6th November 2011

LG Optimus One Review

The LG Optimus One smartphone may come with a slightly smaller than average 3.2” touchscreen but this screen is extremely receptive, so a light touch is enough to get activated and the Optimus One offers bright and clear images and natural colours. The LCD panel has 320 x 480 pixels and, due to the screen being smaller, the low resolution does not distort the sharp images.  The dims are 113.5 x 59 x 13.3mm and the model weighs in at 129g. The design is flat, slim, elegant and black and the phone feels robust in the hand and lends itself perfectly to one-handed use.

The LG Optimus One features Android 2.2 and with it the Google Maps app with free sat nav and it is possible to use the LG Optimus One as a wi-fi hotspot to allow you to hook up your pc and surf wherever you are.  The Optimus One has a 3 mega pixel camera and video offers 640 x 480 res.  The camera on this model has been subject to modifications and enhancements from the previous model which allows the user to change and adapt the previously static settings.

The apps offered with this phone are user friendly, as is the Optimus One itself.

LG Optimus One is attractive, responsive, and more than capable in everyday tasks and is altogether one of the best budget smartphones on the market. 

+ LG Mobile Phones, Mobile Phones

3rd November 2011

Android accounts for 52% of the mobile market

It looks as though Android is winning the battle of the mobile operating systems as a new report from Garner suggests that 52.5% of mobiles that were sold between July and September used this system. This represents more than double the 25.3 percent share Google’s mobile OS enjoyed the year before, and up from a 43.4 percent share in the second quarter of 2011. It seems that this growth has come at the expense of the Symbian phones as this now only account for 16.9% of new phone sales, down from 36.3 percent last year.

Other figures released show that Apple’s iPhone makes up 15 percent of all mobile phone sales, down slightly from 16.6 percent in 2010, and RIM’s Blackberry OS took up 11 percent of new mobile phone sales, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform continued to languish at only 1.5 percent of the market.

+ Android OS, Google, Mobile Phones

28th October 2011

Samsung overtakes Apple

Samsung has shipped nearly 28 million Smartphone’s in the last quarter and overtaken Apple to become the world’s largest vendor of Smartphone’s, according to new research from analysts at Milton Keynes-based Strategy Analytics who have estimated that  Samsung had shipped 27.8 million Smartphone’s in the last quarter giving them 23.8 per cent of the global Smartphone market.

Samsung’s success has been driven by its adoption of Google’s Android software for both Smartphone and tablets; it has also announced a new model, called the Galaxy Nexus, that it has built in direct collaboration with Google. Although it is one of Apple’s largest suppliers of components, the two are also locked in an increasingly bitter legal battle over mobile phone patents.

+ Apple, Google, Mobile Phones, Samsung

19th October 2011

Kindle hits Amazon profits

The kindle has been a huge success, but the tablet which stores hundreds of books which can be read electronically has hit the profits of the giant online retailer. The company, the world’s largest online internet retailer, said third quarter net income was £40m down. It was during this period Amazon launched the Kindle “Fire” model, which runs apps and streams films and other non-text content.

The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which allows users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media. The Kindle hardware devices use an E Ink electronic paper display that shows up to 16 shades of gray, minimizes power use and simulates reading on paper.

+ Gadgets, General Information

16th October 2011

Table salt increases disc space

We are all demanding more space on our disc drives as we gather and store more information, a simple solution seems to have been found by scientists in Singapore who have developed a surprising use for ordinary salt that they say could help deal with the increasingly quantities of data that companies and individuals require.

Their new manufacturing process, involving simple sodium chloride (table salt), can boost the capacity of computer hard disks by six times. With current hard disk manufacturing technology reaching its limits, the new process could mean that current capacity is able to be increased on future computers. In a statement it is reported that the agencies have “developed a process that can increase the data recording density of hard disks to 3.3 Terabits per square inch, six times the recording density of current models”.

+ Gadgets, PC Components

11th October 2011

More misery for Blackberry users.

BlackBerry services went down on Monday and, apart from a brief period on Tuesday morning, have been down since then. Last night there were reports that users in the United States, Japan and Singapore were having difficulties getting online. The firm is facing growing calls for compensation from users all over the world. European, Middle Eastern and African BlackBerry owners endured three working days without mobile internet access, including email and instant messaging.

RIM in an effort to explain the latest outage in their services, claimed that it was due to the huge backlog of emails and messages that have stacked up whilst the service was down. According to sources, the British operators have made no comment on compensation, but it is understood they do not expect to offer any and blame RIM for the outage. The timing is particularly unfortunate for RIM, according to industry analysts, as Apple launches the iPhone 4S and competing internet services this week, including iMessage, a rival to BBM.

+ General Information, Mobile Phones

5th October 2011

Bowers and Wilkins C5 premium headphones

Bowers and Wilkins is a premium hi-fi brand whose name was made for many consumers by the award-winning Zeppelin speaker, since updated to include the wireless Zeppelin Air. This strikingly designed iPod dock has established the 45-year-old British company as a powerful company with real audiophile credentials and a cutting edge technology.

The new C5 in-ear headphones, too, deliver on both those ambitions: an innovative “Micro Porous Filter” acts as a diffuser. B&W claim this produces a “pristine, natural” sound, and for once the marketing blurb is spot on: music listened to through the C5 takes on a quality of spaciousness that is hard to achieve even in more expensive, on-ear cans. Although the sound quality is near perfect, the way that the headphones are held within the ear is not to everyone’s liking. This uses a thin tube of flexible plastic to hold the headphones within the ear, although it does promote a genuine feeling of security, it can become uncomfortable after long periods.

+ Gadgets, Headphones

28th September 2011

The £300m cable that will save one millisecond in transmission time

With the world of the mobile ‘phone and the high speed internet it is hard to believe that people still communication by a cable joining them together, but it is the case, especially went comes to trading and hedge funds. The first cable across the Atlantic was laid in 1858 from the Telegraph Field, Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Heart’s Content in eastern Newfoundland. However, in the high-speed world of automated financial trading, milliseconds matter. So much so, in fact, that a saving of just six milliseconds in transmission time is all that is required to justify the laying of the first transatlantic communications cable for 10 years at a cost of more than £300m.

The current leader, Global Crossing’s AC-1 cable, offers transatlantic connection in 65 milliseconds. The Hibernian Express will shave six milliseconds off that time. The new cable will offer super fast bandwidth and trading firms and banks in the City of London and New York queuing to use it; but at a price. It is predicted they will pay about 50 times as much to link up via the Hibernian Express than they do via existing transatlantic cables.

+ General Information, Internet, Mobile Phones

25th September 2011

HP offers partial refund to full-price TouchPad buyers

The TouchPad was on sale in Britain for just over a month and failed to make an impression on the market which has been dominated by the Apple iPad. HP is to refund hundreds of pounds each to customers who bought its failed TouchPad tablet at full price. The compensation programme means buyers who paid full price for their TouchPad before August 23 will have effectively acquired it at the fire-sale price.

For the bottom-of-the-range, 16GB, Wi-Fi only HP TouchPad, buyers will receive the difference between whatever they paid and £89, which is the heavily discounted rate at which HP sold off remaining stocks once it decided to scrap the product. When it appeared in British shops just over a month earlier, the recommended price was £399. Similar compensation will be offered on more expensive models, and to buyers of the Pre3 Smartphone, which was also culled as part of a major shift by HP away from consumer electronics.

+ General Information, Tablets, Wireless

20th September 2011

HTC Desire S Deals

The HRT Desire S is one of the latest mobile phone handsets offered by the popular mobile phone manufacturer HTC. The handset is an updated version of the market leading HTC Desire and offers a number of improvements such as a better screen, quicker processor, faster web browsing and reduced weight. Perhaps the most impressive feature on the HTC Desire S is the full HD camera the phone boasts, which can capture movies and pictures in high definition. These movies can then be streamed wirelessly to any HD Ready TV with a DLNA connection.

As the handset is incredibly popular, there are a huge amount of HTC Desire S deals on the market. People looking for HTC Desire S deals with a contract can expect to pay around £20 to £25 per month, and with that they can usually expect to receive an average of between 100-300 free calls, a minimum of 500 free texts and at least 500MB of data transfer from web browsing per month. Most of the contracted HTC Desire S deals also give customers the phone for free; however, some will expect you to pay around £30 for the handset. Unfortunately, pay as you go HTC Desire S deals require customers to buy the handset themselves. This can prove expensive, as the phone by itself and without a contract is quite costly, ranging between £300 and £420 depending on the exact version of the phone required.

+ HTC, Mobile Phones