Fries lets you prototype Android apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Despite advertising 16GB of internal storage, the Samsung Galaxy S4 only offers roughly 9GB of user available storage <a href="http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsung-galaxy-s4-gets-wrists-slapped-by-bbc-watchdog-investigation">highlighted by the BBC Watchdog exposé</a>. The Samsung flagship does offer microSD card expansion options, but early purchasers have complained about the memory discrepancy.<p>

“We appreciate this issue being raised and we will improve our communications,” said a Samsung spokesperson to CNET UK. “We are reviewing the possibility to secure more memory space through further software optimisation.”

The interesting thing about this isn't that there's a difference between the stated storage and what you get, but that buyers are actually complaining about it. One wonders how much Samsung will be able to claw back through that "optimisation". And how much memory Google's "pure" S4 has. (Thanks @Avro for the link.)

Prototype Android apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

AVRCP metadata support allows your bluetooth receiver (ie: car stereo) to show song data like track, artist and album while using Bluetooth A2DP audio streaming. Google Play Music has support for this, so why not Spotify?

"Recent protests, political unrest, and news events have been well documented with digital video and photos posted online on sites like YouTube. As smartphones grow in popularity, this trend will accelerate. Yet it remains difficult to obtain a comprehensive view of contested events from the many individual photos and video accounts. The result is that viewers often draw contradictory conclusions by seeing only parts of the available material. The Rashomon Project is developing an online toolkit that will facilitate rapidly assembly and public review of "Multi-Perspective Chronologies" where many videos are time-aligned and displayed simultaneously. Initial experiments with vanilla iPhone and Android video show that temporal metadata embedded in the digital files can be used to do a very close alignment. Once they are closely aligned, audio signals from video can be processed to further refine the alignment. Such a toolkit will benefit the public, citizen journalists, and ideally courts or commissions charged with investigating disputed incidents. Our goal is to allow the public (potentially hundreds of thousands of viewers) to gain a much better understanding of contested events from user-generated photos and video than is currently possible."

[via: http://www.krisfallon.com/projects/ ]

Ben Thompson:

Asha… has worse specifications than a cheap Android phone, and a much worse app selection. Thus it has been largely ignored by a tech press that <a href="http://stratechery.com/2013/value-chains/">considers little more</a> than features and price.<p>

However, finding a market is about finding a new axis of differentiation. In the case of low-end smartphones, are there things that matter beyond price and performance?<p>

Consider again where Asha will be sold: India, Africa, Latin America – all have markets where mobile phones are the primary form of computing, as well as areas without consistent electricity. In such markets, nothing matters more than battery life.

And Asha has that in spades. In fact, the Asha range has sold more phones in the past three quarters than Windows Phone. (Also, bonus point for the title of the post.)

Phablets vs. normal sized screens

My Xoom may be having battery issues, so I may have to replace the battery.