Posts in the Gadgets category

Last week, I decided to get myself a new Nike+ SportBand. I have absolutely no idea as to where my first one went, but I haven't really needed one since I lost it as I haven't played football regularly since. It was great for tracking how much I ran during a game, much better than strapping an iPod to yourself considering how physical some encounters can get.

Before I settled on the SportBand, I was very intrigued by the FuelBand. Currently speculation suggest it might cost £150, in comparison to the £30 I spent on a SportBand, that's a lot of cash!

I was actually willing to wait for the FuelBand and even stump up the cash for it, thinking it would give me an incentive to climb more stairs and get a little more active during the day. The big draw back really came down to cycling. If it measures you're activity during the day, but can't measure how much effort you've put into cycling, what's the point?

That was the single biggest problem I had with the device. Fine, on a cycling machine, there's practicly no movement, but out on the road, people cycle for hours at a time but if it counted for nothing, how accurate would it actually be.

So I opted to go the for the SportBand. Now,

I'm not unhappy with that decision. There's so much more I can do with the £120 I saved, but I really thought about the issue and found it odd that Nike featured a segway as a way to get 'fuel' in their first promo video for the FuelBand and both a BMX-er and a skateboarder in subsequent introduction video.

Accelerometer

Rather than relying on a sensor in your shoe, limiting you to activities, it now relies on an accelerator, which most people have commented will only measure movement covered by your arm. That would make cycling pretty damn hard to track when your arms are near enough stationary for long periods of time. Nike have actually thought about that and included a 3D accelerometer. This, like the iPhone and iPod touch (and iPad?) lets you measure what I assume are g-forces, not just on a X or Y plane, but on the X, Y AND Z planes. BMW have already taken advantage of this with their iOS app and finally another manufacturer is putting the technology to good use!

To be fair, Nike have actually commented on the FuelBand's suitability for cycling and while they're conservative, I'd guess it does a better job at measuring the force you generate while cycling than they'd lead you to believe.

Earlier this year, I found myself needing a new camera. My previous one, a Toshiba H20, hardly made it out of the drawer it called home, yet it needed repairs and replacing over it's 2 year life span.

Once my camera had been written off by the company taking care of repairs, I decided to start the search for a new camera and one that really caught my eye, was the Sony Bloggie 3D.

At the time, I was planning on purchasing a 3D TV and the combination of HD and 3D video recording really made the Bloggie stand out. At less than £200 as well, the camera just became more and more attractive with each passing comparison.

The camera's HD offering is OK, certainly not the best, but considering the price tag and it's other features, it's not worth complaining about either.

The 3D capability is pretty good, you don't need glasses to view the video on the device and you have the ability to adjust the effect, bringing the two frames closer together or further apart where necassary.

I've been using the camera a lot more than my Toshiba already and have uploaded a few short clips to YouTube.

I have read a lot about different tablet form factors since the iPad was first announced. Yes, Apple got the iPad almost certainly spot on. The iPad 2 that has been just as, if not more, successfull.

Samsung, as well as HTC, Motorola and almost every other tablet manufacturer has tried to release a variety of tablet sizes to help match Apples incredible output and sales. Hoping that demand catches up with devices on offer, rather than trying to fullfill demand. A dangerous game to play in what I would class as a, admittedly large, niche market.

Habit

Unfortunately, it seems that, especially in Samsung's case, releasing a number of different sizes has become a habit of what might be seen as their core business. The humble TV.

For decades now, television manufacturers have released any number of sets with almost identical features (if not identical), just in different sizes. Walk into any electrical or department store and you now see walls of the things. Gone are the CRT offerings, but now you have plasma, LCD and LED. 22, 32, 36, 42, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 58, 59, 60 inch and beyond in terms of diagonal screen size. This is one crowded market space.

Just take a look at Samsung's current D range sets which come in 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 series configurations, each a slight step above each other, then the different types of technology powering within each series. The range is further widened with the multitude of screen sizes available. On their website, you have the choice of 148 televisions. 148. An insane number of devices to have on offer.

If this is your common approach to selling your devices, it is probably a natural step to take into new spaces. Their mobile and tablet offerings don't offer as many choices, but compared to Apple's solitary device, it looks like a lot.

Apple were not always the experts at just giving users one choice, take the iBook (5 different colour options) as an example. Or the iPod Mini (5 colour options) or iPod Nano (4th and 5th generations had 9 colour options). Admittedly, colour options are less serious than different screen resolutions, but then their iMac and MacBook ranges also give a multitude of options... the difference? Configurability. Whether that's space, screen size, RAM or the type of input devices, Apple makes their devices either personal or configurable. One thing their iPad competitiors do is give too much choice.

I've been posting a lot about Android lately, and this is the last one I intend to post for at least week or so.

As I've documented already, the HTC Wildfire is my phone of choice for my foray into the world of Android.

Having used the phone quite a bit over the last two weeks, I thought that it was time that I shared my thoughts on the phone, Android and the surrounding ecosystem.

First Impressions

The HTC Wildfire is a small phone, both compared to it’s Android siblings and the iPhone. My last phone was extremely small, but that’s what I wanted. A small phone that didn’t take up a crazy amount of real estate in my pocket (in the process destroying the whiskers in my unwashed jeans).

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HTC Sense usually refers to the user interface on your device and is a bit like a layer of gloss that HTC apply to Android devices. It's actually not that bad. It's quite a decent, yet subtle, set of changes to the default UI. Admittedly, these arent to everyone's tastes and nearly a week into my Android adventure, I'd like to try an Android device without it.

As a result, I searched and messed around and thought it might be useful to document how you can disable and re-enable HTC Sense on your Android device so that you can make the most of it. Having disabled it myself, I've found the phone to be just a little bit faster and more like what I was expecting from Android.

The steps I’ve put together all apply to HTC Sense on a HTC Wildfire which is running Android version 2.1. It's fairly easy to do and you'll find them at the bottom of this article.

Pros

• I found the phone to be a bit faster
• Can always re-enable the HTC Sense UI
• The home button takes you to the home screen you were on

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Android may languish in second place when it comes to the number of Apps in it's store, but that's not to say it doesn't have it's own gems.

As I've only been using the phone for a week or so, this is a top 5, but I hope to be able make a top 10 soon. I've only downloaded the one paid app, and a handful of free apps, but then most of what i've wanted had already been pre-installed. So here goes, my top 10 Android apps (in no particular order):

My top Android apps

Please note, that clicking on these links will take you to their Android Market page if being viewed on an Android device. I'll update the links to be friendly in all browsers soon. If you have an Android device, try out the Barcode Scanner app by scanning one of the QR codes below.

Twitter for Android (free)

Not as good as the iPhone version, but still a pretty good Twitter app. All the key features you need, but I can't seem to view my own timeline of tweets. There's the mobile version of the site I guess, and future updates may change that, but I feel the iPhone and Android apps could be closer together in terms of appearance. Not perfect, but a must have for Twitter users.

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The App store continues to go from strength to strength and the number of apps just refuses to slow it's growth. There seems to be an App for that in every situation (almost), which is no mean feat and just goes to show how well Apple has the phone and music market firmly in it’s grasps.

Here's a top 10 for the apps you should download from the App Store (apps that run on all iOS devices):

My top 10 Apps

Facebook for iPhone (free)

Facebook is possibly the most popular social network around and having the iPhone app makes it even easier to keep in touch. I don't think there’s a feature from the website missing, so if you're a member of Facebook, you should have this on your iOS device. No excuses!

Twitter (free)

Twitter may not be as popular as Facebook, but it's popular product in it's own right. Twitter's official app is the evolution of a third party product that was bought in-house early/mid 2010. It's much improved and has some nice touches. Twitteriffic was my first choice before, but now that has had some real love and attention from the guys at Twitter, it's a must have app!

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After it’s debut a couple of years ago, it has taken me a little while to jump onto the Android bandwagon. Not that I didn't want too, more that I couldn't justify the cost to make it happen.

My phone history

Since early 2006, I’ve been mostly Mac based (exclusively for the last 6 months!), so the jump from OS X to iOS wasn’t a big leap. Having said that, the jump to iOS is so small, it's ridiculous that Apple have been able to make such an easy to use device. During those 4years (and counting), I've been keeping up with Apple's journey and in October 2008, I purchased an iPod Touch. In February 2009, I moved from T-Mobile to O2 and that move bought with it, my first new mobile phone in over 4 years! I went from the brick that is the Nokia N70 to the brand spanking new, Nokia 6600 fold.

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When it comes to Apple, I don’t really take the time to speculate but I thought now would be a great time with the imminent launch of the 4th generation iPod Touch, it seems like a great time to start.

My iPod history

The launch of the original iPod saw a new era for music. It’s taken an extremely long time for record companies to come around to the idea of music being digital and I feel that consumers are still being ripped of. Ripped of quite a lot since the introduction of Apple’s 3-tier price structure in iTunes.

With the release of the iPod Mini, I found my own way into the iPod market as I needed an affordable storage device but wanted a small factor MP3 player too. The Mini fit perfectly, although it’s 4Gb capacity wasn’t ideal for the video editing projects I embarked on in University.

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I picked these up for a bargain price on Play.com (have since gone up a little) and was very pleased once I finally got my hands on them.

After the initial charge, I instantly tried to pair them with my Mac Mini, not knowing that OS X doesn't support the correct profile for a stereo bluetooth device... no matter, Skype wasn't my main reason for buying these! Being able to use these with iTunes would have been a huge plus, but again, no biggie!

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