Technology and gadgets

Gadget Show 2011 – what I learntMay 27th, 2011

Android

2011 might be the self-proclaimed year of the iPad, but it’s also the year of Android. It’s everywhere when it comes to tablets: It seems to be the default not-an-Apple device operating system. Which is a shame, because it means theres less innovation going on and instead tablet makers are just slapping on some open source software without thinking about it.

And very often it’s just done really, really badly. I’m a self proclaimed Apple nut, but I love good technology more. There’s nothing more I’d like to see than something, or someone, beat Apple at it’s game. I think with mobile phones we’re now there: I like the HTC Desire1. But we’re not there with tablets. It seems manufacturers are getting scared of the iPad, churning out their so-called iPad killer, and using rubbish spec hardware.

I’m also surprised that of all the Android tablets I’ve used at the show, not one was using the version specifically designed for tablets. Most used Android 2.2 (the current version designed only for phones), with one even using 2.1. One salesman told me that their hardware wasn’t good enough to support Android 3. Tell me about it.

A note to manufacturers: it’s all about attention to detail and doing it right. If I have to swipe slowly to get your screen to react, you’re doing it wrong. Salesmen shouldn’t have to teach me the right technique to swipe, and it shouldn’t involve pressing down on a LCD touchscreen, breaking a few pixels while I’m at it.

A note to salesmen: when I ask you what the killer features of your tablet is (hoping to be blown away) dropping the lie that I want to get away from Apple/my iPad, the answer isn’t “it has Flash”. It really isn’t.

A note to the salesmen from Prestigio whose tablet I managed to crash (it was the PMP30848, if you’re interested). I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I think I swiped it the wrong way…

Ebook readers are now in colour

Wow. After my complaints last year about ebooks being naff, I’m so pleased that ebook reader manufacturers are finally starting to move to LED backlit screens. The hardware I tried is still a bit too slow for my liking, and I don’t really see the value in ebook readers (I guess I don’t take enough beach holidays), but the improvements in the last 12 months were staggering, I just hope the momentum carries on and next year I’ll be drooling over a slick touch-screen reader.

Watches

Vivifi Titan

Vivifi Titan, complete with Nokia style menu. Image
taken from company website. Sorry.

My guilty pleasure item. Almost completely pointless but the day I see a mobile phone watch I’m happy with that I can use, the day I can die happy.

Last year I compared them to 80s digital watches. I’m pleased to report that the watches I saw were no longer like this: instead they can be compared to 90s mobile phones, with the old Nokia 3210-style menus and everything. Ok, maybe not pleased. But one step at a time eh?

(Also, the problem with it being too easy to pick-pocket the phone off your wrist is still there)

Speech recognition

I’m really blown away by this. Admittedly I’ve not used speech recognition software in a long, long time, but I was genuinely shocked at how well it worked after seeing a demonstration.

Chargers

I never thought I’d be impressed by a charger. But I am. Recognising that people have more than one portable electrical device, iDapt have smartly created a docking station which allows you to plug more than one device in to charge. It’s a bit of a stepping stone between a plug per device and charging using wireless charging mats, and I’m not sure how good the quality will be (third party chargers generally being rubbish), but I was very tempted to buy one.

Internet TVs

Last year it was all about 3D; this year it was all about Internet connected TVs. I have to be honest and say that I’m pretty neutral about Internet TVs at the moment. Sure, it’s a good idea, but it needs that killer application (the replacement to the red button that makes an Internet connection worth it), and I don’t think YouTube is it.

Lack of Flip

There was a distinct lack of Fiip exhibiting this year. Which is a real shame.

Cheap accessories

It was a shame to see so many cheap accessories on sale at the exhibition. It seemed like it was a shame to have it detract from the genuinely good tech on show (a real problem in that environment where it’s very easy to get lost and even though you have the time it’s impossible to see everything).

The quality is also questionable. I saw a iPhone case labelled “4G”; or maybe I just missed an Apple announcement.

Get a decent sound system

Once more I was blown away by the sheer quality of headphones available: anyone using the earphones that came with their MP3 player is missing out. And I was amazed by the systems that Bowers and Wilkins demonstrated. It was also nice to be invited to plug your iPod into some headphones and see the quality on music you choose.2

And the killer gadget of 2011 is…

Er. Last year I could clearly say that 2010 was certainly the year of 3D TV. But this year? I guess it has to be the year of the tablet device. Or rather, the year of the crap tablet device.

And finally…

It was upsetting to see blond girls wearing next to nothing being used to attract people to stands and sell stuff. One particular stand even had girls doing a little dance routine (shame on you, Viewquest). We’ve moved on since the days of “only men are interested in technology and the best way to attract them is with sex”.

  1. Enough to get an HTC Desire S as a replacement to my broken-but-getting-old-anyway iPhone [↩]
  2. On a related note, you haven’t lived until you’ve listened to the Tron Legacy soundtrack on some noise cancelling surround sound headphones [↩]

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Predictions for 2011January 9th, 2011

Just the one prediction this year

I don’t think that 3D TV will take off in 2011. 3D requires you buy a new TV set, and with the economy as it is I don’t think people can justify this extra cost. I mean, people have only just bought their HD TV

I think 3D cinema will grow though. It won’t be massive but there will be a few blockbusters that are practically 3D only, a bit like with Tron

Bonus prediction: Responsive web design will be the buzzword of the year

As always I’ll see how I did in about a year’s time!

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Review: HTC DesireOctober 13th, 2010

There’s a couple of things I don’t like about the iPhone and iOS. I think it could do with a homescreen (it’s tacky but it’s handy — I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve accidentally lost an application alert by unlocking my phone, with no way to get it back), and I would love it to have an FM radio. As much as I love internet radio, mobile data providers have yet to provide a good enough (and cheap enough) service to allow you to stream smoothly.

The HTC Desire solves all of these problems. As well as the built in radio there’s also the homescreen which works very well, and alerts are shown at the top of the screen. No more popup alerts that get in the way that you can’t get back: they’re nicely tucked at the top of the screen. The notification light is also a useful little addition – It’s the one thing I miss when I upgraded from my old phone to iPhone, and they prove very helpful

But enough of what I don’t like about the iPhone.

When you take it out of the box, the HTC Desire stands out as being a very good looking phone that’s pleasant to hold. Apart from it being hard to find where to put the battery and SIM (I actually had to read the instructions), it’s a doddle to set up, although I’m a little unsure about your phone being linked to your Google account

But once set up, the one thing I didn’t like is the sheer number of apps. The iPhone doesn’t have many apps on a clean setup (although even then I’d say there were too many – does anyone ever use Stocks?) – but the HTC Desire is just insane. There’s at least two mail apps, I couldn’t even find the address book app, and it’s just generally a lot of clutter that most people won’t really need (and if they did, they’d easily find it in the Android Market which is – yup – hard to find)

The earphones are also questionable. I know the Apple earphones are a bit crappy, but these are just plain bad. It’s like the cheapest pair you could find, but worse. There was no way they were gonna stay in my ears. But I do like the power cable: it’s a USB lead. I’m a big fan of reusing leads and I have a ton of USB cables around. It’s a nice little touch, and I’m looking forward to more phones doing that in the future.

So – my final thoughts. It’s a nice phone – a very nice phone. There’s a lot that Apple can learn from it. But just like the iPhone, there’s a couple of irritating niggles that I’m sure would annoy me just as much after a year and a half so of using it.

For those who don’t like Apple’s closed way of doing things, it’s a fantastic phone. For those don’t mind it, you’ve got a difficult choice. The HTC Desire is most definitely on par as being one of the best phones on the market to date, alongside the iPhone 4

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Some mindless babbling about Gadget Show Live 2010 (part 2)May 7th, 2010

So, in my previous post about Gadget Show Live I was a little negative. There were eBook readers that were total rubbish, watches that can be nicked, and 3D tellys that were blurry given the wrong light.

But then I realised, there is a lot of cool new tech out there, you just have to wander around the exhibition space a bit more, open your eyes to what’s already around us, and watch what the professionals can do with enough time and money.

Firstly, sound. I’m a big music fan, and I’m one of those who believes that the quality of the sound has a big impact. By using cheap, low quality headphones, it just doesn’t sound the same. But I’m ashamed to say, I use Apple earphones. I’ve just never gotten around to researching anything better. Having gone to a headphone stand (Zino, if anyone cares) and tried out a pair, I realised what I was missing. All these top quality headphones, and I had my Apple blinkers on and didn’t bother researching if anything else could be better.

Secondly… sound. More specifically, sound around the house. The Sonos multi-room music system, which lets you play any song into any room. It can link to your iTunes library, last.fm, and Napster. And it can be controlled using a dedicated remote control or an iPhone app.

It’s the sort of application of computer networking that I love, it’s very clever and it doesn’t need any complicated setup procedure. It’s simple, does the job, and makes technology great. It is a little pricy though, £799 for a two room bundle is a lot of money when you can share an iTunes library between two computers. But the idea is just brilliant.

And finally, Architectural Mapping, which we were shown during the live show. There’s lots of photographs and videos of this technique in various settings, but it really does have to be seen in person to appreciate just how fantastic it looks.

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Some mindless babbling about Gadget Show Live 2010 (part 1)April 16th, 2010

So, last week I went along to Gadget Show Live, in a hope to try out some stuff I’ve never had the chance to play with before (such as 3D TV and ebook readers) and see what’s on the horizon when it comes to new technology.

In the whole, the sheer scale was overwhelming. There were thousands of people and it was hard to get near some stands. But I also have to say that I was pretty disappointed with the quality of what was supposed to be new technology. Not even new technology, but stuff that was being launched this summer or even things that was supposed to be making a big entrance to UK homes this year.

With the new iPad launching in the UK in the next week or so and doing amazingly well in America, eBooks are certainly the next big thing. They’ve been around for a few years now, and I’ve tried out the Sony reader but I’ve never been that impressed. Don’t get me wrong, the quality of the text is as good as ink on paper, but they’re just slow and very hard to use.

The eBook reader I tried out at the exhibition was just as bad. A confusing interface, slow response, and not something I’d pay money for. They had what looked like colour touchscreen models, but I soon found out to my dismay that they were just prototypes (plastic boxes showing either a rather confusing video, or a plastic box with a screenshot stuck to where the screen would go).

I asked a demonstrator how it would compare to the iPad — a reasonable question I feel, as it’s pretty certain that Apple are shaking up this market just as they did with mobile phones — but didn’t get a very clear reply. I think I somehow offended them by even asking the question.

I also stopped at two 3D stands early on. The first stand used the active technique and were mostly selling 3D projectors which I have to say I quite liked. They were cheaper than a 3D TV (even with a couple of pairs of the glasses), and could be attached to anything. Brilliant. It was also of reasonable quality. This was demo’d to me because I noted to the demonstrator that their TVs were flickering. To be fair my eyes are never very good at 3D, and as the demonstrator pointed out the lighting was harsh and was nothing you would get in a normal home.

I moved onto my second 3D TV stand, which used passive 3D (the type you get in a cinema). I had seen this at the cinema but never on a small screen, so to my surprise this looked very impressive. It was much better than the active 3D systems, and you didn’t have to be directly facing the screen. I’ve always questioned 3D TV, but I can now see why people are raving about it. I wouldn’t buy one myself just yet (being short sighted I would find having to wear a second pair of glasses whenever I wanted to watch TV or play a game annoying, and at the moment they are far too expensive for me), but for sports, gaming, or even films, 3D has a future in the next few years.

So onto watches. Or rather, cool digital watches with touchscreen and phone capabilities. I’ve always wanted one of them. It’d be so cool to be able to have a proper LCD (or better) screen on your wrist that shows you the time and date, your calendar, your phone numbers and anything else you want. I was pretty excited when they started to come out a couple of years ago. I was excited to see one on exhibition. There! Ready to buy!

But… no. I couldn’t get over how bad it was. I really do hate being negative over technology because I love it when new and innovative stuff happens. But this was very 1980s (even a fellow visitor mentioned this). The screens were large and bulky (80s), you had to use a stylus to use the touchscreen… assuming that even works properly (80s), and the strap was cheap plastic which would be very easy for the most amateur of pickpockets to steal under 5 seconds. Dreams completely shattered.

But not everything was bad. Some tech — mostly related to sound — really impressed me when I honestly didn’t think it would. There’s also some future developments that won’t be in the homes just yet, but to see it was encouraging. And there were a lot of future developments that I’m pleased to say is with us already. All of this I’ll speak about in my next post.

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