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Showing posts from 2013

Spring/summer PSC meet up!

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By popular demand, for anyone local to Berkshire, UK, I'm hosting another Phones Show Chat pub meet-up for smartphone enthusiasts on  Wednes day 26th June  2013 , from 7pm until whenever we call it a night. The venue is the usual The Lands End Pub, Park Lane, Charvil , Twyford, RG10 0UE. See below for a map. The Lands End is perfect for meets because there's no piped music, plenty of space, good food and drink, and plenty of parking. Oh, and it's also my local! 8-) Use your sat nav to get to the general area. You  can  approach The Lands End from the East, but you have to go through the ford -  not  recommended if there's been a lot of rain. Usually about a foot or so deep, so 4x4's only!  Approach via the arrowed directions  if possible. The idea is to swap phone tech stories, try out other people's favourite devices, down some decent beer and (maybe) do a few short pieces to camera for the show. If it turns out well, you might be a star(!) I'll brin

Batteries again. And cards. And backs. Samsung's way is the flexible way - more power to the S4

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I've ranted in the past about the implicit dangers of 'sealed' batteries (as on the iPhones, HTC One range, and so on). In summary, batteries degrade over time and, a year down the road, do you really want to be struggling with a smartphone whose battery is at 70% original capacity and now won't last you beyond tea time? I thought not. Having a replaceable battery means that you calmly source a new cell - or perhaps even upgrade, as I did with the Samsung Galaxy S III, to a larger capacity battery. The choice is yours when you've got access to this most vital component. Plus, of course, there's the road warrior option to own a spare battery and keep it in a pocket for evening power emergencies. Such flexibility is lost with sealed devices. In fact, there's more at stake than just battery power - microSD expansion is something else which keeps getting forgotten by trendy manufacturers like Apple, HTC and LG. Your music collection won't fit on your

Never heard of RHA headphones? Neither had I...

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Please excuse the brevity of this post, but there's a very good reason. The kind folks at RHA, based in Scotland, sent me over a set of their MA350 in-ear headphones to review and, after some initial testing and photography, I foolishly lent them to my wife to 'try'. Who liked them a lot and lent them to a relative to 'try'. And I haven't been able to get them back since. From which I can draw two conclusions: Never lend out stuff you really want back The RHA headphones made a very positive impression with each of us Hey ho. I was very impressed by the build quality, from the aluminium speaker housing 'cones' to the anti-tangle material coating on the cable, while audio was clear and distortion free. If I had to be picky, it would be that there wasn't as much bass as with the same music tracks on my Monster in-ear headphones, though in fairness the RHA MA350 are only a third the price. As a replacement for a generic 3-pole set of in-