All posts by Gavin Fabiani-Laymond

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About Gavin Fabiani-Laymond

President, CEO & Editor of https://gavinsgadgets.com Reviews & News of Technology

Google and Lenovo get ready to launch the world’s first Project Tango Phone

Android, Tech News,

1 tango

Today, at CES, Lenovo announced the development of the first consumer-ready smartphone with Project Tango. By adding a few extra sensors and some computer vision software, Project Tango transforms your smartphone into a magic lens that lets you place digital information on your physical world.

For some inspiration, Lowe’s is developing an app where you can point your Project Tango-enabled smartphone at your kitchen to see where a new refrigerator or dishwasher might fit virtually.

Elsewhere, developer Schell Games let’s you play virtual Jenga on any surface with friends. But this time, there is no cleanup involved when the blocks topple over.

1 tango 2

To support the continued growth of the ecosystem, we’re also inviting developers from around the world to submit their ideas for gaming and utility apps created using Project Tango. We’ll pick the best ideas and provide funding and engineering support to help bring them to life, as part of the app incubator. Even better, the finished apps will be featured on Lenovo’s upcoming device. The submission period closes on February 15, 2016.

This is really exciting news and it will be interesting to see what these phones can achieve.

Source – Google

The $25,000 Apple Watch clone – totally gorgeous Swiss Alp Watch

Tech News,

The Swiss Alp Watch looks just like an Apple Watch, except it costs twice as much.

– It is the created from over 200 years R & D
– A revolutionary power source that lasts 100 hours
– Features – No messaging, no phone, no heart beats, no sketches

Tagline – Get a life, get a mechanical watch. The video is great to watch, so enjoy. Make sure you have the volume up and listen right to the very bitter end!

Apple iPhone 7 – The Removal of the Headphone Jack & Lightning Port – Editorial

Apple, Tech News,

Across the internet many websites are claiming the next iPhone, the iPhone 7 won’t have a headphone jack. And now there’s another rumour that the lightning port is history. This will make the next iPhone waterproof. 

The loss of the headphone jack is making people panic that all their headphones will suddenly become obsolete. That’s totally wrong. Or is it?

Firstly, remember these are only rumours. Apple has not confirmed anything so this may be pie in the sky. Secondly, it could be rumours spread by Apple to test the public reaction.

Let’s look at the headphone jack first. 

Apple won’t be the first company to remove the headphone jack. Oppo sells the Oppo R5 which is 4.85mm thick and is too thin for a headphone jack. It comes with a bluetooth accessory that allows you to connect your current headphones into. The little adapter can also be used to operate the camera shutter remotely.

So Apple could very easily provide this little bluetooth accessory or simply include bluetooth headphones that would need to be recharged from the iPhone. Or you could buy right now the Philips Fidelio M2L Hi-Res Headphones with Lightning Connector . That’s right the Philips Fidelio are Hi-Res Audio headphones that connect via the lightning port. So the other option is Apple provides wired headphones that connect via the lightning port and or a lightning port to 3.5mm headphone adapter.

Of course bluetooth headphones are another option and with the advancements in new bluetooth Hi-Res Audio codecs, most people won’t notice the difference. All it will mean is another device to charge at night. That’s why mains charging devices like the [Most Compact 10-Port USB Charger] Anker PowerPort 10 (60W 10-Port Charging Station) Wall Charger for iPhone 6 / 6 Plus, iPad Air 2 / mini 3, Galaxy S6 / S6 Edge, Other Apple and Android Devices and More (Black) are becoming so popular and needed. I actually have this 10 port adapter too.

The final aspect of this lightning port is the audio quality is digital out as opposed to analogue via the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack and therefore better quality sound is possible via the lightning port. I am personally already using the lightning port as the preferred method of listening to my music. I simply connect up an external DAC via this way and plug my headphones into the external DAC. As an example you could use a Chord Electronics Mojo Headphone Amplifier / DAC or Oppo – HA-2 but with both of these options, additional cost is created.

All I can hope is Apple provide a solution in the box for people to be able to use their existing headphones without losing the sound quality that is available directly from a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack.

But this theory could be thrown in the bin if the lightning port goes too. 

If Apple removed the lightning port all headphones would need to be wireless, probably using Bluetooth. But how would you recharge the phone? Wireless charging technology which already exists. This would make the iPhone 7 waterproof. 

Personally, I reckon only the headphone jack removal is possible, but what do you think?

Apple iPhone 6S – Apple Watch versus FitBit Charge HR – Part 2

Apple, Tech News, Wearables, ,

A few days ago I mentioned I was going to try and see whether using the Apple iPhone 6S with the Apple Watch or Fitbit Charge HR would work as a better solution for fitness.

This is an interesting exercise as my wife is using her iPhone 6S and I am using my iPhone 6S Plus. We are both testing the Apple Watch and Fitbit Charge HR to see which one works best.

We are both syncing data from the Apple Watch to the Apple HealthKit app which in turns syncs the steps to MyFitnessPal. My wife noticed that MyFitnessPal under the home tab showed the correct step count value synced across from the Apple Watch. In the Diary tab at the bottom, the number of steps shown was up to 50% inaccurate meaning the total number of extra calories created that day were down by a fair amount. This can make a lot of difference if you needed extra calories for a snack in the evening.

So as I had the same issue, I did some investigation and noticed in the Apple HealthKit app it displayed my wife’s Apple Watch twice. So a call to Apple Support and I was advised to wipe the phone clean and restore from iTunes. What was scary was the guy from Apple Support did not know the to save your HealthKit data you need to backup to iTunes using encryption. Restoring a backup from iCloud will not bring back historical health data. This is not good as not everyone uses a PC/Mac so therefore backing up to iTunes is impossible.

I also emailed MyFitnessPal re the inaccurate steps showing in the Diary tab and whilst I have not had an email back yet from MyFitnessPal it now shows different text in the Diary tab. My wife opened the app on her phone, and it had the previous text entry under the Diary tab. MyFitnessPal had done something to my account.

So how is the FitBit Charge HR going. In one word, it just works and really well. For pure fitness it is far simpler and easier to use. It also syncs really smoothly with MyFitness Pal.

So how does the Apple Watch compare? To be honest it is a totally different device that can do so much from paying for goods, controlling my weather station and more. As a fitness device is works fairly well but it is not perfect. Activity is minus the GPS map tracking. After a workout you can’t read your heart rate scores taken throughout the time exercising. All you get is a heart rate summary. On the other hand I do like how the Apple Watch makes you stand up every hour and also displays your activity.

If I had to choose just one device for fitness, currently the winner goes to FitBit.

It is also worth noting that FitBit has just had a Class Action lawsuit taken against them that alleges that the heart rate tracking in the Charge HR and Surge, are inaccurate and by a significant margin.

Ted Baker Rockall Headphones – 2 Month Review

Audio, Reviews, Tech News

  
Welcome to my review of the Ted Baker Rockall headphones. This review is written after spending 2 months with these headphones to allow for a proper burn in period. Ted Baker? Headphones? Surely not? Actually yes.

Apparently Ted Baker designed the Rockall headphones from the ground up to produce a high quality headphone. These have a RRP of £179.99. However, these are available for a lot less. Amazon (link) is selling these currently for as little as £69.99.

The Key Specifications

– Made from brushed stainless steel and soft leather
– Smart foldable construction
– Adjustable sliding headband
– Tangle-resistant cable
– Exceptional sound quality with rich bass
– Apple-compatible remote and microphone allowing call and control functions
– Travel case included
– 1/4 adaptor plug for hi-fi connection
– 40mm driver

As you can see the specification excludes the ohms, frequency range and sensitivity. I could not find this information anywhere on the internet. These headphones are designed to work from Apple iOS devices as the inline remote/mic works fully with iOS devices. On android only the play/pause/mic part works.

The headphones come in a range of finishes. I have the silver black option, but there are two other finishes brown/silver and gold/white. There are a number of neat design touches with these headphones form leather effect removable cable (handy if you break the cable or want to upgrade it), cool finishes across various parts of the design. See photos below.

  
So they look stylish, but what do the sound like? For a start they are not a Beats sounding headphone with a V shaped bass heavy sound. Quite the opposite. Surprisingly they are fairly neutral, with sub bass only if the track has it. However it did a good job in some areas like female vocal, guitar, instrumental, rock and classical, but with modern pop it sometimes seemed that the mid and treble got lost in the performance and lacked sparkle. If you like dance or trance type music these headphones are NOT for you! Ted Baker obviously designed these to work straight out of the iPhone and for that functionality they work really well. The mic and controls all function just fine and call quality was acceptable. Using the inline controls to control the music also functioned fine. These headphones are not for bass freaks. They do have bass but it a more neutral sound across the spectrum.

In the box you got a 1/4 adapter and a lovely carry case. To fold the headphones into the case, you really need to remove the cable from the headphones. But that is easy to do and makes carrying them a compact affair.

At a RRP of £179.99 there are many better sounding headphones. If you paid £100 for these then would be a reasonable purchase. At £69.99 they become an ever better purchase. I paid £40 in a lightning deal making these unbelievable value. However, these are a fairly neutral sounding headphone, so will not appeal to everyone. But some some, they will be ideal.

Ted Baker Rockall deal at Amazon UK

CES 2016 – 24 Hours of Crazy Tech Announcements – Best of including My Viewpoints

Android, Apple, BlackBerry, Tech News, Wearables, Windows, , , , , , ,

CES 2016 in Las Vegas is in full swing along with some exciting and crazy tech announcements.

Fridges – Samsung displayed a fridge with an android tablet built in to the front fridge door. Well that’s what it looked like. So now you can read your tweets on your fridge. On the other hand LG decided it would scan your body and if both hands were full, it would automatically open the fridge doors. That’s a bit more useful.

Fitbit – And along came the FitBit Blaze. A smart watch attempt by FitBit. Just a shame they left out GPS. All for $199. The stock market didn’t react well, and knocked 12.5% off the share value. I personally think the shape of the watch is odd.

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Samsung – not to be left out of the luxury watch market announced 2 new finishes for their Gear S2 Classic. The new Gear S2 classic will be available in Rose Gold case with an Ivory Genuine Leather Band and in Platinum case with a Black Genuine Leather Band beginning in February. If you need to know the price, you can’t afford it!. The bigger news is iOS support is coming for the Gear S2 later this year!

Samsung also announced new sexy curved TV’s and lots more including the TabPro S tablet running windows 10 and not android. It also had a cool keyboard case. The whole affair was rather slim too. The Samsung Chromebook 3 got announced too.

1 tabpro

1 Samsung Gear

Chinese Phones – I lost count of all the mid market and budget Chinese phones being announced. All slight spec bumps of the previous models with more storage and ram, more premium builds, finger print sensors and more. In the end, it just becomes a blur.

Casio – The Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 is its first Android Wear device with sport watch styling and a typical Casio style rugged design. In monochrome mode the battery can last a month. Expect to pay around $500. Ouch!

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Weird but True News – Facebook sabotaged its android app to crash to see how loyal its users would be. Rumour is FaceBook is looking to leave the Google Play store. Just how significant a blow would this be for android ? Then Twitter announced its looking at allowing up to 10,000 words per tweet. I hope not. 200-300 is enough.

HTC and Under Armour – A partnership with the announcement of the Healthbox. This contained a fitness band, heart rate strap and scales. Functional and well designed too.

Parrot – unveiled the Parrot Disco, a new drone prototype that’s actually a full-blown fixed wing plane that can travel at 50mph.

HTC – HTC Vive Pre – HTC showed off its second generation VR headset. This is really looking amazing. The second generation has built in cameras and new controllers.

Huawei – Huawei held a big press conference and launched the Mate 8 and a new tablet that came with a stylus. New Huawei Watch models designed for women were also announced.

There were hundreds more products released and announced at CES, but the above are my personal favourites. Was there anything else that caught your eye?

Honor – The Honor 5X got announced. A 1080p 5.5 inch display, Snapdragon 615, 3000maH, 13mp rear camera and well built as usual and low cost phone.

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Snapdragon 820 Phones – LeTV Le Max Pro – this is a beast of a phone from LeTV. A 6.33inch 2K display, 3,400mAh battery, Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB ram, Android 6 with LeTV’s own skin, 21 MP OIS rear camera that takes incredible shots and really fast.

Sources – HTC, Huawei, Parrot, FitBit, Casio, Samsung, LG, AndroidCentral, Pocketnow, Verge, Engadget, Pocketlint

Apple iPhone 6S – Creating Movies in iMovie – Editorial

Apple, Tech News,

One of the joys of using an iPhone is using iMovie on the iPhone itself. The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus come with a powerful A9 processor that makes light work of editing your own movie. 

Below is a sample video edited and created in iMovie from just a few short video clips and photographs. 

The video filmed in the above movie was recorded at 4K. From the iMovie app itself you can share the 4K content directly to YouTube. In fact, this is the only way to share 4K content to YouTube , via the iMovie app on iOS. Otherwise to upload 4K, you will need to do this from your Mac or PC. 

iMovie for iOS enables you to browse and share videos or just video clips, mark favourite moments to find the later on, create cool Hollywood style trailers with 14 different templates along with some great music, customise loads of different aspects of the trailers, from logos, titles , cast names and credits. 3D Touch is available too to quickly start a project or peek at a movie. Movies have a choice of 8 themes, 10 video filters, speed enhancements from slow motion, fast forward, picture in picture , split screen effects, or create your own soundtracks or sound effects. It is also possible to connect a keyboard and use keyboard editing shortcuts for faster creation. And the above is just a summary of what’s possible and all on my iPhone 6S. 

  
If you do decide to video in 4K you will need to change the iPhone settings for the camera in the main settings app, under Photos & Camera. One minute of 4K video uses 375mb of space. However, recording in 4K does allow for zooming in and removing still photos from the 4K video. To remove photos from the 4K video which will be 8mp shots, I use SnapStill for iOS. Not only does it recommend which are the best frames to extract to 8mp photos but it gives you the option to keep the meta data. The above photo is a 8mp still from the 4K video example. 

All this flexibility of iMovie on the iPhone 6S makes it a superb piece of video editing kit. Now when I consider changing to an android phone,there is nothing of comparison that allows for proper editing on the phone itself. 

Coming back to the iPhone 6S Plus from my LG G4 really has opened my eyes to the extensive video and photo editing apps now available. iMovie is the icing on the cake!

Asus Zenfone Zoom – FULL Specs and its downside – Editorial

Android, Tech News, , , ,

w704-2

The Asus Zenfone Zoom has been a long time coming and finally Asus have overcome whatever manufacturing issues it had and is releasing the phone for $399 in the US. However, this amazing feat of engineering has some superb specifications but when it comes to the camera it is also let down by a couple of aspects.

The Asus Zenfone Zoom has a Panasonic 13-megapixel SmartFSI sensor and a HOYA 10-element lens. The magic is that this camera is able to provide 3x optical zoom without any parts protruding. Optical image stabilization, laser auto-focus and a dual-tone flash are also present.

And the negative – the aperture ranges from f/2.7 to f/4.8. This is somewhat disappointing as the LG G4 for example managed with a f/1.8.

The Asus ZenFone Zoom comprises of an aluminium body with a removable leather back cover for accessing the micro SD and Micro SIM slots.

The other specifications –

– Display – 5.5-inch 1080p Full HD, 403ppi, IPS LCD
– Corning Gorilla Glass 4
– Processor – 64-bit 2.5GHz Quad-core Intel Atom Z3590 CPU
– Graphics – PowerVR G6430 GPU
– RAM – 4GB LPDDR3
– Internal Storage – 64GB eMCC Flash or 128GB eMCP Flash
– External Storage – microSD (up to 128GB)
– Cameras – 13MP rear-facing camera, 10-element Hoya 3x zoom lens
– 5MP front-facing camera
– Software – Android 5.1 with ASUS ZenUI
– Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/b/ac
– Bluetooth 4.0+ EDR
– NFC
– micro-USB
– Battery – 3000mAh non-removable Li-Polymer – comes with a rapid charger
– Dimensions – 158.9 x 78.84 x 11.95mm
– Weight – 185g

I really hope this comes to the UK and Europe really quickly as this is one phone I really would love to to test. 3 times optical zoom sounds brilliant and the rest of the specifications are strong too. I just hope the f/2.7 isn’t a show stopper.

Sources – Asus, Engadget, Talk Android, Android Central

LG G5 – The G4 was impressive but the LG G5 is extraordinary – details and vs Samsung Galaxy S7

Android, Tech News, ,

I had hours of delight with my LG G4 and it was sad to sell it on to a new home a few months ago.

Now it is time for the rumours to arrive about its predecessor, the LG G5 and it is likely to be one knockout device.

Features will include –

– Snapdragon 820 Processor
– 4gb Ram
– 32gb Storage
– Micro SD slot
– Metallic Build
– 5.3 inch QHD screen
– Secondary Ticker Display like the LG V10
– Rear Camera – dual lens 16-megapixel camera providing a 135-degree wide-angle capability
– 8mp front camera
– More sensors on rear – fingerprint, RGB, focus assist, flash
– Magic Slot – to provide extra hardware functionality e.g. more camera options, HIFI
– Battery 2,800mAh

I really look forward to seeing what the new Snapdragon 820 can produce with LG’s camera prowess. The magic slot for hardware expansion on features seems exciting too. As does the improved metallic build. Just a shame the battery is still too small even with marshmallow on board and a better SOC.

Now in case you’re wondering about the new Samsung Galaxy S7, this will feature similar specifications but bizarrely the rumour is suggesting the S7 will only have a 12.2mp rear facing camera. Let’s hope this translates into huge pixels for exceptional low light shots! It appears that Samsung and LG are going to tackle photography different this year in terms of optics. I am looking forward to seeing what each of these phones can create especially with the powerful snapdragon 820 processor being able to allow for some serious photo processing during each shot.

The S7 will also come in two variants, the curved edge and non curve.

Are you looking forward to this phone?

Source – Venture Beat

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL – Removed from Sale across Europe – details

Tech News, Windows

Last week I published an article about the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL being removed from sale by Carphone Warehouse. Link to article Click Here

  
Well the news gets worse for Microsoft. Amazon Germany have removed the phone from sale and now Amazon UK won’t sell you the phone as “there is something wrong with Amazon’s inventory”. 

This is slowly turning into a PR disaster for Microsoft. 
Update – Amazon France has also halted sales