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

Playstation Move Controller – First Impressions

Wow ! What a busy, and expensive week, only 2 days ago the Halo Reach XBOX 360S turned up (and I’m blogging instead of completing that fantastic game).

So what do I think of the Playstation Move, will it replace my Wii ? Well let me tell you.

First of all, the controller feels pretty solid. I’ve always found the Wii controller and Nunchuk to feel like toys in my hands instead of controllers. Now don’t get me wrong, I still use the Wii , probably a lot to do with the face that it runs a lot of the games from the external hard drive (You can find that post here)

The buttons on the Playstation Move Controller seem to be well placed, on the main controller you have all the 4 usual buttons, a select and start, a playstation button and a trigger on the back. There is also a “move” button in the middle, this seems to get used as the “Select” button

The Navigation Controller is simplified, and reminds me a lot of the Nunchuk. It has a D-Pad, Anagolue stick, the X and O buttons and the playstation button. There are 2 trigger buttons on the rear, very similar to the Nunchuk. Both devices feel solid in the hand, and benefit from the curved shape (instead of the squared off WiiMote).

I did notice one slight annoyance, there were no USB cables in either of the boxes, it’s a good job I bought the charger, otherwise I’d have been unplugged other USB devices to charge these.

So how do they work ?….Well, very well to be honest, the tracking is spot on ! I realised today, that the Playstation Move didn’t come with any demo games, so had to buy something on next day delivery just to try it out. I then decided to check out Playstation Store, only to find there’s a handful of demos on there.

So far I’ve only played the demo of Sports Champions, and it’s really good. it works very much like the Wii with the motion plus attached, however a lot better graphics. It did however want me to calibrate the controller every time I started a new game, however this could just be because it’s a demo. I played table tennis, and Frisbee, both of which were ultra realistic, (each of my frisbee’s would end up in the trees )

You can also control the XMB with the Playstation Move, simply hold down the trigger on the back, and move up, down, left and right.

All in all, a good purchase, and look forward to more games to come out, and think that this could be the end of my Wii usage.

As always, unboxing photos below.

Tags: 360s, Anagolue, annoyance, benefit, better graphics, boxes, button, calibrate, Champions, charger, curved shape, D-Pad, demo, demo games, drive, external hard drive, first impressions, good job, halo, handful, job, middle, motion, move, move button, new game, Nunchuk, Playstation, shape, something, sports, spot, tennis, time, usb cables, usb devices, wii, wii controller, xbox

Huawei E585 MiFi Router

I’ve been toying with the idea of the MiFi device for a while (while since I moved from Nokia to iPhone and lost the ability to use the joikuspot software)

I get the majority of my internet fix when out and about using my iPhone, however there are occasions when I’m away from home and could do with connecting my MacBook to the web, when I’m not anywhere near a useable wireless network.

I had looked at paying for the tethering on my iPhone for these occasions, however both me and C would need to connect, which would mean setting up internet connection sharing, or something like.

So I decided on the Huawei E585 MiFi Router from 3 on pay as you go, as I only see myself using this on occasions.

The device is pretty awesome, it’s small and apparently will last 5 hours on a single charge.

The LCD display, show data usage, batttery, signal, and messages.

I’ve yet to put this to use as there seems to be a 10 foot “no 3 signal” cloud around my house (according to the coverage map on 3′s site).

All in all, very happy with the purchase, and will update once I’ve had a chance to use it.

Unboxing pics below.

Tags: ability, chance, coverage map, fix, foot, home, house, Huawei, idea, internet connection, iphone, JoikuSpot, lcd display, macbook, Map, MiFi, Network, Nokia, occasions, pay, purchase, Router, sharing, show, signal, software, something, while