Three major Issues for Pakistani Youth

Pakistan is among few privileged states having important geographical location, prevalence of all four weathers, tons of mineral resources, and young & energetic youth. All these ingredients are enough to make a successful country, however youth resource is the most essential one.

It is because youth have the ability, commitment and energy to turn the unfavorable circumstances into the opportunity and then grab that opportunity to achieve the desired results for their country.

Youth population of Pakistan is around 60% of the total population, it means out of every five persons three Pakistanis are youth. That’s really great for the country. However that is not the full picture, instead of having great proportion of young population country is unable to get any benefit from it.

Currently Pakistani youth is facing some serious issues, and if these issues are not properly addressed then such a valuable resource will become a burden for the country instead of having Allah’s blessing.

Following are the youth issues which need to be addressed only then our youth will able to add their share to the country’s growth.

Education:

The first and foremost problem for Pakistani youth is the prevalent education system of the country. Currently there is no single education standard. There are multiple education standards; one operating as government institutes, another English medium, facilitating the children of upper class families and yet another in shape of madrasas.

If we closely analyze all three education systems so no single system provides all necessary things essential for the development of student. On one side government institutes lack required educational advancements that have took placed in the recent years.

On the other hand English medium institutes having the full fledged facility of modern day sciences promotes western culture and leads secularism which is very dangerous for an Islamic states. Again there are some problems with religious madrasas as they fully neglect the daily sciences equally important for the development of any nation.

So when youth living in one country will come out from three different education systems so they will have different abilities, different apprehension levels and different life approaches. Therefore it is quite essential for the policy makers to give a single education system for the country meeting all the essential criteria so that our youth can get out of the confusion of selecting education system for themselves; and differences in their thoughts and opinions could be minimized.

Opportunities:

The talent of Pakistani youth has been crushed for many years but time is proving that Pakistani youth is the most talented youth worlds have ever seen. Youth around the western world gets grooming from the developed organizations however Pakistani youth is only youth that is making records in the field of technology, computer science and sports without the availability of properly structured learning institutes.

The youth that is making achievements at national and international levels have done so because they got the opportunity. From getting job opportunity to learn the technical skills and from getting admission in the medical college to any other thing; talented youth of the country is facing very tough time.

The current loyalty based (Talent crushing) system working inside each department of the state is compelling our youth to focus on illegal ways instead of further polishing their skills and abilities.

Because the old system has taught them that they will get good job only if they have strong connections with any minister instead of having good skills. If our country is unable to give fair opportunities to the youth then their talent will keep on wasting that will prove disastrous for the whole country.

Entertainment:

Entertainment is an important activity to keep oneself amused for the little time period. Entertainment is important for every person and especially for the youth. However it is equally important to differentiate entertainment from any immodest and immoral practices.

My meaning of entertainment is totally opposite to how it is define in the western societies. For me entertainment means Sports, games, debates that amuse oneself in the productive way.

Unfortunately while living in Pakistan you has no choice to get entertained yourself instead of staying at home watching tv or surfing internet. You don’t have any structured sports grounds, any national or local festivals, hardly any provincial level debates, very few amusement parks and gaming lounges. In this situation youth is susceptible to adopt negative ways of getting entertained their selves.

Therefore it is quite essential to offer youth with required educational system and opportunities along with way of positive entertainment so that youth can work hard and add their share in the growth of their beloved Pakistan.

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How to manage Team work Effectively

In today’s world where organizations have been globally expanded it has become impossible to compete if you are unable to manage team work effectively. In the start of industrialism the importance of team work was recognized when large companies integrated their resources to expand the industrial output. However with the development and wide acceptability of Information technology importance of team work has reached sky. The rule of the game is simple today. If you want success so you have to effectively manage team otherwise you will be perished.

How to Effectively Manage Team work

1. Clarity of Team Objective

It is important for the success of team work that team management is clear from the start of the work. It is also important that team objective is reminded to the team members from time to time. It is also important to develop written statement of team objectives. Multinational companies tend to develop their Mission and vision statements which represent organization as a team.

It is also important for teams working in any large or small organization to develop their statement of Objective in the written form. The written statement clearly defines the objective and works as problem resolver in case any issue arises.

2. Size of team

According to management experts size of team should be between 5-9 members. Small teams might work in case of small issues however if you create 3 members team for extensible work then it gonna fail. Likewise having team of 20-25 members will also hurt the team efficiency because of many issues. Such as: 1. Time to develop consensus between team members 2. Probability of developing grouping in case of disagreement between members 3. Inability to understand viewpoint of other members etc. If your work is extensible to allocate it to 9 members then best practice is to make sub teams within team.

3. Who should be Team Leader & Criteria of Members

Selection of Team leader and group members is the half way to success. Therefore the selection criteria should be based on merit. Team leader should be motivated, well versed about the issues which his team going to address and should be unbiased.

Criteria for members should also be strict. Members should be

1. Selected on merit

2. Should have command over different aspects of the situation

3. Should work for the success for team instead for their personal goals

4. Respect each other

5. Should have strong relationship between themselves that will develop cohesiveness and result in team efficiency.

4. Feedback

Feedback is essential for the effective working of any team. It is the responsibility of the team leader to ask the view of individual members about the work of other members and the work of overall team. This way leader will be able to make effective judgments about the performance and the level of dedication of each member. However leader should ensure that biasness is cut out from the feedback and it is used for the performance level of the team.

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Los Angeles could become the largest U.S. city to offer free Wi-Fi

(Credit: Wikimedia)

Will Los Angeles become the country’s biggest city to boast free, city-wide Wi-Fi? Such a plan may be in the works, based on recent discussions at a city hall meeting last week.

Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who heads up the committee on technology and innovation, has asked the city’s Information Technology Agency to research how to set up a program as a way to help more Angelenos connect with the digital economy.

“We live in a world where success is increasingly tied to the ability to access information,” Southern California Public Radio reported him saying at the end of July. “Providing universal access to the Internet is a natural and necessary extension of these efforts.”

But municipal Wi-Fi programs can be hard for cities to pull off — penetrating so many buildings requires a serious investment in hardware and antennae. Also, free Wi-Fi can be surprisingly controversial, CNET senior editor Dan Ackerman told SCPR, largely because telecommunications companies see it as a threat to their business and have lobbied against it for years.

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Some Suggestions for Improving Education System in Pakistan

“Education is a matter of life and death for Pakistan. The world is progressing so rapidly that without requisite advance in education, not only shall we lag behind others but may be wiped out altogether.”

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah

It is clear in this Era of Technology and progress that Education plays vital role in progress and development of a country and nation. As pakistan is an under developed country, Education is Extremely important for its Children and youngsters as well.

We are watching that standard of Education system in pakistan is worst of its kind and if it will not change, Economy of Pakistan will go down daily and Pakistan cannot become Fully developed country until the System and structure of Education is improved or totally changed.

Today I am here with some suggestions for the Improvement in the current Education of Pakistan for a Better future because according to the Article of 25-A of constitution of Pakistan:

The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such a manner as may be determined by law

But as we see today in pakistan that the condition of schools and colleges of Govt. sector is worst as compared to Private schools and colleges, This is mainly due to the syllabus and the method of teaching in both Govt. and Private sector.

We ourselves have created double standards for education like different education levels for different classes of people (i.e: middle class, lower class and upper class people), because lower class people could not afford such costly fees of private sectors.

Let me highlight some main points for improvement of Education system in Pakistan:

Career Counseling:

Today biggest problem in pakistan is that student doesn’t know what to do next in his life so he goes to undirected path and fails in life. There should be people for career counseling of children so that they could get to know that what they have to do in future.

These people should be appointed in both Govt. and private sectors. Parents should also understand what a child wants to do in life and they should not impose their decisions on children.

Lets suppose sometimes a child wants to be a doctor but parents try to impose that he should must become an engineer or sometimes Child wants to become an Engineer but parents impose that he should become Doctor.

In such cases child loses his heart and stops hard work and passion in his studies and Try to start Cramming and at the end of the day he becomes a failed person.

Change the system:

Govt. have to take specific steps to end cramming system in education from Govt. as well as Private sector and implement system of practical work, so that every student can gain more knowledge by doing research on that specific topic or subject, unlike “Ratta”(cramming) system where student have to memorize everything for short period of time which Teacher gives him/her.

Equality and Quality in Syllabus:

We are facing many problems in our Educational system due to different courses in different boards and Provinces. At first Govt. should implement same course and syllabus in all provinces and Boards to make sure that everyone gets same education.

Secondly Govt should order Private as well as govt. schools and colleges to implement one syllabus in classes and there should be no double standards like implementing Oxford’s books in private sectors and Implementing Text Board’s books in Govt. sectors.

Training for Teachers:

Govt. should implement higher standards for choosing Teachers (i.e: at least M. Phil teachers) to make sure that they are teaching according to some standards.

At least one Teachers Training session should be held in every six months where professionals should teach some better ways to teachers for teaching. In this way we can get more concentration on improvement of teaching methods.

In The End:

These are some of the major issues of the current education system of Pakistan, Lets hope for the better future of Education system in Pakistan.

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How to Upgrade Adsense Hosted Account to Normal Account?

 What is Adsense Hosted Account?

The account that you got approved from their hosted sites like YouTube, Blogspot or Hubpages.That mean if you got Adsense using the Adsense hosted sites like youtube, blogspot or hubpages. You can’t use this Adsense account on any other domain name/site.

Let me tell you the difference between Adsense hosted account and normal account

• Adsense Hosted account: You can show Adsense ads using this account only on Youtube, BlogSpot, Hubpages (Sites which let you apply for Adsense and use ad codes on their domain)
• Normal Account: You can use this account on any Sites/Domain owned by you.
• 
  

This is the one and only difference between the normal Adsense account and the AdSense hosted account. You’ve to remove the label Adsense hosted account in order to show ads on any other site/domain. Here is how to do that. You can do so by filling a form , Google will manually review your application and website. They’ll upgrade your Adsense account to normal.

Few things to remember:

To upgrade Adsense hosted account to normal account. You need a quality website. Google is not going to approve any spammy blog or the one with poor content.

Here are some quick tips you must follow before requesting Google to upgrade your Adsense hosted account to normal account.

• Add important pages in your blog like: About us,  Privacy Policy, Contact Us
• You must be 18+. So Make sure to use the payee name same as on your bank account
• Apply using a top level domain like .com , .net, .org
• Write quality content and optimize it for search engines
• Make your website fast loading.

Here is how to remove Adsense Hosted Account label

• Sign in to your AdSense account.
• On the Home tab, visit the Account settings page.
• In the “Access and authorization” section, next to “Only host sites are allowed to show ads for your account,” click edit.

• On the “Show ads on other websites” page that appears, enter the URL of the site where you plan to show ads.
• Click Submit.

Now after submitting the application, you’ve to add the adsense code in the blog you submitted in above step.

Here is how to do.

Sign in to your account. Visit the My ads tab.

From the sidebar, choose  ”Content.”

1. 
   

Click +New ad unit.
In the next step Name and customize your ad unit.
View details about the settings.
Click Save and get code.

Now place that code in your blog that you submitted in the step mentioned above.

Google will manually review your application. It can take few days to week.

You’ll get email about approval or disapproval.  Even if your Application is rejected, don’t worry. You will be able to use Adsense on Hosted sites like Blogspot or Youtube.

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Enblink turns Google TV into a Home Automation Hub

Now this is cool: A small dongle turns any Google TV device into a Z-Wave compatible home automation and security hub.

Talk about teaching an old dog new tricks: Dutch hardware startup Enblink has built a simple dongle that turns any regular Google TV unit into a home automation and security hub.

The Enblink USB dongle, which will go on sale in September, will make it possible for users to control the lighting, check their security system or access IP cameras straight from their TV. Enblink also comes with mobile apps that make it possible to control the functionality of these devices from anywhere.

The dongle itself sells for $85, and Enblink is also selling starter packs that come with lighting control and security sensors. However, users don’t actually need to buy their sensors and controllers from the company. Enblink uses the Z-Wave networking standard, which means it’s compatible with a couple hundred third-party sensors and controllers.

So why did Enblink choose Google TV, even though other smart TV platforms are arguably a lot more popular? One word: Android. The system is based on Google’s mobile operating system, which also is the core of Google TV.

One thing that’s interesting about this product is that Google had very similar plans when it debuted its Android @home initiative a little more than two years ago. At the time, the company said that it was going to partner with third parties to sell its own Android-based networked light bulbs and home automation controllers. However, these kinds of devices have yet to materialize, and Google has kept mum on its plans for Android @home.

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Facebook will pay $15 per user after judge approves final $20M ad settlement

Did you reply to that class action notice from Facebook? If so, you get $15 as a result of a “sponsored stories” lawsuit that shone light on the way lawyers and activists represent privacy concerns.

Facebook will pay out $9 million to approximately 614,000 users as part of a $20 million legal settlement that is intended to compensate users for the social network’s decision to display their pictures in “sponsored stories” ads without permission.

In an order filed Monday in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg gave the final thumbs up to a revised deal that will raise individual payouts to $15 each — a total that is higher than the $10 maximum proposed under an earlier version of the settlement. The payouts will only go to those who responded to a notice earlier this year (it’s too late for everyone else).

The payouts increased after fewer people than anticipated responded to the class action notices sent out by Facebook. Under the final deal, the $11 million left over after the $15 subscriber payouts will go to lawyers, fees and a dozen non-profit groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Monday’s decision is the final step in a long-running court case that not only shone light on Facebook’s advertising practices, but also raised a debate over the role of lawyers and activists groups in addressing alleged privacy violations by companies like Google, Apple and Facebook. On previous occasions, courts approved multimillion dollar settlements in which all of the money went to lawyers and consumers groups; this time, Judge Seeborg rejected the first version of the settlement, saying the proposed payments — and the lawyer awards — were “plucked out of thin air.”

Approximately 7,000 Facebook users opted out of the settlement altogether, meaning they are free to bring lawsuits of their own against the social network. Their chance of cashing in would appear low, however, as Judge Seeborg repeatedly questioned whether Facebook users had suffered a real loss, noting it is “far from clear that they could ever have shown they were actually harmed in any meaningful way.”

Here’s today’s order (related court documents describe the lawyers fees and the number of claims) :

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How to Analyze Your Competitor’s SEO Strategy To Beat Them in Search Results

There are lots of competitor analysis methods, techniques and procedures out there because there are a lot of competitive marketplaces. This article covers SEO competitor analysis. You are competing for a position on the search engines, and would especially like to rank highly on the Google search engine results pages. Your competitors are of the same mindset, so here are a few ways you can learn from them and use what they are doing to your advantage.

Look at Their Website With SEO Eyes

Telling people to look at their competitor’s website in order to gain a bit of SEO insight is such a crap piece of advice that you see littered around the net. So, here is what you look for:

1. The Words That Are in Bold
They have been put in bold for the sake of the search engines. The search engines still key in on the words that are put into bold within the text of a website. It is an old trick that a lot of people now choose to ignore, but you will find that it is still applicable as your competitors are using it and they are ranking above you.

2. Look For The Words That Affiliate Advertising Has Keyed Into
Do your competitors have affiliate advertising? And if so, are one or two words in the text highlighted? Underlined? Or are anchor texts? If so then the page was no doubt created to hold those keywords.

3. Mirrored Words Throughout The Page
Take a look at that title, the URL, the anchor texts, and the content itself. Look for words that seem to appear in all of them or most of them. These are the keywords that your competitor is trying to optimize for.

4. Look At The Source Code of The Website
This is going to give you some very nice information and it can be found using a regular web browser. You just press CTRL+U and the source code will appear for the page that you are looking at. Now press CTRL+F and a small search bar will come up. Here is what you are searching for:

• Keyword
  It will highlight different things depending on how the page has been written. Some web designers may have made it easy on you and have a keywords Meta tag that is clearly defined; in which case a search for the word “keyword” will take you right to it. Look at all the occurrences of the word “keyword” as it will be close to the keywords for the web page.
• Description
  This may take you to a number of different places in the source code. You are looking for the Meta description. This piece of text will act as a good example for your worn Meta description, and you will notice that one or two of the mirrored keywords are in it too. You may also wish to optimize for those mirrored keywords.
• H1
  This will take you right to the H1 text. It should be a short phrase or sentence that is surrounded by the H1 tag. This tells the search engine that the phrase and words within are important. It makes inspiring reading when coming up with your own keyword profile and H1 text.
• Word counters will show you their keywords
  Find a good word and phrase counter online. Do not pay for one as most of them are free, just search out good ones. Copy the content of your competitor’s page and cut out any unnecessary text such as guarantees, disclaimers, sitemaps, etc. that may also be on the page. Paste the content into the word counter and see which words seem to appear with routine frequency.The important words that appear there are probably not on there by accident. They are probably there because the webmaster is optimizing the page for them. Use your frequency list to update your keyword list with new/important keywords. Then run the text through a phrase counter. You are looking for phrases of two or more words that have been repeated. Look to see if they appear to have repeated by accident. If they look suspiciously like key-phrases, then they probably are. You can steal them or write anti-SEO against them when you optimize your web pages.
  Take a look at their ALT text
  It is now common practice to embed a keyword or two into the ALT text of the web page images. Look at the descriptions within the ALT text of the images by looking at the source code, or hovering your mouse pointer over the image (this does not always work). If all else fails then go to your Internet options on your browser and turn off your image loading. Go back to your competitor’s website and all of the images on there will not load and you will be able to see all of the ALT text.

In The End

Once you have gathered enough information through the various means listed above, you can start to alter your ON-Page SEO to match and beat that of your competition.

You can create a keyword profile that is as full and varied as theirs. Plus, you are collaborating the keywords that you came up with, with all of the keywords that you have researched from your competitors. This will mean you will be able to narrow down your keyword profile to the most powerful and usable keywords. You will also be able to see what your competitors are trying to optimize for. If the competition is too harsh then you can go out of your way to optimize for something else by avoiding the keywords you discover on their websites.

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Best Buying mobile phones 2013

Smartphones have never been bigger. Soon enough every pocket will have a mini-computer, and the sheer variety of smartphones out there means there's something for everyone, at almost any budget.

Once you've used a smartphone every day, you'll never look back. Here's our pick of the bunch, from Android.

Samsung Galaxy S4

One of the best smartphones just got better

The Galaxy S4 is the update to the Galaxy S3, our favourite Android smartphone for the last year. It's possibly the most hyped phone of all time, but thankfully it's still an impressive handset.

Despite the phone's huge 5in screen, it manages to be slim and light, and weighs just 130g. It's the first phone to use an AMOLED screen with a Full HD resolution, which gives it a huge pixels-per-inch figure of 441, up from 306ppi on its predecessor. The operating system and web pages are, as you'd expect, hyper-sharp.

The S4 uses the same Qualcomm chipset as the HTC One, but it's clocked at 1.9GHz rather than 1.7GHz. The phone is awesomely fast in both everyday apps and running 3D benchmarks. Despite all this power, the S4's 2,600mAh battery managed to keep it running for ten hours and 43 minutes when playing back video, which is one of the most impressive figures we've seen.

The S4 is a lot of smartphone for your money. It's a relatively conservative design, yet has a bigger screen and battery than the HTC One in a smaller package. You may prefer the HTC One's metal body, but if you don't get on with HTC's extensive operating system tweaks, the Galaxy S4 is the phone for you.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.2.2

PROCESSOR SPEED 1.9GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 4

RAM 2GB

MOBILE DATA GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, LTE

DISPLAY 5in 1,920x1,080 LCD

CAMERA 13-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 16GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT microSD

CLAIMED BATTERY LIFE 17 hours talktime, 15 days standby

DIMENSIONS 137x70x7.9mm, 130g

Motorola RAZR HD

A great alternative to Samsung's Galaxy S3

The RAZR HD is a powerful and good-looking Android phone with a huge battery, and it's also good value on contract.

We liked the Kevlar back panel, splashproof coating and scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass screen, and the large 2,530mAh battery meant the phone managed a huge 14 hours in our video playback test.

The phone's 4.7in screen is an AMOLED model with a 1,280x720-pixel resolution, and is just as impressive as that of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

The phone is also 4G-compatible if you fancy a bit of super-fast data - the only let-down is its uninspiring camera.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.1.2 (JellyBean)

PROCESSOR SPEED 1.5GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 2

RAM 1GB 

MOBILE DATA GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA, LTE

DISPLAY 4.7in 720x1,280 LCD

CAMERA 8-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 16384MB

MEMORY CARD SLOT microSD

DIMENSIONS 68x132x8.4mm, 146g

HTC One

The ultimate next-gen smartphone

Now that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is here, the HTC One finally has some stiff competition, but it still holds its head up high. The phone has a gorgeous metal body and high-contrast 4.7in Full HD display, which is perfect for browsing web pages at full zoom.

The phone feels gorgeous in the hand, and the display's vibrant colours makes using Android 4.1 a pleasure. The HTC One is fast, too, thanks to its quad-core 1.7GHz processor.

Beautiful design aside, the One stands out from other Full HD Android phones such as the Sony Xperia Z due to its far-reaching software modifications. Instead of being full of icons and widgets, by default the homescreen is an information feed, with chunky tiles displaying the latest information from news and social media feeds.

If you’d prefer the standard Android homescreens instead, you can always shuffle around the order so the news feed isn't the first thing you see. If you like your phones to have a gorgeous design this is the handset to buy, but the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a larger screen and longer battery life, as well as less extensive operating system tweaks.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.1 (JellyBean)

PROCESSOR SPEED 1.7GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 4

RAM 2GB

MOBILE DATA LTE

DISPLAY 4.7in 1,920x1,080 LCD

CAMERA 4.1-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 32GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT none

DIMENSIONS 137x68x9mm, 143g

Samsung Galaxy S3

No longer the best Android smartphone, but still great value

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is no longer the best Android smartphone there is and has been superseded by the S4, but it's still slim, fast, has a beautiful AMOLED screen and is now available at a very reasonable price.

The phone has just got better, too, thanks to an upgrade to support 4G. On Everything Everywhere's network we saw speeds up to 25Mbit/s, which is twice as quick as many home broadband connections. However, if you want 4G be sure to get the LTE version of the handset, as there's still a lot of 3G-only ones on sale and only these are available as part of the cheapest offers

Samsung has loaded the phone with clever features. If you bring the phone to your ear while a contact is on screen it will call that person automatically, if you flip the phone over while it's ringing it will turn the ringer off, and the Smart Stay feature uses the front camera to keep the screen on while you're looking at it.

Throw in an excellent camera and you've got all the ingredients for a brilliant smartphone, which is now available for a very reasonable price.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.1

PROCESSOR SPEED 1.4GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 4

RAM 2GB

MOBILE DATA GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, (4G optional)

DISPLAY 4.8in 720x1,280 LCD

CAMERA 8-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 16GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT microSD

DIMENSIONS 137x71x9mm, 133g

Google Nexus 4

Google's cut-price Android 4.2 wonder

The latest Google-branded smartphone is made by LG, and it's a stormer. The Nexus 4's quad-core 1.5GHz processor runs Android 4.2 incredibly quickly, and its 4.7in 1,280x768 display has a similar pixel density to the iPhone 5's Retina screen.

There's also a high-quality 8-megapixel camera and built-in NFC, so the phone will support Google Wallet's tap-and-pay service when it arrives in the UK.

The phone is also incredibly good value SIM-free at just £239 - it's a lot of phone for the money.

SPECIFICATION 

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.2

PROCESSOR SPEED 1.5GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 4

RAM 2GB

MOBILE DATA GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA

DISPLAY 4.7in 768x1,280 LCD

CAMERA 8-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 8GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT none

CLAIMED BATTERY LIFE 15 hours talktime, 16 days standby

DIMENSIONS 134x69x9.1mm, 139g

Apple iPhone 5

A worthy update to the iPhone

Our Expert Opinion Five generations on, and the iPhone is still the model to beat. Android has taken great strides, but iOS is still the slickest, fastest and easiest to use operating system, and there's no arguing with the quality of the apps in the Apple App Store.

The iPhone 5 is an evolution of the 4, with a longer screen for more room for app icons and an aspect ratio better suited to widescreen films. It's also incredibly quick - more than twice as fast as the iPhone 4S in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark.

The only thing stopping the iPhone 5 from getting an award is Apple's horrendous new Maps app, which replaces Google Maps, but this should improve with time.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM iOS 6

PROCESSOR SPEED 1GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 2

RAM 1GB

MOBILE DATA 4G

DISPLAY 4in 1,136x640 LCD

CAMERA 8-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 16GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT none

DIMENSIONS 124x59x8mm, 112g

Motorola RAZR i

A gorgeous slimline Intel phone 

The RAZR i has an Intel rather than ARM processor, and it's seriously quick - around the same speed as the iPhone 5 in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark. It runs Android 4.1 incredibly smoothly, and the operating system looks great on the phone's 960x540-pixel Super AMOLED screen.

The RAZR i has a 4.3in screen, which is big considering how compact the phone is. It's also incredibly slim, and the rubberised back looks great and makes the phone comfortable to hold.

It's a classy handset all round, and is also remarkably good value on contract.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.1

PROCESSOR SPEED 2GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 1

RAM 1GB

MOBILE DATA GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA

DISPLAY 4.3in 960x540 LCD

CAMERA 8-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 8GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT microSD

DIMENSIONS 123x61x8mm, 126g

Nokia Lumia 925

The best Windows Phone 8 handset there is

The Lumia 925 is an update to the Lumia 920, our previous favourite Windows Phone 8 handset.

It addresses some of the criticisms levelled at the 920, such as its heavy 185g weight. The Lumia 925 cuts that back by 46g, at the same time as shaving 2mm from the phone's thickness.

Instead of being a solid lump of polycarbonate like the 920, the Lumia 925 is split into a plastic rear and a metal frame; we're fans of the frame, as we feel it makes the phone comfortable to hold.

The 925 has a 4.5in AMOLED display with a 1,280x768 resolution. It's not a Full HD screen as found on much of the competition, but it still has an impressive pixel density of 332 pixels per inch, which compares well to the iPhone 5's 326ppi. Image quality is excellent, too, with deep blacks and beautifully saturated colours.

Like the Lumia 920, the Lumia 925 has a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB RAM. This is enough to run Windows Phone 8 beautifully, and the 925 comes with some useful preinstalled maps, such as free offline navigation and music. If you're after a Windows Phone 8 handset, this is the one to have.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Windows Phone 8

PROCESSOR SPEED 1.5GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 2

RAM 1GB

MOBILE DATA HSDPA

DISPLAY 4.5in 1,280x768 LCD

CAMERA 8.7-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 32GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT none

CLAIMED BATTERY LIFE 18 hours talktime, 18 days standby

DIMENSIONS 129x71x9mm, 139g

Sony Xperia L

A whole lot of Android phone for your money

The mid-range Xperia L may be quite expensive on contract, but it's a steal SIM-free at less than £200.

The phone has a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM, and runs Android 4.1 smoothly. Sony's subtle Android customisations looks great, apps open and shut with a snap and animations are silky smooth.

The Xperia L also has an impressive screen, with bright whites and punchy colours, and we even like its chunky design and pleasing rubberised finish.

SPECIFICATION

OPERATING SYSTEM Android 4.1.2 (JellyBean)

PROCESSOR SPEED 1GHz

NUMBER OF CORES 2

RAM 1GB

MOBILE DATA HSDPA

DISPLAY 4.3in 854x480 LCD

CAMERA 8-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 8GB

MEMORY CARD SLOT microSD

CLAIMED BATTERY LIFE 8 hours talktime, 498 days standby

DIMENSIONS 129x65x10mm, 137g

PART CODE Xperia L

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