So you’re in front of your laptop or with your tablet and you open four or five different tabs on your Chrome browser including YNaija, Bella Naija, Naij and maybe 360nobs. You’re switching back and forth between tabs and scrolling endlessly to get your latest gist. This might not seem tedious at first but after a lengthy period of scrolling and clicking and shuffling you might get exhausted.

How about you get all that info aggregated in one place? This is the awesomeness of the Amebo app.

1. It is FREE
What more can you ask for? An app that charges you zero to deliver all of your favorite content in one place is being doled out like jollof rice at an Owambe. All you have to do is find the corresponding app store and download it for free. There’s almost no excuse for not downloading this app if you like your Naija gist delivered to you daily on a platter.

2. Neat and hassle free
The designers at TexSoft who created this app have been able to design a clean and intuitive user interface for an otherwise rowdy, heavy traffic gist lane. It feels very rewarding just scrolling through to catch the headlines or tapping for the full info. The user experience is comparable to many other high profile apps out there.

3. Offline Mode
What if you’ll be away from network signals for a few days or a week or even more? No worries! The application saves all the data you have loaded from the last time you used the app so you can read anywhere. That includes in the jungle or even far out in the ocean.

4. Minimal Data Consumption
This app barely takes a toll on your data subscription for those who are wary about how many kilobytes they consume per second, per app, per day. Even those who don’t care will stay not caring because they will barely notice the data taking a hit.

The official site fo the app is at amebo.ng. The app is available on the Google Play Store, Blackberry Appworld, Nokia Ovi Store and the Windows Phone Store. iOS users will have to wait. I don’t think these guys own a Mac…yet.

Have you been using the app? Do you like it? Would you rather go back to browsing the websites instead? Leave your thoughts down below.

If you don’t already have one, get one. And before you start complaining that ‘oh no, not another account!’, wait. As long as you have a Gmail account that ends with ‘@gmail.com’, you’re good. It’s a free service so you shouldn’t worry about paying any fees. The reason you have to get an account is because you need it to set up the phone. Afterall, it’s a ‘Google phone’ so you shouldn’t feel too uptight about this.

2. Make up your mind on Hardware

The fact that Android is open source means that it is available on different hardware from different manufacturers; the most popular being HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson.  There are other manufacturers but these five have the best and most popular phones running Android.

Samsung Galaxy S II – Currently one of the highest rated Android phones 3. Know your specifications

After you’re done deciding on hardware, you need to make sure your phone is fast enough to give you a smooth user experience. The current generation of Android phones range from 1GHz single core processors to dual core processors! It is easy to get carried away and get a 800MHz processor because of the price but I warn you, the phone might disappoint you after your first major firmware update. The least specs you should be going for is the 1GHz snapdragon processor. The HTC Desire is a very good phone from last year and still is. It’s a good place to start your Android experience.

4. Skins

Manufacturers like HTC include a skin for their Android phones called HTC Sense (pictured). It is supposed to make for a more intuitive user experience but some people consider it an obstruction. Samsung have their corresponding TouchWiz and Motorola have their Motoblur. You might want to look into the phone you’re getting to make sure the skin is something you’ll like and will not be a nuisance. On the other hand, some phones come with stock android like the Droid X from Motorola and the  T-Mobile G2X from LG. This is raw Android without any fancy skin atop. I kind of prefer this because it is less demanding on your phone’s hardware.

All the other stuff, you’ll have to experience it yourself when you start using the device. Before you know it, your new smartphone will be your new best friend. And then you start pointing and laughing at your friends still rocking their symbians and blackberries (with all humility though) Android is a fun, easy to use operating system. Be reminded though, that user experience will vary across different hardware and make sure that you are exactly sure about what you want before you invest in one. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions! Thanks for reading!

Google sky map is an application that allows you to find exact locations of stars, planets and other celestial objects in the sky. The application uses your phone’s internal compass, GPS and the current date and time on your phone to let you know exactly where you’re pointing at with your phone. I tried it and it was mind blowing. You just move your phone around and you can see what’s in space. You can search for planets, constellations, etc. And when you do so, your compass guides you in navigating to find what you’re looking for.

In all, the app is fun, it’s something to show off to your friends. It works pretty good and for now, it is available only on Android. iPhone and Blackberry owners will have to wait; I don’t know how long for because I’ve not heard any gist about development.


Dear readers,
The reason we have ‘App of the Month’ and not ‘App of the Week’ is because of consistency. We need to see how well we can keep up with a monthly review before we jump into weekly! We don’t want to raise  your hopes and them crush ’em. That’ll be mean. We’re nice people. Thanks for understanding.


The aIRplaY team.

Even though the amount of apps I have access to are limited to my OS version and my phone specification, I have to say, this operating system is advanced! Either on Wifi or on 3G, I get the best out of my phone; this is really a smart phone. As much as the HTC Desire was my dream phone (it still is, by the way) I have to say that I’m cool with what I have for now, and that the Android platform in general is a particularly good look and feel. This is only the beginning.

This phone is ‘ginormous’ with a 4.3-inch touch-screen display and weighing in at 155g (5.47 oz). It has dimensions of 2.6 x 5.0 x 0.4 (in.). The Droid X might not be too lenient on you if you have small hands but it packs all the goodies
in the bag to make it worthwhile.It is equipped with an 8.0 megapixel camera with 4X digital zoom that captures 720p HD video at 24fps. It has 3 microphones in which two are for noise cancellation. Besides the 8GB internal memory, it comes shipped with a 16GB microSD which is expandable to up to 32GB giving you a total of 40GB.
Even thought the Android 2.1 is the preinstalled OS on this device, the manufactures announced an update to Android 2.2 (Froyo) for the device. This is not surprising considering the hardware can handle it; the phone’s processor is a 1.0GHz TI OMAP3630 which is comparable to the Snapdragon processor used in some other ‘heavy duty’ smartphones.
The Droid X seems a likely candidate in outselling the iPhone 4 this year but can they handle the challenge? Apple’s iPhone 4 sales have been record breaking since launch and they show no signs of slowing down thanks to their large, devoted fan base. They have sold about 1.7 million units of the iPhone 4 already and their only challenge seems to be the Achilles’ heel in their antenna. The Droid is already sold out in major stores in the US as at the time this was written and new shipments don’t arrive till the 23rd of July.
Before one starts drooling for an unlocked version of the phone, it should be pointed out that it is a CDMA phone. This implies that it will not work on your regular GSM networks. Bummer. This was what killed it for me because the Droid X has everything I have always looked out for in a phone.  The one thing users might not really like about the phone is the Motorola software atop the Android. Unlike the HTC Sense which is arguably a magical experience on the HTC HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5, the Motorola counterpart looks pretty but doesn’t really deliver (for instance, why would I want to add all my twitter followers to my contacts list?!)
For customers who have already purchased the iPhone and are having problems with reception, Apple is giving away free cases for the phone that is supposed to alleviate the problem. They claim to have gone back to the drawing board to see where the problem is from and that for people who purchase the phone on or before September 30th, they get a free casing.
Bottom-line, the Droid X is a big phone for people who want to consume data and probably do some work on the go. It is fast, has a decent battery life and does really good photos and videos. If I owned an iPhone 4 and was currently pissed and looking for a replacement, I’d let my case rest with Steve Jobs and just reach out for this awesome alternative.

So recently I graduated from college; not with the kind of grades you would hope for, but good enough for one to be thankful he’s out of school :). During the entire grad period, I noticed almost (and I mean almost) everyone I knew – friends or otherwise – had one type of Blackberry or the other. I was privileged to handle and mess around with a Storm2, a Bold2, one type of Curve and a Javelin. And I gotta tell ya, I still haven’t seen the wow factor. RIM, the company that owns the Blackberry lines of Smartphones are going through their record books right now and wondering what exactly they did right this time to have made so much money in this part of the world in such little time. Over the past year (or so) there has been an influx of Blackberry devices in Nigeria in particular and the major reason being because of the Blackberry service that allows the owners communicate for ‘free’ among other Blackberry owners across the globe. This is a major perk that still drives a lot of people towards the BB market; matter of fact it’s so crazy right now that people don’t even bother asking you if you have a BB all they want is your pin: “Abeg wetin be you pin?” …[reply] “Uh, dude… I don’t even own a Blackberry!” A lot of consumers have acquired the phone without considering the cost of managing the device. Before the Blackberry service can be active, on has to have a data plan which requires you pay a monthly subscription to your service provider. The average price range is within the N5,000 range which is equivalent to about N60,000 a year. This might not sound like much but when you realize that’s how much you’re spending just to chat, it might get frustrating. It is easy to argue that the Blackberry has a web browser and other social networking apps like the facebook app and the twitter app etc. but one should also consider the user experience with these other devices. I could ping or get pinged all day on my BB without any complaints. But sorry to say, I would rather surf the web, read blogs and check e-mail on my HTC HD2 or my iPod touch [not saying I have both :(]. This is mainly because of the user experience involved. In this day in age where touch-screen smart phones are a way to go because of their landscape keyboard that gives less room for error while typing (don’t even mention the Storm here) and the joy of pinch-and-zoom to zoom into web pages enabling easy reading of the print, I think I’m better of without a pin! The Blackberry devices are a good set of Smartphones that have a budding application store (nothing compared to Apple’s AppStore or the Android Marketplace) and a decent keyboard that takes some getting used to depending on what kind of keyboard you are coming from. The concept behind ‘pinging’ is kinda cool but there’s more to smartphones and mobile devices than just instant messaging. Finally, I don’t see me getting a Blackberry except it has a fully functional landscape keyboard (screw that haptic feedback crap), a motherload of applications and a more dynamic user interface. Then I might consider not getting the HTC EVO 4G or the iPhone 4 or the Droid/Droid X or the HTC Desire or the HTC Incredible or any other smartphone that’s not a BB. NB: All company names and products mentioned here are properties of the individual or organization. All rights remain reserved.