LG G5 - Modular Phone

Going by the video from Android Central LG has the winner here. The phone looks different and in a good way. If this phone is a preview of things to come from Project Ara then Google has a real winner with the modular phone concept. 

It should be interesting to see what Samsung reveals in a few hours with the S7 series but LG has done something innovative here

Samsung Galaxy S7

Again thanks to evleaks, look like Samsung will have the best looking phone this year again 

HTC M10

Courtesy Evan blass we get a sneak peak at the HTC iPhone M10...

It looks hideous, an odd mix of the Galaxy phones and iPhone. 

The Amazon Echo

It puzzles me how Google still doesn't have anything that competes with the Amazon Echo....Amazon seems to be running away with this one to capture mind share in peoples homes

http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-echo-will-now-talk-your-ecobee-thermostat-help-keep-your-home-warm

MSI Cubi HTPC Set Up

I recently purchased the MSI Computer PC Barebone . Its a Broadwell i3 with an integrated Intel HD card that is capable of playing 4k video.

I had some trouble with a previous i5 model where it would not recognize the hard drive at all making it a brick. I had no such trouble with this one but wanted to outline the steps to get it all set up because the documentation around it is really sparse.

To get 4k video playing smoothly, you need two sticks of RAM. This machine is quite picky about the RAM you install, I went with Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 1600 which has worked fine. Before you can do that though, you can only install Windows ( or your operating system of choice ) with one stick of RAM. The device wont even post if the second ram has been installed.

Once that is done you have to flash the bios from the files provided on MSI's site using a bootable USB drive (remember to turn off Windows 8/8.1 features in the bios else you wont be able to boot in to DOS). After that is done it will recognize the RAM in the second slot and windows will be able to access it.

Figuring out this bit was quite annoying and I spent a lot of debugging this than I thought. After that however the machine runs like a dream and plays video smoothly which is what I need from the HTPC.

Hopefully this helps out other people who have purchased this and cuts down set up time. If you have questions post in the comments below

Facebook for Android Battery Life

I have a Nexus 6p and so far battery life has been excellent in my usage. The phone lasts all day with ease but when I read Russel Holly's article on how you can get some more juice out of your battery I decided to remove the app and go with his approach (I still kept messenger)

While I cant claim to have notified any speed differences in the phone the battery usage is  a lot better. I'm setting the phone to charge at least an hour or two later I'm the day than I used to which is quite impressive. I wonder what happened to Facebook's internal quest to have an amazing Android app where employees were using the app on Android devices and making improvements.

Anyone else seeing any difference ?

http://www.androidcentral.com/it-turns-out-uninstalling-facebook-android-pretty-great

Yahoo WTF

The headline :- Marissa Mayer Just Fired Dozens of Yahoo Employees By Accident

Steve Harvey has some competition

http://fortune.com/2016/02/01/yahoo-mayer-layoffs/