The above screen shot is from my new LG G4. My original G4 has been replaced by LG, so yesterday I had the time consuming task of setting up a new phone.
I am using the default LG launcher, but with a theme called Neon Suits. Doesn’t look so garish now!
These are the first shots I have snapped using the Huawei P8. The camera has lots of options and over time I will explore these in more depth. In the meantime, enjoy the handful of shots taken around Wistman’s Wood Nature Reserve on Dartmoor. All photos are unedited, and taken at 10mp which gives the widescreen view. If you wanted to use the full 13mp, this provides an aspect ratio of 4:3. In terms of sunlight visibility the P8 adjusted the screen contrast and brightness to make the screen readable in bright sun!
Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor
George and Tiggy – note the difficult shadow and sun conditions
Tiggy looking happy
Littaford Tor, Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor
The Ancient Trees of Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor – the lighting was near impossible to capture with darkness and mega bright sunlight pouring in
From Wistman’s Wood looking towards Princetown, Dartmoor
The Girls – Tiggy and Fury having fun
George having fun
Another shot of Wistman’s Wood
Welcome to my first impressions of the Huawei P8 that I received yesterday.
The official specifications are –
– Display 5.2-inch (1920 x 1080); 424ppi
– Processor Hisilicon Kirin 930; 8-core 64-bit; 2.0 GHz
– Operating system Android 5.0 Lollipop
– Storage 16GB on-board
– RAM 3GB
– Network GRA_L09: TDD LTE: B40 FDD LTE: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B17/B18/B19/B20/B25/B26/B28 UMTS: 800(B6,Japan)/800(B19,Japan)/850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
GRA_UL00: TDD LTE: B38/B39/B40/B41 (2555MHz~2655MHz) FDD LTE:B1/B3/B4/B7 UMTS: 850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz(B8/B5/B4/B2/B1) GSM : Main card: 850/900/1800/1900MHz; Second card: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
– Rear camera 13MP with OIS, 1080p video, 4-color RGBW sensor
– Front camera 8MP
– Dimensions 144.9mm x 72.1mm x 6.4mm
– Weight 144g
– Colours Mystic Champagne, Titanium Grey, Gold, Carbon Black
– GPS GPS/A-GPS/Glonass/BDS(BeiDou Navigation Satellite System)
– Connectivity 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, microUSB
– Sensors G-sensor; Gyroscope sensor; Ambient Light sensor; Proximity sensor; Compass, Accelerometer
– UI EMUI 3.1
– Battery 2680 mAh
My first impressions started from opening the box and admiring the beautiful unibody design. Just check out the photos of the unboxing and the phone itself. I will be writing my full review in due course, but if you do have any questions, please let me know.
Hopefully you noticed the box presentation. The Huawei P8 is thin, very thin, and to highlight this point, you have to pull the phone out of the box from the side. All the contents were neatly packaged too.
I asked my wife of her views of the P8 and she also agreed with me that it looked beautiful.
If you would like to get an idea of how the camera performs, please look at my other post with some camera shots from the P8. Click here https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/26/huawei-p8-camera-shots/
If you have any questions, please let me know so I can incorporate the answers in my review.
After everyone has bought the Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung decide to release a more rugged version with a much bigger battery. Only one major drawback, the storage is restricted to 32gb. If you can live with that, maybe this is the S6 to go for.
Android Central have reviewed this S6 Active and they like it a lot. It’s a good video, so go check it out. A number of other larger websites also prefer the S6 Active over the standard S6 including Pocketnow and Supersaf TV.
I have been using and testing the Lindy IEM-50X Hi-Fi In ear headphones for several months now to get a real feel of these headphones.
Firstly, let’s look at the specifications –
– Dynamic Driver Diameter – 6.5mm
– Frequency Response – 8-20kHz
– Impedance – 18 ohms
– Sensitivity – 99db
– Nominal THD – <3% 9@1khz with 1mW input)
– Max Power Input – 3mW
– Cable Length – 1.2m (0.85m to split, 0.35m from split to each earpiece)
– In the box – headphones, guide, 6 super soft tips
I have been intrigued with the Lindy IEM-50X in ear headphones as for around £49.99, you get a pair of in ear headphones with adjustable bass port tuning on each headphone. Not only that, it is very easy to adjust the tuning quickly. In addition, you get a pouch for storing/carrying and 6 super soft tips, 3 of which are black and the other 3 are transparent black. The is an inline microphone with a single button control. The cable is flat to prevent tangling.
I have listened to many different genres and found the IEM-50X headphones to offer a fairly well balanced and neutral sound with the ability to really pump the dynamic bass control using the hardware adjustments on the headphones themselves. The dynamic bass is a mechanical feature that opens the rear chamber of each earpiece to give added weight and depth to the low frequencies.
Adjusting is as simple as holding the earphone collar and cable stalk and then twisting the collar so the red line points and moves from the hollow dot to the solid black dot. You then repeat this process with the other earphone. There is a good amount of adjustment possible too.
Over the course of several weeks these headphones have steadily improved as the burn in time increased. They have a neutral tone as mentioned above but with the ability to customise the bass. The bass control is frighteningly good. I tried so many different genres and then I used them with Tidal Hi-Fi streaming service to see how they performed with FLAC. Once again I choose many genres, listening to Muse, Chemical Brothers, Calvin Harris, Vivaldi, Diana Krall and many more different artists. These headphones somehow manage to portray a huge sense of scale and depth. I love using these in ear headphones. The range and slam of bass is something to special to witness.
So in all a really decent pair of in ear headphones with the unique bass tuning, a range of different size tips and carry pouch, make this such a good value headphone.
Just a quick update on new reviews coming soon.
As mentioned in the previous post, I have the Xiaomi Mi4i and Mi Note Pro arriving soon.
I have been testing the Lindy NCX-100 and Lindy IEM-50X headphones for the last 3 months to get a good feel for how these performs. My final thoughts and review will be live soon.
I have also been testing over a period of 2-3 months some power batteries from Mipow which have a few tricks up their sleeves.
The Oppo HA-2 , Oppo PM-2 headphones and PM-3 headphones have truly burnt in and an update on these will appear soon.
By now you all would have seem the camera quality possible from the G4. Well, I have been using RAW a lot more this week. This has enabled me to create a base image with a lot of high quality data and then finish off post processing the image myself. So instead of showing off pure unedited images, these are all edited myself.
My personal favourite of the week is my local church below. This was created taken 3 bracketed shots in raw with exposures of -2, 0 and +2. Then merged to create a black and white HDR. The photo has superb depth to it.
With the another 3 raw images taken at the same time as the shots above, I created a totally different look using Adobe Lightroom.
Another set of 3 bracketed shots, taken while I was waiting for my Chinese takeaway to be cooked. Notice the viaduct running above.
This was a jpeg edited. This is RBS at St Andrews Cross, Plymouth, Devon, UK. It is a listed building. And the water was filthy.
In my village, resides the Visitor Centre, a grand old building with tons of history. At one point this was the Duchy Hotel.
I have taken a few more shots using the LG G4 in RAW mode using both the default camera app and Camera FV-5. Camera FV-5 is used as it does bracketing automatically.
Typically using FV-5, I am shooting 3 shots with EV differences of +2, 0, and -2. Each sequence creates 6 shots, 3 jpegs and 3 raw DNGs, requiring around 120mb in total. 9 bracketed sequences taken, and that’s 1GB!
So the photo below was captured with 3 raw shots, and I merged them and created a HDR jpeg. Click on shot to see full resolution over at my flickr account.
The next shot is a single raw photo, which I then post processed in Lightroom 6. I must admit, I need a lot more time to understand Lightroom 6.
Back to 3 raw shots taken in a bracketed sequence, then merged to create a lovely Black & White moody shot.
Same again, except this was a hand held shot, using the bracketed mode on Camera FV-5.
But is shooting in RAW worth the effort, extra space and time? Below is a shot taken normally in auto mode, using the default LG G4 camera app, and post processed on the phone using snapseed.
Next 2 shots, all shot on, but no post processing applied. These are jpegs not raw files.
From my initial findings, raw shots do allow for better shots once post processed and stunning HDR shots. But RAW isn’t necessary either, but I would rather I had a phone that provided this feature than not. The options with RAW seem to improve the more I understand Lightroom 6. And that is the key. If I can grasp Lightroom 6 I will be able to create spotless photos!
Since receiving the LG Watch Urbane, I have written many posts. Below are all the links so far. This post will get updated when more individual posts go live.
– LG announce the Watch Urbane – details and specs – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/02/16/lg-announces-the-new-lg-watch-urbane-its-luxury-android-wear-smartwatch-details/
– Impressions part 1 – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/09/lg-watch-urbane-beauty-and-disaster-first-impressions/
– Impressions part 2 – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/10/lg-watch-urbane-part-2/
– Impressions part 3 – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/12/lg-watch-urbane-part-3/
– How to change the Urbane strap – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/11/lg-watch-urbane-replacing-the-strap/
– Decisions required on strap choice – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/14/lg-watch-urbane-be-careful-on-strap-choice/
– Gallery of all my watch faces photographed – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/15/lg-watch-urbane-my-watch-faces-shown-photographed-gallery/
– A new thicker strap and the issues fitting it – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/06/17/lg-watch-urbane-a-new-strap/
My second orange strap arrived the other day and this time I managed to fit it to the Urbane. Fitting it was tricky and I found that the only way to connect it, was with the strap at 90° when pushing the pins back in place.
You can also see due to the thickness of the strap at the watch end it slightly protrudes. Leather straps sit flush on the back.
Just a reminder here are the other straps. So far brown leather is my 2nd favourite but for now orange is the new king in town 🙂
I suppose at some point I will fit a metal strap too. So which colour option do you prefer?
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