Nokia is feeling the heat! From the repeated failures in the smart phone segment, they are alarmed about their survival. The very international global company is under threat due its low performance and constant layoffs. It seems that the company is slowly loosing its grip! In this context, their new phone in the smart phone series has so much of importance when Samsung Galaxy S4 storm has hit the market. This is an overview of Nokia Lumia 925 and its comparison with Samsung Galaxy S4.

The Nokia Lumia 925 weighs only 139 grams. The metal sheath has truly given it a fine look, precisely Aluminium. It’s very light. Rear is aluminum polycarbonate, the frame is aluminum wrapped.

Camera

The 8.7-megapixel camera is at the rear, it has optical image stabilization with PureView moniker. The sensor is similar to the Lumia 920 , and major changes are in the design and weight. Micro-SIM slot is on the top, with the Micro USB port on the side and the bottom of the device have ports. The rear has a dual-LED flash and points for the wireless charging points.

Screen

Nokia has changed the screen to OLED from LCD with a screen size of 4.5 inches, Covered with Gorilla Glass.

Samsung S4 – Nokia Lumia 925 Comparison

The Nokia Lumia 925 is a visual treat! Nokia has succeeded in making an impression about its build. Samsung Galaxy S4’s slippery build is not easy to handle. Nokia Lumia 925 is beautifully crafted. But, that is not enough…… Nokia display seems to be excellent it overshadows any other Windows smart phone, but Samsung S4 is the best for web browsing and multimedia purposes. So here Nokia and Samsung Galaxy S4 are good can’t say one is better than another.

Coming to the camera features.. S4 and Lumia have almost all the same features including the editing part, but, the quality of the images and videos are far better than S4. Built –in Pure view technology, will give Nokia more confidence. S4 is better than Nokia for gaming since it’s running on Android. Lumia do not have much Apps like S4 this cannot be considered as a drawback. The OS works smoothly and the preexisting apps are enough if you are not a hi-tech phone user.

16 GB of storage is common for both Lumia and S4, Lumia does not have the MicroSD capability which S4 has.

The Nokia Lumia 925 is supposed to be released on June 13 2013. O2 will be the exclusive distributor for the handset in the UK. The Nokia Corporation will be launching Lumia 925 first in the UK.

If you want a phone with basic smart phone structures Nokia Lumia 925 will be the best. But if you are a person build for apps and gaming only S4 can satisfy you. Nokia is the Lumia 925 best in Windows phone. That is guaranteed

Step 1: Remove all connected android phone from your mac

Step 2: Make sure that you have unchecked Project ->Build Automatically

4G is a data connection which makes your mobile device compatible in  sending and receiving emails, browsing the internet, playing games, downloading apps and music, etc. 4G network is more than the existing services,   4G network is actually as fast or faster than most home DSL and Cable internet connections. 4G, fourth generation of mobile communications standards has created much hype and this will empower the browsing experience.

EE is the 4G provider in the UK, this cover 50% of the population. They will be covering 80 towns and cities across the UK. O2 and Vodafone also will be 4G providers soon. Although EE was the pioneer , Ofcom has now also awarded 4G spectrum licenses to Telefónica (O2), Vodafone, Hutchison 3G (Three), and Niche Spectrum Ventures (BT). Other service providers will be able to tap into these networks through partnerships.

Handsets with 4G

Apple iPhone 5
BlackBerry Z10
HTC One
HTC One SV LTE
HTC One XL
Huawei Ascend P1 LTE,
Nokia Lumia 920 LTE
Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE,
Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE
Samsung Galaxy S4
Sony Xperia SP
Sony Xperia Z

Cities with 4G Network

Birmingham
Bristol
Cardiff
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Leeds
Liverpool
London
Manchester
Sheffield

The average speed  will double to around 20Mbps, with headline speeds of 80Mbps.

Average 4G download speed will be 8-12 Mbit/s (with potential maximum speeds of 40 Mbit/s). This is five times faster than the average 3G speed in the UK.

Pay monthly Plans for 4G

Plans include free unlimited calls and texts, with varying prices on the amount of data used The plans are limited and no unlimited plans are available

500MB for £36
1GB for £41
3GB for £46
5GB for £51
8GB for £56

SIM-only plans for 4G:

These plans are available in 4G phones from Orange, T-Mobile, iPhone 5, Carphone Warehouse or Phones4U.

500MB for £21
1GB for £26
3GB for £31
5GB for £36

iPad and iPad Mini

The Apple iPad and iPad Mini are also available on the EE 4G.But it is going to be expensive
iPad 4 16GB on 4GEE
3GB £25.99 A MONTH 24 MONTH PLAN Device cost £249.99
8GB £35.99 A MONTH 24 MONTH PLAN Device cost £149.99
3GB £25.99 A MONTH 24 MONTH PLAN Device cost £149.99

iPad Mini 16GB on 4GEE

8GB £35.99 A MONTH 24 MONTH PLAN Device cost £49.99
3GB £25.99 A MONTH 24 MONTH PLAN Device cost £149.99

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It may look similar to Samsung Galaxy S3 , but wait, it has more in it.

Key Features

• • Compared to Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy S4 is little bigger. With a screen size of 4.99mm, it is 5mm longer than Samsung Galaxy S3 and 1mm slimmer than Samsung Galaxy S3. They have not changed the basic design of the Samsung Galaxy S3. Hopefully they did not want to take a risk. The phone weighs 130 grams, it is not that lighter than S3. It is built on Android 4.2.2. IR blaster to control any television set which uses infrared remote cannot be seen as a specification.
• 4.99 super AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode )display  is awesome. AMOLED display is highly used in mobiles and televisions. Super AMOLED is the term coined by Samsung. FULL HD resolution 1,920×1,080 can be the one of the best things about Samsung Galaxy S4. Samsung Galaxy S4 gives 441ppi. Pixel density. A next-gen, 1.9 GHz quad-core processor with integrated LTE modem (for the U.S. market), a 5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display with 441 ppi density and Gorilla Glass 3. Gorilla Glass 3 protects from all the scratch marks.
• 2600 mAh battery
  It is 5000 mAh bigger than Samsung Galaxy S3’ s battery. It is bigger than batteries of other Smartphones as well battery with built in NFC ( Near Field Communication) and with 2GB memory. And Samsung Galaxy S4 is powered with quad-core Exynos 5400 chipset.

• Storage Capacity
  With 2 GB of memory, Samsung Galaxy S4 is available with storage capacity of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, it’s expandable by up to 64GB via the MicroSD card slot.
• Camera

  The upgraded camera is if 13 mega pixel , with flash but they have supported the camera with Backside-illuminated (BSI) sensor for better low-light sensitivity. The front camera is with 2 mega pixel. You can make use of the video-calling with Samsung dual camera mode. This feature helps you to superimpose yourself as in floating videos. The smart pause feature helps you to pause the video when you look away from the screen and when you look back at it it continues. Smart pause can be better defined as facial recognition. Another feature of Drama shot gives you the all the actions in a single frame.

• Eraser
  With this feature you can erase an unwanted image from the picture you  have captured .It helps yu to clear the background images and it gives you the image which you want.
• S Health
  Everyone has become health conscious and Samsung Galaxy  S4 has a brilliant app to track the health and fitness. It has a built in pedometer to track the number of your steps. Sensors in the phone measure the temperature where you are in .An integrated diet tracking feature , It gives you the calorie of food items you want to take. It provides  a database of common food items .There is a heart rate monitoring system too. S Health can be synced with third party blood pressure and glucose meters. That is over the Bluetooth.

• S Translator
  It helps the users translate language .This can be mainly used when the user is travelling. It supports 10 languages Chinese, UK English, US English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. It can translate two languages at the  same time

• Text reader
  Text reader will scan the text and convert it Through Optical Character Recognition. It works on QR ( quick response ) code .This is good for scanning business cards.

Comparison  with Samsung Galaxy  S3 

Design

Samsung Galaxy  S4 is the bigger version of Samsung Galaxy S3. Both look  same in almost all ways .Home button’s shape has little changed. Height of both models are same , but the width of Samsung Galaxy S4 is being reduced by 0.8 mm. Samsung Galaxy S4 is slimmer and lighter.

Screen

The resolution has been increased 1080x1920in s4 when Samsung GalaxyS3’s resolution is 720×1280.S4 s screen size is 5 inches while Samsung Galaxy S3 s is 4.8-inch.

Processor

Samsung Galaxy S3 s processor was1.4GHz Exynos 4 Quad truly a hardcore chip. The base was  ARM Cortex-A9 architecture. S4  outshines with Exynos 5 Octa processor. An 8 core chip , that to first in any smart phone. With four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.6GHz. Remaining four out of 8 are Cortex-A7s clocked at 1.2GHz.This is for power saving and smaller tasks  .RAM  is improved to 2 GB in 4 compared 1 GB in Samsung Galaxy S3

Storage

Storage is almost the same with Samsung Galaxy S3 . A MicroSD card slot and 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models.

Cameras

Samsung Galaxy S3’S 8 MP camera was replaced  with 13Mp rear facing camera and 2.1MP front facing camera. When it comes to the video recording 720 p of S3 will not be effective as 1080p of Samsung Galaxy S4 FULLHD.

Software

Samsung Galaxy S3 RUNS IN Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, and Samsung Galaxy S4 in version 4.2.2. Not much changes in software.

Battery

Galaxy Samsung Galaxy S3′s 2100mAh battery and Samsung Galaxy S4 IS 2600m Ah

Samsung Galaxy S4 iPhone  5 COMPARISON

It would not be a surprise when it says Samsung Galaxy S4 outshines. iPhone 5 in each and every feature .Somebody was sharing that it Samsung Galaxy S4 S4 can never be compared with iPhones forthcoming series. The Samsung Galaxy  S4 is Hitech than iPhone 5. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is best in picture quality , pixel density , and better camera. The 441 pin, 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 display of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is better than the retina display on iPhone 5. IPhone screen with 1136 x 640 resolution and 326 ppi density can never be compared with Samsung Galaxy S4.

But when comes to the shape Apple iPhone is quite handy but Samsung Galaxy S4 is a little difficult to handle with one hand. The final impression is apple’s plus points are only its built ins and the thin shape

User views and market opinions 

The Samsung Galaxy S4 does not bring any whirlwind into the market so far.People have not admitted their claims .Most people are looking at Samsung Galaxy S3 only .But time can only say what is going to happen since it is yet to launch in other places also.

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defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
 
killall Finder

To restore all the icons run the below command

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defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

Step 1: Make sure that all you have provided all the information on iTunes before you start.

• Provide all the payment information Go to your iTunes dashboard click Contracts, Tax, and Banking

• Set up all payment and tax information to work the app properly. This is an necessary step. Finally your payment section will be as follows.

Step 2: Configure you Auto Renewable Subscription on iTunes.

• You should provide all the details of the app, including screen shots and other details.
• Make sure that your app status in now waiting to upload binary
• Then click on Manage in app purchase link on your app details page

• Click Create New then you will see 5  options. Select Auto Renewable Subscription

• Provide necessary information for your products and select your duration. The most important part is the product id. You have to give unique name for your product. For example com.sarathdr.monthlysubscription

• Generate a shared secret. This Step is specifically for auto renewable subscription. This shared key will be used to validate the receipt after user subscription.

Step 3: Overall ideas for Auto renewable subscription.

• The plugin use the StoreKit library  for implementing the in app subscription.
• The store kit create a queue for all payment requests (transactions) and process it one by one.
• It is an asynchronous process so our subscription class is a receiver for the events triggered by the Store kit library.
• After processing each transaction it will call the receiver function with the transaction details.
• The transaction details contains an encrypted receipt data which should be verified either from your server or from the app to provide the subscription service to the user if the receipt is valid.
• It is better to store receipt data either on your app or server side to verify it later to check the expiry of the subscription.
• You have to verify the receipt as a json request against the iTunes. Which is explained in another blog post. Also you can use the verify receipt tool. Please find the following links for more details.

  iPhone In App purchase receipt verification – Sandbox
  In App purchase receipt verification Sandbox

• If the transaction is successful the plugin returns base64 encoded receipt data to the success javascript callback function.

Step 4: Download the below  files add that to your plugin
Git Project Link Download
Plugin branch 1.0 ( iPhone Phonegap plugin for In app Auto Renewable Subscription )

Step 5: Add the below configuration to the Cordova.plist file.

Step 6: You can use the below javascript to call the plugin function to subscribe

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 cordova.exec( function(result) {
 
 
                   // Success Function.                         
                   console.log( result ); 
 
                   // you can write the code here to verify the receipt 
 
                   // Please call the function on Step 7 if the receipt is verified. 
 
 
                }, function(err) {
 
                   // Failure function
                   alert(err);
                   return;
 
                }, "SubscriptionManager", "subscribe", ["com.sarathdr.monthlysubscription"]);

Step 7: After you verify the receipt please call the below function. It is not necessary depends on your programming logic.

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cordova.exec(function(result){
                         return true;                          
                     }, function(err) {return;}, "SubscriptionManager", "updateSubscriptionNotifyStatus", [""]);

Step 8: Please consider the below points when you test an auto renewable subscription.

When testing auto-renewable in-app purchase subscriptions in the sandbox environment, the duration times will be compressed to allow for more streamlined testing. Additionally, a sandbox subscription will only auto-renew a maximum of 6 times. After the subscription has auto-renewed 6 times, it will no longer renew in the sandbox. The compressed duration times are as follows:

References:

1. Apple Developer
2. http://www.raywenderlich.com/2797/introduction-to-in-app-purchases
3. http://www.imthi.com/blog/programming/iphone-sdk-base64-encode-decode.php

Airdroid

It is a very useful app to transfer files and open urls etc. By connecting to a wireless network. Sometimes I feel some very difficult to type long urls in low end devices. This application helps you to do this from your browser with a single click.

Also you can install and download apk files vey easily. There are a lot more things you can do with the app. Click the below link to go to the App download page.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sand.airdroid

AIDE – is a simple development tool for Android phones. If you want to test something very quickly you can use this app.

Also you can copy the source code from eclipse and run it on your phone.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui

Webmaster’s HTML – Really useful app to edit the html code and php.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.welant.webmaster.DEMO

Referral Tester: This application is very useful for your tracking implementation. If you want to trigger the App install event before deploying to the Google play store use this app. Though you can also trigger that from from adb shell, this app make it very simple

Download from the below link
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.giago.referraltester

You could find some useful sample project to refer from the below links.

http://code.google.com/p/apps-for-android/

https://github.com/commonsguy/cw-andtutorials

https://github.com/commonsguy/cw-advandroid/

Android development tutorial for a new bee !

http://developer.android.com/training/index.html

I will update this post regularly with more links and useful tips for an Android developer.

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public class NativeAccess
{
   	private WebView mAppView;
        private DroidGap mGap;
 
        public NativeAccess(DroidGap gap, WebView view)
        {
            mAppView = view;
            mGap = gap;
        } 
 
public function getConnectionName()
     {
 
        String networkProvider = ""; 
 
        try{
 
ConnectivityManager cm = (ConnectivityManager)this.getContext().getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);
 
            NetworkInfo ni = cm.getActiveNetworkInfo();
 
 
            if( ni.isConnected() )
            {	
 
 
 
            	if( ni.getTypeName() == "mobile" )
            	{
            		networkProvider = ni.getExtraInfo(); 
            	}
            	else if( ni.getTypeName() == "WIFI"  )
               {
 
            		WifiManager wifiManager = (WifiManager) this.getContext().getSystemService(Context.WIFI_SERVICE);
                    WifiInfo connectionInfo = wifiManager.getConnectionInfo();
 
                    if (connectionInfo != null ) 
                    {
                    	networkProvider = connectionInfo.getSSID();
                    	Log.d("TAG_NETWORK", connectionInfo.getSSID() );
                    }
 
            	}
 
 
 
            	Log.d("TAG_NETWORK", ni.getExtraInfo() );
                Log.d("TAG_NETWORK", ni.getReason());
 
 
            }
 
        }
        catch( Exception e )
        {
        	Log.d("TAG_NETWORK", e.getMessage() );
        }
 
return networkProvider; 
 
}
 
}

If you want to access the below code function from an html page add native access to the class as below. Then call that function from javascript. This will be useful in Phonegap.

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// Add this in onCrete function of the class which extends DroidGap 
 
NativeAccess cna = new NativeAccess(this, appView );    
appView.addJavascriptInterface(cna, "NativeAccess");

You can call the function from javascript as follows.

 
var connectionName = window.CustomNativeAccess.getConnectionName() ;

http://www.raywenderlich.com/2797/introduction-to-in-app-purchases

The main part is to get the receipt data as string when transaction finishes. You can use the below code in finish transaction function to get the receipt data and pass the data to your PHP application to verify it.

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- (void)finishTransaction:(SKPaymentTransaction *)transaction
{
 
NSData *receiptData = [NSData dataWithData:transaction.transactionReceipt];
 
// This is the string you should pass to server for verification
 NSString *receiptStr = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:receiptData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
 
// Use json to pass this value. 
 
    [[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] finishTransaction:transaction];
}

You can use the below code to verify the receipt.

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// This is not an original  receipt - Only an example format
 
$receipt = '{{
	"signature" = "AoC/7Y1Woi2cOL4SFvS6";
        "purchase-info" = "ewoJIm9yaWdpbmFsLXB1cmNoYXNlLWRhd";
        "environment" = "Sandbox";
	"pod" = "100";
	"signing-status" = "0";}';
 
$sandBoxUrl     = 'https://sandbox.itunes.apple.com/verifyReceipt';
$base64Receipt  = base64_encode( $receipt );
 
// Password is only for Auto renewable subscription.
 
$postData   = json_encode( array( 
	        'receipt-data' => $base64Receipt  ,
		'password' => 'sdfdsf'
	         ) );
	// POST data
 
	try {
 
 
	    $ch = curl_init();
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $sandBoxUrl  );
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postData );
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST,  2);
	    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array( 'Content-Type: application/json',                                                                                
			    'Content-Length: ' . strlen($postData )) 
        	);                                                                                                                   
 
	    $jsonResponse = curl_exec($ch);		
	    curl_close($ch);
 
 
	}
	catch ( Exception $e )
	{
		var_dump($e);
	}
 
	    $response = json_decode(  $jsonResponse  );
	    var_dump( $response->status );
	    var_dump( $response->receipt );

I have created a tool to verify the receipt. Click the below link and submit your receipt. The password field is only for auto renewable subscription.

In App purchase receipt verification Sandbox