Category Archives: Tech News

Sony Xperia Z Tablet review – part 6

In part six I am going to take a look at the Album app. If you want to read the earlier parts of the review click here.

When I first started using the Album app, I thought it was quirky and poorly designed.

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When you open the app you are faced with your photos sorted by date. So I thought, maybe my photos I copied across on to the micro SD card would be saved and displayed in the My Albums tab. Well at first they didn’t display. I realised that the photos need to be in the root directory of the micro sd card to display correctly as shown below. I still might be doing something wrong, but i haven’t figured it out yet.

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Of course, if you want Facebook etc photos showing you need to login to your service. I wish there was a way of hiding the service icons like Facebook as I don’t use it at all, and it looks naff sitting in the gallery. Anyway if you click on a folder you are presented with all the photos as below.

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Using two fingers you can zoom out and make the thumbnails bigger and bigger and smaller again. Below are some of the different sizes.

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You can go larger and larger and larger again. Photos look great on the screen. From within the app you have many sharing options as well as editing.

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Clicking the menu provides basic editing, but then you can invoke the photo editor and bring up more options and filters.

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With all the photo options available, the pinch to zoom or shrink the thumbnaiks , Sony really do provide a complete gallery app.

Facebook bug that has been around for a year has exposed 6m users personal info – Facebook responds

For over the last year there has been a bug in Facebook which has allowed your personal information to be available to people you perhaps didn’t want to share it with. In fact, it affected a massive 6 million users.

Facebook was quick to respond saying nothing to worry about.

Now that’s reassuring. And one of the reasons you won’t find me on Facebook.

It’s Wimbledon with the help from YouTube

Wimbledon  now has its own YouTube channel. You will be able to view live and exclusive action from the Wimbledon tennis championships on YouTube.

The official Wimbledon YouTube channel will house key moments from the tennis, press conferences as well as a host of “exclusive” behind the scenes footage when the grass court event kicks off on Monday.

Viewers will also be able to enjoy some of the best matches from tournament history when the inevitable rain interruptions curtail the action on centre court.

Tennis fans rejoice!

Nexus 7 Tablet – reports of failures and memory slow downs

“I can’t find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn’t seen a massive downgrade in performance,” wrote Dustin Early for AndroidAndMe in an editorial titled, “One year later, the Nexus 7 has gone from the best to worst tablet I’ve ever owned.”
“I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display,” Early wrote. “Touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps.”

The above was an opening statement from Dustin Early for Androidandme. What then followed was a wealth of responses from other people all complaining that their Nexus 7 tablet also was suffering from mental slowdowns and more. The issue kicks in when you have less than 3gb free. At this point the Samsung chip activates a process that causes the tablet to become the worst piece of tech ever. Google did release a software update that tries to stop the process from starting, but they haven’t been able to remove the problem.

Not so much of a bargain after all perhaps?

Samsung is really trying hard to alienate its users with the new S4 Advanced

Samsung has announced the new Galaxy S4 that has an ultra-fast Snapdragon 800 processor and radios for LTE Advanced networks. Hang on, Samsung has only just released the S4 and offered it with two different processors, a quad core snapdragron 600 and it’s own 8 core chip, but that didn’t have support apparently for LTE frequencies. Actually, Samsung was having issues with its own processor, hence why it used the snapdragron which did support the LTE bands.

So now it releases the S4 with a new processor that can handle all the frequencies and is slightly faster than the snapdragron 600. And guess what the 800 chip should help alleviate the lag on the S4. Samsung response to angry Korean customers is “most people won’t notice the difference”. My take is Samsung is being totally ignorant to its customers and ripping them off.

Mind you this attitude is nothing new as when the S4 was released it only has 9gb free memory and only after a consumer backlash did it decide to provide a half solution allowing apps to be moved to the memory card. I say half solution as only the app could be moved and not the app data. Also, internal memory is faster and more reliable.

I wonder how much longer Samsung can continue this way before consumers get fed up and buy other brands.

Americans can pick up the iPhone 5 at a really low price now from Wallmart – details

Walmart has slashed the iPhone prices from yesterday, according to Mashable, which points to an impending iPhone hardware refresh in the coming months. Walmart will reportedly slash the already low iPhone 5 cost from $189 to $129 and the iPhone 4S will go from $89 to $39 on contract with AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon (Uncarrier T-Mobile, which Walmart doesn’t support, is not included in the deal).

The iPhone 5 is a really great piece of hardware, and still is able to hold it’s own, and will also be updated to ios7 in the fall. It is probably the only true phone pocketable device that has full blown specification unlike say the S4 Mini which is actually a so-called down spec of the S4.

Smart watches are all the rage at the moment – First Pebble and now Sony

Pebble has witnessed relative success with its smart watch. I had one a few weeks back and it was certainly novel. But now it’s time for the big manufacturers to show their hands and first up is Sony.

A few days ago Sony teased the world on twitter, indicating that at is event this Tuesday it will be launching a new smart watch.

I really hope that if Sony do launch a new smart watch that it actually looks slim and sexy, as the one issue I had with the Pebble smart watch was that it was ugly.

Dashclock Widget updated to support Daydream

Dashclock Widget has been updated to support the daydream function on android. When setting up you are faced with the following screens .

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DashClock is a replacement lock screen clock widget for Android 4.2+ phones and tablets. It also exposes additional status items called extensions. The widget comes bundled with extensions that give you instant access to:
• Your current local weather
• Missed calls and unread text messages
• Your next calendar appointment
• Unread Gmail inbox or priority inbox conversations
• Your next scheduled alarm

Now with daydream support, when you plug your charger in you can have all its functionality.

Nvidia Shield has price dropped before launch – but will it be dead in the water before arrival

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Even before launch, NVIDIA’s Shield is being reduced by $50 from its original $350 asking price. The Android portable gaming console will cost $300 when it arrives at retail on June 27th. NVIDIA revealed both the new, lower price and release date today in a blog post which cited gamers asking for a lower price as the reason for the change.

Really! More likely it has had to reduce the price to combat the sudden explosion in android gaming options from the OUYA and Moga controllers to name just a few. Even the newer Sony Xperia devices work with a ps3 controller. And then its not much less in price than a Sony PlayStation.

Personally, I’m just not convinced this will work.