Category: Hardware

Earin on KickStarter

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:hardware-category ]I’ve been watching KickStarter with interest for a while, it’s an interesting site and there was something finally on it that got me to sign up, Earin.

I’ve been using a Jabra Halo set of Bluetooth headphone for quite a while and they do the job, but they are cumbersome to carry around and I’d been looking for a set of inear Bluetooth earphones for a while.

The problem with the ones I had found were that they all had a cord running between the earbuds.  Earin seems to have solved the problem and I look forward to getting a set early next year.

Adding Integrated Wireless Charging to my Nokia 925

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]In my previous posts, I mentioned finding instructions on how to add wireless charging to the Nokia 925 as well as the fact I’d picked up a 925 on eBay, well now I finally have all the parts I need to put the two together!

I’ve updated the English translation I did of the previous PDF and you can find it here: Nokia Lumia 925 Integrated Induction V2.0 – English

It was easy enough to do, I only ran in to two small issues in the whole process:

  • Finding a suction cup small enough to get a tight seal on the phone cover
  • It looks like the design of the wireless charging cover from Nokia has changed slightly since the original instructions were done

Not a big deal overall and the charging seems to be working fine now.

Now that I’ve been using it for a few weeks, I can’t say how happy I am, there just aren’t words 😉

One small issue did come up that I didn’t notice while doing the work, the new design of the wireless charing shell added a small hump to the back of the phone, which over about two weeks created  hair-line crack in the back of the phone originating from one of the unused charging holes.  It has remained stable since it appeared so not a big deal, just something I’m watch in case it gets worse.

Dell Venue Pro 8

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:hardware-category ]A while ago I picked up an Acer W3, which apparently didn’t like the 3 foot plus drop from my nightstand 😉

The big crack from side to side of the screen pretty much made it necessary for me to find a new tablet.  fortunately Dell released their Venue Pro 8.

The W3 was pretty chunky, but work reasonably well.  The Dell is light and runs circles around the W3.

Highlights include:

  • Lighter.
  • Faster.
  • Brilliant display.
  • Standard USB charging.
  • A nice textured back for an easy grip.

Two little things of note:

  • The auto brightness is far too dim, you have to disable it.
  • The Windows button is in a little bit of a weird place, so if you join a domain and need to do a W+Power combo, it’s a contorted one-handed affair.

 

Acer Iconia W3

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]My ASUS VivoTab Smart has been my workhorse tablet at home since I picked it up, but the other day I came home and found a giant crack across the screen.

Now the ASUS was clearly a low-end unit and there was quite a bit of flex in the chassis so I wasn’t really all that surprised by the crack but it did leave me a dilemma.  What was I going to get to replace it?

My first thought went straight to the Acer Iconia W3.  The 10.1 inch display on the ASUS was just too big for my normal usage of a tablet and the W3’s 8.1 inch display interested me quite a bit.

I picked up a good deal on a base unit ($299) with 32g of storage and the first thing I noticed about the unit was how much more of a premium build it was over the ASUS.  The W3 feels “dense” and solidly built.  It is a little heavy for a small device but not unwieldy by any means.  The unit comes with Windows Home and Office Home so it has pretty much everything a normal user might need right out of the box.

I have to say the screen size is just about perfect.  Small enough to be easy to carry around but still usable for browsing and running apps.  Overall I think the 8 inch size might be perfect.  I would like to see a 9 inch tablet though, just to compare it with.

Battery life seems to be significantly above the 8 hours quoted which is nice.

One really nice feature is the physical Windows key on the unit.  The ASUS had a capacitive button that wasn’t very good, it was often hard to tell if you had hit it.  The physical button on the Acer removes any doubt.

The only downside to the Acer is the display, 1280×800 is ok but not great, but it just doesn’t look very good.  On some solid fill colors there is also a slight, but noticeable, flicker to the display.  I had read a few reviews of the unit which mentioned the display problems so I wasn’t surprised, but Acer usually does a better job than this and in comparison to the rest of the unit it just seems out of place.

So far it’s a great piece of hardware and I look forward to seeing Windows 8.1 on it.  It will be interesting to see the next generation of 8″ devices to see how much smaller and lighter they can go.

Nokia 925 Integrated Wireless Charging

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]The Nokia 925 looks to be pretty much the perfect phone with only two issues; no MicroSD slot and no integrated wireless charging.  Well now at least one of those can be fixed.

An article over at WPCentral has a link to a SmartphoneFrance site with instructions on how to integrate the wireless charging module from the charging shell directly in to the phone without any visible changes on the outside.

Of course the one problem with the instructions are they’re in French… but a little bit of work fixed that issue, so here is an English version: NokiaLumia925-Induction-English.pdf.

Now all I have to do is find at 32gig unlocked version to try this on and I’ll have my new phone 😉