Philips Fidelio DS3020/05

I’ve been looking for some kind of portable iPhone dock for a while now. I currently have the ability to charge my phone in most rooms either by docking it in an alarm clock, or in the front of a TV, or just by putting it in the dock connected to my mac. The only problem with the ones I have is, a, they aren’t portable, and b, the sound quality isn’t that great.

So….I was in Currys last night at this one caught my eye, as it had a sticker on the box saying “iPhone 4 Bumper compatible”. All the docks in my house currently don’t have any of the dock adapters in them, as this is the only way I can sync/charge my phone without having to take it out of the bumper cover. As you can imagine, seeing a device which catered for this was a massive win !.

Another major selling point for this, was it can be also powered from 4 AA batteries, making it something I’ll be able to take camping, or even just to take out in the garden.

So..what’s it like ?….well it’s surprisingly good, it does claim to have “Crystal clear sound” and that it does, even with the volume cranked right up, it doesn’t distort at all. The design itself is nice, the plus and minus buttons light up on the front in a pretty cool orange, when you doc your device, and there’s a on/off button at the top on the back.

As well as being an iPhone dock, it’s also got an AUX-in at the back to allow you to plug in external devices via a 3.5mm jack plug.

There is also the ability to have this as a dock connector for your PC/Mac as there is a USB cable connector in the back.

I think the final thing to note is the free App you get with it called Fidelio. Now you can use your normal media player on your iPod/iPhone, or you can use their application which gives you a few cools features. It seems to aggregate a few apps I already have, for example Tune-in Radio (a radio app) and AccuWeather (a weather app) and brings them all together into a nice little packaged.

All in all a decent piece of kit, I don’t currently know how long 4 AA’s will last, but will update the post once I’ve tried it.

As always, unboxing pics, and screenshots of the app below.

Tags: app, button, cool, cover, dock, eye, house, iphone, ipod, kit, orange, phone, piece, player, plug, selling, something, sound, Tune-in, Weather

Xbox 360 Halo Reach Edition

Now anybody that knows me, will know I’m a sucker for shiny things, and nothing comes more shiny that this limited edition Xbox 360s.

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a 2nd xbox for a while now, and when I found out that the Kinect device required a special port, (or an adapter), I thought I’d hang fire until this bad boy was release.

Currently I have the Xbox 360 Elite, and to be honest I’m very happy with it, I’ve rarely had a problem, and defiantly not had any red rings of death.

So, today’s the day, and I’ve finally got it (Thank you to C for the early birthday present). I was actually shocked how much smaller this is than the Xbox Elite, it’s casing is noticeably  smaller, and hell of a lot quieter.

The Xbox itself is one of the new Xb0x 360S models with a 250Gb Hard drive. It comes with 2 limited edition controllers, and a headset.

Now granted, this this looks cool, but nowhere near as cool as the noises it makes when you power on, and open the DVD drive…these are actual Halo sound effects

Obviously you get a copy of Halo Reach, a token for Limited Edition Elite armour and an episode of Halo Legends.

The console was pretty cheap from Game.co.uk, especially as it’s the new model, with 2 controllers and a brand new game.

As always, the unboxing images are below.

If you want to know how Halo Reach is, keep an eye on my Game review site D5120.com, I’ll post a review once I’ve competed it.

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Sony PS3 OS 3.0 Update First Impressions

Well, if you’ve got a PS3, and turned it on in the last 24 hours you will be greeted by the happy “Dude…there’s a software update, you know what to do…”..message.

What do you get I hear you say, well let me tell you.

The first thing I noticed was the new startup screen with the PS3 logo…looks kinda cool, and then was met by the “sparkly” new theme…looks kinda cool.

In the top right hand corner of the desktop you get your icon, number of friends online, date and time (digital and analogue ?)

Each time you start up the PS3, the it defaults to the What’s new icon (which has replaced the Information board), however instead of the feed ticker, you now get 9 rotating images of “What’s new” in the Playstation store.

Being an Xbox live user, I do really like the way your friends list is treated, clear, you know who’s online, and can quickly see which game they were playing last…..so what have Sony done…..well, they’ve but a HUGE border around each one of your friend, which is twice the width of everything else in the column !…not nice ! I wouldn’t mind if it provided you with more information, but it doesn’t it just looks ugly !

For some reason there are now 2 icons for the Playstation Store, one in the games section, and one in the usual Playstation Network “channel”….really? is there any need ? I could understand if there were more than 1% on the PSN Store that wasn’t a game that would be fine, but apart from the sat nav, the Eye Create, and the VidZone everything else in there are games….

1 Addition I did like was the integration of the BBC iPlayer, granted you could goto the website through the browser before and it worked, but now you can do this straight from the XMB. I don’t however like where they’ve positioned it, they’ve given it a channel of it’s own called TV (I’m assuming this is also used for the play TV, but……), I would have personally added it to the Video channel to reduce the size of the bar.

Another addition I do like, is the right thumbstick controller during video playback. If you rotate clockwise or anticlockwise, it will step backwards and forwards with very hight precision.

A “Save Screenshot” option has been added to the web browser, which is pretty cool, but not sure I’d ever use it..

Apart from that, it’s all I’ve noticed, I have read people complaining about the larger fonts…but I’m cool with this, my vision was starting to go anyway

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