Tag Archives: Review

Amazon Fire Phone – Review – Part 2

Amazon, Reviews, Tech News,

Today I am going to look more in depth at the custom skin and explain the gestures. You will notice on the front there are 4 cameras in each of the corners.

image

These track your head movement and allow for dynamic perspective. This is where the screen can move and you tilt the phone to reveal extras. On the home screen you have a carousel look. The big icon explains the app and underneath common actions. The carousel places new apps and recent.

image

image

I’ve shown a couple of examples. By tilting phone left to right or right to left reveals the side panels. Left is always as shown in main screen, but in an app reveals additional options or settings.

image

Now tilting to reveal right side gives me notifications and weather.

image

Swiping down reveals the quick settings and mayday button.  Mayday connects via video to a person at Amazon support. You can discuss issue and they can show you on the screen. I tried using this and it is the best support experience I’ve ever received.

image

image

So what apps are included as standard. Below screen shot of app drawer. The apps from Met Office onwards are ones I’ve installed.

image

image

The phone has a button on the left side to launch the camera. Long press activates Firefly.

image

The camera has options for hdr, flash, best shot , lenticular and panorama modes. On screen the camera app tells you when it recommends hdr. Tap the on screen icon to turn on or off when it appears. Best shot takes 3 shots. One before you pressed the shutter , as you pressed the shutter and one after. You can then select the best photo. Neat.

In the maps application by tilting the phone you can reveal places of interest, restaurants and more.

As I mentioned yesterday, the headphone audio and Camera and strong aspects of this phone. I also like the hardware overall. Nimble and easy to hold. And at the price I paid of £99 a steal so long as you don’t mind using O2 for a year and aren’t tied into Google services too much.

Amazon Fire Phone – First Impressions

Amazon, Reviews, Tech News, ,

image

On Wednesday, Amazon reduced the Fire Phone right down to £99. Across twitter and many forums many opinions raged as to whether it was worth it or not. Well, here are all the orders Amazon received. So clearly a lot of people thought it was worth of shot.

amazon_boxes_pallet

My first chance to use the Amazon Fire Phone was last night. I opened the box and realised that the phone needed a charge as the battery was at 36%. Once it reached 100%, I turned it on and was presented with a video that explained clearly all its main features and how to use the gestures, along with practising them too. Simple idea but genius.

image

The phone’s hardware feels good in the hand and comfy to hold. But it does seem to pick up fingerprints. The screen is excellent. So a short while later I realised a software update was waiting. This was date 26th August 2014. So this got installed and from there I started to explore the phone further.

The next step afte the video was logging in to twitter and facebook, this is not mandatory. Then I setup my Google account for email, contacts and calendar. Then I explored further. I had heard the headphone audio was outstanding and I can confirm that the sound output via the headphone jack is possibly the best I have ever heard from any smartphone. However, I can not find any sound equaliser. Camera. I have done some limited testing but it appears the camera takes good shots but its operation is both excellent and then at times weird. Again I need more time to explore this feature.

Now I know some of you are screaming “it does not have Google apps or the Google Play store” . Well, I can shout back just as loudly. So what! For most people the world does not evolve around Google. So long as the apps you need are available on the Amazon app store then all is fine. If you are heavily invested in to the Google Play store then this phone is not necessarily for you, but those starting fairly new to the world, or perhaps are invested in the Kindle Tablet eco system, then on paper all should be ok. However, I need more time to assess everything.

Fire OS. Now my thoughts on the Fire OS and its skin and for another day. I will add that I am pleased I bought this phone. Whilst I can see potential areas where it is not perfect, I think I can see what Amazon might have been trying to do. Anyway, more soon when I have had a week or so with it.

One thing I did want to test was the Mayday help button. Video support call worked just fine with on screen guidance. This really was the ultimate support call and shows up so many other companies who provide a poor after sales service.

And don’t forget to “fire” off any questions.

And here are some photos from the Fire Phone. What I have found is that it is able to capture a wider field of view than several other smartphones.

Church of St Michael & All Angels, Princetown #Dartmoor #AmazonFirePhone

Church of St Michael & All Angels, Princetown #Dartmoor #AmazonFirePhone

HTC Desire Eye – review – conclusion

Android, Reviews, Tech News, ,

Over the last week I have penned my thoughts on the HTC Desire Eye. It really reminds me of the previous HTC devices that I have owned, the HTC One M8 and HTC One M7 – good design from a hardware and software point of view. I have shown this phone to a number of people and the all have liked the look, feel and speed of the device.

I believe that the HTC Desire Eye has had thought and purpose as to who might use this phone. This is a great social phone. Ideal for content creation and sharing. Cameras back and front to capture that moment, good editing tools with filters and more, video highlights and Zoe, and finally decent front stereo speakers to enjoy that moment even more.

Take all the above, add a water and dust resistant design, Sense UI which has minimal bloat and an easy learning curve, Blinkfeed, good 1080p screen and a fast snappy 801 processor and the Desire Eye becomes a good phone.

I have one last final thought. Some smartphones lack character and feel bland when you hold and use them. For some reason, the HTC Desire Eye makes me feel good when I use it.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

If you are buying anything on Amazon, please use the link below. This will help support Gavin’s Gadgets with all the running costs and more and won’t be any different in cost. Thanks in advance.

GavGadgets@Amazon

HTC Desire Eye – review – part 2 – sound and more

Android, Reviews, Tech News, ,

Welcome back to my review of the HTC Desire Eye. Click here to read part 1 – https://gavinsgadgets.com/2015/01/26/htc-desire-eye-review/

In part 2, I am going to look at a few other aspects of the Desire Eye and then focus on the sound and music. Part 3 which will be live tomorrow will focus exclusively on the cameras and software that is included for them. On Thursday, I will pen my final thoughts on the HTC Desire Eye.

So lets jump back into the review again and look at a few other neat aspects. Car Mode. Simple concept but in this mode you get thumping big icons to press which makes it easier and safer to use, and you can customise the apps you want to see too.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-14-41

The other aspect of Sense UI is the theme options where you can personalise the look. HTC include a number of themes that tweak the look across the apps and home screen. Again, a simple touch but ideal.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-15-42

HTC include 2 power saving modes. The standard power saving mode reduces the CPU, display brightness, turns off vibrations and puts data connection to sleep when the display is off. All these options are toggles. There is also a generic sleep mode option to turn off data during long periods of inactivity. And finally there is the Extreme Power saving mode which can turn on automatically when the battery reaches 5,10 or 20%. In this mode many android functions are turned off including the ability to wipe or remote lock the phone.

So what can really add to the experience of a device. SPEAKERS. SOUND. The listening experience. And lets get straight to the point. Decent front facing stereo experiences makes everything from playing YouTube videos to listening to music and podcasts and absolute joy. And thats what the Desire Eye has behind tiny nearly hidden grills at each end on the front – stereo boomsound speakers. These front speakers are not as bassy as the HTC One M8, but nonetheless are still commendable and better than many other phones.

HTC include their own music app which can automatically update the album art, artist photos and lyrics. I copied across initially a few tracks and within a minute all the photos etc were fetched.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-13-58

So as I started talking about the sound, lets continue. If you plug your headphones in your get a good sound with the emphasis on bass. The headphone amp is able to power the headphones to a loud level, higher than many phones. Boomsound EQ is a setting that can be turned on or off. When switched on ,which is the default setting, the music is slightly bass heavy and not necessarily the finest word when it comes to pure audio analysis. With boomsound off, the music is rather flat. I imagine most people will leave it on, and for modern music boomsound is just fine. But what I discovered is by connecting my Plantronics BackBeat Pro bluetooth headset/headphones, the sound is booming amazing. Again no shortage of bass, but much better than the wired connection. That is because the Desire Eye has APT-X codec for bluetooth music. This is a phone for the trendy modern person, so I imagine most people will enjoy the extra bass. Some won’t. However, you can install a different music app to regain some control over that bass and that is what I did.

I installed USB Audio Player Pro. I then connected my USB DAC (Sabre Android DAC) and Cayin C5 headphone amplifier. I can confirm that the HTC Desire Eye in this setup supported USB Audio. The sound was naturally miles better and totally accurate from an audiophile point of view. The phone did put a warning triangle in the notification bar advising during this mode, the phone could not be charged. Minor inconvenience I would say for the improvement in sound.

Tomorrow its all about the camera, the editing software and video highlights. Plenty to talk about on this subject!

HTC Desire Eye – review – part 1

Android, Reviews, Tech News,

image

The HTC Desire Eye is typical HTC. Good hardware and software design with a proper purpose. Just look at these photos. I love its look and feel in the hand.

image

It is extremely comfortable to hold. Partly due to the gentle curves and partly because it is not too wide to hold comfortably in your hand.

image

What is pretty neat about the Desire Eye is its front 13mp camera, fantastic for selfies and even more so with its two tone flash unit. But look even more closely and under the front lens and before the glass starts there is a grill hiding the left side speaker. And again at the bottom just after the glass panel ends before the bezel, there is another grill for the right side speaker. So you’ve guessed. The HTC Desire Eye has stereo front facing boomsound speakers! The rear camera is also a 13mp affair again with two tone flash. Before we continue lets take a look at the rest of the specs.

The specifications of the HTC Desire Eye –

– Rear Camera -13MP, BSI sensor, f/2.0, 28mm lens, wide angle, with HDR capability 1080p Full HD video recording, Dual LED Flash
– Front camera: 13MP, Auto-focus with zoom capability, BSI sensor, f/2.2, 22mm lens, wide angle, with HDR capability 1080p Full HD video recording, Dual LED Flash
– Dedicated Camera Button
– HTC Eye™ Experience: Face Tracking, Screen Share, Split Capture, Face Fusion, Live Makeup, Auto Selfie, Voice Selfie, Photo Booth, Crop Me In
– Android 4.4.4 (KitKat)
– 5.2″ 1080 x 1920 multi-touch (~424 ppi)
– 2.3GHz Snapdragon 801
– 4G LTE (Bands 3, 7, 8, 20)
– 16GB storage / micro SD up to 128GB
– WiFi / NFC / Miracast / BT 4.0 Apt-x / DLNA / HTC Connect
– 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
– HTC BoomSound™ Dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers, 3 microphones,Sense Voice
– Capacity: 2400 mAh with Fast Charge , Embedded rechargeable Li-polymer battery
– Talk time Up to 20 hours for 3G Standby time: Up to 538 hours for 3G
– Sensors Accelerometer, Proximity sensor,Ambient light sensor ,Gyro sensor
– GPS / GLONASS
– 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5 mm
– 154 grams

I mentioned that the HTC Desire Eye is typical HTC. That means the software “Sense” is beautifully implemented. Below are the main home screen and Blinkfeed. Blinkfeed is great for aggregating news and your social networks and local information on your phone.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-08-01

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-08-18

Next up are screen shots showing all the apps that are installed. I have added AnTuTu benchmarking and USB Audio Player Pro to assist with this review.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-08-46

Typical HTC in that the selection of added apps is kept to a minimum. In fact, HTC collate apps into folders as the default view in the app drawer. I just changed the view so you could see all the apps present.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-08-51

Some apps to mention that are good to be included. Polaris Office 5. This is good office viewer and creation app for word, excel and powerpoint docs. Twitter, Skype and FaceBook are included for all you social types 🙂 HTC extend the options of the backup with their own solution. There is a file manager, torch, FM Radio (many phones exclude this), Flashlight (torch), Kids Mode, Tips & Tricks and Setup app.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-08-57

It is worth mentioning the HTC provide solid setup solution for transferring data from previous phones including iPhones. Then the Tips and Tricks section is well worth a view to learn more about using the phone.

HTC have included a few more tricks with the Desire Eye – motions and gestures. If you swipe down on the screen this turns on voice dialling. Double tapping – pick the phone in portrait orientation turns on the phone, pick up the phone in portrait orientation again and swipe left wakes phone up and launches the widget panel and same thing but swiping right wakes phone up and launches Blinkfeed. All the options can be toggled on or off.

Talking of toggles, below is a screen shot of the pull down toggle menu.

Screenshot_2015-01-23-20-15-26

The last part of the hardware that I wanted to mention is the hardware camera shutter button. Not many android phones include this but it is found on the HTC Desire Eye. It is fairly firm to use so in practise I preferred using the on screen shutter icon.

Part 2 tomorrow.