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sábado, 16 de noviembre de 2013

5 Tips to Buy Used Smartphone Without Spending Big

If you are planning to buy a smartphone but have a small budget in your tight pocket, then you may want to pick up a used smartphone instead of a new one. However, buying a used smartphone can be a bit tricky if you don't have any experience whatsoever about this "field". You cannot just go up there to the smartphone store and make a random purchase without even checking the whole condition of that phone thoroughly. And if you got the wrong device, it might turn out to be a curse for you.
You might get a good looking used smartphone with a perfect case cover without any scratches on it, but you got no clue that maybe its internal hardware or its screen interface might not work anytime soon because there have been some critical damages inside of the phone caused by the previous owners. That's why, it's really important for you to avoid this kind of smartphone for your own good.
Talking about used smartphones, most people think that used smartphones mostly suck just for the sake that they are second hand smartphones. Well, the truth is, not all used smartphones that you find around the market are some damaged phones that don't work anymore. In fact, some of this type of smartphone still works just as great as new one. So it's irrelevant anymore to say that the quality of second hand smartphones will be that horrible.
Well, if you have made the final decision and are perfectly sure that this is the right time for you to buy your first ever used smartphone, then these are 15 useful tips that hopefully can be your first guidance every time you're planning to buy used smartphones in the future.
1. Run a Quick Scan on the Case Cover
The first thing to notice from a smartphone is definitely its case cover. Therefore, every time you meet some used smartphones on any store, make sure that you always run a thorough scan of the device. Try to see if the device has any physical defect or scratch around the body of that device. This must be done in order to know more about what that device has been through in the past when it was still used by the previous owners.
2. Make Sure that the Case Cover is Original
Used smartphones are usually plagued with the perception that their case covers will tell you the whole thing about their condition. Well, that is so wrong. You cannot judge the overall quality of used smartphones just by looking at how glossy its chassis or how flawless its screen. There is a huge possibility that the seller already covers them up with some new 3rd party case covers that obviously will make them look like new phones, right?
Therefore, as a smart customer, always equip yourself with the mindset that the sellers could always replace the original but damaged case cover with some new 3rd party chassis in order to make sales.
3. Make Sure that All the Physical Buttons Work Perfectly
Physical buttons always become the fragile element on any smartphone that tends to be damaged easily if they have been pressed so many times by the owners. That's why, when checking out any used smartphone on the store, always make sure that all the physical buttons, remember, all of them, can work perfectly, without any hiccup. The best thing to do that is by pressing each physical button over and over again. If you see that there is any button that gives a weak or delay response (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't) or even doesn't work at all when you press it, then the best
4. Always Check the Screen Sensitivity with the User Interface
The next thing to check from a used smartphone is the screen surface and the sensitivity of its User Interface. In this process, always run a thorough scan if there is any scratch around the screen and make sure that the touch screen still works perfectly. Test the touch response from each corner of the screen until the middle area. Do some mixed and random gestures on the screen over and over again, from:
  • sliding the UI to the left/right/up/bottom,
  • doing multi-touch,
  • zooming in/out on the photos or web browser,
  • deleting widgets/apps/elements
  • typing on the virtual on-screen QWERTY keyboard
  • etc
And if you have a plenty of time, try to play some apps that are already installed on the phone, even high performance games and test the sensitivity of the screen interface. Remember, this is really crucial because most of the previous owners might already drop it on the ground for several times in the past, so it will directly impact to the sensitivity of the screen.
5. Check if There is Any Glitch or Weird Colors Reproduction on the Screen
Besides its sensitivity, the other important thing to check on the screen is the display. Usually, used smartphones have been dropped for several times by the previous owners. Therefore, it's really important for you to see the whole area on the screen to check if there is any glitch or weird line on color reproduction around the screen. If you see any of these, then the screen is not fine.
6. Make Sure that the Battery is still Pretty Good
There is no doubt that battery is one of the most important elements in smartphones. Most of touch screen phones, even the new iPhone, have weak battery life (with the exception of Samsung or Motorola flagships of course). Therefore, it's really crucial to always run a test on this sector every time you want to buy used smartphones. To name of few, you can do things like playing high performance 3D games or watching movies/videos to make sure that the battery is still in pretty good condition, if not great. If the battery drains pretty quickly even when you just open the photos or listen some songs (which are not really energy consuming activities), then there is something wrong with the battery.
7. Check if the Camera's Shutter Key (if There is Any) Still Works
Some of smartphones usually have the physical shutter key for shooting photos/videos, even though it can be replaced with the on-screen virtual button. However, on some phones, there is a feature that lets you capture photos with shutter key even when the screen is still locked (e.g., Sony Xperia S, etc). That's why, although you may not use it very often, always do a quick test on this shutter key by pressing it over and over again just to make sure that this button still works perfectly.
8. Ensure that the Cellular and Wi-Fi Connectivity Still Work Great
Connectivity is the other important element on smartphone. Without this sector, your used phone will be pretty much useless for you. You cannot surf the web, download stuff or connect the apps to internet. Therefore, always run the test of this connectivity feature by browsing the web with the pre-installed browser or any other apps that require 3G/4G and Wi-Fi connectivity on that used smartphone.
9. Check the Bluetooth, NFC or Any Other Off-line Connectivity
These connectivity features can be really important in the future because you like it or not, you will need Bluetooth and will use it very often to share contents like photos/music/videos/files with the other devices, while NFC is also really important for the future's mobile payment. Therefore, never forget to always run the quick test on Bluetooth, NFC or other several offline connectivity features on the phone.
10. Test the Sound Quality of the Speaker
Making a phone call is the reason why cell phone is invented in the first place. Without it, your phone shouldn't be called as a phone. That's why, if this feature doesn't work properly, then your used phone will be useless in the future. So it's also really important to always run the test of this feature by making a random call on other devices and hear if there is something wrong with its sound quality, signal or its loudspeaker.
11. Try to Send Text Message
Usually, if the cellular connectivity still works great, then there is a huge chance that you can also send text messages with that phone. However, don't get carried away and sending one text message wouldn't hurt, right? This is for your own good.
12. Check the Sound Quality of the Phone, With and Without a Headset
Most of phone users usually don't open wide the loudspeaker when listening to music or watching videos. They usually use a headset for most of activities that have sounds in it, like games, movies, music or anything. However, in order to make sure that everything is fine, just spend some seconds or minutes to check if the loudspeaker still sounds great or not.
13. Make Sure that the Charging Port Can Still Charge the Phone
Charging port is also the other most important thing on smartphone. If the charging port doesn't work and cannot charge the device properly, this can be really dangerous for you in the future. These days, most smartphones' charging ports are not just assembled with glue, but on some smartphones, this part is integrated deeply with solder. So be sure to always check the charging port of the device by plugging in/out the phone with the charger and see if there is slightly delay response on battery bar on the screen when being charged. Your phone is pretty much useless if it cannot be charged.
14. Check the microSD card slot (if there is any) to see if it still works
Despite the increasing popularity of huge internal storage smartphones, most phone users still think that microSD card slot as a really vital element on smartphones. This type of users tends to choose of having a smartphone with a small internal storage but can be expanded further with external microSD card. Therefore, if you're planning to buy a microSD-card-enabled smartphone, it's recommended for you to check if the card slot still works great or not. You don't want to buy a phone with little storage that can't read external microSD card, do you?
15. Ask the Seller if the Phone is already Jail-broken or Rooted
Jailbroken iPhone or rooted Android phones might be a good thing or bad thing. If you are a tech savvy user, then it's a good thing because you can still do heck a lot of technical stuff with your phone even without the assistance of retailer. However, if you are non-tech-savvy buyer, you really need to ask the seller regarding this information. Especially for iPhone, which you may want to ask the seller to revert back your used iPhone to a non-jailbroken version, so you can still bring it safely to the official Apple store if there is anything wrong with your iPhone.
Well, those are 15 tips that you need to know before making a purchase of any used smartphone. Buying used smartphone might be a lot cheaper than getting the new one, but you as a customer still deserve to get the good quality product, even used one. So hopefully, these tips can be really useful for you every time you're planning to buy used smartphones in the future.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8088420

lunes, 4 de noviembre de 2013

Mobile Security Should Focus on Data, Not Devices

In previous posts I focused on cross-platform development using HTML5 to assure rich mobile user experience and holistic unified security analytics as a big data project. Between development and analysis, mobile security should focus on data not devices.
A recent report by McAfee Labs cited banking malware and "backdoor" Trojans, which steal data from a device without the user's knowledge, as the most common threats during the second quarter of 2013. There were over 17,000 new strains of malware targeting Android devices during the three-month period, up 35% year-on-year. This was the highest growth rate since 2010. Meanwhile, mobile cloud traffic growth continues unabated. Cisco Systems projects this traffic will account for over 70% of total mobile traffic globally by 2016, up from 45% in 2011.
Companies in every sector are experiencing the explosion in mobile, social and cloud adoption. The conundrum for IT departments is that employees need seamless and remote access to enterprise information to enhance productivity and speed decision-making while resources, applications and data need to be safeguarded.
Employees are increasingly downloading third-party apps and accessing cloud services over the corporate network. In addition, an array of new cloud-based mobile software offerings have cropped up aimed at non-technical users. These solutions provide easy-to-use tools that let users build and manage their own apps in the cloud without IT involvement. By circumventing IT, users can introduce myriad problems into the enterprise - from security breaches to unmanaged data flowing into and out of the organization, compromising GRC (governance, regulatory, compliance) mandates. CIOs are at risk of losing mobile application and content controls to business users.
Yet at the same time, more companies are implementing BYOD (bring your own device) programs. This puts pressure on CIOs to monitor, manage and govern the explosion of devices running on different operating systems with multiple versions and specially developed mobile apps. BYOD brings its own risks, including security, data leakage and privacy concerns. The same tablet accessing the corporate network today may have been infected with malware as it accessed a website from an airport terminal yesterday. Or, while accessing corporate data from the road, the same user may have moved enterprise files to a cloud storage service such as iCloud or Dropbox.
Many firms have deployed Mobile Device Management (MDM). However, MDM is useful for company-owned devices only because employees are reluctant to allow their devices to be managed by their employer's MDM solution. Moreover, as easy as it is to jailbreak devices, relying solely on device-level controls is fruitless.
Secure apps and data first
A successful enterprise mobility strategy places applications first, mapping their mission to the variety of use cases in the field. But mobile apps require greater management, control and security. Unlike with a browser, where the enterprise's application logic and data are stored in the data center, with mobile apps this intelligence is stored by the app on the device itself. Regardless of whether an organization's approach to mobility is company-issued devices or BYOD, the focus should be more on isolating and securing enterprise apps and data and less on locking down devices.
The objective is to manage mobile apps at a granular level to address deployment, security, analytics, data synchronization, storage, version control, and the ability to remotely debug a problem on a mobile device, or wipe the enterprise's data clean if a device is lost or stolen or if the employee leaves the company.
To mitigate mobile security risks, enterprises should have their mobile traffic secured, not only to detect and block malicious transactions but also to manage sensitive corporate data. First, IT needs to have visibility into the mobile traffic traversing the enterprise network, especially as it pertains to data residing in or moving between users and corporate resources. Once visibility is established, IT must secure and control potentially malicious traffic. This includes detecting and blocking advanced threats through the mobile browsers, as well as application-specific threats such as malware to prevent sensitive data leaks.
These steps can be achieved through technologies most organizations have already deployed. Specifically, application delivery controllers (ADCs) and application performance monitoring (APM) software for end-to-end visibility, and secure web gateways (SWGs) with built-in data leak prevention (DLP), and next-generation security information and event management (SIEM) to detect and block malicious traffic. These can be deployed physically or virtually on-premise or as cloud-based solutions.
Mobile Application Management for better security and control
Complementing these technologies is Mobile Application Management (MAM), which provides for the security of corporate data alone - independent of the personal settings and apps on the device. MAM solutions can be used to provision and control access to both internally-developed and approved third-party mobile apps.
With the prevalence of cross-platform development, apps are no longer created using a container model, where functionality is configured up front, leaving no room to address security or data management issues. Today, mobile apps are "wrapped", meaning that additional functionality is layered over the app's native capabilities as needed.
IT defines a set of business apps for users to access through the corporate app store via their personal device. The package includes an encrypted data file in which these approved apps reside, user authentication, selective wipe of locally-cached business data from the device and app-level VPN capabilities to provide comprehensive protection for different users and contexts. If a device is used for business, company policy should allow app downloads from a corporate app store only, instead of from public cloud app stores like iTunes or Google Play (formerly Android Market). This should be complemented by cloud access gateways that ensure transparent encryption of enterprise data stored in the cloud via sanctioned SaaS apps.
MAM provides IT with the insights and analysis to determine which apps are being downloaded, which employee groups are installing and using apps, how the apps are being used, and what devices employees have all without additional coding.
Conclusion
There is no silver bullet and organizations will need to use a combination of solutions to address enterprise mobile security. IT should collaborate with functional and business unit heads to define policies, procedures and processes. This encompasses everything from who is eligible, how users will be authenticated, what policy and network access applies to them, whether the company will issue devices or support BYOD, which devices and operating systems will be supported, who is responsible for managing wireless costs and network operators and what the consequences of non-compliance are. Painstaking as this may be, it will result in lower costs and higher productivity while minimizing security and GRC risks.
Gabriel Lowy is founder of Tech-Tonics, a research and advisory firm that bridges technology companies' vision, strategy, portfolio and markets with customers and investors to drive growth and value for all stakeholders. As a leading technology analyst for 15 years, Gabe pioneered the research on Wall Street for major trends, including application delivery networking, cloud computing, user experience assurance and big data analytics. Services include technical writing, custom research reports and strategies for market-building and financing. We resolve C-level challenges intersecting strategy, technology and finance. Contact: gabriellowy@tech-tonics.org or @gabriellowy1.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8050312