but the similarities end there. This rounded back design makes the One better and more comfortable to hold in your hand. The front is also made of machined aluminum, and it has dual front-facing ...

We have been waiting for Blackberry to unveil Blackberry 10 for a very, very, very, very long time. There are not enough very's to stress how long we have waited. Every time Blackberry was getting close to announcing it, they pushed the release date back. On January 30th, 2013, Blackberry finally unveiled their newest operating system and their newest devices. After Blackberry's year long absence from the mobile market, how do their devices stack up to iOS and Android? Will Blackberry 10 and their new devices bring people back from their beloved iPhones and Android phones? Click on for our take on Blackberry's brand-new Z10 and Q10, and their new operating system. Blackberry Z10 The Blackberry Z10 is Blackberry's brand-new flagship. This is the phone that Blackberry will push for you to buy. The Z10 has a 4.2 inch 1,280 x 768 display, a dual-core 1.5GHZ Snapdragon S4 processor, an eight megapixel camera, a two megapixel front-facing camera, and of course Bla...

The year 2012 has finally wrapped up with the releases of many fantastic smartphones and tablets. 2012 surprised us with many groundbreaking releases, such as Apple's first Retina iPad, Google's first tablet, and the introduction of quad-core processors. With the release of many devices, there are some that stand out above the crowd and rise to become our favorites. Here's our favorite devices of 2012. Best Device   AT&T HTC One X   The HTC One X is the closest you can get to a perfect device. It had the best display on the market at the time (bested by only the HTC Droid DNA today), the super fast Snapdragon S4 processor, a fantastic eight megapixel f/2.0 camera paired with HTC's great Imagesense chip, a beautiful polycarbonate unibody design, and a great skin on top of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Sense was one of the first Ice Cream Sandwich skins that actually improved  Android, and it was a great refresh of Sense. The international version was plagued...

Just a month ago, Apple released their brand-new iPad Mini. This was the smaller, less expensive version of the iPad with its 7.9 inch screen and its $329 price tag. How does the iPad Mini stack up to the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD? Is this the portable tablet to buy? To answer these questions, read on for our first impressions on the iPad Mini. Look and Feel The iPad Mini is an incredible piece of hardware. It feels very nice in the hand with the aluminum back and the glass front, and it is very light and thin at 308 grams and 7.2 millimeters thin. The iPad Mini feels like a very premium device, as it should feel, and feels extremely solid. We would definitely say that the iPad Mini is one of the best feeling devices we have ever felt. The iPad Mini comes in two colors: black & slate and white & silver. The unit we tested was the black and slate version and it looks fantastic. The black version has this dark, ominous feel to it. The white version is nice, but it do...