And that’s where the Alcatel One Touch Scribe HD came by, which we appropriately got our hands on. The phone’s name definitely isn’t short at all, in fact, it’s one of the longest I’ve seen. Let’s jump right to it after a quick rundown of the specs of this phone!

• Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean (as per review)
• Quad-core 1.2 GHz
• 8MP rear-facing camera, 1MP front-facing camera
• 5-inch IPS LCD display, 720×1280 pixel (about 294 ppi)
• Stereo FM radio
• 4GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB
• 1GB RAM
• Asahi Dragon Trail Glass
• Dual-SIM compatible
• 42MB/s HSDPA modem

My apologies for the pictures looking yellowish, I’m using a lamp to light up the table and I’m only using my LG Nexus 4 to take the picture.ha

Box and contents

When we first got the phone, the packaging looks extremely basic, no fancy colours, material or design, just a plain white box that holds and covers everything inside. It does what a packaging box should do, of course.

Opening the box we can see the phone itself, and with a flap we can reveal everything below it. From left to right, you get an earphone, a charger, a USB to micro USB cable, a capacitive stylus, a magnetic flip case, and the phone itself. It’s sad that they’ don’t give an extra USB cable, though it’s the standard nowadays to have a USB port for your charger. Another thing I find annoying is the design of the wall charger, as it has a 90-degree angle to it which really does make some of the cable managements a little unsatisfying.

Design

The phone’s design isn’t something you’ll normally see, though the first impression does deceive. A very basic-looking phone that definitely doesn’t feel cheap as it is not made out of plastic. Being one of the first few phones to actually use the Asahi Dragon Trail glass, it feels absolutely same as Gorilla Glass, though the durability is reportedly different.

With a soft touch material at the back, it provides enough grip but is definitely prone to grease.  Came with a slim and light composition, the 5-inch screen doesn’t really feel heavy at all. The biased loudspeaker placement really does help a lot as the sound isn’t blocked by the hands while holding in such a manner.

For someone like me, I always put the phone with the back facing the table, but with this phone, it is advised to never, ever do that. The camera protrusion is a little too extreme and it will definitely make a scratch on the lens. Though fear not, Alcatel actually included a magnetic flip case for the phone, as seen in the pictures above.

This magnetic flip case is by far the best thing I’ve seen in all smartphones and tablets. On the left side of the phone, there’s a strong magnet to hold the flip case’s position. Then at the far side of the the strong magnet, there’s a weaker magnet embedded into the flip case itself that holds the open and close position of the flip case.

Amazing, isn’t it? The positions are held by magnets at the side of the phone truly really does help keep a low profile on annoyance. This magnetic flip casing is definitely a plus for this phone.

Ports

The phone itself comes with the standard ports found in each and every smartphone out there in the world. Power button is at the top, biased to the right and the audio jack is the top, biased to the left side. At the right side of the phone is where the volume rocker is found biased way at the top of the phone, which might take some getting used to, and a microSD slot right below it. At the left side of the phone, you’ll find the dual micro SIM slot biased to the top and a micro USB port at the middle. For the grand finale, there’s only a microphone at the bottom.

What really baffles me is the position of the micro USB. The magnetic flip case blocks the micro USB when it is closed. Completely blocked.  You however have the benefit of just simply pulling the magnetic flip case apart from the phone – that’s easy, but bare in mind that you won’t have any protection for the screen.

The buttons give a great tactile feedback to really know that the buttons are pressed and the commands are received.

Hardware

Speaking of the hardware, it has a touch screen possible to detecting up to 5 points, very responsive and definitely have just the correct sensitivity to make sure everything works fine.

Running on a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, the phone is as snappy as it can be,  browsing performance is top-notch on Chrome and On some games however, the performance only runs fine on some of them – by some I strictly mean some. Though the processor is an amazing yet unknown piece of magnificent hardware, the graphic performance is rather disappointing.

With benchmark from Epic Citadel, the app that runs on Unreal Engine, was set to maximum possible resolution and maximum quality . The results that we obtained was that the phone can run up to 24.6 FPS on ultra-high quality, and runs at a steady 53.9 FPS on high quality. Comparing with the LG Nexus 4 which can run 60 FPS even on ultra-high quality, the Scribe HD definitely lost when it comes to graphics.

When it comes to the phone’s battery, a 2500mAh battery is built in to this phone. The back cover is not removable, so the battery isn’t interchangeable too, though I see no reason at all about why you’d want to change the battery. I used the phone outdoors on 3G with auto brightness, surfed the net and Facebook/WhatsApp a lot yet this is the battery life for that day. Don’t question the time I sleep though.

I tried finishing the battery by using Google My Tracks to track my entire journey back to Ipoh while constantly using WhatsApp and also Facebook and its messenger while surfing the net. With all these tasks juggled together for about 3 and a half hours, squeezing out 50% of the battery is extremely difficult.

As for heat, the Scribe HD cannot get as hot as the Nexus 4 can, though warmth can be felt throughout the phone, unlike the Nexus 4 where all the heat is centered around the earpiece area.

Also, there are no hardware or capacitive keys, all are softkeys on screen, just like the Nexus 4.

Screen

The Alcatel One Touch Scribe HD came with a 5-inch IPS LCD screen with a 720×1280 resolution which really does bring out the beauty of the images through vivid colours and wide viewing angles. Though the phone screen is also bright, I found out that the auto brightness sometimes fluctuates between a very low and a very high brightness level under direct sunlight.

Audio

The phone has a pretty large area for the loudspeakers at the back of the phone which surely doesn’t disappoint, and the position is also excellent so that the speaker is not blocked while holding the phone. The speakers are also loud, crisp and by default having a speaker quality much better than the Nexus 4 can offer.

By using the earphones that came with the phone, sound quality is also amazing, with high pitch and low bass being produced very decently, though comes with only one fixed earbud size. Going into audio settings, there is an option called BesAudEnh, which I think meant Bass Audio Enhance, works as an audio enhancer for auxiliary output, but actually reduces the sound quality of the stock earphones.

Call quality on the phone is as excellent as ever, so for those who actually still use their phones to call other people, fear not!

The problem I had with the audio however, is that the volume will sometimes spike up to the maximum volume for a few seconds, and then drop back to the level that it was in before. This happens to everything that dealt with audio, even SwiftKey’s keyboard strokes. The other problem is the haptic feedback sound that it makes. That sound it makes doesn’t match any of the volume of the phone – be it system, notification, call, or media. It’s actually playing at maximum volume each time, which I find it absolutely annoying for something so crucial.

Camera

The camera, also known as The Great Protrusion, has a barely acceptable quality on both audio and video. An 8MP camera with a bright LED flight directly below it, the camera performs horribly on room-lit conditions. The viewfinder is laggy with the sudden and drastic drop of FPS but pictures are taken in an acceptable level, with an adequate amount of noise.

Even so, the camera has HDR feature and Beauty Shot, both playing the game of exposure. HDR evens out the lighting of the entire picture, whereas Beauty Shot takes picture of faces in a higher exposure, making the picture brighter.

On video however, it records a weird 1920×1088 pixel, with the entire video being darkened and saved only in 3GP format. Wasn’t that format more than 10 years ago? Quality is horrible but it has continuous focus on video mode, with the touch-to-take-photo feature along with it too.

Nothing much disappoints or impresses when it comes to the camera of this phone, yet another thing to point out is that the camera can take close-ups rather decently.

Software

Then here comes the software. The Scribe HD comes along with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean, so you can expect all the Jelly-Beany goodness that comes along with it. Google Now, the two-finger notification swipe to get the quick settings panel, the expandable notifications are all included in the Scribe HD, even with custom quick settings panel too.

This certainly is not a Nexus device, but it is kept as close to the Nexus experience as possible with the home launcher entirely the same as vanilla Android, but only with custom icons for apps and also custom skins for widgets along. Google Now is included, but however it keeps on crashing when upgraded to the latest version, rendering it unusable unless you revert back to the factory version.

Since this is a dual-SIM phone, there is also a SIM-manager app that allows user to control the SIM card usages, like which SIM card to have its mobile data used and such.

As smart as Alcatel is, they even included a bunch of utilities and shortcuts in the phone right on the app drawer for instant navigation, such as :

• Torch light with variable brightness
• File Manager
• FM radio
• WiFi
• Wireless keyboard (Bluetooth)
• Wireless Display
• System Updates
• Tethering
• To-Do
• Weather

One thing I’m quite confused is that they renamed Clock app to Time – it took me some time to find it out before I can set my alarm on this phone. The Time app does support multiple clocks, with a custom clock widget called World Clock. It also has a custom music player app that has a shake-to-skip-song feature.

Of course no phone non-Google phones are complete without some extra apps from the manufacturer itself, and Alcatel is no exception. Given a slew of custom apps by Alcatel, it is amazingly not implemented to the ROM itself, they can be uninstalled without any trouble at all! This is great since the Scribe HD only gives 4GB of internal memory.

Of some of the custom apps given and what they do are :

• Cloud Backup – backs up entire phone, including non-synced apps & data, bookmarks, calendars, call log, photos captured and downloaded, system settings and videos. Can be scheduled, and backed up to Box.net, Dropbox or the internal memory.
• Cell Broadcast – I never got to try this one out, but it looks like a distress caller
• Media Share – send things over WiFi
• One Touch Radio – built-in online radio app
• Scribe Calculator – a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interactive calculator
• Scribe Note – note-taking app, good word recognition

Other features included in the phone is audio profiles found in the old Nokia feature phones, mainly General, Silent, Vibrate and Meeting. You can customize each and every profile to have a different ringtone, just like old times. There is also a power on/off scheduler for the phone which turns the phone on and off according to the time you want.

Check out the gallery of screenshots of the custom apps and added features below!

Hackability

This is one thing that I will stress on, particularly to get the most out of your money through custom firmware with multiple tweaks to gets the most bells and whistles. As of today though, there are currently no custom ROMs or rooting options, so you only get what you pay for, nothing more.

Price

What review is complete without mentioning the details of the price of the device? As the device is currently not available in the market yet, the recommended retail price from Alcatel One Touch themselves is tagged at RM 1,399 only. For this low price, you get a quad-core processor for that! Price is not so much of a winning factor when you compare this with the LG Nexus 4, since the Nexus 4’s goes for a recommended retail price of RM 1,650 only, yet it performs a lot better and gets update directly from Google.

Conclusion

This phone is certainly a decent phone. I can’t say it’s amazing, it surely has its downfalls in the most basic functionality. There is also another problem where I found out that the WiFi disconnects frequently and the phone can’t connect to a slower WiFi (I tried on Unifi and StreamyX 1MB/s), but the phone battery is amazing!

The pros and cons of the phone are as listed below :

• Advantages
  • Bright, saturated IPS LCD screen
  • Haptic and tactile feedbacks are great
  • Audio quality is decent
  • Has FM radio
  • Scribe Calculator ensures speediness
  • Battery life is superior
  • Great price
  • Snappy non-graphic-intensive performance
• Disadvantages
  • Volume fluctuation
  • Selective WiFi connection
  • Latest version of Google Now doesn’t work
  • Micro USB port is blocked by the magnetic flip case
  • Camera protrusion is too extreme

All in all, I would give this phone a 8/10.

A phone with an okay design, a low price with great battery. Though with its troubles, Alcatel One Touch Scribe HD is promised to have a Android 4.2.2 update that I hope will fix all the software problems encountered as per this review. The shortcuts and utilities are redundant but useful when you start to get a hang of it. Custom tiles at the quick settings panel surely is useful with the 3G toggle, audio profiles and also data usage there.

For only a price of RM1,399, I actually think that this phone is worth the price. A 8/10 for the Scribe HD, this phone is definitely recommended for anyone who’s looking for a budget mid-end Android smartphone.

Thanks Alcatel One Touch Malaysia for giving us this chance!

As Google I/O this year skipped out entirely on the Android OS, it is however not entire neglected actually. The much rumoured white Nexus 4 had been tipped since a long time ago, but there wasn’t any progress until recently where more shots of the white version leaked to the Internet.

Even for a white version, the front remains exactly the same with its entirely black slab-like design, with only the sides and the back changed to a flush white colour. An interesting point is that they actually kept the Nexus 4 shiny speckle rear design on the white version as well, though it does get scratched very easily.

With the next iteration of Android coming closer day by day, the release date is still unknown and we barely know any hints of what are the things improved. Rumoured to be released at mid June, the white Nexus 4 is reportedly to be running Android 4.3, though we don’t know if there are any hardware changes just yet.

Time will tell what the next version of Android holds, and what exactly is the white Nexus 4.

Via : PocketNow

Logitech surely doesn’t rest when it comes to new products, innovation and production. On the 22nd of May 2013, they announced a total of 8 products – six redesigned mice and keyboard and two headsets.

As Logitech says, the new Logitech G line of accessories proves science wins by firstly having the Logitech G100s and G400s optical gaming mouse having the exclusive Delta Zero sensor technology made for high-accuracy cursor control, so that you can headshot your enemies without breaking a sweat.

Of the 8 products that are announced are :

• Mouse
  • G700s rechargeable gaming mouse, comes with 13 programmable keys – RM299.00
  • G500s laser gaming mouse, customizable weight – RM219.00
  • G400s optical gaming mouse, switch between 4000 DPI and 400 DPI – RM149.00
  • G100s optical gaming mouse, durable finger-resistant coating with ambidextrous design – RM79.00
• Keyboard
  • G19s gaming keyboard, 36 programmable keys, GamePanel LCD, anti-ghosting, two USB 2.0 ports – RM699.00
  • G510s gaming keyboard, 18 programmable keys, custom-colour backlighting with GamePanel LCD – RM439.00
• Headset
  • G430 surround sound gaming headset, 360-degree sound field, comes with Dolby Headphone 7.1 surround, noise cancellation and washable ear cups, foldable microphone – RM299.00
  • G230 stereo gaming headset, 40mm neodymium drivers, foldable noise cancelling folding microphone – RM229.00

As for the 8 products above, all are expected to be available in Malaysia by the end of May 2013 – that’s only in about a few days more!

For more information do check out Logitech’s website and also Logitech Malaysia’s Facebook page for any inquiries!

Also, check out the gallery for the products above!

Truth to be told, it’s not really “full screen” either, just a few new lines of codes to make the navigation bar at the top disappear as you’re scrolling down.
Another minor feature is that the omnibar got a few tweaks to have shortcuts to search the page for the text you want, basically it’s CTRL + F.

There are also stability improvements as Google seeks for perfection, and also adds drop down menu for tablet mode to display the web page history.

Download and checkout the download at the Google Play Store now!

Much has happened to HTC in the past months – HTC’s CEO, Peter Chou, signed his resignation with the One being the First. Now, HTC’s future is quite gloomy already, but recently, a large number of employees are handing over their resignation letters.

As HTC’s Chief Product Officer, Koudi Kodera, had left last week. He is responsible for all the product strategy of HTC. Jason Gordon, who is the vice president of HTC for global communications had also handed his resignation. Even so, Rebecca Rowland, global retail marketing manager, and John Starkweather, director of digital marketing, and even Eric Lin, product strategy manager.

These are only the main employees who resigned that will show a large impact on HTC itself, as there are also other employees that resigned. Well, given such a number of turnovers, can HTC rise up again in such position?

Eric Lin also tweeted at his Twitter saying :

They are, however, in an “utter freefall”, as an unidentified source told The Verge that anyone who heard of HTC in Seattle is boycotting them entirely.

The HTC First Facebook phone also played a role in HTC’s freefall, as a source also said that the Facebook phone is “a disaster”. We’ are all well aware of how horrible the Facebook Home is, don’t you think?

The beautiful HTC One with precise engineering and design also faced a major thread as the Samsung Galaxy S IV summoned a big, dark cloud to rain over HTC’s parade as One was gloomed by supply shortages for its Ultrapixel camera sensor. It wasn’t the perfect time that HTC chose, but the shortages made the time even worse, day by day.

As HTC is now doomed, CEO Peter Chou is now in the peak of his stress level. How can HTC be saved now?

Via : The Verge

Microsoft has done it again. Reinventing interactive entertainment, again! The new Xbox One will be your TV’s new best friend. With voice identification and recognition, you could just say “Xbox on” and it will automatically log into your account while booting up. The device focuses in being the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system. This time, every Xbox One will be shipped with it’s own next generation Kinect.

TV Entertainment Integration

The Xbox will intergrated with your everyday TV lifestyle. By saying “Xbox, watch TV”, it will launch you into a live television feed. The amazing part is how it transitions between TV, games, browser and other apps just by saying “Xbox, go to” and you can continue just by saying “Go to”. By the look of the demo, the transition was lightning fast and seamless.

The new software is equipped with something similar to the Windows 8′s snap mechanism where you can run two app at on the same screen. For example, you are watching a movie and that girl seems familiar; you can just open IMDB on the side and find out more. Skype is also available where you can snap your caller on the side of the screen without interrupting your gameplay or movie when you answer the call by voice command.

Switching between channels will never be the same again where usually you will have to enter those channel numbers or select them at the TV guide. With the Xbox One, you can just say “Xbox, go to ESPN” or “Xbox, go to SciFi” and it will take you to wherever your heart desires. The popular content section will display all of the trending shows that is on air.

Hardware
The new Xbox is equipped with:

• 8 core CPU
• 8GB Ram
• 500GB HDD
• Blu-ray drive
• 802.11n Wireless with Wi-Fi Direct
• HDMI
• USB 3.0

This means that the Xbox One cannot play old xbox games but hey, what’s so hard to just turn on your Xbox 360? Not like it’s going to stop working suddenly.

Kinect

Kinect was redesigned to respond to you and make the experience more conversational. Motions are picked up at 13 billionths of a second, a two way trip for a photon from the kinect to you and back.

The new Kinect has a 1080p sensor which runs at 30 FPS. It can detect even the finest movement of your wrist, muscle tension and even your heart beat! With the new “time-of-flight” technology, they claim that the Kinect can even work in total darkness.

Xbox live is getting an upgrade from 15,000 servers to 300,000 servers this year. Meaning that you will have access to your movies, music, games and saves anywhere on earth with an internet connection.

I Can See The Future

Xbox One totally blows me away. I can see the future right here, in the making with those amazing gesture controls, natural and accurate voice interaction plus the interactive experience. More will be revealed on E3 next month.

Stay tuned.

A freelance I suppose filmmaker and a doll maker(?) made a fun, short, stop-motion video of amiguruMEI dolls. I think these dolls are custom-made, as there are dolls of characters from Studio Ghibli movies, explicitly Totoro.

Check out the video below, which I think is completely filmed on a HTC One, as you can see the focusing did indeed go off multiple times. I also think that the videographer used burst mode? But some scenes like the staircase rail slide actually had sticky-tacks on them.

Check out the video!

Source : amiguruMEI (YouTube)

Day after day we are getting closer to the dream of the “replicator” as you would see on Star Trek. NASA is now investing in the research of 3D-printed printed food. Mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor received a $125,000 grant to craft a prototype of that ‘dream machine’. This could mean that we could provide food during long space missions and could also solve food shortage and wastage. This software will be open-source.

So far, the concept is to use the basic element of food in a form of power cartridges. By mixing these elements, all kind of food can be replicated by this printer. The printer has successfully printed chocolate and they are going for the pizza next.

The printer will print that layer of dough which will be cooked in the process. Then, mixing tomato powder with water and oil for the sauce. The topping will be some kind of a protein layer. If the pizza works, then this printer could ultimately change the economy(maybe?) as lazy people will buy cartridges instead of groceries!

-Via The Verge

Definitely shocking news for everyone in the world. Tumblr, being a famous blog-post resharing site is acquired by Yahoo!, as the board approves the acquisition – $1.1 billion in cash! That amount of money is equivalent to RM3.32 billion.

Imagine that large of an amount being passed from your hands to another, all in one go. by a snap of a finger or a glace of an eye.

Yahoo!, being the main competitor of Google in the early days of the Internet has now gone through survival through their news, finance and many more, and they’re now no longer waiting to rise up again.

Tumblr on the other hand, has a large user base on sharing many pseudo-inspirational quotes, memes and even some funny random things from the Internet, are mostly of the bored or working lifestyle who seek to blog in a very short, maybe graphically like This Advertising Life. Shortly speaking, it’s something like a in-between of Twitter and Blogger/Wordpress.

With these two combined, who knows what they are going to bring to the world?

Via : The Verge

When Babel first got it rumours out and about in the Internet, there was a few services by Google that was doomed – Google+ Hangout and also Google Talk. Babel was a hot topic before it came out, but the heat seem to have cooled down now since that everyone can get their hands on it and try it for themselves. However there is one question – how does it fare against its competitors?

For me, Hangouts is the direct answer to cross-platform online instant messaging service, or should I say the BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp, LINE and ChatON field. Isn’t that what Google Talk is for? Yes – it was. The new Hangouts is made to replace Google Talk and does more than what Talk did, by integrating Google+ Hangout into it. Of course it seems gimmicky by integrating two services into one and added an “s” at the back of Hangout to make it completely “new”.

Looking into it, Hangouts is supported over 3 major platforms – your computer, Android and Apple. As Google’ always likes it, they kept it simple by making everything work with the least hassle :

• Computer gets to run Hangouts on Gmail itself – like Google Talk did
• Android and iOS needs to download an app
• Chrome browser can download a new extension to run Hangouts on desktop

Mobile version
Since I have a Nexus 4, why not try it? I’m running on Paranoid Android on Phablet UI, so I even get to see the magnificent tablet UI on my phone.

An amazing interface where I can really tell who is seeing, who is online and who read the messages – even the their progress to which message they have seen.

What’s an instant messenger these days if you can’t send out pictures right? The new interface lets you see your picture while you type your caption for it, much like what Facebook’s Messenger offers.

Google+ had their own theme of emoticons already, so why not Hangouts? With Emoji integrated into it, there are more than a few hundred of emoticons of your liking to be chosen from.

Computer version
Firstly as the topic of this post said, you can now have a video chat with up to 10 friends. I found this out on their Gmail version, which I am going to talk about first.

Nothing much to say here actually – it’s same as Google Talk on Gmail as before, just a slight facelift on the interface and changed the logo.

On the Chrome version however, things are different. It works like the Facebook’s desktop version for Messenger, but it looks entirely different.

The contact list and messages pops up just like how the Facebook’s chat on its website does – everything is biased on the bottom right corner, though Hangouts gives you an option to minimize the entire popup to a seamless pixel bar, then peeks out as you hover your mouse over, and pops out when you click on it.

Being able to be so subtle is a plus for Google, with its new notification syncing – which means your notification muting works across all devices together. Getting people to chat is dead simple, you can select a few contacts, or the entire circle, then start by engaging a message or jump straight to a video chat.

A few of the options given across all platforms are snoozing notifications for some periods of time, block people and check out who requested a Hangout with you.

Being a mobile instant messenger itself, it integrates the best of Skype and WhatsApp together in a seamless way, yet it works across all 3 major platforms. Amazingly, it doesn’t show any signs of delay or lag. The response between devices and their servers work seamlessly and quick – almost instant!

But then again – what is the future of Hangouts? I think that this might very well be the real threat to WhatsApp. Hangouts is totally free – all you need is a Google+ account set up, whereas WhatsApp requires a $0.99 fee after the first 9 months of usage.

I do think that Google will finally get the chance to compete among the giants of mobile instant messaging as Talk was rubbish.

What do you think about Google Hangouts? Liking it? Encountered troubles? Let us know!