Apple

Smartphones: Does Size Matter?

I am old old enough to remember a time without the ubiquitous mobile phone and laughing at 80’s yuppies who thought they were Gordon Gekko strutting around with a huge phone that resembled something you would expect the military to use in an old war movie.

By the time they reached the masses, it wasn’t long before the palm sized mobile phones such as the Motorola’s RAZR had taken hold of our lives and anything bigger than a Nokia 3210 was officially labelled a brick.

Back in more innocent times, everyone wanted the smallest phone possible and the biggest social faux pax would be to bring out a bulky mobile phone in public which is somewhat ironic considering that 8 years later the world is about to get very excited about smart phones with larger screens than ever before.

Apple fanboys have remained loyal to their favourite brand but have been guilty of looking at other phones with a certain amount of hidden envy at the much larger screens which is just of the reasons we are expecting Apple to reveal their latest phone will come with a whopping 4.7 and 5.5-inch screen.

As phones get bigger, we should see longer lasting batteries which is a problem that has plagued Apple for a few years now, so much so that Samsung recently posted a cheeky video calling Apple users ‘Wall Huggers’ for their constant search power to charge their device.

Again there is a certain amount of irony that you could take an old Nokia phone to a music festival and enjoy 3 days of texts and calls without worrying about charging where as smart phone users are busy at the queue and charge tents, but it’s important to remember that our favourite devices have been so much more than a phone for over 5 years now.

September 2014 will be the moment that the mobile landscape dramatically changes forever and the word Phablet is no longer scoffed at and ridiculed as the iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and a predicted new selection from Motorola that will be fighting their way onto everybody’s Christmas list to satisfy our thirst for bigger screens. (more…)

Product placement in games

We have recently touched upon how corporate gaming has become, what used to be an underground guilty pleasure is now rapidly turning into mainstream entertainment and if there are any doubts about this, one look at the sales figures. They show that the PS3 has now sold 35.7 million units, Xbox 360 40 Million and Wii 70 million. This shows the main reason that we will be seeing Sony’s “Move” and Microsoft’s “Natal” this Christmas as they go after the Wii market.

The hardcore gamers amongst us are beginning to get a little tetchy as the world of gaming begins to change with rising costs of DLC and an increasing amount of product placements in games are starting to become the norm. The sad truth is that TV Shows, Magazines, Newspapers etc are created for one purpose and one purpose only and this is to fill advertising space and if a show does not perform it’s axed to make way for something else to keep the advertisers happy. A fail safe system but guess what? People are no longer watching TV, and even if they do, they skip the ads anyway. (more…)