I thought about buying a few more cables direct from Apple but have decided against it, when you look at the UK Apple Store reviews, it’s pretty clear there’s some kind of problem here.  Whether it’s with the design of the lightning cables just not good for the amount of power that needs to be pushed through them, or whether it’s the iPhone or iPad’s themselves.  I use the regular 2 amp chargers from Apple, I do also plug my devices into Battery chargers but verify they do supply the 2.1 amps required for say the iPad.

Just look at the amount of 1 star reviews here for at Apple online in the UK.

So at £15 per cable, I have to ask….Apple, is there a problem with the cables, design or implementation of lightning on Apple devices?

I have Amazon Cloud Drive, Box, Dropbox, Google+, OneDrive and SugarSync to name a few along with Google Drive, but I’m going to focus on the more usable solutions which are Amazon, Dropbox, Google+ and OneDrive.

By default out of the box, here’s where each platform backs up photos to

• Android -> Google+
• iPhone -> PhotoStream
• Windows Phone 8.1 -> OneDrive

So as you can see, there’s room for consolidation here!  Before doing so I should say that Android uploads photos seamlessly to Google+ without the need to open an app, it does it in the background.  The same for iPhone to PhotoStream, it syncs whether the phone is locked or not, and the same for Windows Phone 8.1, it backs up seamlessly to OneDrive without the need to open any application.  So all of these work well to their own cloud systems but what I want is a single cloud storage platform where ALL my photos and screenshots get saved to.

Android

• Amazon Cloud Drive
  • I installed the Amazon Cloud Drive app, it’s slow, not the fastest on the block to show thumbnails in the cloud, but that’s not what I want it for, I want it to backup my photos seamlessly to the cloud.  The app is in it’s infancy, Amazon have just beefed up its service recently to support auto-upload, the app seems to upload photos and videos perfectly fine to Amazon Cloud Drive without the need to open the app.
• Dropbox
  • I installed Dropbox but had some issues with it not auto-uploading the photos, recently Dropbox released Carousel and I tried that, it works a lot better and works flawlessly.  Okay that’s two apps that work great on Android.
• Google+
  • There’s really not a lot to say about Google+, it uploads photos automatically without any problem whatsoever, although I have had previous Android devices that don’t seem to upload well or stall the photo uploading.  I’ve had this under iOS too, so when it works well it works well, but sometimes can hiccup and fails, although Google+ is the native cloud storage for Android, so that’s 3 apps that work well now.
• OneDrive
  • I’ve hit into a few problems with OneDrive, sometimes it seems to upload and sometimes it doesn’t.  Most of the time it does auto-upload, but maybe it’s just not happening as fast as I expect it.

So there’s almost a 4 out of 4 there in terms of camera auto-upload on Android.  However, there’s one problem, although all the photos uploaded perfectly fine, the screenshots didn’t.  Screenshots don’t get saved in your Camera Roll, they get saved in a folder called Screenshots.  So to get Screenshots to auto-upload, well they just won’t.  You have to either open each of the above apps and manually select and upload screenshots you take, or you have to manually copy/paste them from the screenshots folder into the camera roll to get them to then auto-upload.

iPhone

• PhotoStream
  • PhotoStream is only available for iOS, it works a good 90% of the time but sometimes photos don’t get uploaded.  I see this a lot when I look in iPhoto on the Mac or check another iOS device.  Sometimes you can force it by adding the photos to another Shared PhotoStream and suddenly they then appear in your main PhotoStream.  This works well with phone locked, although for the purpose of this test, I wanted to use ONE system, so as Android and Windows Phone can’t use PhotoStream, then this test fails, so onto the next app.
• Amazon Cloud Drive
  • The annoyance with Amazon Cloud Drive and I think it’s an iOS native problem is that although the application works in background mode, you constantly get notified in the notification centre that the app has stalled to upload photos, you need to open the app to re-upload.  So you re-open the app, it starts to upload, you browse away to another app or lock phone again and you get notification again that you need to open the app.  So for me, this fails because the next time I go to launch the app because I keep forgetting to launch it, I have several hundred photos which takes 20 minutes to upload.
• Dropbox
  • Dropbox seems to be affected just like Amazon Cloud Drive by the same problem that you need to keep opening the app.  However, Dropbox released Carousel recently and this seems to not have this problem, or at least not from what I’ve seen so far.
• Google+
  • Google+ seems to stall a lot just like Amazon Cloud Drive, the problem though I have with Google+ is that there’ son way of jump starting it once its failed to upload photos, so unless you manually tag photos to upload it won’t catch up.
• OneDrive
  • OneDrive unfortunately fails in the same way as Amazon Cloud Drive, Dropbox native app and Google+ where you find you get the notification that the app needs to re-open to start uploading photos.

So for iOS, PhotoStream is pretty much the most accurate auto-uploader but if you want a centralised cloud photo backup system then Dropbox’s new Carousel works extremely well in my tests.

Windows Phone 8.1

• OneDrive
  • I’ll cover OneDrive first because OneDrive is the native solution for Windows Phone 8.1.  OneDrive works flawlessly unlike under iPhone and some problems under Android.  You’d expect it to work right though wouldn’t you?
• Amazon Cloud Drive
  • There’s no official app on Windows Phone 8.1 for Amazon and any of the third party apps don’t offer auto-upload from what I can find which rules out Amazon.
• Dropbox
  • Again there’s no Dropbox native client on Windows Phone 8.1, there are other apps like CloudSix for Dropbox, they do offer auto-upload functionality although these have failed dismally for me.  I have to open the app manually and let it sync the photos which isn’t my intention.
• Google+
  • Google don’t have a native Windows Phone 8.1 app, in-fact Google don’t have any native apps on Windows Phone 8.1.  There are third party developers apps available but none that will upload to Google+ as it’s a closed system with no API’s allowing for third party developers to hook into their system to upload photos.

So for Windows Phone 8.1, this is where auto-upload for photos to Cloud Storage really falls down.  Pretty much the only one that works is OneDrive, and it does work flawlessly but it seems as though I won’t get a single platform to store my photos on unless I upload them manually.  Now, here’s another problem that I hit into.  Even though OneDrive works flawlessly, there’s still another problem, just like Android, the screenshots get saved to a different folder, and these don’t get uploaded automatically as OneDrive app can only monitor the main camera roll and not the screenshots folder.  Which means you have to manually open up OneDrive app and choose your Screenshots folder and manually upload each screenshot you take.

Summary

I’ve come to the conclusion for now that Windows Phone has to stick with OneDrive for auto-upload of photos to the cloud as no other cloud system with auto-backup works.  Android works flawlessly (pretty much) across all the cloud platforms and apps, I found Dropbox to be the most reliable using the Carousel app from Dropbox.  iOS works well with Dropbox’s new Carousel app and just like PhotoStream it works about 90% of the time.  So I’d have to say that Dropbox is as close as I could get to using a single Cloud Storage for my photos with auto-upload although Windows Phone still doesn’t play well.  I’m half tempted to just stick to OneDrive for Windows Phone 8, Dropbox for Android and PhotoStream for iOS but at least getting iOS onto Dropbox means I have 2 out of the 3 platforms using the same cloud backup system.

I think it’s inevitable that we all want larger screens, the 3.5″, 4″, 4.7″ screens although handy to slip into your pocket aren’t quite the right size.  I do believe the Phablet screen size between 5-6″ as being the sweet spot.  This is already happening on Android and now Windows Phone with the latest Nokia 1520 and I hope Apple do adopt the same strategy and create a larger iPhone to facilitate that.  I love the iPad Air and use the iPad mini even more than my iPad Air mainly because of the screen size.  Weight isn’t an issue now with me on the iPad Air like it was on the iPad 3 or iPad 4, the screen is gorgeous and large but for the mobile user taking it with you even in a shoulder bag is cumbersome.  A smaller tablet or even better a larger phone to bridge the gap would be better.  The iPad mini is a 7.9″, the iPad Air is 9.7″, if we could have something around the 5.9″ I think that would be the sweet spot for a phone.  A little oversized for your pocket, yes.  However, it would be more usable on a daily basis.  I find the font sizes on the iPhone 5S even though the screen is larger than the iPhone 4S just becoming too small, or is it just my eyes are deteriorating over time?  Most likely a bit of both.

So what about the desktop device?  Microsoft had this vision of the original Surface table top where you have a screen built into a coffee table or desk.

That’s fine and it’s a large screen but if you think about it you’ll be more hunched over your desk and cranking your neck and be more susceptible to RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) spawning an entire new legal vertical not to mention health insurance vertical being the net result.  Certainly I’d like to see larger screens, I have a 27″ sandwiched between two 24″ monitors on my desk, my TV is a 55″ TV and I use my Mac daily on that too, having a larger screen would be great, but I think having a tabletop integrated monitor in the horizontal layout is just wrong.  If it was tilted slightly, maybe, but still you’re arching your back and cranking your neck.  A larger vertical monitor like we have on our desks now or wall mounted monitor iI think is the better way to go.  That means though NO TOUCH!  You won’t want to be touching a monitor at arms length because it just doesn’t feel natural.  Maybe we’ll see larger tablets in the 12″ and 14″ realm, certainly there’s a lot of news going around since CES2014 that Apple may be looking at a 12″ iPad and I’m sure Samsung will be looking to exploit every inch as a new product in the next few years to come.

For me the biggest technology improvement I would like to see is battery improvement.  My devices drain fast, I usually carry 2-3 phones with me.  Don’t even ask why, other than sometimes it’s easier to keep the phone rather than selling it when you upgrade, but more so it gives you another full phone of battery.  I do have battery chargers, I have, let me see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5x 12000 mAh chargers and 2x 5000 mAh chargers, and I use these regularly, trust me!  I usually carry one around with me in my Tactical backpack or coat pocket.

We need better battery performance and better battery management on devices.  Let’s take the second of those two evils, Apple, Microsoft, Google are all looking at ways to optimise battery along with Intel also with their newer low powered chips, but it’s still not enough.  I think we have surpassed the need for a device to be slim.  Let’s face it most of us add protective cases to our devices which bulk them out, if the devices were bulked out to start with that would allow for more battery to be stored.  We also need more innovation, whether it’s putting gyro’s into devices that somehow not only detect movement like many already do, but with friction when we walk allow just like a car dynamo to help recharge the battery.  Even if it’s 10-20 minutes extra battery per day it’s a start.  I know some wearable tech companies are examining ways to build this into our shoes and store power that way, but unless you want to look like you’re skipping with a rope having a cable running from  your shoes up your trouser leg, again I don’t think this is a viable option.

Other semi-wearable tech companies are building rechargeable batteries into their backpacks/rucksacks.  This I think is a good move, although so far most of these are only 5000 mAh batteries, which gives you 2x the power of the phone already, really not a lot.  Why not stick a larger, thinner battery pack in as a supportive back plane running 12000 mAh instead?  Once you have a backpack on your back, weight becomes less of an issue, however there is the problem of again running a cable form the backpack into your hand if you’re using and charging the phone at the same time.

Another set of wearable tech companies are trying to provide additional pockets in coat ‘tech’ jackets or build batteries into them, again a good move, personally as I mentioned, I carry a 12000 mAh battery around in the inside pocket of my coat, it’s the most convenient way for me to get extra battery life.  However, these are all only stop gaps, we need better battery innovation and better device innovation here to actually IMPROVE battery times not just find of ways around the poor battery performance.

Tablets have certainly evolved over the past 3 years into something most of us are carrying, they are getting better, thinner, lighter, with more battery.

The wearable watch that connects to your phone has already surfaced, I have an I’m Watch, there’s Pebble too along with several other makes of watches but they’re all pretty dismal.  A year or more ago I wanted one of these, I bought the I’m Watch and I realised just how bad it was.  I’m lucky if it will last for 18 hours between charges.

It needs to be connected via Portable Hotspot to my Phone which is a real pain, the screen size although large for a watch is too small to do anything on it barring seeing 2 lines of text from the latest email or tweet that came in.  It’s pretty pathetic really, and I really don’t see these improving much.  We already know what we want with our phones, it’s a larger screen, so why go to an even smaller screen for a watch?

I think the biggest area though for wearable tech will be voice gestures.  Siri already does this on iPhone although somewhat limited in what you can do, Samsung have their own version too, Microsoft have it for XBOX One which is a lot better than the previous incarnation but sometimes it goes deaf and doesn’t hear me even in a quiet room.  It seems when the processors are maxed out when playing a game it just doesn’t hear me say “SAVE THAT” no matter how clear or loud I say it.

These will get a lot better and I think these will become the main way we interface with our tech in the next decade more than touching the screen.  However we still need to touch the screen, like to scroll text, even if we could dictate reply with voice.  Certainly another area is the Google Glass initiative, I first thought I’d love to have this in front of me, but the more time goes by without having Google Glass the more I believe all I’d use it for would be to record a short video.  Maybe the 2nd, 3rd or 4th iteration though will show a lot more promise and make me want to have that.

The biggest innovation I would like to see is the 1 terabyte blisteringly fast internet speeds, or even gigabit speeds but not just spotty coverage like we get on 3G or 4G at best now, it needs to be connected around the country or the world like you’re connected to a cable at home, perfect wireless data connections without drops, blisteringly fast speeds that we’ll all be happy with, this is the biggest area for me along with batteries that tech companies need to make improvements on over the next few years.  4G is getting there but if we can’t role out 3G coverage everywhere then what’s the point?  Why not put an antenna in every other street lamp, a connected Wifi or WiMax grid with very little black spots unless you’re 20ft under ground.  If we can achieve better battery performance and always connected then this will certainly drive innovation on all tech products so much more than we have seen in the last 10 years.

Apple are always big on figures and one of these is dimensions, but one thing you may not realise is that other than the iPad 2, the iPad 3 and iPad 4 have increased weight over the iPad 2, the iPad 3 and iPad 4 actually remained the same weight, but now the iPad Air has shaved off 181g.  That doesn’t sound a lot but that’s close to 1/5th of a bag of sugar.

As Apple loves to provide figures you’ll see them quoting it’s only 1 pound in weight (compared with the last two models (iPad 3 and iPad 4) being 1.44 pounds, 28% lighter and 20% thinner.

So with the new lightweight, and the name “Air” doesn’t that mean it’s going to be a budget device?  No definitely not.  The iPad Air continues on the iPad into the 5th generation with a lot more power with it’s new A7 chip.  This is the first mobile tablet that comes with 64-bit core architecture running twice as fast both in CPU and Graphic acceleration and still being able to provide 10 hours of battery even though the iPad Air is 20% thinner and 28% lighter.

One thing that Apple did announce in the keynote showing off the iPad Air was that it now is a MIMO device, Multiple In and Multiple Out.  That means it has two WiFi antennas.  Apple claim twice the WiFi performance but in reality you may not see twice the speed for most uses, and have you ever complained about your WiFi being slow?  If it is it’s not usually the WiFi but your overall broadband internet connection that’s slow and not your WiFi.

The iPad Air is the first iPad to have dual-speakers or Stereo speakers just like it’s baby brother the iPhone.

So how does it seem really fast?  Well for me, I have had an iPad 1, iPad 2 and iPad 3.  The iPad 3 was the first iPad that contained Retina and that slowed down significantly from the iPad 2 trying to push all those extra pixels to the screen for the Retina display.  I skipped the iPad 4 but did get the iPad mini, although that had the same processor as the iPad 2.  For me going from the iPad 3 to the iPad Air I find a significant speed increase, even just using the springboard and moving between app screens.

Is it a significant upgrade over the iPad 4?  You will probable notice a speed increase, the weight will certainly be an advantage if you want a large tablet but go light weight in your bag.

For most though that have an iPad already, if you have an iPad 2 upwards then you’ll have the opportunity if you haven’t already to upgrade to iOS7, certainly the OS may lag a little bit on older devices and the older you get, so an iPad Air with a faster processor will certainly make iOS7 feel a little more zippy.

For me though I think the iPad Air is a definite step in the right direction by Apple and can’t wait to see the Retina iPad mini in the flesh.

The Anker Astro3 is the first external backup battery charger that has 3x USB ports, yes 3!  It can charge a phone or even a tablet, and a power zapping tablet like the iPad.  Just plug your USB charger cable into the Astro3 and it will charge it once powered on.

The strange thing about this device is that it doesn’t have a power button, but when you plug a USB cable into the backup battery it doesn’t start charging automatically.  So how do you power it on?  You shake it!  No seriously, you shake it!  It has a motion detector built in so if you shake it the device will turn on for a couple of seconds, and if there’s a device plugged into it to try and draw battery power then it will stay powered on, if there’s no device plugged in to draw a current then it will auto-switch off again within a few seconds.

The Anker Astro3 also has this very weird circle that lights up depending on how much battery power is left in the battery charger and will reduce and show 3/4 of a circle or 1/2 or 1/4 of a circle when the battery is depleting.

The Anker Astro3 you charge using a supplied Micro USB charger cable, it takes a good few hours at 12,000mAh to charge the battery charger, I usually leave it charging overnight but usually a good 5 hours.

Pro’s

It’ll keep your devices charged up for an entire day, a regular phone battery is around 2,000mAh, so with that in mind you should be able to get around 6 full charges for your phone, or you could charge an iPad which has a standard 11,560mAh battery which would give you about a full charge out of it.  You can also charge multiple devices at the same time, after all it has 3 USB sockets on the battery charger.  It also comes in it’s own mesh pocket bag that you can carry it in along with a number of connector bits out of the box.

Con’s

It’s a little bigger than a phone in width, weighs about 2-3 times an iPhone.  I noticed that when the battery power was around 1/4 left in the charger it stopped charging my Kindle Fire HD 7″ tablet.  I guess there’s enough charge in the battery just not enough to charge the Kindle and this would be the same with any tablet.  This would be the same with any battery charger, when the battery power becomes low, it may not charge some high demand devices.

Want something a little smaller in design?

if having a 12,000mAh battery and weight is a little too much there are smaller 9,000mAh and 6,000mAh battery chargers from Anker that will give you a reduced charger capacity but more importantly a reduced weight where it might not be such a dead weight in your pocket.

Still not enough power?

If the 12,000mAh battery isn’t enough and you need something a little larger but not too much larger and for a similar physical size as the Astro3 then there is the Astro E4 at a 13,000mAh battery.

I always experiment with new hardware, new phones and new tablets, I’m not locked to one eco-system although primarily I do prefer Apple, but that said I have a number of other eco-system devices like the HTC One Android phone, the Nexus 7 Android tablet, the HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 and the Microsoft Surface RT Windows tablet. You never know what you want until you try something and for me I pretty much use my Kindle Fire HD for one thing and one thing only, content! I don’t use many apps on it, or play many games, I have my iPhone and iPad for that. I will use the Kindle reader app on the Kindle Fire HD when I’m not using my Kindle Whitepaper, but video playback for me is key.

Currently I run an Windows 7 laptop, a Macbook Air running OS X Mavericks and a Mac mini running OS X Mavericks. I prefer to watch video on the big screen, a 55″ television or if that’s not possible then one of my computer screens. I don’t always have internet access with me or if I do I don’t want to stream it over the internet for various reasons, e.g. one of them being bad or slow internet connections, so my Kindle Fire HD’s job every night at 3am is for Beyond Pod (which is a podcasting app) to download all my Video content. Whether it’s tech shows or other shows, it pulls any updated feeds and downloads the content so I have it offline.

Now I could watch the video direct on the Kindle Fire HD and I do sometimes, and prefer this over the iPad or iPad mini because quite frankly the dual dolby speaker in the Kindle Fire HD is much louder than that of any other tablet I’ve had so far. However, when I’m near my Windows 7 laptop or Mac laptop or even near my Mac mini which is plugged into a larger 55″ television, I can Airstream the video content direct from my Kindle Fire HD direct to any of these devices, meaning I can watch the video in a large screen format. Then when I need to leave, I can pause the video and continue on the device, when I come back I can continue where I left off streaming to a large screen device again.

The beauty of Beyond Pod is that it will also delete the content and I use MediaShare on the Kindle Fire HD to stream the content to an XBMC receiver app on Windows or Mac.

Now, you could stream the content from an iPad or iPhone and have a smaller setup, but there’s several problems here. From iOS it’s very unreliable, sometimes I only get audio and no video, this is a known problem with XBMC, but from the Kindle Fire HD it works flawlessly every single time. The second problem I’ve had is I am usually maxed out at 32gb of video content on the device, that’s a lot of video to watch I know! However, if I tried to put that on my iPhone or iPad then I would be out of space without installing any apps on the device.

This setup does however mean that I need to carry an additional device around with me, but likewise I find the 7″ Kindle Fire HD tablet great for watching video content due to the screen size without being too large and cumbersome like the full size iPad. Likewise I could get away with a slightly lighter setup with the iPad mini (which I also have) but again there’s that space issue. So for me the Kindle Fire HD is a great media consumption device, even though the UI is pretty locked down to the Kindle carousel, but it just works!

Then there’s the price, for a tablet £199 for 16gb, £229 for 32gb or £259 for 64gb Kindle Fire HDX (or £119 for 8gb Kindle Fire HD or £139 for 16gb) it really can’t be beaten.

For anyone wanting apps or games, there’s frankly plenty not he Amazon Appstore, most of which you’ll find on the Google Play Store you will find on Amazon all baring a few.

I’m not really a fan of the Kindle Fire web browser, or the email app but they work.  For any child this would be a great start on a tablet and pretty much locked down so they can’t do any damage to the operating system or mess too many things up.

So for me the new Kindle Fire HDX with it’s improved Kindle Fire OS 3.0, faster processor and better graphics resolution  along with the improved 11-17 hours of battery over the 10 hours on the Kindle Fire HD will be pretty good, and now sporting a front-facing HD camera and offered in storage sizes up to 64gb which will keep my video content habits going a little while longer.

Technical Details

16 people in front of me in the queue, but that queue went real quick, sat down at the Genius Bar, explained the problem and the Genius Technician said he had an iPhone 5 making the popping noise like I had on my iPhone 5S but he had it on an iPhone 5 a year ago and mine was a lot worse.  He would replace it, nice and simple and hassle free, or so I thought.

He went upstairs to check they had stock and come back down and said they have stock, but because I bought it on the Apple Online Store I couldn’t get it replaced.  Sorry?  It’s not like I bought it from a Carrier, I bought it from Apple, whether ti’s the Apple Online Store or an Apple Bricks and Mortar Store, it’s the same thing surely?  Apparently not.  He continued to say I could walk away with a free replacement but I would have to pay the full £709 for the iPhone 5S 64gb Space Grey model, then send my existing iPhone 5S back to Apple who would then refund me.  Well that seems a lot of hassle seeing that I’m actually sitting at the Genius Bar inside an Apple Store, and both the Online Store and the Apple Store I’m sitting in are, let me get this right….owned and operated by Apple!

It was either that or go away with my broken iPhone 5S (although it’s still working but the screen makes a pop noise when I press the screen), then send it back to Apple Online Store, be without a phone for a week or two until I get my replacement, but then I’m not out of pocket for £709.  I begrudgingly agreed to pay another £709 for a replacement iPhone there and then and in the hope I will get my 3 week old iPhone 5S refunded by Apple Online Store, but I wasn’t happy.

Just as we were going through resetting my iPhone 5S I remembered I had my iPhone 5 a year ago replaced in the same Apple Store, it was about 3 months old and there was no cost at replacement, they did it just fine.  So I said to the Apple Genius Bar Tech that was serving me, and explained to him I had previously had a phone replaced without a problem so why is it I can’t get my iPhone 5S replaced in the same manner???  At this point he explained, oh well in that case I could have it replaced it just wouldn’t be a brand new iPhone 5S in a box.  I said…Wait though, you can replace it with an iPhone 5S but it will just be one not in a box?  He said it would be a warranty replacement, these are usually items that have come back and been repaired.  I asked him what is the likelihood of the one he would give me going to be a repaired unit?  He said very unlikely because the iPhone 5S is only 3 weeks into the release.  So I said, okay give me a replacement here and now, I don’t want a box, I don’t want to be out of pocket for another £709 even for a week or two and have to send back my iPhone 5S.  He then went out back and got a replacement iPhone 5S.

If I hadn’t remembered and questioned the Apple Genius Bar Tech about why and how I got a replacement on a previous phone I would have either walked out without a replacement or walked out with a replacement and out of pocket for £709 for a week or two.  I walked out with a shiny new replacement iPhone 5S there and then without having to pay for it or having to send back the old one.

So be warned, do question the motives.  The Apple Genius Bar Tech just assumed I would want a replacement box unit as the iPhone 5S was so new and didn’t really give me all the options available until I questioned him.

So far I’ve been very impressed with it until this morning when I noticed when I went to pick my phone up out of my Belkin desk charger that the screen is now coming away from the main chassis of the phone.

I’ve seen others complain with the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S in the past of this happening but never has this happened to me until now.

Here’s a quick video so you can see and hear the noise the screen makes when you lightly press it.

It’s a real shame, I would have thought Apple would have overcome these regular faults by now on the production line, but I guess some can still slip through especially when ramping up production.

Looks like I’ll have to try and get a Genius Bar appointment sometime in the next couple of weeks.

1. I have a Kindle Paperwhite and although I use the Kindle App on my iPad / iPad mini a lot, thought the Kindle Fire HD might be the best for a colour screen experience as it’s from Amazon
2. I subscribe to Love Film (the Amazon equivalent of Netflix in the UK) and as LOVEFiLM isn’t (well wasn’t) available on the iPad until recently I decided that it would be good to try out the Kindle Fire HD.

The Kindle Fire HD is an Android tablet running a customised version of Android OS 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) running an OMAP 4460 dual-core  1.2 GHz processor and 1GB RAM isn’t to be sniffed at.  The device size is 7.5×4.7×0.45 inch (190×120×11 mm) with a visible area of the screen of 6×3.5 inches (150×89 mm).

I decided to get the “With Special Offers” model, there wasn’t much really between receiving ADVERTS on the lock screen or without, but I decided that knowing Amazon I might actually like the adcerts, so plumped for the AD subsidised (cheaper) model.  If this was any other company I would have paid extra to remove ads, but Amazon do suggest some good content and products, and I’m locked into the Amazon ECO system.

Performance
The performance I find is okay when you’re in a game or an app, or watching video, but moving along the carousel I find to be quite sluggish and can stutter quite a bit, just like the device is under-performing processor wise.  Other than this, I find the device perfectly acceptable.  To be frankly honest, I have similar problems on the Nexus 7, I think this is more of an Android problem as opposed to a Kindle Fire HD problem.

Audio
The Kindle Fire HD comes with dual (stereo) speakers, and these are extremely loud.  Watching any videos on the Kindle Fire HD is bliss, it’s very very loud.  Listening to music or watching music videos isn’t quite as good, the speakers have been over-powered and are quite tinny, so you get very little to no bass from the speakers.  They’re great for listening to Audible (Audio) books, or watching videos which to be honest is really what this device is more geared towards.

Screen
The screen is a HD quality screen touting 1280 x 800 pixel display with a polarising filter and anti-glare technology built into the screen.  There is still glare, even in a moderate to slightly darkened room, you can still see reflection off the screen depending on how you angle it.

Buttons
I have a serious problem with the buttons, the power and volume up and down buttons are recessed to be flush with the case.  Without actually looking at the buttons on the right side of the Kindle Fire HD, feeling around I cannot tell which are buttons and which are not.  This for me is a big problem, the buttons should be raised slightly.  If you picked this up in a dark room you wouldn’t find the buttons at all.  Likewise unlike the iPad, the HOME button is a soft button, there’s no physical hardware HOME button to press to wakeup the device, it’s an on-screen button, so you can only wakeup the device by pressing the power button.

Magnet wakeup
The Kindle Fire HD just like the Kindle Paperwhite has a magnetic detection, so if you go with a magnetic case and open the case it will wake up for you, this overcomes the above problem with finding the power button, but it means you have to have the case closed before opening it to wake up the device.

Operating System
One thing to mention about the Kindle Fire HD is it runs a customised version of Android OS 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).  Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT expect to be able to get to an Android desktop, run widgets and customise the device.  There is no way of doing this out of the box, the carousel you see when you power on the screen is the UI, that’s it.  You have the ability to favourite recent App icons or movies or books or audio to the base of the screen under the favourite section of icons, but this is about as much customisation that you will get.

Kindle Software and Magazine content
The Kindle Fire HD has a good percentage of the Apps and Games available in the “Android Store” (Google Play), however the apps and games are served from Amazon’s own flavour of the Android Store.  Not all developers are in both the Google Play store and the Amazon store, so you may miss some apps and games that are on Android but not on the Amazon store.

Many of the magazine apps like Zinio are on both Google Play and the Amazon store, so if you are like me, you can get all your monthly subscriptions of magazines on the Kindle Fire HD without any problems.

Storage Size
The Kindle Fire HD comes in two storage models, a 16GB and 32GB model.   You can also get both “With Special Offers” (Ad supported) or “Without Special Offers” a slightly more expensive version that will not display adverts on the lock screen.

Battery Life
I must say I am impressed with the battery life, Amazon touts 11 hours battery for reading and I am seeing pretty good battery usage although most of mine is watching video as opposed to reading.

Extras
Amazon UK do give you One-month free trial of LOVEFiLM Instant video streaming for unlimited access to thousands of movies and TV series, however you can get this for any device by signing up to LOVEFiLM.

Summary
I do like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, the 7″ is a sweet spot for tablets, and I am actually liking it more than the Nexus 7.  That might be surprising for some but I’m not looking for a complete Android experience, I’m looking for a Tablet experience, and the Kindle Fire HD UI is a good experience.  The two down sides I see with the device is the performance stuttering on-screen of the graphics engine when in the carousel and also the big border around the screen.  Although the border helps you hold it more easily and not touch the screen, I find it a bit too big.

Since getting the iPad mini I have hardly used my iPad 3.  I would usually upgrade to the next model and I didn’t upgrade to the iPad 4, maybe it’s because the iPad 3 had only been out for 6 months and there was no compelling reason to upgrade other than the dock connector.

The iPad mini IS and I repeat IS the right size, 7″ is the sweet spot, the iPad mini pushes the Apple boundaries yet again with the ultra thin-ness, light weight and its just so much more portable.  It’s better than the Nexus 7, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, and although I still do wish Apple would adopt the 16:9 screen dimensions I really do love the iPad mini.  You can hold it in one hand easily, although I still struggle to hold it like Apple show in the photo below.

I would agree with Steve on one point, I don’t like reading magazines on the 7″ there just isn’t enough screen real-estate and I much prefer the 9.7″ for magazines, so there are some things that the 7″ iPad mini is just not really good for, but everything else it is good for.

Microsoft Surface RT runs Windows RT which is a customised version of the Windows 8 Operating System with AppStore, akin to what is running on a Windows Phone 8 device but on a large scale.  It comes with the standard Windows 8 ‘Metro’ interface, Metro is really the replacement for the Start menu which has what Microsoft calls ‘Live Tiles’ that can update with content from the app and flick up or rotate to show additional content.

The main touch interface is scrollable from right to left, so you swipe left to move the screen left to see additional Live Tiles on the right of the screen.

Sadly Internet Explorer is still a big part of Microsoft Operating Systems and Windows RT is no different, as with all versions of Internet Explorer it feels a bit clunky.  Don’t get me wrong it’s a huge improvement over previous versions of Internet Explorer but it just still doesn’t feel lightning fast like other web browsers, like it’s trying to do things in the background before it loads a page.  The status bar doesn’t display until you swipe up from the bottom of the screen, then you get your other tabs appear at the top of the screen.  To close an app you have to drag or swipe down from the top of the screen (slowly) and the screen reduces in size and you then have to drag it off to the bottom of the screen.  This feels pretty slow and very sticky, sticky in the sense that it doesn’t do it until you drag further.

Windows RT comes with a desktop but to be honest I really haven’t found a use for this yet.  Maybe you can save files to the desktop but I just don’t see the point.  The real annoyance I have found so far is there are no battery meters in the Windows Store, so if you want to check the actual percentage of battery, e.g. 89% then you have to press the START button to get to the Metro UI, then tap Desktop to get to the desktop, then tap the battery icon at the bottom right of the task bar to then see what the percentage is.  Really Microsoft, you can do better than this!  What about a Live Tile that updates?  There’s many apps in the Windows Store for Windows Phone 8 but there’s none for the Surface RT yet.

Bing or Bing Search is also a big part of Windows RT, Microsoft’s answer to Google.  I still prefer Google, Google always comes back with slightly better search results than Bing I find, but it’s down to personal preference.  I do wonder how many people use Bing, as everyone I know uses Google.

There’s a built-in Weather app which is pretty slick called ‘Bing Weather’.  It allows you to check by location or by a preset city around the world.  It’s important to note that Windows RT does not have a GPS Receiver built-in so it’s similar to that of the iPad WiFi model with no GPS, so it uses WiFi to determine your current location.  So don’t get any ideas of using GPS on the Surface RT unless you are able to use a USB GPS Receiver and get the drivers to work (highly unlikely).

Microsoft have created a number of good apps, another one is ‘Bing Daily’ that gives you all the latest news based around your location/region.  Apparently Microsoft have a very large news desk team creating news articles and bringing them in from other News sources, and it does show, Bing Daily is always very up to date.

As I mentioned earlier, swiping right to left allows you to scroll the Metrol UI, it doesn’t scroll up and down like the Windows Phone 8 Metro Interface does, which again seems another inconsistency on Microsoft’s part.

Every application you run whether it’s a Microsoft application or a third party, they all have a splash-screen based on the App Icon, and the Windows Store is exactly the same.  I’m pretty sure this adds to load time of the application, maybe only a second or two but I’d prefer that this didn’t show if it saves launch time.

The Windows Store is pretty thorough, I’ve found a lot of the apps I have on the iPad and Android on the Windows Store, but not every one.  For instance, even though Microsoft are ‘in bed’ with Facebook with Skype, there’s still no official Facebook application.  The same for Twitter, it’s pretty frustrating that most of the big names are not in the Windows Store, well not yet.  There are however other third party apps that help make up for the apps that are missing, but they’re still not quite the same.

There are still way fewer apps in the Windows Store than say on Apple AppStore or Google Play, but new apps are becoming widely available and developers are porting apps between the other two major platforms.

Windows RT with the AppStore is a good start by Microsoft and it’s good to see that Microsoft are finally catching up, but still there’s a long way to go…

Power Charger
I started to plug the power cable in, oh no USB, it’s a proprietary 5 pin connector, how could Microsoft do this?  Hmmm okay, I guess Apple did the same thing with their cables, so maybe it’s not a big thing, but it means I have one charger and one charger for me is not nearly enough for a device unless I lug all my chargers with me which I hate doing.  Here’s where the fun part came… I couldn’t plug the connector into the socket.

It’s strange, it’s magnetic but it’s recessed.  It’s not as easy as the Mac connector where it just snaps in, the Surface RT connector you actually need to line up nicely as it’s very chunky and not only that, get it exactly square for it to lock in and start charging.  This I thought would be a teething problem but over the past month of using the Surface RT I have still not managed to connect the power cable first time.  In-fact it takes me about 8-10 times to get the annoying power connector to latch into the socket on the Surface RT.

This is for me the most annoying part. The second part is the keyboard.

Keyboard
The hardware based keyboard is nice, it’s wafer thin and touch sensitive, but you can’t say recline your chair, put the Surface RT on your chest/stomach and then type away. Why? Because the keyboard starts to bow, and it starts to come away 1 pin at a time from the connector and stops the keyboard from working. The keyboard is superb if you want to use it on a non-warping flat desk, but in any other kind of scenario like using it on a plane or a train, then you’ll need to use it without the keyboard.

It’s nice to have the keyboard just plug in, and you can disconnect the keyboard as it connects again via magnets, but then you’re left with…where to put the keyboard when you take it off.  A big conundrum when you’re traveling and have limited space!

At this point I should mention the keyboard above is the keyboard that ships with the Surface RT and comes in many different colours.  You can buy a more expensive keyboard which adds to the price of the Surface RT but is almost like a laptop keyboard but with very little play on the keys, more akin to say a Mac Wireless keyboard I guess in terms of key travel distance, but it connects in the same way as the ‘cheap’ keyboard by means of a magnet connector and is a little more rigid.  Below you can see the difference in quality between the two keyboards Microsoft ship, the right hand keyboard is the one that comes with Surface RT or you can upgrade to the more expensive keyboard on the left.

You can buy the Surface RT 32gb without a keyboard for £399 inc VAT or have the thin flimsy keyboard for £479 inc VAT but there’s no option to buy the premium keyboard with the Surface RT, Microsoft charge £109.99 inc VAT for the premium keyboard.  That’s a bit pricey for a portable keyboard!

Surface RT ports and buttons
The Surface RT has it’s power button at the top right of the device when in landscape mode, the Windows logo is the start button or what iPad users would term the HOME button.  The volume button and headphone jack is on the left hand side of the Surface RT, I constantly find myself muting or reducing the volume, not because of the hardware based volume button is so sensitive (it’s actually not) but the keyboard has a volume / mute button at the top left of the keyboard and I find I keep hitting that with my fingers by accident.

The best thing I would say that stands out about the Surface RT is the metal kick stand that you can pull out, it’s heavily spring loaded on a hinge but works extremely well.

Charging and Battery Power
The Surface RT has a 31.5 Wh battery that lasts for a quoted 8 hours use.  I have found that it gives me a decent amount of battery power, very similar in terms of the iPad 3.  Like most of my gadgets I charge them up and keep them on charge and only take them off charge when needed.  For the most part the Surface RT is in the lounge and I have it plugged into power most of the time, but I do take it out to the office and it easily lasts a full day for general consumption, email, watching some music videos.

Processor and speed
The Surface RT comes with a 1.3 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 ARM processor running n4 cores and 2GB of RAM. At no point does the RT feel sluggish in using apps, but apps do take around 5-10 seconds to load up depending on the app, it seems longer on average than that of the iPad.

Screen
The Surface RT is designed in a 16:9 format, and the screen is larger at 10.6″ compared with the iPad’s 9.7″ screen.  The screen itself is a beautifully crisp HD screen sporting 1366×768 pixels.  So technically in landscape mode it does 720P.

The screen itself is a beautifully crisp HD screen sporting 1366×768 pixels.  So technically in landscape mode it does 720P.

Overall
Overall the hardware is pretty solid, very robust and actually feels like it’s been built out of steel.  It comes with a lazer etched Microsoft Windows logo on the back although I’ve already in the 1 month of use noticed that this is starting to wear off in parts with scratches.

So how does the Surface RT hardware wise compare with the iPad?  Well it feels more robust, more likely to make a larger dent in my laminate flooring if dropped and more likely to dent its case due to it’s very square edge design (sharp edges).  It feels over sized, more so than the iPad in the 16:9 format, but feels very robust.

For the OS, UI, software / apps I’ll go into this in Part 2 of the review.

Click here to continue to Microsoft Surface RT Review – Software part 2

Since Christmas I’ve now touched my toes in the water of the Microsoft platform…Windows 8 to be blunt, not only on the desktop (well a VM or Virtual Machine on my Mac) but also the Microsoft Surface RT and Windows Phone 8 (HTC 8X).  I’ll try to blog about these a little later, I’ve also hit some health issues since July which has kinda been my core focus on getting my health under control, which I now have, which is a sigh of relief.

I won’t go into the health problems here that I suffered last year, they’re for another blog ;) but needless to say I hopefully have it under control (well as much control as one can).

So it’s the end of January 2013, a month has gone by already and I’m looking at the tech gear I have piled up here thinking…..OMG!  3x iPhone’s, iPad 3, iPad mini, Microsoft Surface RT, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite and thinking how much time technology is now back in my life.  Oh and nearly forgot, the HTC 8X (Windows Phone 8).

You’ll hear a lot more from me on the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite, along with the Surface RT and Windows Phone 8 soon!  Probably ramblings more than anything but you’ll be able to read them!

Oh and yes, I did say someone would have to drag me back to Windows Phone kicking and screaming…well sometimes you have to eat humble pie, and sometimes you just need to be a good tech reviewer and see what’s out there on the other side of nirvana.  That doesn’t mean I’m about to try the new Blackberry Z10, that is definitely off-limits for me, trust me!

British music was also showcased from the 70,’s, 80’s, 90’s and spectacular pyrotechnics and fireworks were seen around the stadium and London including Tower Bridge.