Thursday 5 December 2013
The killer apps and capabilities of five of the best Android
and Windows Phone 8 phones in the world right now
It's not just Apple that can innovate.
Here are the most inspired and useful features of five of the 10 best smartphones in the world.
LG G2
The G2 garnered rave reviews from WapWing HQ for its smart bits and how it measured up
against a couple of the phones mentioned here. We loved how easily it
chomps through tasks, its whole-day-and-then-some battery life and its
bleedingly sharp screen, but what sneaked into our hearts was a simple
feature you’d think smartphone developers would have thought of long ago
- KnockOn.
This ingeniously simple feature allows users to tap twice
on the G2’s screen to wake it up or knock it out. Since the G2’s design
resulted in the power button being shifted to the back, KnockOn is more
of a necessity than a creative move. We’re not fussy about details, as
long as new useful ways of doing things are the end result of
inconvenience.
HTC One
The
One brought a ton of new features to the Android community including a
beautiful body, a refreshed home page and Harry Potter-esque photos in
the form of Zoe shots. It brought a much needed breath of style to the dowdy Android pack and also gave us the new UltraPixel camera, choosing to increase sensor size over megapixel count.
And with that unconventional move, HTC proved that less is,
sometimes, more with better-lit low light shots and a restless gallery
of photos to mix things up via Zoe shots. While the Zoe may be an
interesting feature, it’s still more of a novelty than a go-to given the
memory it snuffles up with each click. Impressive concepts but HTC
still needs to tweak them to make them useful in the long run.
Nokia Lumia 925
The Lumia 925 is one of the finest beasts in the Nokia stable (that is, until they trot the Lumia 1020 out). We could wax lyrical about its hi-tech innards, but we’re sure you’ve had enough of stats.
As a Windows phone, it’s tough to go up against the iOS and
Android big boys in terms of downloadable apps. But there’s one area in
which Android phones have failed us time and again, and that is...the
camera.
For some reason, Android phone cameras just ain’t bringing
it with their inaccurate colour replication, loss of detail and demand
of completely steady hands. They do try to compensate with loads of
camera features, but they’re not fooling us much. The Lumia 925’s 8.7MP
PureView eye sees all clearly and gives the iPhone 5 a run for its money
with its image stabilisation system.
Sony Xperia Z1
Though we do have doubts about the camera performance of Android devices, Sony Mobile’s latest Xperia Z1
might reassure us. With its 20.7MP snapper, 1/2.3in Exmor RS sensor and
an f/2.0, 27mm equivalent lens, it should make short work of its
competitors.
Put the hardware aside, and you’ll find more reasons to be
impressed with its camera software features. Some, like the Timeshift
Burst and its ability to capture 60 consecutive frames, is not the
newest kid on the block (think Samsung Galaxy S4) but it adds more
functionality to the 20.7MP camera.
The Z1 has a few tricks up its sleeve. Film a video, and
broadcast it onto your Facebook page immediately with Social Live. Every
other app is centred around the Z1’s snapper, from Info Eye that uses
Amazon to recognise books to Vivino which sneakily tells you what wine
you are drinking and lets you pass off as a wine connoisseur. AR Effect
adds a dinosaur to the mix, mostly to entertain your kids but the
novelty will wear off after a few shots.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Two
years ago, Samsung raised a few eyebrows with the first Galaxy Note.
Tech pundits had doubts over its gargantuan (by that year’s standard)
5.3in display. While most people are more concerned with how ridiculous
you’ll look (we have the solution for that), one feature was uncharacteristically left out of the limelight - the stylus.
The S Pen triggered a revival of the smartphone stylus,
once a necessary tool to interact with the resistive touchscreens of
antique devices. Yet, the Samsung stylus has done more than that,
introducing Air View, which shows a preview of an image or e-mail when
the S Pen hovers over them, on the Galaxy Note 2.
Last week, the Galaxy Note 3
revealed a new feature for the S Pen, dubbed Air Command, that reveals a
ring with five commands - Action Memo, Scrap Booker, Screen Write, S
Finder and Pen Window. Action Memo, in particular, is a nifty little
tool that makes handwriting interact naturally with the phone’s
features. Scribbling a phone number will trigger a call, while an
address will let you look it up on the map when Action Memo is
activated.