The Future is (Almost) Here

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!! 

FIX OUR MILESTONES!!  :)

"Cant Touch This" A Kindle 3 Review

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.

Welcome to BGR-UK

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