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Your Next Smartphone's Most-Wanted Features

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There’s no such thing as a perfect smartphone.  They’re great devices, but there are a lot of problems with them.  Well, not problems, just… ways to find improvements.  After all, there’s no a device in the house that can’t be improved with a little consideration.  Here are some of the features your next smartphone SHOULD have.

Some of these features, like smart charging and fingerprint reading, are already there, but not very common.  Other features, like expandable storage and removable batteries, are features that SHOULD happen and were available on older phones, but have been phased out over time in a drive to make things smaller and lighter.  However, smaller and lighter aren’t always the be-all end-all of phones anymore.

I’m having issues with my phone battery now, so it won’t be too long before I’ll want to actually pull the battery out and swap it with a better one.  I don’t think I can do that on my current phone, but I’d like to find a way.

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Battery Life Tips And Myths

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One of the most difficult adjustments in the switch from a dumbphone to a smartphone is awareness.  I now have to think about my phone when I leave the house, and make sure I’ve either got a full battery or I have my car charger plugged in and ready to go for when I need to juice my phone up.  Before my phone would be good for literally a whole 24-hour period or more, and now, I’m lucky if I can get 8 hours out of my phone.  Part of that is the way I use my phone, and part of that is just the increased demand on battery capacity that comes with modern technology.

Everyone’s looking for a way to get more out of the phone, and the New York Times has a great set of tips and myths about smartphone battery life.  Color me amazed to discover that closing down all of my apps and turning off WiFi to preserve phone battery life might not always be the best idea, or even helpful at all!  I have long assumed, wrongly, that turning off all my running apps would make the phone last longer, but I never thought to adjust my screen brightness down to its lowest setting when not in heavy use.

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Tips For Best Buy Deals

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Of all the retailers out there, Best Buy is the one that is having the most success at adapting to a new world in which pretty much all of your consumer electronics are bought online.  Sure, they still have crates of movies and CDs and the like, but Best Buy knows that Amazon and Apple are beating them in that department, and the company is actively working hard to figure out how to leverage its physical space and survive in an increasingly online world.  One of the ways the company is doing this is by being the best deal around.  Here are some tips and tricks for getting the most out of Best Buy.

One of my favorite things about this article is the idea of price matching.  If you could combine the ease of access of a physical store with the prices you can get online, well… that’s just sheer brilliance.  As for display models and open boxes, my late father was a big fan of those types of sales, and most of his big furniture purchases were products that used to be store displays that he bought on the cheap.  My unwillingness to actually look for those types of deals might be why I don’t have a whole lot of furniture at the moment.

That’s the whole problem with display model deals, you have to actually go out and look for them to buy them.

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Mattel's 3D Printer

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Kids love creativity, and kids love technology.  I may not be a kid anymore, but I love anything that can combine my love of computers and a way to make my own thing, and I have always kind of been that way.  I’ve never been handy with a knife and a block of wood, but I loved programming things into Mario Paint, so this new generation of creative toys is right down my alley.  Mattel has released a $300 ThingMaker, a toy-grade 3D printer that allows kids to make their own stuff.

The ThingMaker makes the toy pieces out of PLA filament, and once the pieces are crafted–a process that can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hours depending on size and complexity–the child then puts them together using ball and socket joints.  The printer is completely safe; kids are locked out while the heat is getting put to use, and the print head retracts completely into the system when the part is ready.

The app allows kids an easy way to design their new toys, and Mattel says that eventually the ThingMaker will be able to be used to do things like make your own Hot Wheels or Barbie products!  Designing your own Hot Wheels car sounds awesome, even at 34 years old.

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Free Classic Windows Games

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Once again, the Internet Archive has proven itself to be a source of awesome stuff.  From the previous announcement of classic Windows viruses, now comes something that’ll have a little more positive memories.  We’re talking about old-school Windows games!  The Internet Archive has a whole fleet of 3.1 games and other classic bits of software.

There are over 1000 games in the Windows 3.1 collection, including some classics like the awesome old Wheel of Fortune game.  However, it’s not just toys; there are also 300 classic productivity programs, like Write and Paintbrush.  As with the viruses, it boots up in a browser version of DOSBox and can be run from within your browser.

Impressively, there’s a full installation of Windows 3.1 that you can have at your disposal, in case you want to get in touch with your inner George R.R. Martin and do some writing without all the distractions of modern technology (or all the distractions of a typewriter).  There’s also some original Windows 3.1 promotional material for, of all things, Windows 95.  Talk about a blast from the past!

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Free Google Drive Storage For Safer Internet

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Google is the king of the Internet.  If they say that it’s Safer Internet Day, then it’s Safer Internet Day.  The whole point of the day that Google has declared is to get users to check the safety of their Google account, and Google is ready to provide you with a reward for doing so.  Google is offering 2GB of free Drive storage for completing a simple account security check.

The check itself takes roughly two minutes, if that.  All you basically have to do is verify your phone number and backup email address for recovery, and a few other things, and you’ve got free Google Drive storage.  It’s important stuff to do anyway, so it’s just a great way to A) promote internet safety and B) promote Google Drive.  It’s a really easy process, and if you’re not using Google Drive, you need to give it a shot, because it’s one of the most useful document sharing sites out there.

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