The Kurio Pocket Tablet Review Pt2

Many of you may remember my first post talking about the Kurio Pocket Tablet last year? No? Well, read the first post as this is post 2 of 2

Like most families we've become a bit obsessed with technology here at Imwellconfused towers, but at the same time we're concerned about application safety, dodgy adverts based on our search histories and malware laced full games. While many of these concerns are easily resolved by common sense, it's not always cut and dry when it comes to applications. But for protecting the kids we do have an ace up our sleeves - The Kurio Pocket Tablet. 

The Kurio Pocket is a small 4 inch android tablet the size of many android phones on the market, loaded with an adapted variant of Android JellyBean with multi user accounts, internet and game restrictions and individual time settings for all user accounts on the device. Add in the 50 pre-installed games, multimedia apps, utilities and educational tools and the opportunity to install a host of additional apps through either the Kurio store or the Google Play Store, with enough safety tools built in to keep the most worrisome parents calm, trust me.

Hardware wise the Kurio holds it's own quite reasonably, while not a speed demon it's more than capable for children to play games, watch YouTube videos, Skype their friends and browse the internet without throwing a wobbler. Even HD video clips my personal tablet struggles with the Kurio Pocket plays without a hitch. only finding the odd slowdown when the tablet's been on for more than 2 days where the girls have been catching up on their My Little Pony Game, leaving the device overnight on charge and going back to it.

The battery life is very impressive, lasting most of the day if the girls are mooching on YouTube, Spotify or any other bandwidth hogging applications the buffering can eat into battery life, but games and applications seem to be less taxing on the pint sized tab. With an Idle test from full to flat we were able to pull 75 hours of runtime, with the screen on full brightness and WIFI on that's better than my personal tablet in flight mode.

The screen and touch panel are adequate for the Kurio Pocket tab, while many geeks would hope for higher resolutions or a slightly larger screen it's a perfect balance. A higher pixel density would eat more battery and memory and a larger display size (not resolution) would cost more to manufacture. A good compromise in my mind. Also, the reinforced plastic screen is ultra tough, designed to take a lot of stress from most users without failing, most manufacturers should take a leaf out of Kurio's book here.

The Kurio Pocket has 8gb of storage, with a larger than normal amount taken for the OS they make up for this with removable applications and for those who need a more space the MicroSD card slot can accept upto 32gb of extra storage, but with the vast majority of software being removable meaning the 8gb storage should be adequate for most purposes.

The cameras aren't the highest of quality but suitable for Instagram, skype or making simple YouTube videos of their toys, with the built in microphones picking up voice exceedingly well, including the one on my headphones.

Audio playback quality is good, I've commandeered the headphones for the main PC as they have volume limited cans for their ears, the Kurio seems to have limited audio playback volumes to a safe level. Playback is decent with good sound levels with the bundled headphones.

The micro USB port accepts USB on the go, meaning you can use a mouse, 3g modem, memory stick, or other USB powered device on the tablet with the bundled OTG cable, making the device extremely versatile something many devices lack. 

Software wise there's a host of pre-installed games and educational titles on the device but it's main feature being Kurio Genius™ Kid-Safe Web Filtering System, keeping kids safe online and updating daily. Children can't also bypass the protection is tightly integrated  into Android for a seamless layer of protection the kids don't realise is in place.

Bundled applications are a pretty good, with the odd trial and ad supported game. They play well, but the girls prefer specific games in the play store being Nyan Cat - Lost in Space, My Little Pony, Toca Boo (Interesting note - Lissy named the ghosts in the game) and Youtube to name but a few. They're happy and on a safe environments so I'm happy.

Both girls really like the Kurio Pocket. while Lissy has her own android tablet already, Vee's taken a shine to this tablet, using it to research her homework from school, play games and we've been working together on programming in BASIC using Frodo, and when they're feeling under the weather they load their favourite online radio station up to help them sleep the night through.
To the girls its a fun, small tablet that's come with us everywhere we've gone so far this year with a large amount of the Instagram pics I took at the London Bike Show taken with the Kurio Pocket tab and had enough juice left for the kids to play games on the train. Seriously it's fantastic.

While overall we're impressed with the Kurio pocket tab it does have the odd complaint, with the screen taking 3-4 seconds to re-initialise if the tablet has been unused for more than 10 minutes, more of an annoyance but it's nothing to really complain about.

Overall the Kurio Pocket tab is an amazing little device with enough functionality for the entire family to get on with and at a fantastic price point. The girls both love it and I love the safetynet features built in like real-time web filtering, protection from malicious sites, and in app purchase protection with pin codes.

You can get one by clicking here, and for more information about Kurio's Tablets click here and to find out where you can buy one click here. 

If you want to know anything about the Kurio Pocket, please let me know and I'll get back to you asap (yes, there is an update coming I've heard) 

The Kurio Pocket Tablet review Pt1

Good morning all,

Recently we were chosen to be Kurio Family Bloggers, and with this kindly sent us a Kurio Pocket, a four inch android tablet with children in mind. To celebrate this I've let our resident junior tech Lissy unbox it for your viewing pleasure



On unboxing I was extremely impressed with the contents, including

• Micro USB on the go cable, for using mouse, keyboards or even 3g dongles 
• Micro USB pc/charge cable 
• High quality wall charger, 
• Sturdy, yet good sounding in ear headphones
• Basic instructions with more detailed instructions on the device itself.
• Game trial code,

The tablet itself has a nice, sturdy feel in the hand with no noticeable creak or flex, this I suspect to be due to the way rear panel is clipped together on the device, this is designed to take a decent proportion of the stress away from the Kurio Pocket's internals. Additionally, I noticed the touch panel does not feel like a glass panel leading me to believe it's a composite plastic/glass mix so it'll take a lot more stick than typical glass panels, additionally the rear casing is an ingenious extra layer of protection, hats off to the development team who designed the device as in looks and build quality they have done a fantastic job, and that's just the outer shell!

The specifications on the Kurio Pocket are quite modest and suitable for the majority of childrens needs.

• Display: 3.97” capacitive touch screen
• Resolution: 800 x 480 pixels
• SoC (System on Chip) Allwinner A20
• CPU - 1GHz Dual Core
• GPU - ARM Mali400 MP2
• OS - Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
• Internal Storage - 8GB
• Card Slot: Micro SDHC 32GB max
• Ram: 1GB DDRIII
• Camera: Front: 0.3Mpx, Rear: 2.1Mpx
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, 802.11 b/g/n and micro USB:
• Micro USB 2.0 - OTG support W/Cable
• 2000MaH Battery.


Now before you go and say it's not the highest specced device bear in mind this is a pint sized tablet for children, crammed with 50 free games and housed in an adequately child proof casing, perfect for children to play with, stopping them from pinching your tablet all the time.

Settings Protected
in kids mode

Setting the Kurio Pocket up was a breeze, from individual user accounts to internet restrictions, it's a simple process you can get through within half an hour, I will say that I've not paired my Google account to the device yet but that's not a problem as updates for pre-installed applications are handled through Kurio's services and exclusive App store, yes it has it's own app store. I hear you, it's another account to deal with, but see this as a gateway to child safe applications, and for those worried about app permissions, the Kurio Store shows relevant information when you browse an applications information page.
That said if you wish to use the Play Store, it's all ready to go. Just bear in mind the Google account pairs with additional Google services. I discovered this when the girls opened the YouTube app with it being full of C64 demoscene which they somewhat disliked, if possible I would recommend a separate Google account, unless there is a way to manage individual devices within a GAccount, let me know!

Now for playtime!
The Kurio Tablet comes preloaded with 50 applications, while many are exclusive to the Kurio product line with a wide variety of educational, fun and freemium* applications avaliable the girls are actually doing their little jobs around the house to get the chance to play on the tablet with no arguments. The individual logins makes this easy to manage the time they're allowed to play on it too. Also, KD  Interactive are happy for developers to join the Kurio Store, for info on developers joining click here,

I won't lie I was sceptical about the device prior to delivery, however those concerns vanished on using the device. from it's  decent video playback to music streaming services including Spotify this is a well thought out tablet through and through,
To get one of these Child friendly and where to buy click here! (I hear it's Christmas, just sayin!)

We'll come back to the Kurio Pocket Tablet for a larger scale review over the next few weeks. if there is anything you'd like us to try with the tablet please get in touch and we'll consider adding them to the second part of the review.

Paul and the kids!

(*Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a product or service is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for proprietary features, functionality, or virtual goods.)

long term review - Doogee DG300 pt 1

I bought a new phone recently, but with a difference. It came from china, not just manufactured there but shipped direct too, I know what your thinking already an iPone or apple rip off, well strictly speaking it's not a rip off it does get it's looks from the Samsung product range

I bought the Doogee Dg300, also known as the ALPS Voyager DG300, what matters is the hardware to me and for £54.08 including postage (tip - spend a £4 more and get it fulfilled by Amazon's warehouses in the UK if you need it quickly) you get a bit more than the budget handsets sold directly in the UK. I warn you now be prepared to tweak a setting or two to work with your carrier/network (Vodafone, Sainsburys mobile and similar) I'll cover that in the next post for you.

Let's go to the specs for now  - Sorry it's not GSMArena slick this time

Model: DOOGEE VOYAGER DG300
Band: 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
         3G: WCDMA 850/2100MHz
Sim Card: Dual SIM Card Dual Standby(one small and one micro SIM card)
Color: Black
Shell Material: Plastic
OS: Android 4.2.2
CPU: MTK6572, Cortex A7 dual core, 1.3GHz
GPU: Mali-400
ROM: 4GB
RAM: 512MB
Display Size: 5.0 Inch
Type: IPS, capacitive touch screen
Resolution: 960 x 540 pixels  Qhd
Screen Color: 260K Colors
Card slot - MicroSD
Cameras: Interpolated resolution of both 2.0MP for the front camera, 5.0MP  for the back camera (Non interpolated resolutions are 1.2mp front and 2mp rear)
WIFI: Yes, 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0
Gravity Sensor: Yes
Multi-Touch: Yes, 2 point touch
Standby Time: We'll test that
GPS: supported with A-GPS With EPO
DOOGEE DG300 Mobile Phone Accessories:
1 x 2500mAh Battery
1 x Earphone
1 x USB Cable
1 x Charger
1 x User Manual


Now for those wondering who the frick are Doogee? (translated as “Dao Ge”) I would click here and learn about the brand, and while it's very different to how the Brits express themselves it's not broken English so top marks there.

The phone itself is a nice device on the larger side of things for budget devices but for it's price feels pretty sturdy in the hand for a plastic handset and seems to take well to a drop. (yeah less than a week of ownership and drop it!) it removed the effect from the plastic but does not affect operations.

The dual sim card functionality is useful, if you wanted a work and personal device it would do well.
so far WIFI and mobile internet seems to work well with no problems once configured.

While Android jelly bean is outdated thanks to kitkat and soon coming L/Lollypop there is no official update (CFW scene may help here) I have asked Doogee about this and will add it here if they respond which I'm sure they will.

Right I'll leave it here for now as I want to go more in depth next week
If you have any questions let me know and I'll strive to find out or investigate them.

Paul

P.S. Please do not post links to e-shops selling these devices in the comments. Spam is not permitted here and will be deleted.

The Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo Review Pt1

This post forms part of a three post review Hands on | Part 1 | Part 2

Over the last two weeks I've been putting one of the newest handsets from Vodafone, the Smart 4 Turbo through it's paces.

As there will be a lot to cover this review will be a two part affair, part one focusing on the phone, it's software and ease of use from day to day use and the main question on my mind, is it worth the £135 price tag.
With part two will focus on the hardware including the battery, screen, optics, 4g vs 3g speed tests, device strengths and weakness and benchmarks

The phone itself is very similar in size to the Samsung galaxy s2, but feels a a lot better in the hand, while it's the usual plastic back we're getting used to with Vodafone devices in the past but with a hugely premium feel for the market it's aimed at. The device have very good flexibility while in the pocket and does not seem to creak when tested, on top of this the rear of the case also holds the SD and Sim cards safely in position to help prevent removal by flex as they are not lockable. It feels great in the hand with a sturdy feel and well suited to both the larger and daintiest of hands, much to the joy of my children who've loved playing games on it.

Software wise the Smart 4 and the smart 4 turbo are both rocking the latest version of Android, similarly to the Moto G lte, Similarly they've left it as a stock setup, while it does have Vodafone services installed on the device they are non intrusive and easily disabled in settings and/or removed from the main home screens, while I know these are not to everyone's tastes and I'm not overly keen on them but in this instance they are finally utilising new tools inside these to help find wifi hotspots and tell you batter life and storage space in handy indicators.

Additionally, the phone comes with no demos on the device, something of a refreshing thing to see, especially as these trials are usually 30 second limited things with little value to many so with this, and in many cases non-installable without rooting and voiding your warranty in the process so it's great to see. Thanks Vodafone for a double barrelled win.

I've used the phone as a parent and blogger rather than a geek here on this side of the review to provide a real world view of the device so it's had the usual application I use day in day out installed being YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Molome, with Google Calendar, G+ and Yahoo Email for good measure. There were some glitches I will mention soon, just in case it's an isolated issue with the firmware.

For you music lover you get Google Play Music bundled in and while I prefer Winamp Pro for it's graphic equalizer and extra audio tools bundled in it seemed to match audio quality with Google Play Music here. Audio playback was good with little distortion and good overall sounds. But I seriously would consider not using the the built in headphones, they look awful and identical with the ones bundled with many cheaper (£10) phones I've used in the past. I can't say how good the online side of Play Music is as it requires purchase and I felt it was not relevant to the review in itself at this point.

Day to day usage of the phone was fantastic with decent voice quality, a decent quality camera, fast processors and memory for multitasking and games. add the phones internet and radio capabilities (2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 3.75 and 4G) and you have an impressive device I will probably be purchasing in September and happily use it as a daily driver phone as long as Vodafone tweak one or two things on the device in the near future you'll have a perfect starter 4g phone rivalling the MotoG.

There are two issues I run into with the phone but not major enough to discourage purchase, one of them has since stopped so I'm assuming it was an issue with Google's side of things more than the devices software.

Instagram would take an image and store it on the phone itself but it uploads a black image with the filter you added. Reinstalling or updating did not fix this. I've reported it so I hope it'll be fixed soon. But until fixed it those snap happy Instagrammers may feel left out. Here I tell them to try Molome!
The more concerning glitch/setting was from the Google Play Store. By default I always set auto updates via wifi only so not to gobble data from my plan and also reduced the risk of app corruption while out and about but in the first few days the Google Play store ignored this setting and tried updating anywhere it could. This is concerning as many contracts are given capped data allowances which could be gobbled with no warning. It's not good to receive a scary data bill.

As with all things glitch related I've contacted Vodafone, Instagram and attempted to reach out to Google about this so they can resolve this in the future.

For the phone's price of £135 prepaid or £26.50 on a fixed term contract it's an absolute bargain. A high quality device with some solid specs for the budget market. A solid phone you know could cope with what the day has in store for you. Now while my reviews are hopefully good enough for many to make the decision to buy or not to buy I would always say go into a store and play with a demo unit. Thankfully my local store, which happens to be the spanking new Dunstable store has demonstrator models so you can try it and see why I like it so much!

The Acer Z120. Nice phone, shame about the bugs!

The Acer Liquid Z120 review.

I purchased an Acer liquid Z2 last week when my clumsy but working Alcatel ot903 died recently. Sadly it wasn't to be, but we can go through that soon.

Acer built three models of this phone, the Z2, Z2 Dual and the Z120. Today we talk about the Z120. (the z2 has a Qualcomm MSM7227A Snapdragon running at 1Ghz and a 5Mp camera)  But a note to Acer. I'm sure selling a lesser model as the same device could be a bit naughty under consumer laws, but I'm not an expert.

The z120 is a device rocking Android Jelly Bean, with a 320 by 480 pixel display, which is not groundbreaking in this day for mobiles but suitable for a budget device, but with a MTK 6575M chipset, 1 GHz CPU and PowerVR SGX531 Ultra GPU. It can and does hold up really well compared to some cheaper devices. Even if the 512mb ram holds it back a bit but still does the trick

The specs are listed below, with huge thanks to the awesome team at GSMarena for the information,


GENERAL 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
SIM Optional Dual SIM (Mini-SIM)
Announced 2013, February
Status Available. Released 2013, March
BODY Dimensions 110 x 62.5 x 12.3 mm (4.33 x 2.46 x 0.48 in)
Weight 110 g (4.59 oz)
DISPLAY Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
Size 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches (~165 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Yes
SOUND Alert types Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes
3.5mm jack Yes
  - SRS sound enhancement
MEMORY Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal 4 GB, 512 MB RAM
DATA GPRS Yes
EDGE Yes
Speed HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
USB Yes, microUSB v2.0
CAMERA Primary 3 MP
Features Geo-tagging, touch focus
Video Yes
Secondary No
FEATURES OS Android OS, v4.1.1 (Jelly Bean)
Chipset Mtk 6567m chipset
CPU 1 GHz
Sensors Accelerometer, proximity
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
Browser HTML
Radio FM radio with RDS
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
Colors Black, Black/White
  - SNS integration
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa
- MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
- MP4/H.264/H.263 player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input (Swype)
BATTERY Li-Ion 1300 mAh battery
Stand-by Up to 450 h
Talk time Up to 4 h


The phone is cute but feels a tad wide but i feel it's down to the rounded design and it was more comfortable in the hand than some devices i've used in the past, including the SGS2.

Battery life is poor, charge the phone fully and it'll get to 80% and within 2-5 mins it would shoot up to 100%, but discharge stupidly slow. For instance take it off charge and leave it on overnight it'll lose 20-40% charge. Even if the phone is in airplane mode drain is similar.

Software. The overall android experience is pretty good, although themed it's not over the top when compared to touchwiz. With a decent integrated Accuweather clock widget. The home-screen is pretty similar to stock. This is a good thing for those who like the purer side of things, despite not being pure stock android. There is a 60 mb software update ready and waiting for you on first use. Despite there being 2gb space free on the internal storage it requires you to insert a memory card to install the update, I think this is due to it's use of recovery mode to perform the update which seems to run more stable off the root folder of the SD Card. However I seriously recommend you install the update via wifi for reduced risk of crc failure of software corruption also the cost of data these days too, if it fails over 3g a few times you can easily deplete your allowance!

The device is compatible with most apps, but more intensive ones will overheat the phone. Whatsapp and bbm work ok.

For music lovers Google Play Music is installed as the default music player. This is not an ideal tool, It may be clunky for those who's used to the stock player but the phone does have SRS audio controls preinstalled and do a good job compared to the default equaliser but you'll need a good set of headphones as the phone didn't come with any.
If you do use for music buy headphones with a plug that is at a right angle, as plugs that stand to attention do not sit well when in the pocket due to the curved back. It loses connection with the internal connectors and messes music enjoyment up, it's not a deal breaker but be aware of this.

The camera is what you would expect of a budget device, but it requires lots of light due to the lack of flash. Images can come out ok, but usually they come out grainy in lower light. Video was not tested as I'd not got time to play with youtube! But video playback on youtube was acceptable, so the Mediatek chipset was doing a good job. (something they seem to do really, REALLY well)

Connectivity is fully featured with 3g/HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, EGPRS for mobile network browsing and works well when it can be bothered. The phone features WIFI for faster browsing while out and about or home use and works fantastically, when tested at home and on the bus (Arriva 38 route and A route. Plus Centerbus busway services) it seemed faster than my Sony Miro in similar situations.
Bluetooth works well when tested with the Nokia BH-214, JBL Soundfly and a generic keyboard.
With all phones I use in and outdoors are left with both mobile data and wifi enabled so the device could default to the preferred choice when required. A configuration we've used and worked perfectly since owning the Nokia E71, sadly the Z120 struggles with this. If left in this configuration the phone refuses to connect to 3g data, resulting in the need for a reboot. Annoyingly this can require a few resets as turning 3g off and on or forcing airplane mode does not rectify the situation.



Root and mods. While I didn't try to root the device as it was too new for me to invalidate the warranty (in September i would have experimented) at that point from reading XDA Developers there are ROMS in development and a root method but it could also work with E-Root as mentioned in the ot903 post. It found the device but that was as far as i went (less than a week old it's not worth risking it) if I spot any decent ROMS i'll link to them later.

Price. At £64 sim free it's a good price but the bugs do let it down. But if it'll be used for voice and wifi browsing you should be good to go. Sadly i took the phone back due to the network issues and a few other bits that were diagnosed as a faulty device. I replaced it with a Vodafone smart mini.

Dear Acer. the device is nice but buggy, when the issues are sorted it'll be a fab budget phone and I'd be happy to buy or test another one to see if the problems are resolved!


Paul.

Alcatel One Touch 903 no root optimisation +ROOT

Image credit Futek

Before you laugh at me for owning a budget device think one moment. It's cheaper to fix than the galaxy s2 by a huge difference

HUGE UPDATE - A Root has been found and works well, but does have some bugs! How to post is linked here! 

But i do admit it's a sluggish thing due to a slow processor and it's hampered by it's small internal memory (256mb ram) But with a few tweaks we can make it better WITHOUT ROOTING and for free. (note: Thanks to the developers who made these free applications - Please consider buying the full versions over the free variants I  will be once I can get a play store gift card - HURRY THE HELL UP GOOGLE - Finally I found one today)

************** UPDATE *****************
to help speed other bits up go to settings, Applications. Manage Applications. go through lots of preinstalled apps, remove what you won't use and what you will tap the app and move to SD card
this will speed the phone up a bit. use the other tips to make it work fantastically
*****************************************



The default launcher that comes with the phone is a memory hog. Alcatel Please make a vanilla rom without the bloat! But we can change this with Holo Launcher.

Holo Launcher replaces the default launcher on any device with a low memory consumption launcher made to look like Android Ice cream Sandwich. This makes a huge difference with performance.

Now the processor. It's a 650mhz Mediatek CPU with PowerVGR graphics. but it's slow at default. We can overclock it safely to 806mhz for free using the MTK CPU Control test Just make sure you apply the mod and set to apply on boot. I've done benchtests and it's increase in speed is shown. It's far from a placebo tool. The processor still shows 650 in any settings but the benchmarks show it works.

Memory optimisation. Use Memory Cleaner and Advanced task killer  
Memory cleaner is a bit placebo but in tests it does a small bit of good combined with Advanced task killer.

Use these freeware tools to make your Phone fun faster than it has before.

Now for Social media.

If you want to run Facebook Give up. it's too slow for anyone's liking on the phone in it's huge 30mb footprint. (10-15mb minimum ram use too)

I suggest Fast for facebook it's basic but works well. But as it's in beta they are improving the tool every few weeks. It's a lot more fiddly than facebook on the first look. But it works well enough.

If that's too slow for you look for Opera Mobile and use the basic mobile facebook and twitter

For twitter. use the official app. it works ok but slow at times.

Instagram users it'll throw a wobbler despite installing.(unless they listened to my email) install molome  it's just as good and can send pics to instagram too!

One more tip is the 3g access is slow, it's the limitation of the device itself.

This is a quick post and more will be added over time (i just realised i can get a new phone already. but will stay with this one as i like it. quirks and all)

Paul

Review: Sound Asleep speaker pillow

Morning all.

A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to have the chance to review the Sound asleep Speaker pillow.
Knowing what the girls are like we jumped at the chance.

I've been using it for about a week now and I must say I'm impressed. It works flawlessly with any device that has a 3.5mm headphone socket, I also tried a a Nokia E71 tied in with a 2.5mm to 3.5mm headphone adapter, again worked flawlessly.

I love listening to online radio stations like interFACE Pirate radio, Radio Jackie or OCremix. and doing so would involve headphones, and that's a silly idea in bed. whereas with the speaker pillow I get the chance to play tunes to lul me to sleep without strangling myself, or Jessie getting mad I'm waking her up with my random music.

The reason Jess does not wake is not because she likes my style of music, hell no. The speaker in the pillow is designed to be audible only to the person who's using it. As you'll see in the video below it's whisper quiet unless your on the pillow.

I decided it's not fair to test it by myself and let my youngest use it.
I loaded an mp3 player up with songs she likes, and used a dead battery, which would give her about an hour of music. She loved it and fell asleep within the hour. However, we thought we'd broken it at this point as the music cut out a lot. Panic set in thinking we'd killed it (this is mentioned on the video) . But it was the mp3 player. Where it's been sat for ages the jack has a dry solder joint which will be fixed soon.

I asked Lissy what she thought. Sorry it's random and small, but she was in a strange mood. Also she hates being filmed so I took the opportunity while she was happy.

Eventually Vee will test it too. But she was out today so we left it to lissy.





In the time i've had it I like it lots. It's comfortable, helped my youngest settle while ill and chilled me out to some great music (haLO-IS  in haloland FTW)

my only concern is the extension cable feels a little flimsy It's going to take a fair bit of stick in normal use. but it may not be the best in long use. Thankfully spares are avaliable.

If you want one I suggest visiting the Sound Asleep website. They will help you sleep with a good tune.
However If you follow Sound asleep on facebook you may get the chance to win a pillow too.

Huge thanks to the Sound Asleep team for sending one out to me for us to test. (we have been given the pillow in exchange for a review.)
Paul

Sad to be leaving you Nokia

It's time to move on. 

I'm sorry, Nokia. I truly am saddened by this decision.

I've sold my E6 and C3-01 and purchased a Huawei Ascend P1s( the s does not stand for 'Sorry. Not 4g')

Why have I done this you may ask, what's made a Nokia purist (as called by some) move to android. An OS which i hated in the LG optimus1?

Here's the situation. I've owned Nokia phones since the emergence of GSM devices in the UK and loved and hated them in some cases. But since the move to Windows phone with Elop. They've made (in my eyes) a humongous mess of things.

I wanted the pureview. however Nokia sold the WP7 platform to the networks over the 41megapixel-oversampling megaphone with Symbian which people wanted. leaving many lost for words.
Then decided to ditch this technology and make a different tech for lumia handsets with the same name.

Then the marketing. The pureview 808 was used for allsorts of photographic goodness, sadly most of this was highlighted by sites like Symbian tweet, all about Symbian and others.
When the lumia was marketed they were using films shot on the N8 to advertise the lumia 800. (every day on* channel five for a few weeks) many thought the lumia made these films/productions when the aging N8 was the star.
Whereas now they hide behind a professional film crew and photoshop to demonstrate the lumia 920's power without using the lumia's sensor. That sucks balls.

The final nail in the coffin was the face current lumia owners could not update to Windows phone 8, but are still "supported with windows phone7.7" or something silly. Also apple style marketing BS on why the lumia 920 does not have SD functionality sounds pathetic unless your an apple fanboi.

At this same time unlocked/vanilla Symbian belle devices are stuck waiting for updates to fix bugs that previous updates caused. and telling us the same BS, then claiming the device is network branded (i won it in a compo, it's vanilla according to your repair team)


Sadly Nokia. I see why Ricky Cadden and Dr Rita El Khoury Both got fed up with Nokia, causing them to close the site they both ran together (with a lot of awesome writers), Symbian-guru.com  With quotes like these From Ricky "I can’t continue to support a manufacturer who puts out such craptastic ‘flagships’ as the N97, and who expects me to use services that even most of Nokia’s own employees don’t use"
and from Rita, "I swear I could get a VISA, buy an airplane ticket, travel to Texas and talk to Ricky in person before Nokia Messaging for IM loads and opens a conversation with him on my N97 Mini." In their Final blogpost on Symbian guru (archived) I really suggest you read it, as it's a scary insight into the woes of the average symbian user. This should have been the wake up call to Nokia. But it seems this was not. Especially looking back at the mess they made of the belle updates, (E6 users have been forgot about once. Then it happened again this month)
 (Note: this part of the post has been edited)


Well for the next 2 year i'm staying on Android. (currently Ice cream Sandwich) and while I am. Please nokia listen to the fat git who Loves Symbian and Nokia. Being on android makes me feel like i'm cheating on you. but I have no choice. I only have my E71 left here as the floozy phone for blog events i attend.

you have two years to turn it around. make Nokia amazeballs again please. Right now it looks impressive, but still looks uncertain for many people.

I still love you nokia. that will never end. but for now it's time for us to take some time apart.

Paul

Thanks to Ricky Cadden and Dr Rita El Khoury for allowing me to quote them over on the archive at  Symbian-guru

Drop them a visit at MobileRNR, Rickycadden.com Or Phonearena

The LG Optimus One Trial Part two.

Hello Everyone! :)

It's been a while and many a problem to sort out behind the scenes so for that I apologise.
But, as promised. Part two of the optimus one review is here.

The LG Optimus One's is a darned sturdy feeling device. with power/lock button and headphone jack on the top, volume rocker on the top right and four buttons on the front of the device and last but not least the capacitive touchscreen.
On the back of the device is the 3.15mp Camera which comes with autofocus and without flash

It's Rocking Android 2.2 with flash support, and as previously mentioned LG have been quite good not to customise without making a hash of it. Looking at the home screen it's tidy and scrolling between the 5 or 7 home screens (you choose) brings a fluid scrolling experience .

The menus still confuse the daylights out of me, as basic things i would expect in a menu are buried in other parts of applications and settings. That said I've only JUST got used to using the text input on the device.

As were here lets move to inputting text on the device.
The device has three keypads installed, the LG Keyboard and Alphanumeric and the Android default one, the image on the right shows the android default at the top and the LG one below.

I admit the text input is an enormous learning curve, as I'm used to belting it out on a slide out keyboard has proven to be one of the largest learning curves I have to overcome, and the experience nearly killed the whole feel of the phone for me, but this in fairness is due to my learning experience with the handset, not the phones fault. And last night I spent a good few hours playing with the keypad to master it.

Now, lets move to browsing.

The browsing experience is a pleasure. An experience compatible to the iPod touch, We did have he occasional wobble with flash content, although this was due to Adobe and it's partners delay in sending the update. But this does not kill the experience, in fairness it works well, Google really have done a good job with the browser.

The device has shown me that a lower end device can trump the competition and do it spectacularly well too even with a few quirks like the lack of interactive flash content and youtube content, though the latest flash update is on the way.

Using this for social networking is a dream. Youtube, Twitter and Facebook work out of the box. slap your details in and you're good to go, with all applications feeling quite complete, and no feelings of slowness or instability, well. Until I play games then we see an issue.

For instance Angry Birds by Rovio. This can work perfectly, then suddenly grind so a crawl. in a way it's reminiscent of playing Doom on my first pc. Slow and painful at times but still fun.
in fairness I feel the advertising in the app are the problem there. (if LG want me to keep the device I may be able to try more paid apps)
It's a good performer there, but there are newer devices that will outperform it in more demanding tasks, but for the price it's good!

One thing that amazes me is the Wifi connectivity. it's rarely failed me at all. even connecting to free providers with ease. The configuration is confusing but works well.

The camera is a good performer. I would say it's in par with the Nokia E71 without the purple hue. (images will be on flickr soon, I'm still tagging things now)

Music and video quality is spot on with this device, coming from the LG headphones or my Sony high end set both bring crisp audio with the right amount of bass.

Call quality has been strange. Now I use a Vodafone Sure Signal inside the flat, giving a HSDPA signal inside the house, as n extra mast. Now at times it dislikes the witchcraft of a home mast leaving call quality as useless, but the rest of the time it's sharp and crisp. they have done an excellent job on the voice quality on this device.

Now for the important bit. Would I buy this?

I would say Yes, yes I really would. It works flawlessly. any problems are mainly my learning curve, and it does show from my use it has to be doing something right to sell over a million devices. so Top Work LG.

I have to say the Keyboards Image is not mine and is from the following blog. Please go and say hello to Miss Tin A Pie as a way to say thanks
http://misstinapie.blogspot.com/2010/12/urban-adventures-switching-to.html

For now Part three is coming. the final chapter of the LG optimus one. My final thoughts on this device.

For now - PEACE!

Paul :)