Google Play Music Comes to iPhone (Free Month of All Access service)

I didn't expect this to happen but Google has launched it's amazing music service and application Google Play Music for the iPhone. This is a really good thing for iOS users! I have been using Google Play Music and Google Play Music All Access since they have launched and they have been two of my favorite Google services. Google Play Music allows users to upload 20,000 tracks from their computers to their Google accounts in the cloud. Afterwhich, all of this music is accessible from any Android device and now iPhone or web browser. All playlists, ratings and libraries are synced and can be streamed at any time. The mobile app also allows for caching music on the device for playback when there is no network connectivity.  Additionally, iOS newcomers will get one month free All Access streaming services (normally $9.99/month) which gives you access to over 20 million tracks, custom radio stations (like Pandora with more features), and smart features that recommend new music based on your listening habits. Google launched a similar deal at launch on Android also offering a $7.99/month deal for early adopters. I bought in early, convinced within the first hour of my free month trial.

This is an app and service I have been telling all of my Android and iPhone friend s about and I'm glad my iOS friends finally get to experience Google Play Music. Even if you don't want to subscribe to the All Access service Google Play Music is worth a look just to have a free cloud streaming service for your own music library. Google Play Music allows you to upload any of your music regardless of where/how you obtained that music. Whatever goes in the folder you designate for it to pull from goes into your library in the cloud and is accessible to you anywhere including iOS now. Google Play Music also has a tool to easily sync your music from iTunes. Google says the iPad version as well as some of the more advance features are on the way.

Check out the video below for full details on Google Play Music.

How many of you love Google Play Music? Any iPhone users excited to check it out?

HTC One Guest Review

Here on BHT I'd love to get my hands on and review every single phone that comes out (yes even Apple ones lol), but thats just not feasible. Luckily I can reach out and rely on friends and family (and flexible return policies ;) lol). I recently helped out my friend Chris, Law and Journalism MA student at Miami U,  as he made the great exodus from the limited world of iOS to Android, grabbing one of my favorite devices of 2013, the HTC One. He was kind enough to provide his impressions of this top tier smartphone. Check out his quick review of the main features (with a few of my tips sprinkled in)! For full details check out HTC's site.

BASIC SPECS

• Size: 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm
• Weight: 143gDisplay
• Display: 4.7 inch, Full HD 1080p, 468 PPI
• CPU: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 600, quad-core, 1.7GHz
• Platform: Android with HTC Sense™ with HTC BlinkFeed™
• SIM Card Type: micro SIM
• Total storage : 32GB/64GB, available capacity varies
• RAM : 2 GB DDR2
• Network:  AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile (World Phone support)
• GPS: Internal GPS antenna + GLONASS and Digital compass
• Sensors: Gyro sensor, Accelerometer, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor
• Connectivity: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, DLNA® for wirelessly streaming media from the phone to a compatible TV or computer, HTC Connect, Support consumer infrared remote control, micro-USB 2.0 (5-pin) port with mobile high-definition video link (MHL) for USB or HDMI connection (Special cable required for HDMI connection.)
• Sound Enhancement: HTC BoomSound™ Dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers, Studio-quality sound with Beats Audio™

CAMERA

• HTC UltraPixel Camera, BSI sensor
• Pixel size 2.0 µm, Sensor size 1/3'
• Dedicated HTC ImageChip 2, F2.0 aperture and 28 mm lens
• Optical Image Stabilization (OIS)
• Smart Flash: Five levels of flash automatically set by distance to subject
• Front Camera: 2.1 MP, 880 wide angle lens with HDR capability
• 1080p Full HD video recording with HDR Video
• HTC Zoe™ with Sequence Shot, Always Smile and Object Removal
• Gallery with Video Highlights and HTC Share
• Continuous shooting and VideoPic
• Slow motion video recording with variable speed playback 

MULTIMEDIA:

• Audio supported formats:
• Playback: .aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9)
• Recording: .amr
• Video supported formats:
• Playback: .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv (Windows Media Video 9), .avi (MP4 ASP and MP3)
• Recording: .mp4

BATTERY:

• Embedded rechargeable Li-polymer battery
• Capacity : 2300 mAh
• Talk time: Up to 18 hours for 3G
• Standby time: Up to 500 hours for 3G

Best Buy exclusive blue HTC One

CHRIS's REVIEW:

Sound = A+: 
Beats audio makes a big difference, especially in your car. It is clear and the bass is significantly louder. If you have noise cancelling headphones - even non-beats headphones - there is a noticeable difference with beats audio. Also, playing through the phone speaker with headphones unattached is loud and clear.

Music Player = B+: 
I absolutely hate that the Android music app does not let you sort songs by title once you are in a playlist. You have to search by artist, which really sucks because most people know the song name instead of the artist, and even once you find the artist you have to search for the song you want. If you have downloaded music (not bought), the artist may be saved under a different name so it can be frustrating. I feel that this is the worst part of the phone if you use your phone as a music player with multiple playlists.

Luckily I stumbled across the Power Amp app and it let me sort by title. It also allows you to manually adjust the tone, bass, and treble, and save your settings under preset settings, which is amazing. I have a setting for my car and one for my headphones. My car, 2012 Camaro, already has nice factory audio as is, but the beats audio plus power amp makes it sound AMAZING. It is a very noticeable difference.

One thing I love is how quickly the phone downloads album art that you don't already have, and you can even select the option to display the song lyrics as the song plays! Very sweet and seamless.

HTC Sync allows you to easily transport media from your computer or iTunes so if you like your old media player you can edit things there and then just launch HTC Sync and transfer it to your phone. Simple.

Messaging = B:
The autocorrect is not as smart as it was on iOS. If often puts accent marks when the letter "a" stands alone and it took a week for it to consistently capitalize "I". However, after about a week the phone became better at recognizing words, namely because I would manually select the word I want it to autocorrect (the phone gives you options) and it apparently recognized my typing style. Also, after calibrating my finger with the screen the phone became better at selecting the letter my finger landed on, resulting in less typos. If all else fails using your voice to text by holding the voice icon is very effective and the phone rarely misspelled words I said when spoken clearly.

(I'd add to this that the beauty of Android is that it lets you change your default keyboard (or any system app for that matter), I've been using Swiftkey for about a year now, and have never looked back since!)

Speed = A+:
Very fast, faster than my laptop, and it made no difference when launching classic or mobile sites.

Customization = A:

You can pick your news sources (e.g. ESPN, CNN, Huffington, IGN ... a bunch) that will quickly launch and refresh by simply pulling the screen down. You can pick your widgets and apps and easily select what screen they are on and where. However, I don't like the limited choices for text messaging letter colors. You can pick a background for your text messaging screen, but it's hard to read the messages with the colors they give you.

(Again, as you play with Android you'll find text messaging apps you like better, I rarely use manufacturers text apps. Its an adjustment from iOS, but anything you don't like you can replace with an app of your liking in the Play Store. I'd reccomend popular apps, Go SMS and Handcent SMS they're both super customizable!)

Button Placement = B:
If you are right handed, when messaging or generally holding the phone it is a good chance you will incidentally hit the volume up/down button with your right thumb because of its placement. It is also awkward that the power on button is at the top left of the phone instead of top right, because again you have to stretch your finger really far to power on/off.

Camera = B:
Very good effect options after taking pics. It has some pretty cool lighting options to dramatically change the pictures you take and download. Before snapping effects are decent, but not too exhaustive. You also lose quite a bit of clarity when you zoom in. The camera is good, not great.

Overall = A-:
Very solid phone. The pros significantly outweigh the cons on this phone. It looks good, feels good in your hand, it's smooth, fast, trendy, the LED display is large and beautiful. The beats audio is what really sets this phone apart. If you really utilize music on your phone it will likely be your favorite feature, and it gets even better with the Power Amp app ($3.99). There are things about this phone to dislike - awkward button placement and at times ineffective autocorrect - but I can't imagine too many phones on the market are better than the HTC One and it is hard to imagine a better phone will be released at least within the next year or two.

Google Offers Quickoffice for FREE!

One of the most useful types of apps you can have on your phone or tablet is a good office suite app that supports Microsoft Office. This is also one of the first types of apps that I was willing to spend money on. For years I've used Documents to Go Pro, which I got on sale for $10 I believe (currently on sale for $14). I really like this app but free is always better than paid, and right now Google is offering it's newly acquired office app, Quickoffice for free! Quickoffice fully supports Microsoft Office documents created in Word, PowerPoint and Excel and formats them to fit on your mobile device. It also allows access to your Google Drive account and documents within the app. Just download the app on your device (supports Android and iOS) and log in with a Google account before Thursday, September 26th. Also, as a bonus Google is throwing in an additional 10GB of free Google Drive storage space. I haven't used it much yet to give a review but it seems pretty legit thus far. I downloaded it for the free Drive space alone! Who's not up for free stuff? So download and log in! Even if you don't think you need it now at least it will be saved to your account free for later use!

Click to download Quick Office from Google Play Store or for Apple devices

Chromecast Is Back In Stock

The Google Chromecast is finally back in stock in the Google Play Store, after selling out in minutes when it was announced a few months ago and then subsequently being sold on eBay and Craigslist for up to 2x the actual cost.

The Chromecast is an amazing little device, slightly larger than an USB jumpdrive that plugs into your TV's HDMI port and allows users to instantly stream content from YouTube, Google Play Music, Google Play Movies, Netflix and tabs from your Chrome browser to your TV. The device is small enough to hide behind most TV units and draw power from a simple USB port. The $35 price tag made it one of the most irresistible impulse buys of the year. It easily does a large majority of what most people need from a smart tv device at a fraction of the cost, with even more features promised to be coming soon (including Hulu and rumors of HBO Go). The Chromecast is controlled via an Android Device, iOS Device or even a Laptop running a chrome extension. The fact that it supports multiple platforms instead of being locked into a certain manufacturers ecosystem is a huge selling point in my book.

I was able to find two in another state at Bestbuy and others are saying Amazon has them back in stock now also. I highly recommend grabbing one if you use any of these services. I've been loving mine and will be posting a review soon. This is one of those devices that is priced so well you can't afford not to grab one.

Android is KING!

Those of you who have read BHT in the past probably have picked up on my subtle affinity towards Android devices... Ok it's not really subtle, I really don't like Apple "i-devices" that much and lean towards Android pretty much unanimously. Though I doubt I'd switch, Windows Phone 8 and their tablet offerings definitely look interesting and I hope RIM can make a comeback with BB10 (whole other future post I guess).

As an Android-lover there hasn't been a more exciting time than now in my opinion. I'd almost go as far as to claim 2013 as the year of the little green robot. In previous years I feel like it was at least arguable which OS/platform was better but that time has come to an end! I'm declaring Android the champ! Now there's alot of different ways you could take this debate and I'm not saying that an iPhone or iPad isn't the best device for some people; but for the first time since Android came out I feel that I can recommend at least one or two excellent Android phones on each carrier to people without fear that it will not give the end user problems. For the first time that regardless of your tech-ability level I am confident that there are Android options that will absolutely work for you and work well; consistently.

Furthermore, things look like they are getting better and it's happening faster and faster. Google has done an excellent job with UI improvements and streamlining  the Playstore. They've released Google Play Games to clean up and organize the gaming experience. Google and Android have made moves to start invading the living room more and more with gaming and entertainment and Google Music and its All Access subscription has become one of my favorite features, something I can't see going with out now.

On the hardware side Google Glass is expected in 2014 and a Google smartwatch is rumored for the end of this year. We should also be seeing a new Nexus phone and Nexus 10 tablet to accompany the recently revamped Nexus 7. Chromecast, Google's budget TV media streaming device, once back in stock is likely to really open up the living room entertainment arena for Google and there are rumors of an upcoming game console as well.

Yes, 2013 has been a solid year for Google with it dominating or moving into a position of imminent dominance in almost all metrics from market share, app offerings, and more. Even better it looks like Google and Android are still gaining steam and are poised for another great year in 2014. It's a good time to be on #teamandroid!

What do you think? What are your favorite Android features, apps, and Google services? Or do you prefer a different mobile OS? Let us know in the comments.

BHT Returns... Back By Popular Demand

What's up?!!! It's been a minute, I know. I'm back though, by popular demand. I've been really busy with work, preparing for my wedding, life and debating if I wanted to continue with the blog. But as more and more people have been asking about the blog I realized more people were checking out my post than I thought and that maybe it was time to start back up! Not to mention there have been soo many changes in the tech world. I got the new EVO LTE and didn't even do a post or video review which is unheard of since I've done every EVO since the OG dropped and actually launched BHT!

All the recent tech news is just too much for me to resist commenting on lol. So new post are on the way. I'd like to thank all of you who have read my posts and watched my videos in the past it means alot to me! I'd also like to ask you all a favor. Many of you have commented on my posts in the past, but typically you comment on whatever social media site you see me post the links to the blog on. It would help me TREMENDOUSLY if you could post comments here on BHT. This keeps all the discussion in one place and lets readers who get updates through different methods to converse with each other in one spot. I'd love to see convos started right here on the blog. I'll also be honest in that it helps me to generate more traffic here on the site!

Again thanks for all that have read, commented and given me words of encouragement on/regarding Brown Hands Tech!