Category: Reviews

New iPhone sucks! Buy Gemini PDA or Vernee Mix 2 instead

Posted by – September 14, 2018

To be honest, I watched 1 video about the new iPhone, as I can see it’s pretty much still a hugely overpriced shitty notch phone. Good job from the Trillion dollar fruit gadgets company. (I mean of course their new 7nm ARM processor surely is interesting..) The Gemini PDA is my daily driver phone, I use my Gemini PDA every day as my main phone for over 6 months now (since I filmed this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTU28QgYHdQ&t=203s ), Gemini PDA is amazing for me to be productive, to be able to type texts with my phone nearly as fast as I would on a laptop, and here I also show a properly great value $150 Vernee Mix 2 phone available at around $150 here https://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_906061.html?wid=1527929 (thank you Gearbest for sending me this one!) There are some newer Bezel-less phones that have been released since, some perhaps slightly lighter, with better GPS positioning accuracy, better camera and brighter display. Check back later for more videos on these.

$199 Elephone P8, 5.5″ FHD, MediaTek P25

Posted by – September 22, 2017

Elephone P8 4G Phablet ($199 at GearBest) with a 5.5″ FHD bright IPS display, runs on a MediaTek Helio P25 octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor built on 16nm FinFET+ process node running at up to 2.5GHz with an ARM Mali-T880 MP2 GPU, 6GB RAM, 64GB flash, Cat-6 LTE, Dual Band WiFi. 16megapixel front camera with selfie flash, 21megapixel rear camera with dual-color temperature flash it can record 4K video. Right now this phone is selling at $199 at GrearBest here.

$379 Meizu Pro 7 dual display, 5.2″ + 1.9″ AMOLED, Mediatek P25

Posted by – September 5, 2017

The Meizu Pro 7 is available to distributors from around $379 through http://www.sparc.hk (contact details listed below) it comes with 64GB Flash, 4GB RAM, Mediatek MT6757T Helio P25 Octa-core 2.6GHz ARM Cortex-A53 on the 16nm FinFET process node, with ARM Mali-T880 GPU, with a Secondary touchscreen 1.9″ AMOLED Display on the back for quick glancing of information without turning the whole phone up, Dual Rear Camera.

Distributors can contact Sparc here:
SPARC Technology Co., Ltd. (HongKong)
Steven Wong, Deputy Chief Sales Officer
http://www.sparc.hk/phone/meizupro7.html
steven@sparc.hk
Skype: hys8703
Mobile: +86-15975354238 (Whatsapp)
https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/22330594/
https://www.facebook.com/sparchk/

Sparc is an offically authorized distributor for wholesales trading partner/distributor for the Meizu M5c, Meizu Pro 7 and the OnePlus5 Eur Spec also among other among other models, you can contact them.

$79 Meizu M5c, 5″ HD, MediaTek MT6737 Quad-core

Posted by – September 5, 2017

Meizu M5c is available to distributors from around $80 through http://www.sparc.hk (more contact details listed below) it comes with 16GB Flash, 2GB RAM, Mediatek MT6737 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 with Mali T720 MP GPU, Eur Spec, 8 megapixel camera with dual-color flash.

Distributors can contact Sparc here:
SPARC Technology Co., Ltd. (HongKong)
Steven Wong, Deputy Chief Sales Officer
http://www.sparc.hk/phone/meizum5c.html
steven@sparc.hk
Skype: hys8703
Mobile: +86-15975354238 (Whatsapp)
https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/22330594/
https://www.facebook.com/sparchk/

Sparc is an offically authorized distributor for wholesales trading partner/distributor for the Meizu M5c, Meizu Pro 7 and the OnePlus5 Eur Spec also among other among other models, you can contact them.

World’s best device: Samsung Chromebook Plus review after 1 month use

Posted by – April 9, 2017

My impressions on the coolest ARM Powered Laptop yet, the Samsung Chromebook Plus ($419 top selling 2-in-1 on Amazon.com) that features a Rockchip OP1 dual ARM Cortex-A72 with quad ARM Cortex-A53, ARM Mali-T860MP4 GPU. The performance is great on this device, with the firmware updates from Google also speeding things up regularly, this device is amazingly cool and aweome. But in this video I mention a few things I am hoping Google can improve in the software, mostly to do with improving the Android apps for productivity, I’d like a 4K video editor that works and that is hardware accelerated, I think that Google needs to help PowerDirector and Kinemaster get hardware acceleration and 4K video editing support on this device. Even better perhaps would be if Google could contact the Lumafusion developers and support them to port their 4K60 video editor to Android and optimized for the OP1 processor. Other missing apps in the Google Play store are Microsoft Office, Popcorn time, I don’t want to be setting my Chromebook in Developer mode just to sideload apps that may not even be optimized for the Chromebook yet. Photo editors such as GIMP on Android, Adobe Photoshop need to get supported. Few more other productivity apps for developers, creatives, professionals and students I think need to get ported to this Chromebook Android device. Then Google also needs to improve the features of the stylus touch pen on this device, I’d like the stylus shortcuts and gestures allow to do productive work and study such as annotation collaboration, screen region selector saves to JPG to use as thumbnails in YouTube. In terms of the hardware, I am only hoping to be able to prove that USB Type-C SD card adapter to a USB3 Hard drive file transfers are fully fast enough (as fast as on any Intel Windows machine, hopefully), and also I hope to be able to prove that Wi-Fi performance is just as fast and reliable as with any other laptop. Except the missing backlight on the keyboard and the slightly smaller keyboard than full size, otherwise I think this laptop hardware is pretty much near perfect. It is now my main laptop, I just wish that I could do 4K60 video editing in a good Android video editing app, that the Android and the Chrome OS part get better integrated, for example when I save files in Android apps I want to be able to easily get access and upload these files from the Chrome OS Chrome Browser. I’ll be posting more videos about my Samsung Chromebook Plus in the weeks and months ahead as I expect that it will get better with Google’s full support. Samsung really needs to soon start selling it in Europe!

People compare Huawei Mate7 vs Note4 vs iPhone6+

Posted by – June 11, 2015

Last year, I asked normal people which of the top-3 high-end phablets of last year they thought was the better one among Huawei Mate 7, iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4, the flagship phablets of end 2014 and first half of 2015, from the top-3 Smartphone manufacturers in the world. I think the Mate7 is the best among those, let’s see how Huawei Mate 8 will compare with Note5 and iPhone6S+.

EP2: Huawei Mate7 vs Note4 vs iPhone6+

Posted by – March 1, 2015

I ask normal people which of the top-3 high-end phablets they think is the better one among Huawei Mate 7, iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4, the flagship phablets from the top-3 Smartphone manufacturers in the world. I think the Mate7 is the best among those, although for me to recommend it to everyone, Huawei should price it at $299 instead of $499.

Huawei Mate7 vs Note4 vs iPhone6+

Posted by – February 26, 2015

Tourists in San Francisco compare the top-3 brand high-end phablets in the world, among Huawei Mate7, Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus. Those are the flagship high-end mass market phablets of the moment from the top-3 Smartphone manufacturers in the world. This video highlights display size to body ratio, camera feature and large screen enjoyment. Come back for 2 more episodes to be posted on http://ARMdevices.net I think the Huawei Mate7 (which I have been using for the past 3 months) is the best phablet among those 3. Check back before MWC in the next 2-3 days for my review of my Huawei Mate7.

$49 (barebones bulk) Intel x86 PC, MeLE PCG03

Posted by – November 16, 2014

MeLE PCG03 is a fanless Intel Z3735F compact 4K Quad Core Fanless Mini PC with Windows 8.1, 2GB DDR RAM, 32G eMMC (both RAM and eMMC not included in the $49 barebones price), full PC connectors include VGA, HDMI 1.4, 3xUSB2, SD card reader, WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, mini-jack audio output. MeLE claims it has ulta-low power consumption and works perfectly work with XBMC. Mass Production will be ready middle December 2014.

You can contact MeLE here:
Mason Tong, Sales Director
mason.tong@mele.cn
Mobile: +86-132 6816 6362
Isaac Long, Sales Manager, Brand Developement for oversea market
sale5@mele.cn
Mobile: +86 186 7551 2024
Skype: isaac_520320
Leo Owyang, Account Manager, OEM & ODM brand for oversea market
sales13@mele.cn
Mobile: +86 159 8952 0320
Skype: leo4176
http://en.mele.cn
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/715968
http://www.amazon.com/shops/MeLEofficialstore

$234/189€/£162 MySaga M2, MT6589T 5″FHD reviewed by my 12-year old cousin Henry

Posted by – February 17, 2014

ValueBasket.com provided me with a review sample of their MySaga M2 branded MediaTek MT6589T 1.5Ghz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 phone with a SGX544MP GPU running at 357MHz, running Android 4.2 smoothly with 1GB RAM and 16GB Flash. The quite impressive 5.0″ 1920×1080 441PPI 16Million color display is manufactured by LG, back-camera is 13.0MP CMOS Sensor , F2.0 Aperture, 6P Precision Lens, with LED lights and front camera is 8.0MP BSI CMOS Sensor, F2.2 Aperture, 5P Precision Lens. My 12-year old cousin Henry with his YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/techtothepeoplevideo shows here the device in his video review. I have been using this phone as my main phone during these past 3 weeks and I can tell you it shows MT6589T runs 1080p 5″ phones smoothly. With a 2100mAh battery the battery life is decent enough. Bluetooth 3, Wi-Fi, GPS, Dual-SIM HSPA+ all seems to work great. I don’t know if MT6589T phones can be upgraded officially to Android 4.4 yet, but it can be rooted quite easily. At $234/189€/162£ retail price from http://www.valuebasket.com/en_US/mainproduct/view/15102-AA-WH including free shipping (you can see the different prices by changing the country in the bottom right corner of the page), this phone is quite good value for money.

Swatch Sistem51 review, automatic, mechanical Swiss Watch for the mass market

Posted by – December 19, 2013

My unboxing and review of the new Swatch Sistem51, revolutionary ultra-simplified robot-automatic-manufactured, 51-part mechanical automatic wrist watch selling now in Switzerland for 150 Swiss Francs ($169), to be released in the USA/China in early 2014 and in the rest of the world later in 2014. This is the latest advancement in Swiss Watch Making technology, 90-hour power reserve, one screw holds everything together, with anti-magnetic structure. This significantly simplifies the mechanical automatic watch and makes it available to the mass market. Of course I want to see Swatch release real Smart Watches in 2014, using E Ink and LCD displays, using smart LEDs, Bluetooth 4.0, smart buttons, covering their watches with touch screens, including vibrators, microphones and speakers, all the while it’s great to see such mechanical advancement for the Swiss Watch industry. I expect ARM Powered Smart Swatches for next year, they could perhaps even combine the battery powered ARM Processor with the automatic watch mechanics.

You can listen to Alexander Linz of Watch-Insider.com’s really interesting 45-minute interview with Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek here: http://www.watch-insider.com/featured/conversation-nick-hayek-ceo-swatch-group/

Swatch Sistem51

My latest Smartphone collection on Android Central Live @ Samsung Developers conference 2013

Posted by – October 29, 2013

Check me on the Android Central show showing off my samples of some of the latest cheapest Android phones out of China. My range of latest phones include MediaTek MT6572 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 (512MB RAM) phones at $55 4″ (2G iPhone 5S style), $58 4″ 3G, $65 (3G SGS4-Mini style), $72 (3G SGS4 style), Spreadtrum 2G based at $36 4″ (2G Nokia windows phone style), $43 5.3″ (2G Note3 style), my Onyx E43 E Ink Android phone and Onyx Freescale iMX6 Solo Lite Android 4.0 E Ink E-reader.

Anyone else in the Silicon Valley would like to check out these devices? Let me know! I’ll be video-blogging at the ARM Techcon and Linaro Connect at the Santa Clara Convention Center during these next 4 days, then to spend another 6 days in San Francisco. I would like to visit the Twit Cottage next Sunday and I hope someone at Google invites me to their Mountain View headquarters!

This video was published at: http://www.androidcentral.com/android-central-live-nicolas-has-coolest-toys

Overview of the latest/best 7″ Tablets out of Shenzhen China

Posted by – October 29, 2012

Here’s my overview video showing some of the latest best value 7″ Android tablets that I have found in Shenzhen on this trip. At least the samples that I was able to buy. $40 A13 800×480, $65 RK3066 1024×600, $80 NS115 1024×600 IPS, and there’s also the sub-$50 VIA 8850 (which can run a Windows RT clone UI on top of Android), and I compare these with the $199 Kindle Fire HD.

Overview of the latest/best HDMI Sticks and Set-top-boxe out of Shenzhen China


Here’s my overview video of the latest ARM Powered HDMI Sticks that I have found in Shenzhen China, including the $30 Allwinner A10 single-core ARM Cortex-A8, $40 Rockchip RK3066 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, $89 Freescale i.MX6 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 and the $150 HiMedia Q5 HiSilicon Hi3716C single-core ARM Cortex-A9 Set-top-box running the interesting HiControl Android application for remote controlling, mouse and mirroring support from any Android tablet and phone to your HiMedia set-top-box.

Archos 101 XS review, Ultrabook-killing machine

Posted by – August 25, 2012

In this video, I show web browsing speed on this OMAP4470 ARM Powered Laptop/Tablet convertible. This ARM Powered Laptop loads web pages faster than the Ultrabook, both over the same WiFi home network! I load web pages like Engadget.com, Gizmodo.com and TheVerge.com faster on the $400 Archos 101 XS than on the $1000 Toshiba z830 Ultrabook! And the firmware isn’t even Jelly Bean yet! It’ll get the Jelly Bean firmware by the time Archos starts selling this device next month in Europe or the month after that in the USA! Everyone knows Jelly Bean and Linaro speeds up Android even more!

This Archos 101 XS likely provides one of the industry’s fastest performance for productivity on Android, it’s the first OMAP4470 device announced and demonstrated that I know of. Productivity is in Chrome on Android and a few other productivity apps that can be the Office suite (included for free for word/excell/powerpoint stuff) and that can also be Remote Desktop for enterprise professionals who want productivity that way using Teradici and Citrix on Android stuff. I would like Archos to integrate Ubuntu on Android also, I hope they call Canonical to get that included with the Jelly Bean firmware. Thus you’d click on the Ubuntu icon to switch to Ubuntu in a second, do whatever you want in Ubuntu including run any Ubuntu application, and then have the same icon on Ubuntu to switch back to full Android in a second too.

While we’re waiting and looking forward to even faster ARM Cortex-A15 with Mali-T604, that likely doesn’t reach consumer devices until next year though. Right now, the latest and best class of ARM Cortex-A9 processors, with OMAP4470, with 32nm Exynos 4412, with 28nm Qualcomm S4 Pro Quad-core, with HiSilicon K3V2, i.MX6 Quad, we’re getting some excellent memory bandwidth performance on ARM allowing for fast enough full 720p/800p even 1080p web browsing speeds on Tablet, Laptop screens and on any external monitors as a Desktop/Set-top-box with full fast enough performance for productivity!

The time we’ve been waiting for is here! The ARM Powered Laptop is faster than an Intel Atom Netbook! It’s even faster than an Intel Core i5 Ultrabook!!!

While at $299 and an unlimited amount of cash (think: French/EU Francois Hollande national IT investment project) for mass production, I think Archos can single handedly be able to sell more Android Laptops like this one than all the Intel/Microsoft Ultrabooks/Netbooks and new Windows 8 convertibles put together. At $399 introductory Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price, Archos can still get in there and sell as many as Archos can afford to manufacture, selling easily at 50% cheaper than the iPad3 with keyboard ($598), at 63% cheaper than the Asus Transformer Prime/Infinity with keyboard ($648), this is the thinnest, lightest 10.1″ ARM Powered Laptop/Tablet convertible yet. And it has features other tablet makers don’t have such as full hardware accelerated video and audio codecs support, MicroSD/HDMI and USB Host, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi Direct, 1080p@60fps/3D@1080p@30fps and multimedia streaming features such as Samba/Upnp and DLNA.

I think it’s great value and I’m looking forward to try to use this as my main 10.1″ tablet/laptop instead of my ultrabook for the next few weeks and months. Let me know in the comments what specific features you’d like me to test on this device in my next video of it.

ICS on 5″ MediaTek MT6575 Dolphin A80 phone

Posted by – April 23, 2012

I run the Antutu and Quadrant benchmarks (comparing those with my OMAP4460 Galaxy Nexus) on this 5″ MT6575 Android phone that has just gotten the latest beta Android 4 ICS firmware loaded onto it in Shenzhen China. This prototype is just pre-mass production, and the ICS software for the MediaTek MT6575 is beta for testing. Mass production and full production software may be ready by the end of this month. Check back later for more news on this phone and on the performance of ICS on MT6575 devices as I expect to have this and other MT6575 samples to do reviews of the latest MediaTek ICS performance. http://www.yooe.com.cn is selling this phone for sub-$150 when bought in bulk. The MT6575 single-core ARM Cortex-A9 with ICS support is bringing quite good performance to the cheap new Android phones coming out of China.

Sony Xperia S review by Mike Demuth

Posted by – March 9, 2012

Mike Demuth @aeqx is one of the worlds top Sony fanboys, admin on the top Sony Ericsson forum (now discontinued) of se-world.info. He provides a review of this new latest high-end Sony Android Smartphone the Sony Xperia S at CeBIT 2012 in Hanover.

28-minute Cyanogenmod unboxing of Sony Xperia S

Posted by – March 6, 2012

The most technical and awesome unboxing of the new Sony Xperia S (some blogs seem to say it’s currently one of the best smartphones on the market) is done by Diogo Ferreira, one of the leaders of Cyanogenmod alternative/optimized Android development for improved Android firmwares on the Sony Android platform.

NewGadgets.de: Samsung Galaxy Nexus Hands-On

Posted by – November 15, 2011

This is obviously the best phone ever released. I’ll try to get it soon so that I can test Ice Cream Sandwich and film my own video-reviews. Until then, check it out here:

Source: newgadgets.de

List of my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging:


Andy Frame is interviewing me on ARM’s official YouTube Channel about my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging and live video streaming from consumer electronics trade-shows.

List of devices featured in this video:

– Headmounted Display: Kopin Golden-i, OMAP3530 based, provides SVGA screen at eye-level for real-time monitoring of an IRC chat for asking better questions
– Headmounted Logitech c910 Webcam connected to the ARM Powered One Laptop Per Child XO-1.75, Marvell Armada 618 based, live-streaming the webcam video feed to http://ustream.tv (an optimal Headmounted computer, maybe Motorola’s next version, can include the webcam and Android based software to live-stream the video to any live video streaming service built-in)
Archos 101 G9, OMAP4430/OMAP4460 1Ghz to 1.5Ghz tablet, similar specs as in the Galaxy Nexus but in a 10.1″ tablet form factor. Starts $269 unlocked no contract for 8″. This is probably my favorite high-end tablet at the moment. I’ll post my full video-review of the Archos 101 G9 in the next few days.
Archos 70 Internet Tablet, OMAP3630 1Ghz single core, released about 13 months ago. I use this tablet every day as 7″ tablets fit in any jacket pocket. Thus I mostly use this for checking emails, web browsing, watching video, playing games, using apps when I am outside. I am looking forward to upgrade this to a dual-core 7″ tablet.
– My $87 FG8 Android Smartphone, it’s my main smartphone for the past 7 months since I found it in Shenzhen China. It supports Dual-SIM cards (so I can use my home and foreign SIM numbers at the same time, or use voice SIM and data SIM at the same time), has a decent 3.5″ capacitive touch screen, uses the wildly popular in China Mediatek MTK6516 ARM9 processor. I’m looking forward upgrading this to a Galaxy Nexus (because I am eager to try Ice Cream Sandwich) or to a newer faster 3G-capable sub-$100 Android phone.
– ZTE MF61 T-Mobile USA 4G HSPA+ Hotspot, $50 for 3GB/month pre-paid, $141 for the device, no contract.