yellowchilli's musings.

iOS7 beta hands-on preview

2013-06-11T16:16:00.001+08:00

we take a closer look at Apple’s brand new iOS7. It’s cleaner, more colourful and refreshing…but most importantly, it’s very very functional.
Was the risk worth it? What do you think?

Setup

notice the new keyboard UI

Home Screen

it’s like…candies! the clock ~~and calendar~~ [thanks KAC for correcting me] icon is finally live too!

folders now take all the focus off everything else on screen

transition animation, mid-flight.

we all have WebOS to thank for this new notification system.

iOS Notification center marries Google Now cards…

The brand new Control Center, accessed ANYWHERE by an upward gesture! very useful indeed.

Spotlight Search also gets a revamp

Settings

Control Center- quite possibly the best thing on iOS7

Spotlight search is actually still here but it’s no longer accessed by swiping left on the Homescreen.

battery drainer?

hello Bing.

search field suggestions and preload

Camera UI and features

plain old camera, but then:

it’s an Instagram-photobooth takeover!

stylised, AND ready for Instagram sharing (@ square)

Photo samples

Apps and other things

new sharing options and UI

it’s no longer green. jonny has done well to remove all the skeumoph UI.

Newsstand

Appstore

Mobile Safari tabs look beautiful

the new Calculator

but Siri doesn’t yet know of McDonalds in my local area…

that’s it for a quick walkthrough. if you’re interested in seeing the rest of the screenshots, then swing by our Facebook gallery!

Samsung Galaxy S4 unique Octa-core 4G LTE variant unboxed

2013-05-21T22:58:00.001+08:00

Everyone knows that if you want a Samsung Galaxy S4 right now, you either have to pick the Octa-core Exynos 5 version on 3G (GT-i9500); or the Snapdragon 600 quadcore on 4G LTE (GT-i9505). Even Mr. Shin said so himself.
There’s still hope that Samsung will eventually release a proper Exynos 5 4G LTE version, once they sort out their “sourcing issue”.

But there’s no need to wait.

Because it already exists in Korea as the SHV-E300S/K. And here at yellowchilli’s playground, we’re reviewing this exact version.

Specs:

32 GBs storage with 21 GBs useable out of the box
Exynos 5 Octa-core (big.Little, A7+A15)running at 1.6Ghz
4G LTE, 3G and 2G capable
PowerVR SGX 544MP
price: USD$780~

For now, just enjoy a few unboxing pics

comes with some extra goodies too, such as an extra battery and charging case.

HTC One vs Samsung Galaxy S4

2013-05-15T18:49:00.001+08:00


$700~ on Amazon.com	$760~ on Amazon.com

It’s that time of the year again when mobilephone super-manufacturers jostle for your attention, and a sizeable slice of your bank balance. Clearly more effort has gone into the flagships this year from Samsung and HTC in the practicality department, with a better focus on battery life. But they both take to very different directions in presenting something with lots of features that overlap each others’. So how should you choose between them?

*A variation of this article first appeared on SCMP’s 48 Hours on the 9th of May*

Design


Interesting.	Boring.

On the one hand, the HTC One is the most beautifully crafted and sophisticated piece of kit ever to grace the 2013 mobile landscape. The 200 minute of machine cutting love that went into shaping the all-aluminium chassis alone is enough to win anyone over. Not to mention the pleasant surprise that is its Power button that also doubles as a television remote, the beauty of symmetry in its rows of micro-drilled holes for its speakers also doubling as the ear piece and speakerphone… it is this kind of attention to detail, choice of premium materials and dedication to overall design that contributes to its Best New Mobile Device award during 2013’s Mobile World Congress.

Samsung on the other hand, stays rather conservative with their “if it ain’t broke” attitude. If you already know what the Galaxy S3 looks like, then the only thing you have to get excited about is its new faux-metal surrounding. But to be clear, Samsung’s design improvements are less about aesthetics and more about practicality. Why, just look at its larger screen and larger battery. They’re both crammed into a chassis with the exact same dimensions as the S3 and manage to make the whole package lighter. Genius.

Display

Of course, HTC would tell you that less is more. While they both have a super high definition display panel at running at an eye-watering resolution of 1920x1080, HTC is the one to take the crown with its 4.7 inch SLCD3 display in the pixel per inch race. In fact it is the world’s highest at 468 pixels per inch.

But what all those pixels on the Super LCD3 doesn’t do for HTC is turn completely off when displaying anything in black. That is a privilege only available to Samsung’s AMOLED-based display that switches off pixels to show true blacks creating a near-infinite contrast level. In other words, beautiful blacks with colours that pop out at you.

Audio

While the fight has been a close one so far, the HTC pulls far ahead here. Sure, Samsung’s octa core S4 has Wolfson audio chips- the same ones found in a lot of Apple products- powering its media playback. HTC takes the software route and uses Beats that they bought off Dr. Dre and puts and enhancement blanket over all audio outputs from the One.

And that includes HTC’s new BoomSound. It may sound comical and might even make you think of Guile. But make no mistake as HTC sets a new standards benchmark for all others to follow suit with their front-facing stereo speakers. BoomSound in combination with Beats enhancements pumps out audio that is so rich and balanced at high volumes that you almost forget you’re using a mobile phone. And because it is front-facing, the stereo effect is crisp and wide where it needs to be, making games and movies especially enjoyable.

Camera

Here’s where it gets interesting because we have cameras at both ends of the resolution spectrum.

The S4 continues to chase after specsheet numbers and appears a strong contender with a whopping 13 megapixel camera. What this means is you can zoom in that little bit more with less image quality degradation and you have a bigger margin for error because you can crop your resulting photos.

HTC sets out to dispel the megapixel myth once and for all, and offers a 4 megapixel equivalent. Essentially, megapixel numbers are not everything- you could have a high megapixel camera and a bad photo and vice versa. And HTC proves this to be absolutely true. Photos are just as vibrant and detailed and lowlight shots are fantastic- which is extremely rare in mobile phones. With its smaller sized photos dedicated processing chip, shutter lag is completely eliminated. To top it off, the camera is also equipped with a hardware Optical Image Stabilizer to ensure minimum motion blur.

Features

HTC focuses on doing the essentials and they’re all done well. Blinkfeed brings all your social feeds, television guide and various other notifications together to a centralised area and presenting them in beautiful tiles.

There’s also Zoe, short for zoetrope that further exploits the advanced camera system to capture 3 second videos where you’re then able to do all sorts of magical things with them such as scrub out unwanted objects, pick the best still frame or even let the phone create a montage of still photos and videos out of them known as Event Highlights.

Samsung brings a wondrous assortment of features that are out of this world. You can control a lot of things on the phone, without so much as touching it! You can for example see details of your emails and folders by hovering your finger over them, videos automatically pause as you look away and even choose to let your eyes do the scrolling for you. Not to mention a whole suite of software applications all designed to make your life easier.

Performance and variants

HTC keeps things simple: there is only one version, it’s 4G and runs on a fast quadcore processor from Qualcomm called the Snapdragon 600. It’s a win-win situation when you combine superior transfer speeds with a fast processor and then power it with a good sized battery- this is a guaranteed 12 hour phone.

Samsung on the other hand presents consumers with a very difficult but interesting choice: 3G meaning slower transfer speeds coupled with Samsung’s very own Exynos 5 processor that is highly focuses on speed and power efficiency, or 4G with a the Snapdragon 600 that’s been made to run slightly faster than on the HTC. It is easy to say that the 4G version is the better choice because it’s 4G and the processor is already faster than the HTC. But here’s the rub the Exynos 5 Octa processor crunches numbers faster than the Snapdragon 600. What’s more, it’s in a 4+4 configuration- it balances workload between two separate sets of quadcore processors, one for speed and one for power efficiency!

so to conclude…

HTC One is

absolutely beautiful, minimal
great for taking pictures for online sharing
focused and simplistic with its feature set without gimmick
the best sounding mobile phone ever
more suitable for the younger generation
going to make everyone jealous

HTC One is not:

for those hoping to replace their point and shoot cameras
and definitely not for photography prosumers who want the extra image resolution
built to go on an adaptor-less marathon
for those who insist on using microSD for capacity expansion

Price: $760~ on Amazon.com

Galaxy S4 is

amazingly fast
built to last all day long
filled with a scattershot of features, more than you’ll ever need
great when high resolution photos are required
more suitable for people who want more productivity, professionals

Galaxy S4 is not

focusing on certain features and hence not doing one thing particularly well
going to make anyone jealous
easy on beginners

Price: $700~ on Amazon.com

*A variation of this article first appeared in SCMP’s 48 Hours on the 9th of May*

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 hands-on!

2013-05-13T16:38:00.001+08:00

not a 32-storey drop test.

Looks like Samsung is the first to bring out a complete package- software suite and stylus- for those who are looking for an alternative input method on their tablets. Read on to find out how our hands-on went.

- screen resolution is noticeably…non-full HD, at 1280x800

- speed is surprisingly sufficient

- S-Pen greatly increases productivity, works just as well as it does on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2
- Samsung continues their Tab line’s tradition of placing stereo speakers (YAY!) on one of the shorter side of the device (NAY!!); wants you to use it in a portrait orientation, especially when watching movies. wtf?
- it’s a HUGE phone as well/a small portable tablet with phone functions
- bonus! there’s an IR blaster! and Samsung included a TV remote software
- styled similarly to the current generation 2013 Samsung Galaxy
- but missing most of the software features of

[iPhone] How to find more space on your iPhone

2013-05-01T16:07:00.003+08:00

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Originally you got yourself a large capacity iPhone in hope that you will never experience problems with space, but you still find that space is a problem even for a 32 GB or 64 GB phone. You’ve tried taking out files you don’t need, but the phone still has something that takes up huge chunks of space, and you’re ripping your hair out from figuring out where you can squeeze more space. Frustrating, huh? Well, here we have a clue as to where you may have overlooked, and be able to free up more space.

Spae can be a problem even on large capacity iPhones

First, start Whatsapp. Check through each chat room’s media folder, especially those inside the group chat rooms. You’ll find there is quite a library of photos and videos, all saved inside Whatsapp. Although copies of these were copied to iPhone’s Photo album, original copies are still kept here. Now, what you’ll have to do is to delete all these files from your Whatsapp. There’s no quick way around this but to select the files one by one by clicking on “Edit” on the top right if you wish to keep the conversation history, otherwise you can simply just swipe across the chat list and select “Delete” to delete the whole chat conversation along with the files stored with that contact / group chat room.

You have no idea how much space the files in Whatsapp can take up if you don't clean up regularly

Now, do a sync again with your iTunes, you’ll find that huge chunks of space are freed up and available for use again!

The first time I did this, I found my Whatsapp took up over 3 GB worth of space just simply from these media files alone. Now that I clear up my Whatsapp regularly, it is not a big problem anymore. So If you do this on a routine basis, you shouldn’t experience problems with unnecessary files taking up space again.

Regular clean-up helps you minimize space problems

Hopefully this helps.

Feel welcome to drop us a message on any problems you experience with tech and gadgets.

K.A.C.

[XBOX 360] Guide to getting Unicorn cars without losing money, tunes, designs and cars on Forza Motorsport 4

2013-04-28T15:55:00.003+08:00

Ferrari F430 Scuderia, one of the three rare unicorns that you can obtain through importing FM3's VIP car pack

It is quite surprising that even after a year and a half from Forza Motorsport 4's inception, I still hear questions on how to obtain the Unicorn cars from the Forza Motorsport 3 VIP Pack loyalty achievement, but without having to lose the hard earned money and cars. A month or so after I started playing on Forza Motorsport 4, I had the same questions, so I tried and tested a few methods and came up with a solution myself, from which I posted a tutorial on how to do it, and here I would like to re-post it for anyone who might find this useful:

[The original article that I posted on the Forza Motorsport forums: Guide to getting Unicorn cars w/o losing money, tunes, designs and cars]

As some of you may know, I have been trying to obtain myself the unicorn cars from downloading a copy of the Forza 3 VIP pack about 4 months into gaming on Forza 4 (link here: Question on Profile Import from Forza 3 to Forza 4), but did not wish to lose the money and cars I earned, and most of all, the designs and tunes that I've made.
Having found very few sources that could help, I've tried to do it myself with some help within the community here, and having hit a few bricks along the way I've finally managed to obtain myself the cars. Through the process I also saw quite a number of posts asking how to do the transfer as they couldn’t manage to get the cars as well. So I've decided to give the community here a little guide on how to obtain them without the need to lose all your money, tunes, designs and cars that you’ve earned.

Prepare these…
First, you may need to refer to this article published by Turn 10: Forza Motorsport 4: Under the Hood Part 2. Prepare a USB memory device, preferably at least 2 GB in size just to be sure everything can store without worries on space; and have a friend you can totally trust to help you as she or he will be handy later on. I’ll explain this in later sections.
For the USB memory device, not all are compatible with XBOX. This article may help you to find one that'll work without problems: yellowchilli's musings.: XBOX 360 USB stick flash drive compatibility list.

Why I wanted to do this?
Let's start off with my story here. I have started playing Forza 4 with an Ultimate Edition or whatever it's called since day 1. I imported my Forza 3 save file to Forza 4 back then, but I wasn't a Forza 3 VIP so I didn't get the F430 Scuderia plus 2 other cars that you are supposed to get.
Having played for a few months, I just found it too annoying that there is almost no way you can get a Unicorn Car through Turn 10. The only ways are by participating in events or race with devs; obtain them through the Auction House which is really impossible since they cost 999,999,999 EACH, not to say that's only to bid on, not buy-off; or have them gifted to you by Turn 10 for some nice work you do on forums, which I doubt there'd be more than 5 or 10 here. I live in Asia so it's very very difficult for me to participate as I'm like 12-15 hours ahead which means when Turn 10 Studio is in day light, it's the middle of the night here with everyone snoring away.
So I decided to get myself the cars (at least some of them) with 800 Microsoft Points and went back to Forza 3. So here is what you need to do.

Let’s start and obtain the unicorns! Well… some, anyway… Let’s start with Forza 3 first
Recall earlier I mentioned the USB memory device you need to have ready? Now plug it in and let XBOX to format it into a compatible device for use. You will need to store your Forza 3 and new Forza 4 save file here. Transfer your gamertag profile to your USB device as your XBOX won't be able to load it off your hard disk later when you eject it. You can do so by going to Settings > System > Storage under the Dashboard. Eject your XBOX hard disk because we don't want the game to read your Forza 4 save file that you've been playing and create a new save file.

If you still have it then it's all good. If you don't have your Forza 3 save file, then you'll need to create a clean save file. Now buy yourself the VIP pack off XBOX Marketplace. Save your Forza 3 file on the USB device.
What you need to do now is do a few races or complete one or two event series, as I've tried transferring profile without doing any races and the cars don't get sent over to Forza 4. You won’t need to buy the VIP cars in the game, because Forza 4 will only see if you bought the VIP pack in order to decided whether to gift them to you at the start, and will not check your garage to see if you bought them in-game.

Now for the Forza 4 part
When your job on Forza 3 is done, insert the Forza 4 disc and load the game. It should automatically take you into the intro without loading your old save as you ejected your hard disk earlier. You’ll need to complete the first race after listening to Jeremy Clarkson’s intro. Once you’ve completed, the game should load for a while and tell you cars that were transferred. See if the VIP pack cars were listed. If so then all is done! If you were taken straight to First Car selection, then you failed the transfer, you must have missed something along the way. If you aren't sure what went wrong, feel free to drop me a message and I'll see if I can help you on it.
For those who’ve succeeded, now the transfer has only just started, because you’ll now need to go through the painstaking process of transferring your cars from your old save to the new one. The more cars you have, the longer it will take.

Keeping your rides and credits from old save
Now switch off your XBOX and reinsert your hard disk back in. Startup Forza 4 and load your old save file when it asks you. Make sure your cars do not have any tunes or designs loaded that were bought from Storefront, if you do, unload them and make them stock. The ones you created yourself are fine. Don’t worry about your purchased designs and tunes, as long as you’ve them saved, you will be able to find them again later in your new save file.
Let’s start with car transfer first then we’ll think of money later, as you’ll still need credits for what you need to do now.
Now, assuming you have cleared any purchased tunes and designs off your cars, you’ll need to post your cars onto the Auction House (AH). List the price as some ridiculous amount like 300 million, just so be sure that no one with legit credit can buy your beloved cars as no one as of this moment should have that much money, AND DON’T LIST A BUY-OUT PRICE, THAT’D SIMPLY ATTRACT CREDIT GLITCHERS TO DUMP DIRTY MONEY INTO YOUR ACCOUNT AND YOU’D LOSE YOUR CAR TO THE GLITCHERS. Do this for all the cars you wish to transfer. You may also take this chance as a garbage clearing up process to sell off any cars you don’t wish to retain, or gift them to friends, or whatever you wish to do with them. Make the auction for 2 hours so you allow less time for someone to mistakenly buy your car, plus the handling fee is only $100 so we wanna keep the cost down for doing this.
Note that gifted cars, cars with purchased designs/tunes or any locked cars cannot be transferred to new save, as they cannot go onto the Auction House. So you’ll have to give up the gifted cars. It’s for you to decide whether you want to keep the VIP cars and switch to the new save file or retain the gifted cars from Turn 10 and stick to the old save (i.e. Christmas cars like the Honda).

Once you have done this, you need to transfer your money. Since there is no money transfer function in the game, here is where your trustworthy good friend comes handy.
Let’s say you have $10,000,000 in your old save, you now need your friend to put a car on the Auction house with the amount of money you wish to transfer. I would advice you doing the transfer in 2 or 3 lots to minimise potential loss due to system errors. So you may wish your friend to put $5,000,000 on one car, and another $5,000,000 on the other. Once he has the cars posted on the AH, you buy the cars off him. It’s best to put cars that aren’t really attractive to players, so people with glitched money wouldn’t come searching for them, or some wealthy player wouldn’t buy it off by mistake. The point of doing this is so your money temporarily rest with another person then he’ll transfer it back to you through Auction House.

GIMME BACK MY MONEY !!! (and cars…)
Once that’s done, go back to Forza 4’s menu where it asks you to press “A” to start the game. It should ask you which save file to load. Now load the file from your USB device. Double-check to see if your Unicorn cars are still in your garage just to be safe.
Under your new save file, go to the AH, then “My Auctions”. Yay! There you will see the cars you posted onto the AH earlier with your old save file! Now cancel the auction by click on each car and select “Resolve Auction”. The cars should return to your garage under your new save.
Now the money, remember the cars you bought off your friend earlier? Now load these into your new garage as well and use them to get your money back. Put the cars up on the AH for 10,000,000 (or whatever the amount you wish, again, you may wish to split them into 2 halves or more in case of any errors). Get your friend to buy the cars back off you and voila!! Money returned!!

That’s not the end though. Remember your old tunes and designs?
Go back to XBOX Dashboard. Now head to System > Storage > and select your USB memory device. On the bottom right there should be a text saying “Transfer” with a Y button. Click on that, now select the destination, which is your hard disk, and select Forza 3 and Forza 4 files. Note that this will overwrite your old save file, and you won’t be able to get anything back from that save file, so be sure that you have transferred everything before you do this. Also, remember to transfer your profile back to your hard disk from your USB device, as you won't need to read off it anymore. Otherwise your profile will stay with your USB device and your XBOX have nothing to load with.
Once this is done, startup Forza 4 again, and you’ll find your Unicorn cars, old tunes and designs along with your money are all together again!

You might wanna give your mate a million or two for helping you out though =)

Hope this helps those who’ve been struggling to get the cars.

Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, a member of the FM3 VIP car pack, has more horses than the ordinary version of Gallardo, and with its beautiful glass cover over the V10 engine, makes it an attractive car that gamers put to their top of their most wanted lists in Forza Motorsport 4.

K.A.C.

[iPhone / iPad] How to create your own ‘app’ icon

2013-04-28T13:56:00.001+08:00

You may have already seen our Yellowchilli app icon sneak peek earlier on our facebook. Cool, huh? That was created with a a cool app that allows you to create shortcuts to custom URLs; a quick tap on an ‘app’ icon that’d quickly make a phone call to any person you designate; open a new e-mail dialogue quickly; send a new text message that’s targeted at a preset person, or just like the Yellowchilli app we showed previously, open any URL you've set in advance.

Before we begin, you’ll need to prepare these things before you start:

A picture, square if possible, but not necessary;
The iFavorite Pro app from iTunes (HKD$15.00).

iFavorite Pro, available from iTunes app store

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the iFavorite app, start it up. Click on Start on the first screen you see.

On the "Step 1" screen, you'll see a list of functions that you can set. For this tutorial, we'll try the "Open URL", like the Yellowchilli app we've created. Setup for other functions are pretty much the same, so you can try those out in your own time.

On "Step 2", you will see two fields. You may name your app in the first field (this can be revised in a later step), and enter the URL you wish to open upon tapping on the app in the second field. When you are done, tap "Next" for Step 3.

Here is where you make your app icon. The first three options are things like frames and masks that you can add to your icon. There is quite a library of them, so you can take your own time to explore. For now, let's try the first one. Tap on "Fx / Badge", then select the fx that is located second on the left from the top row. Note that the badges are on the other page by tapping on "badge" at the top.

Once you've selected your Fx / Badge, you'll be taken back to Step 3 selection page. For the customised photo that you're prepared earlier, select the forth option "Bg / Photo". Select "Photo Albums", then select "Yes, I want to edit". If you select "No, use it just as it is", the icon may look distorted, especially if you don't have a square photo prepared. Locate your photo and select it, then you'll be taken back to Step 3 selection screen where your app icon will appear, as shown above.

Now, click on "Create". iFavorite Pro will now load for a few seconds before it takes you to Safari, where Step 4 will appear and allow you to finalise it. Tap on the middle button at the bottom, and select "Add to Home Screen".

Here, you can make one final revision to the name you want for your app. You can even make it more original by adding emoticons to your app name to stand it out, or just simply for the sake of knowing which icons were custom made by you, since genuine apps don't have emoticons in their names.

Once you're done, tap on "Add" on the top right of the screen. There you'll see a new icon appears on your screen, and ready for use!

You can see that I've even made one that lets me call my wife by tapping on the icon, so this saves me a lot of time from scrolling through my phone book or dialing in a number.

We hope you like this app and tutorial. If you think this is cool, please do spread it and tell your friends.

K.A.C.

Samsung Galaxy S4 hands-on

2013-04-19T00:48:00.001+08:00

It may look like the Samsung Galaxy S3. But its performance is nothing like it. In fact, it’s totally and utterly off the charts. Nothing is going to come close for a while in terms of raw speed.
And yet, I double and triple confirmed that I was testing the Octa-core Exynos version.

Sunspider scores 740. This is absolutely incredible and blows the iPhone 5 and its A6 processor ( and the iPad 4 and its A6x processor) out of the water!

-feels extremely fast

-stunning high resolution, vibrant display

that’s only 500 mAh smaller than the Galaxy Note 2. and that’s saying something.

-lightweight, S3-sized yet manages a bigger display AND a bigger battery. Can it get better than this?

an even more efficient display? let’s reserve judgement for when we give it a proper battery life test eh

-13 megapixel camera

check out this untouched Samsung Galaxy S4 camera sample.

Gimmicky interface? I ended up tapping the screen while trying to get AirTouch to work during my brief test.. but we’ll see.

HTC One photos vs Nokia Pureview 808 photos

2013-04-15T18:34:00.001+08:00


Ultrapixel (4 megapixel)	41 megapixel pureview technology
Price: $800~	Price: $400

Both these phones are at the extreme opposites on the spectrum as far as camera specs are concerned.
Both say their cameras are a great.
Which one will come out on top?

To make the comparison as fair as possible, I lowered the Nokia’s resolution down to 5 megapixels (granted it uses pixel oversampling), closely matching the HTC One’s ~~4 megapixel~~ “Ultrapixel” camera.
I’ll let you be the judge.

Click to enlarge.
HTC One goes first and Nokia’s go second.

HTC One drop test

2013-04-14T21:23:00.001+08:00

There was a specific reason why I requested the black version. But then I never thought of going through a drop test or even a harmless scratch test.

The purpose of testing the black unit was to see how it holds up against wear and tear- whether the paint would scratch off easily and which to recommend to my readers.
Obviously I had already suspected anything other than the silver version- which is clearly in its original aluminium colour- is going to go all ugly over time (or over the short span one 1 second in my case)

Alas, accidents do happen and I dropped the test unit from chest height just a couple hours before it was due back. O well.

p.s. I thoroughly recommend the silver version for longevity’s sake. See for yourselves. For what it’s worth though, the black version seemed to hold up against seven days of normal wear and tear very well.

there are other more dramatic drop tests if these kinds of things interest you:

HTC One hands-on

2013-04-07T23:43:00.001+08:00

This is not just HTC’s 2013 effort. But rather the culmination of years of hard work and experience in adding value through software (Sense UI), and sculpting beautiful pieces of hardware (aluminium unibody) that otherwise only Apple can.
The HTC One.

Now that’s what we call progress- note the One X was released one year ago this month.

- fast. really really fast.

- camera launches fast, takes pictures very quickly, ImageChip 2 really shines here. Quality is great and lowlight shots are exceptional.

HTC Zoe Event sample

- Zoe (zoetrope) is a fantastic addition to the One’s ultrapixel camera. But Zoe Events really take the crown- this is where the gallery picks and mixes photos and Zoes together and applies background music and some fancy visual effects and creates a short movie. Automatically, in the background.

- Boomsound- the One’s symmetrical pair of front-facing stereo speakers is no joke despite its name. It’s really loud, crisp, has some bass and most importantly, does not distort.

- beautiful 468ppi 1080p display. accurate colours, good contrast.

- new button layout takes getting used to

- Beats audio (equalizer) is back, but other equalizer options are now gone.

- for a phone that touts the camera as its main selling point, they never thought of adding a hardware camera button?

How to setup Google Calendar and Contacts in Blackberry 10

2013-04-03T15:08:00.001+08:00

While Google dropped a bomb on everyone when they announced that they’ll stop supporting Exchange and other protocols for synchronising their Calendar and Contacts, Blackberry Z10 early adopters would likely have gone through more trouble than usual since the phone’s release straddled the Google Calendar and Contacts cutoff date.

In the beginning, setting up a Google account on the Blackberry 10 OS was easy. All that was required, was for the user to enter the credentials once and the OS would automatically create Email, Calendar and Contacts sync profiles. Until of course, it all stopped synching and would not allow the user to create entries when it hit upon a bug in the earlier firmware.

But thanks to Blackberry, it was fixed quickly and a public firmware update was pushed out. But of course, while the bug was fixed, Calendar and Contacts would no longer sync because Exchange was no longer supported.
So then how do you setup Calendar and Contacts again? here’s how:

hit Settings

tap Accounts, then Add Account

Advanced, at the bottom.

then tap CalDAV for Calendar, or CarDAV for Contacts

now set up your DAVs as follows:

username: [username]@gmail.com
password
Server Address: www.google.com
Sync Interval: any

Save

and that’s it!

How to get your Macbook’s battery life back

2013-03-20T14:06:00.001+08:00

This method isn’t anything new. But rather I want to add to the collective voices that it really does work.

Feel cheated? Macbook not lasting as advertised? Or could it be that the battery is on its last leg?
Before you go off and get a battery replacement by your local Apple Genius, try this. It worked on my Macbook Air, the GF’s Macbook Pro and hopefully you’ll see the difference on yours too.

Warning: you’ll lose your desktop wallpaper, so make sure you back it up.
o and mind the capitals as OSX commands are case sensitive.

Open Terminal
-go to spotlight, type Term and you’ll see it

in the Terminal window, type in and press Enter:
cd ~/Library/Preferences/

then type in:
rm com.apple.desktop.plist

then:
killall Dock

reboot and voila.

Sony Xperia Z hands-on!

2013-03-08T17:25:00.001+08:00

handsome.

Sony has released their own equivalent of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2! What are the initial impressions? We go hands-on.

can’t fault Sony’s designs right?

- feels faster and smoother than Galaxy Note 2 which is not surprising since this beast runs on the quadcore Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro
- overall terrific 5 inch screen with an Impressive resolution. 1080x1920 full HD with 441 ppi pixel density!

its backside is just as attractive…

- Stamina mode to suspend apps while the screen is off!
- but then battery drain is fast during use regardless of 3G or Wifi. granted that the battery hasn’t settled down just yet. will be interesting to see how the 2330 mah battery hold up.
- the charging dock looks great and activates a Moto Smartactions-like custom rule when docked
- camera takes around 2-3 seconds to start but once it’s warmed up, picture quality beats any point and shoot.

indoor macro sample from the amazing 13mpx shooter (click for full res)

by wterry507. gadget geek, toy model fetishist and generally being handsome in smartphone reflections.
edited by yellowchilli

Blackberry Z10 hands-on

2013-02-23T17:06:00.001+08:00

One word: impressive.
Nokia N9 users will feel right at home here as the OS is heavily gesture-based in lieu of any physical buttons.
Those who have never experienced gesture OSs before might find BB 10 QNX fiddly to begin with but will hopefully see the underlying practical applications.

Here’s my one day with the Z10.

-has a nice solid heft in hand, unlike the featherweight iPhone 5

-grips well mainly due to the soft rubber coating on the back plastic plate

hmm nice n soft. but inconsistent build materials

like Samsung, how they put the NFC antenna on the back plate

simple camera ui…perhaps too simple

here’s the Time Shift feature

-phones is quite wide so may not fare well in smaller palms as far as single-handed operation is concerned

-smooth animations compliment seemingly awkward gestures

the Blackberry Hub an Blackberry Peek

-ui really does flow once you’re used to the gestures

-Volume Up and Down doubles as song skip, while the Voice command button also Pauses and resumes music. And to think these features are mostly only available on rooted Android phones. Genius.

-some UI inconsistencies, may become problematic especially if developers do not follow BB10 UI design guidelines

-everything loads without delay

-Blackberry World, Blackberry’s appstore loads reallyreally quickly.

-Blackberry has their own Game Center! so much for productivity..

-who says there are no widgets?

wonder if they got the widgets inspiration from Vita’s Live Area…

-for a lightweight OS, its 2gbs of RAM gets used up quite quickly. But then multitasking is limited to 8 apps at all times and are killed off quite unceremoniously

-super fast web browser with an underrated but nevertheless impressive sunspider score to match

sunspider score: 1525 (equivalent to the 5th gen iPod touch) the numbers don’t do it justice but it really is dam fast

-a highly functional Facebook app at launch

-Do Not Disturb mode is easy to find, easy to miss and has no settings for it to work according to schedule yet.

Blackberry calls it Bedside Mode, aka Do Not Disturb mode in the world of iOS

-cannot set multiple alarms WTF

yes that’s when I get up on weekdays. but thanks to Blackberry’s missing multiple alarms setting, I get to oversleep on weekends.

-some bugs are present i.e. google calendar sync is a hit and miss right now

-display clearly has no oliophobic coating and this proves to be one jarring omission considering you’ll be rubbing the glass much more than any other phone

this is fingerprints from 10 seconds of use after I just wiped it down for the pictures above.

The one single reason to jailbreak.

2013-02-08T16:29:00.001+08:00

You’re looking for reasons to jailbreak or are bored and wondering what else there’s to do other than to ~~steal~~ pirate hardworking devs’ apps (please don’t..).

Well look no further. But first let me just say that you have to be prepared to spend 99cents here. unless you’re keen enough to find a way around paying for this as well.

Reason number One, and the only one I’m writing about here is: ridiculously fast Chrome on an iOS device.

Anyone who’s tried Chrome on the iPad of other iOS devices knows it’s slow. Sure you have your usual assortment of tools that comes with Chrome (bookmark sync, tab sync, google connection) but the browsing speed is painfully slow compared Mobile Safari.
If only Safari was like Chrome… Well fat chance.
But what if it was the other way round?

If Chrome was like Safari?

Let’s first have a look at how Chrome fares on a Core2Quad PC. The comparison I’m making is via the Sunspider javascript benchmark.. since we’ll be making changes to the javascript benchmark later.

Sunspider, Core2Quad PC- 294ms

Now Sunspider on the Nexus 7’s Chrome- 1467ms

Sunspider on the iPad Mini’s Mobile Safari- 1448ms

Sunspider on the iPad Mini’s Chrome- 5549ms

So here’s a summary:

	PC	N7	iOS Safari	iOS Chrome
Sunspider	294	1467	1448	5449 and WTF

iOS Chrome performs so poorly because Apple doesn’t allow other apps to access their Nitro javascript engine i.e. iOS Chrome doesn’t get to use it and at the same time Apple would not allow them to employ their own V8 javascript engine. Only their own Mobile Safari and a few other apps are allowed. This isn’t without reason as apparently it’s all to do with security.

Obviously anyone who jailbreaks is already throwing away their keys since Jailbreak itself is already a security exploit. You knew that didn’t you?
So, with security concerns out of the way, here is the way to turbo boost iOS’s Chrome.

On Cydia, search for a mod called “nitrous”. it’s a 99c purchase. Install that then make sure it’s activated in your device’s Settings:

and you’re good to go.
Launch Chrome and prepare to be amazed.

iOS Chrome now scores a healthy 1459ms with Nitrous enabled. that’s 99cents well spent.

Motorola Razr i XT890 hands-on

2013-01-17T16:17:00.001+08:00

ahh the single core dual-threaded Intel Atom Medfield x86 Android by Motorola. The Razr I XT890 is such a pleasure…

-24-hour battery life with 3 hours screen on time is possible

This is my best battery life record with the Razr i

-solid and consistent performance easily beating previous-gen dualcore Razrs e.g. xt 910

Razr vs Razr. See the difference between the xt890 on the left and the xt910 on the right. They both have the same screen dimensions.

It’s only a hair wider than the iPhone 5 / iPod touch 5 but manages to cram in a larger “edge-to-edge” screen at the same time.

-global equalizer
-homescreen launcher- swipe left for full page quick-access settings
-near-stock ICS Android 4.0.4

practical homescreen launcher.

-superb web browser
-solid construction, premium build quality, pleasing industrial design
-jellybean is coming
-camera sucks
-quiet alert and ringtones
-possible but minor app compatibility issues due to it being x86

Full review coming soon.

How to enable Start menu for Windows 8 for free

2012-11-08T23:44:00.001+08:00

For those who have managed to wrap their heads around Windows 8's replaced new Start menu, well done and I hope you're enjoying it- I know I am. But for many, it remains an object of hate and inconvenience... though possibly mostly those who chose to believe in what they read online without trying for themselves.

Regardless, there are a number of easy ways to bring back a fully functioning (and more) Start menu. I did it with a program I’ve used and recommended for years- Soluto. If you don’t want the entire (lightweight anyway) suite then by all means just download the Start Menu component for Windows 8- called Classic Shell.

First of all a quick look at Soluto. It calls itself “Anti-frustration software” and that does actually sum it up nicely. It mainly analyses your PC and tells you what’s causing how much delay during startup and what can be done about it. Choices include- remove the offending item, delay it or just leave it. But the icing on the cake is you actually get to see how other users acted on those choices in percentage terms. Very useful indeed. This is why I’ve been using and recommending it to friends for years.

click to enlarge

“Switching” to Start Menu is just one click and a reboot away. Once there, you can customise the hell out of it- want Windows Key to launch Start Menu? Done. Want to Shift-click bottom left corner to launch the Start Screen? Easy.
And to top it all off, different Start Menu styles and skins are offered.

Enjoy Windows 8.

Just how fast is the 2012 iPod Touch 5, really…

2012-10-25T11:47:00.001+08:00

from the perspective of someone who’s only ever owned iPod touches and iPads up to the second generation- it’s dam spanking fast. Read on to find out how.

feast your eyes on these comparison videos that I made. No numbers from synthetic benchmarks here, just plain old real-world usage.
be sure to check out my iPod touch 5 review over at http://reviews.yellowchilli.net/

First up: boot comparison

then game load, ipod touch 5 versus ipod touch 4

and finally the most surprising of all: ipod touch 5 versus the ipad 2. This is most interesting since they both share the same processor. The only difference being:

iPod touch 5: Apple A5 revision 2, 800mhz

iPad 2: Apple A5 (no revision), 1ghz

and yet the iPod touch 5 wins.

Apple iPod touch 5 hands-on

2012-10-11T15:50:00.001+08:00

“Developers developers developers developers”
o yes I did lol.

Those who pre-ordered the 2012 iPod touch 5 have already started receiving their devices..and that includes me.
After 2 hours of usage I find that this is possibly one of the biggest performance bumps (if we ignore how Apple skipped an update from 4 to 4.5) ever for the iPod touch.
Click Read More for a few very quick hands-on notes, and be sure to check on http://reviews.yellowchilli.net/ [UPDATE: review is up!]for the full review later.

- very slim, sturdy-feeling (scratch-prone maybe) aluminium back
- sufficiently weighty
- display has far better colour range; warmer
- Earpods sound nice; doesn’t fit so well
- fluid UI; consistent performance
- feels superfast compared to iPod touch 4 [update: speed test]
- photos no longer suck
- HDR mode!
- Siri- nice to have, probably not going to be particularly useful

I want Google Maps.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT-N7100 hands-on

2012-10-01T23:50:00.001+08:00

So the Galaxy Note 2 has been released in certain parts of the world, here’s a hands-on from my initial days with it inHong Kong. Be sure to check back for the full review over at http://reviews.yellowchilli.net/ in a week or so.

The HTC One X is not small but the Note 2 is just huge. In a good way.

Made the mistake of turning Battery Saver on so the brightness was stuck on really low levels. But disabling the option didn’t mean the brightness return to normal levels immediately, which was confusing. In reality, the Note 2’s brightness levels are only slightly lower than then One X.

Samsung chose well to partner with Swiftkey (that personalisation page is unmistakable, and the Privacy Policy reveals all) to bring us a better pre-installed keyboard.

The Note 2 is equipped with context-sensitive pages (called Page Buddy) that load as e.g. you pull out the S-Pen. As above. Also works with headphones

The Note 2 notification area. Samsung makes good use of the screen real estate and adds plenty of useful shortcuts.

The Touchwiz home screen.

Initial fully charge drain- had around 7 hours with all radios switched off. Battery was draining (when without data) at a couple % per hour so if tweaked correctly, could even be longer-lasting.

Antutu benchmark scores.

Quadrant benchmark results.

-pity my Note2 came with a slightly older (no updates yet )version of the OS where the split-window mode is MIA.

The Sensor Wars and other futures of the smartphone

2012-09-11T21:20:00.001+08:00

Imagine a world where battery life is no longer a concern, a restriction. Where would smartphones be or what should they be? Is it a question of software catching up with hardware or would it be the other way around?

A couple months posts (been lazy) back I wrote about the Samsung Galaxy S3 being as much of a disappointment as it is a highly innovative device. Sammy kicked off the right revolution by making better use of standard hardware any self-respecting mobile would have these days and tried to make their phone that much smarter. And as expected, while the implementation didn’t quite kill the battery life; you still would be able to extend the On time (possible exception: Smart Stay) by turning them all off.

Google has the right idea with their Jelly Bean’s Google Now where it relies primarily on sensors like wifi, gps and agps then combines that set of data and pulls and presents you with the most relevant info it is able to muster e.g. your location and the current weather; your location, traffic conditions and the location of your home; your location, nearby public transport station and their schedules. And so on. Of course all this becomes useless when the wrong info is presented (perhaps due to sensor error) or nothing pops up at all.

We’re not quite there yet.

So just how is this revolution supposed to happen?
Here are two of the most likely possibilities:

1. super efficient hardware combined with perfectly optimised OS and coding.

processors, sensors and radios die-shrunk to miniscule nanometers would only be the tip of the iceberg. If you’ve got inefficient LCD displays running the show then everything else is a moot point. Or if you’re hampered by an OS that simply drains all the juice with badly written garbage collection, for example. Or if your 3rd party apps comes with a resource-hogging service running all the time in the background then this whole point also goes down the drain.

2. or it would have to be a seemingly never ending power source.

sure battery cell technology seemingly has stagnated in the past couple years- we’re not really seeing much in the way of improved battery life against improvements in processor muscle so something isn’t adding up.
But you shouldn’t forget there’s forms of energy elsewhere. The most obvious being sunlight. Solar panels still haven’t quite matured enough to be of much use in trickle-charging smartphones but there’s still hope. There have been plenty noise about solar embedded LCD displays for quite a number of years now- just imagine what sort of battery savings you’d get by completely eliminating the most energy demanding piece of hardware on a phone. There’s a reason why people size up a phone’s battery life by gauging the total amount of time a screen stays on while ignoring all other factors such as processor and radio.
Not forgetting the stuff of legends that is fuel cells. These have also been in talks since many years back but have not yet entered production due to safety concerns. Recently there’s been news of a fuel cell charger that can hold a cartridge of fuel to charge up an iphone 10-14 times.

Today we’re already at the stage where mobile phones are theoretically more powerful than us humans. Think about it, gyro, accelerometer, thermometer, proximity sensor, gps, altimeter, microphones and speakers, optics, Geiger counter, nfc etc
We humans only have the typical five sense…with the occasional sixth. At the very least, smartphones can see, hear, speak and feel to a certain extent.
Of course it would all be meaningless if no sense can be made out of all that data. Ideally all that data should be freely accessible (assumption being there are no privacy concerns), combined and cross-referenced to make be heads and tails of everything that’s going on around itself.
An example might be as follows:

front-facing camera- recognises user (for security and other purposes), gestures, emotions, eyeball movements and tracking, privacy awareness (someone looking over the shoulder)

rear-facing camera- constantly looking around for landmarks and combines data with the gps and agps for pinpoint accurate locations at all times; displays road conditions for user while s/he is busy typing; recognises known contacts then kicks off other proximity processes (contact details exchange for example); generally a third eye for the user taking pictures or videos in the background of things it recognises and might deem important

microphone- listens to its surroundings at all times; recognises media and displays related info when it thinks it’s the right time and the right location to (e.g. at home, displays tv schedule or related wikipedia when it hears tv/movie is on); voice command recognition; user recognition by voice

These are only the most common hardware sensors and we havent even begun to scratch the surface on the real smart stuff yet.. The possibilities are simply endless.

So what’s going to bring all these sensors together? Qualcomm’s Gimbal.
The SDK is supposed to talk directly to the sensors on the hardware level, making big battery savings in the process and then combining all that data to give contextual information. In fact, a quick look at their “Pricing” page should already pique any techie’s interest. It mentions “Geofencing” and “Interest Sensing” and before you label this as an advertiser’s dream come true, Gimbal has already thought of privacy concerns, also mentioned on the page.

The Sensor Wars

It’s most likely that every manufacturer is going to want a piece of the sensors action once it becomes more technically feasible because it truly is the likely future of smartphones. Expect to see patent fights tightly revolving around smartphone sensors or if you read it back to front: start patenting all those sensors NOW!

As a wild uneducated speculation, Apple might actually be the first to succeed because they’re in the best position to fulfill the “highly optimised OS and coding” part. iOS has always been known to be very well-optimised and Apple can always tighten their grip on 3rd party apps’ coding quality.

But in a sense, Samsung/ Galaxy S3 has a head start (you could count HTC who came up with “turn over phone to silent”).
And Gimbal likely not the only sensor interaction SDK in the world, does state it’s for both iOS and Android.

This is going to be rather exciting.

Do you agree with this post?
Feel free to leave me a comment.

Simple fix for 3DS’s “Could not access sd card during the last attempt to use Spotpass…”

2012-08-23T11:27:00.001+08:00

“…please make sure your SD Card isn’t full or write-protected.”

Well this is one weird problem I encountered after transferring my system data from the Nintendo 3DS to the Nintendo 3DS XL (after the built-in transfer process, I manually moved everything from the old card to the new card via PC). I only discovered it after I was curious as to why I’ve not received any StreetPasses and this message popped up when I entered the Mii Plaza.

I knew my card is not full, and I knew it’s not write-protected. And if you’re in the same boat then try the following simple fix that worked for me:

1. go into Mii Plaza
2. Settings
3. deactivate StreetPass and SpotPass
4. back out to the Mii Plaza’s main menu
5. then quit Mii Plaza completely (Home, X, A.)
6. start Mii Plaza again (no more error message)
7. reactivate StreetPass and SpotPass

Hope this helps and do let me know if this works for you.

Meizu MX 4-core M032 retail hands-on impression

2012-07-02T16:26:00.001+08:00

the very functional lockscreen

This is a hands-on impression of the retail version of the Meizu MX 4-core model M032. An in-depth review will follow over at http://reviews.yellowchilli.net/ once I’ve dug deep enough into the OS and can accurately illustrate its battery life.

antutu benchmark results

-fast fast fast. although this is to be expected due to the screen resolution difference. Actually the MX5Q (as Meizu calls it,m instead of Exynos) really moves things along without a single stutter. I found everything to be just as smooth at Low CPU setting (800 mhz).

-physically feels and looks like an iPhone. Runs just as smooth.

-“Home” knob makes itself easy to locate, provides good tactile feedback.

-in keeping up with the tradition, the M032 also provides clock speed change options in Settings>Accessibility

Low- 800mhz, Normal (default) 1000mhz, High- 1.4ghz

-Music player has a Graphic Equalizer! yes!

-battery life feels solid, though it is too early to say.

just tap in the right code and it’ll unlock. No need to press OK. just like IOS then.

-a well-thought out lockscreen- first-ever Android number lock that doesn’t require the user to press OK?? plus, number lock security doesn’t stop user from accessing lockscreen widgets, such as the Music controls

photo sample- cropped but otherwise unaltered. click to enlarge.

-camera was fast to launch, and fast at snapping shots. Considering its speed, it would have been able to implement the HTC One X-style burst shots. But Meizu didn’t.

the camera UI could also have take note from the One X. instead, it has the traditional toggle between video and still.

Quirks:

-No easy way to reach Widgets, except via Settings> Customise

-no way to remember defaults settings i.e. which browser to launch by default

-face unlock is missing (but not missed due to its relatively low security level- imagine someone holding your Face Unlock up to your Facebook profile picture then gaining access)

-no way to control overall volume directly using volume rockers. instead, they control Media Volume.

-Google+ instant upload not working. which is actually very disappointing.

Full review in about a week’s time. Meanwhile, do check out my other reviews over at http://reviews.yellowchilli.net/

[mod] My Playstation Vita now lasts 10 hours. [now with battery life test!]

2012-06-21T11:36:00.001+08:00

it was one of the worst days in my life. especially when I was so deep into Mortal Kombat. ha.

It all started when I inadvertently cracked my Vita’s OLED display.

[battery life test results are at the bottom]

I thought, fine i’ll just take it to Sony. Called them, told me that because my machine is an import, i’d have to send it back to whereever it came from (Japan) and ask them to fix it there. Ok that’s not an option I was looking for. Surely there are plenty of people able to fix the problem- this is Hong Kong after all and plenty people make a living just fixing broken expensive electronic toys. Lo and behold, after going through a “videogame mall” (a cluster of shops under one roof all specializing in gaming products) visiting a number of repair shops, the answer were all: No. in unison. Just my luck.

It wasn’t because it’s tough to fix. I later checked (and tried) ifixit and it’s piss easy to take apart. It was because of the availability of the OLED panel, and a suitable one at that. The only place where this is available is Sony’s Vita factory. Crap.

After much trepidation, a friend turned me to http://taobao.com. Went through an arduous journey of setting up an account and communicating (relying solely on Google Translate!) with a seller who claims he’s able to fix this because he can source the parts. He didn’t agree to send me the components..even though his page says he would do this. I didn’t want to argue when I was only partially understanding the situation. I also thought that since he’s going to open up the thing anyway, I may as well get him to upgrade/mod my battery capacity, which is another one of his listed services (becasue face it the Vita’s battery life can be miserable depending on which game you’re playing.)

I’m not going to go into too much detail regarding Taobao but if anyone needs help then do say so in the Comments.

So I took a chance and mailed my Vita to him all the way in China. it took 5 days to come back but that was only because the period overlapped a weekend. It came back with a brand new possibly illegal Vita faceplate, complete with a shiny new OLED panel.

And a huge ass 5300 mah internal battery (rated 10 hours of ipad-beating gameplay) which I’m voiding my second warranty with the repair dude just so everyone can see what’s inside! Here we go:

one brand new faceplate and OLED display (which I did test, and is perfect. no dead or stuck pixels etc, real OLED pixels)

there goes my warranty…

there’s the 4200 mah battery on the left, and the 1100 mah on the right I guess.

[UPDATE 20121211]
just wanted to add some good quality photos of the insides as some of the readers have been asking specific questions about it. Enjoy.
Click to enlarge.

The upgraded primary battery is a snug fit for the original Vita battery slot. No need for adhesives.

Top down view of the Wifi Vita’s circuit board.

Vita Porn: As an eagle-eyed reader pointed out- the shielding is gone, possibly to make space for the fatter battery.

The bracket holding the battery was taken out to make space.

It was super easy to take apart anyway. If you’re attempting this then be very careful as there are connectors at the bottom of the board / device that you could potentially tear apart. I recommend you read ifixit’s guide carefully.

The mod adds no bulk to the Vita. It weighs a little bit more but is probably unnoticeable.

I haven’t had time to test out the battery fully but I did have 2 hours of MGS HD Collection and the battery never went down. We’ll see, once I have a more complete battery life test.

And to those who worry about exploding chinese batteries.. well yer there is that risk I suppose. the repair guy says on his page this (li-pol) type of battery has no risk of explosion. But I do wonder…

why buy Trent portable batteries? Or Sony’s very own Official Vita portable battery when you could have something this awesome?

Leave me a comment if you need more details.

================================

[battery life test results]

as promised, here are the results of my initial battery test.

test conditions:
played on the initial charge after it came back from the mod, (unknown but) presumably full at 100%.
wifi on at all times, wifi coverage was around 70% of the time
machine stayed in standby mode during night time, instead of switched off (with wifi)
Near has been set to collect location data periodically
screen brightness max possible
purchased, and downloaded a game ~900mb with screen off
Game used- Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, exclusively MGS3.

first battery warning received, battery meter is red-
5:28- does the time accumulate if you die and then Continue game?
left the Vita alone for 6 hours
woke it from standby and the battery meter has returned to green
played for another 30mins- timer now reads 6 hours
no battery warning

left Vita on standby for 10 hours
played for another 45mins
battery warning came on again
went into standby
Vita completely drained by the time I got up 6 hours later.

EDIT: it took all but 4 hours to fully charge up with a 850mA (moto razr maxx) charger

===============================

and there you have it. I reckon it does live up to its 10 hour claims especially if I switched on Wifi only when needed, and powered it off at night time.

In any case, i’ll likely run another test after it charges up fully.

For game and other gadget reviews, head over to http://reviews.yellowchilli.net/.