BlackBerry Z10 Review And Giveaway

Key Features: 4.2in, 1,280 x 720 screen; dual-core 1.5GHz processor; 8megapixel camera; BB10 OS

Manufacturer: Blackberry Europe

BlackBerry Z10

Introduction

It’s been a long time coming but BlackBerry (formally RIM) has finally unveiled its latest phones, the BlackBerry Z10 and the keyboard-touting BlackBerry Q10. The latter won’t be arriving for a little while yet but we’ve spent a couple of days with the Z10 to find out what it’s all about.

Both these new handsets run the brand new BlackBerry 10 operating system, which BlackBerry hopes  will rival Android, iOS and Windows Phone, and in doing so give the company a truly independent foothold on the smartphone market, as opposed to going the Samsung/HTC/Nokia route and using other manufacturer’s software.

It’s a risky move as the market is already somewhat saturated with interface choice so many punters would rather not have their choices widened. Moreover, these days phones are very much more defined by their hardware features than what software they run – after all, we all expect these interfaces to just work – so will BlackBerry’s tactic succeed?

We’ll be taking an in-depth look at every nook and cranny of the new BlackBerry 10 software in a later feature but for now it’s the overall experience of the Z10 we’re going to focus on. 

Already available to buy here in the UK already, it’s available on all the major networks on both contract and pay as you go, and it’s even on EE’s 4G network. In fact, it will support all future 4G networks too. It doesn’t come cheap though. You can pick the Z10 up for around £480 on PAYG or for free from £36pm. That’s about £100 more than a Samsung Galaxy S3 on PAYG and about £5pm more.

Blackberry Z10 – Design and Features

Straight out the box, first impressions of the Z10 are rather good. Sure, it’s not going to win any design awards but its staid, utilitarian styling feels smart, functional and business like – just as you’d want from Blackberry. That said, it does lack a certain something to really make it feel premium. The main culprit is the back which is plastic and has a dimpled finish. It looks okay but there’s no flare.

Perhaps more important than style is the feel of the phone.  With the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry hasn’t followed the current trend for enormous phones with enormous screens. Instead its latest handset sports a 4.2in display which means the whole handset is a pretty comfortable size. By all means, it’s larger than an iPhone 5 but all its other headline competitors are noticeably larger still. 

That said this isn’t the most efficient phone when it comes to space around the screen. With large top and bottom bezels the whole phone’s dimensions are 130 x 65.6 x 9mm, which puts it at the same height as the 4.5in screen touting Nokia Lumia 920. Nonetheless, 9mm is reasonably impressive as slenderness goes and, at 137.5g, it’s by no means a chunky monkey in the weight department. Plus, we quite like the look of the symmetrical bezels – it’s very iPhone like – and the overall balance of the phone is good.

Other points work in this phones favour when it comes to handling comfort. That dimpled back has a soft-touch plastic finish that feels nice and… well, soft and provides a good amount of grip too. And yet, despite this grippy surface, the phone remains easy to slide in and out of a pocket – a gripe we sometimes have with phones finished in this way.

Even more important than the finish of the back is that it can be removed. Using the notch, which doubles as the speaker output, on the bottom edge of the phone, it’s easy to get a fingernail under the cover and prize it off. Just as with the Samsung Galaxy S3, the back is simply a slim bit of flexible plastic held in place by a few clips so it’s easy to remove and replace. In fact, in some cases we’ve heard it’s a little too easy to remove as on some handsets the bottom edge in particular has started to come loose of its own accord. We’re yet to notice any issues but will keep an eye on this over the coming weeks.

How do I win the BlackBerry Z10?

You may enter by submitting your name and email address. You’ll receive one entry simply by doing so.

After that, you’ll also be offered various methods to earn additional entries. They range from sharing a link to this giveaway on social networks; to commenting or visiting a specific page. The more you participate, the higher your chances of winning! You will receive 5 additional entries into the giveaway for every successful referral via your shared links.

Enter The giveaway

Rover 2.0 App-Controlled Wireless Spy Tank Review and Giveaway

We really liked the first version of Brookstone's app-controlled tank Rover, a toy that let kids "spy" indoors using a moving, wirelessly controlled camera. Now Rover 2.0 ($150) adds a handful of new features for the same price point. Along with the new hardware, the company has launched an updated version of its remote app for controlling the device.

Other than a color shift—Rover 2.0 is black and green rather than white and orange—the newer tank is almost physically identical to the older one. The dimensions are the same, as are most of the exterior details, and the requirement of six included AA batteries. And as was the case before, Rover 2.0 uses Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth to communicate with your iOS device, so the tank has plenty of range and bandwidth for transmitting data. Unfortunately, we experienced some serious issues switching back and forth between our test network and the one Rover 2.0 establishes, as it doesn’t join your existing network. For reasons unknown, we repeatedly received an “Unable to join the network” message, and sometimes even when Rover 2.0 appeared to be properly set up, the connection wasn’t actually recognized. After more testing, we found ourselves unable to establish a connection despite multiple power cycles and manual resets, an issue we verified across multiple devices in multiple locations. Connectivity sometimes popped into place, but it was spotty at best.

One new mechanical feature is the ability to remotely adjust the camera’s angle up or down from your iOS device, which previously had to be done by hand on Rover. A speaker has also been added, so you can send audio from wherever you’re sitting through Rover 2.0. Although the instruction booklet says this feature is for Android devices only, we were able to use it to broadcast audio from the iPhone or iPad, and Rover’s built-in microphone can be turned on to send sound back—the feature works kind of like a walkie-talkie. Also new is the ability to record video footage and take stills, and then upload them to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. To share, you must exit the app, switch Wi-Fi networks, and then reopen it, which is a bit of a hassle.

In our early testing, Rover 2.0 seemed basically like the same product with a new coat of paint. However, the ability to save pictures and video is a pretty big addition, as is the two-way audio, which can make using the new tank a lot more fun as a monitoring and communication toy—assuming that its Wi-Fi works. Unfortunately, the issues we encountered with the Wi-Fi connection were non-trivial, more than erasing any added benefits. When it works, Rover 2.0 works well, but the wireless inconsistencies are too big of a problem to be able to recommend this tank. A firmware update to optionally bring Rover 2.0 onto an existing Wi-Fi network might make all the difference in the world; hopefully Brookstone will make some post-release tweaks to improve the performance.

Enter The Giveaway

How do I win the Rover 2.0 Wireless Spy Tank?

You may enter by submitting your name and email address. You’ll receive one entry simply by doing so.

After that, you’ll also be offered various methods to earn additional entries. They range from sharing a link to this giveaway on social networks; to commenting or visiting a specific page. The more you participate, the higher your chances of winning! You will receive 5 additional entries into the giveaway for every successful referral via your shared links.

Enter The giveaway

Giveaway.ly : Make money by organising giveaways

Giveaway is a great way to get more exposure and traffic to your blog, and meanwhile advertisers get free marketing, and brand exposure. It is generally helpful for everyone (Bloggers, Advertisers and Visitors). You can find blog sponsors for blog contest by contacting them via email. Today I will be talking about a new service call Giveaway.ly. This special platform for bloggers will let them find goodies for the giveaway, and also it will help them make some money.

Little About Givaway.ly

Giveaway.ly helps advertisers and bloggers to connect with each other. Advertisers can find targeted blogs where they can promote their product/service for giveaways, and bloggers can find giveaways (contest) for their blogs. Meanwhile bloggers can set a price (e.g. $10-$50) for running the giveaway on their blog, and this will help them to make money.

If you are a marketer or advertiser then create an advertiser account on giveaway.ly, and find high quality blogs for hosting contests.

How to Get Started With Giveaway.ly to Earn Money?

• First of all go to Giveaway.ly site, and sign up for a blogger or advertiser account.
• Now, in your account dashboard add your blog. Plus point of this platform, it uses your Google Analytics account to show the traffic.

• After filling blog information click on "Next" button, and complete options in Social network area. Link to your Google analytic profile, and set the price per giveway.
• Click on "Submit" button and its all done. Now, they will review your blog with 24-48 hours. 

Payment Options

They will pay you via Paypal. The minimum payout limit is $20.

Click here and sign up for a free account. Don’t forget to share your thoughts about giveaway.ly. If you need any help regarding this tutorial, feel free to ask us via comments.

Nokia Lumia 1020 Review and Giveaway

To review the Nokia Lumia 1020 is to review a compact camera that happens to have some phone features tacked onto it. Essentially, you would only buy this thing for its 41MP PureView camera with Xenon flash. If you weren't already a Nokia fan, why buy Windows Phone 8?

When we first heard about the 41MP smartphone camera in the Nokia PureView 808, our initial thoughts were, "What a shame to put such a nice camera on a Symbian device." Now that the camera is coupled with a marginally better platform, we can breathe a small sigh of relief.

If you're familiar with the Lumia line of phones, the 1020 shouldn't look that foreign to you. Its curvature and overall shape are reminiscent of the Lumia 920, and the smaller Lumia 820.

On the face of the device, you'll find a 4.5-inch 1280 x 720 touchscreen display. The left edge of the device, if you're facing the screen, is clean and free of any buttons or ports. The right side has a volume rocker, power/standby button and a dedicated camera button.

At the base of the device you'll find the micro-USB charging port and speaker/microphone. Up top, there is a SIM card tray, 3.5mm headset jack and another microphone for noise cancellation.

The back of the device is perhaps the most noticeable, with its large camera module, Xenon flash, LED light and camera lens. It protrudes enough from the device that it never lays flat on its back.

Even without the bulky camera, it's a substantial device as far as modern smartphones go. It's not the slimmest or lightest by any means, but it is somehow slightly slimmer and lighter than the Lumia 920.

To give you an idea of its dimensions, this Lumia phone is 130.4mm tall, 71.4mm wide and 10.4mm thick and weighs 158 grams. As you can see, it's pretty wide and bloated by today's smartphone standards.

Despite its size and weight, you eventually get used to maneuvering your way around the device. It's the camera that makes it tricky to hold. Do you keep your fingers around it, or grip the phone right over the camera? Decisions, decisions.

Our review model came in matte black, and it's slightly more slippery than its glossy predecessors. The Lumia 1020 also comes in yellow and white.

For those of you interested in internals, there is a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB on-board storage and a 2,000 mAh battery.

Interface and performance

Windows Phone 8 resides inside the Nokia Lumia 1020, and if you've ever used Windows Phone before, it will be incredibly familiar to you.

This version of Windows Phone 8 is called Amber, available only to Nokia devices, and it's the latest version of the Microsoft platform. It adds a few nifty new features to the software, but it's not a major overhaul of the platform or anything.

You can do new things with the Amber update like double tap the display to turn it on, or flip your phone over to silence it. And if you love customizing your device, there are a handful of new wallpapers added.

Otherwise, it's just plain old Windows Phone 8. The live tile system works pretty nicely to give you app updates and any other relevant info you might want to see. The tiles are also customizable in size, so you can make them large or small and arrange them into clusters when you shrink them down.

If you swipe to the right from the main screen, you'll see a list of all your apps, including the settings. It's a mostly intuitive platform, but what it's seriously lacking is third-party app support.

Most of the big-name apps are on Windows Phone 8, like Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Foursquare and more. But it's also missing incredibly popular apps like Instagram and Vine. This lack of app support is what usually turns people off from adopting the Windows Phone platform.

Another sorely missing feature is a centralized notification system. With iOS and Android, you can see all your notifications and updates in a drop-down pane, whereas Windows Phone 8 leaves you guessing with the live tile system. If you get a notification for an app that isn't immediately within view of the display, you have to scroll around just to make sure you haven't missed anything.

In terms of everyday performance, I experienced no lag or hiccups at all. Well, other than the camera, but we're going to cover that issue. Scrolling through the home page or within apps is smooth, unlike the Android experience on some handsets. The apps and tiles have cool animations, too, when you're opening or closing them or watching your notifications.

Enter The Giveaway

How do I win the Nokia Lumia 1020?

You may enter by submitting your name and email address. You’ll receive one entry simply by doing so.

After that, you’ll also be offered various methods to earn additional entries. They range from sharing a link to this giveaway on social networks; to commenting or visiting a specific page. The more you participate, the higher your chances of winning! You will receive 5 additional entries into the giveaway for every successful referral via your shared links.

Enter The Giveaway

Photography: Where to Start

So you have decided to have a go at photography? Good for you! Photography is a wonderful way to spend time, whether it is making money or a hobby. The problem a lot of poor souls have when they start is the bombardment of information about different cameras, memory cards, lighting equipment, the list goes on!

“Untitled” captured by Mariya Miteva-Simon (Click image to see more from Miteva-Simon.)

In truth, there is no right or wrong brand. There is a bit of good and bad, but at the end of the day I know many different photographers who swear by different brands, and they are all taking amazing images and making quite a bit of money. I also have my preferred brand of choice when it comes to cameras but this will be up to you to decide once you gain a bit of experience and feel what direction you want to go in.

Maybe a good place to start is deciding how serious you are about your newfound love. Try borrowing a camera from a friend first and give it a test drive or go to a camera hire shop. If after that you see a long future rolling in the hills with your new camera, then it’s time to get your own!

Choosing a Camera

Take a look at DSLR cameras that can range from a couple hundred bucks to thousands of dollars. DSLR stand for Digital Single Lens Reflex, and it is your best option moving forward, as you can change lenses to suit your style of shooting. For example, if you are into wildlife photography, you may want a nice long lens so you can stalk the animals from far. If you are shooting portraiture, you may want a nice prime lens to get that crisp sharpness. Diving into lenses is a whole new debate and would need a longer article, so lets get back to it, shall we?

You have now bought your camera and you’re staring at it like it’s going to tell you what to do next aren’t you? To keep it simple, let’s break it down into four simple areas that are the basics of taking great photos: aperture, shutter speed, ISO and composition. If you have the hang of these four, you are well on your way to getting it right.

Aperture

The aperture is the opening in the lens that lets light through onto your camera sensor or film. It is made up of a series of blades and is measured in F-Stops. The smaller the F-Stop number, the wider the opening that is letting in light. Now this may seem confusing and the wrong way round but you will get used to it. The F number can be as low as F1.4 and go up to f22 on most lenses.

Task: Take your camera, and if you have one with manual controls set it to Aperture Priority mode. It should be a setting with AV (aperture value) or just read your manual. Take a series of pictures, changing the aperture from its lowest setting to its highest to see what happens.

“The Water Lily” captured by Sangeeth Sivan (Click image to see more from Sivan.)

Did you notice something specific happening to your images? If you did not, take a picture of something a few feet away with the lowest aperture and again with the highest aperture. Still nothing? Well, take a look at the background. You will see when you shoot with a wider aperture such as f/4, your background will be blurred, but when you shoot the same photo at f/22 most of the image, including the background, is in focus. Oh, so thats how they do that!

Shutter Speed

The camera shutter is, well, basically a shutter that opens and closes letting the light pass through the lens and only hit the sensor for the amount of time you want it to. While you were shooting in aperture priority, you may well have noticed that the shutter speed changes proportionately to how you change the aperture. This is because when you change your aperture, you are changing the amount of light travelling through the lens and onto the camera sensor. If you have a wide open aperture, there will be a lot more light travelling through, so you will use a shorter shutter speed. The smaller the aperture opening like f/22, the longer you can leave the shutter open to let in that light.

Task: Set your camera to Shutter Priority (check your manual) and take a few photos at different settings. Notice how it changes the aperture to allow more or less light. Now find yourself a moving subject. Someone running or your dog playing. Take photos at different shutter values and see how it affects your image. The slower the shutter speed, the more blur you will have in your image. The faster your shutter, the less time for light to hit the sensor, the less blur you will have.

Now you may think, why not just always have a fast shutter, right? Wrong. It depends on the type of image you want to shoot. If you want to shoot at night you will need a long shutter speed to let in the little bit of light long enough to get a good exposure. Or maybe you want to take one of those silky water looking photos? Again you will need a longer shutter speed to allow the water to blur enough to create that effect. Ah!

“Kirkjufellfoss” captured by Joop Versteegh (Click image to see more from Versteegh.)

ISO

ISO is the third part of the three major elements you should learn, besides composition, in order to get good photos. ISO is the electrical charge that affects the sensor, creating the effect like in old film when you had different sensitivity ratings. The higher the ISO (old film ASA) the more sensitive and the lighter the image. The drawback to using the ISO to lighten up an image is that your image gets noisier with the higher the ISO. I personally try keep my ISO at 100 unless I just do not have enough light.

Task: Take a few photos of the same subject, changing your ISO each time, and see what happens. If you expose manually at, say, 100 ISO and then bump the ISO up to 3200, your picture will probably be blown out and too light or extremely noisy. Play around with it and see how it all changes.

When you’ve learned the three techniques above, you are well on your way to taking great photos. This gives you the freedom to concentrate on being creative and leaving the technical details as second nature.

Composition

Alright, you can now take well-exposed images, but they seem to lack that something special. That photo of your dog in the center of the screen just doesn’t look like the one from the magazine you paged through in the shop! It’s time to look into composition and the rule of thirds.

“Untitled” captured by Olga Filonova (Click image to see more from Filonova.)

The rule of thirds was created thousands of years ago by the Greeks, I think it was, and was a technical way of creating the perfect image. Look up the rule of thirds and you will see what you have been missing but the basic idea is to split your image into thirds horizontally and vertically and use the joining points to place your subject of interest, such as a person’s eye or the horizon. The rule of thirds is not a must and can be broken for creative purposes, but it is a good general rule to learn before you break it.

There are various other tips you can follow when it comes to composition, such as foreground interest. If you are shooting landscape images, it greatly helps an image if you have something in the foreground to lead your eye into the image. Do a search for ocean sunrise images in your favourite search engine and see what comes up. What you will notice with a lot of the ones you will find yourself drawn to is foreground interest such as rocks or a piece of driftwood that leads your eye into the image.

I am not going to go into lighting, memory cards, lenses, brands… the list goes on, and each deserves its own article. If this article is enjoyed and well received, I will write articles for each process as well as different types of photography. For now, take out your camera, stop reading, and go shoot! That is the best way to gain experience and find what style of photography suits you. Try as much as you can and don’t be afraid to ask people. The Internet is a big place, and there are wonderful people out there willing to help.

Seriously, you should be shooting right now!

Samsung Note 3 VS Note 3 Neo

• Processor

A hexa-core Exynos 5260 chipset with two 1.7 GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 cores powers the Galaxy Note 3 Neo along with a RAM of 2 GB. A quad-core 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and a 3 GB RAM is what the Galaxy Note 3 runs on. Both phablets can handle any tasks that are thrown their way with ease and each runs its apps seamlessly.

The Galaxy Note 3 has a slight edge in this round, but for all practical purposes the Galaxy Note 3 Neo is not far behind at all.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3

• Storage

Both phablets carry 16 GB of internal memory that can be externally expanded by another 64 GB. The Galaxy Note 3 also retails in variants of 32 and 64 GB of inbuilt storage, each with support for further memory expansion externally.

The Galaxy Note 3 wins this round with its additional storage options.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3

• Operating System

Both phablets offer uses the best of the Android operating system, along with plenty of Samsung's own functional add-ons including Air Command, Easy Clip, Multi Window, S Note, Samsung Apps, Samsung ChatON, Samsung WatchON, Samsung Link, Screen Mirroring, S Voice, S Health, Group Play, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, Air View, Story Album and S Translator. Though both phones carry Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box, it shouldn't take the Galaxy Note 3 Neo too long to follow the Galaxy Note 3 to the version 4.4 KitKat build.

With similar functionalities on both phones, this round ends in a draw.

Winner: Draw

• Camera

The Galaxy Note 3 Neo sports an 8-megapixel primary snapper while the Galaxy Note 3 comes equipped with a 13-megapixel rear shooter. Both phones pack in a 2-megapixel secondary front facing sensor and carry a host of modern camera functionalities like LED flash, auto focus, touch focus, geo tagging, face detection, image stabilization, HDR and video capture of 1080p.

The Galaxy Note 3 wins this round with its higher megapixels.

Winner: Galaxy Note 3

• Conclusion

Both of Samsung's phablets have tons of functionality to offer their users, both in terms of the Android operating system and the tech giant's own add-ons.

If you are on the lookout for a high-end all-in-one device that packs in the best of what is available in the market right now, the Galaxy Note 3 is perfect for you. Rest assured that you will be able to enjoy everything from communication to media and entertainment on the phablet without a glitch - the handset has plenty of storage and power and its display and camera are certainly among the best in the business.

However, if you want all of that Samsung and Android functionality but don't want to empty your pocket on a high-end device, you can comfortably consider the Galaxy Note 3 Neo. It packs in quite a punch in terms of power and usage and it is just as good looking as its top-end sibling, despite its less premium display and camera set-up.