What exactly is CyanogenMod? – Will this be the New Android Revolution?
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How many of you have an Android powered
phone? If you don’t have one yet and are planning to buy one. . . WAIT!!
Try and pick one from THESE
devices. Why?? I have an Android powered phone and expect more out of
it but only with the list of devices mentioned and a few others like the
Amazon Kindle Fire, you’ll be able to update to the latest version of CyanogenMod. Though this isn’t an official release by Google itself, It has replaced the stock firmware in many devices.
What Exactly is CyanogenMod ???
CyanogenMod is the true face of
the Android OS unleashed. In a very broad sense, If Android is Windows
Vista, CyanogenMod can be seen as Windows 7. Commercial versions of the
mobile platform are customized by vendors like Samsung, T-Mobile, HTC,
Motorola etc for their specific devices. Thanks to Google, the
development of Android by many open source developers has led to the
birth of CyanogenMod, which is named after the screen name of an early
developer of the firmware. The stable CyanogenMod 6 was released late in
August 2010 for devices running Android 2.2. As Google announced
Android 2.3 codenamed Gingerbread ,a conglomerate of freelance
developers and communities were quick to release an upgraded CyanogenMod
7. The latest stable version out is 7.1 as of 11th October 2011 for
more than 60 smart phones and tablets.
Every mod release can be categorized into 3 groups -
- Stable releases which as the name suggest are tried and tested versions of the firmware.
- Release Candidates which are under test and development, slightly buggy and need to be improved.
- Nightlies which are crude and could cause fatal problems to your phone.
In terms of performance, CyanogenMod is
awesome. Awesome to the degree that it can push your phone to its limit.
Be warned that some devices could act weird while running it but you’re
guaranteed to love the upgrade. Once successfully installed, Your
phone’s Settings menu will have a new link called CyanogenMod Settings
which will unlock the gate to some stunning features on your device.
So how different is CyanogenMod 7 from
Android Gingerbread? I could go on and on and on about it. The user
interface has been modified a lot and uses the ADW launcher, which has
somehow disappointed many Android lovers. For detailed info on the
complete list of Android launcher styles, Click Here
. The default theme is very similar to that of the Google Nexus and
several cool themes can be added via the android market. Scrolling feels
like slicing butter with a Hattori Hanzo sword. The notification screen
has been greatly improved by adding more controls and the ability to
now deal with each notification individually. The status bar that is
usually at the top of the screen can now be moved to the bottom. Most of
these settings are common for smart phones and tablets but specific
tablet settings can be found under tablet mode.
Gesture recognition for Android is
here!!! Just draw a gesture on your phone and see the action performed.
You could now play a song by drawing an arrow on the phone’s screen or
stop it by drawing an ‘S’. All this even if your phone is locked. You
get to customize gestures for various functions under the CyanogenMod
Settings. The music player also comes with FLAC file support and the DSP
Manager which has definitely improved the audio experience by adding an
equalizer and a virtual room effect that was missing previously.
You see those crosshairs when you try
clicking a picture with your phone’s camera? I’m very sure you tried
moving them to focus on a part while taking a picture and it doesn’t
turn out to be what you expected. With CyanogenMod, touch to focus
actually works but there are many reporting a buggy camera. The
applications seems to be force closing on some devices.
Songs can now be changed using the volume
control buttons on the phone and you can alternately use the power
button to click pictures. A Reboot option has been added to the power
menu. You’ll notice all LED’s finally work on your phone which probably
never did before. You can enable haptic and tactile feedback on the
device which makes the experience more realistic and pleasing. You can
choose from a variety of ways to unlock your phone.
It is also seen that wireless
connectivity has improved. Android devices can now be tethered and used
as network hotspots via USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. There’s also an in
built OpenVPN client available for secure point to point connections.
Earlier, to manage CPU performance, you had to use a 3rd party tools
like setCPU but now, over clocking your device is a built in feature
that you can control which is totally awesome. It does contain some
advanced settings most novices would consider avoiding.
Many of the apps you download and use
require access to various data and services on your phone. Some of the
services that are accessed may seem unnecessary for example I downloaded
this set of HD wallpapers which uses my network service, the SD card
and phone contacts. WHY IN THE WORLD would a wallpaper app need to
access phones contacts?? You can alter permissions for applications
running on your device using the permission manager. Be careful about
messing with this as well because a wrong move could end up applications
to stop functioning properly.
You can now set your apps to install
directly to your external memory card(actually you don’t because this is
set by default) rather than letting them use the phone/internal memory.
This can be done by selecting your device Settings >>CyanogenMod
Settings >> Application Settings >> Install location and
then selecting either Internal, External or Automatic, which means the
system will decide where to install the app.
With CyanogenMod downloads hitting the 1
million mark recently, a big majority of the users have reported an
increase in the battery life of their smart phone, in spite of the boost
in performance, and features. Others complain that power consumption
hasn’t changed or has decreased, something that will have to be looked
into for future releases Talking about battery life, the upgrade now
lets you view the power level of your phone in terms of percentage
remaining which has impressed a lot.
CyanogenMod 8 was planned for devices
supporting Android 3.x codenamed Android Honeycomb, but Google on the
other hand planned not to release the source code for Honeycomb and have
directly announced Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich, which seems to have
some astonishing improvements and features. As Steve Kondik, one of the
major pioneers behind the CyanogenMod project promised a new version in 2
months, an alpha version of CyanogenMod 9 has been released for the Ice
Cream Sandwich platform. It is something many are looking forward to.
There are issues that still exist that
need to be addressed with the stable versions of CyanogenMod and are not
meant for an average user. If you’re planning to try out CyanogenMod I
recommend you do some research on the tools you’ll need to do so. You
should be able to find most of them of the CyanogenMod Official Website
Before you flash your phone’s OS to CyanogenMod, know that no one will
be responsible for what happens to it other than yourself. You can
always switch to stock ROM, but that’s guaranteed to be a big effort
involved.
2012 Best Upcoming Gadgets & Technologies – New Revolutionary Inventions
A Lot of Best Upcoming Gadgets will entertain you this year. I guess everyone is excited to know about these Best Upcoming Gadgets
& Technologies in 2012. I have found some amazing technologies
which will boom up 2012 year for sure. These amazing gadgets will be are
very popular in up coming days. We all are very lucky to get amazing
updates from different technologies in this year 2012. We have already
posted 30 Biggest
Technology Inventions & Revolutionary Gadgets of 2011 in our
previous post. To a continuation to that post, we are posting the 7
amazing technologies and gadgets of 2012. Check them out, hope you find
them interesting.
The Best Upcoming Gadgets & Technologies :
1) Ultrabooks :
We’ve seen a lot of tablets last year,
with the increase of demand for tablets among the student groups around
the world, huge giants like Lenovo and HP are stepping forward to
manufacturing Ultrabooks for the techies and people who just cant get
enough performance out of their portable computers. Okay, lets hold on
for a second right here. What exactly in the world is an
Ultrabook? Ultrabook are the new notebook computers that are promising
enough to fill the gap between lightweight laptops and tablets. Ultra
books are extremely thin, as thin as a paper !! Okay that wasn’t funny,
Ultrabooks are less than 20 millimeters, or 0.8 inches which is
quite unbelievable when you consider the following features.
★ High-powered, low voltage processors
★ Long battery life (A few hours more than an average laptop)
★ Near instant-on and instant-resume capabilities
★ Fast storage
★ Additional RAM
★ Larger screen sizes
★ Long battery life (A few hours more than an average laptop)
★ Near instant-on and instant-resume capabilities
★ Fast storage
★ Additional RAM
★ Larger screen sizes
Okay now comes the worst part, despite
the fact that you are reading this with an open mouth, the price of
Ultrabooks are “Ultra” high too, approximately 1000$ when compared to
600$ for a high end Laptop. For what its worth, since Ultrabooks are new
in the market, they need some time for the prices to eventually come
down to an expected 600-700$ mark by the end of the year.If you are one
of those who just cant wait, then consider purchasing the following
Ultrabooks which i highly recommend.
★ Toshiba Portege Z835
★ Samsung Series 9
★ LG X-Note Z330
★ Asus Zenbook UX31
★ Samsung Series 9
★ LG X-Note Z330
★ Asus Zenbook UX31
2) Xbox 720
Microsoft is now down with Xbox 720, I
bet you don’t know this yet. You heard it, Microsoft has already entered
the alpha development phase and going strong. It might be silly to
mention Xbox 720 in this post and it is even more silly to claim that
its gonna release in 2012, nope XBOX 720 is set to release somewhere
around 2013 as its pretty much uncertain how consistent the performance
is and its performance in the market confirmed by Microsoft. Don’t be
disappointed too much because a mean gaming console that offers
performance twice of that of an xbox is definitely gonna take time. Halo
4 is gonna release by the end of 2012 maybe that can drench your
thirst.
3) PlayStation 4
Sony is certainly in competition with
Microsoft to bring up its next generation gaming console to the market.
When the PlayStation 3 was released five years ago, it was sold out in
almost every store, and as of June 31, 2011 there were more than 51
million units sold.The gaming console is expected to be made up to 60%
of recyclable materials. Apart from that, it will also have a “Eco
Start” feature, which will allow gamers to save and resume games,
without having to switch off the console. So we all know its gonna take
some time before we can lay our hands on Sony PlayStation 4. Check out
this mock up for PlayStation 4 by the PlayStation fans.
4) Windows 8
Okay we’ve just experienced the awesome
features of Windows 7, Now Windows 8? Seriously? Why not. Microsoft has
released the beta version already and promises a lot more features and
better security than the previous versions, now that’s a catch. Though a
lot of work needs to be done on Windows 8 as the beta testers have
reported a lot of bugs and issues in the beta version. All we can do is
wait for it and we can expect Windows 8 in the markets by the end of
2012. Now by the looks of the UI and the detail I’d say the best
operating system waits upon us and vice versa.
5) Android 4.0 : Ice Cream Sandwich
We heard a lot about this in 2011, but
the real action will start from 2012. and Android 4.0 just stacks up
more and more on top of the interests of the android users which they
love the most.Easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home
screens, resizable widgets, and deep User interactivity, and adds
powerful new ways of communicating and sharing. Ice cream Sandwich is
just simple, elegant and beautiful. You buy a phone with Android 4.0,
trust me you are not gonna leave it till you fall sick. It simply is
just so addictive, no wonder this is going to be the best operating
system in mobile phones. Now lets see what we have in store.
1) Redefined and Completely transformed User Interface.2) High definition home screen that allows better accessibility.
3) Access your internet, music, maps, games all at the same time, with multi tasking.
3) New screen lock actions which has all sorts of fuzzy and wiggly actions to unlock your screen makes it very fun to use and interesting.
4) Better spell check features which will never make you utter “Damn that auto correct” again ever in your life again.
5) Control over network data so that you can know how your data control is transmitted over the network.
6) Live effects for video transformation which feel like a CGI movie maker with the effects features.
7) Face recognition which lets you unlock your phone with your face.
6) OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode)
We’ve relentlessly and tiredly used the
CRT (Cathode ray Tube) monitors. A few years later, LCD’s (Liquid
Crystal Display) we’re in our homes and we were just happy to experience
the new computing experience. 
With the increasing popularity of DVDs
and Blurays performance just wasn’t enough so we bought LED(Light
emitting diode) screens. Now what’s OLED? An OLED (organic
light-emitting diode) is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which
the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic
compounds which emit light in response to an electric current. This
layer of organic semiconductor material is situated between two
electrodes. Generally, at least one of these electrodes is transparent.
That’s it, these are the best
technologies which are ready to hit the market. I hope you liked them,
we will update you more about latest technologies and revolutions in our
future posts. Tell us if you feel any gadget is missing and can be
added to this Best Upcoming Gadgets list.
30 Biggest Technology Inventions & Revolutionary Gadgets of 2011 – Best
Most of us don’t know what are the Best Gadgets of 2011.
Though 2012 is a brand new year, its still our right to know the
previous year gadget technologies and tech revolutions made by legendary
companies. We coolpctips team are now listing all the gadget
technologies and gadgets revolutions of the year 2011 in this
article.Sit back and enjoy the article, you will love to know each and
every technology revolution made in the year 2011 at the end of this
article. Also we wish you a happy new year 2012. Coolpctips had an
amazing network with people in the year 2011 and also it has been an
amazing social community platform to many of our fans and friends. We
specially thank each and every reader of Coolpctips. We have announced a
free giveaway for our uses this new year. Please check out the link
given here. Now, lets have a look at the article below.
Amazing Technology Inventions : Best Gadgets of 2011
Year 2011 was really an amazing year for
various gadget releases and revolutionary concepts. They were a lot of
categories in the year 2011 which made a huge impact on our social
lives. The Best Gadgets of 2011 list starts has every amazing
revolution feature which we dreamed of. From iPad 2 to latest aakash
tablet, everything in 2011 was a revolution. These Best Gadgets of 2011
have not only shared knowledge, but also fun and enthusiasm in us. We
are mentioning a complete list below. These lists are not based on any
released dates or custom rating. They are categorized only by their
popularity and interest towards people.
1) Aakash Tablet :
This is the world’s Cheapest tablet released so far. An Indian
government initiative which was the biggest tech revolution of 2011.
This extremely popular tab has attracted millions of people towards it
and made an amazing impact on people’s mind. The two versions of aakash
tablet’s have already hit the market to Pre-book them. This amazing tabs
were tagged at a price of rs.2499 for aakash tablet and rs.2999 for the
aakash ubislate 7. Aakash will be a real gift for every student in
India with an amazing 7-inch screen and android operating system.
2) Apple iPad 2 :
The World’s best tablet with an advance design and comparatively light
and thin with any other tab in the world. Now with iOS 5 and iCloud its
very hard to keep your hands away from it. A powerful dual core A5 chip
and a long lasting 10 hour battery made this tab an amazing gadget of
2011. With over 140,000 apps,
you got a huge range of selecting your apps for your day to day life.
With the amazing iOS 5, you can get access over 200 new features and
with the iCloud, you can store all your content and will be able to push
your data wirelessly to all your devices.
3) Computer TV :
This is an amazing invention of 2011 where you no need to have
additional speakers to your computer and also you can use your TV as
your computer. This is called the VU intelligent TV which is the world’s
first Inbuilt Computer which works with Smart TV features. It is
embedded with an Intel Core i3 processor, 2 GB RAM, 500GB Hard disk
drive, within it. It comes with windows 7 premium operating system. You
can check out more details in their official site
http://technologies.vu.
4) Apple MacBook Air :
Year 2011 has been an amazing year for apple lovers. With very small
thickness and less weight, the Apple Mac Book Air is tremendously light.
This 3rd generation laptop is now available in i5 and i7 Intel core
processors. This 1.7cm thickness notepad is available in a 11.13 inches
screen. They have introduced a new technology called as Thunder Bolt I/O
which transfer the data super fast and it can also play videos of
resolutions 2560×1440 with ease. The attractive multi touch pad and long
lasting battery are its special features.
5) Samsung Galaxy Tab :
Samsung galaxy tab is the toughest competitor of iPad 2. It can able to
challenge Apple iPad 2 with its own amazing features and price tag.
This latest android tab has attracted many people’s attention in less
time. A powerful 1Ghz processor and 1Gb Ram is very fast to access
unlimited number of apps at a time. With its 8.6mm width and 10-inch
touch screen, the tab is able to hold the market place in the year 2011.
The long battery life and amazing access to android market will keep
this tab to stay in the market for 2012 too.
6) Edutor Advantage e40 : The
only device in India which helps students to clear their doubts. This
is the first and only device created by IIT students which assists as a
tutor. This is a home leaning device where students
from Lower Kindergarten to Post Graduation can easily understand the
features of the device. It has an amazing touch screen where students
can learning things from it. Hyderabad-based Edutor Technologies has
built this device and launched it for CBSE students from standard 3 to
10. Priced at Rs:5,845 and will be available in all book stores.
7) 
Amazon Kindle Fire : Amazon
has launched its another new version of eBook reader. In this kindle
fire you can not only read and listen books, but also you can find an
option to add films, TV shows, music and other applications with ease.
Also you can store your data in on online libraries in a cloud
storage’s. The processor is a dual core, which is really fast and the
stunning color touch screen is the best part in this device. The screen
is extra durable this time when compared to the normal amazon kindle. We
all know that the first version of kindle had some problems with the
screen layout which breaks very easily. This is even more better and
easy to carry anywhere.
Amazon Kindle Fire : Amazon
has launched its another new version of eBook reader. In this kindle
fire you can not only read and listen books, but also you can find an
option to add films, TV shows, music and other applications with ease.
Also you can store your data in on online libraries in a cloud
storage’s. The processor is a dual core, which is really fast and the
stunning color touch screen is the best part in this device. The screen
is extra durable this time when compared to the normal amazon kindle. We
all know that the first version of kindle had some problems with the
screen layout which breaks very easily. This is even more better and
easy to carry anywhere.
8 ) HP Touch Screen 610 : Say good bye to your Huge CPU Cabine
