And there is no problem that humankind has ever faced that cannot be overcome with some careful thinking, creativity, and a little Lego.

You’ll find the build instructions here.

Nokia X

Nokia’s experiments with modified Android are interesting (and possibly short-lived!) – this device runs a Nokia Browser with Opera available on the App store. We’ve named this after friend of the lab @Froots101, who seemed frankly delighted. It’s being launched primarily in India, but whenever a new or modified platform springs up it’s worth seeing if we can acquire a device to see how differently it behaves with your apps and websites.

HTC Hero

Android Gingerbread (2.3.3 – 2.3.7) still accounts for around 15% of Android versions in the wild and we’ve run CyanogenMod 7 on this handset to bring it up to Android 2.3.7, which was previously missing from our range of Android devices. We only need to locate a device to run 2.3.3 and we will have full coverage of all Android versions in use, across both tablets and handsets. This device was donated by Orde and named after David Cole (@MayfieldDigital) who originally gave it to Orde!

Nokia Asha 311

John Cooper from Nokia originally sent us a Nokia Asha 305, which we named ‘Stringer’ as with two sim card slots it seemed like the ideal burner for the Wire’s fictional drug kingpin. However, sadly we soon discovered it lacked Wifi which made testing and debugging trickier, so we’ve replaced him with the aptly named ‘Marlow’ which does have Wifi.

Palm Pre

Another donation from Orde, this time named after Det. Kate Beckett in the TV series ‘Castle’, who carries one as her mobile phone in the show. WebOS sadly isn’t used as widely nowadays, but was one of the originally promising alternatives to iOS. And somewhere, someone is accessing your site on one, while still pretending it’s 2009.

RIP, Wonderboy.

There’s the spirit! RT @ben_seven: The touchscreen on this cheap droid tablet is not so much ‘resistive’ as it is actively hostile.

— Stephanie Rieger (@stephanierieger) August 7, 2013

What to say about Wonderboy? The Android 2.3, ~£40 cheap tablet from eBay with the resistive touchscreen. Officially the worst user experience of any device we carried. And a build quality that would make even the folks at your local Poundstretcher cringe.

A Wondermedia product, he was so bad we elected he was actually something of a hero – we called him Wonderboy after the Tenacious D song.

But he’s stuck in a bootloop, and we can’t rescue him. No amount of reflashing firmware will do the trick. And so we will simply mount him on the wall to remind us that no matter how frustrating testing on some of our devices is, in comparison they’ll never quite stand up to Wonderboy.

First there was the sneak peek on Instagram:

Then there was the awesome gallery that emerged of his whole model;

Awesome effort, and thanks.

We’ll have some more news soon about the new devices and tools we’ve added to the lab in recent months. Bye for now!

We had a pretty awesome number of folk through the door (around forty or so over the course of the evening), drinks provided by Vino wine shop and Vitamin Water, and some great chat.

It turns out our security cameras aren’t just useful for capturing amusing gifs of fellow Yardie Radek…

…it’s also useful for catching a cool bit of time-lapse of the party!

Folk seemed to have fun, at least according to Twitter:

I did a bit of a crap job thanking people on the night, so here’s the (hopefully) definitive list of thanks to folk who have funded, advised, helped and encouraged us to get going…

Stephan, Paul, Ian and the team at Yard Digital for investing everything we needed to get up and running; Paolo, Radek and Sash for their help on the technical side of things;

Bryan and Stephanie Rieger of Yiibu, Orde Saunders, Jim Newbery, Colin Hewitt, Jason Grigsby and Jeremy Keith for their encouragement and invaluable advice along the way;

Luca at Blackberry, John Cooper at Nokia and Roan at FreeAgent for their sponsorship, along with everyone else who donated a device;

My friends and family who have helped out with carrying, building, installing, stickering and generally being awesome; in particular my wife, Jules!

You all rock.

It’s finally time.

We’ve been battering away for a while now, getting together funds and facilities to open Scotland’s first community device testing lab. And now it’s time to share it with you.

If you haven’t already received an invite to our launch night, fill out the form below – and while you’re at it, sign up for more news in the coming weeks when we announce pricing, our full device list, and the opening of bookings. Share this post with anyone you know who might be interested in using the lab, so they can attend too.

See you on Friday 23rd!

B

More news soon!