A Nexus fan's take on the LG G3

My first Android phone, eww.

A little backstory, I got my first Nexus device, the original Nexus 7 shortly after it came out in the fall of 2012. This was my first Android device, I knew nothing about anything, and I grew to love it over time. I had never owned a smartphone and I decided that winter I would try. I got a Samsung Galaxy S3 and was so disappointed... It didn't look right at all, nor did it feel right. The high-contrast green on black really upset me. I began researching ways to make this device more palatable, and long story short I got heavy into rooting and custom ROMs. This got bad, to the point where I didn't spend more than a day or two without a clean flash. I wasted a lot of time trying to get the right experience. It was very frustrating.

This all finally came to rest when I got my first Nexus phone, the Nexus 5. I was in love, and I finally had what I wanted my phone to feel like originally. However, I had become so accustomed to the features present in custom ROMs that I had to root and rom this one too. I had this for quite a while, but I noticed that after playing around with different ROMs, I always went back to stock. I found the Xposed module GravityBox and used that for a while, as it provided the features I had missed without any real hassle. I enjoyed things this way for a while.

But seriously... Look at this beauty.

Recently I upgraded to an LG G3 and since it is so new, there is very little development available for it thus far. But I really quite enjoy this UI. The double-tap-to-wake is something every phone needs. I have the screen timeout down to 15 seconds, and I use the "Smart Screen" feature to keep it on when it detects my face. Even the remote works quite well, and I lost my TV remote about a week ago and haven't looked back. The features of this device keep me quite satisfied.
So far I don't miss my Nexus 5. Don't get me wrong, I did very much enjoy everything about the phone. The soft touch back, the camera, which I always had great results with, the smoothness of the UI. The G3 is better in every aspect, camera, battery, screen, size, feel. I can't emphasize the feel part enough, the weight, the size, as well as the fluidity of the OS. I was most skeptical at first of the interface, with LG's optimus UI laying on top of Android. Since playing with it for a couple weeks, I have gotten over this skepticism and grown very much fond of the flat textures and pastel colors. My favorite feature is how the status bar can change color when in some of LG's built in apps. The other great part is if you don't like a particular LG app, you can uninstall it.
This is huge, as not even stock Android will let you uninstall built in apps. Sure enough, LG's QuickMemo+, Quick Remote, even the Calculator can all be uninstalled without having to change anything about the system, and swapped out to another app of your preference. Though I have found LG's calendar to be better looking and more robust than Google's.

In short, though the screen does suck a bit more power than similar 1080p displays, I can still get a solid 12 hours out of the battery on a normal day. I am quite happy with this phone and I am really excited at the direction LG is heading in.

iOS and Android

The battle of iOS and Android has been going on for years. The two are far and away the first two choices for mobile operating system. There are so many aspects to each, it would be impossible to expand on each and every one, however they do require a bit of explanation. There are many things to each that add to the argument, whether for or against. One of the biggest arguments for the Android operating system is the customizability. iOS and Android have both become quite powerful over the years and there are many advantages and disadvantages to each.

When you start up an iPhone, you will always be greeted by basically the same thing. Apart from the last major update to iOS 7, the interface has remained largely the same over the years. Android however has undergone major facelifts in updates, and through customization by apps, themes, and homescreen launcher applications. One of the best things about Android is everything in the operating system can be replaced by a different app. You can swap out the keyboard, camera, and even the app controlling the homescreen. This has led to entire communities dedicated to the appearance of your homescreen, sharing pictures of the screen to friends or publicly.

This choice is not for everyone and can be time consuming to some. On iOS there is very little one can do to customize the appearance, and some are perfectly content with that. However to Android fans this is one of the best features, an ability to truly make a device customized to you.

Where do we go from here?

I have been thinking recently about where technology is going to go from here. We have all these amazing mobile devices, smart phones, tablets, laptops. All of these possibilities within a tiny, beautiful package. However advanced things are, it seems to have begun to level off a bit. Sort of like the law of diminishing returns. It seems like all smart phones are going to be brick shaped, though we have seen some interesting designs in the past.

The LG G flex is a brand new take on the classic smartphone form factor

It seems like everything is basically going to level off at a point until someone comes along and creates the next great innovation. Think of the mp3 player, the GPS, all of these things exist now in your smartphone.
I am going to go with the industry and lean toward some form of wearable tech, and a smart watch seems to be the most reasonable to me. Checking a watch is something we're used to, (granted that was nearly assimilated into the smartphone as well) and it only makes sense that as devices get thinner, lighter, they may begin to migrate toward a smaller, more portable devices. However these will be different, as there will be times where a larger screen is necessary and you may still need a tablet or laptop.
I think the smartphone may be a temporary thing. Its later going to be consumed into the next wave of wearable tech. The brick shaped phone will be replaced with something lighter and more ergonomic until it does.

How to unlock, install twrp, and root a nexus device from ubuntu

I've been reading up on this a lot recently and I decided there was no real guide to help newbies to Ubuntu and newbies to rooting in the same step. I just so happened to be in that situation and attempting to root my nexus tablet. Please keep in mind this reflects my experience, with other devices and other operating systems the process is significantly different. You may / will void your warranty doing this, I am not responsible for bricked devices, etc the usual.
So first I assume since you are here that you are using Ubuntu operating system. If that does not sound familiar, take care and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
So first thing you want to do is get a fast boot environment set up. Google Linux fast boot for more information there are many different guides out there. Don't search for Ubuntu fastboot that will mostly find things related to Ubuntu touch which doesn't help us.

My process is very easy and I have tested it on both my nexus 7 and nexus 10 tablets. I know there are scripts but they are not the easiest thing for an Ubuntu first timer.

Now in your terminal (Ctrl+shift+t) you will have the world at your fingertips, but it is going to look very overwhelming at first. Don't panic, were gonna get through this.  Power down your device and turn it on in boot loader mode (often power + vol up + vol down) and plug her in. I have heard the cord that came with the device must be used for this, but have not experienced any negatives with using a different one. Let's go meet fastboot. In your terminal type fastboot and check out the help menu it returns. Lots of possibilities here but we need only 2 of them.

Now, in your terminal type
Sudo fastboot devices
This will grant the terminal superuser permissions (often needed) after prompting you for your password. Then it should display a device with a long number as its name. Don't worry about this there will not be a test, but this is required to see if your fast boot command is working correctly, and whether your device is on in fastboot mode. Now we type one simple phrase to unlock the device after we verify fast boot is running.
sudo fastboot oem unlock

This will display a prompt on your device to be sure you want to unlock the device. Accept this, it will most likely wipe all of your data. (Factory reset)
Now if everything was done right you should be able to reboot your device and get it up and activated again. Unlocking your device is the only action that wipes information aside from installing custom ROMs.
Now that were unlocked we need a custom recovery. Assuming you have downloaded this already (Google is your friend) we can move on to step two. Power down your device again into fastboot mode.
In your terminal, we need to change directory to the folder housing the IMG file for your new recovery. (Default is simply Downloads which ill show you here
Type:
CD Downloads
Notice your path changes

Now let's go for it!
Sudo fastboot flash recovery (yourfilenamewithoutparentheses.IMG)
Now the worst is over. Congrats on making it this far!

Now on your device scroll through the options (volume keys) to reboot to recovery. You should see the Google logo for a moment first.
After making a backup in your recovery, go ahead and find the option to reboot (in twrp its called reboot) and reboot to system. Twrp will prompt to install supersu for you (what a nice guy) and all you need to do is open it up a couple times to update.
And thats it! Now you can run your stock rom with root access and a custom recovery. Whether you need helpful root apps like titanium backup or want a custom ROM installed you should now have all you need. I hope this helps someone!

An android lover is born

This is going to start as a rant, become a life story, and eventually approach a thesis.
I have always been obsessed with tinkering. 
When I was younger I was obsessed with transformers and other action figures that could change form. I would switch them back and forth, often getting so frustrated if I was unable to figure out how to make them transform. My parents had their hands full if I went with them to Walmart, I was a bit spoiled in that respect and God bless them for putting up with me during that. 
This was always in me but I guess it didn't really reveal itself again until last year when I got my girlfriend a Kindle Fire. I loved the dame and wanted to spoil her a little for her birthday, after not being able to do enough for a couple holidays before. She still uses the thing to this day, and I am so grateful I made the purchase.
 I loved the idea of a tablet, this slick little computer replacement that we could carry anywhere. I later decided to get myself one, which ended up being the Nexus 7. That was it for me. I had never experienced a more intentional feeling piece of tech with a touch screen. The best part of it was coming from my most recent smart phone, a Nokia C7, which at the time was a decent phone, it was a serious upgrade from the one I had prior, a Nokia Nuron (labeled at the time as a 'budget smartphone'), but still felt clunky, and the Symbian system app store was full of junk and nearly useless. 
Coming from the Symbian OS to Android was great. First of all the Jelly Bean OS was a new world. Apps felt solid and smooth, the interface was beautiful and well designed, and everything felt as it should be. I have never owned or extensively used an apple product (save my trusty iPod Classic 80GB, which I am convinced will never die. But I digress.) but everything I have heard points to this sort of user experience. The biggest difference being the ability to change anything. I'm digressing again.
All was great during the honeymoon period between myself and my Nexus 7 until a couple of months later I decided I was finally going to upgrade my cell phone, and I got a pair of Galaxy S3's for myself and my girlfriend. The touchwiz features slapped on top of android 4.1 were great and I really enjoyed how smooth the phone felt, having all the different features of my Nexus in this compact, and quite frankly beautiful piece of technology. I got into custom launchers to get a more custom user interface, and that was great for a while as well and satiated my need to tinker. 
Eventually I got sick of touchwiz, and one thing lead to another and I learned about rooting and enabling certain locked permissions in the phone, which lead to discovering the ability to install custom operating systems, flashing and rooting became my new addiction. I experimented a great deal with my phone, lots of wiping, flashing, even one time accidentally deleting my operating system and backup, and needing to jump through a whole mess of hoops to finally get what I wanted on my phone. Jelly Bean. I installed Cyanogenmod 10.1 and finally figured out how to get it running stable, and that's where I've stayed since. I love the ability to customize every little thing about the phone to finally get everything exactly where I want it.
But that feeling of the first custom rom I flashed...

I remember going through the motions to root and flash superuser to the device, sending over the cyanogenmod zip file to the phone's internal memory, booting to recovery mode, wiping and flashing the custom rom. Hitting reboot, seeing the boot animation light up and hang for a moment. 
I had many experiences up until this resulting in 'boot loops' where the boot animation just runs and runs until you finally power off the phone. 
I noticed something different in this one though. It went around and around for a moment, but then I saw the backlight dim slightly, the animation hang, and I was greeted by the sight of that welcome screen, and one of the most gratifying feelings of accomplishment I have ever experienced. 
This was quickly squelched by realizing all of my texts were gone and I needed to log into every one of my apps again. 
But it will forever keep me coming back.

This Nexus connected me into a whole new world. The various connectivity methods such as bluetooth, wifi, nfc. the apps, the software, all of it was so inspiring. I've had a couple ideas for my own projects to get into soon, I am just beginning school for computer engineering and I hope to soon get into studying android design and programming on my free time.