Gadget News and More

Elago S4 glide case for iPhone 4 review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:29:00 -0700

What is it?
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The Elago S4 Glide Case is a two piece, hard-shell, slider style case which in my opinion is one of the best of it's kind. With this product I really believe that Elago really showed off what they are capable of in terms of design - which they are well known for etc.
First Impressions
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One of elago's qualities is design, and this really comes in the case and the packaging as they fit everything into the case in the packaging and even another bottom piece (the second bottom piece) of the two-piece hard shell case is neatly concealed in there as well as some other accessories.
What it Comes With
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It comes with; Microfiber Frabric - keeps your iPhone clean ,

Two protection films - one for the front of your iPhone and one for the back,

An extra bottom piece - meaning you can replace the bottom pieces of the

two-piece Case with either the same colour as the top piece or a different one

A Set of Screen films
-Very smartly designed, Elago did a great job with this. They cut the screen film that goes on the front of the iPhone to be a tiny bit smaller than the actual screen which makes it fit perfectly on to a slider style case like this S4

Glide. And the the case doesn't bubble the screen protector, again just because it's cut a little bit smaller than the actual screen of the iPhone.

-It also comes with the back film, and in my experience with most back screen films, once you put on the case, the case gets stuck. However Elago's back protection film is incredibly thin and fits perfectly with the slider case.

Design & Other Details

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There is a rim around the front of the case, which stops the face of your iPhone from hitting the table when placed face down on the table. The two pieces of the case also fit firmly together.

Also there is a good cut out for the camera which doesn't affect the flash.

You have easy access to all the keys, such as; the ringer, both volume controls and the sleep/wake key at the top and the home key. Easy access to the headset jack and wide cut out for the dock connector and speakers.

I was a bit taken aback at the fact that this case has no rubber resisters or padding of any kind to protect the phone internally, on the other hand the two front and back protective films also do a good job in internal protection.

There are many various colours to choose from: coral blue, indigo, white, black, pink, baby blue, orange, gray, red, and yellow. Each one is coupled with two bottom clips to allow further customisation of the case.

Apple Is Said to Pay About $50 Million for Chomp and their wonder app

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:28:00 -0800

The US apps discovery startup Chomp has been obtained by Apple for a rumoured $50m (£32m), as it looks to make it easier and simpler for iOS users to find the best iPhone and iPad apps.

The news was first proclaimed by TechCrunch which claims "Apple has bought the Chomp team and technology and plans to use both to completely revamp App Store search and recommendations".

TechCrunch's story gave no price tag for the deal, however since then Bloomberg has claimed that Apple paid around $50m (£32) for Chomp.

Apple has confirmed it's 'addition but not the price. spokeswoman Amy Bessette told Bloomberg: "We buy smaller technology companies from time to time and generally don't comment on our purposes or plans."

9 to 5 Mac has also joined this 'discussion', claiming that Ben Keighram, Chomp chief executive now works for Apple's iTunes marketing team, whilst also Cathy Edwards is a senior iTunes engineer. At this time neither of them had updated their LinkedIn profile however this does not really make much of a significant point to say that they had not changed jobs as any difficulty could have popped up.

Chomp iPhone app was launched in January 2010 as a way for iPhone users to write short reviews on their favourite iPhone apps, and then browse a feed of other peoples recommendations.

By August in that same year it had 400,000 active users, and had a great focus on search. At that time Ben Keighram described it as the most personalised way to search and browse for apps, also adding that: "Apple is insanely excited about this."

This great addition should help Apple with one of its key challenges which it does not cater for: helping iOS users discover apps at a time when there are more than 550,000 available in its App Store.

Purchasing Chomp can also be seen as proclamation of no confidence or belief in Apple's existing Genius technology, at least in the searching of apps.

Genius, was originally developed and created to provide iTunes music recommendations based on people's existing collection of music, in September 2009 Genius for apps was introduced, suggesting new apps for a person based on previous individual purchases and downloads.

It is expected of course Chomp to get rid of it's non-iOS services quickly. Such as an Android version of this app which was launched in March 2011, whilst it started to work with US mobile operator Verizon Wireless on recommendations for its Android app store in September later that year.

It is quite unknown about what will happen to Chomp's standalone iPhone app, although it is probably most likely to be pulled from the App Store and reappear as an Apple app.

Review: Silicone Horn Stand Speaker for Apple iPhone 4 from Bone (BudgetGadgets.com)

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:42:00 -0800

Over recent months we have seen lots of add-ons for the iPhone and iPad etc. such as joysticks, controllers and even add-on lightsabers??!?!??!! However one of the most useful and practical "add-ons" has got to be the Silicone Horn Stand Speaker for Apple iPhone 4 from Bone ( BudgetGadgets.com)

How it Works and what colours it comes in etc.
The design does not just look unique for the sake of it but improves the output volume "the old school way" through an acoustic amplifier. (picture)

Like a trumpet sound is concentrated through the horn amplifying it without electronics or batteries.

How the Silicone horn stand amplifies the sound - Noordinarygadget

This product is available in colours; light blue, black, white, yellow, light green, pink, peach, dark red, lime green, sky blue and purple.

What it Can do

The Silicone Horn Stand Speaker for Apple iPhone 4 (- BudgetGadgets.com) is light weight and very flexible. It is made of Silicone which is machine washable, dust and scratch free!

Light material makes the Silicone Horn Stand Speaker for Apple iPhone 4 very convenient, it is also extremely practical especially compared to a portable speaker which has a very high probability of being larger than the Silicone Horn Stand Speaker for Apple iPhone 4.

The portable charger may also need batteries of some sort of power supply, and annoying add-ons which this product does not need because of it's smart design makes use of the shape of the horn to concentrate the sound through the horn hence amplifying the sound, it increases the sound by 13 decibels (dB) which is around 2.5x louder!

The home key, microphone on you iPhone are still accessible, there is a cut out for the at the bottom of the product for the charging port (picture) which allows you to charge you iPhone when listening to music or watching a movie or whenever! There is a gap for your microphone so you can still make calls whilst this product is still on your iPhone and lastly there is no gap for the speaker on your iPhone as it is 'connected' to the horn.

Vertical

The product is also a stand for your iPhone it works horizontally and vertically. Horizontally is also perfect for watching and good for whatever use you have for your iPhone, It fits well around the iPhone 4 and gives good support for it. (picture) you can also separate it into two parts which you can put back together.

Horizontal (with a film!)

Final Verdict

This unique product is very well made and has alot to offer you. Enjoy louder and decent sound with no noise or distraction for a great price. It is NOT very easily worn, flexible, and I can't really think of a con for it. It is easy to put your iPhone in and take it out, no external power is required and great for face time, watching movies, reading books, documents, texts etc, and amazing for music. I just believe that it's a smart little product that was well thought of.

CLICK HERE TO BUY ONE (Below is a coupon)

If you have any questions about the product don't hesitate to ask me by commenting below.

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For 5% discount off this product and all the products on budgetgadgets.com site-wide use the coupon "noordinarygadget"

Announcement of iPad 3 First Week of March......

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:20:00 -0800

There has been alot of talk and rumours online on the subject of the new iPad 3 due out this year. Of those rumors, one of them has been when we are going to here the official word from Apple, in relation to the presentation, announcement and showing of the product. "AllThingsD" is now saying that Apple will in fact be announcing the iPad 3, to the world at a point during the first week of March 2012 . After that announcement, the iPad 3 should then be availible for purchase at some point during the second and third week of March in North America.

“Apple’s not holding an event in February. But it is holding one in March — to launch its next iPad. Sources say the company has chosen the first week in March to debut the successor to the iPad 2 and will do so at one of its trademark special events. The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these.”

The iPad 3 is predicted and expected to have; a retina HD display with 2048 x 1536 resolution, an upgraded rear camera, iOS 5.1, a larger battery for improved battery life and a quad-core A6 processor. Other improvements are said to include 4G LTE (Long term evolution) models of the iPad 3 all fitting within the same casing as the iPad 2. Hopefully this probably means that for those of you who brought cases, keyboards and other accesories for your iPad 2 will work with the iPad 3 if you decide to purchase it.

Apple iPad 3 With Quad-Core Processor Approaching

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:33:00 -0800

The Apple iPad 3 rumours have been all over like a rash now for the last couple of months and a new rumour has emerged.

Bloomberg has been speaking to three people familiar with the iPad 3 who claim that it will come with a quad-core processor , have a higher resolution display and will support LTE.

Apparently, production will start to gear up this month and will reach maximum capacity by next month. If this information is true in the slightest then its quite possible that we could see the Apple iPad 3 as early as March.

A quad-core processor would be a brilliant add-on to the iPad, while a higher resolution Retina display is always appreciated and welcomed. Also the addition of LTE will be one of the biggest pieces of news to US users because it'll enable much faster than download speeds giving new possibilities for downloading, streaming and a lot more.

We've heard all sorts of rumours about the iPad 3 and iPad 2S and we'll just have to wait patiently for Apple to unveil the details. Once anything else is mentioned about the "3G" I will try and provide you with information as quickly as possible.

Huawei Ascend P1 S is worlds thinnest phone.........

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Mon, 9 Jan 2012 14:35:00 -0800

The Huawei Ascend P1 S has stolen the crown of the world's thinnest phone, with the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich powered Huawei Ascend P1 S.

Revealed at CES 2012, the dual-core 1.5GHz processor-powered Android is an quite impressive 6.68mm thin, and also boasts a
4.3-inch super AMOLED touchscreen, 8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.3-megapixel front-facing cameras with dual flash LED and HDR effect optimisation.

Huawei also unveiled the Ascend P1 which, as part of the same smartphone series, boasts the same functionality while measuring a comparatively chunky 7.69mm (which was quite unnecessary!).

The Huawei Ascend P1 S and Huawei Ascend P1 are expected to be available in the UK in early Q3 (third quarter this year) 2012, according to Huawei.

Apple's iPad 3 Coming in Two Models in 2012: Rumor

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:08:00 -0800

eWeek leaked that Apple's next iPad will arrive in two models (which would be quite a change for apple) and the iPad 2 will be repositioned to battle against the fast selling Amazon's Kindle Fire according to a DigiTimes report. Apple will unveil two iPad models at a conference in January, according to Taiwanese publication.

Meanwhile, according to the report, the new iPads will feature higher-resolution screens and “dual-LED light bars” to “strengthen the brightness of the panels.” (quotes from DigiTimes)

Earlier in December, DigiTimes quoted still other unnamed sources in the supply chain as claiming the first next-generation iPads would arrive within three or four months....... Certainly if Apple follows the same release schedual of the previous two iPad versions, the next will make its debut early in 2012, but however the wild, unfounded, far-fetched rumors that usually accompany each new iPad on its way to close unveiling and release, it just pays of to take many of the reports with a miniature grain of salt.

Apple concludes 2011 with a untouched share of the tablet market. However, the competition is unlikely to be diminiuative in 2012. Microsoft and its manufacturing partners are prepping a series of tablets running the upcoming Windows 8, which will make a hard play for PC power users and businesses. In addition, competitors like Samsung are still grasping the edge tablet fight. Whatever Apple decides to release next year, it will continue to face a crowded marketplace, which I'm sure it will do!

Microsoft lines up Tablet series for 2012

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:39:00 -0800

We are comming up to the year 2012 and new news is that Microsoft is preparing a new generation of Windows Tablet for 2012 running Windows 8, will be another competitor to the booming tablet market, Bring on 2012!

Hasbro sues Asus over Transformer Prime 'copy'???

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 13:12:00 -0800

Toy maker Hasbro is suing computer manufacturer Asus for daring - allegedly - to name an Android tablet after one of its biggest money spinners.
Yes, Hasbro owns the Transformers line, and is annoyed not only that Asus has released the Eee Pad Transformer but also added the word 'Prime' to the end of the product's moniker.
Optimus Prime, as any ten-year-old or Michael Bay will tell you, is the leader of the goodie Transformers, known for their multi-pivot limbs and cunning disguises.

Hasbro's legal assault team attempts to impede Asus tablets' entry into Blighty

Said the plastic figure giant: "The specific actions we are taking today against Asus underscores yet again Hasbro’s willingness to pursue companies who misappropriate our intellectual property for their own financial gain."
We'd argue the company doesn't have a (retractable) leg to stand on.
Lots of companies share names, but provided they operate in very different markets, that is considered reasonable and not an invasion of either's territory.
Then there's the fact that while Transformers are robots that ingeniously 'transform' from humanoid figures into a vehicles, the Transformer Prime is a two-part unit that intentionally comes apart.

Robot in disguise?

The only Transformers that ever came apart are those yanked to bits by irate youngsters unable to get them to transform correctly.
Transformers are brightly coloured. Transformer Primes comes in dull, gun-metal grey and a bronzy colour Asus calls 'champaign'.
Presumably, with a five-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chip on board, the Prime will fizz when in arrives early next year.
If it does, of course - Hasbro lawyers will undoubtedly seek to block its entry into the US and possibly elsewhere too. Which all seems a bit petty and trivial to me..........

-reghardware

Sodastream Fountain Jet Specifications

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:46:00 -0800

With the SodaStream Jet Starter Kit, you've got everything you need to turn tap water into sparkling water in 30 seconds--saves your money. This black/silver SodaStream Jet soda maker comes with one CO2 cylinder that will make up to 60 liters of sparkling water. With no batteries or electricity, you can use your soda maker in your kitchen, outdoors on your patio or deck, or on your boat or R.V.

In addition to making fizzy water, SodaStream also offers more than 25 regular, diet, energy and caffeine-free flavors of syrup (sold separately). Each 500ml soda mix bottle makes the equivalent of 12 liters of soda (about 33 cans). And with over 25 flavors, the possibilities for creative beverages are limited only by your imagination. How about a Creamsicle (Orange and Cream Soda), or a Japanese Beetle (Ginger Ale and Lemon-Lime)? The regular soda mixes contain no high fructose corn syrup, while the diet soda mixes contain no aspartame.
The benefits of the SodaStream drinks maker, compared to ready made bottled drinks:

Provides an endless supply of sparkling water, freshly made from tap water in just a few seconds.
No more need to buy, carry or store large quantities of heavy and bulky bottles.
A wide variety of flavors are produced by SodaStream.
The ability to make sparkling water as strong or as weak as one likes, makes the machine an ideal solution for the family's entire sparkling beverage needs.

The Jet soda maker carbonates water in a BPA-free, reusable one-liter bottle in less than 30 seconds, without electricity or batteries, and with no clean-up. After loading the carbonator into the soda-maker, fill the bottle with regular tap or filtered water and place it in the soda maker. Just pump the button a few times to add the fizz and in seconds you will have a liter of fresh, tasty soda or sparkling water in a resealable bottle that stores compactly in your fridge.
When the CO2 carbonator is empty, you can visit the SodaStream web site to purchase a new CO2 cylinder as well as set up a cylinder exchange, which helps to eliminate waste. SodaStream collects your empty cylinder and returns it to our filling facility where it's cleaned, inspected and refilled.
The SodaStream Jet measures 16.7 by 5.3 by 7.9 inches (HxWxD) and weighs 2.58 pounds.
How Does SodaStream Help the Environment?
SodaStream is an "Active Green" company, meaning that consumers actively minimize their CO2 footprint when using the SodaStream system. The more the system is used on a daily basis, the more CO2 footprint the user actively saves. This differs from "Passive Green" brands, which use green-friendly production processes, but their products are not inherently helping you save on your daily footprint.
Because SodaStream uses water straight from the tap, the system makes traditional store-bought beverage bottles obsolete. That means, less plastic manufactured, less plastic waste and less transport of bottled beverages. Globally, 206 billion liters of bottled water were consumed in 2008 (Zenith International Global Bottled Water Report, 2008), and the energy required to make water bottles just in the US is equivalent to 17 million barrels of oil (Container Recycling Institute, 2002).
A family of four could slash their home soft-drink-related packaging usage by over 90 percent simply by using a SodaStream soda maker, and SodaStream's plastic carbonating bottle are reusable for up to three years. A typical American will toss away over 1500 aluminum cans (and/or hundreds of plastic 2-liter bottles) over three years, while a SodaStream owner will use just one carbonating bottle or carafe that come with the home soda maker.
Operating without batteries or electricity, SodaStream home soda makers are highly energy-efficient small appliances. Appliances that work without electricity improve the environment by cutting down on the emissions generated by electrical plants, giving us cleaner air and ground water.
By operating completely on power supplied by the compressed air in the carbonator--an easily renewable fuel source--SodaStream does not contribute to environmental pollution made by batteries. Empty carbonators are returned to SodaStream to be cleaned, inspected and refilled with CO2 drawn naturally from the air. Carbonators are reusable as long as they remain in good condition.

SodaStream Fountain Jet Soda Maker Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:43:00 -0800

Pros

Easy to use

Doesn't take up much space on the counter

Users can adjust the level of fizziness in their soda

Cons

Water must be chilled before using
Soda in the bottles loses carbonation within a few days
Can only be used on plain water (add flavorings afterwards)
Bottles are not dishwasher-safe

Description

Machine and bottles are made of recyclable materials; CO2 cylinder can be traded in for full ones
Comes with 2 1-liter reusable BPA-free plastic bottles and lids, as well as a CO2 cylinder good for about 60 liters of soda
Does not require electricity or batteries
24-month warranty includes free repair or replacement for faulty workmanship or inferior materials

Guide Review - SodaStream Jet Soda Maker

The problem is, the cost of those sodas adds up, and lugging the bottles home from the store (plus out to the recycling bin when they're empty) can be quite a chore.

So when I saw the SodaStream C100 soda maker, I thought it would might be a good solution. And, for the most part, it is.

The SodaStream is a non-electric countertop device that pumps carbonation into water via a CO2 canister that is included with the machine (Note: Don't do as I did and try to either travel with or ship your SodaStream – CO2 cylinders are considered hazardous materials and are pretty impossible for the average consumer to transport). The SodaStream also comes with two 1-liter plastic bottles and lids. The bottles are BPA free and are reusable, which makes them very eco-friendly. Plus, they last for 3 years (bottles are even marked with the "use-by" date). Extra bottles are available for purchase separately, and once you've used up your CO2 canister, you can exchange it at an authorized retailer for a new cylinder, and pay only the cost of the gas (at my local kitchenware store, this ends up being only around $13, whereas buying the cylinder itself is twice that much). The company claims the carbonator will make 60 liters of soda water, depending on the amount of carbonation used for each bottle (A larger cylinder is also available that carbonate up to 110 liters of water).

Using the SodaStream is simple: You screw the CO2 cylinder into the back of the machine (the canister can stay in place until it's empty), then screw a bottle of chilled water into the front of the machine. Then, press the carbonating button a few times until you hear the machine buzz. Three buzzes will yield standard carbonation (which seems as fizzy as a just-opened can of soda), more or fewer buzzes will give you more or less carbonation according to your preference. Then, unscrew the bottle from the drinkmaker and either drink it immediately, or cap it and refrigerate it for later. The SodaStream can only be used to carbonate plain water, but for flavored soda, you can add syrups, juices or extracts to the bottle or to your glass.

I found only a few drawbacks of the SodaStream. For one, you need to chill your bottle of water first, which can be a drag if you are making multiple drinks and only have 2 bottles, or if you want a spur-of-the-moment beverage. Second, the bottles must be washed by hand. And finally, I wish the user manual had a few recipes for making your own soda concentrates. SodaStream sells its own line of soda concentrates, but they are all filled with artificial ingredients, which makes me itch to create my own (Although I do like that the sweetener for the diet versions is Splenda rather than aspartame). But for around £68 for the kit, I think the SodaStream is a fun and useful accessory for soda lovers.

Vita-Mix 5200 blender Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 02:53:00 -0800

- In this Vita Mix blender review, we’ll take a look at the ever-popular Vitamix 5200. The Vitamix 5200 is Vitamix’s flagship blender and makes whole food juice, cooks steaming hot soup from scratch, and even makes healthy, homemade ice cream.

The Vitamix 5200 blender is built like a tank, and it was designed to outperform and outlast virtually every other appliance on the market. It is a high performance appliance that combines versatility with commercial-grade components and construction.

If you’ve never handled a Vita Mix blender before, you’re in for a treat. From the first time we picked up the Vitamix 5200, it was obvious that this blender was built like an absolute tank.

Featuring an impressive Swedish-built 2 peak HP motor that was custom designed for the Vitamix 5200, this blender runs much cooler and is much more energy efficient than other blenders we’ve reviewed.

We’re also big fans of the Vitamix 5200′s feedback-type variable speed control. With speeds ranging from 11 mph to 240 mph, the blender provides steady, consistent power regardless of load.The blender includes an all-new Eastman Tritan 64 ounce copolyester container that provides the durability of polycarbonate, but features improved chemical resistance and sound damping. The ergonomic soft-grip handle is extremely comfortable to hold, and makes pouring a joy.

Blending food during our tests was never a challenge for the Vitamix 5200, thanks in large part to the unique stainless steel hammermill and cutting “wet” blades. These blades process whole foods better than any other appliance we’ve tested to date, and don’t overheat the food in the process (which can destroy up to 3 times the nutrition value).

The spill-proof vented lid with removable lid plug which is a nice touch, making it easy to measure and add ingredients safely while the blender is running. Last (but certainly not least), clean up is super quick and easy with the Vitamix 5200 blender — simply add a few drops of dish soap, some warm water, and run on high for 30 seconds.

Vitamix 5200 Blender Review – Final Thoughts

The Vitamix 5200 blender is a beast of a machine that easily tackled everything we threw at it, and the overall build quality left us truly impressed.

If you’re seriously thinking about buying a Vita Mix blender, you’re probably already aware of the fact that these machines aren’t exactly cheap. However, if you truly want to purchase the best blender money can buy and make an investment in an appliance that will serve you faithfully for many years to come, there’s no better choice in our opinion. Add to that the fact that the Vitamix 5200 is backed by a full 7 year warranty and this can save you, money on soups, smothies, cocktails etc. I would HIGHLY recommend purchasing one.

-Noordinarygadget

The Vita-Mix 5200

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 02:19:00 -0800

The Vita-Mix 5200 is a so-called "high performance blender." High performance blenders can be used for tasks which are not always possible with a normal blender, such as making your own peanut butter or homemade flour.

The high-performance label is usually only given to blenders with a motor that has 2 horsepower or higher, but it's important to check the actual specifications of any blender you may be considering purchasing, or you may not get the best bang for your blending buck.

The Vita-Mix 5200 uses a custom designed 2 horsepower Swedish motor. This can be considered the most important part of a high performance blender, as it's what gives the blender the power to blend food into a finer consistency than conventional home blenders.

The Vita-Mix 5200 uses a copolyester container with an attached blade. The standard Vita-Mix 5200 package contains a single wet-blade container useful for blending wet foods. A separate dry-food blade container comes with some of the more expensive packages or can be bought separately.

Unlike some other high performance blenders with digital controls, the Vita-Mix 5200 uses a simple set of manual switches and a speed dial.

The Vitamix 5200 stands 20.5 inches tall including the container in place, 8.75 inches deep and 7.25 inches wide. It weighs 10.9 pounds.

Sony Tablet S Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:02:00 -0800

Sony has an enviable record of producing top-quality, high-end laptops, but its attempts to jump on the budget portable bandwagon have so far met with mixed success. It ignored netbooks until it was too late, and even tried to reinvent the genre with the ill-fated, pocket-sized P Series.

Its belated entry into the tablet race, the Tablet S, is a much more mainstream affair. Pricing is on a par with the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1: the 16GB Wi-Fi version costs £399, and the 32GB is £480, while the 16GB 3G model costs £500. It has a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU and 1GB of RAM running Android Honeycomb 3.2.

Sony being Sony, though, things aren’t left at that. In fact, in a market where it’s becoming increasingly tough to stand out, the Tablet S is something of a guiding light. It boasts a unique wedge-shaped profile, which has a number of advantages. When you pop it down on a desk, it sets the screen at a slight angle so you don’t have to hunch over to see the screen and type. The thick edge gives you a good chunk to grip onto, and most of the weight is at that edge, making it much more balanced to hold in one hand than its rivals. The 586g weight, smaller 9.4in screen and grippy, textured rear panel also help.

Other practical additions include a micro USB socket that can be used not only as a means of transferring files from PC/laptop to tablet, but also as a USB host, allowing you to connect extra storage, a keyboard, mouse or game controller via a converter cable (not included). There’s also a full-sized SD card slot, so supplementing the 16GB or 32GB of storage is simple. The one major omission is an HDMI output.

The best part is that although the textured plastics don’t feel as expensive as those in the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Tablet S looks every bit the premium device. Its thin edge tapers down to 9.8mm, the sides are shaped so the tablet looks like a folded-over sheaf of paper, and the gloss black contrasts satisfyingly with matte silver plastic. It’s a very handsome piece of kit.

Sony’s other main innovation focuses on home entertainment, with the Tablet S featuring an infrared emitter, allowing it to be used as a universal remote control. As you’d expect, setting up new devices is straightforward: select the manufacturer from a list, then the product type, and cycle through the options provided until you hit upon something that works.

In a few minutes, we had a Samsung TV and Windows Media Center PC up and running, then took it to another house and set up a Sky HD box and Panasonic Viera TV. We struggled when it came to more esoteric AV components: stereo amplifiers are limited to seven manufacturers, and we couldn’t find ours on the list; and there was no sign of the Virgin Media TiVo DVR.

But the good news is the tablet can also “learn” commands, so if you can’t find your device in the tablet’s very long list, you’ll be able to program it in. And once set up, it all works beautifully.

There’s no point in innovating if you don’t do the basics right, and we’re happy to report that Sony has got it spot on. The 1,280 x 800 resolution display is top class, boasting superb brightness and contrast. We measured the former at 379cd/m² and the latter at 733:1 – on a level with the iPad 2. Suffice it to say, movies and pictures look outstanding, and good viewing angles mean it’s just at home acting as a shared photo album as a personal movie and music player.

Menu scrolling and the like feel immediate and smooth, as do web page panning, zooming and scrolling actions. And when pushed through our set of benchmarks, the Sony produced the sorts of figures we’ve come to expect from a top tablet: the BBC desktop homepage loaded in four seconds, the SunSpider JavaScript test finished in 2,191ms, and it scored 1,805 points in the Android Quadrant benchmark. Battery life is acceptable: it played our low-resolution video continuously for 8hrs 41mins before running out of juice.

The camera is excellent: not up to the standards of the best smartphones, but strides ahead of the tablet competition, with good contrast and decent autofocus and a lot less of the hideous, smeary over-compression that afflicts so many of its competitors. It’s a shame there’s no flash to help out in low light, though.

Software

As is increasingly the case with Honeycomb tablets, Sony has tweaked the interface in various ways and thrown in a bundle of extra software. On the desktop, Sony adds four small (rather ugly) shortcut icons at the top of the Honeycomb desktop next to the Google Search and Voice Search options, for the browser, the remote app, the social networking app and email.

In the top-right corner of the Android desktop is a shortcut to another frivolous extra – the Favourites screen, which groups recent apps and activities together in a sort of 3D video wall. Sony has also replaced the standard Honeycomb icons for many of the core Google apps with its own. Quite why, we couldn’t say.

Fortunately, the changes aren’t all bad. We like the revamped app drawer, which sees a change of colour scheme (from black to white) and scrolling orientation (it’s now vertical rather than horizontal), plus the addition of various viewing and organisational tools. Apps can be sorted alphabetically, or by “Newest first”. Custom dividers can be used to split apps into groups, and shortcuts rearranged with a quick drag of the finger. And the screen can be viewed in two-column or grid layout.

PlayStation certification means the Tablet S will be able to play old-school PS One games, with two titles included as tasters: the venerable Crash Bandicoot and Pinball Heroes. Yet the PlayStation Store app needed to purchase further games wasn’t up and running when we wrote this review. Sony says it will release this sometime in October.

Sony includes its own music and video apps, both of which come in addition to the existing standard Honeycomb offerings. The principal appeal of these – aside from a rather attractive cover art “coffee table”-style view, which allows you to rummage through albums as if they were strewn on a flat surface in front of you – is the ability to “throw” music and video from the tablet to a suitable DLNA-compatible device. It’s a great idea, but not one that currently works very well. It recognised Windows Media Player on our network, but refused to play any file we attempted to send across.

There are also improved camera apps, Sony’s own ebook reader software, a social networking app that aggregates Twitter and Facebook feeds, a DLNA client for streaming music and video across the network to the tablet, plus links to the company’s Music and Video Unlimited services (although again, the service wasn’t yet up and running when we tried to test it).

Verdict

There’s a lot packed in, and despite some ragged edges the software line-up certainly adds plenty of value. And that’s the picture we take away from Sony’s Tablet S as a whole. It may be unusual, but it isn’t quirky for the sake of it. The design works very well, the universal remote control facility is a stroke of genius and it’s backed up by solid performance in all the key areas: the camera is good, the screen is excellent, the battery life fine, and performance well up there with the best.

In terms of sheer desirability, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a brighter screen and slimmer, sexier profile, while the iPad 2 has its far larger library of tablet-specific apps to give it an edge. But we have to say Sony’s new baby runs them very close indeed.

iPhone 3G Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:42:00 -0800

It's hard to think of any other device that's enjoyed the level of exposure and hype that Apple found in the launch of the first iPhone. Who could forget it? Everyone got to be a gadget nerd for a day; even those completely disinterested in technology seemed to come down with iPhone fever. But the original device was still far from perfect: its limited capabilities (especially in the 3G department), high price of entry, and the small number of countries in which it was available kept many potential buyers sidelined. Until now -- or so Apple hopes.

The wireless industry is a notoriously tough nut to crack, and it's become pretty clear that the first iPhone wasn't about total domination so much as priming the market and making a good first impression with some very dissatisfied cellphone users. With the iPhone 3G, though, Apple's playing for keeps. Not only is this iPhone's Exchange enterprise support aiming straight for the heart of the business market, but the long-awaited 3rd party application support and App Store means it's no longer just a device, but a viable computing platform. And its 3G network compatibility finally makes the iPhone welcome the world over.

The hardware
No one will have any trouble recognizing the new device from its face -- it's essentially identical to the original iPhone. Thankfully, the bright, high quality, high resolution 480 x 320 3.5-inch display that's just so easy to love, hasn't been changed a bit. Unfortunately, it's still every bit as much a magnet for smudges and fingerprints -- in fact, even more so now that the rear of the device has dropped its chic matte aluminum in favor of black (or white, optional on the 16GB model) plastic. Hey, at least now it's more symmetrical.

The move to plastic seemed almost inevitable now that the iPhone has so many radios, frequencies, and antenna needs (GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS), but while we do prefer the original aluminum, the plastic does feel pretty solid and not at all flimsy, which is more than we can say for a hell of a lot of handsets. There's no doubt about the fact that we'd have preferred a matte or soft-touch finish to the glossy plastic, but that's all a matter of taste.

The body of the phone is slightly thicker at its center than its predecessor, although the edges are tapered and thinner than before, which is always a good way to make a device feel smaller than it actually is. (Palm learned this a long time ago.) There are a couple downsides to the body shape, though: first, when you're tapping off-center on a hard, flat surface, the phone wobbles (but only a little, oh well).

Second, the new shape means you won't be using it in your original device's dock. This really wouldn't be all that bad if Apple included a dock with the 3G like they did with the first iPhone, but now they want you to buy that separately. Did we mention they're asking $30 for it? Way lame. That absurdly small power adapter kind of makes up for it, but only a little.

One thing Apple was keen to talk up is the vastly improved call quality of the iPhone 3G. Those in the know understand that 3G call quality is often better than regular GSM -- but it turns out Apple made a huge improvement on both sides. iPhone 3G calls made over 3G and GSM both sounded significantly better than calls made on the original iPhone. If you're upgrading your device iPhone you may not necessarily notice it, but on a side by side it was pretty obvious.

Of course, call quality most often depends on coverage, and coverage varies between 3G and GSM networks depending on where you are. 3G calling also requires more battery power. Where are we going with this? Well, despite many of the painstaking measures Apple's taken to preserve battery power, the iPhone 3G doesn't do any real time signal detection to help determine whether you currently have better 3G or GSM voice coverage. If you suspect you might get better coverage either on or off 3G, it's up to you to dig down through a few settings menus to flip the switch. Not a deal breaker by any means, but it'd make for a welcome fix.

Apple's numbers on the iPhone 3G's battery life peg it at 10 / 5 hours talk on GSM / 3G (respectively), 5 hours 3G data, 6 hours WiFi, 24 hours music and 7 hours video. Pretty much everything we've found in our testing jibes with Apple's claims, if not exceeds them. (Our early results testing video early on skewed low because we had mistakenly left on push and fetch data, which dropped the battery life by almost 25%. After re-testing, they're back up to spec.)

All our tests were conducted with 3G on, WiFi on (not connected), Bluetooth off, no data fetching enabled (unless specified otherwise). Media tested with stock headphones, medium volume, and medium screen brightness, auto-brightness disabled.

Music (continuous playback, large library, occasionally turning on screen): 31h 23m
Video (continuous playback, no push/fetch data): 7h 5m
Video (continuous playback, with push and 15 minute fetch data): 5h 24m
Daily data use (browsing, email, and GPS / maps): ~6h 30m

Those numbers definitely are not bad, but if you're anything like us and you kill time on your phone reading feeds and checking email like a fiend, by 3 or 4pm you'll likely be wondering if you'll even make it home with any power left -- especially if you leave on the 3G data. So be warned, because the kind of prolonged usage you used to get away with on the original iPhone probably isn't possible with the iPhone 3G. For some, this may be an issue. Others may never notice.

There have been a number of other fixes to better the device as well. For example, the phone now has two proximity sensors to better detect when it's held to your ear. We also found that while the camera was essentially identical, we were getting images that were ever so slightly sharper and crisper than the original iPhone on 1.1.4 (check it out below). Still, knowing that HTC's Touch Diamond -- which features a 3.2 megapixel sensor and mechanical autofocus -- could pack such a great camera in an even smaller form factor than the iPhone's left us pining for something a bit more than the same 2 megapixels from the first time around.What we're probably the most excited about, though, is that two of our biggest hardware-related gripes from the original device have finally been addressed: first, the headphone jack is now flush, which means any standard (3.5mm) headphones will work in the iPhone without the need for an adapter. The new jack has a solid, confidence-inspiring feel that won't leave you worrying about damaging the device or your headphones. To this day we still have no clue why Apple pushed the jack in -- it was kind of funny hearing Steve pitch the flush jack as a feature at WWDC. It's the simple things, you know?

Second, the speaker volume has been jacked up significantly, giving your calls (or music) a much more workable volume level if you're not blessed with superhuman hearing. It's not the loudest speaker we've ever heard on a device, and unlike many Nokia Nseries phones, it's still mono. But it's definitely a step up compared to the first iPhone, which was not only quiet, but also seemed to distort at much lower volumes.

Speed and location
At the end of the day, it's the 3G data that's important enough to become part of the new iPhone's namesake. Speed testing the iPhone 3G hasn't been disappointing in the slightest. We've seen speeds between 300 - 500Kbps in the US (roughly equivalent of other HSDPA devices we've tested), and in networks abroad where the data rates are even faster, we've gotten consistent data rates of over 700-800Kbps. It's pretty clear the iPhone 3G isn't hitting hardware limits right now, so much of what you can prepare to see in terms of speed in the US will depend directly on reception with AT&T's network -- which doesn't have the most outstanding reputation, nor the broadest 3G rollout.

Interestingly, in one test, our iPhone 3G had worse reception on AT&T than a Nokia N78, yet managed speeds of over 100Kbps faster. So ultimately, where 3G coverage is decent, you should be seeing speeds that will no longer have you tearing your eyes out, as was so often the case with little mister sometimes-takes-minutes-to-load-a-small-page first-gen iPhone.

GPS acquisition has also been surprisingly fast for a cellphone. AGPS devices use traditional GPS receivers, but help speed up location acquisition and accuracy by using cellphone towers to triangulate. As far as we know, the iPhone 3G is the only device out right now that not only has AGPS, but takes advantage of Skyhook's proprietary WiFi-based location system, giving it a total of three ways to help find where you're at. We were able to acquire GPS in as little as a second or two, although depending on your location and reception, you might see that take longer. It's important to note, though, that the iPhone's was clearly intended to be a location-aware smartphone -- not a dedicated GPS device. There's a big difference.

That said, there's an enormous amount of interest by people hoping they can add one more to the pile of devices their iPhone has taken over for. It's pretty clear why people might want the iPhone 3G to replace their car's dedicated GPS nav, too. It's not just a location-aware device with a large, bright screen -- it's also connected (with service you're already paying for), thus able to get traffic updates, routing information, and so on. The Google Maps app doesn't provide turn by turn route guidance, though, so while it does provide directions, you can only use it as a stand-in -- and not as a full replacement -- for a proper GPS device. This problem might be solved later by some intrepid 3rd party developer (like, say, TomTom or Telenav), but there's been some confusion as to whether this might actually happen, and what Apple's official stance on GPS nav actually is. And even if this GPS software does eventually come out, the speaker on the iPhone 3G simply won't be loud enough to be heard over most road noise, so you'd also have to make use of a line-out. In other words, don't sell your GPS device just yet, okay?

The software
Anyone that's used the original iPhone knows what a delight the device can be to use -- except when using the old mail app -- but the hardware is only one part of that. An accurate capacitive touchscreen and well optimized mobile processors form the basis of that experience, but the iPhone continues to derives its real power in usability. The iPhone 3G and the second release of mobile OS X have given the device numerous useful new features while keeping in line with expectations that they not slow down the experience, nor overwhelm new or experienced users. So far, so good.

Easily the most significant addition to the iPhone 3G (as well as the original iPhone and iPod touch) is the App Store, which finally enables users to trick out their phone with whatever programs make it through Apple's rigorous developer screening and software testing process. We've got as many mixed feelings about that closed-but-open model as we do about many of the programs that launched with the device -- especially the AIM client, which we were most excited about, but that kind of flopped. (Disclosure: Engadget is owned by AOL / TimeWarner. Sorry gang!)

Although the App Store isn't open to any developer, it's worth noting that Apple's implementation wrests all control from its carrier partners, which typically expect 3rd party applications to be either side-loaded (i.e. more for the power user set), or simply want complete control of sales through their own walled garden. It's easy to argue that the App Store just trades one walled garden for another, but what the hell, we'll happily take Apple's over AT&T's.

The applications themselves vary in price, and are purchased after you've logged in with your iTunes account. (Yeah, you'll need one even if you're only downloading free programs.) Apps under 10MB download over the air, and are immediately deposited in your first available slot, where they can be moved (or removed) as you see fit. As new versions of the apps become available, the App Store notifies you of updates and manages the downloads. Yes, it's a new kind of walled garden, but the App Store is also a category-redefining experience. We've already heard a radically open version will be making its way to Android, and we hope it will eventually find its way to platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian as well.

Another new addition is character recognition support for logographic-based languages, such as Traditional Chinese, as well as localized keyboards for nearly two dozen languages and markets worldwide. But the touchscreen keyboard can still be a major sticking point for some -- ourselves enthusiastically included -- and Apple hasn't given any more of its default programs (like SMS) the increased ease of typing that comes with using the keyboard in landscape mode. There's simply no question that in terms of efficiency, on an iPhone we're nowhere close to where we can get on a spacious (or even not so spacious) QWERTY keypad. To their credit, though, Apple's made a few tweaks over the last year that have made typing a little faster and easier (like letting you pre-type the next letter before your first finger has lifted). But the fact is this defining feature of the iPhone remains one of its biggest drawbacks.

After nearly a week of testing MobileMe, we still haven't really had a positive experience with it among our editorial team. One editor, who had fewer issues than anyone else, still had difficulty syncing his 1,300+ contacts. MobileMe would choke on sync and require disabling / re-enabling to keep that sync moving. Another problem we saw was that email deletes weren't synced to other devices, requiring the same message be deleted in multiple locations. In some cases, a deleted email that wasn't properly synced would actually repropagate to back out other devices. Nothing better than zombie email.

Another thing we (and a lot of people noticed) is that MobileMe on the desktop is faux-push -- it only gets updates every 15 minutes because it's actually pulling them, unlike the iPhone's proper push. (We're, like, totally sure someone's going to sue.) You can edit a certain .pref file (details here) to make it fetch every minute -- but fetching every minute isn't push, now is it? Apple has since acknowledged this issue (among others). We also noticed on the phone that if you have synced MobileMe calendars, your calendar subscriptions (like, say, shared iCal or Gcal or what have you) are disabled.

All in all, as of the time of this writing, our feeling is that MobileMe still feels like it's in beta -- when it's up -- and is generally falling way short of what was promised by Apple. We believe they're earnest when they say they're trying to get it all up and running to fulfill their commitments, but for the time being we think it's best to steer clear until they work out the kinks.

On the other hand, we found the Exchange support to be simple enough to set up and use that you may not have to bug your IT dude. Some hardcore enterprise users will miss the full Exchange suite, including synced notes and tasks, but the core functionality (email, calendar, contacts) work very well, and if you need to take your iPhone into the locked-down office, we tested and confirmed that it will play fine with your company's WPA Enterprise / 802.1x with PEAP network. But our biggest gripe with Exchange isn't small: the system is unable to let enterprise contacts and calendars coexist on the same device with personal contacts and calendars. (Personal and corp email get along just fine, though.)

When you turn on Exchange-synced contacts and calendars, you're notified that it's a one or the other kind of a situation, and your personal data will be removed from the phone. Though that data isn't purged from your host machine, of course, you do immediately lose the ability to change contact or calendar sync settings. This effectively means that your device can only serve as an enterprise device OR a personal device, but not both at once. Kind of defeats the purpose of convincing your boss to get you an iPhone in the first place, you know? Can't all our calendars and contact lists just play together on the same device? We think they can (and should).

Some other new and noteworthy features:

As mentioned, Google Maps now shows a pinging blue locator that can track your movement. As of right now there's no way to convert this to KML or anything usable for geocaching.
The camera will also now ask you permission to use GPS to geotag photos with your current location. Once you grant that permission, it will add the necessary standard EXIF data to your photos. Trés useful, but you can't refer back to those geotags to bring up a location in Google Maps.
Side note: there's now an option to reset location notifications, if you accidentally granted permission to an app you don't want knowing where you are.
The iPhone can now read PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents. It's still incapable of editing or creating new documents, however, and outside of sending yourself these files via email, there's no accessible file storage.
You can now save images from the web to your camera roll by tapping and holding.
The calculator goes into scientific mode when the device is tilted sideways.
Entering passwords is a little easier -- the last character you entered is temporarily shown at the end of the string. Keeps things safe but makes sure you know if you mistyped.
One of the very first things we ever requested the iPhone see fixed is finally fixed: calendar colors are now supported, meaning you can finally visually tell your appointments apart based on calendar.
You can now control email, contact, and calendar fetching from system settings, giving you granular control over push and pull data on your various accounts.
You can also enable parental controls if you got the device for your kids. Or you just want to curb temptation to constantly watch Charlie the Unicorn on YouTube or buy Lil Wayne tracks on the WiFi Store, weirdo.
Screen captures can be taken by holding home, then pressing sleep. They're dropped in the camera roll.
Doing a hard reset now fully purges the device's memory, thereby making it much more difficult to recover the kind of data you don't want someone else recovering. (More on that here.)

We'd also be remiss if we didn't namecheck a few of the things missing from the device, some likely to be inconveniences, others outright dealbreakers:

Easily-replaceable battery -- especially being that 3G is much more demanding on battery power than EDGE data. We haven't popped the back off, but even if replacing the battery were as simple as unscrewing the two screws at the bottom (and it's not), that's still not what we'd call easily replaceable.
Copy / paste. As if we even needed to mention this.
MMS. Ditto.
Expandable memory still isn't in the cards (har). 8 and 16GB capacities are very decent, but the ability to go further with microSDHC would be welcomed by many. As would be a 32GB model.
A2DP (stereo Bluetooth). If this was an unlikely addition before, it's all but written off now. A2DP is a notorious battery hog on devices like cellphones, and the iPhone is already pushing the limits on power conservation and efficiency. It pains us to say it, but we just don't see A2DP happening any time soon.
Push Gmail. Hey, if Helio can have it on the Ocean, and Samsung on the Instinct, why is Apple stuck with only push Yahoo mail?
Service-independent device to machine wireless syncing. Exchange and MobileMe are nice, but even nicer would be a way to easily sync data directly to your machine without having to pay or have some kind of service.
Tethered data. Hey, you're paying $30 a month for data (likely more if you're using it outside the US), your laptop should be able to use some of it too.
No way to open a link in a new tab in mobile Safari. We also wish the browser was still a bit better about caching data, too -- it'd be nice not to have to do so many reloads when switching between tabs or moving back and forward through history.

And for the enterprise users in the audience, the shortlist of ActiveSync / Exchange bits that didn't make the cut:

Folder management
Opening links in email to documents stored on Sharepoint
Task sync
Setting an out of office autoreply
Creating meeting invitations
Flagging messages for followup

Wrap-up
If you're an avid Symbian, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile / Exchange user, chances are you might think the iPhone 3G is Apple playing catch-up -- and you're not wrong. 3G, GPS, third party apps, enterprise messaging, these are all old hat. But even the would-be iPhone killers being churned out weekly haven't yet found a way to counter the iPhone's usability and seamless integration of service and software, desktop and mobile, and media and internet.

There are always things that could be improved, features to be added, fixes that should be applied -- but from first to second gen, from year one to year two, Apple has proven itself a relentless upstart in the mobile space, and is showing no signs of slowing down. All those new features give the iPhone even more appeal than ever, but the price is what really seals the deal.

For our money, you're going to have a hard time finding a better device for two hundred bucks -- or maybe even for any price. But that doesn't mean you ought to toss your original iPhone, either. With the release of iPhone 2.0, Apple's given early adopters every possible new feature for free, meaning the iPhone 3G's biggest roadblock to adoption in the US may be its still very worthy predecessor. But as Steve says, "If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us." As for the rest of the world? Things are about to get interesting.

Archos 101 G9 Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:53:00 -0800

What do you want from a tablet? It's a question that many reviews want you to ask yourself before invariably buying an iPad 2 , but it's a question that's particularly relevant to the Archos 101 G9.

That's because Archos has focused on media playback for its latest machine, and it's done a pretty decent job of it. The Archos 101 G9 also happens to be a fully fledged Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet at the same time. Plus there's the little point of cash - at £270 for 8GB, this is one of the most affordable Android 3.2 tablets that money can buy.

The obvious fear with any tablet focused on the budget market is that too many corners have been cut in order to bring it in at an iPad-destroying price point. But on paper, at least, there are no obvious miscarriages of silicon justice.

You get a 1GHz OMAP 4 dual-core processor courtesy of Texas Instruments, with a view to upgrading this to a faster 1.5GHz model in early 2012.

There are plenty of connection options - including a mini HDMI port, microSD slot and a standard micro USB port. And when it comes to the all-important display, you can rest assured that the 10.1-inch screen is capacitive (and responsive), and boasts a healthy native resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.

The Archos 101 G9 comes in two different flavours, each defined by the storage options available. The basic unit packs 8GB of storage and has a list price of £270 (although you should be able to pick this up for around £250), while a 16GB model, the Archos 101 G9 Turbo, is going to be available at the start of 2012.

Potentially more interesting is the 250GB additional memory on the Archos 101 G9, which uses a traditional hard drive. This will obviously make the unit a little more fragile than your standard tablet, but for a media machine, that's plenty of space for hours and hours of movies.

Connection options for the base unit are limited to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only, but Archos is keen to promote its 3G USB dongle that can be plugged into a special slot on the machine's underside. This doesn't make much sense if you're thinking of tethering this to your television, but it does enable you to extend the usefulness of the machine to compete against much more expensive options.

The dongle can be used with your PC as well, which ticks the versatility box nicely.

Archos has employed Android 3.2 on its 101 G9 tablet. Unlike previous tablets from Archos, this isn't a limited installation, and finally boasts full access to the Android Market.

This means you can install the swathes of applications, utilities and 3D games that appear on there - currently standing at some 300,000 apps, although the list of tablet-focused ones is still frustratingly low.

This isn't a Tegra 2 machine, but it doesn't seem to hold the Archos 101 G9 back too much when it comes to games - the likes of Dungeon Defendersworks fine, while the ubiquitous Angry Birds Rio is smooth.

The Archos 101 G9 ships with a suite of tools pre-installed that focus on the machine's main strength, media playback.

The Music tool replaces the standard Android offering, making for a far more visually appealing interface for handling your favourite tunes.

The Video utility is more impressive though, pulling metadata and posters down to make for a great way of viewing information about your films and TV shows.

You're not limited to simply playing your movies off the tablet either, as you can connect it to your Windows shares to stream movies. It will handle 1080p content without breaking into a sweat, and will handle plenty of the main formats.

You'll need a mini HMDI to HDMI cable to get the most from this machine, and while we would have liked one to be included in the package, it's probably asking a bit much at this price point.

Playing back movies on the machine itself is smooth, but we're not entirely sold on the screen. While most expensive tablets tend to use IPS panels, such screens are expensive, and so in order to hit that low price point, Archos has instead gone for a more traditional LCD TFT panel.

Cheaper tablets, such as the Hannspree Hannspad, tend to use budget TN panels, which suffer from appalling viewing angles. But there's none of that apparent here, even from extreme angles.

What there is, however, is a coarseness to the pixel pitch that doesn't sit quite so well with a tablet aimed at enjoying media. There's an underlying grid on the screen that, once seen, is really hard to ignore.

It knocks out the vibrant areas a little, but is most apparent in darker areas, where muddy greens and browns seem to win out if the source image is much more intense. Even if you're watching the machine at a relative distance (using the flimsy stand to hold the tablet at a comfortable viewing angle), it's still apparent.

If we're being picky, it would have been good to have a standard-sized USB port too, so that you could plug USB flash drives filled with media into it.

You can of course connect to your shared devices wirelessly, if you've been forward-thinking enough to set such things up. Plus, the micro USB charging cable enables you to transfer straight from a host PC, so it's not a great loss. Even so, given how most media players, Blu-ray players and even TVs boast USB ports these days, it is notable for its absence here.

This model is somewhat limited in the storage stakes, as well. Sure you can slide a microSD card in the waiting slot for an easy boost, but install a few applications on there (especially the larger 3D games, such as the aforementioned Dungeon Defenders), and you'll eat through what's left of the 8GB of storage.

There's a reason why most tablets boast at least 16GB, and that's before you start looking at the huge storage-gobbling media.

Sound on the whole is passable, if not particularly amazing. Long movie watching is better experienced through headphones, and the same goes for playing back music. If all you want to do is watch the odd YouTube video or listen to a bit of internet radio, though, it's adequate enough.

Battery life is good, managing five hours of use when playing back movies. Playing games will reduce this, while simple surfing should see this extended to as long as seven hours.

The built-in camera is probably the weakest element of the Archos 101 G9. Even in good light levels the quality of the images taken are woeful, and when used in the standard low-lighting of most houses, it's barely usable. In theory you could get by using it for video conferencing, but realistically you'd be better off simply not bothering.

There's no rear-facing camera either, so you can pretty much forget using it to capture memorable moments if you do manage to take it out of the house. Trying to guess what is in the frame without seeing the screen isn't really what we've come to expect from modern technology.

If you're looking for a tablet that can put in a decent turn as a source for your social networking, then there are plenty of better options available - even the iPad 2's camera, which is universally derided for its lighting capturing capabilities, is better than this. And frustrations aside, the quality of photos captured by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 beats this hands down.

Build quality

There are plenty of plus points with the Archos 101 G9, and the odd negative, but to a certain degree these are all eclipsed by the tablet's chassis. It feels cheap, plasticy and generally not that impressive at all.

While the likes of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer has a solid chassis that feels like it can survive many knocks, this doesn't feel like it'd survive an unprotected trip in a handbag. The back of the unit flexes with even light pressure, while the stand that enables you to watch movies comfortably hands-free, bends worryingly easily.

The power and volume buttons don't have any positive feedback, and both of these are located exactly where you'd naturally want to hold the machine, which means they're prone to accidental pushing.

There aren't a lot of positives to mention for the physical implementation of the 3G dongle, either. The actual unit itself seems badly designed (requiring a side of the dongle to be removed so that it can slide into place). Once installed, this dongle needs to be eased out slightly from the main unit to improve reception as well. Given its location, this is less than ideal, too.

Possibly the most frustrating design choice, though, is that the screen sits behind a slight bezel. This means your finger will keep catching the edge of the screen surround when you're using it. It also looks far shoddier that it should do because of this design choice.

Why Archos felt the need to do it this way round, as opposed to having the glass screen in front of the machine's facia (like nearly every other tablet worth considering), is hard to fathom.

Regardless of what you've paid for your tablet, you don't actually want to it feel cheap. You want it to feel special, but you're not going to be showing off the Archos 101 G9 to anyone - which is a shame, because it is capable.

The Archos 101 G9 isn't an easy device to judge. Looked at purely in isolation, there's a lot to love here, thanks mainly to the fact that it handles media playback well. And that seemingly tempting price tag would appear to put the machine in a certain form of isolation.

There's a problem with the pricing though, and it's one that's going to be hard for Archos to solve. Essentially as the new Tegra platform, codenamed Kal-el, makes its way onto the market, that means that a whole host of existing machines are about to see some tempting price cuts.

These price cuts have already started to appear, and they're only going to continue. These cuts are leading other manufacturers to make much better hardware that costs only a few quid more and looks far more tempting than this clearly budget-focused system ever will.

Compare the Archos 101 G9 to a budget Motorola Xoom, and the two tablets feel poles apart, at least in terms of build quality and materials. It's true that the Archos is better built than most budget-focused machines, but ultimately it can't escape the price tag it has so clearly been built to.

We liked

A full Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet at this price point is not to be sniffed at. Archos offers full access to the Android Market, at last, too.

The way your media is displayed in the Archos Video and Music apps is excellent, and thanks to album covers and movie posters, it produces an incredible experience. The fact that the Archos 101 G9 handles pretty much every format you could hope for is to be commended too.

Good connection options, with HDMI, microSD and micro USB ports, afford plenty of options for getting your media on and off the system.

A price that is far more tempting than the £400 standard that other manufacturers have decided is the entry price for the tablets. At £279 it's not the cheapest option, but it does offer more bang for your buck than its peers.

We disliked

The plastic chassis feels cheap, making it something you use for functional reasons, rather than something you want to shout about as a paradigm shift in computing (which for some, will be reason enough to buy it).

The camera is truly awful, and with only a screen-facing lens, this isn't great for capturing those odd moments that you can find yourself near something interesting with a tablet in your hand.

The screen is disappointing when viewing darker images and movies. There is an obvious underlying grid that makes smooth gradients turn into a brown muck.

Performance is lagging behind the competition, and while this doesn't appear to affect movie playback, going forward this is going to rule this tablet out of playing some games and handling certain apps smoothly.

Final verdict

The Archos 101 G9 sets out a specific stall for itself and does incredibly well at delivering on that goal, although only in a functional way. There's no innate joy or passion on show here.

If you're in the market for a capable tablet, but have a limited budget, then this is one of the best options outside of price cuts that you can get.

The potential problem is we're about to be bombarded by cut price tablets, and much better units can be had for this kind of cash - tablets with more memory, built from better materials and generally put together with more love!

HTC Flyer Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:49:00 -0800

The tablet market is heating up and heating up fast. So what makes HTC think that it has what you need when it comes to a tablet? Some have called out some glaring spec shortcomings of the HTC Flyer. Can HTC overcome and weave its magic with HTC Sense? Is their first tablet “quietly brilliant”? We’ve been living with the new 7-inch tablet to find out how it stands against the competition.

Design

If you thought the iPad was a giant iPod touch, the first impression of the HTC Flyer is that it’s a giant phone. Measuring 195.4 x 122 x 13.2mm and weighing 420g the Flyer sports the company’s now familiar design; it is well built and solid in the hand. The front is dominated by the 7-inch capacitive touchscreen with a black bezel around the edge.

Like the BlackBerry PlayBook there are no buttons to distract - that is until you turn it on - and the only real tell-tale sign of which way is “up” is the HTC logo. While other tablets encourage you to hold them horizontally, like phones, the design intonation here tells you the best way to hold the tablet is vertically. That’s not to say you must hold it that way. Obviously HTC has designed it to be held in landscape as well, and that is expected when it comes to video calling as the front facing camera is at the top when held in landscape.

Those appearing and disappearing buttons (Home, menu, back, and pen - no search though) are a nice trick too. Hold it portrait and they appear at the bottom of the screen on that black bezel. Hold it landscape and they shift to the landscape bottom bezel. iPad users will be very jealous with their static physical home button that does nothing of the sort.

Switch around to the back and the UK version of the Flyer shows off it's silver and white colours. In the US the Flyer will sport a moody black and red paint job. (UK readers needn’t get excited: we’ve been told that paint job isn’t coming to Britain.) Another logo lets those who see you using it know just exactly what tablet you are using while the white elements of the design allow for the radio and wireless antenna to get a signal.

The top white area features the 5-megapixel camera, no flash, and sliding this off reveals the SIM card slot and a microSD slot for expanding the Flyer’s storage. Both are easily accessible and those who have opened up an HTC phone before (since the HTC Legend) will feel right at home. Not that you’re going to see this too often, as once you’ve loaded it up with a SIM for surfing and some storage it’s unlikely this cover will ever come off again. The battery is sealed out of sight and inaccessible. Volume buttons, a power switch (which also has a notification light in it), Micro-USB and 3.5mm jack complete the package.

In the flesh it is comfortable to hold with one hand. It’s small enough to type on with two thumbs, and yes, you could slip it into your back jeans pocket, although we wouldn’t recommend sitting down. On the train and in the home we’ve found that we hold it differently to the iPad, and because of that it’s not as isolating, you aren’t so shut off from the world because its less of a physical barrier and that means you probably won’t be as self-conscious about getting it out in public.

As for the size, like the BlackBerry PlayBook and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the 7-inches compared to the Motorola Xoom and iPad 2’s larger screen certainly makes a difference, this is more like a paperback book than a full screen laptop without a keyboard, and that changes the experience dramatically.

Specs

Let’s get the bad bits out of the way first: it’s not dual-core and it’s not Honeycomb. That means it is at a disadvantage compared to the likes of the Motorola Xoom or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, happy to tout their Honeycomb wares, or other tablets coming on the market that are more powerful with a dual-core chipset. That’s not to say it’s a slouch though, the Flyer still packs a 1.5GHz processor, and 1GB of RAM meaning it zips along just fine.

Apps opened quickly, although there is a noticeable lag compared to our Samsung Galaxy S II. It’s not enough to break the bank over, but it’s a good split second slower doing menial tasks like opening the gallery. Getting around the Sense interface isn’t a problem and we didn’t experience any problems in loading Flash in the browser. While the power may not be a problem now, it could be that apps designed for dual core processors in the future may not work so well.

You get 32GB of internal storage (there is a 16GB version too), the microSD slot we’ve already talked about allows expansion up to 64GB in total and the 5-megapixel camera on the back in addition to the 1.3-megapixel camera on the front.

Camera performance on stills is okay but not great. It’s an afterthought rather than a must-have, but then you probably aren’t getting this for its camera performance anyway. That’s a good job too as the camcorder’s capabilities are even worse, the camera struggling in our tests to produce anything remarkable. You can apply affects like sepia or negative as is standard for HTC devices. As for the front facing camera the capture angle is fairly wide - great for video conferencing (you still can’t do video via Skype). You won’t have to hold it out at arms length to have a conversation.

On the connectivity front you get HSPA/WCDMA, Quad-band, and wireless connectivity in the guise of 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. Don’t for one minute think that you’ll be able to make a call though. The Flyer might have a SIM card, but like the iPad it is not a phone and HTC hasn’t included phone capabilities. That won’t stop you making a call via Skype or other VoIP services, but that SIM is for data only. The Flyer also has the ability to be turned into a wireless hotspot for up to eight devices. Sensors include a digital compass, and a g-sensor, although no barometer (like the Xoom) and no NFC.

Battery life is a promised 4 hours video playback. We found we could get through a good day on a single charge, using it fairly heavily for web applications. Battery will depend on what you do with it of course, but it is better than many the company’s phones.

Media, music, and more

A 7-inch screen makes it perfect for watching movies and content on the go - it’s a really nice size. Most video codecs are supported and you get to watch them in the standard ways available to you via Sense. That means 3GP, 3G2, MPEG4, WMV, AVI (MP4 ASP and MP3), Xvid (MP4 ASP and MP3) are all supported covering most options. The Flyer supports playback up to 720p and we had no problems doing that.

Besides importing your own content, there are plenty of other options too. A quick visit to the BBC iPlayer lets you watch all the content thanks to Flash support built-in to the browser.The Apprentice here we come…

But wait, there’s more. HTC has also introduced a new movie download and streaming service, which has debuted on the Flyer. Watch is for buying tracks on the go and lets you download 720p movies (just make sure you’re on Wi-Fi).

HTC’s answer to iTunes movies (and soon to be launched Google Movies) is Watch. It is currently a series of trailers in a Cover Flow design that you can … watch. Although the app is there, the service is still to be turned on in the UK. However a sneak peak before we updated to the final ROM (that will be available on retail units) showed us that it's a easy to use and currently has around 100 movies and TV shows to rent or download.

Rentals vary in price, but the average seemed to be £2.49, while movies to buy cost around a tenner. Not all are available to rent, and we will make sure we cover this in more depth when it launches properly in the UK. (Sadly we didn’t get a screenshot expecting the access to still be available in the final ROM.) Likewise OnLive, HTC’s gaming service isn’t present either, presumably because it is not ready yet, so we were unable to test this.

Streaming is quick and as long as HTC can get decent movies on the service you’ll want to watch - at the moment it’s classics like Ferris Burris Day Off or Napoleon Dynamite, then this has strong potential for the travel bound tablet fan.

Sharing all this content is easy. You either get to watch it on the screen, or fire it out across your living room to other supported media devices like your DLNA TV or a media player on the network - it worked very well with our Sonos system with music, for example.

When it comes to music there too are a number of options on the device before you have to start enlisting the help of services like Spotify. Amazon MP3 is pre-loaded. The music player has been re-designed to benefit from the landscape view with your playlists and tracks on the left and what’s playing on the right.

Twin stereo speakers might be found on the rear of the Flyer, but this doesn’t seem to affect the sound quality, which can be switched from Stereo to SRS where available. The quality is good, certainly better than we expected, and the speaker placement uses the curve in the design of the back of the player to bounce off the table if lying flat, although at an angle is pushed away from you. The PlayBook’s front facing speakers produce a better sound.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Helping the HTC Flyer to stand out from the tablet crowd is the Magic Pen that comes in the box. The stylus, pen, scribe, digitiser, or whatever you call it comes in the box (for Best Buy customers in the US it won’t) and gives you a secondary level of input beyond your finger.

The idea is that you can use the Magic Pen to jot down notes quickly by writing them rather than having to operate a keyboard - something that’s not hard here because of the Flyer’s size and the very good keyboard with decent autocorrect anyway. The pen is activated by pressing on a small green icon next to those shifting buttons we mentioned earlier. When it’s red then the pen is no good to you and you’ll have to put it away.

The app will dictate the level of input the pen gives you. Currently the pen only works with two apps shipped on the device, both from HTC, although HTC has said that third party developers can get involved. Those apps include Notes, a service HTC has teamed up with Evernote to create, and Reader, HTC’s ebook reading app allowing you to make notes or highlight text.

Furthermore, and this will be welcomed by anyone that’s ever tried to do a screenshot on Android, you can use the pen at any time to take an instant screenshot of what’s going on. (The only place we’ve found that it doesn’t work is in HTC’s Watch application, and we presume this is because of the copyright issues.) Why would you need to take a screenshot of a page and then draw on it? Well for web developers making constant mark-ups on a website design we can see this being very handy - especially when you can Dropbox the results straight away.

So that’s the theory, what about the actuality? The first problem we encountered is that the Flyer doesn’t have a place for the pen to live. There is no hidden stylus sheath in which it tucks. Perhaps realising this, HTC have bundled a leather case with the device that has a slot for the pen. It means you won’t necessarily lose it in the first 10 minutes, but it’s something that you need to bear in mind.

The pen itself is akin to an expensive Biro and features two buttons on the side, which act as function buttons. Thanks to some clever technology in the screen itself the Flyer knows when it is being touched by the pen or by the finger. That means that if you are using the pen your hand won’t trigger random actions. That said, the main focus on interaction on the Flyer is still by the finger touch.

The first couple of times you try to press something with the pen that you aren’t able to, it politely tells you are doing it wrong. The pen instead controls a small dial that appears in the bottom right-hand corner, accessible by tapping on the green logo we told you about earlier. That reveals a series of options from what pen type to choose, the colour and size. There are eight primary colours, six pen types and five different sizes. Beyond that there are options for toggling on and off your marks, deleting them altogether or if you’re looking for something slightly less severe the ability to redo or undo.

In use and the pen is very responsive, easy to use, and works as you would expect a pen to work. HTC has found a balance between weight and size of the pen itself and if it had the ability to write on paper as well, you wouldn’t think that it was a dedicated digital pen (aside from those buttons). Using the pen to make notes is easy and then sharing those notes via HTC’s Sense UI easier still, but you have to ask how much value it really offers and whether you are going to actually use it.

We suspect it’s the latter, for while it works, we personally can’t see the need to doodle, or highlight text. Ditch the pen and it’s a giant phone, no really it really is. But then that’s us and we acknowledge that that won’t be the case for many individual whether it’s designers sketching or just annotating notes. The technology works, you’ve just got to find a use.

Apps

For those worried that the HTC Flyer might not offer much more beyond the pen you shouldn’t be. The HTC Flyer has HTC Sense for Tablets at its core. Along with all the normal HTC goodness, you get dedicated apps like Watch, a new tablet variation of mail that splits the view into two panes to make best use of the available space, and other features like Kid Mode by Zoodles that makes your tablet child-friendly.

You might not get Honeycomb (although HTC has promised an update soon), but the company has done all that it can to cover up that fact thanks to HTC Sense. That’s not to say the experience is perfect. The Gmail app (as opposed to the standalone email client) isn’t “tabletised” and other apps don’t benefit in the same way their Honeycomb offerings do. But when it comes to HTC Sense features, they’ve done all they can.

There is of course much more to the new Sense for tablets: there’s the new homescreen unlocking mechanism when you turn the device on; SnapBooth which is a way of showing you a stack of effects the camera can produce; Evernote, the note taking software that lets you share notes with people and yourself via the web; and Kid Mode thanks to an app provided by Zoodles that locks down the Flyer so your kids can’t cause chaos if you leave it with them. Others include Polaris Office, PDF Viewer, Amazon MP3 player, Navigation, and many more.

As we’ve said, core apps get a upgrade, the keyboard now features a better auto correct feature that certainly gives SwiftKey a challenge and this can be used in portrait or landscape mode, but the landscape doesn’t drastically change to use the space to best effect. The keys are bigger, or wider, and that's about it.

Regardless - find anyone with an HTC device and we are sure they’ll wax lyrical about the apps and features of the operating system they have. Much of it is the same whether that’s Market, News and Weather, Navigation, Weather, or Stocks. Yes some get a slight change for the tablet version, but the core experience is the same.

For a fuller, longer, in-depth detailing of some of the new apps it’s worth reading our HTC Interface walkthrough we wrote after a detailed play with the new features with HTC and a Flyer back in February.

Verdict

The HTC Flyer is a giant phone without the phone calling capabilities, just as the iPad 2 is a giant iPhone without the calling capabilities. The Flyer sports HTC Sense, it has the same aspect ratio as a phone, and even runs a phone operating system (Android 2.3.3). By those terms it means that its competitors are the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Dell Streak 7, the ViewSonic and Archos tablets and a whole range of mediocre products in-between. But to bundle it in that category would do the HTC Flyer a disservice: it is better than that and it deserves more attention, thanks to the full inclusion of Android Market and the niceties of Sense.

The lack of Honeycomb is something that HTC has said it’s fixing. Doing so, while HTC won’t admit this, will make a massive difference in the way apps are viewed and work. Android Honeycomb makes native Android apps, like Gmail or the browser, work much better on a larger screen. Of course it also brings with it a change to notifications and optimised menus, which may well leave HTC with a lot of work to do to make Honeycomb and Sense gel together.

If you’re already a HTC Sense user then you’re going to love it. It is like HTC has taken your phone and supersized it, literally, bringing you a stack of new features all around the same core experience that you know and love. The HTC Sense users we’ve shown it to have all got very excited and no one so far has had anything bad to say about the Flyer, even when we mention the pen.

It’s a well polished, well built tablet. HTC has been clever here. This is a tablet for those that don’t necessarily want the latest features of Android, want the experience their HTC phone gives them, but essentially want something that will work, work well, and ultimately be familiar to those who have bought into the HTC lifestyle already.

Review Recap

MADE BY: HTC
PRICE AS REVIEWED: £599.99
LATEST PRICE: Compare mobile deals
THE GOOD: Pen, size, build quality
THE BAD: No Honeycomb, not dual core, no space for the pen on the actual device
QUICK VERDICT: This is a tablet for those that don’t necessarily want the latest features of Android, but do want something that will work, work well, and ultimately be familiar
KEY SPECS: 3.5mm jack, 3G, 5 megapixels, Android, Bluetooth, GPRS, GPS, GSM, HSDPA, Li-ion battery, microSD, Wi-Fi
SCORE

Toshiba Thrive Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:45:00 -0800

The good: The Toshiba Thrive's very aggressive pricing gives it an advantage over most other tablets. Its grooved back, full HDMI and USB support, full SD card slot, and replaceable battery justify its very bulky design. Also, its built-in file management system makes finding and accessing files in Honeycomb easier.

The bad: The Thrive's bulky design and hefty weight are not for everyone. Also, awkward back camera placement and a difficult panel removal process make us wish more time had been spent in the design phase. The LED lights on the bezel can be distracting.

The bottom line: The Toshiba Thrive is a bulky but aggressively priced Honeycomb tablet that earns its girth with full port support and a removable battery.

Photo gallery:
Toshiba Thrive

Tablets are generally expected to be "thin and light" small computers with unobtrusive interfaces. Some tablets are thinner and lighter than others, however. While we've praised tablets like the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 for their sleekness and dinged the HP TouchPad for being too bulky, the Thrive poses an interesting question. Is a bulky tablet inherently a bad thing or can a tablet justify its extra mass?

Design
While most other tablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, show efforts to emulate Apple's thin, light, and minimalist iPad 2 design, Toshiba hurls the Thrive right into the soft, supple face of the notion that tablets should be designed this way. Sure, at 1.66 pounds the Thrive is relatively light compared with, say, a laptop or even a Netbook, but at that weight, it's as heavy as the heaviest tablet we've seen and its 0.63-inch depth makes it nearly twice as thick as either the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the iPad 2.

	Toshiba Thrive	Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	Apple iPad 2	T-Mobile G-Slate	HP TouchPad
Weight in pounds	1.66	1.24	1.34	1.38	1.6
Width in inches (landscape)	10.75	10.1	9.5	9.6	9.5
Height in inches	7	6.9	7.3	5.8	7.4
Depth in inches	0.63	0.34	0.34	0.49	0.45
Side bezel width in inches (landscape)	1	0.8	0.8	0.9	0.85

Toshiba's intent with the Thrive was to make a tablet that more closely met the needs of a typical laptop user, and as you can see from the specs above, the Toshiba Thrive is one of the heaviest, widest, and deepest tablets we've yet seen. As Honeycomb tablets go, it's very much the anti-Galaxy Tab 10.1. While the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is all smooth, sleek, sexy, and devoid of ports, the Thrive is anything but, and its measurements only tell half the story.

The Toshiba Thrive compared with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. We told you it was thick.

Upon picking up the Thrive, the first thing we noticed was its grooved back panel, which provides an easy-to-grip texture. While our model's panel was black, the panel is removable and can be swapped out for a panel in one of five other colors (green, purple, blue, pink, and silver), available for $20 each. Removing the panel requires that you dig your fingernails into the speaker indentations and then carefully, but firmly, pull back. Given the manner in which the panel is connected to the tablet, when pulling it off you may get the impression that you're breaking something, and although we didn't break anything, we can't rule out the possibility and we wish the panel came off more easily.

Once the panel is off, the removable battery can be accessed, removed, and finally swapped with an extra battery Toshiba has priced at $80. The battery measures 5.1x5.5 inches, with about a 0.25-inch depth. Removing the battery is simpler and easier than removing the back panel, although replacing both battery and panel is easy. There's also the option to lock the back panel into place, which seems unnecessary since it's pretty firmly attached once placed properly, and if locked and forgotten could easily cause someone to break it by trying to pull the panel off while it's in a locked state.

The back panel is removable and swappable with up to five other colors. The battery is revealed here. It's the large light gray plate on the left.

When held in landscape mode, the top of the tablet holds, from left to right, the power button, volume rocker, and rotation lock. Both the volume rocker and rotation lock are easily accessed, but the power button is embedded a tad too deeply and requires a more focused press to actually click. It's nowhere near as bad as the BlackBerry PlayBook's, which requires a pen to access properly, though.

On the opposite end of the top edge is the full-size SD card slot, which accepts cards of up to 128GB in capacity. Near the power button, on the bezel, are three LED indicator lights that glow to indicate when the power is on, when the battery's charging, or when wireless or Bluetooth is switched on. While you'd likely get used to the lights after a while, they're not typical of the tablet experience and can be distracting if you're looking for a completely clean interface.

On the bottom right side are the power and headphone jacks. Above them is a 3-inch-long door, concealing the full USB port, full HDMI port, and Mini-USB port. On each of the far sides of the bottom edge sit 1-inch-long speakers. In the middle of the bottom edge is a dock connector port.

The cameras are located on either side on the bezel in the middle of the tablet's left side. We found that when holding the Thrive in landscape mode, our fingers naturally blocked the rear lens. And while it's easy enough to move your finger down and out of the way, it's also less comfortable to hold it like that, especially given the tablet's heavier-than-average weight.

We think the Thrive's rear camera is ill-placed as evidenced by the fact that our fingers covered it virtually every time we turned it on.

Overall, the device feels solid and durable, and we found it comfortable to hold, if slightly bulky. Also, the edge where the back panel meets the end of the bezel feels a little sharp and was distracting when our fingers rubbed it.

Features
Under the hood, the Toshiba Thrive houses a 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor with a 10.1-inch capacitive touch screen and a 1,280x800-pixel resolution. All the usual tablet bell and whistles are here, including a gyroscope, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, GPS, and digital compass.

Some preinstalled software includes LogMeIn, PrinterShare, Quickoffice HD, and Need for Speed Shift. Toshiba also includes some propriety software: App Place is filled with mostly cloud-based applications (already available via the Android Market) that Toshiba recommends for use with the Thrive. Start Place is a well-designed news aggregator, and Book Place is Toshiba's e-reader and book market. Media Player aggregates all media on the tablet or on the network you're connected to, making it accessible from one interface.

Toshiba also includes a video enhancement feature that pumps up the color and contrast on standard-definition video, and while we did see some improvement, it's very subtle. The audio enhancement feature, on the other hand, clearly improved the sound quality of all audio when turned on, enhancing the previously muffled sound to something with more clarity. At the highest volume we still heard some static interference, however. In addition, Toshiba's Ambient Noise Equalizer adjusts the tablet's volume based on the amount of noise in the area.

By far the best and most useful exclusive feature in the Thrive's repertoire is File Manager. This app provides native direct access to the file system, allowing you to easily launch files from the hard drive, SD card, or a connected USB thumbdrive. Directly accessing files in this manner is a nice, convenient shortcut and means you can manage files more closely.

Performance
So far, Honeycomb-based tablets have had similar Nvidia Tegra 2-based specs. The ones that have stood out for their performance had high-quality screens like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and T-Mobile G-Slate, and because of this, better visuals than their Honeycomb brethren.

The Thrive's interface is just as snappy as the others and its camera performance, including when shooting 720p video, is about Honeycomb-standard, which is very good, but not outstanding.

Attaching a full-size monitor via HDMI and playing HD video was seamless with no compression or bandwidth problems.

The In-Plane Switching (IPS) screen is about on par with other Honeycomb tablet screens, with great viewing angles, but it's missing the clarity and high color saturation of the T-Mobile G-Slate or especially the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Tested spec	Toshiba Thrive	Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	Apple iPad 2	T-Mobile G-Slate	HP TouchPad
Maximum brightness	337 cd/m2	336 cd/m2	432 cd/m2	424 cd/m2	292 cd/m2
Default brightness	131 cd/m2	336 cd/m2	176 cd/m2	143 cd/m2	85 cd/m2
Maximum black level	0.24 cd/m2	0.30 cd/m2	0.46 cd/m2	0.52 cd/m2	0.38 cd/m2
Default black level	0.10 cd/m2	0.30 cd/m2	0.19 cd/m2	0.18 cd/m2	0.11 cd/m2
Default contrast ratio	1,310:1	1,120:1	926:1	794:1	772:1
Contrast ratio (max brightness)	1,404:1	1,120:1	939:1	815:1	768:1

	Video battery life (in hours)
Toshiba Thrive	9.6

Conclusions
The 8GB version of the Toshiba Thrive is available for $430, andthe 16GB and 32GB versions are priced at $480 and $580, respectively. I won't go into what those prices say about the cost of memory and how easily it dictates tablet prices, but make no mistake: the Thrive's starting price is very aggressive. At $430, it's undercut only by the 16GB version of the Asus Transformer, available for $400, and, thanks to its extra features, the 8GB Thrive is a slightly better deal despite offering less storage space.

Those looking for a sleek, thin tablet should probably check out the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 instead. In the past we've criticized tablets for not being thin and sleek enough and preferred those that were. But the HP TouchPad didn't get dinged solely because of its bulky design; it was more that its bulky design offered no advantages. The Thrive, on the other hand, spends its extra real estate well, providing a full SD slot, a full USB port, and a full HDMI connection. Note the completely removable battery and you begin to see that the Thrive is not just bulky for bulk's sake. There's definite method to Toshiba's madness here.

Still, we would prefer it to be thinner, and the bad back camera placement and the sometimes clunky nature of its back-panel implementation won't win it any design awards.

Purchasers of the Thrive should know what they're getting into, but if you're comfortable with the extra girth, the Toshiba Thrive offers a great Honeycomb tablet experience at a very approachable price.

Asus Transformer Prime Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:44:00 -0800

The good: The Asus Transformer Prime sports an iPad 2-inspired design that's even thinner and nearly as light, while also managing to include microSD and Micro-HDMI support. The Prime delivers smooth and clear 1080p video, and the 8-megapixel camera captures detail and color more accurately than any other tablet we've reviewed. Feature highlights include being able to play games on HDTVs via a game pad and to throttle CPU speeds to save battery life.

The bad: Not every game takes advantage of the quad-core CPU, and frame rates can suffer as a result. When connected to the dock keyboard, the tablet is top-heavy and can easily slide off a lap or table if you're not careful.

The bottom line: The Asus Transformer Prime is the best full-featured Android tablet yet, with a sexy design, thoughtful features, and an impressive camera.

Since the launch of the iPad 2, we've been kind of waiting for the Asus Transformer Prime. While we didn't know it existed until a few months ago, the thought of a powerful, robust, and sexy Android tablet has been invading our tablet dreams for months.

Is the Transformer Prime that tablet? With its quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, it definitely has the potential.

Photo gallery:
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime

Design
The Prime comes in two colors, amethyst gray (gray and purple) and champagne gold (silver and gold). We got the amethyst gray version for review, and although a purple tablet admittedly wasn't the highest item on our holiday wish list, the gray and purple are blended in a sleek, sexy, and appealing way. Although the aluminum back does a good job of resisting fingerprints, the glossy screen and bezel succumb to them easily.

	Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime	Asus Eee Pad Transformer	Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	Apple iPad 2
Weight in pounds	1.32	1.52	1.24	1.34
Width in inches (landscape)	10.3	10.7	10.1	9.5
Height in inches	7.1	6.9	6.9	7.3
Depth in inches	0.32	0.51	0.34	0.34
Side bezel width in inches (landscape)	0.8	1.1	0.8	0.8

The Prime is about an inch wider than the iPad 2 but a hair thinner; it's also thinner than the Samsung Galxy Tab 10.1. It's slightly heavier than both aforementioned tablets, but its weight is distributed evenly, so we felt only a negligible difference.

That's the iPad 2 on the left, Transformer Prime in the middle, and Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the right. While they're all really thin, the Prime wins the supermodel contest by a hair.

The Prime takes some design cues from the iPad 2, with a sloped back and rounded corners that don't dig into our palms as the previous Transformer did. For connections, the Prime includes a microSD slot and a Micro-HDMI port on the left side. On the same side are a volume rocker and a microphone pinhole. On the top is a smallish power/lock button, which, though functional, could have protruded more from the chassis so as to feel more tactile. Next to that is a second microphone pinhole and on the right side is a headphone jack. A 40-pin connector port for data/power is located on the bottom.

On the front bezel sits a 1.2-megapixel camera, and almost directly opposite it on the back is an 8-megapixel camera, which is capable of recording 1080p video.

Like the previous Transformer, the Prime connects to an optional keyboard/dock ($150), transforming it (heh) into what is essentially an Android laptop. With the previous Transformer, that connection wasn't the easiest to achieve, but the process has improved dramatically on the Prime, as it now easily slides into the awaiting slot.

With the dock attached, the Prime looks like a typical ultrabook. Well, a purple one at least.

The dock includes a touch pad, a 40-pin data/power connection port on the left, and a full-size SD slot and USB port on the right.

Once connected, the tablet feels a bit top-heavy, though, and could easily slip off a lap or table if enough care isn't taken. Also, the dock is compatible only with the Prime and vice versa. Switching between the older Transformer and this newer one is not supported.

Hardware features
The Prime is the first tablet to house Nvidia's new quad-core processor, the Tegra 3. The Prime also includes 1GB of RAM and comes in either 32GB or 64GB varieties. It has 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a gyroscope, and GPS.

The Mobile dock includes an extra battery that--while connected--"feeds" the Prime its power, meaning that the dock's battery will deplete its reserves before the tablet's.

Through its Micro-HDMI port, you can connect the tablet to an HDTV or monitor and play full-screen Android games using both wired Xbox 360 and PS3 game pads, as well as supported wireless game pads through the use of an USB dongle.

Software features
The Prime comes preinstalled with Honeycomb 3.2.1 and is upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). According to Asus, ICS should arrive on the Prime before the end of 2011.

Asus MyCloud enables users to access 8GB of free cloud-based storage space for the lifetime of the Prime (upon registering it) at Asus WebStorage. It also provides remote access to the desktop of a PC or Mac and access to the @Vibe online music and radio service.

The File Manager accesses the Prime's root directory, providing easy and organized access to every file on your drive or expanded memory unit. MyNet lets you stream content to DLNA-enabled devices on your network, and with MyLibrary, Asus' e-reader software, you can read and purchase new books directly through the interface.

The File Manager app provides easy access to every file on your tablet.

SuperNote is intended to help with taking notes and allows you to not only type them, but "write" notes with your fingers as well. You can also draw graphs and take pictures or video right from the interface. This could be especially useful for taking notes in a class.

Via Asus' tweaks to the Honeycomb interface, you can choose to run the Tegra 3 CPU in normal, balance, or power-saving modes. While in normal mode, the CPU runs at full speed. In balanced mode and power-saving mode, the CPU speed is throttled to save on battery life. Having this level of control of overall speed is a very welcome feature we hope to see in more tablets.

Asus also adds a Super IPS+ (In-Plane Switching) mode, which boosts the tablet's brightness, making reading in sunlight a bit easier. There's also a feature that allows you to take screenshots using the Recent Apps button.

Performance
While the Prime's IPS screen was immediately clear and sharp when first we powered it on, it was the screen transitions that really impressed us. The first time we tapped the Apps button, we were treated to a noticeably higher frame rate transition than on any previous Android tablet.

We hoped this fluidity would carry over to apps like Marvel Comics, but that was not the case. Reading a comic through the app on the iPad 2 is still a considerably smoother experience, but this may have something to do with specific optimizations of the iPad app. We can't be sure, however.

The resolution and contrast on the IPS panel are about as impressive as on the previous Transformer or the Asus Slider, but the new Super IPS mode+ increased the brightness up to 570 candelas per square meter (cd/m2), which is the highest brightness we've yet seen on a tablet and makes reading in direct sunlight a bit more tolerable than on other LCD tablets. Still, both the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 are more impressive in terms of displaying vibrant colors.

Tested spec	Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime	Sony Tablet S	Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	Apple iPad 2
Maximum brightness IPS mode (Super IPS)	358 cd/m2 (570 cd/m2)	393 cd/m2	336 cd/m2	432 cd/m2
Default brightness	183 cd/m2	160 cd/m2	336 cd/m2	176 cd/m2
Maximum black level, IPS mode (Super IPS)	0.27 cd/m2 (0.45 cd/m2)	0.47 cd/m2	0.3 cd/m2	0.46 cd/m2
Default black level	0.15 cd/m2	0.19 cd/m2	0.3 cd/m2	0.19 cd/m2
Default contrast ratio	1,220:1	842:1	1,120:1	926:1
Maximum contrast ratio, IPS mode (Super IPS)	1,325:1 (1,266:1)	836:1	1,120:1	939:1

We used Riptide GP as a games performance benchmark. On the Prime, GP runs smoothly with a high frame rate, although maybe a bit lower than on the iPad 2; however, thanks to specific optimizations made by the developer, GP has added graphical effects, like water that splashes on the screen, contributing to the feeling of immersion. Also, on the Prime, the water physics seems to knock you around more violently. Overall, we enjoyed the experience on the Prime much more than on any other platform.

Bladeslinger is the most impressive-looking game on the Android platform yet, and the demo (pictured) looks great running on the Prime.

On the other hand, Zen Pinball on the Prime features impressive high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, but suffers in frame rate compared with the iPad 2, where HDR is absent. Overall, as impressive as some of the demos are--especially Bladeslinger--there's nothing here so far that looks outside the iPad 2's capability.

Web page loading speeds as well as app download speeds were several seconds slower than on other Android tablets and the iPad 2 in our anecdotal testing. Given our expectations for the effect the Tegra 3 would have on download speeds, this is disappointing.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime photo samples

The 8-megapixel rear camera provides the Prime with what is, on paper, the most technically advanced camera we've seen on a tablet. Pictures taken by the camera retained details other cameras like the Tab 10.1's and Sony Tablet S' rear cameras didn't. Colors were slightly lighter than the same photos taken with the Sony Tablet S, but the clarity and overall color accuracy of the Prime's camera make up for this.

An example of the kind of clarity you can expect with the Prime's 8-megapixel camera.

Also, shutter speed on the Prime is nearly instantaneous, whereas the Tab 10.1's camera took several seconds to focus and shoot. Thanks to the 2.4f aperture of the Prime's camera, which allows more light through the lens than is typical for a tablet camera, we were able to see more detail even in low-light situations.

As for moving pictures, 1080p video recorded with the camera is clear and smooth, with no noticeable artifacts like what we saw in the Tab 10.1's 720p videos.

Sound delivered by the speaker carried heavy bass with clarity and thankfully didn't have the "tinny" feel to it that many other Android tablets' sound has. We would have preferred a higher volume, though, as the iPad 2 easily dwarfs it in that department.

With normal use, the battery drained about as fast as on other Android tablets and we were able to continuously use the tablet all day without needing a charge. Check back soon for official battery life results, both with and without the dock connected.

Conclusion
The Asus Transformer Prime is the best full-featured Android tablet yet. Its refined design makes it just as sexy as the iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the laundry list of thoughtful features, coupled with great video playback and camera performance, deliver an impressive device that more than holds its own against any tablet, including the iPad 2.

While games performance is somewhat of a mixed bag, most of what we've seen is impressive and, in most cases, is just as good as the best of what the iPad 2 has produced. However, it will take some time before developers really dig into the Prime's quad-core guts to produce something that truly blows us away.

The Prime will be available mid-December 2011 at $500 for the 32GB version and $600 for the 64GB version. The dock/keyboard clocks in at $150.

iPhone 4S Review

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:34:00 -0800

Unfortunately this isn’t iPhone 5 many hoped for. No matter if you wanted larger screen, slim case or rounded glass screen those things aren’t there, yet. It’s a new spin for previous iPhone 4 but it still can impress many with a faster processor (borrowed from iPad 2), a better camera, a smarter virtual assistant and twice the storage of its predecessor.

Like iPhone 3GS did back in the days to the 3f, the iPhone 4S bumps the iPhone 4 down to 2^nd position while keeping it for sale for lowered price. Apple says iPhone 4S is the most amazing iPhone ever. Is it? Yes, of course it is, but read on to see whether it’s really worth an upgrade.

iPhone 4S Hardware

The Apple iPhone 4S after making revolution in industrial design with iPhone 4 last summer still remains one of the most attractive smartphones to have ever been built. Apple’s choice of materials and its manufacturing prowess are unmatched, and puts a group of other wanna-be competitors to shame. Apple didn’t need to make changes in design to make iPhone 4S as the bestselling cellphone ever created.

The iPhone 4S has the same durable glass and metal construction as the iPhone 4. You won’t find any creaks or loose parts, and the only plastic used on the phone is for the home button below the display. The iPhone 4S is a bit heavier than its predecessor by increase from 137 grams (4.83 ounces) to 140 (4.94 ounces) but you won’t feel a difference while holding it. Apple’s use of glass for both the front and back of the phone may be questioned by those who tend to drop their phones often, as it has a tendency to shatter, despite it being reinforced. But the smoothness of the glass gives you the feeling that you are holding a real premium device. Apple has covered both the front and back glass panels with an oleophobic coating that resists face grease and fingerprints better than any other smartphone I have used.

All buttons along the sides remain the same as for iPhone 4s and includes power/sleep/unlock, volume controls, and the switch for ring/vibrate are all made of quality metal and are very satisfying to use. Button feedback is just right, and you never miss a command because the button didn’t respond to your input as it usually happens with low quality plastic buttons.

iPhone 4S comes with two built-in antennas to avoid call drops like it happens to iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S can now intelligently and instantly switch between those exterior antennas, in real-time, even while you’re in the middle of a call.

This generation of Apple handset comes with A5 dual-core processor you might be familiar from iPad 2 that was released this spring. iPhone 4S RAM size the same as of its predecessor and is 512MB but Apple have expanded the storage options for the iPhone 4S, and you can now choose a 64GB model in addition to the 16GB and 32GB versions that have been available before for iPhone 4.

iPhone 4S, is that it still features a small (by comparison with Samsung Galaxy S2 with 4.3-inch and Samsung Galaxy Nexus with 4.5-inch display) 3.5-inch display. It’s still nonetheless one of the best LCD screens on the market, with its 640 x 960 pixels (326ppi) of resolution and near paper-like viewing angles. The iPhone 4S’ display is noticeably different than the Super AMOLED Plus screens from Samsung, as it’s not nearly as saturated and punchy. However, the colors for iPhone 4s display seem more accurate, and the screen is just a joy to look at. I didn’t find the smaller screen size to be a hindrance in use, even though I’m used to carrying around phones with 4.3-inch or even 4.5-inch displays. As for me the optimal screen size for today’s devices should be 4-inch and that’s why I hoped iPhone 4S will get bigger screen.

Software (iOS 5)

iPhone 4s comes preinstalled with latest iOS 5 which was first shown to public back in June 2011 and only now it’s introduced to wide audience. iOS is great mobile operating system with some feature some major improvements like Siri and improved notifications, other improvements are more minor but will still improve your overall user experience.

The one thing we will blather on about quite a bit more here is Siri. Apple bought the DARPA project called CALO. in early 2010 and now that functionality is baked right into the iOS 5 but currently available only for iPhone 4S owners. We’ve heard that’s due to the processor demands required for voice recognition, but since you need an active data connection (Wi-Fi or 3G) to use Siri we have to imagine that the heavy lifting for voice recognition is happening somewhere inside Apple’s massive data center they built last year, which would seemingly allow lower-spec devices to do the same. And, since the iPad 2 is running the A5 at an even higher clock speed, there’s just no good reason we can think of for putting Siri exclusively on the iPhone 4S.

We were and still are amazed about with what Siri can do. Siri are capable of doing great number of things, from sending texts and emails to finding restaurants and getting directions from one place to another – all things that are possible to do without voice commands as well but with help from Siri you can do those things hands free.

And then there’s the other part that makes Siri great: you don’t have to remember the exact commands, at least, not as much as you do with Android handsets. If you want directions on Google Navigation in Android you have to specifically say “Directions to X.” With Siri you can say “Tell me how to get to X,” or you can say “Get me directions to X,” or even “Directions to X.” It’s not a major difference but it feels more like Siri has enough “brain” to figure out what you are looking for whereas the voice recognition elsewhere feels more like you have to remember to say what it wants.

Siri signals that Apple is taking a real interest in improving voice recognition and hands-free device interaction. That should mean some amazing progress from here, and we can’t wait to talk to the next generation Siri. We also hope that Siri will be able to run offline one day, because today’s Siri requires a 3G or WiFi connection to do anything. Even the simple voice commands that were available in iOS before no longer work offline, and if you happen to be one of the few who actually used those commands to change tunes while offline, you’re sadly going to have to find another way.

iPhone 4S Battery life

The iPhone 4 offered impressive battery life, and new handset offers even bigger capacity batter, but the main problems is that dual-core processors uses more power than its single core predecessor. While Apple promises up to eight hours of battery life on an active 3G connection which is up one hour from the 4. Curiously, though, standby time has dropped from 300 hours on the iPhone 4 to 200 on the 4S (probably due to new services included into iOS 5, like Siri). Other stats remain the same: 14 hours on GSM, 10 hours of video watching and 40 hours of listening to music.

During this review, I was able to get through a full day, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on a single charge, with my usual battery of two email accounts refreshing at the fastest intervals, push notifications from Facebook and Twitter apps, a handful of text messages, a good amount of web browsing, and few phone calls. The iPhone 4S easily outpaces most any Android smartphone, but it doesn’t beat the best ones by a large margin. I was really hoping to be able to go 24 hours on a single charge with the iPhone 4S, but at this point, it seems like battery technology just isn’t there yet or at least Apple isn’t there to pick them up.

Camera

Another of the more noticeable changes from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S can be found in the camera. The iPhone 4S features a new 8-megapixel camera with an f/2.4 lens (improved from the old phone’s f/2.8) and a backside illuminated sensor that is 73 percent (according to Apple) more sensitive to light than the already impressive 5-megapixel sensor found in the iPhone 4.

iPhone 4S camera features autofocus, with face detection, and a flash (this feature is useless just like for any other cellphone), and can record 1080p HD video with digital image stabilization. Latest iPhone also camera is significantly faster (to launch and to shoot) than before, and much faster than the competition. Photos are captured with accurate color and gobs of detail, and the interface is simple to use. The camera opens with minimal lag, and it is possible to bang out shot after shot without it slowing down between images.

iOS has simple but yet useful photo editor that allows to remove red-eyes and allows to crops images as well as add some special effects. Apple also added a camera shortcut to the lock screen and you can snap the shutter by clicking the volume-up key when in the camera app.

Video captured with iPhone 4S can be up to FullHD size (1080p). The quality is similar to mobile phone king Samsung Galaxy S II captured videos. The iPhone 4S does have an advantage with its image stabilization feature though. The iPhone also has a simple video editing feature for trimming clips down to smaller sizes but you can avoid a need to trim your videos just by choosing iPhone 4S with bigger storage.

Unfortunately, Apple stuck with the VGA resolution front-facing found on the iPhone 4 for the iPhone 4S, but it gets the job done for video calling purposes but let’s be honest, who uses their cellphones for video calling?

Conclusion

The iPhone 4S is not radically changed compared to its predecessor and doesn’t features top-tier smartphones do these days (such as a 4-4.5-inch screen or 4G LTE connectivity), but offers what is arguably the best smartphone experience of any device on the market today. Its overall user experience is improves upon the massively successful iPhone 4, and takes the crown as the best smartphone you can get. The iPhone 4S is not perfect but Apple’s simplicity, great design, and quality materials used makes it great smartphone that competitors are still trying to match. Though the iPhone 4S may not appeal to owners of the iPhone 4 due to its almost matching design to the older model, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who is looking at their first smartphone or wants to switch to iOS from another platform like Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and others. You could certainly do far worse. As the previous iPhone 3GS owners I already ordered iPhone 4S due to its design and processing speed over two generations older iPhone and you won’t regret if you plan to.

Amazon Kindle Fire Features, Specifications & Price

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:01:00 -0800

The new Amazon Kindle Fire was launched during the Amazon Press Conference a few days ago. It has not just brought big surprises, but also has got some great features along with it.
Although the Kindle Fire is packed with great features, Amazon has certainly got its competitors nibbling by announcing the device for a market-friendly $199 price tag, which poses serious threat to Apple’s iPad.
Since the launch of the first Kindle, Amazon managed to sell a whopping 3 million tablets in 2010, and as speculations broke out indicating that it is planning to launch its next Kindle in 2011, the tablet became one of the most anticipated devices of the year.
The tablet comes with great features, which include streaming movies and TV shows and access to Amazon’s app store. The tablet boasts a 7-inch Gorilla Glass color display and is powered by Google’s Android OS with Wi-Fi connectivity – however, it does not feature a camera, microphone, or a 3G connection.

Amazon Kindle Fire Specification
Here are the full technical specifications of the newly launched Amazon Kindle Fire:

Display	7-inch multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.
Size (in inches)	7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″ (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm).
Weight	14.6 ounces (413 grams).
On-device Storage	8GB internal. That’s enough for 80 apps, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books.
Cloud Storage	Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
Battery Life	Up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as web browsing and downloading content.
Wi-Fi Connectivity	Supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use the 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or 802.1X standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks.
USB Port	USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Audio	3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers.
Content Formats Supported	Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.

Kindle Fire Features
Although the Amazon Kindle Fire is priced for more than half of the cheapest Apple iPad, it is loaded with new features and increased processing speed. Here are some of the features, which will definitely make the device worth buying.

Size and Weight
Weighing just 14.6 ounces (413 grams), the Kindle Fire is the lightest tablet available on the tablet market. It approximately weighs 64% lesser than the iPad. On the other hand, it is even lighter than the BlackBerry PlayBook which weighs 425 grams.

However, in terms of size, it is about half the size of the iPad, which matches closely with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color tablet. The tablet is about 4.72 inches wide and 7.48 inches in height, a little larger than a 4×6 picture.

Amazon Silk Web Browser
The Kindle Fire is a content-focused tablet, and keeping that in mind, Amazon has come up with its own Web browser called the Amazon Silk. Silk is a cloud-accelerated Web browser that crunches all of a website’s elements with Amazon’s powerful Elastic Compute Cloud or “EC2″ cloud service, which will provide faster loading of contents and websites.
The basic functionality of Silk is that it dynamically divides workload between the local Kindle Fire and the cloud-based EC2, taking into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content.

According to Amazon, “If hundreds of files are required to build a web page across dozens of domains, Silk can request all of this content simultaneously with EC2, without overwhelming the mobile device processor or impacting battery life.”

Free Amazon Cloud Storage on Kindle Fire
The tablet comes with 8GB internal storage, of which 2GB is allocated to the OS and 6GB is usable. However, if you run of out of local space then no worries. Amazon offers you free cloud storage for all Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. This allows you store Apps, books, movies, and music which will be available instantly to stream or download for free, at a touch of a finger.

The tablet comes with 8GB internal storage, of which 2GB is allocated to the OS and 6GB is usable. However, if you run of out of local space then no worries. Amazon offers you free cloud storage for all Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. This allows you store Apps, books, movies, and music which will be available instantly to stream or download for free, at a touch of a finger.
At present, there isn’t any cap on the amount of content you can store. This means that the cloud storage will be unlimited and you can practically store any number of files on the cloud.

The Power of Apps
The Kindle fire will merge all of Amazon services including Instant Video, Prime, Amazon Web services, and MP3 as well. Along with all these services, the Kindle will enable you to shop on Amazon. Although the Kindle Fire is loaded with Amazon Services, the tablet is still powered by Android. This is will enable the device to run all kinds of apps for playing games, socializing, stay up-date with breaking news, weather updates, and more.

The Amazon App Store for Android is integrated with the Amazon.com website and features premium Android apps which users can be download for free or at a discount. The best part is that you can preview or test drive the apps without having to buy them.
Here are some of the apps available for the Amazon Kindle Fire:

WhisperSync for Movies and TV Shows

Another important feature on the Kindle Fire e-reader is the WhisperSync which has the ability to synchronize your notes, bookmarks, last location read, and popular highlights. With the launch of the Kindle Fire, Amazon expanded the feature to support movies and TV shows. With this, you can stop a movie on your Kindle Fire, and then resume it on your Internet-connected HDTV or computer in the same spot. And all of this happens wirelessly.

Amazon Kindle Fire Availability and Price Details

The Amazon Kindle Fire is priced at very low price. Perhaps it is the best feature of the tablet. The Kindle Fire is available for just $199 without any contract plans. Users will be getting 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime, which is $79-a-year membership service that includes streaming video and free two-day shipping.
Alongside the Kindle Fire, Amazon also announced two more low priced Kindle e-readers:
The entry level Kindle – priced at just $79 – is the cheapest version of the e-reader. It comes with a standard 6 inch e-ink display and 2 GB internal storage. It will support Wi-Fi and a 5-way controller for navigation.
The other version is priced at $99 with a limited touch screen capability, known as the Kindle Touch. It will come with a 6 inch e-ink display and 4 GB internal storage. The same version is available in 3G – Kindle Touch 3G – for $149

(The prices are in United States Standard Dollars because the Amazon Kindle fire is not out in the UK yet)

-Noordinarygadget

The iPhone 4S....

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:58:00 -0700

The iPhone 4S is a stunning new phone (advancing from the iPhone 4) made by Apple inc. and what I believe is the best smartphone you can get right now. Heres a bit about it...

Description

Processor and battery life

The iPhone 4S features Apple's A5 dual-core 1GHz processor along with a dual-core GPU. Apple says the new chipset makes the iPhone 4S twice as fast and offer graphics performance that is seven times faster than the iPhone 4's. Despite the more powerful processor, the company claims the smartphone provides 8 hours of talk time over 3G, 14 hours over 2G, 6 hours of browsing over 3G, 9 hours via Wi-Fi, 10 hours of video playback, and 40 hours of music playback.

Siri

Siri icon
http://www.noordinarygadget.blogspot.com/

The feature that Apple touted most during the event was the new voice assistant called Siri. It doesn't completely replace the current Voice Control feature, but it certainly does a whole lot more. Basically, Siri is designed to deliver information or follow commands that you give it. For example, you can check the weather, ask for a contact's address, set up a reminder, get directions, and ask for obscure trivia like the height of Mount Everest (and lots more). You access the feature by holding down the Home button.You will be able to activate Siri with a Bluetooth headset, I understand that car integration is "coming." Given the abundance of hands-free driving laws, Apple will need to make Siri fully accessible to drivers while they keep both hands on the wheel. Siri supports English, French, and German. More languages will come later.

Camera

The iPhone 4's 5-megapixel camera was already great, but now it's better. The iPhone 4S has an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus, flash, f/2.4 aperture lens, and a backside-illuminated CMOS sensor that allows 73 percent more light than the previous sensor and should deliver better low-light performance. A hybrid IR filter is also onboard for better color accuracy. Apple claims the new camera performs 33 percent faster than the iPhone 4's camera, and the A5 processor has a built-in image processor that adds face detection and 26 percent better auto white balance. So basically you can take flash photos!

Dual-core A5 chip

A5 chip
http://www.noordinarygadget.blogspot.com/

Two cores in the A5 chip deliver up to two times more power and up to seven times faster graphics. And you’ll feel the effects. Fast. iPhone 4S is quick and responsive, which makes all the difference when you’re launching apps, browsing the web, gaming, and doing just about everything. And no matter what you're doing, you can keep on doing it. Because the A5 chip is so power-efficient, iPhone 4S has outstanding battery life.

Official iPhone 4s Video

The New Kindle fire...

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Thu, 6 Oct 2011 09:08:00 -0700

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, presenting the Kindle fire

noordinarygadget.blogspot.com

At a New York press conference on Wednesday, the Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, revealed that the much anticipated device would be under half the price of its market-leading rival, Apple's iPad, at $199. A vital, shock announcement was that the new Kindle Fire will only be going on sale in the US for now.

The wireless media player/book reader/web browser/geegaw will be the cheapest of its kind when it is released in the US next month. Others have tried and failed to crack the tablet market now dominated by Apple's iPad.The iPad is designed to be an ultimate system for entertainment and multimedia, and is supported by Apple’s iTunes Store and App Store, which have over 18 million songs and 425,000+ apps, respectively. Some memory and graphic intensive applications, such as “Asphalt 6,” “Sim City,” “Dead Space,” and “Prince of Persia,” require the iPad to contain superior processor and memory to handle the graphic intensive nature of the applications. The iPad also features a long battery life, at least 16 GB of internal storage, and webcam for HD video conferencing to provide users with a comprehensive entertainment and multimedia experience. In addition, iPad’s 3G connectivity is essential to thousands of apps, such as the “Restaurant Story” and “Vegas Tower HD,” that rely on wireless connections to function.

Unlike the iPad that is designed to outperform the competing tablets in both technology and user experience, the Kindle Fire is designed to bring the fragment pieces of Amazon’s ecosystem, such as Cloud Drive, Music Cloud, Video Streaming, and App Store, all together under one roof so that the users can experience all the products and services while enjoying the core value proposition of reading and storing books and magazines.The tech specs on the Kindle Fire are designed for simple multimedia and entertainment, and its 8GB internal storage is not meant to store graphic and memory intensive applications that can easily take up internal storage space.

But Amazon is uncannily good at guessing what its customers "need" – its systems have squeezed every little clue about our future desires from all the information it has built up about us from our previous purchases. Estimates vary, but Amazon is set to sell between 2m and 5m Kindle Fires by the end of the year.

Apple and Amazon come at the tablet market from opposite directions. Amazon cares more about selling media than devices, hence the cut-price tablet. Apple cares about selling devices – beautiful, exciting, all-singing, all-dancing devices that command all-singing, all-dancing prices. But despite the fundamental differences in their approaches, they clearly agree that the tablet is going to be the place where people consume media. Let's face it, we are all too lazy to open laptops these days!

Amazon needs people to buy a lot of content and it's going to be cutting deals to get exclusive stuff. It will be competing with Apple, Netflix and a host of others to get those exclusives. Deals are going to get done. Now there is more competition, maybe some will be good deals.

Of course, the Fire could fizzle out. And the media are all too prone to throw away online opportunities. But maybe, just maybe, it won't only be Bezos who has the last laugh.

What Do You think??http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Color-Multi-touch-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B0051VVOB2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324153424&sr=8-1

Apple to release cheaper, 8GB iPhone 4 within weeks???

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 05:23:00 -0700

As the world waits for Apple to release the iPhone 5, with not much paitence but with high hopes. Reuters is reporting that Cupertino may be refreshing the iPhone 4, as well. According to two anonymous sources "with knowledge of the matter," an unnamed Korean manufacturer has already begun producing parts for a cheaper, 8GB version of the smartphone, slated to launch within the next few weeks. As for that next-gen handset, the insiders went on to say that the iPhone 4S / iPhone 5 will will feature a more spacious touchscreen, better antenna and eight megapixel shooter, and that Apple is indeed aiming for a late September launch, after having already asked manufacturers Hon Hai and Pegatron to prep their facilities for the production of 45 million units, altogether. Details are very scarce, as usual at this point, but I will let you know as soon as I get more information.

But in the mean time what do you think? Feel free to comment and subscribe.

Source(s):Technorati

The Benefits of the Kindle 3G

micahj99@googlemail.com (Micah Roberts) — Tue, 9 Aug 2011 10:40:00 -0700

I believe you’ve heard about the new Kindle 3G wireless reading device, question is how do you feel about it? Does it interests you? Do you feel like you’d like to know more about it or do you think it’s just another gadget that will be forgotten soon enough until we hear about the new hot item on the market?

Allow me to elaborate. The Kindle 3G is no ordinary gadget, those items that are spread on the news and last for a month tops. The is one of the best selling products online these days and there’s a good reason for it too. I myself had doubts about it and didn’t pay too much attention, but when every third person next to me talked about it or even took it out of his bag to use it I knew this is something new and big that maybe is good enough to learn about.

So, the Kindle 3G is actually a wireless reading device, nothing new here except the new Kindle has new features that benefit better than the previous one. Now, you can download any no. of books or magazines in less than 60 seconds from anywhere in the world since it comes with a free 3G + built-in Wi-Fi technology, how cool is that? No more looking for book stores or ordering out of stock books, feel like reading? In less than 60 seconds no matter where you are you can have your books. More than that, it weights less than an actual paperback and it’s very easy and convenient, unlike a regular book you have to hold in a specific position so your page won’t turn on you. I don’t know, I like books and their smell (when they’re new) but I find I like the Kindle better, it has too much to offer than a regular book has and it’s the same value since it’s the same book.

Kindle 3G :

Here are just a few benefits of this new wireless reading device :

1. It’s thin, small, very light and weights only 8.7 ounces [246.64085097 grams] which is less than an actual paperback, so why carry heavy books with you now that you can have all of them in this small device?

2. You can store up to 3,500 books in the new Kindle 3G, can’t carry 3,500 books with you at once right? Don’t think you want to either, but now you can and you won’t feel their weight.
3. Read it bright sunlight since there is no glare, just like a regular book.
4. The battery lasts for up to a month, so even if you don’t have electricity around you’re still able to read.
5. Download any no. of books or magazines anywhere in the world in less than 60 seconds without paying annual fees.
6. More than enough reading area size with 6”.
7. 50% better contrast with latest E Ink Pearl technology.
And much more.
Now, let’s go to books. Besides of holding an actual book, feeling paper and taking place on the shelf, that’s it. I think the Kindle 3G won this fight with a clear knockout! No wonder this is one of the best selling products on the Internet, I guess it’s true what they say – hundreds of thousands of people Kindle all over the world can’t go wrong, can you?

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The Benefits of the Kindle 3G

Kindle 3G :

Here are just a few benefits of this new wireless reading device :

1. It’s thin, small, very light and weights only 8.7 ounces [246.64085097 grams] which is less than an actual paperback, so why carry heavy books with you now that you can have all of them in this small device?

Email me at micahj99@googlemail.com