Written on 4/03/2012 02:56:00 PM by poison_ivy
Sure, Apple's iPad is king of the tablet world but for those who don't like Apple's closed environment, there's always Android. But here's the rub, there's a pletora of Android tablets in the market each vying for the anti-Apple market, so which one's the best? Here are my top 10 list.
1) Asus Transformer Prime
With a quad core to boast, 32GB of internal memory and an optional keyboard dock, the Asus transformer prime is currently king of the Android tablet. However, stocks are low and some reports say the Transformer Prime is experiencing some GPS issues but its nothing that a software update couldn't fix, in fact it seems Asus already issued an update addressing the issue. If you can find one for less than £450, grab one.
2) Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 Plus
For those looking for a tablet smaller than 10 inches, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 Plus should be on top of your list. It’s one of Samsung's latest tablets released in the last quarter of 2011. Its claim to fame? It’s the first tablet to have the Super Amoled Plus display technology which means, clearer and crisper pictures and videos. The build quality is also not half bad, with an aluminum back housing. HSPA+ technology also ensures you have fast internet connection 24/7.
3) Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
While not exactly cutting edge since the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is already a year old, it remains one of the thinnest 10 inch tablets so this still remains an option for those who likes 10 inch tablets. The Galaxy Tab packs a dual core processor, 1gb of RAM, 8 megapixel camera that allows you to record full HD videos. Plus the 2 megapixel front camera still smokes most tablets, iPad included, which still have VGA front cameras.
4) Motorola Xoom
The Motorola Xoom is on of the first honeycomb tablets and I've included it in my list because the price for this tablet is getting cheaper. If you can grab the 32gb variant for £200-£250, then better grab the deal. Sure, the wifi Xoom has some issues but putting in your custom ROM solves most of those issues. Again, if you can get it for £200, then it has its place as one of the best Android tablets.
5) Acer Iconia Tab A100
I've seen the Acer Iconia A100 go for as low as $190 for a refurbished unit in the US. If you can find one in the UK for along that price point then the Acer A100 is in the running for one of the best Android tablets. A 7 inch screen, dual core processor, honeycomb OS, plus dual cameras makes this tablet hard to resist if you can find one for £150-£200.
6) Kindle Fire
This would have been higher up in my rankings if its available directly from Amazon UK but if you go to eBay UK you can grab one for around £160. That's by far the cheapest dual core tablet you can find. The reason I didn't want to rate it higher is that you have to root it to gain access to the Android market and you can't directly purchase from the Amazon appstore without going through the hoops. It also doesn't have any cameras so if you can find a dual core android tablet with a camera for less than £200, that would be the better deal.
7)
Motorola Xoom 2 Media edition
The Xoom 2 Media edition is Motorola's follow up to its original Xoom tablet. This tablet has an 8.2 inch HD screen, 1.2 Ghz dual core processor, and has a thin profile at 8.9 mm thin. What make's this tablet appetizing is the price. Even though it’s been recently released you can find a brand new one for around £300.
8)
Samsung Galaxy Note
Sure, the Galaxy Note has a dual personality as it's in between a tablet and a phone thus the monicker phablet, but the fact that Samsung sold around 5 million of these in just 5 months, it just means people want an in-between device too. The Galaxy Note is more expensive than most tablets but the fact that you don't have to carry two devices...yeah, it’s still an expensive tablet but if you could get one for free on contract, you'd save a lot by having a phone and a tablet for free.
9)
Archos 80 G9 Tablets
Archos has a series of tablets with different specs and comparing those specs with branded tablets, Archos comes out on top in terms of price. Of course there's durability and customer support to take into consideration but Archos is the best alternative for those looking for a budget tablet but don't want to scrimp on specs.
10)
Blackberry Playbook
Yes, it’s not an Android tablet but the latest OS build lets you run Android apps plus the current market price makes this tablet hard to pass up. Oh, and the promise of Blackberry OS 10, you can have the best of both worlds for a tablet less than £199.
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Written on 2/04/2012 05:34:00 AM by poison_ivy
You know something is popular when you start seeing knockoffs of the thing on the Internet. Well, it seems that the Twelve South Bookbook case is on the spotlight as I have started seeing knockoffs of this thing on eBay.
Now I know that the sure fire way to tell if something is fake is the price but there are some sellers who are actually selling their original bookbook case for iPhone at a discount since some may have gotten these as gifts and are looking for a quick sell but there are also those unscrupulous individuals who will import these knockoffs, jack up its price and try to pass it of as authentic. So I hope this guide will help the latter.
PACKAGING
Left is the authentic bookbook
Knockoffs are getting better and better at copying the original. In the case of the bookbook for iPhone, there's almost no difference from the original packaging...almost. On the authentic bookbook package, there's a small sticker on the front indicating its an iPhone 4/4S compatible case. Also the red inner box easily comes off on the fake while on the original, it stays on.
ACTUAL BOOKBOOK CASE
Authentic bookbook on the left
As for the actual bookbook iPhone case itself, the authentic one is made of real leather while the fake one feels like it has a more suede material. On the inside, the leather holding the actual phone is more thick on the authentic one while the fake one is flimsy and the phone sometimes dislodges itself from the fake one. There's also stitching separating the bookmark tab and its absent from the fake one. But the most important thing to note, and this came from twelve south themselves, is that the authentic one doesn't have a volume cut-out while the fake one have cut-outs for the two volume buttons.
CONCLUSION
Well some people say that with the price difference the fake one is still a good buy but coming from someone who was able to compare both, I'd say save up for a few more bucks and buy the authentic one instead. The workmanship alone makes a huge difference and Twelve South stands by their product with a 1 year warranty. Also, with the fake one's flimsy build, your iPhone isn't that secure.
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Written on 1/16/2012 02:30:00 AM by poison_ivy
The Motorola Pro is one of my favorite Android phones, which reminds me that I have to post my review of that phone soon. Anyways, I recently encountered a problem with my Motorola Pro after resetting the phone to factory settings and pulling out the battery, my Motorola Pro suddenly encountered a bootloader error.
The XT610 took a while to boot up and then it went to a black screen with bootloader mode on it and a bunch of other things I forgot. Rather than take it to Motorola which would take ages, I decided to take matters in my own hands and google the problem. I'm glad to say that I managed to unbrick my phone thanks to a few helpful websites. Here's what I did (do this at your own risk, I will not be responsible for anything that will happen to your phone):
1) First, make sure that your phone's battery is fully charged. Since you won't be able to charge the battery via your phone since its bricked and all, get one of those cheap clip-on chargers, it worked for me.
2) Download the appropriate sbf file. This file is the ROM that would bring your Motorola Pro back to life. For European/GSM Motorola Pro's, use the file here, for CDMA/Verizon Droid Pro your sbf files can be found here at the second post, you need to register to see the link.
3) Next download the needed drivers and flashing utility (rsdlite) found here at the second post.
4) First install the drivers. I had trouble installing the drivers on my windows 7 machine so I used my parents' old windows xp PC.
5) Turn on your bricked phone and wait for it to be in bootloader mode then connect to PC and run rsdlite. Make sure that your phone is detected so better use the back USB ports of your PC.
6) In rsdlite select the appropriate sbf file then run start. Wait for it to finish and ta-da! Your phone is unbricked.
Many thanks to the guys who provided the sbf files!
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Written on 1/04/2012 01:39:00 PM by poison_ivy
So, you know I'm a fan of free stuff, in fact as much as possible I don't pay for my apps for my iPhone that's why I've signed up for Appshopper so that I can just wait for the apps that I want to become free or drop in price.
Now the highly anticipated sequel to the best iPhone game, Infinity Blade II, won't drop in price anytime soon but instead of waiting for it to drop in price you can actually download it for free. Yep, that's right F-R-E-E. What's the catch? Well, you only have to download a profile to your iOS device then download other apps and run them for at least 30 seconds. After that, you'll earn credits which you can use to redeem paid apps.
So how do you get started? First you need to have an iOS device, either an iPhone, iPod or iPad. Second, this will only work for US iTunes account so if you don't have one yet, do a google search on how to create one. Third, you need to point your iOS Safari browser to freemyapps.com in order to download and get the rest of the instructions.
Is it hard to earn credits? Well, if you're aiming for Infinity Blade II then you most certainly need to download all of their sponsor apps but for other apps, I was able to download cut the rope with just two sponsor apps. Once you've gotten your credit/free app you can always delete everything.
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Written on 12/27/2011 12:38:00 AM by poison_ivy
Fancy free stuff? Well, Apple has some belated gifts for you. Starting December 26 until January 12, Apple is giving away something free, either its a free album, videos, e-book, or apps. All you have to do is go to the App store and download the 12 days of Christmas App. This promo is only available in Canada and select European countries, UK included.
Here's the list of Apple's 12 Days of Christmas give-away 2011: (list will be updated everyday)
DAY 1: Coldplay EP iTunes Festival London, 3 tracks
DAY 2: Top Gear and the Trip video episode
DAY 3: Lady Gaga: Marry the night single
DAY 4: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo (ibookstore)
DAY 5: Sonic and Sega All stars racing
DAY 6: David Guetta: Nothing but the beat (party remix) EP
DAY 7: Snapseed (Appstore)
DAY 8: Gotta be you (single) - One direction
DAY 9: Free pilot episode of House and 30 Rock
DAY 10: Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed
DAY 11: Lonely Planet Best in Travel 2012
DAY 12: Foo Fighters Single
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Written on 12/16/2011 01:38:00 PM by poison_ivy
Sure WebOS is all but dead but the recent announcement by HP that it will be donating webOS to the opensource community has sparked a ray of hope to webOS fans. The HP Veer is probably not one's first choice for a smartphone but you can probably buy this one on eBay for less than $120 and that's a sweet price point. So does this small guy deserve a place even as a backup phone? Let's find out.
DESIGN
There's no arguing that the HP Veer is the smallest smartphone around. With a 2.6 inch screen and weighing 130g, it's easy to forget that you have a phone in your pocket. On the right is the charging port which also serves as your headset jack when you put on the head adapter, top right is the power button, on top is the sim card slot and on the left is the volume button. When you slide the screen up, you'll be greeted with a full QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard has a nice tactile feel but anyone who has big fingers will have a hard time with the keyboard which is so cramped.
FEATURES
When using the HP Veer, I have to constantly remind myself that I'm using a smartphone. This phone does emails, it has an App store, document viewer, GPS, almost everything you can find on today's smartphone. However, the size just gets in the way of its usability as a smartphone. For one, document editing is really laughable on such a small screen and cramped keyboard, reading and sending emails is fine and it actually has a nice implementation on webOS, web browsing is also good considering that it has a small screen but the browser has flash and it too is usable if you want to take quick peeks at websites which has flash and which you can't view properly on your iOS devices. But my number one complaint against using the HP Veer as a smartphone is its speed. Its.just.too.darn.slow. Booting up takes almost a minute and although webOS has a good implementation of multitasking, once you have too many apps open, it just bogs down the phone.
The HP Veer has a five megapixel camera which has a very so-so quality. Picture quality is okay in bright environment but degrades when using it indoors. What does make the HP Veer useful as a smartphone is the pre-installed Google maps and you can use it as a mobile hotspot. So if you have a broadband dongle, instead of buying those hotspot devices, you can just pop your sim in the HP Veer, adjust the apn settings and you got yourself a broadband hotspot
CONCLUSION
Sure, $120 is still too much to pay for a smartphone that's dead considering that there are android mobile phones for much less than that but if you're into hacking and hoping that android would be ported to the HP Veer, or if you're just curious about webOS and would like to try other platforms, or if you're just into zombies, well, then what's a few hundred bucks compared to the experience you've gained?
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Written on 11/24/2011 06:03:00 AM by poison_ivy
So, iMessage, Apple's take on BBM. Usually, the iPhone's features are intuitive and doesn't require much research but there seems to be some people confused with using iMessage. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding iMessage and hope I've helped.
How do I use iMessage?
Go to settings->message and turn the iMessage toggle to "on". You will be asked for your Apple ID and password. Enter it to register/activate iMessage on your iPhone.
Why can't I send iMessage to another iPhone/iPod/iPad user?
In order to successfully send an iMessage to another iPhone/iPod/iPad user, first, they must be using iOS 5 and above so tell the recipient to update their device to the latest firmware. Second, they must also turn on their iMessage feature under settings.
My friends are already on iOS 5 and they have iMessage on but iMessage isn't showing up in the message box or there's no option to use iMessage.
The recipient must also be connected to the internet in order to receive your iMessage. Also, if they're using an iPhone and their mobile number is registered with iMessage, make sure that under your contacts, their mobile number is under this format: +(country code)(mobile number) e.g. +447731234567
Can the recipient receive my iMessage as a text message when they're not connected to the internet?
Under settings->messages menu, for iPhone users there's an option to send as SMS when iMessage is not available. If you turn this on, your recipient will receive an SMS if they're not connected to the Internet, however, you will be charged standard text messaging charges. If you choose not to send as SMS but as an iMessage, the recipient will receive it as soon as they're online, just like a regular IM app.
Is there a way to tell if the recipient is available for iMessage?
If you've successfully sent an iMessage, there will be "delivered" under the message bubble. If its been a while and there's no status that the iMessage has been delivered, there's a good chance your recipient is offline.
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Written on 10/05/2011 05:26:00 AM by poison_ivy
So, the iPhone 4S is has been revealed and announced. A good lot of us are probably disappointed, what, 16 months of waiting only to get the same design albeit a few bump in specs: dual core processor, 8 megapixel camera, voice assistant. But of course, fanboys bloody don't care so for those of you who are eagerly awaiting to get your mitts on the iPhone 4S. Be prepared to pre-order the phone via the Apple Online Store on October 7, and delivery will start October 14th.
The website says that the starting price is 499 quid, that's the unlocked price, if you want carrier subsidy, as of now, it's only Vodafone where you can register for updates, the rest don't even have a page yet but again, it's only been a few hours since the announcement was made.
As for pricing with the networks, I'd say it would be about the same price plans as the original iPhone 4.
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Written on 9/07/2011 05:33:00 AM by poison_ivy
Are you bored with your iPhone 4 and impatiently waiting for the next generation iPhone to be announced? Well, here's a bit of rumour to get you going: The iPhone 5 or 4S will be announced around the 3rd or 4th week of September.
According to this blog, a Philippine newspaper reporter already has his hands on a review unit of the next generation iPhone but because of the non-disclosure agreement with Apple, said reporter can't publish the review within 2 weeks when the iPhone 5 has been announced.
Apple typically gives demo/review units to reporters, like Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, so this rumour is HIGHLY likely. If the iPhone 5 is announced around that time, it will probably be available first week of October which coincides with a lot of rumours from the Internet that the next generation iPhone will see an October launch.
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Written on 8/25/2011 02:19:00 PM by poison_ivy
I never really thought of Groupon that much before. I always thought their deals were more centered on things like restaurants and SPAs so I never really signed up nor have I downloaded the iPhone app. That is, until I found out that they were also offering some great deals on gadgets.
One of the Mobile Phone deals available on Groupon was a dual SIM phone from Hash mobile which they were offering for 60 quid! That's more than fifty percent off the original price of 129.99. Dang! I was actually kicking myself for missing out on that one.
Being obsessed with mobile phones, I have simcards from almost all the carriers in the UK, since I don't want to miss out on a great mobile phone that's only exclusive to one carrier. Anyways, having a dual sim phone would save me the hassle of carrying three mobile phones with me. I can just carry around two and have my primary number on my smartphone.
Well, lesson learned. I downloaded the iPhone app and obsessively checking in everyday to see if they got any good tech stuff I might want. So for those of you who are writing off Groupon, don't knock it till you try it. They might actually have a good offer you'll be interested in.
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