Summary for World Cup 2010 Day 2:

Matches Played
Uruguay(0) : France(0)
South Korea(2) : Greece(0)
Argentina(1) : Nigeria(0)

Tomorrow (13th June 2010) Matches
England : United States [2:30am]
Algeria : Slovenia [7:30pm]
Serbia : Ghana [10:00pm]

All matches are in (SG) times

Received the Mobile Phone Tripod Holder from Mobile Fun last month for review. The mobile phone tripod holder is useful when you want to take self-shot photos (there are timers in some phones) or even videos using your mobile phone.

Packaging Front View

Packaging Back View

When I first opened the package, I thought the quality of the tripod might be terrible and it is flimsy. Despite most of the parts being made in plastic, it is still pretty firm.

Mobile Phone Tripd Holder

Holder

What exceeds my expectation was the holder that mounts onto the tripod. You need to exert some strength to expand the holder so that that it will expand to fit your phone, after that it holds your phone extremely firm.

With my Nokia N82

Wanted to try with my iPhone 3GS but it doesn’t make sense because the camera in iPhone suck, so I decided to use my Nokia N82 instead.

You can get the Mobile Phone Tripod Holder for £14.97 (including taxes but excluding shipping).

For more iPhone accessories, Check out Mobile Fun’s iPhone Accessories.

Summary for World Cup 2010 Day 1:

Matches Played
South Africa(1) : Mexico(1)

Tomorrow (12th June 2010) Matches
Uruguay : France [2:30am]
South Korea : Greece [7:30pm]
Argentina : Nigeria [10:00pm]

All matches are in (SG) times

Box View

SingTel send me the Motorola BackFlip for a review last month but because of my busy schedule I can only review it till recently. I apologize for the delay. I will be only covering the physical aspect of the phone because in terms of OS and software it is very similar to the Motorola Dext which I reviewed 5 months ago.

Package Content

If you notice the battery cover comes separately in the package instead of being pre-fixed to the back of the phone.

Back View

I would consider the Motorola BackFlip a form factor of its own because it is neither a candybar phone, sliding phone or a flip phone. The reason it is called a BackFlip because at the back instead of the usual battery cover, you will see a keyboard and the keyboard can be flipped so that it is directly below the screen.

Keyboard And Screen

Trackpad

Once you did that, the hidden trackpad at the back of the screen is revealed. You can use the trackpad to navigate around the phone. It takes quite sometime to get used to. Because of the trackpad, the Motorola BackFlip has 3 forms on input method, touch screen, QWERTY keyboard and trackpad. I would say it is an overkill because I don’t think you can move the mouse cursor faster than you tap on the screen.

Keyboard

The keyboard does not have any gap because most of the time it will be facing down on a table and having gaps means dust and even bits of food will get into the keyboard (like our desktop’s keyboard, I know we all eat in front of our computer at one point). The keyboard provide moderate tactile feedback but it felt a little stiff when typing on it. The camera and LED flash light is located on the keyboard also put placed at the top. It looks pretty well camouflage.

USB Port Light

Charging

When your battery is getting weaker, it will prompt you to charge via blinking the light around the micro USB port. When it is being charged, the light will be lighted permanently. I think that is a pretty cool feature.

The review unit that I received is still Android 1.5, but no worries as it is upgradeable to Android 2.1 when it is make available by Motorola. I can’t seem to find any difference in terms of hardware when compared to the Motorola Dext. The battery of Motorola BackFlip is 20mAh lesser than the DEXT which I don’t think it will be that noticeable. Similar to the DEXT, navigating around the BackFlip is laggy as well and all the cons about MOTOBLUR platform that I mentioned in my Motorola Dext review are still present. Pretty disappointed with that. Common Motorola, I believed you can do better than that!

You can get the Motorola BackFlip exclusively from SingTel Hello Stores or SingTelShop.com for SGD$248 with a monthly subscription plan of SGD$39.00 (3G Flexi-Lite AMPed) or for just SGD$98 with a monthly subscription plan of SGD$55.99 (3G Flexi-AMPed).

Official Site: Motorola BackFlip
SingTel Site: Motorola with SingTel

Was invited to Intel exclusive blogger event on Monday, 7th June 2010, at Starhub center which is where the Intel office is. My first impression of the office is that they got tall cubicles!

We are introduce to the latest Intel technology, SSD, Wireless Display, Project “Tangent Bay”, Light Peak, Super Thin Laptops and Intel’s AppStore!

SSD

Memory vs CPU Upgrades

The bottle neck of our computer is no longer our ram or graphics card and even processer, but our hard disk drive. A computer with SSD with just 3GB or ram will outperform a computer with 7200rpm HDD with 6GB of ram. Not many applications make use of the extra free ram, not in the eyes of normal consumer, they don’t run virtualization or even Adobe Premium Pro. Anything more than 4GB of ram will not bring significant improvement speed, the money will be put to better use in SSD.

I always wanted a SSD, regretted not getting it in Taiwan as it is cheaper by about SGD$70 over there at Taiwan’s Guanghua Computer Center. 300GB to 600GB SSD is expected to be release before the end of the year and that will push down the prices for 40GB/60GB/80GB SSD.

I have the misconception of SSD that once the limited 5 years lifespan is up, I can no longer use the drive and my data is gone. That is not true, you can no longer write to the drive, but you still can read from it.

Official Site: Intel SSD

Wireless Display

Netgear Setup Box

I was blown away by the Wireless Display. You just need a small setup box connected to your TV via HDMI and you can stream your laptop screen OTA to the TV! It also streams audio to your TV as well.

It is using 802.11g technology capable of delivering 54Mbps of bandwidth. The secret lies in the Intel Wireless Display built into your laptop where it compresses and encodes the signal and when the signal is sent OTA to the setup box, it gets decoded and decompressed and outputted to your TV!

Netgear is the only maker of the setup box at the moment but more will come soon!

Official Site: Intel Wireless Display

Tangent Bay

Tangent Bay

Tangent Bay is a project by Intel that brings 3 touch screens placed below the screen and above the keyboard. You can drag windows down to these screen even playing a movie there as well. The reason of putting 3 touch screens instead of a single piece is because of cost and availability. It is easier and cheaper to get 3 touch screens the size of a normal smart phone then to make one specially for laptops.

This is coming in Q1 2011.

Gizmodo: Intel’s “Tangent Bay” Laptop Concept Has 3 OLED Multi-Touch Screens Above the Keyboard

Light Peak

Light Peak

We have maxed out the bandwith of copper cables and that is where light comes in. The longest cable length you can go without slowing down the transfer speed with a single USB3 cable is 3m and for USB2 is 2m. For light peak, the limit on the length is limited by transmit power.

I wonder what comes after light?

Intel Research: Light Peak Technology

Super Thin Laptops

Dell Adamo

I call this MacBook Air for the masses! The chips are soldered directly on the motherboard and thus reducing heat output and hence reducing the need for fan or a cooling system. It is a reduction of 32% in size.

App Store
Intel also jumped onto the App Store bandwagon with its own App Store called AppUp Center. It features apps for netbook for platforms like Windows, Moblin, Meego. It also allows OEM manufacturers to have a co-branded store front. Intel’s own Moblin will eventually be replace with Meego

Visit: AppUp Center

More Photos

Intel Adverts
We are shown some funny Intel adverts and the people acted in the video are all Intel’s staff! Here is my favourite advert:

YouTube: Intel’s Channel

Thanks to Elvin from Intel for the invite!