I have owned iPhone 4s for over a year, and felt pretty comfortable with it. After reading all the reviews and watched several youtube videos at first I decided that I should not upgrade it. If I had owned iPhone 4 I would definitely go for upgrade (iPhone 4 have single core CPU and it is really too slow for geek’s daily use).

 Several weeks later, two friends upgraded their iPhone 4 with black iPhone 5, and when I have seen speed difference in data transfer and browser I have decided to go for an upgrade.

      Glass vs Aluminum – more prone to scratching – get a white iPhone 5

First dilemma was what color to choose for my iPhone 5? There is lot of blog posts about problems with black iPhone 5 and aluminum parts that gets scratched easily. I have carefully examined few black iPhone 5, and it is definitely more prone to scratches and you must own decent case. I have bought a white one, and of course, material (aluminum) is the same, but scratches are not silver on black. Silver scratche on silver is not so noticeable.  Although design is still superb, glass back on my 4s felt more luxurious (maybe it felt like that because it was heavier). Event that iPhone 5 is more pleasant to hold, together with phone I have bought white Speck case. It feels a little bulky and although I feel that my phone is secured enough with internal rubber layer, outer plastic feels too cheap for $35. I have ordered $5 silicone transparent / matte white case and it feels more luxurious so I have put “speck” in the drawer.

Pros: Physical aspect and design – Good point of iPhone 5 is that it is lighter and edges of phone are more ergonomic / pleasant to hold without a case. It is thinner (7.6 mm vs. 9.3 mm)

     New Lighting connector – order several genuine or not so genuine iPhone “lightning” cables before upgrade

New connector is a new expense! Original Apple cables are rip-off! It was second day of my iPhone 5 I was near empty battery experience – didn’t you know that people with less than 15% of battery juice have higher level of stress hormones in their blood? (Dinke – thank you for your cable )

I have immediately ordered several cables, but also one small adapter to microUSB (I feel that it will save me many times in future when I am visiting Android friends )

Pros: New lightning connector is smaller, you can turn it both sides (internal logic will reverse contacts) – convenient

   New display 4inch Retina 1136×640 wrong polarization

This is a main improvement (beside more memory and better CPU) that I feel is worth upgrading.

What is the drawback? First time that I wore my polarized sunglasses I was unpleasantly surprised that the polarization of screen is wrong! I have goggled it and nobody mentioned it? Brightness is worse and color quality is disaster while looking through polarized glasses on my brand new iPhone 5 retina displays. Here are few pictures that I took with my DSLR with polarization filter (it is a pity that I don’t have polarization filter for my Nikon 105mm micro lens ) (Order Wrong polarization, Right, No polarization filer)

Pros: It brings you additional row of icons on Home screen but also 40% more space while typing email or SMS! My Belkin IRIS ANTI-GLARE FILM performs beautifully – no glare, smooth to touch.

      New iOS 6.1 – now freed thanks to jailbreak

My iPhone 4s was on iOS 5.1 and of course it was jail broken. Why? I do not need jailbreak for pirated applications, I am a developer and strongly encourage legal application market, but I feel more secure and under control (do not try this at home ) if I can tweak phone as I want (eg. Add vibration when call is answered or use WiFi Analyzer to detect problems with WiFi, or control connections with iP Firewall).

Here are few things that are annoying – iOS mail application, although Apple added possibility to insert picture (long press while typing and then click to arrow to insert picture or video) somebody in dev. team thought that they should play “swoosh” sound the same moment that I click “send”. No, I like to know when my messages are sent, and this must be corrected. You can test it yourself, just turn the airplane mode on, and send an email from your iPhone. You will instantly hear “swoosh” even that your is email still “offline”.

Other thing that is problematic is Apple maps – for all the countries that are centuries old and looks like green field? Come on Apple.. Luckily you can install google maps (but only on iPhone – there is no google maps for iPad with iOS 6.1) but they are not integrated with rest of the OS. Maybe there should be some settings where you can choose what is the default map application.

Pros: IOS 6.1 is more stable, especially now Safari does not randomly exit; App Store feels more multitasking able with improved user interface.

     Caller ID problems

Maybe you will not have this problem if you are in the USA, but when I restored my 4s backup to iPhone 5, I instantly had problems with recognizing who is calling me. I feel ashamed that I have spent 600+ EUR on a phone that doesn’t support basic Caller ID functionality. There are two solutions, either to change all the phone numbers to international number format with country prefix (and you can still experience problems while roaming when operator doesn’t correctly forward caller ID in international format), or jailbreak and install some of CallerID fixes. It looks like Jailbreak is only solution.

Pros: Sadly, motive to Jailbreak.

What to conclude… If you have iPhone 4, definitely go for upgrae, If you have iPhone 4s, maybe you should be patient and wait for 5s or if you are geek, upgrade to white iPhone 5?

We have tried out the ROM upgrade on our Desire S device. We really like the slick UI of both ICS and Sense and we're very pleased to see that the device became overall more responsive. Although it's a WWE (Worldwide English) release, which means provided System languages are the world major ones like English, German, Russian, Chinese etc., HTC included also many East European languages for spell check which is quite nice.

Before upgrading, don't forget to backup your applications, data and SMS messages first. The RUU download is about 400 MB big. After download, you just need to connect your device to your PC and start the downloaded RUU and follow the instructions provided in the readme file, which is detailed and also gives instructions on how to recover from a failed upgrade. Actually, our installation failed at first because it was a rooted device and the RUU wouldn't recognize it. So, if you have a rooted device, make sure to S-On it first or you won't be able to install the upgrade. The upgrade process was quite fast – in under 10 minutes we had ICS running on the Desire S.

Here are some screenshots for your pleasure, enjoy

[View with PicLens]

Hey @RovioMobile, our computers are a bit better than they were in ’69. We might be able to help you launch birds if you find pigs in space.

— NASA (@NASA) March 27, 2011

but except the excellent new game, have a look at their marketing campaign. This time Rovio attached a giant Angry Birds slingshot to the Seattle Space Needle!

After a giant claw kidnaps their eggs, the Angry Birds chase it into a wormhole and find themselves floating in a strange new galaxy – surrounded by space pigs! Luckily the Angry Birds have super powers of their own…

You can try new game, now with "space" physics, that even involved NASA consultants. Angry Birds Space is available for Android devices at Google Play

More information at twitter and techcrunch

On this one we stumbled on a QR code blog, and at first it was hard to understand how stupid it was… Now we must categorise it as Fun

We have tried to google for it and it looks like that this smart QR code campaign is Europe or world wide? Let's hope that more people will start scanning what they are printing.

See it and scan it for youself!

More details about QR code marketing campaign could be found at original blog post about RedBull QR Code

During the Mobile World Congres 2012 in Barcelona, Asus have presented the new uber gadget called Asus PadFone.

We know Asus for ultra portable notebooks, great Android tablets (Asus Transformer with NVIDIA quad core CPU) but it looks that they have decided to go to smartphone market judging with this new Asus PadFone solution. What do you get in set? Beside the smartphone with respectable specification, nice screen size (4.3” qHD resolution 960×540) you get a tablet shell, so you can enjoy 10" screen and additional USB port, when you are at your home or work, just insert the phone inside the tablet. While inside tablet it charges phone battery. There is additional keyboard with additional battery for your tablet and smartphone. Smartphone hearth is run with dual core Snapdragon S4 CPU with  Adreno 225 GPU and of course Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS. But what if your phone rings while it is in the tablet? Guess what, there is additional capacitive pen inside the package, and it has small speaker and microphone so it doubles as a handsfree! Welcome to the Asus future!

Image via Flickr The CBI

According to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, who released a big report on Microsoft this morning, Microsoft gets $5 for every HTC phone running Android

Microsoft is getting that money thanks to a patent settlement with HTC over intellectual property infringement.

Microsoft is suing other Android phone makers, and it's looking for $7.50 to $12.50 per device, says Pritchard.

We knew hardware companies were paying Microsoft, we just didn't know how much. (In October Steve Ballmer said, "Android has a patent fee. It's not like Android's free.")

Via Businessinsider

HTC has just presented 5 new phones, two of them with Facebook experience, and a tablet.

Wildfire S now has HVGA Super LCD screen and alu-case, Desire S packs Desire HD features in Desire sized body. Incredible S does not look too impressive.

HTC Flyer is the first tablet from HTC. Among interesting stuff, capacitive stylus and improved user experience. We'll have to test it out and check out all the software enhancements.

One day before the official start of Mobile World Congres 2011 in Barcelona, both Samsung and Sony Ericsson are organizing press conferences. The topic of SE conference is Xperia family of phones. We know that one of them is Xperia arc, but is Sony Ericsson going to surprise us with another one ? Check out our previous post on details about Xperia arc. We will be there, so expect more info on 13. Feb.

ZTE has improved annual shipments to 94% ! We are waiting for their press conference at Mobile World Congres 2011 in Barcelona, scheduled for 10:00AM CET, Monday 14th of February…

Source: BGR

The Wholesale Applications Community has been established to increase the overall market for mobile applications. Since 2010, operators and manufacturers have been defining the standard and communicating with developers. At the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2011, WAC is organizing a developers' event on Monday 14th of February. The official statement says:

…Listen to presentations from WAC experts and many of our 59 member companies and watch demonstrations of how you can use WAC device APIs to create great widgets. Hear about the commercial opportunities offered when you can upload your application once, have it distributed worldwide across many application stores and have a single point of settlement. Learn about the plans for WAC enabled devices being launched throughout 2011 and experiences of your peers in the development of WAC widgets….

Check out WAC website for more details and info on how to register for the event…