For the second year in a row, Apple ranks the highest among tablet makers for customer satisfaction. Owners of Apple’s iPad are the most satisfied among all tablet owners, says J.D. Power. In a poll of 1,857 tablet users for Volume One of J.D. Power’s “2013 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study,” the iPad rated the highest with a score of 836 out of 1,000, outpacing Amazon’s Kindle Fire with a ranking of 829.

Conducted in February and released Thursday, the study was aimed at tablet users who have owned their device for a year or less. Customer satisfaction was measured based on the five following factors in order of importance: performance (26 percent); ease of operation (22 percent); styling and design (19 percent); features (17 percent); and cost (16 percent).

The iPad scored high in four of the factors, namely performance, ease of operation, styling and design, and features. The Kindle Fire performed well in terms of cost.

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

The Grain Farmers of Ontario SellSmart app for smartphones was developed two years ago to provide cash bids for grain at basis points across th

e province at a farmer’s fingertips. Now, members are able to use their smart phones not only to view price information but to reach out to their local elevators to make the sale.

“We are continuously looking for ways to improve access to market information and efficiency for our members,” says Barry Senft, CEO of Grain Farmers of Ontario. “These new apps will better connect farmers to their local elevators and input suppliers.”

Through a gateway icon on the BlackBerry home screen named FarmCentral, Grain Farmers of Ontario members have access to the GFO mobile website, the popular SellSmart app, and now the new app – AgBids. Provided through a partnership with AgNition, AgBids allows a farmer to simultaneously request an actual grain bid from numerous buyers on their BlackBerry.

There is also additional functionality that has been built into the AgBids app – the opportunity for farmers to request a price for fertilizer. This aspect of the app allows farmers to find a competitive local price for their fertilizer needs by enabling them to send multiple requests for pricing to their local fertilizer dealers.

AgBids is currently available on BlackBerry and BB10.

To add your name to the grain buyer or fertilizer seller database, or to read more about the AgBids app, go to AgBids.com

© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

 THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON WIRED.COM

The HTC One is, in nearly every way, the finest device HTC has ever built, and it’s one of the absolute best Android phones you can buy right now. A couple of things keep the One from being perfect. Battery life falls short, for one, and the camera takes a left-field approach to smartphone sensor technology that, while ambitious, left me wanting. Still, the One is largely a delight, especially if you’re the demanding sort when it comes to hardware finish and raw performance. If you’re looking for a new Android phone for use on a 4G LTE network, it would be a mistake if you didn’t consider it.

The new HTC One boasts an all-aluminum body that’s truly gorgeous. In fact, the attention to detail seen in the design of the entire phone is spectacular. Frankly, it needs to be. Apple’s iPhone still defines smartphone design language, and Samsung’s marketing muscle is delivering massive sales. Meanwhile, HTC has seen its sales nose dive over the last couple of years. The company needs a hit, and it knows it.

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

The Microsoft Surface was the biggest new tech of 2012. Its first iteration—Surface RT, a confusingly named and marketed tablet-with-a-keyboard—bombed. Pretty hard. So why believe in the full-powered Surface Pro? Simple. It’s a braver and more divergent take on the laptop-tablet convergence than anyone else has risked so far.

But while the Pro improves on the RT in nearly every measurable way, it presents a whole different problem set for Microsoft. Where the RT was aiming at Tablet Plus—an ambitious enough goal—the Pro cannotafford to be Laptop Minus. In this strange new world of hybrid devices, is that even possible?

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

Flipboard’s tablet-optimized version of its Android app is everything you expect if you’ve ever used Flipboard on another gadget, which is to say it’s awesome. And it’s exactly what other big-time app makers should be doing, but too many aren’t.

The elegant app puts Twitter, Facebook, Rdio, Spotify, Instagram, Dropbox, eBay, Yelp, Foursquare and everyone else on notice: Your Android tablet apps don’t have to suck, and if they do, it’s because you’re lazy. It isn’t that these companies can’t make apps that look as great as they work, it’s just that they chose not to.

Flipboard’s app looks and works fantastically on both 7-inch and 10-inch slates. The stiff board turns seen in Flipboard’s other apps are just as responsive on the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets we tested the app on. My Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud, Tumblr and Facebook feeds appeared without a hitch. So did articles and videos pulled from dozens of sources around the web. Everything was laid out in Flipboard’s lovely magazine-like user interface — exactly as expected.

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

Samsung introduced yet another Galaxy smartphone, the Galaxy Grand, on Tuesday. It follows the Galaxy S III, Galaxy S III Mini and Galaxy Note II, all of which debuted this year. No one can say Samsung isn’t keeping busy. But the new phone’s biggest feature is also its biggest drawback.

The first thing you notice about the Galaxy Grand is the 5-inch TFT LCD touchscreen — you know, for those who think the Galaxy S III’s 4.8-inch display is too small and the Galaxy Note II’s 5.5-incher is too large. It’s a big screen, and a new size for the Galaxy line, but it’s got a disappointingly low resolution of just 800×480 pixels. The Grand’s massive screen doesn’t come close to the 1280×720 of the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II. In an age of HD games and video, that kind of cramped resolution makes the Grand a non-starter for us.

It’s a shame too, because there are some features we appreciate. The new handset will run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and is available with either one or two SIM-card slots, which is helpful for those who travel internationally and might need multiple cards to get service. The dual-SIM setup also allows you to use multiple phone numbers at the same time, on the same phone.

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON ENGADGET.COM

It’s not the first time we’ve seen it on video, but the folks from Tinhte.vn have now followed up their hands-on look at the BlackBerry 10 L-Series with what’s certainly the most detailed video of the smartphone to date. That includes a comparison with the somewhat bulkier Dev Alpha B device (as well as an iPhone 5), a quick run through of the BB10 OS itself and a look at the removable back (which reveals a replaceable battery).

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

Windows 8 has ushered in an era of category-defying devices, with hybrid machines that bend, flip around, lie flat and otherwise contort flooding the market (and our offices). When virtually every Windows 8 product we’ve reviewed possesses acrobatic abilities, it’s easy to forget regular ol’ laptops are running Microsoft’s new OS, too.

One such machine is the $1,949 ASUS Zenbook UX51Vz (aka the U500), a 15-inch Ultrabook with the trappings of a multimedia powerhouse, including a quad-core Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GT650M graphics and a 1080p IPS display — and no gymnastic tricks up its sleeve. Another thing it doesn’t have: a touchscreen, which is available on plenty of other Windows 8 notebooks, not to mention other upcoming Zenbook Prime models. Considering that (possibly glaring) omission, is the UX51Vz still an attractive option at this premium price point?

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

When Google unleashed the Nexus 7 upon us earlier this summer we were caught completely off-guard. A $200 tablet that was legitimately good in every regard? It was unheard of at the time, and even five months later it’s still a really nice slate. Now it has a big brother, the Nexus 10, this time coming courtesy of Samsung. At $399 it arrives with less fanfare and a higher price, but it also comes with a very distinctive selling point: a stratospherically high resolution.

This 10.1-inch panel has an eye-watering 2,560 x 1,600 resolution — the very same as the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display but in a much smaller package. Is Google’s second reference tablet the ultimate Android 10-incher at a bargain price, or is it simply another big tablet with a lot of pixels? Your answer awaits after the break.

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON GIZMODO.COM

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how much I like the Surface RT. I wasn’t expecting a lot when I ordered it, but after a day of use, I realized this was more than Yet Another Gadget. It might represent a brave new world of laptop design. How can you not love a laptop that lets you touch Zardoz to unlock it?

I have an ultrabook I like, but the more I used the Surface, the more obsolete it seemed, because I couldn’t touch anything on the screen. I found touch interactions on Surface highly complementary to the keyboard. Way more than I would have ever believed, because I lived through the terror that was Pen Computing. If you need precision, you switch to the mouse or touchpad – but given the increasing prevalence of touch-friendly app and web design, that’s not as often as you’d think. Tablets are selling like hotcakes, and every day the world becomes a more touch friendly place, with simpler apps that more people can understand and use on basic tablets. This a good thing. But this also means it is only a matter of time before all laptops must be touch laptops.

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© 2011 The Mobile Farmer