The Orange San Francisco is a bit of an eye opener on several levels. For starters it’s a PAYG smartphone, something that is still a bit rare even today but perhaps more importantly it’s not a hamstrung pile of crap. The problem with budget smartphones tends to be twofold. Firstly they tend to have cheaper resistive touchscreens. This means that unlike the iPhone and other higher end devices, the screen has a membrane over it that responds to pressure. Traditionally these have required a stylus (pen like prodding stick) to tap and don’t really cut the mustard in today’s market. Secondly they’re often hamstrung by a low resolution screen and a slow processor. Obviously for the price of a budget phone, you’re not going to get a display like the retina … Read entire article »

Now the Xbox Kinect is out, I’ll put my hands up and admit I’ve had an Xbox 360 for about four and a half years now. Although I owned the original Xbox, I was a Playstation geek back to the early days of the format. Waiting for the PS3 got boring though and as the delays grew and the price started looking more and more ridiculous, I jumped ship to Microsoft’s machine. Given that the alleged PS3 launch game, Gran Turismo 5, only made it out a couple of weeks ago and that multi format games are inevitably better on the Xbox, I don’t think I’ve missed out much. I still fire up my PS1 for a bit of retro gaming every now and then though. In a cunning plan to get … Read entire article »

The Wacom Bamboo Pen graphics tablet has been a bit of revelation to me these past few days. I’d used a graphics tablet in the past but it was a very cheap Trust device and didn’t have the resolution to do anything other than 8bit computer style rubbish. Still, if you pay 15 quid for something you’re not entitled to expect much I suppose. The Wacom costs quite a bit more, it has an RRP of around £80 but can realistically be yours for £50 delivered from the likes of Amazon. For the uninitiated, a graphics tablet lets you drawn directly on to your computer (amongst other things), negating the need to draw with a pen and scan images in. There is a knack to it, when you’re drawing with pen … Read entire article »

The Nokia N8 is something of a conundrum. I’ve had smart phones before they were called smart phones, before they actually had phones in them and you had to infa-red (via the IrDA port) it to your Nokia to it to check your email and use really crappy WAP stuff. I am of course talking about the PDA (personal digital assistant) which eventually morphed into the smartphone. In terms of smartphones though, despite a mixture of Android, Apple and Windows Mobile devices, I’ve never actually had a Nokia smartphone to play with. I came close with the E71 but opted for a Blackberry instead. Opening the Nokia N8, the first thing I was struck by was the comparative lightness of the device compared to my iPhone. Given that it has a metal … Read entire article »