Gadgetory

welcome back to Android's Q&A my name is Jace not Joyce not Jason but Jace and this is where we try and answer your most pressing Android questions and today the most pressing question is the new year is upon us coming soon how do I become a better person other apps out there that can help me be a better person and stick with my new year's resolutions who you have come to the right place because I stay up late at night trying to answer those very questions and last night I stayed up so late that I had a nightmare from wrapping Rudolph come on sit back relax but on your radio gear get ready for a trip for some holiday cheer gonna take a full ride to the android zone I don't need a spaceship please microphone so hold on your leg go gather y ok cuz I'll be answering to you an aids for the rest of the beer alright well put away wrapping Rudolph for now but before we get to those new year's resolution apps I want to answer a question from sigh Ken Russell do you think that Google will be able to integrate google now on super budget phones so Ken that's really going to decide on how you define super budget phones that term concerns me a little bit because you could be talking about ultra ultra dirt cheap Android devices and there is a lot of crap out there my wife bought our daughter unfortunately about our daughter a tablet that was but that thick it was like 50 bucks and it was running a forked version of Android and it was horrendous I mean we didn't use it ten minutes out of the box and it was so laggy and so slow we just never used it again it was horrible and there are devices out there like that but if you want to talk about entry-level phones like the Moto G that is a fantastic phone for the price and of course you can check out Joshua's detailed review of the device but I also spoke to him last night just for you about the google now issue and how Google now worked and he said it worked great now it wasn't as fast as the Moto X or the Nexus 5 but it was comparable and it was a great phone for the price you should check that out so if you're talking about entry-level devices I would go with something like that the next question came from strippy notice hey Jace what is system-on-a-chip and yr cortex processors included in the Snapdragon yes so what is a system-on-a-chip and how does it matter for me and my android phone good question you see in the olden days when people use desktops you had the major components of a computer integrated through the motherboard but on a small tablet or a smartphone engineers must economize on space and so they've taken most of the components of that computing device and integrated them onto one chimp called an integrated chip or more commonly known as a microchip this this integrated package is called system-on-a-chip now you also may be were a bit confused about your terms there you said why is the cortex on the Snapdragon the cortex is not included in the Snapdragon system-on-a-chip snapdragon uses the Krait processor the cortex is used by the Tegra 4 processor but great question all right since I was about 19 I had major plans to change the world but I soon realized that none of that was even remotely possible unless I had some measure of self-discipline and I didn't have much and I had to work on it a lot and since the advent of smartphones has actually helped me significantly and I know coming up in the next week he were going to be thinking about their new year's resolutions to you know change their lives improve on things whether that's how they eat how they exercise they educate themselves and they have various different goals and I want to share with you the apps that i personally use these are apps that I've you know reviewing for just this segment these are apps that I use almost every day and I love them and I wanted to share them with you all right the first of all I wanted to talk about was audible for those of you who have goals that relate to your own education your own career goals audible is fantastic why well it allows me to you know read and educate myself on the topics that I'm interested in while I'm doing other things because the biggest challenge with reading is that people are not time to read you have to sit down and read and be undisturbed well with audible I can read while I'm driving walking the dog doing the dishes my favorite thing to do my favorite pastime I could dump you know 10 hours a day in it is to play most of my favorite video game while I'm listening to an audible book and honorable is not a sponsor of this show but hey audible if you want to sponsor us I will make you an amazeballs commercial okay I love audible and let's talk about the apps okay so audible has a great app both on Android and iOS it's pretty much perfect in my opinion except for two things one you can't do in app purchases on both platforms and two they took oh they used to have it but they took out the fast forward option you have the rewind option for 30 seconds or 60 seconds within the book but you can't fast forward anymore so if you want to fast forward you have to like scrub with your finger manually and you're always going too far not too far enough but otherwise amazing I go through about two books a week inaudible just talk about the subscription model for a moment if you become a subscriber I think I'm like there's two levels to it there's like a 19 or $17 option and then there's a $22 option that the premium membership and you get two credits per month or one credit per month and most books can be bought for one credit some of the real premium ones take two credits but then you get a discount on all the other books within their library and I have bought their competitor audiobooks calm and they're also really good their app that does have the fast-forward version but the app isn't is pretty for sure and they just don't have the same selection as audible and in the end I went back to audible because of their subscription model is just a little bit more cost effective in the long run and for someone like me who read so much audible is really fantastic check it out alright the next step is runkeeper and many of you will know about this it basically tracks your exercise with your running walking biking hiking anything like that and i use it for when i'm walking the dog when i'm hiking all that kind of stuff it tracks my distance my laps you know organizes my goals and that kind of stuff and a voice will come on and tell me what pace I'm on in that lap how what distance I've gone how far I have to go all that kind of stuff and it allows me to listen to my audio books at the same time it's playing on in the background so it's really fantastic the only drawback to it is that it gets expensive to operate because it does use gps and depending on your data data plan it can be expensive to operate I've noticed a noticeable hike in my bill when I use runkeeper a lot but otherwise fantastic now the next appt I'm sure almost all of you use or have used to some extent in the past but I'm going to talk about it because it's the app that's probably had the biggest practical impact on how I organize my life and that is google calendar here's the thing people like me who you know loosely call themselves a DD we don't just need reminders we need harassment right and Google Calendar allows me to set up at least 5 reminders on the iOS version allows me to 10 and I use that one too for reminders for appointments for deadlines phone calls you know anything I need to remember to do it will set up constant reminders and I have a warn you I have spent over two hundred dollars on different types of Calendar apps because this was really important to keep myself organized and I always came back to the google calendar at least on Android because it allowed me that kind of flexibility the most important thing for me is multiple reminders color coordination that's really important and automatically syncing up to the cloud which it does all that really really well Google Calendar love it alright the next app is a nap and a gadget and it is Fitbit i bought Fitbit for like I don't know 110 dollars or so a few months ago and I like it I like it a lot I like it because it automates the process of tracking you know my calories and my exercise and all that kind of stuff and it doesn't require me to think about it very much and I like that I like that a lot I just really need to remember to charge the Fitbit and sync it up with the desktop app and it works really really well I don't have much experience with the mobile app but fit when we're talking about new year's resolutions you know to be able to stick with one of these news resolutions you need as much as the process automated so you're not thinking about it and Fitbit does a fantastic job at that for me it was worth the money if you're willing to take your exercise seriously all right so the last appt recommendation for this isn't a nap at all it's a book and it's audible you can also get it on kindle course and it is called the power of habit and this is a fantastic potentially life-changing book why well I have read a number of different books like at least a dozen on the subject of self-discipline and changing habits and stuff like that and a lot of them require is it is basically their inspirations they're meant to encourage you to just have more willpower to have you no more discipline to be more determined and that's not a really smart long-term strategy the power of habit cites numerous cave studies where people have studied how to change habits that have been formed over time right so if you have learned like me if you're a drink coca-cola you know 8 to 12 times a day like I do it's a very serious habit that I developed from childhood and it's very very difficult to stop I have quit many many times and I hit like a four-month barrier and then you know I ended up going back to it it's very very difficult but the power of habit breaks down how these habits form and the mechanisms behind changing them and they they cite some case studies where longtime habits have been changed and for me it helps it helped me understand why I do some of the things I do better than any book I've read before so check that out the power of habit it's both on audible and kindle check it out thank you for watching Android peeps kindly accept my heartfelt best wishes for you and your family to have a happy holiday in a safe that new year you also don't want to forget my brother's an Android over here Josh Joe and the tech ninja Kevin who strive to be your source for all things Android you can connect with me here on Google+ or Twitter and better yet in the comments below give us your questions comments or thoughts and you could be in next week's androids Q&A bye