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

Only in China – Pirate iOS App Store

Apple, Tech News

A pirate version of Apple’s App Store, selling iOS apps that let iPhone or iPad owners skirt iTunes and install apps, with no jailbreak required is operating out of China. It has been running for nearly a year and I am surprised that Apple’s lawyers have not interjected yet.

However, the website is planning an international web version later this year, but only for windows not mac. Somehow, I imagine Apple will strike soon.

Also bear in mind, if you get apps from unknown sources, you do not know if any malware or code has been added to an app.

HTC One – Car and AC Charging Tip

Android, Tech News

The HTC One has a standard micro USB connector, so one would assume that when charging you can use any micro USB connector lying around both at home and in the car. Well you can but be warned.

In the car and at home you need to make sure that when using a third party cable and plug that you are charging AC power mode and not USB. Nothing wrong with USB mode except it’s slow and in the car might not charge the phone quick enough as you use the GPS, Bluetooth and more. If you use HTC’s own car and supplied charger you will see the below screen shot. Go to settings, power and top left it says AC charging.

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Now if for example you used an iPad wall part with a USB cable the top left wording would change to USB charging which takes a lot longer.  In the car I originally tried a Kensington car charger block with a BlackBerry micro USB cable. This only gave USB power and consequently when I had GPS and Bluetooth running the phone battery died by 2% every hour. Swap over to the official HTC car charger,  AC power mode is triggered and the phone chargers ahead despite using it heavily.

Mini MicroSD Reader for Android Tablets and Phones

Android, Tech News

If you have an android device, you probably can plug in a USB OTG cable and then a memory card into the cable. This allows your device to use the memory card as required. But wouldnt it be great if you could do the same but without the USB OTG cable. Well that soon will be a reality.

Check out this kickstarter project that aims to create a microsd reader that can plug directly into your device.

Very cool and I hope it is a success.

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ZTE takes aim at Geeks with the ZTE Geek phone

Android, Tech News

Seriously, I couldn’t have made the title up even if I tried.

The ZTE Geek is an Android Jelly Bean phone powered by an Intel 2GHz Clover Trail Atom, 5-inch 720p display with Gorilla Glass, 8-megapixel main camera, a 1-megapixel front-facing camera, 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, 2,300mAh battery and wireless charging. Radios UMTS 900/2100 courtesy of Intel’s XMM 6260 chip, and there’s also the usual lot of 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE and GPS.

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Samsung and LG go head to head

Uncategorized

Whilst we all think the tech battle is between Samsung and Apple, another head to head is occurring between Samsung and LG.

LG have announced the value pack for their Optimus G Pro which includes many of the features of the S4. These include for example Smart Video eye recognition, the dual-camera video and still capture, and seamless pause and resume video recording.

At the end of the day, this is all great news for the consumer.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the LG Optimus G Pro in real life. Looks like a great piece of kit.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 16gb – some advice

Android, Tech News

Without a doubt the Samsung Galaxy S4 when it is launched next week will be a big hit. This is due to it being a competent piece of kit and Samsung’s tremendous marketing budget.

But it is not unusual nowadays for any phone to have memory allocated for the system firmware. For example, the HTC One is advertised as a 32gb phone but has just over 25gb actually free. That’s 7gb for the firmware.

So if the HTC One needs 7gb approximately, how much does the Samsung S4 require? Well, at present there are two options being mentioned around the web. Russian website mobile-review mentioned it has only 8gb free, whereas elsewhere it increased to 9.2gb. Nothing unusual with these figures and in line with the firmware requirements of the HTC One.

However, if 8-9gb is left free for the user, that is a precarious amount if you like games, or have apps that have large databases. Medical apps are a good example that could have a large database requirement. Need for Speed Most Wanted is a great game, but its also nearly 2gb in size. Also, if you buy music on the device from amazon or google or even a film, or rent a film, it will again need to be saved in the phones main memory.

But, I hear you say, the memory is expandable with a micro sd card. Sort of. The memory card can be used for storing the camera shots or camera videos, documents and music you have copied across from your computer. It cannot be used for saving apps or games. The S4 burst camera mode needs to store the photos in the main memory.

So if you don’t install many apps, then you should have nothing to worry about, but if you are the opposite, your 8-9gb memory will be swallowed up.

So is there a solution. Well according to Samsung, the S4 will be available in 32/64gb options. However, no information has been confirmed by Samsung of the availability of these, and based on previous Samsung phones, S3 and Note 2, the promised larger capacities never materialised. I can only hope that this time the larger memory versions will surface.

Samsung S4 processor saga

Uncategorized

When Samsung announced the S4, it made a big song and dance about the Exynos 5 8 core processor. Instead most S4’s will have the Snapdragon 600 Quad core chip fitted, including those available for sale in the UK in a few weeks.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Snapdragon is a very good processor but it is not as good as the Samsung 8 core. According to SamMobile, an insider scored 28018 points on AnTuTu with the GT-I9500. Compared to the GT-I9505 Galaxy S 4, it scored 23607 points as found by GSMArena. While we were hoping the Exynos 5 Octa would make its way into the Galaxy S4 heading to the U.S. and UK, you shouldn’t notice too much of a performance difference in normal tasks. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that it performs better with CPU-intensive apps and is more power efficient.

What will be even more upsetting, is if this processor of Samsung’s is fitted to the S4 6 momths down the line. Not sure how I would feel if I had bought a S4, only to find it now had the processor that was meant to have been in it from launch.