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Nokia Lumia 822 Review: Mid-Range Bang For Mid-Range Buck
Nokia has been busting out their chops to find the right audience and carrier to hold their Lumia line of smartphones that run Windows Phone 8. In this particular case, unable to obtain the fancy Lumia 920 that I reviewed back in November, Verizon has to settle with the Lumia 822, a mid-range smartphone with a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and with plastics and metals fused in a rather creative matter to appease those who want great aesthetics in a phone.
Samsung hasn’t been stingy for their first Mobile World Congress announcement in Barcelona. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 is the second “Note” edition tablet — that is, a Samsung device to include an S Pen stylus. This bad boy is no different from any of the other high-end gizmos that Samsung churns out: a 8-inch 1280 x 800-pixel TFT display, a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos 4 processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, microSDXC support, a 4,600 mAh battery, Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, HSPA+ 21 support for mobile internet, and a body that’s 25% thinner that the Galaxy Note 10.1 from last year.
Do you think the Chromebook Pixel is useless and expensive, despite having one of the best screens ever put on a laptop (plus it doubles as a touchscreen)? Well, look again. Google and Lenovo were smart enough to include the usual bonus unverified BIOS slot that you can go and enable through developer settings — which would then allow you install a different operating system.
If Google Play Music isn’t enough for the big G, then what is? Apparently, it would be music streaming, like Rdio or Spotify. According to the Financial Times, Google is currently in talks with “big music labels to launch a streaming service to compete with companies such as Spotify.” If this is true, then Google would offer songs available for streaming with ads, alongside paid subscriptions that remove those ads, with perhaps some unique features, as soon as the 3rd quarter of 2013 strikes.
Apparently, the Al-Qaeda insurgents are thinking very astutely when it comes to defense against American drone strikes and fly-by reconnaissance missions. In a document originally published in 2011, and now finally translated into English, Al-Qaeda members are urged to us all (or any) of the 22 ways suggested of avoiding a drone strike. Some of them are rather simplistic, like ”hide under thick trees” — which is believed to have been written by Osama bin Laden, but another involves using a Russian device called a “sky grabber” to “infiltrate the drone’s waves and frequencies.” And some include creating jammer towers using readily available materials.
Google has taken the initiative to build a high-end Chromebook laptop. The Chromebook Pixel starts at $1,299 for a Wi-Fi model or $1,449 for LTE and more storage. (a full 1TB of Google Drive storage, per user, for three years) and ships in the first week April from Google Play or Best Buy — pre-orders start now.
Want a high-end camera that’s not over a year old? Well, Nikon has you covered where Canon doesn’t (for now). The D7100 has 24.1-megapixel sensor for the high end of Nikon’s consumer DSLR offerings. The new camera has its very own CMOS sensor — which is completely new for DSLRs. The ISO range of 100 to 6400 and can also be pushed to ISO 25600 in Nikon’s Hi2 extension mode for different lighting conditions. A 51-point autofocus system (15 cross-type sensors in the middle) also adds to the feature list of the D7100.