Welcome! Having set up this blog page a while back never really got round to posting into it. Anyway.... The idea of the blog was to post up techie snippits of info and other things that maybe of interest to others and share views on a range tech related subjects.
The annual "Interesting tech to tinker with hunt" is on!
So without further delay lets get stuck in with the very first post! :) I have a little ritual in that I save up a little chunk of monies (around £200) over the year between birthdays and then come birthday time hunt around for some interesting tech to have a play with over the proceeding year. I find this generally fun because I never know what I'll find in a given year to tinker with and what I'll be learning from tinkering with said tech!
So with next birthday looming the hunt was on for this year. A few candidates hit the final list a Playstation Vita portable game system or an Android based mobile device. Both are quite valid targets - for the Vita I would get some fantastic gaming opportunities and there simply is no better handheld gaming experience to be had from any other portable device. That lovely quad core processor, coupled with a wonderful 5" OLED screen with bespoke gaming controls built in - a vast improvement over it's older sibling the PSP. Coupled with this Sony have released a development platform so there is also opportunity to tinker and create your own content for the device... and even make some money if good enough!
So the other choice - an Android device. Now never really got on with touch screen phones the virtual keyboards I find really fiddly like the nice positive click and feedback that only comes with real keys. iOS devices probably have the best touch interface with Android devices feeling somewhat clunky in comparison. Now I have had a couple of iPhones in my time and because of geeky tech lust - they are wonderful pieces of industrial design coupled with a sleek user experience and most importantly that wonderful app store with all those fantastic little titillating mini tech trinkets to feed the tech lust of the inner geek. However eventually realised that as good as the iPhone is it's just not for me and is not my natural choice for a communication tool - preferring qwerty keyboarded phones I finally settled on a Nokia E7, which is a lovely bit of kit. I bought an iPad a couple of years back to feed the App store addiction inside of me and all was good. I had found balance in my mobile life. I had found mobile nirvana. Or so I thought.
Now with Symbian (E7's OS) an OS on death row (will be a sad loss TBH but I'll probably blog up something on Symbian at some point as I like that little OS) hardly any apps are getting released and recently getting kind of niggled that my choice of apps is ever decreasing - apps which would be handier on a small phone like device opposed to the somewhat larger iPad. So I decided to have a look around at the phone market again. iPhone was out of the question as purely touch screen only which just leaves Android devices. Now believe it or not there is only a single Android based handset that is fairly recentish and has a decent sized keyboard on the market in the UK today - I give you the Sony Xperia Pro and even then it's hardly stocked by any of the big suppliers out there - carphone warehouse et al. Looked to be a nice bit of kit. However the spec is a bit lacking, with only 512MB RAM and a single core processor. Fine you might say but with Android being somewhat CPU hungry I think it would have been less than satisfactory over the forthcoming year or so - what with quad core devices currently hitting the market. So the gadget of choice this year was looking to be the PS Vita. Well almost.
A search discovered the Motorola Atrix. A dual-core 1GHz, 1GB memoried beastie. Whats more 16GB on board storage, Mirco-SD card expansion, reasonable camera. And most importantly it came in my tech budget. But it is a touch screen phone..... back to the drawing board. Well actually not quite. This is a special little phone as it forms part of Motorolas Atrix ecosystem that comprises of a variety of docks that allow it do interesting things. One dock is something called a LapDock - essentially a laptop shell where the phone docks and forms the computer. Hmmm my techie tastebuds were tingling, things are looking up. Still the phone and the Lapdock would push me well beyond this years budget. But I lucked upon ebuyer who were selling the phone and lapdock bundle for a paltry 259 British pounds. Considering this bundle would have set you back nearly £800 not so long back and that the spec is roughly that of a Samsung Galaxy SII that retails at twice the price it was a no brainer really! The perfect tech playtoy for this year had been targetted and acquired! Yay.
The Lapdock
The LapDock is a very nice bit of kit - very solid and finished in brushed metal. In fact it looks like a matt black Apple Macbook! Feels very high end indeed. Once you have docked the phone into the unit it boots a desktop (WebTop) which then presents you with a few local apps (file manager, firefox etc) and your phone screen as a virual phone. Which which you can use as a phone when docked. LapDock has inbuilt speakers so you can basically have a chat with someone without moving of the desktop - surfing the web etc. It has inbuilt batteries too so charges your phone whilst it is docked so you are good to go when you unclip it. It's a really good concept and TBH suits me fine as a bit of a qwerty keyboard fan this is a great halfway house.
The Handset
The phone itself is fairly generic type android handset stuff. Feels a bit plasticy - especially coming from either a iPhone 4 or my Nokia E7. Solid enough though - doesn't feel as premium as the other two devices mentioned. Screen is 4" and is fast and responsive, nice contrast and colours (not as good as the E7's AMOLED clear black screen though or the iPhone 4's). Resolution is very nice near iPhone 4 levels. Camera is 5mp and autofocus, shoots upto 720p video footage. Pictures are good as can be expected from a mobile camera - generally not been over impressed with *any* camera I've had on my mobile phones (ones featuring carl ziess optics have tended to be the better ones though - which this sadly lacks - think Nokia have a monopoly there?) which can be expected really as they are a compromise. The phone has Android GB installed with Motorolas skin - known as MotoBlur on. Very functional and business like here - none of those fancy graphical animations etc! Which I guess is fair enough probably saves overusing the GPU and draining the battery more than necassary. Speaking of which the battery in this is the biggest I've had (in terms of mAh) at 1930... so I expect it will give reasonable use between charges. Lastly the novelty attached with this phone is that it is locked/unlocked via fingerprint recognition! The scanner is on the power button... nice neat touch that works *really* well. Of course it is backed up by PIN entry just in case. Speaking of security there are options on the phone to encrypt all data contained on it. Which is nice.So not sure what to make of Android yet.... I definately prefer the iOS interface (for touch screens) for it's elegant simplicity and clean look. Not to say Android is bad just seems sometimes you have to dig around a bit to much to do something. However this might just be Motorola's skin ontop of the OS. Text editing isn't as easy as on iOS devices IMHO - again maybe because not used to it yet but seems more tricky. MotoBlur also sets up an account for you on Motorola's servers which allows you to do similiar things to Apples iCloud - eg : remotely locate and wipe the phone should it get lost (same as the Apple system), stream content etc. No played to much with that yet.Overally liking the package as a whole. Well worth looking at if you want a decent spec Android device for a knock down price that does something a little more.
The Future... A shift in the physically of the computing device
The LapDock idea is something that will be big at some point IMHO. As mobile phones get much more powerful over the years I can seriously see a time when it will be your computer and Motorola's vision with this technology will pay off for them. It's humble beginnings but this IMHO is the dawn of what our computers will become. What I expect is that mobile devices will have a full fat OS on there at some point that will change the view presented to the user depending on the context it is used. Ie: Dock to a TV - TV resolutions, Monitor even higher res. Undocked the devices display view kicks in. At the rate tech is going - quad core mobiles with GB's of memory the future is not as far away as we may think.
Next Up...
So next up... time to put MAME on there, get a PS3 controller working with it and hook it up to a TV... :) (handset has a micro HDMI port on it). I will blog up my experiences and journies with the device over the forthcoming year amongst other techie stuff.... ciao for now.
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