Another interesting product. Only it’s not. I was too bored and deprived of a new gadget to play with, so I stupidly went out and bought a Smartwatch, which really is “LiveView version 2″. Recently released, it sells for US$150 in the US but I bought it for RM320 (its RRP is RM399 in Malaysia). It communicates with your Android smartphone via Bluetooth, and supports other Android smartphones apart from Sony branded ones.
The Smartwatch has a touchscreen and is capable of recognising two point multi-touch. To install apps or widgets on the Smartwatch, you install the Sony Liveware Manager on your Android smartphone. Configuration of apps or widgets on the Smartphone is all done on your Android smartphone and not on the Smartwatch. In summary, without an Android smartphone, the Smartwatch is *useless*.
To cut a long story short, if you have RM300 odd to burn, get it for its novelty factor – you can show off by reading tweets on the Smartwatch. Otherwise, avoid it. Now, who wants to buy my Smartwatch?
The HAME MPR-A1 which is a bloody mouthful to pronounce, by the way, is a battery pack cum 3G/WiFi router all in one. You can use it to charge your smartphones as it has a standard USB out port; it packs 1800mAh of juice, 30% more than the iPhone 4S’ battery capacity. You can insert a 3G wireless broadband dongle into the USB port and it will share the single 3G internet connection to multiple devices (“3G router”). You can connect the device to another wireless network and re-broadcast its signal to increase the coverage of the “main” wireless router to “dead spots”. You can connect it to a broadband modem to add wireless capability to that modem. Sounds like a Swiss Army knife by now eh? Not far off, I’d say.
I got it for RM150 excluding shipping from a local fellow. You can get it on dealextreme for US$22.70 or US$29.90; I honestly do not know the difference between the two apart from colour! Bear in mind that if you do try to buy from dealextreme, Customs may withhold it as it has a WiFi radio inside, which supposedly requires SIRIM certification; but that’s up to your luck.
There are alternative products from TP-Link here (sadly still vapourware), as well as from Prolink here. If I’m somehow stupid enough to buy them, I’ll try to do a short review. Or you can send them to me for review, I wouldn’t turn them down
And oh, I neglected to mention it in the video, but the operating modes of the device are:
3G router/3G hotspot
ADSL router
dynamic IP router
static IP router
universal (WiFi) repeater
iPhone sharing hotspot (connect to iPhone through USB to share iPhone’s 3G connection)
There you go then, the Swiss Army knife of mini routers.
If you have the bandwidth, watch the video below in HD
Nokia’s current woes are well known by now to everyone. The once market leader is now languishing in a position reserved for also-rans, quite shocking considering this happened over the course of only 4 years. But 4 years is a long time in the mobile phone business, as some like to say.
It’s also quite sad to see them not catching a break in good decision making. I’ve always felt that going Windows Phone exclusively was very limiting and not the best option given the environment at the time the decision was made. As Google VP, Vic Gundotra, famously tweeted – “2 turkeys do not make an eagle”. And I think we’re seeing this come true now, after the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 were launched to generally lukewarm reception. And even if the Lumia 900 is supposedly “selling well” in the US, the sales volumes of these 3 WP models aren’t going to make up for the worrying slide in Symbian phone sales; hence the continued gloomy earnings outlook issued by Nokia.
And now, locally, we have Nokia resorting to taking out fullpage newspaper advertisements for its latest Symbian phones, the Asha and C models, with the most expensive being RM385. Yes, 385. Yes, a fullpage ad. Yes, I think a complete waste of money and shows how alarming its business has become.
We then have another fullpage ad for the white Lumia 800. Yes, white is a nice colour for gadgets nowadays, but the lure of white faded quite a bit once other manufacturers began selling their gadgets in that colour as well. The availability of something in white nowadays, does not, at least to me, warrant fullpage ads running into tens of thousands of ringgit!
And it’s getting worse for Nokia, unfortunately. Sales of its dumb devices, targeted at developing economies such as India, are below expectations to make up for the catastrophic fall in its smart devices. Smartphones are predicted to become the device of choice when people buy new phones, aided by falling phone prices (Android smartphones from renowned brands such as HTC and Samsung are already selling below the RM1,000 mark locally) and falling data access charges (cheap data is what makes a smartphone “smart” and “useful”). So, Nokia can expect to sell less and less dumb devices. Its smartphones aren’t selling well – and that makes for a lethal combination which can push Nokia’s mobile phone business into extinction, much like Palm (although that failed due to different circumstances).
So, what would I do if I were Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO?
strike a deal to license Blackberry and Android but continue selling devices under its own branding.
continue developing MeeGo with a view to developing another OS for its future.
license PalmOS if possible, improve upon it by forking it now that HP has open sourced it with a view to developing its own flavour of this OS.
stop wasting time, money and resources on developing Symbian further. It’s very clear that consumers no longer want Symbian devices, so why flog a dead horse?
Make no mistake – Nokia makes excellent hardware. Look at what they can do with the new Nokia Pureview with its 43 billion megapixel camera. It’s the software side, the operating system, that’s tripped the company time and again in the past 4 or so years. Betting on Windows Phone did not work, and it’s doubtful if it ever will, given how closely Microsoft wants to follow in Apple’s footsteps in controlling the operating system tightly, not realising that there can only be one Apple in this universe, at least in our version of this universe.
Many will say that the Microsoft-Nokia partnership needs time to succeed. Sadly, I think that time is the only thing that Nokia does not have at the moment. It cannot move at the pace of the old, now obsolete Nokia. It needs to keep pace with what’s happening with iOS and Android, stat. The world’s mindshare is now captured by only iOS and Android, let’s not kid ourselves here.
If Nokia is bold enough to do some of the things I think they should do, I will be cheering for them every step of the way. It’s always tragic to see a company with such great history slide into oblivion.
Seeing the amount of deranged drivers on Malaysian roads, I went out and bought a car DVR from eBay. I wasn’t really expecting much, to be honest, based on the price I paid, but I ended up quite pleasantly surprised. It records in HD (with the highest resolution supported being 1440×1080 and not as claimed on the box), not the best quality, mind you, but sufficient to be used in the event of an accident. Actually I really bought the device because I was bored stiff, but that’s another matter entirely. So, here comes a review. I’ve split the review into a couple of parts so you don’t have to be bored to death listening to me ramble and waffle on and on. I only do that because I like the sound of my own voice, really.
If I’m sufficiently motivated, I may post videos of some deranged Malaysian drivers on our roads. Actually, scratch that – if I did that, I’d have no rest, seeing that 99.99% of Malaysian drivers are flipping mad one time or another.
Enough with the written crap, on with the review. The videos are in HD, so click the “gears” icon to view them in all their glory.
Part 1: Introduction to the device
Part 2: Operating the device
Part 3: Annoyances and conclusion
Parts 4…..oh, the heck with the parts thingy. Here is some footage (footages?)shot with the car DVR. It claims an angle of view of 140° and I think the claim is fairly accurate. Watch the videos for the evidence. As usual, with teeny weeny sensors like this in small little gadgets like the car DVR here, you’re not going to get night footage worth much, but I’ll leave that judgement up to you by watching the night footage. Heck, even the daytime footage is not that great, but for the price you’re paying for this crap, it’s fairly good value for money, methinks.
The date and time stamps are accurate. Please don’t stalk me after you’ve watched these videos. Seriously, I mean it, I’ve got some hardass people as security personnel who have shoot-to-kill orders on sight of any intruders Man, I gotta stop taking these pills!
Bright sunny day, also testing the microphone by speaking at a “normal” volume in the car. Mind you, I don’t really sound like that squeaky nerdy idiotic voice you hear in the car at all, so it must be a bad mic Sorry, I lost the original AVI file that the car DVR recorded in, I was in one of my moods where I deleted stuff without looking properly (aka, I was drunk…)
The AVI files available for download are untouched. I only trimmed them using a tool called Solveig AVI Trimmer.
And in case you’re wondering about its ability to capture still images, ie. photos, you’d be disappointed. Here’s a 5 megapixel sample, untouched. Because of the wide viewing angle of the lens, there is a noticeable barrel distortion effect (I think). Click for a full sized image to download, if you didn’t already know that.
Finally, thanks for listening to my waffling, it’s much appreciated
Those who know me know I’m a bloody cheapskate. So it will be no surprise when I bought a ripoff of a product on photojojo called the Holga (Filter) Lens Case for the iPhone 4/4S, and what a bloody mouthful of a name that is.
The full name of the product is “Special Lens & Filter Turret for iPhone 4/4S” or SLFT-IP4. On the original, there’s the word “Holga”, on the cheaper ripoff, no such wording and “iPhone” is used instead.
Performance
You snap on the case to the phone, and rotate the lenses like an old rotary dial telephone for the different filters. Ripping off the photojojo website for the description of the lenses, we have:
Dual Image Lens - Makes 2 identical images in one frame
Triple Image Lens - Makes 3 identical images in one frame
Quadruple Image Lens - Makes – wait for it – 4 identical images in one frame
Macro Lens - Get close-up on your subject for amazing detail!
Red Filter with Clear Heart Shape Center - Red color filter with a clear, heart-shaped center
Red Filter - For a rose-colored look
Green Filter - Give your photos a green tinge
Yellow Filter with Clear Center - A yellow color filter with a clear circle at the center.
Blue Filter with Clear Center - A blue color filter with a clear circle at the center
Holga Hole - A soft lo-fi vignette around your image
Here are sample photos taken with the various lenses in the order of the lenses described above, starting with a “normal” unfiltered picture.
Conclusion
At US$30 excluding shipping on the photojojo website for the original, I think it’s overpriced. At US$10 on eBay including shipping, not bad value for money. But if you’re already familiar with the photo apps out there for the iPhone, where you can get similar, if not better looking effects, you probably don’t need this lens case.
The case has a protective plastic snap on cover to “protect” the “lenses”. Well, the lenses don’t really need protecting, to be honest, since they’re made of cheap-shit plastic. Plus, my unit came with rather dirty lenses which you can only clean with a cotton tip; don’t bother trying to remove the lens unit from the case as it’s only stuck on and you’ll screw up the alignment badly when you try to stick it back, assuming you can still stick it back on.
So, there you go. If you have RM30+ to blow, get it. Otherwise, spend it on an app, or a few apps which do a better job of applying various filters to the photos you take using the phone at a much better quality.
Man, I gotta stop taking these pills!
