Over the weekend at the BFI in London, the Sci-Fi London Horizons event took place. We were there on the Sunday along with Eben and Liz Upton from Raspberry Pi.
Outside of the Blue room we had for the event was a table with two, yes that’s right, two working Raspberry Pi’s.
And of course Manic Miner was being played on the FUSE emulator on one of them. Well it was an event to celebrate the ZX Spectrum after all!
Before Eben’s talk, I had a long chat with him about various things. One of the things he told me was that by the end of next month there should be around 120,000 Pi’s “in the wild”, which is amazing! I am still waiting for mine, but it should be very soon.
Another thing we talked about was the number of Pi’s that appeared on eBay the first week of launch, and still continue to be on there at around the £100-200 mark. Like me, he is disappointed that people are putting them up their to make a profit, which really goes against the whole reason for the Raspberry Pi coming into existence. Still, as he told me, once the product runs start getting out there over the next few weeks there shouldn’t be that many selling at those sorts of prices.
He also told me that they take a very active role in dealing with companies that are selling things for the Raspberry Pi that either claim to be Raspberry Pi or use the Pi logo.
Then it was time for his talk, which was entitled “The Future” and included William Marshall talking about the Pi, and various other things. As usual a very interesting session (and Liz even got to be involved)!
I recorded most of the talk and you can view the video below:
Have you got your Pi yet? Tell us what you think of it and what you are doing with it.
Sennhesier updates its Bluetooth travel headset line. We bring you the details!
Sennheiser announced updated versions of their travel headsets that support apt-X, an emerging Bluetooth standard that enhances performance. Here is what they announced:
Sennheiser Launches apt-X Compatible Versions of its Best Selling Bluetooth® TRAVEL Series Headsets
New MM 400-X, MM 450-X, MM 500-X and MM 550-X Headsets Provide Increased Fidelity and Clarity for both Music and Phone Calls
OLD LYME, Conn. — May 7, 2012: Microphone and headphone manufacturer Sennheiser announced that it has launched enhanced versions of its MM 400-X, MM 450-X, MM 500-X and MM 550-X TRAVEL Series headsets. The new models are now compatible with the apt-X® codec, which provides enhanced fidelity and clarity whether users are listening to music or making calls.
The apt-X® codec offers audiophile travelers an enhanced Bluetooth® listening experience through the use of proprietary audio codec compression algorithms. Just like the earlier MM models, the new Sennheiser apt-X compatible headsets are compatible with any Bluetooth® enabled device that supports A2DP and HFP/HSP profiles including computers, smartphones and tablets and will benefit from increased fidelity when using with devices utilizing apt-X®.
“The new Sennheiser MM 400-X, MM 450-X, MM 500- X and MM 550-X headsets take advantage of the latest advances the CSR group has made in achieving a Bluetooth wireless sound experience comparable to a wired one,” commented Eric Palonen, senior product specialist, consumer electronics, Sennheiser USA. “These models contain the same features and functionality of their predecessors, and additionally, listeners will now be able to experience increased fidelity whether they are listening to music or making calls.”
Consumers using computers without apt-X can still benefit from Sennheiser’s use of high-quality Bluetooth® chipsets by pairing any of the new TRAVEL Series headsets with the new Sennheiser BTD 500 USB dongle to add Apt-X transmission to their computer-based music system.
The new MM 450-X and MM 550-X TRAVEL Series headsets also combine the first-class comfort, quality and convenience of a state-of-the-art Bluetooth headset with a luxury noise-canceling headphone. These headsets features Sennheiser’s exclusive NoiseGard™ 2.0 active noise cancellation technology and TalkThrough technology enabling travelers to communicate with people nearby without removing the headset. Additionally, the MM 550-X utilizes SRS Labs’ SRS WOW HD™ technology for a more exciting listening experience at the touch of a button.
The MM 400-X, MM 450-X, MM 500-X and MM 550-X are available now at the street prices of $269.95, $449.95, $329.95 and $499.95 respectively.
Up to ten hours (without NoiseGard; with: up to eight)
Note: MM 500-X and MM 400-X models do not have noise-canceling function
Charging time
Approx. 3 hours
Range
Up to 33 feet
Weight
6.3 oz.
3.8 oz.
Frequency response (headphones)
15-22,000 Hz
Total harmonic distortion
<0.1%
Sound pressure level
107 dB
Frequency response (microphone)
100-10,000 Hz
Mic pick-up pattern
Omni-directional
SENNHEISER
Sennheiser is a world-leading manufacturer of microphones, headphones and wireless transmission systems. Established in 1945 in Wedemark, Germany, Sennheiser is now a global brand represented in 60 countries around the world with U.S. headquarters in Old Lyme, Conn. Sennheiser’s pioneering excellence in technology has rewarded the company with numerous awards and accolades including an Emmy, a Grammy, and the Scientific and Engineering Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For more information, please visit www.sennheiserusa.com.
I currently use a Beats Audio wired and non-noise-cancelling headset and like it. A Bluetooth-only headset would not be a great choice for air travel since you can’t use Bluetooth in the cabin, but could be useful if you spend time travelling by train and of course in your hotel room.
We recently got to play with the multiplayer beta of Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Future Solider, and it was good, really good!
In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier join an elite team of highly trained, cut-throat special-ops soldiers. Armed to the teeth with unrivalled combat technology and cutting-edge military hardware, Ghost Recon takes you to the globe’s most deadly warzones to hunt down the highest value targets.
In the multiplayer beta, up to twelve simultaneous players would have the opportunity to choose from three classes (Rifleman, Engineer and Scout) and experience the intense adversarial online action in two different modes:
Conflict – players battle to complete objectives located throughout the map and earn points, the team with the most points at the end of the round wins.
Each Game session would be 1 round of 15 minutes.
The gameplay was excellent and it wasn’t long before I was shooting at the enemy, and then being killed by those very same enemies! There are different weapons and tactics to use even after only a few minutes of playing I knew that I would be spending a lot of time on this game when it’s released!
Here are some images of the game to keep you going…
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier will be available on May 22nd for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and the Sony PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system. It will be available for Windows PC on June 12th.
Have you played it yet? What do you think? Let us know.
Was it possible to design and manufacture a fan less, reliable, silent, and desirable PC?
That was the question 10 years ago. Since then Tranquil have shipped 10,000s of systems all over the world – for use in 100s of different applications.
We have always striven to deliver the best available products and our award gallery is testimony to that.
Reducing the cost of computing has also been important, and the low running costs and long term reliability of our systems has saved millions of pounds to our customers.
Providing an environmentally friendly product has also been at the heart of our designs, and over the years the carbon foot print of our products continues to reduce.
Here are the special discount codes to use:
SAVE 20% of ANY order placed online, before 10th May
use this COUPON CODE – 10THSPECIAL20
SAVE 10% of ANY order placed online, during May 2012
When Microsoft removed Drive Extender from Windows Home Server 2011, Covecube jumped in and brought us StableBit DrivePool to replace the functionality. In the next of our giveaways, you could win a full licence – and we had five to give away. And now it’s time for the results.
Here is how CoveCube describes this application:
Combine all your hard drives into one big storage pool (except the system drive with the OS).
Add and remove drives from the pool at any time without re-partitioning or manually moving folders.
Create duplicated folders on the storage drive pool that are protected against single drive failure. If a drive fails on which a duplicated file was stored, the contents of that file will remain readable even without the drive.
All your data is stored in standard NTFS files. You can always access your files even if the Windows Home Server completely crashes or this add-in can’t be used.
The Winners are…..
DWO
Hill John
Russell Crawford
Sean Gray
Scott Wheeler
Well done to the five winners, and thank you to every one for entering, and thanks again to Covecube for the licences. We will have another giveaway starting very soon!
The guys over at the BYOB podcast, including our very own Tim Daleo have just released episode 85.
Here is what is included in this weeks show:
[box style=”rounded” border=”full”]Special Guest Chris Barnes from the DMZ podcast thEndUsr joins us to discuss his systems. We’ll also tackle nVidia’s GTX690. Amazon plays me too with their cloud drive. Playon is told to move on. [/box]
This review covers the “Personal” version of CoPilot Live Premium. There are also “Truck” and “Enterprise” versions available – see the CoPilot website for more details.
CoPilot Live is GPS route navigation for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile devices. I’ve been trying it out on Android 2.3 on a Galaxy Note. This is what they say about their product:
“Combining advanced navigation technology with breakthrough design simplicity, CoPilot Live Premium guides you where you need to go by the way that suits you best. Featuring unique new routing features and a completely redesigned, interactive user interface that makes navigation features more accessible and useful – CoPilot Live puts all the features you need for accurate navigation, right at your fingertips.”
Features
They’re absolutely right that CoPilot offers some great features that are still missing from the market leaders like TomTom (last time I checked). CoPilot have really made the most of having a high-definition touch-screen. If your route isn’t quite right, you can use your finger (or stylus) to move the route – particularly good if the postcode hasn’t put the destination quite where you want it. If you’ve used the similar feature on Google Maps, it will feel very familiar, and is a very welcome feature in sat nav software.
The interface and voice guidance is available in a huge range of languages. Most voices are free, and there are some premium ones too; on Android, these are purchased via Google Play (Android Market). To save space, you download voices as you want to use them, so it’s best to set the software up while you’re connected to WiFi. There’s a nice range of free UK voices to choose from, and those who prefer an American accent can choose from two free ones.
The map display can take advantage of smart phones’ orientation detection and display either in landscape or portrait. As a note, you have to choose “use phone setting” in the display settings to enable auto-rotation as it’s locked to landscape by default. The maps can be displayed in 2D or 3D, with or without directions side-by-side, and you can have two other configurable items of information like speed, ETA, arrival time etc too. You can set up different day/night colour schemes, with a choice of five day and five night schemes. The software can automatically switch between day and night displays automatically on phones that have light sensors (most now do). You can choose to have Points of Interest displayed on the map, or not, or only when you’re stationary, which avoids distraction. The display includes ClearTurn, which displays the upcoming junction for a configurable distance before you get there and also shows clear lane markings, so you know which lane to use when approaching a large junction. Inclusion of real signpost information means that what you see on the screen is what you should look for out of the window on the signs.
There are of course routing options so you can avoid certain types of roads, tolls, ferry links and so on. When you enter locations, the software predicts what you’re typing, so usually you need only enter the first few characters of a street, and then select it from the list that appears.
The software has a premium subscription ActiveTraffic service. It uses real-time traffic flow information to intelligently calculate the fastest route around traffic jams and view an accurate ETA to your destination. CoPilot Live’s optional ActiveTraffic service automatically monitors your route for delays as you drive and will alert you if a quicker, alternative route is available, along with a preview of the route and the amount of time you’ll save. The service requires an active mobile internet connection.
Safety camera information can be enabled, and the distance warnings are given at configured to your liking. There’s also a premium fuel price subscription service, allowing you to find the cheapest pumps.
If you’ve had a few tickets, you’ll be pleased to hear that CoPilot Live allows you to set speed limit warnings. The software knows the limits on most roads and can be set to warn you if you exceed the speed limit by a configurable amount.
The software includes social media integration so you can share your journey information with friends, family and colleagues via Facebook and Twitter.
I happen to be friends with an astronomer, and he loves the great GPS information screen that tells your latitude and longitude to six decimal places, plus a GPS-calculated elevation – very handy for star gazers and hikers alike.
There are some power saving settings, including the ability to turn on a power saving setting at 30% battery or less (or permanently), which decreases the frame rate of the map display, saving valuable battery power.
Other features include weather reports, find-where-I-parked, location saving, wikipedia places, and roadside assistance erm…assistance!
The features differ slightly from platform to platform, so be sure to check out their website for more details
Connected Digital World Score
I can’t fault CoPilot Live – it does everything I wish my TomTom could do and more, so I’m giving it the CDW Gold Award.
Prices on Google Play
Prices* for CoPilot Live Premium for Europe and North America are:
CoPilot Live Premium UK + IRE: £20.82
CoPilot Live Premium Europe: £33.32
CoPilot Live Premium USA: £12.32
*Correct at time of writing. Click the button below for current prices.
The ActiveTraffic subscription (after the current offer of 12 months free expires) is £9.98 per year, and the Fuel Prices subscription is £7.98 per year.
The SuperTooth HD BlueTooth Car Speakerphone is one of the best in-car Bluetooth speaker devices. Featuring dual speakers, dual microphones and easy-to-use large controls, the SuperTooth HD is well designed and provides excellent audio quality, both incoming and outgoing. In this video, I demonstrate the device and some of its basic functions.
That demonstration doesn’t cover the SuperTooth HD’s more advanced features. There are some out-of-the-box features, and some premium subscription features, but the included features are enough to make this a worthwhile purchase on their own. The ready-to-go features include:
Strong magnetic detachable sun visor clip – leave the clip there, take the HD with you.
Twin Speaker V Array Technology® for enhanced audio power.
Dual speakers, noise cancellation and dual microphones.
Large volume control with push-to-dial and voice command features.
Day/night automatic interface light dimming.
Talk time: 20 hours. Standby time: 1000 hours. Charging time: 3 hours (via in-car or normal USB, provided)
Six interface languages: UK and US English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.
True multipoint connection – connect two phones simultaneously. Useful if you have a business and a personal phone.
Firmware upgrade support via USB cable.
Voice commands:
“Check battery”
“Am I connected?”
“What can I say?”
“Voice dial”
“Redial last number”
“Call home”
“Call office”
“Call voicemail”
“Call emergency”
“Call contact 1”
“Call contact 2”
“Call contact 3”
“Call contact 4”
“Call contact 5”
“Cancel”
“Answer”
“Reject”
“Ignore”
“Voice dial” taps into your phone’s native voice dialling functions. You can also set up contacts in your phone’s contact list which have specific names (described in the instruction booklet), which then allow you to use “call contact 1” and so on. When you have an incoming call, the device beeps and allows you to tell it to answer, reject or ignore the call.
Hands Free Assistant
The SuperTooth Handsfree Assistant feature composes and sends SMS, e-mails, Facebook messages and Twitter notes by using your voice. The SuperTooth HD can also read incoming SMS and e-mails (for Androids and BlackBerrys only). This service is powered by Dial2Do. This is a premium service, but the device currently comes with a free 6-month subscription (in the UK).
Connected Digital World Score
This is the clearest, most feature-rich bluetooth speakerphone I’ve ever used, which is why it gets a CDW Gold Award – 5 out of 5. If you need to talk on the move, you need one of these!
The Facebook app for Android has been updated bringing with it improved performance and more messaging features.
Share and stay connected with your friends with the Facebook for Android app.
Facebook for Android helps you connect with your friends and share on the go. Upload a photo, keep up with friends’ photos and status updates, look up a phone number, and more – right from your Android device.
What’s in this version:
Improved performance and various bug fixes
More messaging features like creating group messages and adding friends to existing group conversations
Shortcuts to share photos and messages right from your home screen
1.9.1: This version also includes updated shortcut icons and additional bug fixes based on user feedback.
1.9.2 includes additional bug fixes and removes the camera and messaging shortcuts.
Have you always wanted to fly a remote controlled quadricopter, especially one equipped with a 720p camera and integration with YouTube and Picasa online services? If so, I have the product for you: the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 quadricopter.
I ordered a Parrot AR 2.0 drone the other day. Enjoy the unboxing post!
About PARROT
Parrot, a global leader in wireless devices for mobile phones, stands on the cutting edge of innovation. The company was founded in 1994 by Henri Seydoux as part of his determination to drive the inevitable breakthrough of mobile phones into everyday life by creating high-quality, user-friendly wireless devices for easy living. Parrot has developed the most extensive range of hands-free systems on the market for cars, motorbikes and scooters, including wireless multimedia products geared towards audiovisual applications.
In 2008, Parrot launched a new prestige line of high-end products bearing the hallmark of renowned artists.
In 2010, Parrot launched a flying wifi Quadricopter with Augmented Reality video games, the Parrot AR.Drone.
Parrot, headquartered in Paris, currently employs 450 people worldwide and generates 85% of its sales overseas. Parrot is listed on NYSE Euronext Paris since 2006.
Euronext Paris – Eurolist C: FR0004038263 – PARRO www.parrot.com
Here is how Parrot described the AR Drone 2.0 when announced at CES:
At CES Las Vegas 2012, Parrot, a global leader in wireless devices for mobile phones, reveals the AR.Drone 2.0, the new generation of its renowned high-tech quadricopter that can be controlled by Wi-Fi using a smartphone or tablet.
With a new high-definition camera, video recording, flight data sharing, new piloting mode, increased stability and brand-new look, the AR.Drone 2.0 offers an experience like no other!
A flying HD camera
While in flight, the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0′s front camera transmits real-time what the quadricopter sees onto the pilot’s device screen.
For the first time the AR.Drone 2.0 camera, with a 1280×720 resolution, shows a view from the sky in high definition with smooth and unbelievable images.
The pilot enjoys an experience like never before, as if he was on board. For gaming purposes, this camera also can recognize specific shapes and colors to show augmented-reality elements on the smartphone’s screen.
Record and share flying experiences
Thanks to the new AR.FreeFlight 2.0 piloting application, players can record their own HD videos and watch them or share them with the AR.Drone community.
Additionally, with the “travelling” feature, the pilot can film HD video sequences like a professional! Simply select the direction of travel (forward, back, sideways) and the duration, and the AR.Drone 2.0 does the rest.
AR.FreeFlight 2.0, a new piloting and sharing platform
In addition to flying the AR.Drone, new application AR.FreeFlight 2.0 – available to download for free from the AppStoreSM and AndroidTM Market – offers players a new interface and several options.
– FreeFlight: Access to the piloting application. The pilot can record flights, take HD videos or photos and save them in the piloting device. All the flight data (altitude, speed, duration and place) can be saved, checked by the pilot and shared with the community. – Guest Space: Access an overview of the AR.Drone 2.0, the best flight videos and practical information. – Drone Update: Access the AR.Drone 2.0′s free software updates. – AR.Drone Academy: Get geolocation data of the best flight zones, watch other pilots’ videos and access their shared flight data. – AR.Games: Access applications/games available for the AR.Drone. – Photos/Videos: Directly access your own videos and photos. Watch or upload to YouTube for the community to enjoy.
Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Coming in 2012
Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 will be available for purchase at selected retailers in Q2-2012 in the United States for $299 MSRP
WinZip for iOS has been updated to version 1.1.1 and you can download it now for free!
WinZip, the leader of file compression for over 20 years and the creators of WinZip the world’s # 1 zip utility for file compression, file sharing, file encryption and data backup.
With WinZip, a zip file management application for iPhone and iPad you can:
– Open Zip files and Zip attachments from email
– Browse and view Zip files, including multi-file attachments
– Open encrypted Zip files
– Copy the contents of Zip files to the clipboard
– View Zip file attachments from webmail (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc)
Zipped file types that can be previewed:
– .txt, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .pdf, .key, .numbers, .pages, .htm, .htm, .jsp, .bmp, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .png, .gif
An easy-to-use interface for quickly opening and manage compressed Zip files on your iPhone and iPad.
What’s New in Version 1.1
• Support for unencrypted RAR files
• Extract files and “open in …” another app
• Save files extracted from Zip or RAR files
• Improved notification for archives that use an unsupported compression or encryption method
• Bug fixes
I use WinZip all the time on my PC, so it’s going to be very useful to have it on my iPhone and iPad!
If you have, or are interested in the Raspberry Pi, then you might want to download the first issue of a new digital magazine called The MagPi.
This is how the Raspberry Pi guys describe the magazine:
The MagPi, a free online magazine dedicated to the Raspberry Pi, whose first issue was released a few days ago, is a perfect example of that. It’s been put together entirely by volunteers, guided by Ash Stone, Jason “Jaseman” Davies, Meltwater and other names you may recognise from the forums and comments on this site. I was broadly aware they were up to something, but I was amazed at the scope of what they sent me to look at earlier in the week, and I’ve been really, really impressed by the first issue. There are Debian and Puppy guides, articles on computing history, ideas for robotics projects, tutorials in Scratch and Python (with code you can type in yourself, just like in the good old days), features about the Raspberry Pi itself, and other goodies to dig into. I really can’t recommend it enough, and if you haven’t been lucky enough to get to the head of the queue, you don’t need a Raspberry Pi to find it useful (you might actually find the magazine good preparation before yours arrives).
It is a really interesting read – so go download it today, and let us know what you think!
I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy Note for a little over a week now so I thought I’d give you my impressions. I was going to write about its pros and cons, but I can honestly only think of one negative aspect of this phone. No, it’s not the price, or the size – it’s the fact you can either have a silent mode OR a vibrate mode, but not both without having to go into the sound settings. My old Samsung Galaxy Apollo allowed you to turn the volume down until it went into vibrate mode, and then once more for total silence. Not so with the Note, but I suspect that may be to do with the version of Android, rather than the phone itself. That’s it, that’s my only niggle with this phone, which I absolutely love.
Size
The first thing people always talk about with the Note is its formidable dimensions. As you can see from the pictures of me holding mine, and the one of a business card on the screen for scale, it’s quite large. If you want to feel what it’s like to hold a phone that size, get a piece of cardboard and cut it into a rectangle 8.4cm by 14.7cm; imagine it’s approximately 1cm thick, and you can judge the size for yourself. There are three down-sides to this in my opinion. First, if you wear skinny jeans, it won’t fit in your pocket. However, I wear bog-standard jeans, and it fits in the front pockets more comfortably than any other phone I’ve ever had because it’s so thin. Secondly, you look like Dom Joly (Non-Brits might have to look that up on YouTube) when you make phone calls in public. However, I rarely make phone calls in public, and I bought this phone for web, email and SMS. It’s nowhere near as big as an iPad though, so you’re not going to look like a complete idiot. Thirdly, with great power comes great responsibility (in the form of battery drain) – it’s a big screen, so if you’re on it all day at maximum brightness, you might want to carry your charger with you. Fortunately, many of the desktop docks on the market have spare battery slots so you can charge your phone and the spare at the same time. The cover is a little hard to take off, though, so you might be better off with one of those external portable chargers (solar / AAA battery). You can also buy aftermarket non-Samsung higher-capacity batteries that come with a replacement back cover (makes the phone thicker, but you have double the juice).
Galaxy Note with business card for scale
Depending on how you’re planning on using it, the size could be a negative. If you think it might be, get a Galaxy S II or III for a very similar phone. For the kind of uses I’m interested in, the big screen is nothing but joyfully welcome. The Super Amoled HD display is pin sharp, and easily visible in bright sunshine, and offers a resolution of 800×1280 (a slightly more square aspect ratio than most smart phones). When it’s dark, the screen can dim down automatically so you’re not blinded. Having owned an iPhone a while back, and used a 4S from time to time, I have to say that the browsing experience on this phone is so much nicer than a iPhone-sized screen. You can simply see more at once, so there’s less panning around to do. Android doesn’t have quite the same slick double-tap-to-zoom-to-an-element as Apple’s phones, but the Note’s screen size makes up for it.
Stylus
The other unusual feature of the Note is the fact that it comes with a stylus. I’ve used the stylus quite a lot, but mainly I think because it’s there and I thought I should try it out. An interesting question is whether I would miss it if it weren’t there. The key thing Samsung were trying for with the Note was the ability to annotate pictures and notes by hand, and if that’s something you wanted to do, the Note is very good at it. Watch some of the promo videos to see what kind of things are possible. It comes with S Note, which is a bit like a mobile version of Microsoft’s OneNote – you can make hand-drawn notes, including handwriting, hand-drawn pictures, as well as some pre-installed clipart and you can also paste images in from the gallery. You can use the stylus just like you finger, and you can also use it with its in-built button to control some of the menu functions via swiping motions. The phone comes with a nice set of tutorial videos on board for all its features. So, the stylus is very capable, but I’m honestly not sure how much I’ll use it once the novelty has worn off. No matter though, because it sits in it’s own little missile silo-like slot and you can just ignore that it’s there. If you’re addicted to Draw Something, the Note plus stylus will have you wowing people in no time – you just can’t draw with your finger like you can with a pen tip.
Camera
Image taken using Galaxy Note's main cameraImage taken using Galaxy Note's Secondary camera
Much like a lot of high-end smart phones, the Note has both front and back cameras. The main camera is 8MP with a very powerful flash, recording 3264×2448 pixels. It has various focusing features, as well as smile detection, geotagging and image stabilisation. The flash can also be used as a torch (flashlight) with a built-in widget which offers three brightness levels (Dim, Strong, and Police Searchlight) – a very handy feature which I’ve used several times already. The front camera has lower-res 2MP sensor to support video calls. The main camera is very good quality and has auto-focus. This means it takes a second to take a picture while it focuses on the subject, but the result you get it far superior to most phone cameras. You can also choose the focal point by touching the subject on the screen, like a lot of modern compact cameras. Once you’ve done that, it will take the image immediately when you press the shutter button (also on-screen). Here are a couple of pictures I’ve taken with the main camera and secondary camera for comparison (click to see full image).
The Note can also record full 1080p HD video at 24-30fps. Here’s a very quick video of samples I’ve recorded at 720p and 1080p. It’s re-encoded, but you can see the difference in quality when you watch it at 1080p.
Processing Power
It’s powerful. The Note next to me on my desk has the same processing power as my cheap eMachines laptop. With a dual-core 1.4GHz processor, and also a supporting GPU, the Note is exceptionally fast. There is no lag, no delay, and apps install incredibly quickly. Don’t forget with the new Google Play service (replacing the Android Market) you can install apps to your Android devices from your desktop/laptop browser without touching your Android. Click, click, and the app is there waiting for you when you pick the phone up. That’s the power of Android and Google, of course – it’s seamless in a way that no other mobile platform has yet achieved. When I picked the phone up, all I had to do was enter my google account name and password, and I had all my email, contacts, calendar entries and apps (available to download when I was ready) without having to connect to my computer at all. Add a service like Dropbox, Google Drive or SkyDrive to that, and you can sync all your files too.
Storage
The Note comes with 2GB of on-board storage, with an additional microSD slot for up to 32GB more. While I think of it, it takes a normal SIM, not a micro SIM.
Operating System
One slight issue is Samsung’s lackadaisical attitude to OS updates. They are notorious for taking a long time to release Android updates for their devices, if they release any at all. The Note in Europe comes with Gingerbread v2.3.5. There is talk on the ‘net of Samsung releasing an update to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android v4) in “the first quarter of 2012”, but they seem to be running a bit late with that. The phone does offer push notification of Samsung updates, though, so when it is released, you’ll know. One way around this would be to take a brave pill and ‘root’ your phone with a generic ICS image, however make sure you read around a lot before doing it – just like IOS and jailbreaking, it’s riddled with danger. You have been warned. Gingerbread is fine, though – especially if you’ve not used Android before, you’ll love it.
Rating
Without question, for me at least, this gets a whacking 5/5 for being easily the best phone I’ve ever used.
The HBO GO app for Android has just been updated to version 1.4.
Introducing HBO GO. The new streaming service from HBO.
Watch over 1,400 of your favorite HBO shows, including HBO original programming, hit movies, sports, comedy and much more—now available on Android smartphones!
It’s HBO. Anywhere.
Free with your HBO subscription through participating television providers.
With the New HBO GO App You Can:
• Keep up with your favorites. Watch everything you love about HBO, including HBO original programming, hit movies, sports, comedy and every episode of the best HBO shows, including True Blood®, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire®, Entourage®, The Sopranos®, Curb Your Enthusiasm®, Sex and the City®, The Wire® and more. Plus, get bonus features and special behind-the-scenes extras!
• Take it with you. Get instant access to HBO GO whenever you want, wherever you are—and never miss a moment of your favorite HBO shows.
• Make it your own. Create a customized Watchlist to catch up on all your favorite HBO shows and hit movies at your convenience. Plus, set a Series Pass® to automatically load your list with all the HBO Original Series you love.
• Enjoy more HBO. Get even more of your favorite HBO programming with HBO GO—FREE with your HBO subscription through participating television providers.
