Meet the five toughest smartphones that can withstand extreme temperatures, water, dust, shock and are hack proof The top 5 super tough smartphones that can withstand almost anything

The top 5 super tough smartphones that can withstand almost anything

Meet the five toughest smartphones that can withstand extreme temperatures, water, dust, shock and are hack proof

Rather than buying a smartphone case to protect your investment, many are considering a really tough phone to begin with. This is especially true for those who work in challenging environments ranging rigs, oil platforms, mines, forests, deep sea shipping to military personnel serving in some of the toughest environments in the world.

To meet this unique demand there a  handful of manufacturers who look to deliver Android devices with brains and brawn.

While not all products claim the same level of durability, we have picked the top five so called “tough” phones to see how they’d stand up in most extreme conditions.

1. Caterpillar CAT S50

The CAT S50 features 4.7 inch (1280×720 pixels) screen and has a quad-core Qualcomm MSM8926 processor clocked at up to 1.2GHz coupled with 2GB of RAM. The battery will give you up to 16 hours of 3G talk time. The smartphone can function in temperatures ranging from -13°F (-25°C) to 131°F (55 °C) and waterproof up to 1m for 30 minutes and resistant to dust and drops of up to 1.2m. It is also the first Caterpillar smartphone to come with useful and customized applications.

The CAT S50’s retail price is $459.99.

2. Quechua Phone

Quechua has collaborated with Archos, a French manufacturer to manufacture its first smartphone, built “to be mountainproof” (wind, water and dirt). It comes with a touchscreen made of thick hardened glass with a rubber shell as well as it let’s it absorb shocks. Quechua also brags of 22 hours of talk time.

The Quechua Phone 5 is available for $310.

3. Fieldbook F1

Logic Instrument’s Fieldbook F1 can theoretically function in extreme temperatures ranging from 14°F (-10°C) to 131°F (55°C), as it is water, shock and dust resistant. This is a quality phablet running on Android Lollipop and comes with a 6 inch HD display (1920×1080 pixels). The Fieldbook F1 is also fitted with many sensors (ambient light, barometer, etc.) which converts the phablet into an actual weather station.

You need to get in touch with the manufacturer for the price of the product.

4. Galaxy Xcover 3

The Xcover 3, a sturdy entry-level smartphone from Samsung can handle dust, water, and drops (up to 1.2m). Besides this, it features a 4.5 inch (800×480 pixel) display and is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor. It comes with 1.5GB of RAM coupled with 8GB of internal storage, which is expandable via a microSD card.

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover 3 comes for $248.

5. The Turing Phone

Available online only from the start of this summer, the Turing Phone calls itself as a safe smartphone, promising the privacy of your data and conversations, which are encoded in a systematic manner. According to its creator, the Turing Phone has a casing made of a never-used-before material called Liquid morphium, which is stronger than titanium and steel, and which keeps it safe from climatic and physical hardships.

Starting at $610, The Turing Phone is available online only.

Hope you like our list of the toughest smartphones in the world as of today. If you have found even more tougher smartphone and feel that it should be included in the list, kindly drop the name of that smartphone in the comments section.

RIP Windows Media Center

This week was full of exciting and encouraging announcements for Windows fans from the stage of Microsoft Build 2015 Developer Conference. But, here comes a news that is a big blow to the Windows Media Center fans. Now, Microsoft has finally confirmed that this media software won’t be available in Windows 10.

If your PC is running Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 and you upgrade to Windows 10, your system will be devoid of the Media Centre and you won’t be able to get it back. If you try to install the most recent Windows 10 build on a system with Media Centre, you will get this warning before the setup proceeds further:

If you try to install the most recent Windows 10 build on a system with Media Centre, you will get this warning before the setup proceeds further:

History of Windows Media Center:

This isn’t a surprise move. Developers at Redmond stopped actively developing the Windows Media Center in 2009 as the team behind its development was broken. The version that was made available in an upgrade pack in Windows 10 was an unmodified versionWindows Media Center has been a popular feature of past Windows operating systems and it’s like a blow to the fans. Back in 2001, Media Centre was launched as a separate XP version that supported TV channels from TV tuners and played full screen as a media player.

Microsoft upgraded it with HD TV support, CableCard-based tuners and ability to enable apps Netflix and other third-party sources. It was a signature feature of the Windows “premium” versions. If you are a fan of Windows Media Center, you’ll have to ditch your plans of Windows 10 upgrade and hope for some unofficial porting to the new OS.

This news was confirmed by Microsoft in an interview with ZDNet’s Ed Bott.

Will you miss Windows Media Center? Tell us 

Angry Bird is Not Just a Mobile Game, Angry Birds Movie Trailer is Released

Angry Birds was one of my favourite games on App Store and I was really excited when I heard the buzz about Angry Birds movie. But now, it’s no more a buzz as Angry Birds is getting its own movie, and its trailer is finally released.

Plot: The movie takes us to an island populated entirely by happy, flightless birds – or almost entirely. In this paradise, Red (Jason Sudeikis – We’re the Millers, Horrible Bosses), a bird with a temper problem, speedy Chuck (Josh Gad in his first animated role since Frozen), and the volatile Bomb (Danny McBride – This is the End, Eastbound and Down) have always been outsiders. But when the island is visited by mysterious green piggies, it’s up to these unlikely outcasts to figure out what the pigs are up to.

TNW reported that:

The movie likely carries significant weight for Rovio, which cut 260 jobs just last month. Despite over 50 million downloads, Angry Birds 2 couldn’t quite replicate the sensational success of the first game.

 Rovio’s surely banking on the movie to be popular enough to give it a financial boost – particularly given it costed the company more than $160 million to make. 

Google offers real-time traffic updates in its Maps application. Have you ever thought how Google tracks live traffic?

Google offers real-time traffic updates in its Maps application. Have you ever thought how Google tracks live traffic?

Getting a Google Maps traffic update before leaving for work is not a big deal for you, but have you ever wondered how Google tracks live traffic. There is no rocket science behind this, but Google has to do a lot of hard work, just to serve you the real-time traffic updates in your area.

Google gathers GPS data it receives from smartphones and uses it to analyse their speed and location. Google has assigned different colors for different traffic congestion levels, like red is for heavy traffic. So, if more smartphones are there at one place (obviously on the road), the color of the maps overlay changes to red. Google’s intelligent algorithms exclude vehicles like Postal Vans, as they take more frequent stops and may alter the traffic data.

Google also crowdsources location data from telecom companies. These telcos monitor user location data by a method called Trilateration, in which the distance of a user measured between two or three surrounding telecom towers is used to analyse the speed and location of the user.

“When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions”.Google

The minds behind the working of Google Traffic are ZipDash, a traffic analysis company that Google bought in 2004. Google added ZipDash’s technology to Google Maps and started providing live traffic updates.

Apart from the goodies offered by Google Traffic, it has also been a topic of concern as it affects the privacy of the user by sending user’s location to google servers. Google is fully determined to protect the privacy of the user and has acknowledged this. 

“We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going”.Google

After tracking and analyzing the location data for a particular trip, Google permanently deletes it from its servers. Google also offers an Opt-out option, in which if a user is concerned about his privacy, he can stop his location tracking by Google Maps servers. Google stated:

“Once you disable or opt out of My Location, Maps will not continue to send radio information back to Google servers to determine your handset’s approximate location”.

So, wherever you’re, next time when you’ll use Google maps for live traffic updates, you’ll praise Google’s efforts for the accuracy and speed they provide while tracking the live traffic for you. Google has played a major role in making our lives simpler. One can’t imagine internet without Google. In fact, Google is the internet for most of us.

Windows 93 is Complete and Ready to Use, Try this Weirdly Genius OS Here

What if Microsoft released another operating system between Windows 3.X and Windows 95? Windows 95 was around for a long times and it ruled the PCs for a long time. What if Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer released an OS in 1993?

Last night, couple of digital artists from France, Jakenpopp and Zombectro announced that the Windows 93operating system is finally complete. They released the first version of this bizarre but beautiful art project back in October 2014.

ear mobile users, Windows 93 works very well on mobile devices too.

When you open the link to use the OS, you’ll be greeted with a boot window and the PlayStation boot up sound. After this step, you’ll be taken to the desktop.

This is an in-browser operating system which is pretty cool if you have a lot of spare time and you want to be lost in your geeky childhood fantasies coupled with some fun. There are games like Castle GAFA 3D, Solitude, and you’ve got theStar Wars Episode IV in ASCII animated version. You’ve got a virtual PC too in Windows 93 where you can run Windows 93 inside the Windows 93.

There’s a voice program on the desktop namedSpeech where you can type a word and the program will pronounce it in different accents.

To give you some company, the creators have included Lisa, a virtual girl who just stands there at the desktop and there you’ve got a friend.

In case you’re wondering, there’s porn too; for God’s sake it’s the internet. Dig deep in C:/ drive to find images folder and then go to png.

Windows 93 is unstable and you’ll be greeted eventually with the BSD (Blue Screen of Death.) There are a lot other cool applications, just explore the desktop and find out.

In case you are ready for some fun and wasting some useful hours, the way I’ve been doing since morning, Windows 93 deserves a try.

Try it here: Windows 93

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This is where Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg went when they had problems

Meet Neeb Karori Baba whose followers include Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg

This is where Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg went when they had problems

Vinod Joshi, the secretary of the trust who is in charge of a small temple and ashram settled in a picture-postcard valley called Kainchi near Nainital, Uttarakhand had received a call from Larry Brilliant, an American physician and former director of Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org few years ago. Recalling the instance, Joshi, the short and cheerful man with sparkling eyes, who has spent his life in the service of his spiritual guru Neeb Karori Baba at the ashram told “Larry said some Mark would be coming to the ashram for a day.”

Joshi had no clue who Mark Zuckerberg was, as Facebook was not the behemoth that it is today. While he does not remember when he received the call, he does remember that Zuckerberg had flown down to Pantnagar, which is about 65 km from Nainital. He then drove to the ashram of Neeb Karori (mostly called Neem Karoli) Baba, who died in 1973 but still continues to charm many of the high-profile Americans.

During the Indian prime minister’s US tour last week, the Baba’s halo shined bright when Zuckerberg mentioned to Narendra Modi that he had on the advice of Apple founder Steve Jobs visited a temple in India during the early days of Facebook.

At a town hall meeting at Facebook headquarters, Zuckerberg told Modi, “…he (Jobs) told me that in order to reconnect with what I believed as the mission of the company I should visit this temple that he had gone to India early on in his evolution of thinking about what he wanted Apple and his vision of the future to be.”

“So I went and I travelled for almost a month, and seeing people, seeing how people connected, and having the opportunity to feel how much better the world could be if everyone has a strong ability to connect reinforced for me the importance of what we were doing and that is something I’ve always remembered over the last 10 years as we’ve built Facebook.”

Zuckerberg spent 2 days at the ashram

Zuckerberg came with just a book in his hand and even without a change of clothes says Joshi. “He was wearing a trouser which was torn at one knee,” he told Economic Times. As Pantnagar was hit by a storm and flights could not take off, Zuckerberg had to spend two days at the ashram instead of only one day.

Situated beside a bubbling broom, the ashram is surrounded by tall pine-forested mountains, which itself is small for a saint who has an elite following that includes Hollywood star Julia Roberts. It consists of five shrines, of which one is dedicated to his favourite Hanuman. Many of the Baba’s devotees believe that he himself was the human incarnation of monkey God. The sage used to live in a white building with square columns opposite the shrines. Joshi says “We call it the White House.”

There is a small wooden platform enveloped with a dark woolen blanket scattered with fresh flowers on its verandah – the Baba used to spend most of his day seated on it. There are pictures of the ever-smiling Baba sitting or half lying down with his left palm supporting his head all over the place. He is always seen wearing a blanket.

He wears a Burberry-check blanket, even in the shrine where the Baba lives on in a life-size marble statue. As the evening aarti (lamp service) winds down at the shrine, an ET correspondent tells Rameshwar Dass who is standing at the back of a small crowd of worshippers that the statue is life-like. “Well, almost,” Dass replies with a mischievous smile, his eyes crinkling up crows’ feet on the edges. “He looked quite different.”

A former New York-based photographer, Dass was Jim until the sage gave him his new name. In 1970, when Jim first met Neeb Karori Baba, he stayed for two years by his side.

Baba spoke about Christ

Dass says “The atmosphere around him was very powerful. It was like a spiritual pressure cooker.” When asked what is that attracts foreigners to the sage, thinking for a moment Dass says, “He talked to us a lot about Christ. He used to say that Christ and Hanuman are the same. That Christ never died.”

He says that it was as if he was seeing Christ, when the Baba talked about him. “Tears used to flow from his eyes.” The Baba never gave scriptural lessons or sermons except that he recommended them to be of service to others says Dass. “The idea of service appeals to Christians like us.”

He remembers one of the Baba’s earliest disciples, Ram Dass making fun with him about a giant statue of Hanuman at another ashram of the Baba in Nainital. “Ram Dass said, ‘What would my friends in the US say if they saw me worshipping a giant concrete monkey’,” Dass says with a hearty laugh. It was Richard Alpert or Ram Dass who made Neeb Karori Baba very popular among the elite Americans.

While on vacation from Harvard, Alpert, an American psychologist, met the Baba with fellow psychologist and psychedelics researcher Timothy Leary. He lived many years with the sage and wrote an interestingly designed book ‘Be Here Now’ on him and Hindu philosophy. Written like a graphic novel, the book had an effect on many readers in the US who began to connect with a commune and foundation Alpert had set up in New Mexico.

Alpert, Jim and Larry Brilliant’s evangelism continues to draw followers to the Baba. When the ET correspondent was to take Joshi’s leave, he showed him an email from Brilliant about Steve Jobs. Brilliant, who is also a science adviser to Warner Bros. and president of Skoll Global Threats Fund set up by eBay founder Jeff Skoll, said that Jobs till his last had kept pictures of the saint by his bedside.

“I met Steve when we were all young and the world was full of promise and so, of course, we went to India as spiritual seekers,” he writes in the email. “Girija [Brilliant’s wife] gave him our only blanket from Maharaj ji when Steve was very ill.” Even though Neeb Karori Baba is no more, it is evident that he still continues to be a comforter many"

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OnePlus CEO Apologizes, Wants to Work as an Intern at Samsung

In his blog post, OnePlus CEO Carl Pei apologized for screwing up the OnePlus 2 invitation process and expressed his desire to become an intern at Samsung to learn some concepts from the tech giant.

OnePlus has worked hard to build a good reputation for itself in a short period of time. The first product of the company OnePlus One was dubbed as the flagship killer as it came with tons of features at affordable features.

The new OnePlus 2 phone is being teased with the help of an invite system and there are rumors that the company is gearing up for another mid-range phone that will be revealed later this month.

The company’s CEO Carl Pei recently apologized for screwing up the invitation process as the system isn’t working properly.

To cope with this issue, Pei came up with a crazy idea to learn how to handle the invites. He says that he wants to be an intern at Samsung. Pie says that Korean company has been doing its humungous business like a pro for the last 77 years.

On his blog, e writes, “Running a company that does so well, for so long, with such a wide range of products is an astounding feat by any measure. They’ve shipped hundreds of millions of phones around the globe through a multitude of sale channels, you can’t help but admire their operations.”

Pei says that being an intern at Samsung he could provide some of his expertise he gained over the years dealing with OnePlus business.

He ends his blog with the following, “I hope to hear from you, Samsung.”