Sony has announced a new “Ultra” phone for 2016, the Sony Xperia XA Ultra.
Key Specs
– Operating System Android 6.0 Marshmallow
– Display 6-inch 1920×1080, Mobile BRAVIA engine 2,Super Vivid mode
– Processor MediaTek MT6755 oct-core ,64-bit
– Storage 16GB, Expandable microSD up to 200GB
– RAM 3GB,
– Rear camera 21.5MP with Exmor RS
– Hybrid autofocus, HDR
– Front camera 16MP with Exmoor R, 88-degree wide angle lens,Flash, OIS,Autofocus, HDR
– Charging micro-USB
– Battery 2700 mAh
– Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, GPS
– Miracast, Google Cast, DLNA
– Waterproofing None
– Dimensions 165.1 x 78.7 x 7.6 mm
– Weight 189.9 g
– Colours White, black, lime gold
Disappointingly the XA Ultra only comes with 16gb storage. It does however like the HTC 10 feature a front camera with OIS. However, Sony have opted for a 16mp front camera. The rest of the phone is a middle of the road device, just a big 6 inch phone.
Apple releases software updates for all its hardware yesterday, including iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac’s and more.
iOS 9.3.2 – This is mainly about bug fixes. The main points –
– Ability to use Night Shift while Low Power Mode is activated.
– The Game Center bug has now been fixed.
– iPhone SE bluetooth audio issue where some Bluetooth accessories could experience audio-quality issues when paired to iPhone SE is fixed.
– Fixes an issue looking up dictionary definitions which previously could fail.
– Addresses an issue that prevented typing email addresses when using Japanese Kana keyboard in Mail and Messages
– Fixes an issue for VoiceOver users using the Alex voice, where the device switches to a different voice to announce punctuation or spaces
– Fixes an issue that prevented MDM servers from installing custom B2B apps
However, according to Macrumors.com iOS 9.3.2 is causing problems for some 9.7-inch iPad Pro owners, with multiple MacRumors readers and Twitter users reporting issues shortly after installing the update over the air. Affected users are seeing an “Error 56” message that instructs them to plug their devices into iTunes. So it might be worth holding fire for a few days before updating your iPad Pro.
watchOS 2.2.1 – this software update is all about making your Apple Watch run smoother by fixing a number of annoying bugs.
tvOS 9.2.1 – like other updates this is all about bug fixes.
iTunes 12.4 iTunes 12.4 introduces new interface tweaks including a new media picker that allows users to quickly switch between Music, Movies, TV shows, and more. Next there is a persistent sidebar . This interface tweak makes it easier to switch between different categories of content. The menus interface has also been simplified.
OS X 10.11.5 – this is all about bug fixes.
Seems Apple had a lot of bugs to fix across all its devices!
Welcome to my review of the Huawei P9. The Huawei P9 is Huawei’s flagship phone that for the first time is available from all UK networks. The P9 is by far the best Huawei / Honor phone I have used from the software, hardware and cameras.
The Key Specifications
– Screen 5.2-inch IPS LCD, 2.5D glass, 1920×1080 resolution (423ppi)
– Cameras – Dual 12MP (colour & monochrome), ƒ/2.2 lens, Leica certified
– 8MP front camera
-Battery – 3000mAh capacity Non-removable
– Processor Huawei Kirin 955 Quad-core 2.5GHz
– 3GB or 4GB RAM
– 32 or 64GB internal storage
– microSD slot
– Dimensions – 145mm x 70.9mm x 6.95mm
– Weight – 144g
Hardware and Design
If you buy a phone just based on looks then the Huawei P9 is a winner for you. It is beautifully made. The phone is only 6.95mm thick and still comes with a 3,000 mAh battery and the twin Leica branded rear lenses do not protrude.
The phone has the fingerprint sensor on the rear along with the two lenses, two tone flash and laser auto focus. The right edge has the power and volume buttons. The bottom edge house the USB Type C connector, 3.5mm headphone jack, mic and loudspeaker. The left edge houses the nano sim card/micro SD card. I have the 3gb ram/32gb P9. The model number is EVA-L09. This specific version does have NFC. Some of the models sold in different countries have 4gb ram and sometimes don’t have NFC so it is worth checking before you buy. Any official UK model should have NFC which is important as android pay is about to go live.
Software and Phone Basics
Huawei still use EMUI, this time as version 4.1. I installed the Running theme which I felt looked the least offensive. You will either love or hate EMUI. EMUI like many other phones does not include an app drawer which really in my book doesn’t matter. If you want to change the launcher just install Google Now or Nova Launcher.
Some of the software features provided by the P9 include WiFi Direct, Data Traffic Management, NFC, Tethering, Link+ (WiFi+, Signal+, Roaming+, Link+), Normal or Easy Home layouts, Themes, Colour temperature display adjustments, LED notifications, Fingerprint gestures (show notification panel, browse photos, Floating dock (icon appears on screen so you can easily access back, home etc), motion controls (flip to mute, pick up to reduce volume, raise to ear to speak, knuckle screenshot, knuckle gestures used to draw a letter to open camera, designated app, music or weather), One handed UI (shift screen, mini keyboard), Voice control, smart cover options, smart headset control when using Huawei Music app, Gloves mode and Huawei ID. So the kitchen sink of options!
Call quality is excellent on the P9 as are most of the other cellular and connectivity options. This is a strong point for the P9. However, I did notice that if the WiFi signal was weak, it did not automatically reconnect unless you selected the WiFi network manually.
The 1080p panel offers decent viewing angles and is readable in the sun. Battery life is excellent on the P9. I always got to the end of the day with ease. The combination of the 1080p screen and a 3,000mAh battery really helps. The Kirin processor seems to play most games reasonable well. Occasionally there was some stuttering/lag.
Camera and Audio
This is where Huawei made all the focus during the P9 launch. On the rear you will find 2 lenses with LEICA branding. The lenses are not made by LEICA, merely endorsed by LEICA who helped co-engineer and worked with Huawei on the development and processing aspects.
What I initially discovered is the P9 for very fast action shots in burst mode was not fast enough. Future testing improved this slightly. However, I don’t think the shutter speed goes fast enough for very fast shots. However, the shot of George does actually look cool and you get a sense of his speed.
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The P9 colour reproduction is outstanding at times. It can produce such real life like images that are better than the S7 or G5. The menu is incredible.
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What you have with the rear lenses is one monochrome lens and the other a standard lens. The concept is that together more light and depth data can be gathered.
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The P9 has loads of camera modes but one of them is a refocus mode. After taking the above photo, you can tap anywhere on the shot to create a focus point and then adjust the f stop from f/16 to f/0.95. You can create and save as many different refocused images from one image too.
The Huawei camera app is one of the best available. Features includes, filters, 14 shooting modes (beauty, beauty video, light painting, watermark, monochrome, HDR, night shot, slow mo, photo, video, panorama, time-lapse, document, audio note), film modes (standard, vivid colours, smooth colours), camera grid options (grid, phi grid, fibonacci spiral left, fibonacci spiral right), Timer, audio control, touch to capture, smile capture, object tracking, ultra snapshot and image adjustments. The P9 also has a Pro mode which gives you options from focus points, ISO(50-3,200), Shutter speed (1/4000 to 30 seconds), EV, AF-S, AF-C and Manual Focus and AWB. The max photo resolution is 12mp. The max video resolution is 1080p at 60fps.
I have created a dedicated Flickr album for the P9 – Click HERE. Jonathan Morris has created an open Google Photos Gallery which has over 14 different people contributing photos from their P9 phones. Click HERE.
My opinion on the P9 camera is that with some care and skill it is possible to snap some great shots. The monochrome mode is superb and works well. Some of the special light painting modes are unique to the android phones e.g. silky water. In fact the light painting modes includes car light trails, light graffiti, silky water and star track. The P9 is the only flagship phone to offer such options. RAW capture is equally impressive. Video recording is just average and there is no 4K option. The lack of OIS will mean you will end up with a few blurred shots from time to time. The front facing camera is reasonable too with plenty of beauty options to knock 10 years off your age! A weakness of the P9 is low light shots with people or movement. However, static shots using the night, light painting, monochrome or Pro modes produce stunning photos.
The headphone quality is reasonable with Dolby DTS provided. The output is loud, but not of the highest audio quality available. Bluetooth is ok too. The loudspeaker is average but acceptable.
Conclusion
When you consider everything you get in this phone, it is quite remarkable. At an official retail price of £450 there are plenty of other options available that might be more appealing. But when you consider several places are now offering the P9 at less than £400, this becomes a more viable option. Even more appealing Vodafone is offering this at £300 on Pay as You Go and is unlockable after 30 days. At this price it becomes a great option and unique.
Huawei are soon to be selling the larger version of the P9, the P9 Plus. This is slightly improved as it has a 5.5 inch AMOLED screen, not IPS. It also has 4gb ram and 64gb rom, Infra Red Blaster, 3,400 mAh battery, stereo speakers and Press Touch screen technology.
For more information on the Huawei P9 and the latest pricing on Amazon UK click HERE.
Once again I went out with the Huawei P9 and took some more photos. I have add some comments after each shot. Also don’t forget to click on each photo to view full size.
Tomorrow I will be publishing the Huawei P9 review.
Above are shots of the National Park Visitor Centre. First auto and then in monochrome. The sun was at an awkward angle just above the building i.e. I was partially shooting at the sun. Shots were both ok considering that.
Same issue with both of these shots in that the sun was in the wrong place. But again reasonable shots from the P9.
The church is well captured here. There is something really appealing about the photos from the P9. They look so life like.
Shot in monochrome and into the sun. I like this photo.
So the same view but in Pro mode and the above photo is the taken from the raw image which was post processed on the phone using Adobe Photoshop Express. I have noticed that the raw image files possess huge dynamic range.
Another Pro mode shot and using raw. Post processed in the same method as above. Here I made the image more vivid. Using raw images on the P9 really helps sometimes.
So there you have it, some more shots with the sun in awkward places and some taken in raw. Tomorrow I will have my main review covering all the other aspects of the phone.
So I am out walking my dogs in the middle of nowhere in a place called Dartmoor.
Dartmoor is a National Park , 328 square miles in size.
Below is the Live Stream showing part of my walk with my 3 labradors and the spectacular views.
Live Broadcast is a camera mode on the Samsung Galaxy S7. It is not available on any of the other flagships by default.
Before you live stream you send SMS messages to those you want to see it. You only get choice of sms messages. The maximum resolution is that shown below. You hit record and wait a few seconds. You then get confirmation the messages have been sent. During the live broadcast you can see who is watching and any messages they live you.
Yesterday I published the very first photos from the HTC 10. Later on I took my 3 labradors out on Dartmoor and attempted to see what the HTC 10 could achieve. Don’t forget, click on each shot to see the full size.
Below is a shot of George shaking his head. The movement is frozen fairly well.
Next up is the 2 girls Fury and Tiggy. This was part of a burst, all of which were fine.
One more from the above burst, this time with just Tiggy.
Another shot below from a burst sequence. The HTC 10 choose a decent shutter speed for this. Again ALL of the burst shots were in focus.
The photo below of George smiling is part of the burst shot above.
The photo below is a 4:3 pic cropped to create a pano style of photo of Princetown.
The photo below is the from the same image as above, just cropped differently.
Now this is just a single shot, ie. burst mode wasn’t used. I did crop the 4:3 slightly to 16:9. What was interesting was watching how the HTC 10 took the shot. I actually focused in on George and then took the photo. This was all very fast but impressive.
Again cropped and not pin sharp, but look at Tiggy’s boots 🙂 She’s jumped into a muddy bog and went back in after this shot to be totally covered in thick smelly bog mud.
It is very early days with the HTC 10. But so far I am fairly pleased with the results. I also have the LG G5, Apple iPhone 6S, Samsung Galaxy S7 and Huawei P9. The crazy thing is all the phones offer something different to each other!
When it comes to fitness, Garmin was never the name that jumped up at me as the company to go and look at their product range.
I have owned around 13 different fitness / wearable devices and reviewed most of them too. Click HERE to read some of the previous reviews from Pebble, Samsung, Fitbit, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, Acer and more.
And then I had some private conversations on Twitter with @paulgarner. Paul and I were chatting about fitness devices and he explained I should take a look at some of the Garmin devices as they were way better than any Apple Watch or Fitbit.
So last weekend, I visited Cotswolds Outdoors. They stock a large range of Garmin watches and fitness devices. Also quite handy was the sales person had excellent product knowledge of the different devices. One of the Garmin watches is called the Tactix Bravo. This watch includes live altitude tracking. This is handy when jumping out of a plane so you can check you altitude on the fly. Apparently the military use this model. It also looked amazing. However, I had decided if I was going to get a watch as opposed to a fitness device, it would have to be the new Fenix 3 HR or Forerunner 735XT.
However, I didn’t want to leap in at £350 – £500 in cost with the Fenix 3 HR or 735XT, so I opted for the new Garmin Vivoactive HR which retails for £209. It comes in 2 strap sizes – medium or X-Large. I needed the X-Large. The X-Large strap is perfect and after wearing the Vivoactive HR for 12 hours (6 hours in the evening, 6 hours sleeping) I am impressed at just how comfortable it is.
So what is special about the Garmin Vivoactive HR? Garmin state the following –
– GPS is integrated
– Its a smart watch with a sunlight-readable colour and touchscreen display – always on display
– Built-in-GPS sport apps, running, cycling, golf, swimming and activity tracking
– Elevate wrist based heart rate gives you heart rate all day and night – no additional strap required
– Receive smart notifications and smart coaching on your Vivo Active HR from Garmin Connect, when paired with your phone
– Syncs with Garmin Connect app to upload activities.
– Rechargeable battery: 8 days (watch/activity tracking mode) or 13 hours (GPS mode)
After some extensive research I also discovered that the Garmin Connect app is one of the best I have seen. It also integrates with MyFitnessPal. The level of detail and data collected is fantastic. I will cover more of this off in the review. Setting up is a breeze. This is done using the touchscreen display. There are also 2 hardware buttons as well. The setup uses Bluetooth Low Energy. After pairing, a firmware update was downloaded and installed. And then it stopped syncing with my LG G5. Grrrr. I thought I was going insane as nothing I was doing would get the device to sync. It turns up Garmin had planned maintenance on their servers for an hour yesterday. All seems ok now.
I had a brief look at the Garmin Store. Here there are several downloadable options from watch faces, apps, widgets and a few other items. I did install a few intelligent and customisable watch faces, but so far have now decided to stick with the traditional digital clock face.
I have turned on notifications and received a few whatsapp messages. These were displayed in full. I need to explore this option in more depth.
So what made me pick this over other brands? It works in the swimming pool. You certainly can’t take an Apple Watch or Samsung Gear S2 in the swimming pool, let alone get live activity and heart rate tracking. The display is highly readable in sunlight. Only needs recharging weekly. If I use the GPS function, this might mean charging every 4 days. If I don’t need the GPS, the battery life is 8 days with tracking and heart rate in operation 24 hours a day for 8 days. It tracks so many different activities too e.g. running, skiing, cycling and more. I had read it was comfortable to wear.
A simple test, you go out on a day trip and want to photograph a few landmarks. Which phone takes the best shot.
For this test I used any special mode possible to try and give an advantage. I also cropped the P9 shots afterwards so they were in the same 16:9 format as the G5. Click on each photo to see it full size.
Round 1
LG G5
The G5 has a wide angle lens. This was used for the shot above.
I didn’t save the wide angle version as it looked weird.
Huawei P9
Monochrome lens.
Round 4
LG G5
Now with the wide lens. This has a filter applied in snapseed, HDRscape to bring up the drama in the clouds.
Huawei P9
Not a sharp in focus shot from the P9.
The monochrome did a better job. In focus and fairly sharp.
Round 5
Silky water mode. Only the Huawei P9 and manage this shot, so a clear winner to the P9 here.
Overall the LG G5 takes better quality shots but the Huawei P9 has good contrast and colours. It also has the silky water mode. I still think the wide angle lens on the G5 is fantastic and I would rather apply a black and white filter than shoot in monochrome first.
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 