At the edge

I had been impressed with the review on the S6 since the announcement was made. It was a toss up between this new Samsung flagship or the HTC M9.

Having owned the M7 and Galaxy Nexus and S2 previously, I was familiar with the strength of both lines, but clearly the Galaxy S series had moved along quite far, compared to the HTC.

So, I did a free order and picked up my phone last weekend. I went for the S6 Edge. Although honestly, apart from the slicker form factor and bigger battery capacity, there were not much deterrence between the standard S6 and the Edge. The specs were identical.

After a couple of days of use, I was struck by how comfortable the phone felt on my phone compared to my staple, the iPhone 6 Plus.

The Edge was just blazing fast and the Lollipop OS just sang! There was no lag which I could detect although I hardly put any skin on the system to compliment the standard Samsung interface.

I use the standard Google app - Mail, Calendar and the rest. Of course the first thing I did was download Facebook, Twitter, Feedly, 2Do, Instagram, Flickr and VSCO cam among others. Then I went about putting the phone through its pace.

A couple of things was plain obvious from the start. Yes, the screen was gorgeous and reception on LTE was fast. But unexpectedly the camera and battery life were the features which impressed me the most.

The home button, cum the fingerprint recognising buttonLet's start with the camera. 16MP with optical stabilisation. Sound basic, but that's double the amount of pixel on the iPhone camera. And the results were just fantastic. Hands down, out of the camera they were better jpgs compared to the iPhone. Almost at the level of the Lumia 930, but with better post processing apps to chose from.

The app of choice so far for image post-processing was Snapseed. The newly updated 2.0 version was just amazing. I can't stop admiring the camera output and I have yet to explore its full potential.

The second thing which impressed me was the battery life. I had been reading reviews that due to high resolution screen and small form factor, battery life was limited. I have yet to experience such a drain so far. At least compared to the Nexus 4 and M7. Or even the Oppo Find 7 which carried the same.screen resolution - although on a physically larger-dimensioned screen.

I have a wireless charger placed at my clinic and I just put it on the tray while seeing patients. No issues. And setting up emails were a doodle, but I was still using the basic apps for them. None of those fancy app or Samsung's proprietary programs. They were just too fiddly.

One major criticism I had out of the box was the keyboard. They were just lame. Fleksy soon fixed those up. If only they could make some similar to my Z10 - which I still use for emails at home - then the S6 Edge would be perfect!

These were still my early impression but I think this phone would be a hit, especially for the power user. I have set up my Feedly account to connect to my bitly service, so expect many updates on Facebook coming soon!‎

Low Yat Look

Since I had some free time last Sunday, I walked - with the camera - towards Low Yat, enjoying the gorgeous weather. The MWC at Barcelona last weekend came with plenty of announcement - the HTC M9 and the Samsung S6 Edge to name a couple. I was keen to see if there had been any discounts going on at the plaza with the impending release.

No such luck. Business as usual from the look of things. I had a good look around at some cases for the iPad but nothing took my fancy. I was thinking of upgrading my 2 year-old Nexus 7, but the recent Lollipop update gave a new life to the ageing device. Although the battery life suffered big time, the new upgrade offered plenty of new excitement, especially in the notification department. The system also felt snappier than before.

And to be honest, the 7-inch Android tablet market had not been exciting for a while now, and certainly not after the release of Nexus 6, and the announcement that Google was not planning to replace the Nexus 7.The next up would be the Nexus 9, which personally felt to big. Samsung had a couple of offerings, but not much of an upgrade to my current tablet.

Frankly speaking, nothing much to see really. Maybe the next month would be interesting with the release of a host of new devices.

Droning Around

One of my colleague at work had a drone a few months back and had uploaded footage from the device. Looked pretty fun and the main issue he had was the flying time. The drones really eat up the batteries and if it took a couple of hours to charge for a 10 minutes flying time, it was hardly worth it.

So, I initially bought a small drone just to familiarise with the idea. A couple of hours charge, with only around 6 minutes flying time. With no extra battery unit to boot. Not exactly a great deal, but it got us started. And it only had a lame camera attached to it.

After a couple of sessions, Idlan and I decided to go for an upgrade. And oh boy! Upgrade we sure did.

We bought ourselves the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. Power edition, which came with a couple of high capacity batteries, which would last easily half an hour of flying. And it captured images at 720p, beamed directly and recorded onto the iPad which we used to control it with.

It took some getting used to, but it worked better than the first drone. It cost a fair amount as well. But if we were to do some droning, might as well go for the proper one.

Would I recommend the drone to people? Well it depends if you wanted it or not in the first place, and if you have money to spend. It certainly was not cheap but if you were willing to invest, this would be the best value for money.

Hopefully I could spend some more time flying it as we only managed to fly it at the apartment compound so far. We might just bring it to a park in town but I was sure it would attract some attention. At least we should be able to get some decent footage ....

Not Your Normal Light

I have been reading about Hue for a while now but never came across it in Malaysia. I told Idlan during our trip back to Penang the other day about the light system, where we can change colour using the computer, phone or iPad. He was naturally interested.

Last weekend, while Anita was doing a bit of shopping after we went to the school exhibition at Mid Valley, Idlan and I walked into Machines, the shop which sells Apple stuffs. Then, Idlan spotted it. The starter pack for Hue lights!

It didn't take much to convince me to buy one. The next step would be to get a light stand for the bulbs, which we did at Jaya Jusco next door.

The starter pack came with three bulbs and the base unit. Once at home, I connected the base unit to my Wifi base station and after some configuration and button pushing - there was only one button on the base unit - plus a quick app download on my iPhone, I was up and running.

It certainly is fun, but not exactly for use as a main light. We got the three lights installed at the lounge at my apartment now, set into candle light mode while we were watching TV. I have since downloaded an app on my Mac Pro which became the main controller. The base unit can control up to 50 bulbs, so there was plenty of room for manoeuvre. I was still trying to figure out a way of making the lights flick when I receive emails. That would require another app I think. More on that later ...

Low Yat Time

Yesterday was one hell of a busy day. Starting with the tax submission, runs to the bank followed by a quick lunchtime visit to see a friend who had just had an operation the day before. And then after that, a walk around Low Yat to check out the latest buzz on what was going on in the local gadget scene.

The Galaxy S4 was finally out, and there were plenty of units available from both the official and the not-so-official retailer, and the abundance of phones in terms of availability made sure that there were not much price distortion going on. Most of the vendors were trying to outdo each other by adding on packages such as covers and screen protectors. Me? After having a feel of the device for a good 20 minutes, I decided to stick with my Nexus 4.

But in the middle of this all, I was still intrigued by the Blackberry. But to give up either the iPhone or the Nexus for it? Not quite yet. Even though I got SIMs for the three main local telcos, I just couldn't justify carrying three phones in one go! The Nexus just worked fine as a communication hub.