Thanks to the advent of smartphones , we have started living in a world which is full of technical terms such as Jailbreak, Rooting superuser etc. Some of us are familiar with these terms where as to others its as good as Greek. So here is a short explanation on various jargons which I feel all of us should know about given the world we live in.
1. Jailbreak: Anyone who has an iPhone or even those who don’t , have heard this term somewhere or the other. What is it? Well when you jailbreak your idevice, what you really do is, you give it the freedom to do some awesome stuff. The most advantageous feature of jailbreaking is the ability to download all the paid applications for free. So if someone jailbreaks their device, this means, they have “tweaked” their operating system(with the help of various 3rd party applications). There are two kinds of jailbreaking, tethered and untethered.
2. Cydia: It is nothing but a second application store. You get this when you jailbreak your device. Same as the apple application store, only instead of applications it has a plethora of tweaks and utilities which increase the productivity of your idevice.
3. Mango: To people who don’t care about technology , mango is just a fruit but in the world of smartphones, Mango is an Operating System developed by none other than Microsoft. So all the buzz you hear about windows phone, it is running the operating system Mango.
4. Rooting: Rooting is restricted to android operating system. Rooting is to Android what jailbreaking is to ios. It helps you remove limitations and gives you administrative privileges. Whereas jailbreaking is easy, rooting an Android device is an intricate task and if it goes wrong, it can brick your device.
5. Siri: I hate to include this term in the list of jargons but still there are few people who don’t know what Siri is. A virtual personal assistant Siri which lives inside an iPhone 4S. Equipped with artificial intelligence, it keeps you entertained, you can converse with her, ask her to do your tasks and also remind you about your chores.
6. Iris: This is what I call cut throat competition. Iris is same as Siri. Iris belongs to the android family. Only some people (including me) think siri is better.
7. Gingerbread: What is it? A sweet? Well no its not. I wish things were that simple. It’s an Android Operating System, well technically Android 2.3 is also known as gingerbread which is one of the most popular Android OS. It added the support of VoIP calls and Near field communication to Android and various other UI enhancements.
8. Honeycomb: Again, its not a dessert. This thing of beauty (as android lovers call it), is android 3.0, an update to Gingerbread. Basically designed for Android based tablets.
9. Ice Cream Sandwich: Welcome to the world of Android. Where operating system names are the names of desserts. Android 4.0 or ICS is the latest android operating system. Its main purpose was to bring the features of honeycomb(meant for tablets) to smartphones and also added many features such as facial recognition unlock( James bond style) and unified social networking contacts etc etc.
10. iOS: This was supposed to be a jargon but thanks to popularity of iPhone, it is not anymore. The iPhone, runs on the operating system which is known as iOS. Best out there? Enough said.
11. Saurik: Well not really a jargon, but an alias, belonging to Jay freeman. Everyone in the technological world know who he is. He is the man responsible for Cydia and freed the iPhone from all the limitations and gave it wings. Respect for the man.
12. Repository: In Cydia, All the tweaks and utilities are stored in what is known as a repository. There are various developers and these developers have their own repository. They develop a tweak and store it in the repository so that users like you and me can download it.
13. Tweak: Any application which does not show on the application screen but can be configured by going in to the settings of your phone and helps you overcome a flaw which according to you should have been there in your phone is known as a tweak.
14. HDMI: High Definition Multimedia Interface is HDMI, with the help of this technology, you are able to view all your videos in high definition. All our laptops and televisions have a HDMI port. Basically it gives you high definition picture and a superior sound quality whe connected to an HD television.
15. MicroUSB: We all know what a USB is. Thesedays its analogous with a pen drive. But what is a Micro USB? It is a variant of USB, and thesedays, all of you are using a Micro USB in some way or the other. The data cables which we have to transfer the data between our electronic devices and computers , they all use micro USB .
16. ROM: This term again belongs to the Android family. It can be analogous with the word firmware. Just like you update the firmware of a device, same way you can change the ROM of your android device. Though this can be done only after rooting, but once done, it changes rather completely modifies your android device.
17. Boot loader: It is nothing but a computer program. It starts your device. In the mobile world, it loads your operating system.
18. Gorilla Glass: Gorilla glass is the baby of Corning. Designed with the purpose of being thin ,light and damaged resistance. Mostly all the smartphones we see today, their screen is made up of gorilla glass. Its USP is, its very tough, scratch resistant and also very light.
19. Overclocking: Again belonging to the Android smartphones. With the help of overclocking, you can make your phone run faster than the specified limit by the manufacturer. Not really advised , but there are some people who love to see their phone running at lightning fast speeds.
20. Underclocking: Like the name suggests, making your phone run slower than the specified limit is known as underclocking. Now why would anyone want their phone to go slow? Some of my friends do use this. They say it saves the battery, but would you want it?
21. Keynote: It is an event really with a theme. Generally by an organization who when launch their product do so by giving a keynote. You must remember the keynotes given by Steve Jobs while launching iphones and ipads. And the latest one by Tim Cook. Sorry for being so biased. I am an Apple fan and proud to be one
22. Open Source: Open source operating system, as the name suggests, lets you play with the source code of the original operating system. You can change it according to your own free will. And also gives the developers some task to do. IT also gives free redistribution. Basically open source allows you to see the back stage work behind a product.
23. Dev-Tools: These are basically programs and applications which the developers use to develop more new programs. These tools can only be used by developers as they are the only ones who can understand them.
24. Android: Well I had like to end this list of jargons by explaining none other than Android. The operating system which took the world by a storm and still going strong. Its an open source operating system which means it will never die. The developers will never let it die. Something or the other will keep coming out. Android belongs to google. And we all know what google is capable of.
