A lot of people were left grumbling after Apple’s “Let’s talk iPhone” keynote speech last week. “Where’s the iPhone 5” being the biggest out cry. Well let’s take a step back for a second. The iPhone 4S now possesses an A5 processor, which is identical to what’s in the iPad 2, an 8 megapixel camera and new virtual assistant in the form of Siri. So this is not merely a rehash of the iPhone 4.

Opening the Box:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hardware aside it was Siri that stole the headlines at the keynote. The demo was more than impressive. The prompts Apple has provided have helped with the learning curve. I’ve been able to set up reminders, search the web, play songs in iTunes and create SMS messages just by using my voice. This has forced me to project my voice more clearly.  My usual muffled voice has lead to some interesting results i.e. whilst texting about wrestling to my brother CM Punk came out as Tiempo Pascal.

Something my friend had spotted on MacRumours that I thought I’d test for myself. Location services don’t appear to be set up in the UK at the moment. A request of “Where am I” fed me back this statement from Siri:

Not a massive problem as I always have Google Maps to bail me out of this situation. But it’s something Apple need to address ASAP.

Other new features stem from the release of iOS5. There are some fantastic features, which have been added such as tabbed browsing in Safari, the ability to create reading lists, new software to edit photos and movies and iCloud.

iCloud replaces the redundant MobileMe which never took off. Importantly it will now be a free app and you’ll be able to sync devices without the need to plug them into a computer. 5GB storage will be available for free, but you have the option to purchase more storage. On iTunes for example you will be able to re-download your music via cloud to any of your other iOS devices. You’ll also be able to do the same with pictures and movies on Camera Roll and documents.

iMessenger is the to Apple what BBM is to Blackberry. You now have the ability to send instant messages from iPhone to iPhone. Also you’ll be able to do the same across iPhone to iPad and vice versa. This will help with the monthly free SMS allowance.

Features aside the process to get up and running was very straightforward. I was hoping for the iPhone to sync with iCloud straight out of the box. This didn’t work for me, so I resorted to plugging it into my Mac. Other than that all my contacts, messages and files transferred over from my 3GS to my 4S seamlessly.

All in all the iPhone 4S is fantastic and the jump from a 3GS is noticeable. If you’re considering upgrading from an iPhone 4 only do so you’re out of contract. The iPhone 4 will continue to be supported by Apple for a long while. I don’t think there is enough to make the switch. The 4S is better than the 4, but it’s not substantially different.

Well aware that this will not the first article you’ll have read about the new Apple iPad, what I hope to do here is look at some of the features and aspects of the device to provide an overview that is both informative and helpful for anyone still on the fence about whether to buy one or not.

First off let’s talk about the keyboard.

I’m typing this review on the iPad using the keyboard in landscape mode. The keys are are represented on screen in a larger format than expected with plenty of space between the keys.
Not all the keys are represented as one would hope, and a special mention to the omission of the apostrophe which requires the user to click into a new menu before you get access.

The iPad software attempts to automatically correct spelling and grammar which is great, but it would be more helpful if it was more accurate. At the time of writing this post it has only corrected successfully around 50% of the time, which means its still not good enough to rely on, makes it hard to let the words flow and actually makes it more time consuming.

A minor gripe for an iPhone user might be the location of the shift button located where the delete key is on the smaller phone keyboard.

These things aside, the more one becomes accustomed to the interface and learns to relax with this device you can let it’s power and the intuition of the OS really do it’s thing.
The important point is that this is not as intuitive as we may have been told.

Screen

The screen on the iPad is around six times larger than that of the iPhone although the resolution doesn’t appear to be as good as on the iphone4 – the letters on the keyboard show pixelation and images in some of the iPad apps can be a bit blurry.
However there is no denying that having this much real-estate available affords better and more user-friendly interfaces within applications.
To have columns in the email or Settings applications mean it’s a much more smooth process to do what you want to do with as few swipes and clicks as necessary.

The swipe action works very well on the iPad and requires less actual movement of the finger, and selecting and loading apps is as easy as it is on the iPhone.

The spacing of the apps icons does feel a bit too far apart for no real reason, but the forthcoming update to allow folders should mean that you can have all the important bits of software in one place.

The iPad does not function very well outdoors as the screen is very difficult to view in direct sunlight.
With this in mind it is worth considering whether it really is worth the price hike to purchase the 3G version at this stage, rather than wait to see what improvements are made in the next version.

I was given the 32Gig WiFi version to test here at Laskys E-zine, and so far with a couple of movies, a few TV shows, some books and a fair few apps I’ve barely scratched the surface of the space available.
This again makes me feel that unless I was planning to use the iPad as my main portable media centre I could save further money and reduce the spec down to 16Gig for version 1.

The WiFi seemed to be stronger than that of the iPhone 4 and had a strong signal around 20 meters outside from the base inside – so with a glare reduced screen attachment it’s possible to take it out to the garden with you.

Applications and uses

There’s no doubt the iPad is not just for Christmas. Nor is it a one trick pony.
The beauty and simplicity of the OS is such that by adding modules or applications that suit your needs, you can customise the product from the inside to do exactly the things that suit your individual needs.
No two iPads need be the same. This is the same philosophy as for the iPhone of course and nothing new.
However, to have a larger screen than before does tend to skew the usage towards reading, gaming, and drawing. Even music applications are starting to look very good and make good use of the screen size.

At the moment lots of applications are being updated to work on the iPad and it is just a waiting game for your favourite app to be re-released.

But in some cases the applications are being re made altogether for the larger screen format and classed as HD or iPad version, and in most cases when this is done a far higher price is being attributed to the program.
Sometimes this is justified by extra features not present on the original, but in a fair few cases there may be no extra a functionality at all.
Be aware that the cost of the iPad itself is just the beginning!

Overall having spent some time with the devise, I have learned to love it for what it does well, and feel just a bit let down when I’ve found it can’t do something I was hoping it could.
The experience of using the iPad is not by any stretch a let down however and new uses and applications are being revealed daily.

It’s important to remember that the iPad at this stage cannot be classed as a full computer replacement device – you still need a computer to sync it with of course – but there is also still some issues such as document reading, printing, and saving that needs to be addressed.

In the short term this is a device that will change the way you acquire and process information – an interactive and customisable tablet that can put you in contact with mass media and online culture (if not contribute to it too – remember there’s no camera).
In the long term this devise is set to revolutionise how we interact with tools that talk, and how we build and display the interfaces that provide us with a window out to our community.

Let us know your experiences and thoughts about the Apple iPad in the comments below.

Justin Goring reviews the iPhone 4G and shares some exploratory remarks about why and how some of the features contained within it are present and correct.

IPhone 4G in hand

Dimensions

I will avoid specific measurements on this post as you can find out these kinds of details on the Apple site, and will instead focus on how it feels to hold it in comparison to previous models.

The phone feels really well built and exceptionally solid. The metal casing with glass front and back makes the iPhone not only sit well in the hand but also reinforces it’s solid build qualities. It is reasonably heavy and as such you can certainly feel it in your pocket, but it’s extremely thin so what it gains in trouser weight it more than makes up for in slide-in-to-back-pocket agility.

Look and Feel

Because of the phone’s amazing build quality it really is a stunner to look at.

It’s still early days and still a rare sight to be seen with around the office, so be prepared to have people rock up and ask to have a play on it. Any self-assured and confident person should have the where-with-all to remind them that this is not a book in a library and that your phone is in a long-term relationship with your Social Networks and therefore should not be pulled, grabbed or man-handled like a bit of steak at an all-you-can-eat buffet

The buttons on the side of the device feel nice and solid with no ‘give’ or loose feel and the addition of etched ‘+’ and ‘-’ symbols will obviously add some extra accessibility to those that need it.

The speakers and cable slot are located in the same place and are the same size, as is the main circular call-to-action button on the front.

The addition of a front pin-hole camera to the right of the ear-phone speaker is the only noticeable change to the phone when comparing and looking straight on.

Side by side: the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4G

Speed, battery and reception

The iPhone 4 seems faster when loading apps and navigating the menus. I recently updated the OS on my iPhone 3G to version 4 and had felt it made the phone slower, and drained the battery faster. But not so with the new iPhone 4. The battery life on the new version is much much better. I’ve found that despite extensive use the battery showed only 50% loss in 24hrs. However I’d say that I rarely use my phone for music and multimedia – instead tending to pull on the WIFI and 3G capabilities to read and update social tools.

I’ve noticed that the reception on the phone can be temperamental. I’ve read up about the antenna issues and ways to hold the phone etc, but I’ve not noticed this as a real issue. Instead I have noticed that where on previous models of iPhone I might have had good reception (such as at home) it seems to register a weaker signal; and other places where previously reception was notorious (at work) it seems better.

This could be to do with interference of particular types of other signals as at home I have a cordless phone, and next door have SKY television. I also have quite a strong WIFI signal beaming out from two Apple routers. Whereas at work, our phones are wired, we have no SKY TV (unless there’s something they are not telling me) and no WIFI (??!!) in the Design-Bunker.

Screen

The screen has been one of the most talked about new features to the iPhone 4 and it really is something that should be seen to be appreciated.
The actual screen size has not been improved upon since the early iPhones but the rendering process really has come a long way. Text is the most appreciable thing to view on it as it really does display pixel perfect, leaving icons and buttons some way behind.

A good example of this is on the Guardian app where the article text renders perfectly and is a joy to read, but the header graphic showing the Guardian logo is pixelated and cheap-looking on the new screen (whereas it looked fine on older models).

Note: For those who know about such things, the advent of HTML5 and CSS3 (the coding language [and version] used to build and display websites) should begin to address the imbalance of button graphics and logos to text, as new ways to render web graphics and logos that might include rounded corners, drop-shadows or non-web accessible fonts can be created at any resolution on-the-fly through code rather than by displaying a pre-designed image. This means that web pages load quicker, but also can render to take into account new screen sizes such as iPads, netbooks, mobile and smart-phones.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Other noteworthy features

The front camera adds additional features such as the ability to swap between front or back camera while framing a shot; and the inclusion of FaceTime which is basically video chat. FaceTime is currently locked down to calls between iPhone4 users only but I think pretty soon they will open it up to AppleTalk users and eventually even further to take advantage of the Jabber chat framework (which Facebook also uses).

There is apparently two microphones now built into the body which in theory should make voice calls better as between the two it can distinguish one primary sound source and attempt to block out any additional background noise. I’ll be interested to see future apps that are released to take advantage of the two mics especially those in the music recording category.

Conclusion

What I especially like about the new version of the phone is something more than the sum of it’s parts: not just the shape and feel of the phone, or what it can do (all of which we have seen before in other smart-phones like the Nexus One and Desire) but actually the feeling I get from owning and having a practical use for such a well designed and engineered bit of kit. It reminds me of watching my dad coveting his Sony Pro Walkman in the 1980’s – a beautiful, heavy black professional and portable recording machine often seen under the nose of a reporter at the BBC. This phone’s slick silver metallic edges harps back to the 1970’s and 1980’s when media equipment was analogue and solid and had needles and dials instead of displays and buttons. Yet it’s ability to be controlled by voice, to pin-point the stars above your location in the sky, to create 16 track music recordings, to record in 720p HD at 30 frames a second and upload to youtube where ever you have a signal… all these abilities and more put it safely at the front of the current crop of freshmen multi-media phone devices.

The new iPhone 4 will not change everything again, but it will change our design tastes for the better and give us a lingering more-ish taste of the cutting edge of technology. It doesn’t take a genius-bar frequenter to predict that what starts with physical functional mobile phone design from Apple will permeate out through the ranks and end with better looking consumer products in every category. Products with one digital footprint in the present and another in the re-presented and re-imagined past.

Original title and location of post from Justin’s personal blog: Another blog post about iPhone 4

“Just let your love mflow”

http://www.mflow.com/

I have a number of music devices and services in my life, in particular, 3: my own music collection, Spotify and last.fm. All of these perform a specific task for me, and they do that rather well, so when a new one comes a long, it always takes me a while to discover if it’s something I actually want to use and, if so, how it’s going to fit in with my listening habits.

So, today, this is what I’m going to attempt to do with mflow.

What is mflow?

Always a good starting point – I’d actually read a couple of articles / reviews on mflow before getting hold of it myself (it’s on an ‘invite only’ system at the moment, though it’s fairly easy to get an invite) and it seemed straight forward – you gather followers who you ‘flow’ music to and follow people who ‘flow’ music to you. So far, so not unlike twitter. When someone flows a track to you, it appears in your inbox, and you have the option to listen to it once in full. For all other tracks, you can listen to a 30 second preview, or you can buy it. Here’s the best part – if someone buys a track that you have flowed to them, you get 20% of the money. Only to spend on mflow tracks mind you, but that’s not so bad, right?

And that is pretty much all there is to it, so let’s have a look…

The first thing you are presented with is the friendly ‘find out what this thing you’ve installed does’ screen:

Normally, I’d just skip straight past this and dive into the software but, in the interests of doing a proper and complete review, I thought I’d go through it – turned out to be a complete waste of time. If you’ve read the paragraph above, you know all of it, all it does it point to various parts of the interface the lead you to these various functions. But as you’ve probably already guessed, they’re not really that hard to find anyway.

How can I play some music?

This is likely to be the first question you ask when opening any new music software. If you have been paying attention so far, you may have picked up on the fact that you can only listen to a full track once you’ve followed someone and they’ve flowed some music, otherwise it’s just 30 second previews… Fortunately, mflow has realised this, and set you up to automatically follow 3 of the ‘mflow’ accounts. Coupled with that is the fact that once you start following someone, their most recent 5 flows are sent to your inbox. So, immediately, you have 15 tracks in your inbox to listen to. Or, if you’re like me, and you left it a week between signing up and actually installing and running the software, you might have 50 there.

Don’t like any of the songs they’ve sent you? This is not beyond the realms of possibility, so how can you listen to something? Well, as I’ve said before, when you follow someone, their most recent 5 flows appear in you inbox, so all you have to do is find someone with the similar music taste to you, and follow them – voilà, 5 tracks to listen to.

If, at this point, you’re thinking to yourself “but I just wanted to listen to music, never mind this ‘following’ rubbish”, well I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. Unless of course you dive straight into buying some…

OK, I’ve got last.fm on the background, how do I find people to follow?

This is simple to a certain extent, as you can probably see on the screenshot above, there are a load of people on the home screen who you can follow straight away, including the likes of Phil Jupitus and Zane Lowe – I chose the former initially, and 5 tracks appeared in my inbox.

You’ve also got a selection of ‘top recommendations’ and new people to choose from on the home screen. This is all very well and good, but soon enough you’re going to want to actively seek out people with similar tastes in music. The easiest way to do this, is to search for the music. Once you’ve found an album you like, you can see you who has recommended this the most, as well as the most recent flows. Clicking on one of these people will show you all the tracks that they’ve flowed and, if you like the look of them, you can follow them

Hang on, remind me again why I want to go through all this following malarkey?

Simple – this is the key to this service, it’s all about sharing music. These people you’re following will (if you’ve chosen well) have similar music tastes to you. Get following enough people and you could have an inbox stuffed full of new music all the time that you actually want to listen to.

Brilliant, so I’m now getting all this music to listen to. So why do I actually need to flow?

Well here’s the first problem – this service is all about discovering new music and, once you’ve got an array people to follow, that’s all you need, so why should you flow? Clearly there’s the whole social element here, where you contribute to the community by sharing the music you like so people can follow you and discover said music. Other than this, as far as I can tell, there are 2 reasons to flow: To validate / show off your taste in music.

1. To validate / show off your taste in music.
   This is not dissimilar to the whole twitter ethos. Let’s be honest here, if you’re not a celebrity, no-one actually cares what you are doing with your day, so why should they care about your music tastes?
   Well they won’t – they’ll only care if it’s a song they like and, if that’s the case, chances are they won’t care who it came from, just that it’s a good song. (See previous social / community point).
2. Money.
   Yes, that’s right, you can actually get money using this – as I said right at the beginning, if someone buys a track that you’ve flowed, you get 20% of the price they paid – that’s 15.8p for a 79p track. As far as I know, this is only to spend in mflow though.

The obvious question now is why would someone choose to buy something here rather than on whatever their current online music store is?

I guess one theory is that this is all cyclic – people buy because someone has bought 5 tracks they’ve flowed, so they’ve got enough money to buy one. Of course, this isn’t sustainable, people (including you) will have to feed in actual money at some point, at the very least, at the beginning of the cycle, otherwise it’ll just run out. This raises a similar question – will people actually put money into this or will they just join in the hope that people will buy what they flow and get them some free music? My vote is for the latter.

Couple with that the fact that not all music is on here – iTunes, for example, has a far wider selection – and once people realise they can’t get all the music they want here, they just go straight back to iTunes (other online music stores are available).

Free music? I’ll have some of that… so how do I get people to follow me?

I’m not sure… I flowed a few tracks this morning, after checking at 4, I still had no followers… From what I’ve seen, the best way to get yourself noticed is a flow a load of songs that people like (for hints, look at the current charts) and, in amongst that, flow a load of tracks from a really popular album. This will put you up on the ‘top recommenders’ list for the album – make sure you don’t flow  loads of tracks from the same album in a row otherwise people will see those in your most recent flows and think you’re a loser.

That all sounds a bit artificial…

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Or I have, I’m not sure any more. If you accept that the only reason to flow is to make money to get more music, it soon becomes apparent that there’s no reason to flow music that you actually like – just flow the stuff you think people will buy. When it comes to the discovering new music, you can follow people who haven’t realised this yet, and are still flowing music they like. Spotting the problem here yet…? If everyone picks up on this, people will only be flowing the popular music, the whole ‘finding new music’ bit goes out the window (unless you’re into all that popular stuff) and people just start using to target teenagers with mummy’s credit card to make them some money.

Conclusion

OK, so this review has taken a slightly cynical direction, so I’m going to attempt to round up the main points here.

The principle here is a good one – it picks up on one of the main reasons people still use last.fm in conjunction with Spotify – there’s no easy way to discover new music through Spotify. The concept of following people with similar music tastes to find new music is brilliant and should work really well.

Unfortunately, there are too many reasons why the implementation just isn’t that great:

• The big difference between this and other free services is that you can’t listen to what you want, when you want to unless you buy the music.
• If you’re buying music, most other online stores have a much wider selection – after just an hour, I came across several CDs I own that weren’t on mflow. This is the kind of thing that will make people just go back to their preferred music store when they want to buy something.
• The ‘paid’ incentive model works against the ideal of sharing what you actually like vs. sharing what you think people will buy.

So, as I said, while the concept is brilliant, the implementation just isn’t. The fact that there’s no incentive to tweet and people still do it means the whole paid model is unnecessary. My current set up involves last.fm, and a twitter search for ‘spotify’ to discover new music, and this works well for me. If Spotify implemented a similar sharing model, I could see that working, but as for this, I’m not a fan.

If you do want to follow me, search for ‘eambrose’ – I can’t promise I’ll actually use it any more though…

I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on one of these – I am an Android fan, I’ve had a G1 for just over a year now (running Android 1.6) so was keen to see the changes in the operating system, as well as getting my hands on some new hardware.

Hardware
I won’t dwell too much on the looks – there are plenty of pictures here and around the web for you to draw your own conclusions. In my opinion, it’s a nice looking phone. The screen is a good size, the extra 0.5 inches to the G1 makes a big difference.

On the front, you have four touch sensitive ‘buttons’ as well as the scroll ball thing which protrudes from the device rather like… well I’ll leave that to your imagination… You’ve also got a 5MP camera, a flash and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The lack of hardware keyboard obviously means that this can be much thinner than the G1, it’s also slightly thinner than an iPhone.

It feels solid in your hands, and has a good weight to it. Overall, it looks and feels like a quality piece of kit, clearly designed to compete with a certain other popular smart phone.

Display
As mentioned above, the display has an extra 0.5 inches on the G1, and it makes a big difference. Obviously a lot of the native Google apps have been re-deigned to fit the 800×480 resolution, and they definitely look the part. HD Youtube videos look fantastic, as do most of your standard photos. Where this increase in size does cause issues is with some of the older apps. In particular, one of the most popular games in the Android Marketplace, Solitaire (we’re a sad bunch…) looks very fuzzy and, combined with the slightly different colouring (there’s a lot more orange) makes the app almost unplayable for any length of time.

Of course, this is not the fault of Google or HTC and I’m sure the app developers will gradually bring out new versions to take into account the new screen. For the most part, the bigger screen alone makes using most apps much easier.

One aspect of the G1 I didn’t think I would be able to live without was the hardware keyboard. The larger screen here, however, makes the keyboard bigger (surprisingly…) and much more usable. I was getting pretty good by the end, but I’m still not sure I’m ready to part with my hardware keyboard, particularly not on any device with a smaller screen.

The touch sensitive buttons on the front are responsive and give a little vibrate when pressed. I did accidently press them twice – once when pulling down the notifications screen and once when aiming for the corner of the screen, but that was very early one and could well be due to my own lack of brain – hand coordination.

Android 2.1 (Éclair)
This was the part I was looking forward to the most, the updates to Android itself.

The differences are noticeable immediately from the home screen, where you are presented with a ‘live wallpaper’, in this case, a load of coloured lines moving around the screen. As the live wallpapers go, this is probably the most ‘usable’, most of the others will most likely slowly hypnotise you. The home screen itself is now 5 homescreens (up from 3) with helpful dots in each corner in case you get lost.

The ‘menu’ button has been replaced by an on-screen version which causes the apps to ‘fall’ onto the screen. The menu has a kind of 3d ‘folding’ effect going on at the top and bottom, with some nice sliding around when moved. It’s all very unnecessary, but nice enough to look at.

As far as the native apps go, most of them have had small and, relatively insignificant, redesigns (the calculator and actual phone part spring to mind here), the music app is as boring as ever, the camera app hasn’t changed much (though the lack of hardware camera button makes it slightly more awkward to use). The biggest change as far as the interface goes is on the gallery.

While it’s not one of the most significant apps you’d think to upgrade the UI on, it makes a big difference to the ‘squares on black’ from older versions. In other changes, the Clock app has more of a desk/bedside table feel to it, with links straight through to the alarm, a slideshow of photos and music – clearly designed with dock usage in mind.

The most significant change to the OS has to be the inclusion of multi-touch support, and now, the maps and browser apps support this. There’s a short video below to show how I got on with these.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As mentioned in the video (for those who didn’t watch it…), the only really annoying thing about this is the fact that there are still ‘fixed levels’ of zoom, so even when you zoom in, the app still has to adjust to one of the ‘acceptable’ levels of zoom which, in some cases, can be some way off what you originally selected. It’s a minor gripe, but means I will probably continue to use the zoom buttons. It does feel like the pinch zoom functionality has only been added as a response to criticism and comparisons with the iPhone, and it does feel a bit unnecessary. The pinch zoom works really well on the browser though. As far as other changes to the map app go, the other significant (maybe) one is direct integration with ‘Buzz’, Google’s new social networking concept. I’ll be honest, I haven’t really had a look into this, despite apparently already having an account, but if you are already a hardcore ‘buzzer’, you might like that aspect.

Another new feature for Android (since 1.6 at any rate) is voice recognition. You can’t fail to notice the liberal sprinkling of little microphone buttons on almost every text input you can find, as well as one on the keyboard. Naturally, I was skeptical, but take a look at my tests in the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I should point out that this did go considerably better than when I was first playing around – the word ‘bread’ for example, took 4 attempts in rehearsal (one ‘fred’s’ and two ‘reds’) and the sentences just didn’t happen at all. Perhaps I was speaking better this time…

After seeing this success, I was very briefly excited about the prospect of combining this with the Google translate app as well as the ‘Text-to-Speech’ functionality to, potentially, allow you to have a two way conversation with someone speaking a different language via the phone, unfortunately, my attempts to get the phone to recognise any French were a miserable failure. Of course, that could be due to my own lack of ability when it comes to speaking French.

As for performance, there’s a 1GHz Qualcomm processor under the bonnet which easily coped with anything I could throw at it – my G1 has problems running Spotify and the Jewels game at the same time. No such difficulties here, though I’m not really surprised. What did surprise me is that, despite the decent processor, some of the animations are still lightly jerky, even the unlock ‘sliding’ action isn’t as smooth as I would have expected. However, when it comes to the important stuff, I had no problems.

Sound
The inclusion of a 3.5mm jack is a big relief for me – although the G1s included headphones were actually half decent compared with some ‘out the box’ headphones, it’s nice to be able to use my own. It also means I can charge my phone AND listen to music at the same time! I’m sure this is unremarkable for most people as, let’s face it, the 3.5mm jack should be standard, but I’ve had my G1 for over a year now, so I’m going to enjoy this moment…

OK, done.

As for the in-built speaker, well it’s a built in speaker… don’t be expecting too much. I’m sure if you’re a teenager on a bus, it’s more an adequate to annoy everyone else on the bus. In terms of using it for speakerphone conversations, it’s certainly passable, but nothing to get excited about.

Camera
The Nexus One has a 5MP lens and a ‘flash’ (LED). There’s not really a lot to say other than that!

I was disappointed by how these came out, actually. They’re fairly dull (I realise that’s most likely due to the content of the pictures) and, for 5MP, the quality really wasn’t up to much, particularly when viewed at actual size. The flash is also rather weedy – the pictures take inside used the flash – and the outcome is very grainy with colour not unlike a 70s TV show. You can also clearly see where the flash ‘gives up’ in the corner of the images.

I don’t pretend to be an expert photographer, but then most people that will use this won’t be either, so it was a big disappointment. I’ll stick with my proper camera for now.

Overall
This may come as a surprise, but I like this phone. A lot. Yes, there are a few little things that could be improved, and I certainly won’t be writing any novels on the on-screen keyboard, but then I don’t do that on my G1 at the moment. The only truly bad point at this point is the Solitaire app. I know it’s sad, but I do spend far too much time playing it at the moment and I don’t really know what I would do on my bus journeys without it. Still, I’m sure the developer will fix that soon enough.

Will I be buying one? Well, no. I still want one, but I have a few months left on my current contract and am not rich enough to just buy one. Who knows, maybe there will be something bigger and better by the time I come to upgrade. We can but hope…

Actually, there is one more bad point about this phone, I don’t want my G1 anymore. Anyone want to swap?

View more photo’s of the Nexus One smartphone here.

I’m always on the lookout for great new Apps or ways to get more out of my iPhone. The website TVCatchup.com is quite possibly one of the best things I’ve found yet.

It lets you watch live TV on your iPhone…. for free! You don’t even need a Wi-Fi signal, it works perfectly over 3G.

From Wikipedia:

TVCatchup is an internet television service for viewing certain UK channels from free-to-air digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasters live without the use of a television receiver. The service re-broadcasts BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five and free to air Sky channels. As the service permits the viewing of live television channels a TV licence is required. The service is only accessible in the United Kingdom. The service is funded by advertising, with a pre-roll advertisements preceding the live channel stream.

All you do is visit the site, register by setting up a simple user name and password, click the iPhone tab and you’re ready to go.
For ease of access you can just add an icon to your phone screen using the plus button on your browser, and it will appear like an App.

It shows you TV in real time, so basically lets you watch what’s on TV at that moment. It’s still in relatively early days, but there are around 20 channels to choose from. They are all currently channels you’d get either through terrestrial TV or free view, but more are set to be added.

If you like to use your iPhone when on the move, this really is a must!

Below is a video tutorial from SoftwareTutorial showing you how to install and use TVCatchup

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Follow TVCatchup on Twitter
• More info: http://iphone.tvcatchup.com

First, 2 clarifications:

1. By ‘Has Apple done it again?’ I mean ‘Has Apple created a device that is going to change the way we think about a certain type of device (cf iPod, iPhone) and inspire a raft of potential ‘iPad killers’.
2. I’m not an Apple ‘fanboy‘ – yes, I get excited by Apple launches like this, but mainly because of the cool, shiny stuff, not because I’m actually going to buy them. The two Apple products I own (a Mac Mini and iPod) are about 2 years old, and I don’t even have an iPhone – I was an Android early adopter with the G1.

OK, now we’ve got that out of the way, on to the main point – it this a game-changing device in the tablet world?

Let’s look at the good stuff first – it looks nice, and the touch interface certainly seems decent from the videos I’ve seen – I’ll reserve final judgement until I’ve actually got one in my hands, but the main selling point here has to be the software and, in particular, the apps. Being able to run iPhone apps is clearly a great advantage immediately, and I’m sure there will be some great dedicated apps for it as well. I’ve already seen a couple of pictures of the new iWork, and it looks very good.

So the negative points. I’ve been looking around the interwebs and can see a lot of points that already have people ready to take up burning sticks and pitch-forks and burn down the Apple HQ (Laskys does not condone this), here are some of them:

• No camera. Is this a big deal? I can’t decide really, sure, I imagine this device would be brilliant to have a video conversation on, but I don’t see this as a deal breaker.
• No calling / texting features. It’s not a phone, simple as that. I wasn’t expecting a phone, Apple already has one of those, and I don’t really fancy holding a 10” screen to my face…
• No Flash. Starting to get a bit more worrying now, this has been a complaint of iPhone users for some time and for a device for which web browsing is a big selling point, it could be annoying.
• No multi-tasking capabilities. So no listening to music while browsing the web or, say, writing an article. Again, a common iPhone complaint, but this time, it could be a bigger issue.

So (once again) back to the big question – is this a game changer? The problem I have with this is that I can’t decide what game this is trying to change.

The word that has been prominent in all the rumours is ‘tablet’ but I’m not convinced that this is a tablet. For one thing, the whole device just isn’t sophisticated enough to replace a desktop or laptop of any kind, especially with the lack of multi-tasking. I’m also not convinced that the soft keyboard is going to be a huge hit with anyone who is writing a lot, and it could be a long time before there are enough apps to replace the software available on a Windows PC. Finally, there’s the lack of pen input (something I was hoping for). If I want to annotate a book / document, I don’t want to do it with my finger, I’ll use a pen. If I want to draw something, I’ll use a pen.

So is this a netbook replacement? Definitely closer here, but I’m still not convinced. Sure, it looks great for browsing the web, looking at photos and reading on, but for actually being productive, I’m still not convinced that it has everything necessary. Having said that, I’m fully prepared to admit to being wrong on this one when it’s launched.

No, I’ll tell you what this is, it’s a big iPod touch. With an e-reader. If this is the game it’s trying to change, then there’s no doubt it has done that. The apps, screen and interface see to that, but with the others, it remains to be seen whether people will choose this over a tablet or a netbook.

And now, the big question once again, will I be buying one? I can tell you one thing for certain, I wouldn’t be writing this article on one for two big reasons – 1) I have music on in the background on my laptop and 2) I don’t honestly think I could write this much on an on-screen keyboard like that, not without a lot of patience and practice at least.

I also wouldn’t use this as a replacement to my iPod. I might buy a normal sized iPod touch to replace my current one, but this is just too big to use as a portable music player on its own.

So what about the big new thing – would I use it to read on? Again, not convinced. Various companies have spent a lot of time coming up with alternative types of screen to make reading books in this way easier (e-ink, for example) but Apple has just come along and said “Oh, you don’t need that, just use a normal screen.” Again, I’ll have to reserve judgement on this until I’ve actually tried it.

So to put it simply, I just don’t see what I would use this for. Sure, what it does it seems to do very well, I just think there are better ways of doing them all separately. I think I’ll wait and see what actual tablets come out.

Having said that, I’m sure I’ll still want one when I’ve got one in my hands… I’m fickle like that.

So… I had my girl friends round the other night for pizza and wine.
As these things go, one thing led to another and before anyone could say “M P 3″ out popped the Quiz It!

What it is…

Quiz It is a visually friendly update on the old ‘Simon Says’ game with four large purple buttons and a large circular speaker in the middle.
The point of it is to let you create and host your own unique music quiz by simply plugging in your MP3 player and using your own favourite tracks to test the musical knowledge of friends and family.

It’s a game for 2 – 5 players, and each player can take it in turns to be the quiz master and take control of the music and scoring. As quizmaster you will be able to add and subtract points, boo or cheer answers, and distort the music to make the game harder. Players need to have their fingers at the ready and beat the other players to the buzzer just like a real game show!

Setup…

It is very easy to set-up and get going. But you will need a little screwdriver to get the back open to put in the batteries, which i didn’t have, having just moved into a new flat!
So after about 10 minutes trying to get it open with a pair of scissor, finally managed it put the batteries in and plugged in the ipod.

It say on the back of the box your game options are:

1. Name that track;
2. Beat the intro;
3. Name the artist;
4. Sing the next line;

I thought there would be settings for these and unless I missed them, there isn’t they are simply game suggestions.

Game play…

I nominated myself as quizmaster and the rest of the girls were against each other. We decided not use the contestant answer buttons as there we more than four contestants. So we picked the game Name the Track, and I selected a track on the ipod and hit the start and distort buttons. This basically mutes the music and as such it was pretty obvious what the song is.

As quizmaster I decided this was far too easy, chose a new track and hit distort button number two which was no better than the first (I’m not sure what kind of ‘distort’ this was supposed to be but it made the tune sound as if it was being squeezed through the loins of a dying cat) and the game was again brought to an abrupt close.
The third distort button fared somewhat better and so we quickly got into the game play.

But even after just 10 minutes of playing I noticed a distinct lack of interest around the room and in fact one of the players had actually fallen asleep!

Overall…

The best bit about Quizz It was the audience buttons which make boo or clap sounds and were only mildly entertaining. Perhaps after a few more glasses of wine it might have been a bit more fun. But then what isn’t after a few more glasses of wine! It does say “for ages 8 and above” and so perhaps me and my friends are not the ideal demographic for this game and as such I think we will be sticking to games like Ring of Fire (!!) in the future.

Quizz It is by Paladone, available online and in shops at around £25 GBP.