Posts by davew_uk

The best tablets for Christmas

Re: What about the no-names?

Most of the no-name tablets are rubbish, though there are some real gems out there. There are two main chinese chipsets powering these things, the Allwinner A10 (ARM Cortex A8 single core ~1.2ghz + Mali 400MP GPU) and the Rockchip RK3066 (ARM Cortex A9 dual core ~1.6ghz + Mali 400MP quad core GPU). Once you know which chipset a no-name tablet is based on you will get a very good idea of its performance and capabilities.

Over here in Portugal the shops are full of sub-100eur 7" Allwinner A10 tablets and they nearly all have 800x600 LCDs with poor viewing angles and 8gb storage. I gave one to my wife, and for basic surfing and ereading its OK, handles virtually any known video file and even makes a fair stab at games.

I spent a little more on mine (139eur) and got a BQ Maxwell Plus with an 1024x600 IPS panel and the RK3066 chipset. I also have one of these and it smokes the A10-based tablet completely for any use case.

Bought both for the price of a Nexus 7 over here too :-)

Apple unveils iPad mini, upgrades its big brother

@Gary F

I too have a cheapo Android tablet - and feel quietly pleased about its high functionality/price ratio - but you wouldn't show it off to your mates. For that, Apple will happily charge you a premium.

LG Optimus 4X HD quad-core Android phone review

LG - poor track record on firmware updates, but then who hasn't?

Like others posting here I got burned with the LG Optimus 2X - a phone that promised so much yet delivered so little. Hardware problems meant the phone crashed continuously, and ancient software that was never updated meant sluggish screen response and poor battery life. Worst phone I've ever had and thank god Amazon gave me a refund on it.

After I sent it back I switched to Samsung, and after a short while with a Galaxy Ace (slow, blurry screen) got burned by the Galaxy SL. In every other country where this phone is sold, it received a Gingerbread update and the "Value Pack" - but not the UK. I've had the phone for six months now and still waiting. The handset is effectively dead, from a support perspective in the UK. Thank god for XDA, that's all I can say.

So if Motorola is as bad as LG who are as bad as Samsung, then who is doing it right? anyone?

Ten... crowd-funded games from veteran devs

No mention of Project CARS?!

Surely Project CARS (Simply Mad Studios/World of Mass Development) was fully funded via crowdsourced development before anyone had even -heard- of Kickstarter?

Steelseries SRW-S1 PC gaming steering wheel

nice wheel, shame about the game

The wheel looks pretty neat, but the game it is designed for is underwhelming.

After finally getting it downloaded, I tried a few practice laps and the graphics are a throwback to five years ago. Looks suspiciously like the rFactor engine dressed up a little.

System Shock

Superb game, one of the best ever - and still playable on modern PCs thanks to DOSbox. Google for "System Shock Portable" and thank me later.

Orange Tahiti 7in Android tablet

Underlying hardware?

Isn't this just a rebranded Huawei Mediapad?

Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos

@Jonathan White

I have a feeling that the target audience for The Register have no fear of installing a few apps on their Kindle Fire's without needing their hand holding. As a Brit, a this particular device would be rather a useless lump of plastic to me without access to the Amazon cloud content, so pretty much the ONLY reason I'm reading about the Fire is to find out how hackable it is.

Easily solved

Kindle Fire now rocking Android Market and the rest of the google apps:-

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/kindle-fire-now-rocking-android-market-and-the-rest-of-the-google-apps/

There, now that wasn't so hard was it?

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

Talking Heads

Two pages of commments and no-one has mentioned "Stop Making Sense" yet?

iOS update woes prompt gnashing of teeth for Apple fans

Update failed ...

Restore seemed to go OK...

Complete reset to factory defaults...

Reload everything...

500mb of app updates...

seven more minutes to go and might finally be there...

f*ck me its 3am!

Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S

How can you recommend the LG Optimus 2X when it is well known to be an utter lemon?! There's a good reason why Expansys, Amazon etc. are knocking this phone out for under three hundred notes, its because the return rates on this unit are through the roof!

Head over to xda-developers.com and read 150+ pages of O2X owners complaining of constant crashes, freezes, reboots and the Sleep of Death. Then read another 100 pages of O2X owners complaining about the promised Gingerbread update that never came, and never will come.

I had one for a month, never again will I buy an LG mobile.

Nokia: regular WinPho handset releases through 2012

Oh dear, I just realised just how this is going to work...

Reading the article gave me a flashback to the operator magazines you get in the mobile phone shops here in Portugal, of which I have a few around the office. In each magazine there are a couple of pages of Apple, Android, Blackberry "star" devices and then about twenty pages of undifferentiated slush from Nokia.

Those with clue will choose carefully and pay top dollar for a premium smartphone. Those with no clue will carry on buying undifferentiated nokias from the slush pile at the back of the catalogue - and in a few years, they'll all be on Windows Phone 7 rather than Symbian.

These punters are used to having just Windows computers at home, and all our nerdy platform-wars go totally over their heads.

This could actually work if they get the price down to around the right psychological threshold and the mobile operators continue stuffing their catalogues with Nokias...

Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed

Growing on me

When I first played this you could hardly say it was love at first sight, but with time and effort it is starting to grow on me. It's good-looking and enjoyable, but the handling is flawed far more I think than the review suggests. After an hour on Shift 2 its such a relief to go back to almost any other driving game where you don't have to wrestle the wheel into submission just to get around the track.

Apple limits Design Awards to App Store residents

Some types of legitimate Mac apps are outside the walled garden

In 2009 the audio plugin market was worth US$ 20 million annually (according to NAMM), and Mac sales accounted for a significant percentage of that due to the Mac's historical association with all things creative.

Unfortunately for us the Mac App Store guidelines specifically prohibit any software that installs to shared folders, well, like audio plugins do.

The App Store might be a godsend to one-man-band businesses but not to one decent sized sector chock full on one-man-band businesses...