Great review - especially enjoyed the intro
Posts by Lutin
97 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008
OnePlus 6: Perfect porridge? One has to make a smartphone that's juuuust right
LG’s modular G5 stunner shuns the Lego aesthetic
Sony Xperia Z2: 4K vid, great audio, waterproof ... Oh, and you can make a phone call
Re: The king of smartphones for sure.
It actually has dedicated (always exposed) charging pins on the side of the phone, so you don't have to charge via USB. You can get a magnetic cable or dock.
http://www.sonymobile.com/gb/products/accessories/magnetic-charging-dock-dk36/
Should be available on ebay too for under a tenner.
Stephen Fry rewrites computer history again: This time it's serious
Re: Why let truth get in the way...
"QI is a tool to boost his ego by telling everyone else they are wrong, unfortunately he now seems to believe the hype"
He's... a gameshow host. You know how gameshows work, right?
You know he doesn't make up the questions, right? You know he's given the answers on the autocue or into his ear, right? You know HE KNOWS all these things, right?
Well wtf are you on about then?
You thought NFC tags were Not For Consumers? Well, they're in Maplin's
UK plods cuff another bloke in Twitter violence threat probe
Re: High-profile women gets protection from police
"When did we lose the ability to ignore the "bullies / trolls"?."
We never lost that ability. It's just it's not the right solution for every case. The internet is filled with asshats who don't understand the making threats online is the same as making them in person, and can lead to the same consequences (getting prosecuted).
A few high-profile convictions of such scum and maybe others will start to understand that what they're doing is illegal and stop doing it.
Apple: iOS7 dayglo Barbie makeover is UNFINISHED - report
Opera rewrite comes to Android
Facebook skins Android with Facebook Home
Review: HTC One
First Samsung Galaxy S4 review leak: Stop FONDLING, start FINGERING
Tesla's Elon Musk v The New York Times, Round 2
Re: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk arguments are pathetic
>> 1. Musk says his car failed because it was not fully recharged.
No he didn't.
>> 2. Musk said his car failed because the journalist attempted to keep the interior temperature more than 42°F warmer than the exterior temperature.
No he didn't..
>> 3. Musk said his car failed because the journalist drove it faster than 54mph.
No he didn't.
>> 4. Musk said the car failed because it was driven in a city.
No he didn't.
>> 5. Musk said the car failed because the journalist passed by a charging station without stopping.
No he didn't.
Nokia primes Lumias for Windows Phone 8 push
Carphone Warehouse outs LG-made Google Nexus 4 smartphone
How Bodyform's farting 'CEO' became a viral sensation
Apple unveils iPad mini, upgrades its big brother
Hands on with BB10: Strokey dokey
The keyboard sounds a lot like SwiftKey for Android which has all the predictive features you mentioned.
The SGS3 and galaxy note 2 also have the "time lapse" feature on the camera, where the camera takes a burst of 5 pictures and you can choose the "best" facial pose for each person in the photo.
That horrendous iPhone empurplement - you're holding it wrong
Re: except
@SuccessCase
The review on DP review that you refer to does not say that it is the second best camera phone. What it says (verbatim) is:
"The iPhone 5 is a fine mobile device, with an excellent camera. In qualititative terms it's not the best camera out there, and nor is it the best camera on a smartphone (the Nokia 808 has that honor, for now) but it offers satisfying image quality, some neat functions like auto panorama and HDR mode, and - crucially - it is supremely easy to use. It isn't much better than the iPhone 4S, as far as its photographic performance is concerned, but it isn't any worse (notwithstanding a somewhat more noticeable propensity towards lens flare)."
Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us
Apple iPhone 5 hands-on review
Adaptor
>"But it means that speaker docks, third-party chargers and more will all need an adaptor"
For a lot of people it means getting a new speaker dock. I have a speaker dock where the very bottom of the phone leans against the dock, if the phone is raised up (by an adaptor), there is nothing for it to lean against.
iPhone 5 wait drives record Samsung smartphone sales
Xiaomi to go quad core with iPhone challenger
Re: Fantastic OS
Totally with you on this.
I reckon the useful life of my htc desire was extended by about a year thanks to MIUI (made it so smooth and the UI was lovely). As I say, the whole UI experience is more consistent than Cyanogen (though ironically the base for MIUI on the Desire was actually cm7).
If I was to advise someone on a budget on a phone today, I would say get a second hand s2 and stick MIUI on it.
Re: Fantastic OS
I use it in English. There is a site that releases a new MIUI Rom every week, translated into about a dozen different european languages.
Would the actual M2 phone have a market outside China? Is that what you mean? That's a tough one - If the hardware exceeds or even matches what's on the market right now, then yes (as the price would be lower than htc/samsung).
The trouble is that MIUI team actually goes out of its way to support popular new devices, so you can have MIUI OS on nearly any hardware you want.
Fantastic OS
Long before they released the M1, they were releasing free versions of their (Android based) MIUI OS for multiple existing devices. New releases every week (with user feedback/bug reports) helped polish the OS until it was at a stable enough state to launch on their own phone. Not a bad strategy - thousands of testers for free.
It was by far the best OS I had on my HTC Desire and I am currently running it on my S2 and can't see myself switching any time soon.
The UI is smooth, aesthetically pleasing and there is a design consistency across different apps which holds the whole OS together really nicely. It's like iOS in that regard. I just don't get that with the default android OS (mind you, I haven't got Jelly bean, yet)
Boy cuffed after Twitter troll's drown threat to Olympic diver Tom Daley
Apple misses earnings targets, Street reacts
Avast! Mobile Security
Three thumbs up
This is a fantastic app.
If you lose your phone (or have it stolen) you can also locate it remotely by sending a text to it from someone else's phone. You send your Avast pin with the word "locate" and you get a text message back saying exactly where the phone is.
The amount of functionality on this thing is amazing considering it's free.
That said, I installed it, played with it for half an hour and haven't gone back to it since (which is probably the way it should be with a security app).
Stephen on Steve: The most important man on Earth
Toshiba reveals iPad 2 rival
My Tracks travel tracker
Touch Calendar
Check out QuickPic
If we're talking about alternatives to google's built in apps:
Check out QuickPic - the best gallery/picture viewer. Knocks the stuffing out of the slow (pointlessly 3D) stock google app. Gets android gallery browsing very close to iOS in terms of smoothness.
And it's free.
Might be too "simple" to necessitate a review though.
PowerAmp
One of the few apps I've paid for
Well worth the money if you ask me. I've probably only ever bought about 3 apps, but this is one of them. Swiping the album art on the lockscreen to go forward and back is a fantastic feature (when you're driving a car, buttons are not always easy to press).
That said, I use a Rom called MIUI now, which has a fantastic Music player bundled as standard, so I don't actually have poweramp installed any more.
Opera Mobile pops up on Android
Slightly disappointed
Got to admit i am a bit disappointed with this. I'm a massive Opera fan and was really looking forward to this, but its got a sort of flimsy feel to it. The rendering doesn't feel as solid as the webkit browsers.
It also doesn't seem to have that snappy, cached "back" functionality from Mini, where if you go back a page the last page renders instantly.
It feels a bit too much like Opera Mini, and where with Mini, it's forgivable because of the bandwidth savings, with Mobile it's less so.
As someone said above though, it is a beta.
As an alternative I found a fantastic browser the other day called "Charming" browser. It's part of the MIUI Rom (android re-skin) that some chinese blokes did. It's based on the android webkit browser, but the UI and tab handling are much, much better in my opinion. It also does have the "back" functionality where the last page is rendered instantly when you hit the back button.
HTML5 web video flashes past Flash
Archos announces five Android tablets
Oracle, Google, and the survival of the fittest Java
Fragmented
Gosling says:
"Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers."
Is this really true? Sure, there's fragmentation in terms of what skin the manufacturer sticks on their phone, but for application development, it's not that different from iOS, and far, far better than what j2me ever was.
The market has changed since the j2me days, where the developer would jump through hoops to try to make their app compatible with as many handsets as possible. Now, apps are King and it's not in device makers' interests to make their handset incompatible with a whole host of existing apps. This tends to minimise fragmentation.
3 offers best iPhone deal
Stephen Fry's truly terrible mistake
Internet radio on the go
DAB's dead baby, DAB's dead.
You can use internet radio on the go (and in a car!) if you can get internet on your phone. This is what I use to listen to 6 music and french stations (which are magnifique) on my daily commute.
Get yourself acquainted with moodio.fm and you don't even need 3g.
(btw before anyone starts moaning about data charges, i'm on a cheapo O2 simplicity and never once been charged extra)