It’s not a problem that our phones are dead at the end of the day. At least, it doesn’t have to be.

Last week I was watching a live stream of the Samsung Unpacked event. It was a pretty good presentation, the CEO´s English and the craving for applause left aside. The presenters were enthousiastic about their new products, which is a good thing.

Impressive specs were present, but the thing that stood out most to me, is the speed of wireless charging that comes with the new Samsung phones.
They can now charge without any cords in 2 hours.

Wireless charging takes longer than conventional charging, my Nexus 5 goes from 0 to 100 in 2 hours, using the standard wall adapter. It has a smaller battery than the Samsung phones, so I think this is a great improvement.

Most people charge their phones overnight, to be able to “survive” the next day. A lot of people want their phones to last a week.
Looking at wireless charging, I don’t think we need phones that last for a week or more. When I use my phone, it’s mostly on a surface, like the table. Companies take advantage of that nowadays, like IKEA, who makes furniture with built-in wireless chargers.

With wireless charging evolving so quickly, soon we’ll be at a point where it takes only a matter of minutes to charge your phone. Phones don’t have to last for days anymore, you simply lay it down for a moment and you’re ready to go. This can be anywhere, at work, Starbucks, your car.

A future with wireless chargers everywhere, it might happen one day…

What are your thoughts on wireless charging?

Leave an answer below, I’d love to read it!

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My Tips To Be Productive.

Most people are looking for productivity tips, to use the time they have efficiently. If you’re one of those people, welcome to the club. Let me help you, here are my tips on how to stay productive.

P L A N N I N G

For me, productivity is all about planning. First let’s focus on why, later we’ll see how.

Planning brings structure, calmness and focus. When you have a lot of stuff to do, it helps to write all those things down, and organize them. You can organize them on priority, or number them. You can assign certain amounts of time to tasks, to ensure that you accomplish them all, which brings calmness on its’ own.

By writing down and ordering the tasks, you can focus on one tasks a a time, and give all your attention to it.

H O W

But how do you plan your tasks? I already mentioned writing them down.
A simple notebook would do. You can list your tasks, give them colors, and so on. You could also make some sort of a planning board, which let’s you write down extra notes, tracking how much water you’ve been drinking etc.

Or you could order such a planning board online.
You can find the one on the right here.

But what if you hate paper, or you don’t want to spend money on buying a notebook? I’m not the kind of person to use notebooks alone, so I use apps as well. Here are some of my most-used ones.

Todoist

Todoist is a platform to keep track of your tasks. It’s available for all major platforms, like Android and iOS, but for browsers as well.

The platform makes it easy to sort your tasks. You can add labels, assign tasks to projects and because it’s available on all platforms, it’s always with you.

One of the best features (for me) is Natural Language. You can type something like “Write article 12 aug” and it will detect that you have to write an article at 12 August. It’s extremely useful and quick.

Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking service, the best one for me. It lets you save everything. Webpages, audio, photos. When you have a document, you can scan it and it’ll clarify it and save it to a note.

Notes can be organizedusing notebooks, and those can be organized using stacks.

Just like Todoist, Evernote is available on almost every platform, so you can use it everywhere.

Forest

And last, but not least, Forest. This app makes focussing on one task a lot easier. One of the biggest distractions for me is my phone. Forest tries to keep you focused. The idea is simple.
When you open the app, you’re greeted with a timer. Set the desired time and click plant. You’ll see a countdown and a button Give up. In the time that you aren’t using your phone, a tree will start growing. The goal is to grow a forest. When you give up, your tree dies.
Surprisingly enough, it’s a pretty good motivator to remain focused.

P O L L

I would like to ask you for a small favor, could you fill in this poll? It would really help me.

What are your productivity tips?

Please leave an answer below, I’d like to read it!

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There are a lot of social networks out there, and we use them every day. Is that wrong? Not particularly, it’s the same thing as with all things in life, too much is bad for you. And that is where it all starts. There are (too) many social networking apps.

Categories.

First, you have the categories. Social networks can be focused on photo-sharing, which on its’ own has subcategories like quick pictures, family photos or even true masterpieces. Some social networks focus mainly on spreading your words, like short stories or detailed ones.

Video-sharing has become more popular as well, be it short videos or long ones. Some apps even let you livestream to your followers.

Apps.

And then, there’s apps. For every category there are more than 10 apps (doesn’t sound like much, but that would mean you could have 30 apps for social media alone.)

Take photo-sharing apps for example. You have Snapchat, Instagram, VSCO Cam and even apps that have an option to add images to your stories, like Facebook and Twitter.

Staying up-to-date.

Some networks are visited more than others, for me Twitter is one of those more-visited ones. There are almost no days without checking at least one social network. Imagine having to check them all every day! Person X uploads a picture to Instagram, you can see the story that’s behind it on Facebook and there is a tweet about that photo as well.

There is room for a single social network app that does it all. But maybe having this many apps is nice in a way, it gives you freedom of choice. You can participate in only those networks you like.

After reading this article you might think I am against social networking apps, but no. I use them too, a lot. But sometimes I think of how much we actually depend on social media.

Medium delivers some powerful tools to make the most simple articles look great. Here is a “Behind the scenes” look of how I write mine.

It all starts with I D E A S. There are days where I can come up with something in a matter of seconds and days where I can’t think of a single thing. Whenever i get an idea, I write it down. I have a notebook for Medium only. When I don’t have it with me, I use Evernote on my phone.

When I have time, I sit down, grab my notebook and S T O R Y B O A R D.
I write down the different parts of the article and note which P H O T O S I need to take. I grab my phone (Yep, no DSLR here), take those photos and then I E D I T them.

After that I start T Y P I N G. I follow the notes and instructions I wrote down in my notebook. After a while I paste the images and review it one last time. It usually takes a few tries to get the article I want.

When I’ve done that, all there’s left, is pressing the P U B L I S H button and sharing the article on Google +.

I would like to ask you for a small favor. I’ve made a form to find out what people like and what they don’t like. I would appreciate it if you’d fill it in, it helps me improve my style.

Follow me for more articles and don’t forget to share this article!

After some digging I found it. An old camera, collecting dust in the attic. I had thought of it while I was taking pictures, with my phone.

I wiped the camera free of dust, and took a better look at it. The front contained a manual slider to slide up the lens cover and a timer.

The top contains a shutter button, the right side has a button that opens up the back, useful for switching films and the bottom has a slot for batteries.

T H E N

It made me think of how people used to take photos. Back in the day when they didn’t have 40 megapixel cameras, 4K video options and SD cards.

Imagine yourself in that time. You’re about to go out, to the mountains, to take some stunning photos. When you arrive you walk up to a beautiful lake, and grab your camera. You grab a tripod and carefully position it to your liking. The next step is to look through your viewfinder, and take some pictures. You have to be careful, because you have only one spare film with you.

After some time, you have the pictures you wanted and you head back home. The next day you go to the shop, to print the photos. It turns out half of the photos are not good enough, they’re either underexposed or overexposed.

N O W

Now, imagine yourself in the present. You go to that same place, and follow the exact same steps. Except for the fact that you can take way more photos, in higher resolution. Maybe you even shoot a 4K video.

You don’t need to go to the shop, you simply go back home and stick your SD card in your PC. Some images aren’t quite perfect, but a little Photoshop can make them better.

It doesn’t have to be a camera, a phone can take some great photos nowadays. Services like Instagram make it easier to edit and share these photos. I use my Nexus 5 for my photos. A phone can’t beat a DSLR, but for the occasional picture now and then, it’s fine.

With editing apps all over the Play Store, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Instagram and VSCO Cam have some decent options for editing.

The filters and other editing options can make a pretty boring picture into something nice.

In the end, it takes just as much effort to get that one picture. You used to set up your camera, just as you need to do now. You had to drive to the shop to develop the pictures and you can still do that if you want, but you can also see them on your PC. From there you can edit your photos, which can be pretty time-consuming on itself. Anyway, now we’ll have to wait for 8K, 80 megapixel cameras and 1 TB sd cards, and I think it won’t take too long.

What do you think the next step in photography will be?

Leave an answer below, I’d like to read it!

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Introduction

I’ve tried a ton of editing apps (for Android). Some apps were really good, some were just plain bad. There were apps that had great functionality, but the design would be dissapointing. I saw the opposite as well, apps with great designs but the lack of options.

This is were VSCO Cam comes in.

Why it’s better than the competition

When you open the app, you see a splash screen, not one with colors all over it, it’s a black screen with a minimal VSCO logo in the middle.

The navigation bar contains features such as Grid, a social photo-sharing platform, Explore, where you can see Grid photos from others, Journal, which is some sort of blog, Library, where you can view your photos, Shop, where you can buy more filters, camera and settings.

So one reason to choose VSCO over all other apps is design. But what is a photo-editing app without editing options? Exactly, so let’s see what VSCO offers.

When you open a photo, you are greeted with a variety of filters. Tap a filter to select it and set the intensity. The app is similar to Instagram, with a lot of the same options, but the filters are completely different.

Once you’ve chosen the best filter for your photo you can proceed to the next step, refining the image. VSCO has options for Brightness, Contrast, Temperature, Shadow save, Skin tone etc. If needs some getting used to, due to the lack of typography, but once you know where everything’s at, it works like a charm.

It’s the combination of function and design that makes VSCO Cam the best photo editing app for me. I enjoy using it because it as a wide variety of options, while having a nice design as well.

The possibilities

If you aren’t convinced yet, here are some examples of before and after photos, of course edited with VSCO Cam.

On this photo I’ve applied the F2 filter, reduced the exposure a little bit and saved some highlights. I think the result is a cleaner looking image.

With this photo, I have increased the saturation, straightened the image and increased the exposure.

Do you know a better photo-editing app?

Leave an answer below, I’d like to read it!

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When Microsoft announced that it was bringing Cortana to Android and iOS, I really wanted to try it. I use Google Now often, and I wanted to try other personal assistants as well, without the need of buying a new phone.

A few days ago the first beta of Cortana was leaked, and I installed it on my Nexus 5. Here’s my review.

My thoughts.

I’ve found Google Now to be very useful. It gives me information the moment I need it, like when I have to leave for an appointment. I use Google now to remind me to do stuff as well, Cortana is capable of doing the same. The design is a mashup of Material Design and Metro style and I like it. It has a clean interface that is easy to understand.

Because it’s a Microsoft product, Cortana uses Bing search instead of Google search. I think this isn’t that bad, but I prefer Google search.

Cortana is capable of other things like giving you weather information, information about nearby locations, etc. She does most of the stuff Google Now does.

There are some things that Cortana doesn’t do (yet), like Hotword detection. You can’t say Hey Cortana, like you can in Windows 10 or the Ok Google option in Google Now. Also, Cortana is slower than Google Now, she needs several seconds to give an answer, whereas Google Now gives you an answer almost instantly.

Personality.

What Cortana does better than Google Now, though, is personality. Cortana has one. Her voice is more natural, her answers are quite funny sometimes, and you can ask her to tell you a joke or a story. That isn’t very useful, but I like it, it gives more of a Personal Assistant feeling than Google Now.

Better than Google Now?

No. Not yet. This is a beta after all, and for a beta I find it to be very stable, but it isn’t quite there yet. Things can be changed, like hotword detection and speed improvements. When the final version is out, I will review it and compare it with Google Now a little bit more.

I do like the idea of having Cortana on all of my devices, I have a Windows PC that I will update to Windows 10 when it’s released. I think Microsoft is on it’s way back, and this is a perfect way to do it.

Do you use a personal assistant app?

Leave an answer below, I’d like to read it!

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Cortana for Android BETA was originally published in AndroidPub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As a starting Medium-blogger, I didn’t know what to expect from it. Would I gain followers/views quickly, or would it take days for someone to find my articles? First, I uploaded a few articles. They weren’t viewed by people, at all.

I needed to share the articles, at least that’s what I thought I had to do. So I began to think on which platform I had to share it. When I would use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, I would only reach the people that follow me. That’s why I chose Google +. It turned out to be a pretty good choice.

The Advantage.

Google + has what’s called Communities. A community is a group of people with th same interests as you. You have all sorts of communities, Android ones, Art ones, Tech ones and so on.

This is where Google + really shines. When you write an article about Android, you want to share it with people with Android as interest. So, you simply look for a community about Android and share it there (Maybe even share it in more than one community.)

These are my Stats, guess on which day I shared my articles on Google + ;).

You might think Google + is my favorite social network. It isn’t. I still like Instagram a lot, and Twitter is my go-to social network for keeping up with news and updates from my favorite websites. But for discovering new things, like wallpapers and articles, Google + is the place to be.

Where do you share your articles?

Leave an answer below, I’d like to read it!

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Google’s newest version of their M release.

July 9th. I was reading my Twitter feed when I saw that Google had released the second version of their M preview. The next day I flashed the factory image. I’ve encountered some good things and some bad things, here’s my review.

The new stuff.

Stability is one of those good things. It feels more stable than version one, every animation, every tap, it’s smoother than before.

A redesigned app drawer is also present in the new release. It’s a vertical list of all your apps. When I first installed the m preview I was a bit confused, the app drawer was a big mess. They fixed it though, and it made me using the Google Now Launcher again.

A landscape mode has been added to the Google Now launcher. I don’t use my phone in landscape orientation that often, but it could be useful sometimes.

Battery life seems a bit better, I get about 4 hours of screen on time.

There are some small changes as well, like:

• You can now delete screenshots right after you’ve taken them.
• You have more options in the System UI tuner menu.
• Peeking notifications are now cards instead of sliding pieces of paper.
• You can select the “Now on Tap” option, it doesn’t work yet, though.
• You have a new storage and memory menu.

Here are some screenshots:

The “disappointing” stuff.

Bugs are still present in this preview, like the new landscape mode. When you use your phone in landscape mode, the navigation bar will be transparent, but when you swipe to the right to access Google Now, the search icon will be visible behind the navigation bar.

The latest version of snapchat doesn´t work, at least on my Nexus 5, it crashes right after launch. This was the case on Preview 1 as well.

The landscape bug:

More than ever, I would call the Android M Developer Preview a stable, daily driver. Everything is just as fast as/faster than Lollipop. The small bugs that are present aren’t bothering me that much, there are more positive things about Android M. I think Google has succeeded in bringing a nice user experience with this update. I can’t wait to see what Fall will bring us.

Any comments, questions or other things, leave them below!

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I’ve been thinking.

For some time now, I have been thinking. Thinking about whether I should use a notebook, or use Evernote, a note-taking service. I couldn’t choose. Did I want to have my notes in the cloud or in a notebook. If I’d choose Evernote, I’d have to miss the joy of writing in a notebook. But I am also that kind of person who’d forget that same notebook at home and come up with an idea and have nothing to jot it down in.

Why Evernote?

Evernote is a service that lets you take notes. It’s available for all major platforms. Take a note on one device and you’ll be able to open it on another. But why would I want to use Evernote over a notebook?

It’s always with me. At least, in my case. I carry my phone everywhere, and there is a big chance that you do that as well. When I get an idea, I just grab my phone, open the app and start typing. A notebook can be carried around as well, I know that, but I could forget it, and I never forget my phone.

It’s searchable. When I need to find a specific note, I only have to tap the search button, and type a keyword. In a matter of seconds notes with that keyword are showing up. Think of a notebook with a hundred pages and you have to find that specific note in there. Sure you can go over every page, but a search button would be quite handy.

I can store more than notes. Audio, photos, videos, websites, screenshots. Everything I can think of, I can store in Evernote. Sure, I can paste images in a real notebook. But I’d have to get scissors, and what if that image was on the internet?

Why a notebook?

The feeling. Notebooks have some kind of feeling with them, I can’t really describe it. If I write something down, it’s there. I can’t undo it. Maybe that’s one of the things I like, I have to think before I write something down, instead of just typing and deleting stuff.

Speed. Grabbing a pen and a notebook can be faster than Evernote. When my phone’s on the table, I’d have to unlock it, open the app, tap the screen to create a new note and start typing. With a notebook, I only have to grab it, open it, grab a pen and start writing.

Charging. Well, actually, the lack of charging. I don’t need to charge my notebook. My phone and tablet, however…

Balance.

I’ve compared the two and came to the conclusion that Evernote is the best option for me. I always carry my phone around, and it’s always charged.

However, that doesn’t mean that I throw away my notebooks. I use my notebooks for notes that I don’t want to have online, or when I have to draw stuff, which is a bit hard in Evernote.

Also, I use a notebook for planning my day. Every day I plan my day, write things I have to do that day and check them off. ( I use Todoist as well, but for bigger tasks.)

In the end, it comes down to personal preference.

How do you store your notes?

Leave an answer below, I’d love to read it.

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Recommended: Behind The Scenes.