Hello all, and welcome to BigGreenRobot-UK, the blog with android & and tech news from the UK, I will post my thoughts and reviews on new tech and advances in the world of android, this site will focus on UK relevant news, so if there’s a new phone coming to Verizon and it’s not being released in the UK....I DONT CARE!!
If there’s a new device coming to Blighty, I do care and I’ll let ya know.
Anyhoo on with the show
Dropbox! wow, I recently discovered Dropbox and was immediately a convert, I had heard of it before but always thought "why do I want to store my files on line??" then I realised when I found the android app that bar charging I could practically not plug my phone in again! It’s amazing, in conjunction with the Dropbox app I also have DropSnap by CTSO installed so whenever I take/download a picture it’s automatically sent to my Dropbox folders (I can even specify which folders the pictures go to). Visa versa, when I have an apk file, document, wallpaper, music track, whatever, on my computer I can simply drop it in Dropbox then open it on my phone :)
Also I have a shared folder with my dad so we can easily share files even if were not in the same room, city, country. Yeah, yeah I know that’s called the internet and it’s been around for a while! but it’s such a nice, well presented and simple way of doing it.
I would recommend completing the "Complete these quests and become a Dropbox guru!" section as you will bag yourself some extra free storage for some very easy steps.
That’s the ZipReview now go check it out!
P.S. I do later plan to mod my phone (actually phone case) with palm pre parts for wireless charging so I will literally be able to completely banish the need for plugging my phone in, this mod will shown in full detail when I can afford the parts and time so stay tuned :)
2.The location of the power button (constant accidental pressing during games) and headphone Jack are pure stupidity
3.I've experienced horrible lag in anything from game playing to texting
4.The screen is one of the most sensative and least accurate I've used, regularly registering either double taps or no input at all
5.Several core functions seem to have bugs (keyboard canceling itself in Facebook )
6.the light sensor/auto brightness can't be turnedoff and is waaay overactive in every app and function
7. For some reason none of the keys are illuminated, oh apart from the power/notification light which is located out of sight damn near on the back of the phone And with its light leaking on the gamepad which further demonstrates the poor quality
8.the volume button is damn near impossible to activate correctly as its so small and smooth. Soits hard to feel if your pressing up or down
9. No camera button!.....seriously couldn't theyhave set the shoulder buttons to do this in nongame mode?
I could go on but I'm typing this on the phone and its driving me crazy, will deffinitly be trading for a samsung or a htc
Well me and the girlfriend were getting annoyed with not being able to access the Internet at most times of the day despite numerous e-mails to the landlord!
Anyhoo "Huffs to self" we decided we needed to find a solution to our access woes. We looked at the several wired provider options but felt since our location wasn't permanent we would opt for a mobile solution,
We looked at the various USB dongles that the mobile networks offer but as they only serve one device at a time these were not really an option either,
So then we looked at Mi-Fi dongles and there were only 2 on offer, the Vodafone Mobile Wi-Fi R201 & the Huawei E585 from Three.
After looking at the available deals and hardware we decided against the vodafone one. the hardware seemed quite large and the data deal didn't come even close to what Three were offering for the same money, so decision made we signed up and got our dongle on :)
SO WHAT IS A MI-FI DONGLE I HEAR YOU SHOUT??
well I'll tell you, its basically your own personal, portable wi-fi bubble that you can put in your pocket and take with you wherever you go, its about the size of a very small bar of soap (for those of you that remember soap coming in bars!! :P) and you charge it as you would a normal mobile phone, you can connect up to 5 devices simultaneously, so you could have your phone, laptop and ipod (or android powered music device) all connected at the same time.
The dongle has been improved since the last version Three offered, it has a sleeker black look and now ultra simple operation with only one button, the On/Off/Display button.
It has a small OLED display, and whilst very simple, shows all the information you need for use, i.e signal connected network, battery and session usage, it would be nice if it showed total usage but the fact it doesn't is of no concern as the Internet dashboard is a great tool and keeps track of total usage.
If you connect it to your machine with the provided USB cable it will install the online dashboard link and also the drivers for the internal storage, you can put a micro sd card of up to 32Gb in the device so it can be a handy storage device too.
So far we have enjoyed fairly trouble free browsing, occasionally it will go from a full signal 3G network to a poor signal HSDPA network, and some times it can take a few refreshes to get a page to connect but such is the nature of mobile networks, and a slow connection is better than no connection :)
all in all were pretty impressed with device and look forward to having the freedom to access Internet when were out and about.
Well Finally were starting to see some decent integration! The Motorola Atrix has been announced and its a great concept that is actually seeing the light of day, quite soon too.
For those that haven't heard or seen, the Atrix is the 1st decent truly multi-purpose media phone, on its own its a powerful smart phone (according to Motorola "the most powerful") with 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor & 1GB of RAM making things pretty speedy, but it won’t be 5 minutes before theirs a more powerful one, however this device has plentiful sleeves with many tricks hidden within.
Things start to get clever when you see that it can become the brains of a netbook or home computer or even connect with your TV for full media experience!!!
So let’s go through the awesome accessories
(Awesome until the price is released I'm sure)
1st you have the laptop dock, this basically looks like a laptop except there is no mother board or other gubbins, the brain is the Atrix, i guess it’s essentially just a keyboard and monitor, Secondly they will also be offering a dock that will allow you to connect a HD monitor along with keyboard and mouse to give you a desktop like experience or you can link it to a HD TV.
Now i named the article "The Future is (Almost) Here" because i think this is great and a step in the right direction but it’s not totally there yet, it would be nice if the monitor was OLED because that could make the accessory insanely thin and a thing of beauty, also i don't like the way the phone is behind the monitor, it would be better it acted as a trackpad and/or 2nd display, maybe showing app appropriate icons so say for example you’re in the browser the phone could display all your shortcuts. also id like there to be no need for the dock so you can wirelessly beam data to whatever device, i.e. ya HD movies and pictures straight to your TV from your couch, i know that’s a bit beyond current capability...but not far off, Also the device at the moment whenever docked launches a larger Android/Motorola interface called WebTop which is good but personally id like to see a more complete OS like Chrome or Android Honeycomb (WITHOUT THE MOTOROLA BLUR!!!) yes it currently and unfortunately has Motoblur which is Moto's own skin on the android OS that the insist we all really love and want "they obviously don't read their Facebook comments page!"
This brings me onto another point, i own a Motorola milestone, a truly great phone that i believe turned Motorola's fortune round in Europe as they were seriously waining bringing out allot of dull dumbphones before this, but most European milestone owners are currently disgusted at Motorola's support of their product, we've been promised a software update for about 1/2 a year now and we've been constantly fobbed of with feeble excuses whilst other brands get the latest updates leaving our phones missing allot of good features its perfectly capable of running (and the American version with hardware already does!!!), on top of this they have the locked down bootloader so unlike many other android devices i can’t be updated with custom Roms, anyhoo i wont digress to much as this could turn into a long rant and you only need to check out Motorola Europe's Facebook page to see the feelings of oh so many people, their actions have made me very unsure whether to consider getting any more of their products, with other great quality manufacturers like HTC out there they need to keep an eye on their customer relations and support.
Right on with the show, here's a list of the complete specs for the device:
Software — Android 2.2 FroYo
CPU — 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor
RAM — 1GB
Storage — 16GB included, upgradeable via microSD
Output sockets — HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro USB port
Connectivity — 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, DLNA
Screen — 4 inches, 960×540 pixel resolution
Video support — MP4, H.263, H.264, WMV, Xvid, DivX (with 1080p support)
Audio support — MP3, WAV, WMA, eAAC+
Cameras — 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, 720p video recording, user-facing VGA cam
Dimensions — 117.8mm x 63.5mm x 10.1mm
Weight — 135g
Battery life — 1930Mah
Colours — Black with textured finish back
In summary, I’m definitely excited about the direction of the android OS and what manufacturers are doing with it, and whilst i think I’ll be skipping this one, i will be keeping an eye on it.....and Motorola!!
Ok peeps I just received a free Kindle 3 thanks to a cock-up by amazon, my girlfriend got one for Christmas and for some reason amazon sent the order twice and charged once.
:)NICE.
Anyhoo I know it’s not android but I thought I’d do a quick review on it, now I’m admittedly not much of a reader but lately I have been downloading samples to the kindle app on my Milestone and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading them so getting a free kindle has been a nice bonus and incentive for me to read more.
1st impressions of the device is its very smart, very lightweight and mostly a pleasure to use, I say mostly as there are a few floors/niggles that bug me but I’ll get to that shortly.
Now the very 1st thing I did with the kindle was hack it, That’s right I needed to get rid of the default wallpapers, their very nice but also a bit pretentious and dull and you only need to see them once before your bored so after a bit of Googling I ended up here howtogeek.com jailbreak your Kindle for screensaver customization and within 5 min I was hacked and after a bit of photoshopping I had my own wallpapers.
Now to the device itself, I named this article "Can’t Touch This" because it’s taken me a while to get used to not touching the screen! Due to the way things are with tech nowadays I want to touch everything “ooh er!” seriously I often find myself tapping my laptop screen before remembering its not touch sensitive, Oh and there was the time I tried to unlock the house with the remote key for my car!! Umm ok let’s carry on shall we, I don’t really understand why this device couldn’t have a resistive touchscreen, that’s right I said resistive! It doesn’t need a fancy fragile, expensive capacitive one, just a basic resistive one. I find the page buttons at the side a little too easy press whilst holding the device and although I’m a fan of a physical keyboards, when you need a symbol or a number you have to press the (Sym) button then choose from an on-screen menu, seriously amazon we’ve had multi-purpose keys for a while now that’s what the Alt key is for! also the lock button feels a little awkward on the bottom of the device, Another issue I have is the lack of a backlight, now I know many people would disagree but I don’t mean a bright backlight, I mean just enough to look like the page is being illuminated by a small lamp so I can read in the dark whilst my girlfriend snores..........I mean gently slumbers! Also the keyboard could benefit as it’s almost impossible to use in a dimly lit room, now I know you can buy a leather cover with built in light that plugs into the side of the kindle but ITS £50!! Yeah I’m not paying that.
Right lets be positive, I think the screen is great, yeah I would like colour to read comics etc. but that tech's not ready yet and as it stands it’s a great screen, very good contrast and looks as good as printed word, also the page turn/refresh is great, very quick and I look forward to reading many books on this, the device also has speakers and I have to say I’m very impressed with the volume and quality of the sound they can produce, although the music player is in the extreme Beta if not Alpha stage, when I played some Disturbed through it I was very surprised with how good it sounded, I also tried the Stephen Fry audiobook and his dulcet tones were reproduced very well.
All in all I give this device 8/10, it’s probably the one of if not the best eBook reader available and whilst I think the tech has got further to go I’m very impressed with the device from amazon.
Hello all......anybody......ok im talking to myself for now it seems, anyhoo this is the a BRAND NEW android blog, with all the latest android news and info, i will post my thoughts and reviews on new tech and advances in the world of android, this info will focus on UK relevant news, so if theirs a new phone coming to Verizon....I DONT CARE!! if theirs a new phone coming to Vodafone or other UK nets I do care and ill let ya know.
anyhoo on with the blog
and feel free to leave comments and let me know your thoughts people :D
