After borrowing my Xiaomi Mi Note Pro, Steve Litchfield pens his thoughts on his first Xiaomi phone. The Mi Note Pro is currently Xiaomi’s flagship.
Steve’s viewpoint is great to hear and see, so do check out the video below. You can read my review here – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/07/07/xiaomi-mi-note-pro-review/
If you want to bag a reduced Oppo smartphone, Amazon may be the answer if you are a Prime Member. This Wednesday is Primeday, which is billed by Amazon as bigger deals than Black Friday.
This is one of the deals on offer from Oppo.
Currently I have the LG G4 with a few extras.
The G4 has one of the best cameras, great audio, comfy to hold in the hand, replaceable and user changeable battery, expandable memory with a micro SD card up to 2TB, QHD display and so much more.
Add to the fact that I also have the black leather version, which also came with a gold back cover what more could I want. Well, I also have the ceramic white cover, which in my opinion looks better than the black leather option. Ceramic white is also likely to be more durable than leather. I also have a spare battery and battery charging cradle so there is never any wait to recharge the phone back to 100%. No matter what your views of the G4, its versatility translates into an excellent workhorse/functional phone. In conclusion it performs perfectly as a phone coupled with plenty of flexibility.
BUT.
I’m not happy and I don’t know why. Sometimes I think it is because the G4 lacks emotion when you use it. I also have had/have a Xiaomi Mi 4i and Xiaomi Mi Note Pro to review along with many others. The 4i has moved on to new pastures and Steve Litchfield from Phones Show Chat has temporarily borrowed my Mi Note Pro for a week in order to review it himself. I am looking forward to using the Mi Note Pro since there is something emotionally satisfying about using it.
For some reason I enjoyed using the Mi Note Pro more than the LG G4. The camera on the Mi Note Pro is not as good as the one on the G4, but it is pretty darn close. It doesn’t have changeable batteries or a micro SD card slot, yet it is so stunning to behold, and a monster of a powerhouse android phone with higher specs in many areas than the LG G4. I also think MIUI is more engaging. All the others specs are fantastic too. But it just looks so cool and drives some emotion in use.
This got me thinking. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and Xiaomi Mi Note Pro use the latest/newer/more advanced components than many other phones at the moment. For example both these phones have done away with micro SD card and are using a fixed internal storage. The internal storage is faster than accessing the micro SD card. One reason the Mi Note Pro camera can take 20 shots a second in burst mode. Whereas the LG G4 has still stuck with replaceable batteries and micro SD card expansion. With all this in mind I do wonder if we need better processors etc or are we better with yesterday’s tech? Then finally, I thought, if the phone has all the power and storage we need, what else drives us to get that next new shiny phone? Colour? Or something immaterial because the phone choice is so vast, we can choose to be picky about every little feature or fault?
It will be interesting to see how the next 3 months pans out with new phone releases. Maybe the next big thing with a smartphone has already happened!
Power on your LG G4 and you are faced with the LG G4 bright square icon theme. Some people will hate it and others will love it. LG has you covered, as you can head over to LG Smartworld and download a few others.
First up is “Suits”.
With each of these screen shots I have left the theme wallpaper alone. With Suits theme it is better to use a near black wallpaper.
Another theme from LG Smartworld is “Puzzle v2” . I think this is worse than the default theme.
Fortunately with a quick search on Google Play and via Google you can discover some more pleasing themes. These are the best I have found so far. This one is called “LG Home Flat”.
Next up is “Thin Blue Line”.
For all you MIUI fans, this one is for you. “MIUI Theme”.
Samsung fan people, time to rejoice. Here is the “S6 Theme”. I quite like this. I suppose I have got used to Samsung icons over the years.
HTC Sense UI theme is next. I don’t like this theme.
From the LG Smartworld is “Lego v2” theme. I can’t decide yet what I think about this one.
But without a doubt my favourite it “LG Home Lollipop”.
So which theme do you prefer?
Apple Pay seems on track for its UK launch tomorrow, Tuesday 14th July 2015.
Whilst not officially announced by Apple the evidence is ramping up. Waitrose last week confirmed in an internal memo to its staff the data, HSBC tweeted the date yesterday and many other retailers are providing small bits of evidence too.
In other Apple news, tomorrow is also the rumoured date for a possible refresh on the iPod range which hasn’t seen a refresh in years.
Sources – Waitrose, HSBC, 9to5mac
I made a few tweaks to the layout of Gavin’s Gadgets.
If you’re browsing on your PC you will notice only 4 tabs on top – About, Reviews, Editorials and Princetown Weather St.
If you’re on a mobile device you’ll see the above screen shot when you tap the menu icon.
If you tap on the “Reviews Index” you will see the following.
And as an example tapping on Phones etc brings up a list of around 60 reviews of phones and more.
Each of the 4 menu options have been tidied up too.
Hope you like the small tweaks.
So it’s now been 10 days using the Mi Band. The standout feature has to be the battery life. It is still on its first charge and it’s only lost 17% after 10 days. At this rate it will last nearly 60 days on a single and its first charge. This in turn means that I will only ever have to recharge it 6 or 7 times in a year.
Now it is possible to have a more frequent battery recharging if you start using all the notifications, sleep alarms and other third party apps that can integrate notifications and use the LEDs. This reduces apparently the battery life to a mere 30 days. 30 days at worst case scenario. Wow.
If there is one reason alone to get this, it is its stand out battery feature. My Fitbit Charge HR needs charging every 2-3 days. My LG Watch Urbane gets charge daily.
The Mi Band syncs with Google Fit if required and also WeChat. It doesn’t integrate with anything else. It tracks steps and sleep automatically. It has graphs showing you what steps you walked each day. And not much else. However, there are 2 versions of apps/firmware. If you use the Chinese app you will get a lot more functionality but no syncing to Google Fit. The Google Fit sync version gets updated regularly so hopefully in time the two apps will has less difference in features.
Price. Cheap. £20 maximum. Depends on currency and where you buy. Value. Bargain.
Negatives so far. On my first day wearing it, I was walking on Dartmoor and my rucksack straps caught the tracker module without me realising when I took my rucksack off and pulled it out of the band. I realised it was missing and spent 10 minutes trying to find it on Dartmoor. I did find it but I was lucky. I have had the band itself come off my wrist as well. So my advice is to be aware that it might de clasp itself or you could lose the module.
There is an optional leather band which is far securer as it uses 4 screws to lock the module in.
Overall, it’s ability to not need a recharge every few days is fantastic and it does what is says on the tin.
Can you help Gavin’s Gadgets? Actually you can. If you decide to buy anything on Amazon, please use the special link below to visit Amazon UK. By using this link, you will help support Gavin’s Gadgets with all the running costs and more, and yet it won’t cost you anything when you shop on Amazon UK. That’s right the price you pay at Amazon is the same whether you use the link below or not.
I was driving across Dartmoor yesterday evening and I spotted an army helicopter. I stopped a took the above photo.
And another shot below. Notice the startled sheep looking at the helicopter too.
So I wondered how close I could zoom in with the G4 and capture the helicopter moving along with its blades. Result is below.
And then further down the road there was another helicopter. I took this in portrait so you could gain some perspective against the moor.
Not a bad sequence of shots!
Change the strap and the watch face and you have a new watch.
The milanese metal strap arrived yesterday. It was so easy to swap over. I now have the black strap that came with the Urbane, a lovely brown crocodile leather and a sports orange strap.
Below are the other straps in my possession.
Without a doubt the metal milanese strap is my favourite! What is crazy is that the cost of all 3 additional watch straps cost less than one of the cheapest straps sold by Apple for their Watch.
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