App Review: Tube Download

With all the fanfare that Microsoft’s amazing YouTube App received last year, many newbies to the scene haven’t been given proper notice. While I doubt that anything out there will match the power and look of the official Microsoft App, there are a few that function quite well.

Tube Download is one of those perfectly functional Apps, with a few twists thrown in for fun. First off, there’s not much in the way of frills for this media streamer. The screen opens to a search bar with a few videos listed. A swipe to the right takes you to your videos and another takes you to playlists. One last swipe takes you over to the downloads list, where you can see the videos you have downloaded.

Simple and clean, and did I mention that it is a data mongers dream? When you tap on the videos in the search bar, you get a screen that gives you the option to download, play or share the video. One click of the Play Video button and we are off and running.

If the video was encoded with playback options, you can select the stream level at this point. Fortunately, our test video was, and this is where those with limited high speed data will appreciate this App – you can select the bandwidth of the playback stream before it starts playing. This means over Wi-Fi at Starbucks you can watch the HD video and when you are on that precious cellular plan, you can choose to watch a lower quality stream.

Overall, the playback quality is great, navigation is easy and the App does exactly what it says. You can jump online and save content with a few simple clicks, then play it back later for friends, even when you don’t have data.

Tube Download is available in the Store for $2.99 and for those with one of those limited data plans can really rack up the savings for you. Don’t let the simple layout and the ease of use take away from the power that Tube Download brings.

App Review: 4Blend HDR Camera

Many smartphones are boasting their HDR or High Dynamic Range capabilities. What isn’t always explained, is that this has much more to do with software than hardware. Of course, having a great camera, like the Lumia PureView cameras or the amazing shooter on the HTC 8x is a great start, but you won’t have those amazing HDR images without some software to enhance things for you.

The first thing about shooting HDR images is understanding what they are and how they are made. Dynamic Range is the unit of measurement that many people use to define the amount of tones between black and white in an image. The larger the range, the more detail you will see in the image. The lower the range, the more detail will be lost. HDR will take multiple images ranging from under exposed to overexposed and stitch them together in to one High Dynamic Range image. This HDR image will combine the detail of the images that are captured into one perfect image.

HDR filters are applied to each level of the image, or each individual image in order to capture the detail. Different filters will have a different effect on each image. Fortunately, in this case, 4Blend HDR does a great job of applying these as needed.

The interface itself reminds users of Apps like Nokia Camera or even Camera360. The shutter button is on the right of the screen. The individual controls are located at the top of the screen. To the left is a selection filters that can be applied to the image before you shoot.

The top controls simply open the popular “ring style” controls that are easy to move and quick to set up. The controls set up in threes on the stock settings. This will control the under exposed, auto exposed and the over exposed images. The menu includes settings for the exposure, exposure time, ISO, focus, gamma and flash. It also has a button to engage the voice command.

Finally, in the settings menu for 4Blend HDR, there are controls for saving all shots, capturing an image after manual focus and showing the shooting grid. You also have some controls to help the voice command shooting as well. Overall, it’s a perfect little package for shooting HDR images on any Windows Phone.
For anyone with a PureView camera or a higher quality shooter on a Windows Phone device, you should take a peak at 4Blend HDR. You probably won’t replace your everyday camera with it, but for those sunset shots, or when you need a bit of an effect on a great portrait, it can certainly rise to the occasion.

Domino’s Delivers A Good App

One of the things about living in a semi-small town is that your food takeout choices are somewhat limited. In Monroe, there happens to be 3 pizza places that deliver and Domino’s just offers a better price that then other two. Until recently, all our orders were placed online, which involved tying up the computer long enough to get through all the crazy menus, ordering process and payment screens. It was easier than calling, but not as easy as the Apps for Android and iPhone made it.

Fast forward to 2014 and the new Domino’s App in the Windows Phone Store. The small size made it a quick 2 second download over Wi-Fi. Within 5 more seconds, I had entered my email address and password for my existing Domino’s website account. With just those two little steps, my account was current and I was ready to order.

I swiped over to the coupon section, found the 2 medium pizzas for $5.99 each deal and selected it. It then let me touch the first item, create my first pizza and moved me along to the second. The order screens were quick and easy to use and the touch navigation was remarkably good. Within a few minutes, the order was placed and the order tracker screen popped up.

A short time later, the pizza arrived and dinner was served. I do recommend checking all the addresses that are imported though, as it did miss our unit number when the order was placed. Just make sure that all your information is up to date and current before placing an order.

The App is definitely worth the download if you are a fan of Domino’s Pizza. It makes ordering quick, easy and honestly, a bit more fun. Having the order tracker pinned to your home screen is nice for getting that update on timing as well. If you are ordering for dinner, you can have the table set right when the order arrives if you are watching. That said, the small size and limited data usage makes this a great App for anyone that orders Domino’s Pizza. Plus if you let your favorite pizza shop know that you like Domino’s App, maybe they will jump on the Windows Phone bandwagon as well.

Getting To Know Nokia Cam Beta

If there is something that Nokia has been killing the competition on in the last year, it’s the quality of their camera hardware and the software that makes it shoot. I want to give you a quick walk through of the Nokia Cam software on my Lumia 925, and show you just how powerful this camera can be.

We will start out looking at the home screen of the camera. To the top, you have buttons for gallery view and review the last image taken. Then you have your settings bar that has controls for the flash, white balance, focus, ISO, shutter speed and exposure. To the right hand side of the screen, you will see the menu button and controls to switch to video mode, photo mode or smart sequence.

A drag of the camera button to the left reveals the setting menu that will give you about as much control over your camera as you would find on most DSLR cameras. The simple sliders slide along the arcs and can be set to any values you need to achieve your optimal exposure. If you want to go fully manual, you can do that by moving each slider into a preset position and not leaving any in the auto setting.

Once you set your sliders, you simply swipe back to the right to get out of the camera settings.

The camera menu that is found by pressing the three dot in the corner of the screen will reveal a lenses menu, access to the front facing camera, a shutter timer, a bracketing setting, the camera settings menu and a tutorial of how everything works.

Using features like the timer setting will allow you to take photos of yourself with the front camera and not have to worry about pressing the shutter button while you do it. Simply set the timer to 2 seconds, press the ok button, and snap your photo. It will give you plenty of time to get your finger away from the camera button before it snaps the image.

Going a bit deeper into the settings, bracketing is very useful for taking images when you are having trouble with exposure settings. It will take 3 images with steps in between them. This will give you hopefully an underexposed image, an over exposed image and one in the middle that is perfect. If not, perhaps the lighter or darker image will be right and the others can be discarded.

The camera settings menu will reveal the options for setting up images, videos and even smart sequence. You can adjust the focus assist light, framing grids and even the aspect ratio of the images with this simple drop down menu setup.

Finally, if you are one that just doesn’t want to play with you camera at all, you might just want to enter auto mode. This is done by selecting the arrow in the camera settings bar at the top of the screen. By selecting this arrow, all the camera settings are returned to auto and the camera is ready to shoot just about anything. Note to self though, this does not re-engage the flash setting, so make sure you turn that on if you want it back on.

In the next camera post, I’ll take a more in-depth look at how you can take better images with the tricks I have learned with my Nokia Lumia 810 and Nokia Lumia 925.

Game Review: Asphalt 8: Airborne

If there is something better than driving games, I’m not entirely sure what it is. The Asphalt series from Gameloft is one of the longest lasting mobile racing series around and the 8th installment doesn’t disappoint. Of course, giving away a game isn’t a way to make money, so if you jump on this download, be prepared for some IAP to get all the way through it.

The game starts out simple enough with a menu that makes most video games themselves seem boring. Multiplayer, Facebook play, exclusive cars and more greet you on the opening menu. Once you figure out how to scroll down the right side of the screen to start, you can get rolling pretty quickly.

Game play itself is tremendously fun and well worth the 1.5GB install size. Unfortunately, you need almost double this to download and install it. Rumors pin the needed storage at 3.2GB to get the install package down and install it before it deletes the temporary files and clears the excess space. Loosely translated – don’t do it on a device with less than 16GB of storage.

Overall, Asphalt 8: Airborne is a thrill to play and should be snagged even if you don’t have a device worthy of using it right now. The $.99 savings over the regular price is worth the purchase right now, if only to future proof your gaming on you next device.

Download it here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/asphalt-8-airborne/3a9e6a13-433b-495d-879e-d4704fb40703

Switching Plans To Save Cash…

 

Everyone loves to save money. Unfortunately, sometimes these money savers can be a pain and ultimately cost us more cash in the long run. Cell service is one of those areas where we can save a ton, but lose service often if we don’t do our homework first. For starters, look at your current plan and your needs. If your plan costs less than $25 a line and meets your needs, stop reading and enjoy your great deal. If not, read on.

The next step in saving some cash on your cell bill is determining what network will work best where you need it to. Sure, plans like T-Mobile’s Simple Choice are great and with their ETF payoff promo going right now, it’s a tempting deal. Of course, if you need more than a few hundred MB of data a month and a don’t have $600 for that new iPhone, these plans may not be the best choice for you. On the flip side, for someone that grabs a new Nokia Lumia 521 for under $100 and uses the data sense feature, these plans can be an amazing value for your family. That said, if coverage isn’t decent where you need it, you probably don’t want to switch.

Coverage maps are very sneaky. You look at the big picture and your city is completely covered in 4G LTE speeds. Here is a look at the zoomed out T-Mobile coverage map for western Washington. We are looking at the Monroe area in particular.

There’s a ton of magenta on this map and all of it appears to be well covered around the area. As we zoom in though, a different picture begins to be painted…

Some of that dark magenta turns into a lighter pink. This means you still have a solid 2G signal, but no high speed data and a lower quality voice signal.

Coming in even further, you can see that the area east of Monroe has poor coverage overall. Once you leave the city, even the highway has minimal coverage going towards a popular ski area. In other words, if you planned on Instagramming that shot of you on the slopes with LTE speeds, you can forget about it.

Now that said, if you are a lighter data user and do most of your communication via texting, there’s no reason to pay AT&T, Sprint or Verizon double or triple what another carrier charges. Here’s the fiscal breakdown of a single plan between the carriers.

AT&T – Single Line: Unlimited Talk, Text and 3GB Data – $131.97
Verizon Wireless - Single Line: Unlimited Talk Text and 2GB Data – $131.62 
Sprint – Single Line: Unlimited Talk, Text and Data – $127.84
T-Mobile – Single Line: Unlimited Talk, Text and Data – $60.50 to $84.27

The range on T-Mobile’s plan depends on how much 4G/LTE data you want. If you can get by with 500MB of high speed, the $60.50 plan is your price. If you need 2.5GB of 4G/LTE data speeds, you are looking at $72.60. For fully unlimited LTE data, the price would be $84.27 after taxes.

Single users also have the option of taking their line to an MVNO and saving even more. The unlimited Spot Mobile plan with 1GB of 4G data is only $39.99 a month. If you want those LTE data speeds, you can head over to Simple Mobile and grab a 3GB LTE plan for $50 or a 5GB LTE plan for $60. Both exceptional values to the single line user.

Families, on the other hand, will save so much going with the T-Mobile setup, that it even the cheapest MVNO’s can’t beat the price. T-Mobile’s family plan for 5 lines will run you about $1200 a year less than the other major carriers – even after paying $20 extra per line for each of those new phones. If you opt for something like the Nokia Lumia 521, your family will save about $2500 a year. Here’s the breakdown by carrier in the family rates.

AT&T – 5 Lines: Unlimited Talk, Text and 6GB shared data – $335
Verizon Wireless – 5 Lines: Unlimited Talk, Text and 6GB shared data – $340
Sprint – 5 Lines: Unlimited Talk, Text and 1GB data per line – $310
T-Mobile – 5 Lines: Unlimited Talk, Text and 500MB 4G/Un 2G data – $130

Now, keep in mind that this includes a subsidized device from the big three, so you would have to factor that in to the total cost of the plan. Much of T-Mobile’s plan relies on the user financing a phone through them for $20-25 a month. At this rate, your T-Mobile bill comes in about $230-250 a month – or a 25-30% savings over the others. Factoring in the device costs, the family plan cost over 24 months is as follows.

AT&T – $995 devices + $8040 service = $9035
Verizon Wireless – $750 devices + $8160 service = $8910
Sprint – $995 devices + $7440 service = $8435
T-Mobile – $2500 devices + $3120 service = $5620
T-Mobile (with Lumia 521) – $500 devices + $3120 service = $3620

If you are willing to take that great Nokia Lumia 521 and 2 years of T-Mobile service for a run, you will save almost 60% over AT&T’s rates. There really isn’t another way to look at it. If you feel that your phone service is worth more than a car or even a down payment on a house, then keep your carrier and carry on. If not, you owe it to yourself to stop in to a T-Mobile store for a test drive today.

Make sure to do some homework at http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage.html and check out the areas where you use your phone the most. If you have better than Pepto Bismol coloring, you’ll be a happy camper. If it’s looking a bit purple, you might want to think twice, but still consider it. The $200 a month you save can be quite nice come vacation time.

Nokia Lumia 521 For $29 With Metro PCS

If there is one thing I like more than cheap cell service, it is a cheap phone to use on that plan. Right now, MetroPCS has the deal of the week on the Nokia Lumia 521. Currently going for $89.95 in my Amazon Store, the 521 is a paltry $29 after mail-in rebate. Of course, if you didn’t want to use it on Metro’s service, you can always just pay the discounted price of $49 and do with it as you like, but to get the additional $20 off, you need to do a few things.

First, purchase the device and activate it on a Metro plan. Metro PCS plans start at $40 for unlimited talk, text and data with the first 500MB being 4G speeds. So, for $29 plus 2 months of Metro service, you can snag a brand new Lumia 521 and a Visa rebate card loaded with $20. Oh, did I forget the $50 port in credit as well?