Surveillance and Monitoring Apps for Smartphone Users

For smartphone users, playing sophisticated games of espionage may be easier than ever and this is due to the ever increasing number of surveillance apps. Most of the times, these apps are programs that are downloaded and installed on smart phones, iPhones, Android phones and so on. You then need an online account to access the information being captured by the app on the smartphone.

Few of the leading surveillance apps:

Most of these apps are capable of a comprehensive monitoring of the smartphone user’s phone usage. This includes emails, text messages, calls and even location. Most of them are popularly used by parents who want to keep track of their children and protect them. They are also used by employers who want to ensure there is no misuse of the phone privileges being accorded to employees. None of these apps are available on Google Play store.

• StealthGenie–this app can be downloaded and installed on the smartphone and left to run in the background. It will help you track location of the smartphone, listen in to the calls being made and received on the phone and even access the contacts list on the smartphone. It will cost around 25$ for 3 months which is the cheapest of the lot.
• Mobile Spy– a product from Retina- X Studios, this app can be installed directly on the phone and it keeps running invisibly in the background. The data thus recorded can be accessed online with the Mobile Spy account. This app also gives you the location of the phone. You can also exert remote control over the phone. The best part about this app is the fact that it will upload all data irrespective of the fact that the user may have deleted all logs. It costs around 50$ for 3 months license.
• Mobistealth – this app will help monitor calls, video logging and change in SIM card. There is also the very useful feature of phone wipe which will enable you to delete and wipe out all data on the phone should it be lost or stolen. The remote control feature of the phone can also allow the microphone to be activated and conversations can then be heard other locations as well. Unlike others a demo of this app can downloaded by signing up on the website.
• From the house of SPYERA comes the Spyera software that can be downloaded on to iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones. It allows you to intercept live calls, read the text messages of the user and read email as well. There is also the fact that there is total protection of privacy as far as activity logs are concerned. Thus only authorized people can access and use the data generated by the software. The app is not available in google play store though can be bought directly but will make a hole in your pocket the size of an asteroid. We won’t even mention the price.
• SpyBubble is the easy option of tracking the cell phone’s use and promises easy usage, URL usage tracking and photo tracking as well. This app costs around 40 bucks and too comes with a demo.
• mSpy is another specialized software that can be installed easily and enables spy calls, cell identity tracking and monitoring of tasks and web accounts too. The website offers an online demo and app cost 100 bucks for 3 month license.

Most of these companies offer monthly subscriptions. You can even opt for a 3 or 6 month subscription and annual packages too.

About the Author:
Cynthia loves to blog on latest mobile technologies. To know about her updates please click here.

Titanium Backup Pro 4.8.4.1 In-Depth Guide and Review

Many users of Titanium Backup will agree; It is the one of the best apps for Android.
Why though? In this review we’ll tell you what Titanium can do, why you need this app and how to use all of it’s features.

When you first launch Titanium, you will be greeted by the ‘Overview’ screen. This tells you about Titanium Backup, various library files and details about your Internal and External memory.

By pressing ‘Backup and Restore’ on the toolbar, it shows a list of installed applications stored on your Internal and External Memory, as well as your system partitions. By pressing ‘Ordered by app name’, you can sort your apps in various ways, including when they were last backed up or installed, their size or the number of backups

By pressing on the button marked ‘Click to edit filters’, you are welcomed by this screen. This screen allows you to filter and search through your apps, as well as labeling them so they can be processed individually.

By tapping on an application, it will bring up a small window telling you what backups your application has and also has buttons to Backup, Wipe Data, Uninstall and Freeze.

When you restore an app, Titanium will ask you if you want to restore the Data Only (If the app is installed already), App Only or App+Data.

Titanium also allows you to add notes to individual backups. You can also protect backups, so they don’t get overwritten by newer backups.

By pressing your device’s Menu button,you have a number of options.

The most used option is Batch. This allows you to perform tasks in bulk, such as Backup, Restore, as well as other advanced tasks.

Another handy tool are the Market Tools. These allow you to fix issues with the Play Store, such as apps that won’t update or fixing market links to apps.

In the ‘More’ menu, you can use lots of awesome advanced features. The 4 most handy are ‘Send Data’ (Where you can export a list of your apps), ‘Overview of app storage use’ (Where you can see visually what apps take up the most space, ‘Create “update.zip”‘ (Where you can create a CWM-flashable package with Titanium inside it) and ‘Extract from Nandroid backup’ (Where you can extract apps from your CWM backups).

With all the features Titanium offers, the 6 dollar price tag makes it justifiable, as it could just save your life. This is the best root app ever! Titainium is highly recommended. The support from the developer is great, and also a wiki is available so that you can find answers to most of your questions.

Titanium Backup is free on Google Play, and the Pro version is available for 5.99USD on Google Play, Paypal or Moneybookers.

The latest Indian Firmware: Gingerbread 2.3.6 DDKQ8 [Review with Screenshots & Download link]

Finally, firmware with Android 2.3.6 has been launched in India with version number DDKQ8

There are quite a lot changes introduced by Samsung in this version (some mainly because of Apple’s patent fight with Samsung on Slide to unlock lock screen and Overscroll bounce…! Damn you Apple!)

So before we move to the review of this ROM, here is how to get it on your phone:

Method 1: Update using Samsung Kies
Method 2: For flashing with Odin. here is the link to the firmware: Hotfile.com: One click file hosting: S5830DDKQ8_S5830ODDKQ7_INU.zip (Pass (if any): sampro.pl)
Then just follow the flashing with ODIN tutorial.

Note: Clear Cache Partition from recovery menu after update! Otherwise, you might have problems!

How to go to recovery menu?
Turn off your phone. Then, Power On it by holding Power+Home button at the same time. You will reach the recovery menu. Navigate with the Volume Rocker and Select using Home button.

1. Lock Screen

The Unlock method has changed. When you keep your finger on the screen, a lock like symbol will appear! You have to slide your finger over the screen to unlock!

A big advantage is that the lock screen also displays your unread text message count and you can directly access the messages by sliding on top of the red circle which has a message symbol on top! It even supports missed call count and you can access your missed calls directly! Cool, huh?

Unfortunately, you don’t have the old slide to unlock method but you can use an app like widgetlocker to go back to old slider type lockscreen.

2) Touchwiz

Not much has changed…! The call button icon and Memo icon has changed somewhat. And the home screen is loopable now. In the app drawer, you can navigate to any page by simply tapping at its screen number on the top, and it will go to that page.

Samsung launches the dual-SIM Galaxy Ace Duos in India [Comparison]

Samsung has launched the dual-SIM brother of its popular smartphone Samsung Galaxy Ace, dubbed as Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos (I589). It had previously announced the device with Galaxy Y Duos & Galaxy Y Pro Duos in late December, now it is available. The Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos is now available from online retailer Letsbuy at Rs. 13,490 and from Flipkart for Rs. 13,899. The device is available in 2 colors- Black & Metallic Grey.

As far as the features are concerned, below are the highlighted features-

Poweramp v2.0 beta In-Depth Review : Verdict

Sold? Wait, there’s more!!

These features didn’t make it to beta but will be in final 2.0 release:

• 4×1, 4×2, 2×2 home screen widgets
• couple of extra skins (external apk/jars)
• widget pack compatibility
• Better skins for tablets.
• Help update (as if the current help was anything short of awesome)
• Skin SDK : The most important feature that will open a vista of customization opportunities.
• sSettings backup to sd card/restore ( Thank God!!)

Poweramp v2.0 beta In-Depth Review : Lock Screen & Settings

Now moving on to the lock screen. In words of a user at the Poweramp forum, ‘The new lock screen is epic’ & we have to agree. It is fluid with swipe to next/prev support. Shuffle/Repeat are also accessible. You can hide the Notification bar if you like.

Poweramp v2.0 beta In-Depth Review

Poweramp, if you don’t already know, is a very popular Music Player for Android. There are some other music players which come par with Poweramp in terms of features (like PlayerPro) while there are some which beat it in terms of UI (like Ubermusic).
But come v2.0, this is about to change.

Download PowerAMP v2.0-build-443-beta-3

In today’s in depth review, we have a look at Poweramp v2.0 beta. And frankly speaking, we ran out of ran out of superlatives before reaching the end of this review.

So let’s start right from the Now Playing screen.

Now playing Screen:

Aakash Tablet: Hands On, Review, Pics, Insights

There has been much fanfare and buzz surrounding the launch of Aakash Tablet. Luckily author of Hungry N Foolish managed to get hands on with the device.

Hardware:

First glance: Impressive. The device is black in colour on all sides. Actually, black is the only colour the device is going to be maufactured in. There are absolutely no buttons anywhere on the front side except for a thin elongated one at the left end. This single button is used for multiple purposes such as sleep mode deactivation and navigating back to desktop. If you hold it up for a few seconds it’ll display options of switching to: previous folder, recent places you visited or the desktop.

The overall look is aesthetically clean and pleasing to the eye. The back side which as of now is covered with stickers of Aakash and Datawind maufacturers, has a speaker output and a tiny reset button hole. The screen is protected by a dual layer of plastic, possibly for reducing the gloss.