New Paragon Android app lets you easily connect your phone or tablet to Windows and Mac drives

Although there are many easy and convenient ways to hook up a PC to an Android-based smartphone and/or tablet these days, there still isn’t a cohesive and accessible solution around for connecting both Mac and Windows formatted drives to mobile devices.
The compatibility issues are the main reason why you’ll have a very tough job in transferring files between such devices – media used on an Android device needs to be formatted as a FAT32 drive, while Windows and Mac drives are NTFS and HFS+ formatted.
Sure, you can e-mail yourself files, copy them from a laptop to a phone or tablet with the help of an SD card, but why go through such inconvenient procedures when you can do everything straightforward and extremely quickly? Well, you can’t, you might answer, but that’s because you haven’t met Paragon’s new Android app, available as a free download in Google Play.
The Paragon NTFS & HFS+ app (I know, not the most inspired name), is a very easy to use software that allows you to attach to your Android-powered device any NTFS or HFS+ flash drives or hard disk drives and handle them as if they were FAT32-formatted in the first place.
You can copy files from both Windows and Mac drives without the need to change any settings, reformat or make efforts of any kind, so convenience and ease of use are the key words here. Then again, there is a catch for the app, at least for the time being.

In fact, there are two issues you might encounter with Paragon NTFS & HFS+. First off, the app is still in beta, so you might deal with bugs or glitches here and there. That’s not much of an inconvenience, though, especially considering that the developers have promised they will listen to user feedback very carefully and act accordingly.
What could be a major annoyance, however, is making the app work on your specific phone or tablet, as there are some pretty special conditions to be fulfilled. Although it will technically work on any gadget running Android 2.3 or higher, you need to root your device before making use of the app and use an adapter to connect the drives.
Moreover, your phone or tablet has to support USB storage, and officially there aren’t many such devices, especially among the ones released more than a year ago. Then again, there are a bunch of custom ROMs around that take care of that inconvenience for some particular gadgets, so the more industrious Android users will probably have no problem in making Paragon’s new app work.
Enjoy and don’t forget to get back to us with your opinions on the app if you decide to take it for a spin.

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Evernote for Android 4.1 comes with improved tablet interface and specific Nexus 7 support

The Evernote note-taking app for Android has been extremely popular for more than just a while, but the updates and tweaks haven’t come as frequently as they have on iOS. However, the trend seems to be changing and we’re excited to announce the second major Evernote update in just two months.
After pushing the app to version 4.0 back in May, developers have now released Evernote 4.1. That means we’re still a bit behind iOS users, who’ve been enjoying version 4.2.2 for a while, but the gap is closing in fast.

While it does come with a slightly more modest changelog than the update to 4.0 from May, the most recent Evernote tweak is a significant one and will make a huge difference especially for Android tablet users. They will surely enjoy the redesigned interface, the “sleek new home screen” designed to improve the user experience on larger screens, and the introduction of swipe interactions that are promised “to dramatically improve navigation through the app”.Moreover, there are a few strictly cosmetic updates too, making the “Note List” look much better than before.

Another change specifically targeted to tablet users is the introduction of a “Tablet List View”, which is a compact list showing all the basic information about a note. I know, it doesn’t sound like a “critical” update, but it will most likely improve Evernote’s productivity and ease of use even further.

As you might already suspect, these tablet-oriented updates and tweaks are not coincidentally coming right as we all eagerly await our Nexus 7 orders to be fulfilled. In fact, the app’s developers specifically mention that Evernote 4.1 will work “beautifully” on Google’s new 7-incher.

Android smartphone users haven’t been left out of the mix either, and Evernote 4.1 has brought a series of updates for “all Android users”. These are pretty minor and not very numerous, but the additional levels introduced to bulleted and numbered lists are a very nice touch.
You can try out the new Evernote app for Android for free on Google Play, and please don’t forget to drop us a comment below and let us know what you think of the update.

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Nexus 7, a wolf in sheep’s clothing for other Android tablet makers?

The Google Nexus 7 is right now one of the most popular 7-inch tablets out there, and considering it’s a Nexus-branded device ready to offer buyers a pure Android experience, it will probably become one of the best sold tablets of the year.

Google is yet to mention sales numbers for the device that started shipping last week and which is currently sold out with certain third-party retailers, but Digitimes reports that according to “industry sources” the Search giant may ship as many as 2.5-3 million units this year.
That may not seem like an impressive number, as the tablet is only available in a limited number of markets right now, but will Google hurt its partners when it comes to overall tablet sales and profits? The Nexus 7 doesn’t, and can’t, target the iPad – Apple is expected to sell tens of millions of iPads each quarter – but instead it’s meant to compete against the Kindle Fire, a product Google can’t afford to ignore.
Amazon’s tablet became popular with the crowds because it’s an affordable device, ready to offer a good enough experience for that price, not to mention access to the company’s digital content stores.

 Google has adopted the same model, selling the device at cost, hoping to prevent users from jumping ship to Amazon and have them immersed in an improved Google Play environment instead. But while Google can sell the Nexus 7 without making any profits because users would then spend more money in its digital stores, other Android makers won’t be able to enjoy the same perks.

And they won’t be able to come up with similarly priced devices ready to offer a similar experience. Google did say that’s plenty of room left for innovation in the tablet environment, implying that its product will not hurt tablet sales from its Android partners, but the fact is that each Nexus 7 buyer is a customer that may have chosen an Android tablet from a different OEM. At the same time, that customer may have chosen the iPad too, so having him or her purchase a Nexus 7 instead is a better alternative for Google.

But, and I’ll say this again, Apple may sell as many as 30 million iPads by the end of the year (that’s a guesstimate from my part), that’s not counting what it has already sold in the first two quarters. And Apple did not cut the price of its tablets once the Nexus 7 launched. And Apple also has its digital stores in place that can be accessed almost in full in more markets that Google Play is available in, which means Apple too can make plenty of money off of its digital offerings.

Meanwhile, other Android device makers will have to suck it up, and fight even harder for a piece of the (Android) tablet ecosystem. The same Digitimes reports that various OEMs including Samsung, Asus and Acer, have started to cut the prices of their tablet offerings in order to better adapt to the new competition from Google’s tablet:

Samsung, which enjoys a high level of brand recognition, cut slightly the prices of its tablets in order to cope with increasing competition and to pave the way for the launch of its own new models.
But for Acer and Asustek Computer, they seem to have adopted the same strategy of lowering the prices of their 10.1-inch models to the levels close to those quoted for 7-inch models by Google or other rivals in order to attract consumers.

So is the Nexus 7 a wolf in sheep’s clothing for the Android tablet ecosystem? We’ll be able to better asses that in the following months when we’ll find out more details about tablet sales from the most important players in the business.

Finally, there’s also one more negative effect of the Nexus 7 that we can’t overlook – the iPad mini. Apple was rumored since last year to be working on a 7.85-inch iOS tablet, but the company didn’t make it public. Then the Kindle Fire appeared and the Google Nexus 7 rolled out seven months later revealing that there’s a certain share of the population that’s interested in purchasing cheaper tablets – but not the very cheapest, as there are various cheap Android tablets from unrecognized brands that don’t enjoy the popularity of the Kindle Fire or Nexus 7. And that could be a good enough reason for Apple to launch its smaller iPad this fall/winter. Android tablet makers will then have to fight against the smaller tablet as well.
What tablet are you buying this year?


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