Design and Hardware

The OnePlus Pad 2 is technically the third tablet to come out of the OnePlus design studio, they had the original pad that launched around the same sort of time last year and then came the Pad Go which I reviewed on the site right here. What OnePlus has done here is to take what they learned from feedback on both of these devices and then build it into the new Pad 2 as a result we do have some notable changes to the hardware

I have already covered the hardware in an unboxing video which can be found just below or if you want to read the article then take some time to do so now.

I was very impressed with the hardware of the Pad 2 but I want to just focus on a few of the significant parts that lept out at me. In addition I will also be looking at some of the optional extras that I was lucky enough to be provided with as this unit was given to me very kindly by OnePlus for review.

(Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own and have not been influenced by OnePlus who will not be given a preview of this review before it’s published. I have not been paid for this review, however, the items in the review have been provided at no cost to me.)

First things first is the size of the Pad 2, it has grown slightly from an 11″ screen to a 12.1″ screen now and this comes with some benefits to the rest of the design. By having a slightly bigger screen size the Pad 2 can now fit a massive battery (9150mAH) and it can also accommodate a better cooling system which in turn means a more powerful chipset. The size increase does of course have some downsides too though. It now has a bigger footprint than the previous design and this can be shown here by comparing this to the smaller Pad Go. The pad is also slightly thicker than the Pad Go and it is also a tad heavier as well. None of these aspects are really issues for me as I find that the size is a great size for a tablet and it is really nice to use for both work and play.

Coming onto play the next thing I want to highlight is the display on the Pad 2 as this is a great display as I mentioned above it is 12.1″ diagonal but it has an aspect ratio of 7:5 which makes it great for content viewing. It is also sporting a resolution of 3000 by 2120 with a PPI of 303. The panel will output anywhere between 30Hz and all the way up to 144Hz with various stops in between. It will also offer up to 900nits HBM but in normal conditions will go up to 600nits. All of this comes from an LCD panel which OnePlus is calling a Readfit display. Now I don’t want to gloss over the LED display part here as I was actually genuinely surprised that the panel was LCD after I got my first look at it. Had I not been told by the rep from OnePlus I would have assumed that this was an OLED display. It is a great display and one I have enjoyed using to consume content a lot I have also really enjoyed working on this display as well it is clear and vivid and the aspect ratio is really conducive to multitasking but more on that later…

Next up is the sound stage provided by the Pad 2. This is very good and more than enough for watching movies, YouTube and listening to music. The Pad 2 packs in six speakers to give a great range of sound and as the tablet is not a bit wider we get great distance between the individual drivers so we are able to get more of a stereo effect. In addition to the speakers’ physical setup, OnePlus has also sprinkled in some magic in the form of OReality Audio. This is the company’s take on what Dolby has been doing for years and offers you some preset sound settings some of which can be customised.

I have been using the Music mode whilst I am writing this review on the tablet now and I have been quite happy with my tunes blasting out. That being said you cannot always use your device with the speakers blaring out for everyone to hear or endure! This brings another nice feature that we are now seeing across OnePlus’s portfolio which is of course Spatial audio on Bluetooth headphones. Thankfully I have a pair of OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro which I have been able to use alongside the Pad2 and this creates a great audio experience when you use an app that supports this feature. I have used this setup on Disney+ whilst on an overnight trip and it was great.

That about sums up the key external point of design and hardware that I wanted to highlight. However, as suggested above there is a lot more going on inside the OnePlus Pad 2!

So the first internal feature I want to talk about is the chipset. OnePlus has been able to cram a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SOC into the Pad 2, bringing a lot of power to the table. I am not going to go into the performance of the chip as I don’t do benchmarking here, what I will say is that I have used a few devices with the 8 Gen 3 chipset and this is by far the biggest to date. This is relevant as the inbuilt graphic has to drive a bigger display than on a phone. the good news is that the Adreno 750 GPU is more than capable of the task and provides crystal-clear images regardless of what you are trying to do. I have already mentioned it is great for watching movies and videos. It is also a great platform for some light gaming, while handheld but it comes into its own when used with a controller setup like shown below.

The next bit I want to cover is the battery. As I have already mentioned the battery has a little bit more space due to the bigger chassis however it has not increased in size over the original Oneplus Pad. The battery is still a 9150mAh size and will charge at up to 67W when using a SuperVooc charger from OnePlus. I don’t have the appropriately sized SupperVooc charger to test the charging speed but I have been using a GAN charger and the Pad 2 will charge very fast allowing me to get from 0 to 100% in just under 1hr 30 mins. If using a OnePlus charging brick then the officially measured time is 81 minutes according to their own internal testing.

While this isn’t an amazing step up from the OG Pad it is nice to see that it hasn’t gone down and that the charging speed remains consistent. I am also really happy that you can leave this device to sleep for a really long time and pick it up again knowing that you should have some power left. This was one of the features I liked about the Pad Go in my review. Also of note is that there is no significant heat build-up within the tablet when it’s charging. The one thing that I would like to pick fault with is the location of the charging port. While having it mounted on the die is not by any means the worst place it does mean that handheld gaming is not really a viable option when charging. This must have been a designer-based decision for the inclusion of the optional keyboard accessory. It is not a bad thing but just something I would like to mention.

The next thing and indeed the last is the build quality of the tablet. The Pad 2 is built very well with no indication of torsional twisting or flexing when it is held in one hand. The rounded-off edges of the case make it a joy to hold. the texture of the Aluminium body is grippy and not an absolute fingerprint magnet either. Whilst the bezels on the front are larger than some people would like they are useful being that size as it stops accidental screen touches when you are holding it.

If I had one complaint, I would have to say that this is not a light tablet especially when you include the optional accessories. The tablet feels very similar in weight to my Macbook Air Pro when I am carrying it around. Its bare weight is 584g but once you add the Smart keyboard case then you are including another 800g. Include the Stylo 2 at a tiny 1 gram and you are carrying a total of 1.385 kg, my MacBook Pro weighs in at 1.6kg. Dont get me wrong I like the reassuring heft to it but this is worth bearing in mind for those looking to purchase.

So that brings me nicely onto the optional accessories that can be purchased (or can be free depending on offers). First up and I think this one is an essential extra, is the Smart Keyboard case. This is a two-in-one affair and it allows for the tablet to be used as a laptop replacement to a degree. it comes in two parts the first is the keyboard itself which is one of the best typing experiences I have had on a tablet keyboard case. the keys are well spaced and they have a solid feel to them. They have just enough travel to keep most people happy. It is a relatively standard layout but it now has an extra row that has been added to the top in the form of shortcut keys. this was not present in the previous version. the actual keyboard base is solid as well and this can be used with relative ease when on the lap. However, that is not the only way it can be used, as inside the Smart Keyboard is a hidden battery and some Bluetooth connectivity. This means that you can also use this as a removable keyboard separate from the tablet. So if you are on a Plane, train or automobile and you need to get some work done then you can remove the keyboard from the tablet and then have just the keyboard on your lap and the tablet screen positioned somewhere else. This is very convenient when I have been writing this review as I have been doing the majority of this on the Pad 2 itself, in either my office or my recliner in my lounge. In the latter setup, I will have the screen on a separate piece of furniture and the keyboard on my lap as this is the most comfortable position for me to use it.

Another thing that has grown from the previous folio-style keyboard is the trackpad. This is now a massive 8640mm surface area which is a significant increase in size. It is bigger than my Pixel Fold in its folded state! Now if I am being entirely honest, I had some issues with the trackpad on my device. So much so that it required a new one to be sent from OnePlus, for some reason on the first trackpad, I got there was no discernable click from the trackpad and this created all sorts of problems effectively rendering it useless.

Fortunately, after some email exchanges with OnePlus Tech support, I was sent a replacement unit and the issue was solved. I have asked some other reviewers who received their devices at the same time as me and they have had no similar issues so it may have just been a glitch on mine. As you would expect you can use the trackpad for all the normal gestures and swipes that you would expect and it does have a nice feel and responsive click to it. It also does not get in the way too much when I have been typing and I haven’t had issues with accidental presses with my palm.

There is another feature on the keyboard which the eagle-eyed would have seen from the pictures. In the bottom right-hand corner, there is an NFC logo. This is to indicate the position where you can hold your OnePlus phone to initiate a wireless connection between the Pad2 and the Phone allowing you to screen share your phone and also take control of the phone on the Pad 2. It also allows you to access content from the phone’s storage and shares the Mobile data connection. I will cover this a bit more in the software section of the review as it is mostly software-based.

I mentioned that the Smart Keyboard was a 2 in 1 accessory. This is because the standing element of the keyboard is a completely separate component to the keyboard. The stand is a panel that has a central hinge going across it at the halfway point. This hinge will allow you to fold the backplate into various different positions.

The top half of the panel contains several magnets that align with magnets in the back of the Pad 2. This is how the back panel attaches and also how the panel supports the weight of the tablet. This setup allows for a large range of angles to be achieved when you are using the stand and the keyboard together. I have found that you can have the set-up as shown in the image below and this is the most conducive for typing and still being able to use the last accessory the Stylo 2.

The Stylo 2 is OnePlus’s take on a Stylus for its tablet lineup. As far as I am aware it will only work on Pad 2 as there was a different Stylo for the original Pad. The Stylo 2 will not work on the OnePlus Open internal display as far as I have been advised. I have not had the chance to test this so your mileage may vary. The Stylo 2 has got an internal battery that will recharge wirelessly when you “dock” the Stylo 2 on the top right-hand edge of the screen.
The Stylo 2 will also detect up to 16,000 levels of pressure to allow you to get the pressure of the screen just right when drawing and writing. When writing the Stylo 2 will vibrate ever so slightly to recreate the feel of using a pencil on paper. It can also be used as a laser pointer when being used in conjunction with a presentation. For the most part I have been using the Stylo 2 as a mouse-style device as I find that I can get a slightly higher level of accuracy with it.

I have tried to do some drawing with it but I am by no means an artist so I decided to skip this test. One thing I did like is that I was able to use the Stylo to take notes with the screen off. previously this has been something I have only found on Samsung kit so it is a nice feature to see here. How much I would use this in my day-to-day life is still up for debate.

Normally I would now go into the camera section of a review but, I am not going to give it much time here as let’s be honest no one will use the camera for taking photos as you don’t want to be that person.

The rear camera is a 13MP sensor which will record video at up to 4K at 30fps. It also has EIS on board as well if you really want to use it for photos/video when moving. Here are some pictures from the rear camera for your viewing pleasure.

Not too shabby I am sure you would agree but not something I would use to capture photos with unless I had no other option.

What is more important and will be vastly more useful is the front-facing camera which is an 8MP sensor that will record at up to 1080p 30fps and also includes EIS. The front camera is also used for Face Unlock but this is just regular 2D Face Unlock not the depth-sensing 3D version. This does mean that it doesn’t pick up a lot of the time which is a bit annoying. Facial recognition is the only biometric unlock option here as there is no fingerprint sensor. I do feel that this is a bit of a miss but for most people, it won’t bother them.

I also included a few images from the front camera as well as a quick video clip to show what video calls would be like.

Really if you want to get photos onto your pad 2 the best way is to take them on another device and then transfer them either through the OneTouch Transmission option (taping the NFC point on the keyboard if you have it) or using nearby share.

Now moving to the software lets see what makes Pad 2 tick under the shiny hardware skin.

Software

The software is very what we have to come to know from OnePlus. We have got Android 14 on board with Oxygen OS 14.1 UI over the top. As far as UI’s go this is one of the better ones especially as OnePlus has brought the excellent Open Canvas elements across from the OnePlus Open.

Open Canvas makes multitasking on a large-scale device like a foldable or a tablet a much more fluid and enjoyable experience. It allows you to expand the useable desktop space virtually by having windows that can be slid out of sight until needed. It also supports the normal Split screen functions that you would expect but has the added benefit of having up to 3 active apps at any one time.

I have included a few screenshots below so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

As you can see you can have the apps appear as 3 normal size apps side by side and you can switch between them as above. Pinching in with 4 fingers on the screen will give you an overview mode as well.

Or you can have one full-screen app with the others sitting just below the main app but still easily accessible.

What I found really cool is that if you are using something like YouTube then it will continue playback while you can be using another app. The only time I couldn’t get this to work was when I had two apps trying to play media at the same time which is understandable. i have found this really useful whilst writing this review as it has allowed me to have the OnePlus page open for reference and the WordPress app running alongside it in addition to having my Gmail app open as well. You can also fully interact with the apps even when they are in the overview view which is awesome to see.

Here is a quick screen recording of the app switching in action.

Pretty sweet I think.

However, there are other quite cool software tricks in the OnePlus Pad 2, I am of course talking about the previously mentioned OneTouch Transmission function. This allows you to use the NFC on the Smart Keyboard to initiate a screen-sharing mode on the Pad 2 with a compatible OnePlus Phone. However, screen sharing is just one fo the things that it can do. Once the process has started and the phone is being displayed on your Pad 2 you can then use the Pad 2 to control every aspect of your phone in a window. You can use this “phone ” to interact with any of your apps and even use it to make calls and share the data connection with the Pad 2. I’ll be honest this last one I was never able to get to work probably due to an error on my part but the functionality is there. I was however able to use it to transfer files from the phone to the tablet which was extremely useful during the course of this review.

I am sure this can also be done without the use of the Smart Keyboard but it is not going to be as smooth an operation as it would be just tapping the NFC point on the keyboard to initiate it.

Here is what the Phone looks like when shared with the Pad 2.

Other than these two features you have got a fairly regular Android 14 tablet and all the goodness that comes from that along with the weaknesses. Android as an OS has never fully embraced the tablet form factor as much as the likes of iPadOS which is a shame as there are some very good tablets on the market now including this one. if Google is serious about large format devices and making Android into a multiplatform OS then they need to get more apps designed with Tablets in mind. There are still too many apps that just scale up to be a big phone UI on a tablet which gives the user a poor experience. being an Androdi tablet user for many years and now a foldable user I have learned to live with these issues but it is not enticing for newcomers.

There is however one major omission from the OnePlus Pad 2 software suite and this is a “desktop mode”. We have seen the likes of Honor, Samsung and Huawei (even after the Google Mobile Services ban) implement their own version of a desktop mode for use when you have a keyboard connected to your tablet and it can make things a lot more useable for power users. Again I have learned how to navigate around the pitfalls of Android on Tablets and things like Open Canvas certainly go a long way to help with this but the key phrase in that sentence is “learned”. A new user shouldn’t have to learn how to do these things it should be intuitive. The Chromebook experience can run on the same processor as the ones we have on tablets and it would be awesome to see this being implemented on tablets that have the powerful enough chipsets to do it. The OnePlus Pad 2 is certainly one of these devices. However, I have gone a bit off-topic, back to what we do have today.

The use of AI in the software is not something that has been missed by the Pad 2 and it is as present here as it was on the Oneplus Nord 4 that I recently reviewed. You have got the same SmartSidebar as found on the phone and this allows quick access to tools depending on what app you are in and also to multitasking. AI Eraser is present in the Photos App and is effective at doing so.

You also have AI doing its thing in the Notes app where it will allow you to carry out a voice recording whilst the Pad2 will transcribe what is said into Notes for you to use later as required. Currently, this is limited to English and Chinese only. there are more AI features to come in the form of AI Toolbox in Q4. How much of this will be used in the day-to-day I can’t be sure but at least we know it is already here or coming soon. Before we leave AI though I am sad to see that OnePlus has not embraced what Google has made available in the form of Circle to Search and Googles other goodies like Live Translate and Generative Wallpapers or example. to be fair a lot of Googles new AI features are limited to Samsung and Pixel devices at the time of writing so it is not surprising that we have not seen them on a OnePlus device yet.

Overall despite my early rant about the state of Android on tablets (which to be fair is not the fault of OEM’s like Oneplus), I am very happy with the software that I am presented with on the OnePlus pad2 and it has been a joy to use it for the past few months.
Conclusion

So it has come to the time where I need to gather my thoughts and try to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this review. IS the OnePlus Pad 2 a suitable laptop replacement?
Quick answer No it is not.
Long answer yes but with caveats and a learning time.

I dont think that the OnePlus Pad 2 can replace your laptop outright for all your needs especially if you use any pro tools at all. But then the same can be said of things like Chromebooks, or the latest laptops to feature Snapdragon chipsets in them. If you are not someone who needs programs (I deliberately called them that) and can make do with Apps then the OnePlus Pad 2 may work for you just as well as some of the lighter computing alternatives i.e. Chromebooks. I have been able to get a lot of the reviews for both the Pad 2 and the Nord 4 written on the Pad 2. It has been my lighter-weight travelling computer when I have been away from home and I have even used it for a bit of gaming on the side. The OnePlus pad2 is a powerful and productive mobile computer that could potentially fill the needs of a lot of people over a laptop and it is also a significantly cheaper cost.

However with all that being said, there is another threat looming for tablets and that is the emerging foldable market for me that is where I will be planting my flag into moving forward as it gives me my dream two-in-one device which ticks the vast majority of the boxes for what a tablet used to do especially as I lent towards the smaller tablet like the Nexus 7 and the iPad Mini, My Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the same size as these when unfolded and is a phone size when folded.

It is incredibly expensive though and if money is an important factor then a separate tablet like the OnePlus Pad 2 and high-end mid-ranger like the excellent OnePlus Nord 4 would be worth looking into.

Just remember that this combination even with the accessories is less than the cost of a folding phone and some may say more practical…..

Check out the OnePlus Pad 2 on the OnePlus website now for the latest offers

The post OnePlus Pad 2 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The first is the unboxing of the OnePlus Pad 2 along with the OnePlus Smart Keyboard and the OnePlus Stylo 2.

This is the successor to the OnePlus Pad which came out last year and at the time of writing is the most powerful Android tablet on the market with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip powering it. Alongside this chip we have got 256 GB of Storage and 12 GB of RAM.

It has a very crisp and vibrant screen with 3K resolution from a 12.1″ diagonal LCD panel that is capable of up to 900 nits in brightness. The tablet follows a similar design to last years however now comes in a more toned down Slate gray colour way. We still have the centrally mounted 13 MP rear camera when the device is being held in landscape. This is very much the way the tablet is designed to be used which is also reinforced by the fact that the front facing 8MP camera is situated in the middle of the top edge of the device.

The OnePlus Smart keyboard is significantly different in design to the previous gen as it now has an extra row of tools along the top room of the keyboard and it has a bigger track pad area. One other major improvement is the fact that you can use the keyboard when it is not physically connected to the device via a Bluetooth connection. This is very useful as you can set the tablet up in a standing position using the magnetically attached back stand, which can fold to a variety of angles from near vertical to almost flat allowing a good range of adjustability. I am actually using the Smart Keyboard to write this article whilst on holiday in Rhodes! This combination of the OnePlus Smart Keyboard and the powerful Pad 2 does make it possible for this to be the “laptop replacement for mobile work” that I have been looking for since I had to give up Xperia Z4 Tablet many years ago due to it no longer being supported by updates.

The last piece of the tablet based kit is the OnePlus Stylo 2, which as the name suggests is the stylus based input for the Pad 2 and it is very good from the limited use I have given it so far. I have found that the accuracy of the pen on the screen is very good and when I have used it for writing notes the tracking works very well with the accompaniment of some audible feedback that makes it sound like you are writing on paper. There is also just enough resistance on the display so that it feels like you are getting some feedback. The Stylo 2 is capable of detecting up to 16000 levels of pressure which is more than I could ever discern!

All of this makes for a really easy to use mobile workstation, there are of course limitations but I will cover this more in the full review as for now this is merely a first impressions post.
OnePlus Watch 2R and the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro.

Next up we have got the OnePlus Watch 2R and the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro.

This video is a combo of the two in one as they are accessories but they do deserve some airtime in their own right.

OnePlus Watch 2R

This is the update to the extremely well received OnePlus Watch 2 which I previously reviewed for the site and was very impressed with. Again this is not going to be a full review but I have got an unboxing video below for your viewing pleasure.

In the above video I unbox both the Watch 2R and the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro I have been using the Watch 2R as my daily watch since the moment I unboxed it and as I mentioned above I am currently on Holiday in Rhodes and this has been performing extremely well during this time. I have been putting it through its paces and testing the water resistance which has been awesome. I have not been particularly kind to the watch as I have been using it in the sea and in swimming pools and it has barely skipped a beat.

I have still got some further testing to do before I form my final review thoughts. I will try and test it up against my Garmin Epix 2 that I have been driving daily for the past month or so. This will give me a true idea of its accuracy in terms of health metrics but so far I have been very impressed with the overall package.

Next up and last but by no means least are the new OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro

OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro

These have been in use a lot since I received them as they have been my headphones of choice for my trip.

They are comfortable and provide very good and adequate noise cancellation and can wear them for a sustained period of time which makes them amazing for traveling.

Yes they are a bit more basic in terms of functionality than the Google Pixel Buds Pro that I normally rely on exclusively but it is entirely possible that these may end up being my go to earphones for the future.

iF you want to find about any more about any of the specs or prices for the above products then please check out the OnePlus website.

I have included a gallery of some other pictures of the devices below if you want a closer look at them.

OnePlus Pad 2

OnePlus Watch 2R

OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro

The post OnePlus Summer Launch – Unboxing extravaganza is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Design

As always with a device tour we will start on the top edge of the device and to avoid confusion I am going to be  orienting the tablet in landscape mode as that is what is suggested as its normal use mode by the camera positioning.

This is where we can find the volume up and down buttons on the far left edge the next noticeable thing is the pinhole microphone that will be brought into function when the front camera is being used. on either end of the top edge, there are two antenna bands for the inbuilt connections.

Moving around to the right-hand side we will then find that there are two of the 4  speakers, nestling inside these you will find another pinhole microphone next to the USB type C port. This port does not support Display Out, unfortunately, but given the price point and target demographic, this is hardly surprising.

Moving around to the bottom of the tablet there is nothing to see here which makes holding the device in the landscape orientation comfortable.

Continuing to the right-hand side we can see that we have got the other two speakers but this time they are flanking a Nano SIM/microSD card slot. This allows the tablet to support LTE bands for full;l phone and data duties if you wish to use it as a phone! You can also expand the storage by up to 1TB via the Micro SD card slot. You can also find the sleep-wake/power button on this side. This is simply just a button there is no fingerprint reading going on here.

Around the back we have the Camera module that is mounted on the upper third of the device in a shinier section of the back cover, presumable this is where the twin Mint naming comes from. Incidentally, this colour is the only variant you can get in the UK and it matches up with a lot of the other OnePlus devices of late. The camera itself is an 8MP sensor which has EIS and will support 1080P/720P video recording at 30FPS.

Going around the front finally we got the 11.35″2.4K screen which has a pixel density of 260PPI, and a refresh rate of 90Hz. The screen is reasonably bright at 400 nits with a contrast ratio of 1500:1 and a colour gamut of 96% NTSC. As is the case on most devices these days the screen is set up for Eyecare as well meaning that it will automatically adjust in lower light settings to limit Blue light and adjust colour temperatures to suit the available lighting in your viewing environment. It is a TÜV Rheinland Certified Full Care Display. Very good to know especially if this is a purchase being considered for younger users.

Also at the very top of the display is where we find the 8MP front-facing camera.

Thickness comparison with RedMagic 9 Pro gaming phone

Overall I really do like the aesthetics of the design and the way the tablet feels in the hand. it is comfortable to hold due to the 7.5mm bezels surrounding the devices and the 7.:5 aspect ratio of the display means it is not too wide for a 11.35″ screen size. I can find that I can interact with the tablet easily enough but typing is a bit easier using the thumbs when in portrait mod. it is light enough to hold in one hand while poking at the screen with the other hand which is great if you’re doing a quick search for something to watch or listen to. It is also pretty useful for games as well as I found with a quick session of Asphalt 9. As I mentioned earlier the device has a quad-speaker setup which creates a very good sound stage. I was more than happy to have this playing music in the background as I was working on writing this review.

Hardware

The outside may be good to look at but none of that makes any difference unless the internal hardware is any good. thankfully we have got some pretty good-looking kit inside. bear in mind that this is by no means a flagship-grade tablet so the expectations need to be aligned to that. To start with we have got a MediaTek Helio G99 CPU powering the tablet. This is an octa-core CPU built on the 6 NM process it has 2x Arm Cortex-A76 up to 2.2GHz and  6x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0GHz and is paired with an Arm Mali-G57 MC2. We also have 8GB of LPDDR4X and 128b GB of UFS 2.2 storage which will give a reasonably fast read and write speed but is not anything groundbreaking, more than adequate for streaming media and some light gaming. As I mentioned above the device has a SIM card slot and this is down to the CPIU being able to support 4G for both calls and data. Alongside that, you have the usual WIFI 5 and 2.4Ghz available frequencies and Bluetooth 5.2. Lastly, we have got support for GPS (L1), BEIDOU (B1I), GLONASS (G1), GALILEO (E1), and WLAN positioning. All in all, this is some pretty good spec for the price and is comparable with tablets from other players like Honor in the form of the Honor Pad 9u

We also have a standard suite of sensors that you would expect to see in an entry-level tablet; a Geomagnetic sensor, Light sensor, Acceleration sensor, Gyroscope, and Hall sensor.

I am pretty pleased with the hardware and especially happy to see that this device carries a battery with 8000mAh in it that is also capable of charging at 33W SUPERVOOC with the appropriate power supply unit (not included). This will allow for use for at least two days but it also supports a standby time of 514gours according to OnePlus, which works out as just under 21.5 days. This is an important metric for a tablet as you tend not to use it constantly all day long. You will use it for a quick look at something or maybe to catch a TV Show watch a film etc. Having the ability to shut the screen off and then come back to it and still have some charge a few days later is a very useful feature.

The screen is plenty bright enough for use inside but it does struggle when in direct sunlight outside due to that max brightness of 400 nits. however, at this price point, you will struggle to find a much brighter screen. As you would also expect there is a lot of reflection in very bright conditions, however, I have yet to use a tablet that doesn’t suffer from this issue so I can let it slide.

In terms of the hardware that is all I have at the moment for initial first impressions as I need to spend d a bit more time with it but I am impressed with things so far.

As I have only been using the device for a short period I have been unable to draw any conclusions about the software yet but I am happy to say that it all looks pretty good so far. There has been a lot of development on the adaptation of Oxygen Os to accommodate the larger display and the tablet is better for it. I would have appreciated it if the device was running Android 14 but it is currently still on Android, With that being said though the tablet did receive a security update a few days ago bringing it up to March 2024 for security patches which is okay. it will be interesting to see if they can get this more aligned with Android in terms of the OS platform as we are not that far away from Android 15 being launched by Google. I have an older Oneplus Nord CE 3 Lite that is running more up-to-date software than the PadGo so it should be possible for them to push through the update to keep at least near relevance regarding the the core OS.

So for the moment that is all I have got for the OnePlus Pad Go and my brief time with the device.

if you are interested in picking one of them up for yourself or a family member it is definitely worth considering it, especially as at the moment OnePlus is giving a £30 discount on its RRP which is normally £299. You can pick one up from the OnePlus website for £269.00 from this link.

I will continue to run this device and will follow this up with a full review after a bit more time with the device during which I will be trying to use it for some gaming and also more consumption of media. Check back in with me in a few weeks for some more.

The post OnePlus Pad Go – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Some time ago I was sent through the TCL 10 Max 4G tablet for review, and for the last couple of months it has come everywhere with me, and used as my primary tablet device.

TCL 10 Tab Max, it is a mid-range tablet that comes with a pretty decent set of features and specifications. The tablet is available in two variants — Wi-Fi and LTE. I got the LTE variant of the tablet which comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage and an unspecified octa-core processor with Mali-G72 MP3 GPU clocked at 800MHz, the TCL 10 comes with a massive battery and a full HD display.

Specs:-

• Operating System Android 10.
• Display10.36″ IPS TFT – 2000 x 1200 – Multi-Touch.
• Processor(8-core).
• Processor Clock Speed2 GHz.
• RAM4 GB.
• Storage64 GB.
• Supported Flash Memory Card microSD.
• Cellular Technology 4G.
• Wireless Connectivity802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0.
• Rear Camera 13 Megapixel. Front camera 8Megapixel.
• Dimensions (WxDxH)24.78 cm x 0.765 cm x 15.756 cm.

Good Points:-

• Amazing battery life.
• Lightweight.
• Price.
• Good screen quality with NXTVision

Bad Points :-

• Poor Camera Quality
• Viewing angles lacking.

Design :-

It’s clear that the 10 Tab Max is a mid-range tablet that’s built entirely of plastic which is of decent quality. The back panel has a dual texture finish which feels rugged and durable, and does give the device a more premium feel, although I would have liked to have seen a chrome housing or gloss finish to jazz up the look even more.

The back panel houses a single 13MP sensor with an LED flash at the top left corner along with the TCL logo at the bottom left. The top and bottom of the tab have four speaker grilles, out of which only two work as the speaker.

The left side has a five-pin POGO connector for docking, while the right has volume buttons and a SIM card tray. The power button is placed at the top of the tablet which feels a bit of stretch to reach while using the tab in portrait mode. The front has a 10.36-inch full HD display and an 8MP selfie shooter.

In Use :-

Talking about the display, the tab comes with a 10.36-inch display, and it comes with TCL’s proprietary NXTVison, this is where TCL use all there experience in the TV world and the screen digitally upscales content, making games and videos look HDR, and tweaking images viewed, to make them better-looking, and I found watching media or playing games more that adequate.

Mid range tablet performance plays an important role, I tested the Tab 10 in different scenarios like watching videos on YouTube, binge-watching TV shows and movies, attending office meetings and also some gaming, the TCL 10 Tab Max performed really well and I never felt the need for more ‘horsepower’ while performing a task, the device was able to play AAA games like Call Of Duty Mobile and Google Stadia with no issues.  The audio quality from dual speakers is loud enough and clear, not full surround sound but more that adequate.

As far as the camera is concerned, the 13MP rear camera is average and is only good for occasional photography, to be honest I only ever use a tablet camera to scan documents etc and the camera was fine for this task. Also, the 8MP at the front offers decent clarity for video calls and taking selfies. Also, the landscape positioning of the sensor comes in handy while attending conference calls or while attending online classes.

Where the tablet shines is in the battery. The 8000mAh battery lasted for an entire day under heavy load which included some binge watching on Netflix and gaming and hours of browsing by far the battery is the strongest point of the TCL 10 Tab Max. I left the device over the Christmas and New Year period and the battery only dropped a couple of percentage points, standby battery drain was up there with the Apple Ipad.

Coming to the software part, it runs the Android 10 operating system which is a two-year-old system as Android 12 is now fully released, I would have liked to have seen a more up to date operating system, and TCL has not confirmed anything about the tablet receiving the Android 11 update in future. That said the Tab was smooth with no stutters or lag.

I was able to pop a unlimited data sim in the Tab and got decent download speeds, all the features and messaging apps were there and phone calls were possible ( I know your not going to hold a 10 inch tablet up to your ear) but connected to some headphones meant I was always connected.

Conclusion:-

TCL 10 Tab Max, is a mid-range tablet with mid-range specifications, but don’t let that put you off it was able to do 95% of the tasks my Samsung Tab S7 can do with ease, in its favour  is full HD resolution, very good battery life, decent pair of speakers and performance. Priced at £240 for the 4G version and £220 for the Wifi Version ( I’d fork out the extra £20 for the always connected device) from Amazon

If you are looking for a decent tablet for casual work like content consumption, browsing and attending online classes, then TCL 10 Tab Max is definitely  worth a look.

The post TCL 10 Tab Max 4g – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

So we know that 3MK make some awesome screen protectors that we saw last year whilst we were here. Since then I have been using their screen protection for my various phones since then. They have not let me down and survived the various trails and tribulations that I put my phones through.

I decided that I would go by and see what they had that was new this year. It was then I was greeted with people dropping phones from quite a height onto a solid stone base.

Now obviously I had to give this a shot so here is the resulting video.

The screen protector that was used in this test would obviously have to be replaced but the really impressive thing is I was not taking it easy on that nail and it didn’t go through the screen of the phone which was really impressive. It is part of the InvisibleCase range that we discovered last year

The case that the phone was in is really well made and feels good in the hand. It is called the ArmourCase and has an Absorber rating of 3. This is new for this year and was what I used in the video above.

You also have experience Clearcase which has a slightly lower Absorber level of 2. These case, were released last year but this is the first I am seeing of them.

They both share a similar design style and the levels of absorption are actually the height that the case can be dropped from and the phone survive at least these are the tested heights. The cases are drop tested like in the video to either 2m or 3m.

Here is a clip explaining the Absorber technology.

It has a really nice back pattern to allow you to get a good grip on it whilst using the phone.

Obviously, this is designed to help you not drop the phone but if that were to happen then it wouldn’t be a disaster because as you can see from the video it will absorb all the impact force.

In other great news, 3MK are currently looking to set up in the UK and will hopefully be doing so this year so you will be able to potentially have them fit your screen protection for you when you are visiting your local mall. Watch this space for more details when we have them.

In the meantime you can buy the 3mk Clearcase from Amazon by going to this link.

The post MWC -3MK have new cases to show us is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Following on from my Venturer Saturn Pro 10 review, I’m now moving on to review the latest budget tablet from RCA/Ventruer the Mercury 7L. As it is currently priced at £49.99, the Mercury 7L is a direct competitor to the Amazon Fire tablet (which I take with me everywhere). Hey, for that price it’s almost a throwaway device.

Good points:

• Google Play certified
• Price
• Propitiatory and micro USB charging

Bad points:

• Build quality
• Battery life
• No rear camera
• The screen is a fingerprint and scratch magnet

Device Specs:

• Quad Core 1.3GHz with 1GB RAM
• Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)
• 7” Capacitive Touch TFT Screen. with 1024 x 600 resolution
• 8 GB Internal memory
• Micro USB port
• Front Facing, 1M camera
• MicroSD card slot support, up to 64GB
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Google Play certified

In Use:

Upon first unboxing the Mercury 7L, the first thing that I noticed was the actual build of the device. The whole device is made of what feels like is cheap plastic and when pressing on the back there is a definite give in the rear panel. Also, the screen looks and feels like it is sitting inside the rear panel, with a lip running all around the edges of the device.

The front screen is made of plastic that picks up fingerprints and small scratches like mad. The screen could have been a bit brighter in my opinion, as I felt it was at about 75% even though it was showing as the maximum. The screen also looked like it had a blue tinge to it, but then again this wouldn’t be a high spec panel on such an inexpensive device. All the controls and ports are on one edge of the device, with the small but surprisingly powerful speaker round the back.

That said, I was able to load my apps from the Play Store, and in use the tablet did cope quite well. The Mercury 7L only comes with a front facing 1MP camera, which was OK for video calls, etc but no rear-facing camera at all, which was obviously left out in a bid to keep costs down. The battery is rated to last 6 hours, and to be honest, in my tests I found this to be closer to 4-4.5 hours.

The Mercury 7L can be charged by either micro USB, (of which most of us have tons of the things lying around) or the supplied proprietary charger. This is a nice touch, as I can charge the device and use a USB OTG cable at the same time.

Conclusion:

This lower-priced tablet market does have a number of competitors from several camps – including Amazon and Windows – to name but a few. Should you buy the Mercury 7L over the competition? It does have some advantages over the others, being Google Play certified means you can load apps from the millions available from the Play Store without side loading and hacking Google Play services on the device. Additionally, unlike the similarly-priced Fire Tablet, there are no adverts on the lock screen, to subsidise the overall price.

Would I use the Mercury 7L over my Fire Tablet? Erm, no, to be honest. I’m an Amazon Prime member, so I get access to the offerings from Prime Video and I was able to get the Google Play store on there quite easily by following some on-line tutorials.

In this case, the Mercury 7L doesn’t offer me any more for the same price.

The post RCA/Venturer Mercury 7L tablet – review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Intro

I love tablets. I love the idea of carrying something thin and light around that has enough computing power in it to keep me up to speed with all my musings on this very site. I also love being able to just pull out something from my bag and get working whenever the moment strikes. This is something that I have not been able to replicate in the real laptop and computer world with much success. Don’t get me wrong, my Chromebook does come close to this, but it’s not quite there for what I really want.

Due to the reasons listed above, I was very excited by the concept of the Yoga Book from Lenovo. With that in mind, as soon as I was able to get hold of one to test, I was all over it. I have used various different Lenovo Yoga grade machines over the years; in fact, my current works machine is a ThinkPad Yoga 12 which I really enjoy using even with the somewhat archaic use of Windows 8.1 as its OS. I have also used a laptop with a non-moving keyboard before in the guise of the Dell XPS 11 which was, to be, honest diabolical. I am pleased to say that this is so much better room that aspect (the keyboard).

So without further ado, let us dive in.

Design

I have already covered the build quality of the machine pretty extensively in the unboxing article that can be found here.

Here is the unboxing video as well:

In that unboxing process, we discovered all the little toys that the Yoga Book comes with. And I have to say that you are getting a pretty good bang for your buck here, especially for £449 as the asking price. That is of course for the Android version. If you wish to embrace what Windows 10 can offer this form factor, then you’ll need to stump up another 100 quid. If you require LTE as well, then the price does start to get a little silly. Especially since theYoga Book isn’t being sold in the UK market so you will be looking to be importing. Something I do need to add is that the device I am using is a US variant, therefore, you do have to settle with the US keyboard layout. This is something that cannot be changed, so be aware of this if you’re planning on buying abroad.

Here are the specs of the machine for those that may have missed them on the unboxing post the other day.

Operating System: Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow)
Display: 10.1-inch FHD IPS (1920 x 1200) @ 400nits
Processor: Intel Atom x5-Z8550 Processor (2Mb Cache, Up to 2.4GHz)
Storage: 64GB
Expandable: microSD Up to 128GB
RAM: 4GB LPDDR3
Rear Camera: 8MP
Front Camera: 2MP
Charging: micro-USB with Fast Charging
Battery: 8500 mAh
Dimensions: 256.6mm x 170.8mm x 0.96mm
Weight: 690g

For a full tour of the device, I would encourage you to refer back to the unboxing post here

One aspect I really didn’t go into in the unboxing was the brains behind the machine. The Yoga Book features the Intel Atom X5. This may be one of the last devices that we see with this chipset as Intel has effectively killed off that chipsets family. This is a shame, as the Atom series were and to an extent still are perfectly suited to powering this type of machine. I have used a couple of different devices with this chip in it, mainly the Surface 3 which was my main device for last year. This chip will cope admirably with the daily tasks of word processing, spreadsheets and some light photo and video editing. All of this whilst providing a very good battery life with very little drain when dormant.
Alongside the CPU, we will also find 4 GB of RAM, which allows the Android OS to have sufficient overhead so that you will never feel that you are getting bogged down. I have full benchmarks to discuss later on, so you can see how this device rates against some of the other options out there in this segment.

Software

The software on the Yoga Book is based very closely on the standard Android 6.01 that you would expect from any up-to-date tablet, however it has some subtle tweaks to make it better suited for use as a tablet with a keyboard attached. These additions come in three main areas:

1. The use of TouchPal for the keyboard and its interpretation
2. The use of resizable apps
3. The use of a dock style feature that Windows sees will be more used to seeing

Now let’s cover them in more detail.

First and foremost on the Yoga Book we have got the “Halo keyboard”. Now this keyboard will work admirably with the GBoard app that comes as standard for most Android tablets these days. That being said, as the keyboard is lacking any physical feedback, it can be quite tricky to ensure that you are pressing the correct ones. This is where TouchPal comes into play. TouchPal will intelligently correct what you are typing to ensure that you are not just bashing out gibberish. It works in a similar manner to the predictive text engines we used to know from the old T9 days of numeric keypads. Each key has a predefined touch area, and if you hit in the right place you get the right key. However, if you are slightly off centre then it will give you the wrong letter when using GBoard. TouchPal, however, is prepared for this and it will learn where you tend to hit the keys and adjust the detection points to compensate. It works very well and it has allowed me to write 90% of this review on the device itself without me wanting to pull my hair out.

Secondly, we all know that Android has been primarily designed for phones and phone UIs. That is great if you are using a phone, or at a stretch, an 8″ tablet. It is however not so great when you scale up to a 10″ device. Things start to look a bit weird and stretched. So this has been countered by the ability of some apps (I emphasise some) to resize to the phone UI size. In turn, these apps can be used as a means of multitasking. In the example below, we can that I have both Google search and YouTube open at the same time with both working as normal. Behind this, I am still working on this very review! This a great and easy-to-use solution, I just wish you could actually use a full half screen option as it would make it even better. (Ed notes: Our consultancy fee is not that high Lenovo…)

Thirdly, the dock-style taskbar which has been carried over from Windows works very well at allowing you to quickly and easily multitask. Essentially the apps that you open will sit in a dock at the base of the screen and you can easily jump into another app whilst the others will sit dormant until they are called upon again. This allows for lot more fluidity whilst working and creates a really user-friendly environment. We have seen something like this before in the form of Remix OS. It really is nice to see other companies trying to make Android more productivity-oriented.

So that about covers the software improvements that Lenovo added on top of what is a very near-stock Android interface.

Create Pad

The next big thing that differentiates the Yoga Book over other Android tablets, is the use of the “Create Pad”. The best way to show this off is most certainly by showing it in action. So I have tried to do so in the video below.

As you can see in the videos, I have tried to focus on the usage of the “Real Pen” and the included notepad. This is a really great and useful tool, especially for those who wish to make physical copies of the notes that they are taking. I can envisage this being particularly useful for college and university students for taking notes during lectures. If I am completely honest, it isn’t a feature that I see myself using particularly often. However, that being said, the combination of the “Real Pen” and the stylus will make this very handy for note-takers and artists alike.

What I was really looking for this device to do for me was to give me the best of both worlds. I wanted it to be a tool for consumption of media, and also a tool for writing whilst on the go. In this respect, with a little adjustment needed (mainly on the typing front), I have found it to be really proficient.
Now to come onto performance.

Performance

I have conducted my usual array of tests for the performance grading of the machine. I have used the same benchmarks that I use on phones to see what this is capable of.So. Let us dive in and have a look how the Atom X5 performs on the Lenovo Yoga Book.

And so. Let us dive in and have a look how the Atom X5 performs on the Lenovo Yoga Book.

So as we see from the results in the tests above, it is very much a mixed bag. What surprised me was the sheer level of score that was achieved in the Quadrant test. I have not ever seen a score that high. I can only surmise that this has something to do with the Atom chip. As for the rest of the numbers, it does perform very well. It is one of the faster devices when it comes to loading up Sunspider, which can only bode well for intensive web browsing sessions. The gaming test through Antutu shows that it can certainly hold its own, and this is backed up by the Ice Storm Unlimited result as well.

As we all know though, these benchmarks don’t paint the full picture. So to try and get a clearer picture of the real world performance, I have also run a test of playing Asphalt 8. Have a look at the video below.

True to what I expected given the results of the benchmarking test, the gaming performance of the Lenovo Yoga Book is really not that shabby. If I have one complaint, it is that the tablet is quite awkward to hold whilst playing games. But be advised that this is more of an ergonomic issue rather than a performance one.

Also…

As a small treat, I have also taken the time to record the process of rendering the above video for you using Cyberlink Power Director on the tablet, to show that this is entirely possible on an Android device. In fact, this is one of my requirements of any Android tablet that I purchase. It is also a bit of a behind-the-scenes look into the review creation process. Enjoy

https://youtu.be/yvtRATOLWBc

I should quickly talk about battery life. In short, it is really good and I have been very pleased with what I have been getting from the Yoga Book. I can charge this up, use it sporadically for a few browsing sessions during the day, and I will get about 3 days of light use. If I am to use it all day, then I will need to plug it in at night but after a 3-hour charge. It is good to go again for another day.

I also love that I can charge it from one of the power packs that I have for my phone, which is awesome for when I’m on the move.I have only one complaint. Lenovo chose Micro USB instead of Type C. This is only an issue for me as I have now moved to Type C for all my devices, other may not experience similar trauma.

I have only one complaint. Lenovo chose Micro USB instead of USB Type C. This is only an issue for me as I have now moved to Type C for all my devices. Other may not experience similar trauma.

Camera

I am not going to dwell on this one too much as a camera is really not what this device has been designed for. On the front, we have a 2MP fixed-focus unit which will be perfectly adequate for Google Hangouts/Allo. On the keyboard (which would become the back in tablet mode), you can see an 8MP auto-focus unit. It will produce images that are reasonable… but not much else. If you are looking to take a picture, just use your phone as it will be better, I promise you.

Here are a few shots that I have taken on the device

Value for money

This is always a bit of a tricky one, if I am honest. The Android version of this tablet (my review unit) will cost £449 from most retailers. The Windows version of the Yoga Book is about £100 more. I have not used the Windows version, but from what I can see of the Android Yoga Book, it should be just as good.

Is this a good tablet to buy? Well yes, as in my opinion, bar the Xperia Z4 tablet from Sony and the Pixel C from Google, there are really not that many good 10″ tablets out there right now. Just to clarify: whenever I say good, I am looking at this as a productivity device, not something to just watch Netflix on.

For less than the cost of either of these other devices, you get a gorgeously-designed device with plenty of power and style. The keyboard is extremely useable for typing on for a reasonable length of time. The added bonus of the stylus and “Real Pen” do certainly differentiate this from the normal mundane tablets that we are used to seeing. The best part though, is that all these things come include in the box so short of maybe having pad refills for the note pad your good.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the Yoga Book is going to come from within Lenovo themselves. They have just announced a cheaper, slightly larger version of a Yoga Book, the Yoga A12. The Yoga A12 is not going to be including the Create Pad and other stylus-related goodies, yet it will have a lot going for it –  especially if it is priced right.

Conclusion

I have been really happy with the Lenovo Yoga Book over the last few weeks. This is something that I would happily recommend it to anyone who wants to get stuff done without having to carry a bulky laptop around, or worry about keeping it tethered to a charger.

I am hoping to get a look at the Windows version soon to see if is worth the extra money. For now though, I am going to leave you and go and indulge in some Yoga.

The post Lenovo Yoga Book – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It’s not that often that a device comes along that is truly a game changer. That is until now. 

Today I had the pleasure of unboxing an item that in my opinion is truly groundbreaking, and could potentially change the game in its field. I am, of course, talking about the Lenovo Yoga Book. It’s more than a tablet, and something other than a computer, at a very reasonable £449.99

This tablet/laptop/convertible is definitely in the above category. I have been very keen to see what this machine can offer, ever since I first saw it unveiled last year at IFA. I have been keeping an eagle eye on this device since then. In fact, I have been very close to buying one on several occasions. Essentially what we are looking at is a tablet with the extra convenience of having a very useable keyboard. It is however much much more than that. It has some very cool and appealing features hidden within its sleek body. Let’s get into it.

Specifications

Before we dive into the tour around the device, let us have a look at the specs that we have on offer.

Operating System:     Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow)
Display: 10.1-inch FHD IPS (1920 x 1200) @ 400nits
Processor: Intel Atom x5-Z8550 Processor (2Mb Cache, Up to 2.4GHz)
Storage: 64GB
Expandable: microSD Up to 128GB
RAM: 4GB LPDDR3
Rear Camera: 8MP
Front Camera: 2MP
Charging: micro-USB with Fast Charging
Battery: 8500 mAh
Dimensions: 256.6mm x 170.8mm x 0.96mm
Weight: 690g

So as we see from the specs, the Yoga Book is much for a muchness on an Android tablet as they go these days, however the specs don’t tell the full story, not even by half.

Let’s take a look around the body of the machine and see what else we can find out.

First up, the unboxing video

Starting with the display, which is made of a glorious 1080p panel with a PPI of 224 and up to 400 nits of brightness. This will make it usable in most environments, apart from direct sunlight where it may struggle. It does have some pretty large bezels, however I find that these are a blessing when handling the tablet in its tablet ‘mode’. The viewing angles are very good and I didn’t notice any phasing out or colour shift at all even when viewed at up 180°.

Above the screen, you will find that there is a 2MP front-facing camera, which is going to be more than adequate for Skype or Hangouts.

The Halo Keyboard

Below the Yoga Book’s screen, we have one of the unique features of the Lenovo Yoga Book in the form of the “Halo’ keyboard, which is very cool and weird at the same time. In my limited time with it, I found that it really wasn’t that bad to type on particularly as I am more ‘hunt-and-peck style” typist. I think that if you were a touch typist, then this would be quite annoying and would require a fair bit of adjustment. However this area is not just for the keyboard, as it also performs double duty as a Wacom style drawing tablet when used with the pen. More on that later though. You also find the button for switching this surface to the “Create Pad” mode where the stylus can be used, but more on that later. Next to this button is an 8MP camera which will become the rear camera in tablet mode.

Before we move away from the keyboard, I just wanted to show that the backlight on this is really good, especially when being used in low light situations.

On the left-hand side, we find a micro-USB port for charging also for ‘USB on the go’. Next to that is a charging indicator light that will flash away to let you know that the device is getting power. Next up is the microSD card slot which easily takes up to 256 GB size. On some versions, this slot will also house an LTE SIM card (I have yet to see one being sold in the UK). Next is one of the two speaker outputs. Lastly on this side is a microHDMI port for connecting the Lenovo Yoga Book up to a TV or an external display.

One the right-hand side we have a 3.5mm audio jack,  the volume rocker and the sleep/wake/power key. In between these, we have the second speaker grill. Both the speakers are assisted by Dolby Atmosphere to give a better audio experience and create a surround sound effect. This was demoed in the video above. It does create a more impressive sound and is defiantly noticeable for its absence when you switch it off.

Around the back, we have the wonderfully made “Watchband” hinge. This is something that Lenovo has been developing throughout their Yoga range and it really makes this tablet stand out as an industrial design highlight. I can just get lost watching it open and close! If you look at it closely, you can see the individual elements move as it rotates. It is also a fundamental design feature of the device, as without it, the “modes” of use would not be supported.

On the front of the screen section we can also see that there are two beamforming pinhole mics that will work to assist in those aforementioned Skype/Hangouts calls.

That is pretty much it for the hardware of the device, but we aren’t done yet, as there are some other very cool add-ons that are also included in this package.

Lenovo Yoga Book Real Pen

First up we have the “Real Pen”; this is both a stylus and a pen. In the box you get some replacement ink nibs (three of them), and a stylus nib. These simply pop in and out of a silo in the top of the pen, which allows you to switch them out with relative ease. It’s unfortunate that nobody at Lenovo thought to include a way of storing these nibs when you are out and about.

Next to complement the Real Pen is a paper pad which comes cut to the perfect size to fit over the create pad space on the keyboard deck.

The purpose of this is that one can take real notes and also have them digitised to share with the likes of OneNote and Evernote. The good news is that you can actually use any type of paper for this function as it is the pen that makes the magic happen. I am going to shoot a video of this all in action after I have got my head around it.
That is pretty much it for the hardware side if things. After my initial use of the Lenovo Yoga Book, I am finding that I’m very impressed with it. I will have to take a bit of time to get used to the Halo keyboard, but it is a lot better than I expected. I have actually written this whole post on the Lenovo Yoga Book, and I am going to be using it as my daily driver for the next few weeks.

If you have any questions about this device then please do let me know and I will try my utmost to test them for you.

Cheers for now.

The post Lenovo Yoga Book – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It has been a few weeks now since the latest Acer tablet arrived on my desk at Coolsmartphone towers. In that time I have been using it as my main day-to-day device for media consumption. I have not really been using it for very much in the way of work as I have my Chromebook to fulfil that role.

I also don’t have a Bluetooth keyboard at the moment, and Android tablets in general are a bit hit and miss when there’s no keyboard. Obvious exceptions to this are the excellent Xperia Z4 Tablet that I was using a year ago and the Google Pixel C (which I am still to get hands on with). Going into this review I had one big question about this device. Is it worth the asking price of £179 as a multimedia platform?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of answering this question, we will need to have a look at the hardware and the software to see if they are a good fit for the devices multimedia push. Before you go any further I would suggest you take a look at my unboxing article which can be found here.

Design and Hardware

Acer has taken a different approach to the design of the Iconia Tab10 and, although it is not groundbreaking, it is certainly a bit different. This is appreciated in the segment as normally Android tablets are relatively unassuming slabs of glass and plastic.

That being said, the main body of this device is exactly that – plastic. However, the plastic used is a soft touch material that feels nice in the hand.

Up front, we will of course find the 10.1″ screen with a 1080p resolution. Although we have seen a trend to head towards 3:2 aspect ratios on screens (with some of the more high-end devices) the widescreen aspect ratio used here feels right. This device is intended to be used in landscape first and foremost after all. 

Flanking both sides of the screen we can find the quad speaker arrangement that separates this tablet from nearly every other tablet on the market. The only other tablet we have seen adopting this layout are the iPad Pros. Unlike the iPad’s though the Iconia’s speakers are forward facing to give much better audio experiences.

Nestled in between the speakers we find the volume controls on the left-hand side and on the right we find a “MediaMaster” button. This button will change the audio profile for the tablet to the most suitable mode which matches your output. It will also change the screen’s RGB ratios. These changes are very subtle and, if I am honest, I tended not fiddle too much with this feature. Something that I felt was lacking was the ability to program your own preference into this button. It would have been a nice touch as not everyone will be 100% happy with the preconfigured ones.

On the top edge of the device, we find the single button which is the sleep wake button and further along is a flap for your Micro SD card.

I tested the device with a Class 10 64GB card that was read with no issue. Next to this is the Micro HDMI port, which whilst not the most common format is nice to see. It makes it easy to share the screen for media and work purposes.

Again this worked flawlessly in my testing. If I had one grievance it would be that this is not a commonly used port and it would be nice if the cable was bundled into the box.

Around the back, we find the standard regulatory information near the bottom of the device along with a DTS Audio logo. As I mentioned above this does not seem to be customisable, which is a shame as it would have really cemented this tablet as a multimedia powerhouse.

Above this, we can find the 5MP camera module which is surrounded by the flap that covered the microSD slot. This surround is composed of a soft but shiny gold plastic. As it is raised above the rest of the back panel the whole device rests on it, meaning that it is very easy for it to become scuffed. This is, unfortunately, the case of this review unit. Fortunately though, the camera lens is hidden behind a layer of plastic so the lens should be free from scratches. The rest of the plastic will scratch easily though.

The only other things of note are the charging port which is sadly still a MicroUSB style, and the 3,5mm headphone jack.

The edges of the device are slightly bevelled into the front of the unit from the back. This does lean towards a more comfortable feel when holding the tablet. However, if you are planning on using it for an extended period of time then Acer have thoughtfully included a small stand in the box that will make it easier to prop up on a seat back tablet etc.

The last thing worth mentioning here is the bundled power cable which has multiple plug heads for use across the continent. Again this is the nice touch as it is one more thing that the user would not need to buy. The power supply outputs at 2.1 amps and 5 V which, although not Qualcomm fast charging, is adequate for an overnight charge. This is how I would recommend that you charge the tablet as it does take a long time to juice it up. 

As is always the case with battery life on tablets, it is difficult to measure the actual performance in the real world. However, whilst I was using the tablet on a trip away it did allow for two full-length movies to be played without too much of a problem.

So that is the outside all done… what about the internals?

Well, under the hood we have got a processor from MediaTek which runs at 1.4GHZ. It is quad-core and seems to be plenty powerful for all the normal tasks that would be asked of a midrange tablet. It is supported by 2GB of RAM and 32GB of memory. Out of the box, memory usage is kept quite low, although there is a lot of apps that have space holders on the screen when first connected to Wi-Fi. I will cover this later when we look at software. As you would expect there are loads of other sensors and bits and pieces thrown into the mix as well.

Let’s have a look at the specs ..

• 10.1-inch screen
• Resolution 1920 x 1200 pixels
• IPS technology
• Multi-touch screen
• LED backlit display
• Fingerprint resistant coating
• 1.5GHz MediaTek mt8163a quad-core processor
• 2GB RAM
• 32 GB internal storage
• Android 6.0 operating system
• 2 MP webcam
• 5MP rear camera
• Wi-Fi,  Bluetooth
• 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
• microSD memory card slot
• Micro HDMI
• Micro USB
• Four front-facing speakers with DTS-HD premium sound
• Up to 8 hours battery life (depending on usage)
• 9mm thin
• Size H16.8, W25.9cm
• Weight 529g

Not a bad spec, but remember that we are looking at a mid-range device here with a price point of £180. Due to this, some corners have been cut and I would have really liked to have seen a version with LTE built in. This would let me use the device more effectively on the road. That being said, if Google themselves deem it acceptable for their own hero device to not have it, then we can hardly expect other manufacturers to build it in.

Performance

I have already mentioned above that this is a tablet built to fit into a certain budget, so with that, I was not expecting great things when it came to performance. I was not disappointed though. In fact, if anything, I was a bit surprised. The tablet performed pretty well on benchmarking. For the purposes of this test I put it head to head against the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact as that was the only other tablet I had to hand. I also put it against an Acer R11 Chromebook which was running Android Apps. This made for an interesting comparison as you can buy one of these for very similar money. I am also using this machine as my main computing device so it seemed relevant to test.

Benchmarking

Some of you may be asking why I was impressed with this tablet based on these figures above. Well, bear in mind that the two other devices are both of higher specs. More importantly they’re a much higher price point. Also, another reason is that benchmarks don’t really tell the full story of performance. In real world usage, I didn’t actually notice that much of a difference between the tablets in speed terms. I know that if I were to run this test against the like of the Google Pixel C then it would blow away the tablet but it also cost around 4x more, so I would expect it too.

Overall I am happy with the tablet as it delivers for the price point.

Software

Historically Acer have been pretty good with the software that they load onto their devices. Yes, there is normally a bit of bloat but 9 times out of 10 you can delete most of it. This is true of the Iconia as well. Here is a shot of what comes installed out of the box. Woaha!

As to usage of memory, you will have a vast 24 GB to play with after first boot and app updates. 

You do also get some space holders on the home screen which are prompts to allow you to install some suggested apps. These can be dismissed if they are not needed.

Off to the side of the main home screen, you have a section called “Left Page”. This will aggregate social media and news articles for you if you want them. I did not use this as I prefer to use the native apps for this purpose. You can also add additional content to this page if you wish to do so such as RSS feeds and bookmarks. Again this was not something I was ever going to use, so dismissed it. 

Also present is the Acer BYOC (Bring your own Cloud) service which contains abPhoto, abFiles and Acer Portal. This is a useful service that can be used on multiple Android devices but for me is supplementary as I use Google Cloud for all my content.It is a nice feature though and would be useful for a new user to get setup with, had they not already started to use Google’s own services.

Next to this is the Iconia suite which will allow you to customise the device in a few areas. It contains EZ Snap, EZ Wakeup and EZ Utilities.

EZ Snap is, as the name suggests, an app that will allow you to easily take screenshots by using a 3 finger gesture. It will also allow you to save web articles to Pocket (which is pre-installed) to allow you to read them later.

EZ Wakeup is a way of setting the tablet to wake up by a five finger tap or two thumbs tap if you are in portrait. It is quite useful, and you can set which app the tablet will wake up in. This can be handy if you are using the device for playing music or videos. I did use this feature when I had the tablet hooked up to my HD TV via the handy MicroHDMI port.

EZ Utilities is a service that will allow you to use various tools to help setup and personalise the device to your own preference. It also has a built in memory cleaner which will allow you to optimise your storage with a few simple presses. In here you can also find a UI magnification tool (see above) for those who are not gifted with perfect eyesight. I did not find this was needed as the panel is great with text scaling out of the box.

It is nice to see that Acer has put these features in as they will be helpful to the novice user.

As for the rest of the device, it runs Android 6.0 and it is a very clean looking UI as Acer have not messed with Android at all really (beyond the apps mentioned above that is). The App drawer behaves exactly as you would expect, as do widgets on the home screen.

Cameras

Normally in a review of a phone I would go into a large amount of detail about the camera performance on the device. Today we are looking at a tablet though, and as such the camera is going to be an afterthought, with very little focus on the quality etc. All I really have to say is that the cameras are … okay. They will be great for things that cameras are typically used for on tablets such as Skype or Hangouts. Not for beautifully scenic photos. Up front, we have a 2mp unit and on the back, we find a 5MP unit. We will quickly look at the front facing unit first.

As you would expect from any selfie camera these days you do have inbuilt “Face Beauty” mode which attempts to make your subject look a little nicer by blurring out any blemishes on your face. It also has gesture capture that will take a picture if you hold your fingers up in the “Churchill-esque V” symbol. Both of these are nice touches and give the front facing unit a bit more practicality. I have taken a few shots below to allow you to see the effects of face beauty for yourself.

The rear camera brings a few more settings to the party alongside the above features. Of primary interest to me is the HDR mode which will give a little bit more exposure to your picture as can be seen in these two images below.

Of course, you do have all the other bits and pieces that are normal on a smart device camera. Panorama mode, the ability to adjust exposure, white balance adjustment and colour effects. These are then complimented with some preset scenes, allowing you take photos in various conditions with relative ease. If I am completely honest though this looks like a near direct port of what we have seen on Acer phones,  which makes sense. However, do yourself a favour if you are planning on taking a picture and use your phone instead. It will give a better result. That and you won’t be “that” guy/girl.

Summary

At the beginning of this review, I asked if the Acer Iconia Tab10 was worth its asking price to be a multimedia tool. If that is what you are buying this tablet for then yes it certainly is. The screen is nice and clear and the colours pop well. The sound is very good due to the four front-facing speakers and the DTS audio gives it some real “oompf”. Add in the fact that this has a very handy Kids Mode built in and this could very well be a great tablet for the upcoming holidays as a family tablet. 

What it is not is a gaming powerhouse or a workhorse. if you are looking for an Android tablet that can do either of these things then you will need to ..

A) Look elsewhere
B) Increase your budget quite a bit.

I think for the price this tablet is hard to beat and if anyone in my family was needing one I would happily recommend it. Just don’t push it too hard as the tablet will then let you down.

The post Acer Iconia Tab10 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The Acer Iconia Tab 10 is currently available from all good retailers for a great price of £179.99. What we have here is a 10.1″ tablet with a great Full HD screen and not one, but four forward facing speakers. These speakers are backed by sound technology from DTS Audio, who have worked heard to produce a premium audio experience on an inexpensive device.

As for the rest of the specs, they are on par for a device in this price segment

specs

• 10.1-inch screen
• Resolution 1920 x 1200 pixels
• IPS technology
• Multi-touch screen
• LED backlit display
• Fingerprint resistant coating
• 1.5GHz MediaTek mt8163a quad-core processor
• 2GB RAM
• 32 GB internal storage
• Android 6.0 operating system
• 2 MP webcam
• 5MP rear camera
• Wi-Fi,  Bluetooth
• 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
• microSD memory card slot
• Micro HDMI
• Micro USB
• Four front-facing speakers with DTS-HD premium sound
• Up to 8 hours battery life (depending on usage)
• 9mm thin
• Size H16.8, W25.9cm
• Weight 529g

initial thoughts

On the face of it, The Acer Iconia Tab 10 looks like a pretty good tablet then. I have been using the device for a few days now, mainly for its multimedia functionality. In this role, it is performing admirably. The battery will last long enough for at least two feature-length films with room to spare. There are some pretty neat little features that have been stacked on top of a relatively spartan installation of Android 6.0. One of these is the use of multi-finger inputs. For instance, when the screen is locked, you can use 5 fingers to unlock the screen and go to an app of your choice. This is a really nice touch when you’re using the tablet in conjunction with an HD TV via the inbuilt HDMI port.

Connectivity wise, in addition to the Micro HDMI port, we also find Micro USB for charging and USB OTG is supported. You will also find a 3.5mm headphone jack and Micro SD card support for storage expansion of up to 256GB. The Wifi is 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth version is 4.0. We can also find an accelerometer for detection of movement, and GPS for navigation. Sadly there is no LTE model of this device, so if you plan to use this on the go you will need to tether to a hotspot or phone.

views

Here is a little unboxing video:

I recorded the video a few days ago, hence the mention of my plans to use this while on my trip away.

Here is a gallery of the rest of the Iconia Tab 10.

Check back in a few days for the full review.

The post Acer Iconia Tab 10 – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Firstly, and this is the one I am most keen on, is the new improved tablet platform – Remix Pro.

This builds on what was previously done with the original Remix Ultra. It still keeps the 2-in-1 design which we loved, but it mixes up the way that is achieved. Here are the specs that we have been given so far..

• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 8-core processor
• GPU: Qualcomm® Adreno 510 GPU
• Memory: 3GB LPDDR3 RAM; 32GB eMMC internal storage; microSD slot supports up to 256GB storage expansion
• Screen: 12” Full-HD Retina IPS 10-point touch screen; 2160x1440p
• Cameras: 5MP front/8MP rear
• Connectivity: WLAN with 2.4Ghz/5Ghz duo frequency supports 802.11a/b/g protocol, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi Direct
• Dimensions & weight: 207mm x 289.5mm x 6.9mm; 640g
• Power: Supports quick charge; 9,000 mAh

So, as we can we see there have been a couple major improvements. The processor has been switched over from Nvidia to a Snapdragon in the form of the 652 chipset. This is the exact one I am using on my Xperia X, and I know that it performs well (some benchmarks suggest as well as the SD 810 from last year).

Next up, the screen has grown slightly in size from the 10.1″ to 12″. It’s not just a 1080p resolution either, and now has a “Retina” display with 2160x1440p resolution. WiFi has also been stepped up to dual band in the form of 2.4GHZ /5GHZ with 802.11a/b/g on board (shame it is missing N but cannae grumble too much)

Those are the key standouts on the hardware side. However, Jide has also been very hard at work on getting Marshmallow onto the device, which they have now done in the form of Remix OS 3. This means we will see all the features we have learnt to love from Marshmallow tablets, including the amazing Doze Mode and MultiWindow support courtesy of the Jide customizations.

I really liked using the original Remix Ultra when I had it in for review by and I still use the Remix Mini that I bought from Kickstarter back at the end of last month. It has become my media server in my bedroom.

I do however have one major concern for this device and the other ones that Jide released today (see below). That threat comes in the form of Chromebooks. Very, very soon these cheap laptops will have access to Android Apps from the Google Play Store. This does beg the question of do we need Remix OS on 2 in 1s, laptops and all in one PC’s? Only time will tell, but I look forward to putting this through it paces while we find out.

The Remix Pro will be released in China first with the international release later in the summer. We will keep you informed of it as soon as we know more

Jide Technology continues to push forward the future of Android PCs with new hardware

Multiple strategic partnerships and products announced at their 2016 Preview Event

June 16, 2016 (Beijing, China) – Jide Technology, the creators of Remix OS, today announces multiple new devices and partnerships that continue to push forward the future of Android PCs. These partnerships also highlight Jide’s growth as the company is able to preinstall Remix OS on an increasing number of devices and form factors, giving users more options to run Android on desktop environments. The key announcements are detailed below:

Remix Pro 2-in-1 tablet

Following the success of the company’s own Remix Mini hardware, Jide has unveiled their second generation productivity tablet – the Remix Pro. This will also be the first device that supports Remix OS 3, an upgrade that represents a migration to Android Marshmallow and additional stability and bug fixes. The Remix Pro will first be available in the Chinese market. International availability will be confirmed at a later date.

Key specifications:

• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 8-core processor
• GPU: Qualcomm® Adreno 510 GPU
• Memory: 3GB LPDDR3 RAM; 32GB eMMC internal storage; microSD slot supports up to 256GB storage expansion
• Screen: 12” Full-HD Retina IPS 10-point touch screen; 2160x1440p
• Cameras: 5MP front/8MP rear
• Connectivity: WLAN with 2.4Ghz/5Ghz duo frequency supports 802.11a/b/g protocol, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi Direct
• Dimensions & weight: 207mm x 289.5mm x 6.9mm; 640g
• Power: Supports quick charge; 9,000 mAh

Android-x86 Open Source Project founder joins Jide

Chih-Wei Huang, Android-x86 Open Source Project creator and accomplished developer, has officially joined Jide Technology as the x86 Technology Lead. Possessing a wealth of experience as the originator of the Android-x86 Open Source Project that ports Android to PC desktops, Huang will be a key member in further developing Jide’s Remix OS.

Chih-Wei Huang explains his move to Jide, “Linux was created as a desktop OS, but it’s actually the only space that the operating system hasn’t truly dominated. I joined Jide because I think Remix OS is best route to establish Linux as a key player in the desktop OS space.” The first project the seasoned software engineer will be working on is a limited release Acer concept laptop running Remix OS on an Intel x86 chip.

Acer Aspire ES1-131 running Remix OS

Through a close collaboration with Acer, Jide has unveiled an Intel-based laptop running Remix OS out of the box. The concept laptop will be released on a limited basis firstly in the Chinese market. Jide has worked on developing Remix OS for this hardware that will run an optimized version of Remix OS for PC. It represents an evolutionary shift in computing- an Android-based Intel laptop. The development work done on the ES1-131 will also significantly improve the user experience on the free download of Remix OS for PC.

Key specifications:

• CPU: Intel Celeron N3150/4-core/1.60GHz
• Memory: 4GB; 500GB internal storage
• Screen: 11.6” HD / 1366 x 768
• Connectivity: Gigabit Ethernet; WLAN 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 4.0
• Dimensions & weight: 291mm x 211mm x 21.2mm; 1.25kg

Remix OS PC box solution for OEMs

In addition to the Remix Pro, Jide also showcased their second generation Remix OS PC box. This device is still under development and will be offered as an affordable solution for OEM brands interested in Remix OS 3 running on a lightweight and accessible device.

Key specifications:

• CPU: Rockchip 3368 8-Core 64bit ARM Cortex – A53 1.5GHz
• Memory: 1GB/2GB DDR3; 8GB/16GB eMMC; microSD slot (up to 128GB memory expansion)
• Operating system: Remix OS 3 (based on Android 6.0); OTA support
• Connectivity & ports: WLAN 802.11.b/g/n 2.4G; Ethernet (100Mps); BT 4.0; 2x USB Type A; HDMI 2.0 supports up to 4K @60fps
• Supported codecs & formats: MPEG/VMA/WAV/AAC/AMR/MIDI; JPEG/BMP/GIF/PNG/WEBP;
• Video output: MPEG – 1/2/4, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, MVC, VC-1, Motion JPEG/H.265 4Kx2K @60fps/H.264 4Kx2K @30fps/MVC, VP8 2160P@30fps

AOC Mars All-in-One PC

In addition to the 24” AOC All-in-One (AIO) PC running Remix OS that Jide announced at CES Asia 2016, the product line will now also include 22” and 32” inch options. All three models will share the following key specifications:

• CPU: Amlogic S905/4-core/64 Byte/ARM Cortex – A53/2GHz
• GPU: 5-core/ARM Mali 450/750MHz
• Memory: 2GB RAM; 16GB/64GB internal storage
• Screen: 22”/24”/32”FullHD @60Hz
• Connectivity: Ethernet; WiFi
• Ports: 4 USB 2.0 (32” – 3 USB 2.0), 1 HDMI, Audio out, 2 built in speakers
• Weight: 3.9kg

“2016 has been an incredibly exciting year for Jide Technology, highlighted by the launch of Remix OS for PC and the several quality partners that we have been fortunate to announce,” said Jide Technology CEO and co-founder Jeremy Chau. “When we first started out more than 2 years ago, no one quite got what we were trying to achieve. Now, companies and brands that we have always admired are reaching out to us. It’s a win-win situation as we continue to push the capabilities of Android PCs.”

—–END—

/

The post Jide Announce its next Remix, the Remix Pro is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I’m going to take a slightly different approach to this review and note down everything as I unbox the device. First, the specs. This is the Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 and it’s available in either “Luxurious Gold” or in this fine shade – “Moonlight Silver”.

It weighs in at 500 grams and measures in at 239.8mm x 172.75mm x 7.35mm. The screen is a 1920X1200 Full HD 10.1″ IPS unit and inside it’s powered by a Hisilicon Kirin 930 Octacore CPU running a quad 2.0 GHz and quad 1.5 GHz.

Inside it’s also running Android 5.1 with the Huawei EMUI3.1 GUI on top. Not the newest OS, granted, but it zips along. This particular one is the 64GB “Premium edition”, so you obviously get 64GB of storage on board. There’s also a “Standard version” with 16GB. This “Premium” on also has 3GB of RAM, whereas the “Standard” has 2GB. Both have GSM network connectivity though, and you can get 4G connectivity along with WiFi. Around back there’s a 13 megapixel cam with f2.0 and autofocus plus flash. Up front, a 5 megapixel one. There’s also a set of four speakers – two of them for the treble and two of them for the bass. These speakers have Harman Kardon audio technology – something which I’m a big fan of. That audio tech apparently gives a “richer, clearer and more immersive acoustic experience”.

The battery is a 6600mAh unit but again, depending on the version you have, you have different kit in the box. The “Standard” version has the tablet, a charger, quick-start guide and a “needle” for interacting more precisely with the screen. The “Premium” version here has an M-Pen too.

This is great for artists or for those taking notes and it has a pressure sensitivity level of 2048. What that means is that it’s really precise and responds better to the level of force you’re using. There’s a fingerprint sensor too.

The box feels heavy and you’ll notice in this review unit that we have a free case and protector combo. Opening it up actually reveals two boxes. The top box has the protector and the case itself. The case is a folio-style flip-case which has a soft inner and a custom-made inner holder which you clip the tablet into.

The tablet itself is next, and there’s a sticker on the front promoting the various features of the device. Ultra Power Saving, that octa-core CPU and those powerful speakers.

Underneath, that charger, the M-Pen and a very substantial quick start that I touched on before. It’s a thick little book and this, along with the cover and second box, actually contributed towards the weighty feel of the device when you first pick it off the shelf in the shops. The clever stylus needs one AAA battery which comes in the box too. You screw the top off the M-Pen and then drop the battery in to get it working. The tablet itself is powered and charged by a microUSB cable which is in the box too.

Turning the unit on plays a Huawei animation and you get to hear the sound output which is definitely very powerful indeed. The device itself is quite angular, although there’s some curvy corners and a two-tone finish to the tablet, with this one having a polished white front border around the screen. It has a very high-spec and quality feel to it. Under the screen is that fingerprint sensor.

At the bottom, precisely cut holes on the lower edge reveal the bottom speakers which create a “wide acoustic field sound” through technology which helps to give you a sense of direction when you’re playing games.

The right edge has the audio controls and power button above – this is on a slight curve and helps you to locate the buttons easily even in low light.

The top edge is similar to the bottom, although the unit does have a dividing strip and a 3.5mm audio plug which you’ll need to use your own headphones with as there’s none in the box.

The left edge has the microUSB power connector and the tray for the SIM card, which you’ll need to pop out with the supplied tool.

The back is a smooth silver affair and has the camera on that separated top edge along with a flash.

All in all, it’s a good construction which – although slightly flexible if you want to try twisting it – has no creaks. Good spec and good construction.

Here’s my usual video overview..

Turning on the device fires you into the usual WiFi setup screen and the Google login screen. You naturally use the device in a wide-screen setting. I elected to set a secure lock screen and the fingerprint sensor got busy as I placed and re-placed my finger on the sensor to build up a full reading.

The main out-of-the-box screen has a dark background which you can change through the now-familiar Huawei theme system. This lets you quickly change the look of the device by tweaking the unlock animation, icons and background quickly and through one interface. I could only find four here, but you can adjust the background and lock screen picture yourself too.

Again, as this is Huawei, there’s a management system for keeping your device running smoothly. You can scan the device and then optimise it, check and adjust the apps that are allowed to run when the screen is off. This is something we’ve seen recently on the Huawei P9, where a power management system kicks in to stop apps sucking your battery (and your data bandwidth) when you don’t necessarily want it too. There’s a few things you’ll want to adjust here, including fitness tracking apps like Strava that need adding to the allowed list.

On the lock screen, which can operate in a slideshow format to flick through favourite images. Huawei call them “Covers” and you can flick through them direct on the lock screen itself. From the lock screen also lets you head straight into the camera, turn on the rear LED. It’ll also let you dive straight into a calendar and audio recording.

The device has some cool little tricks, such as the “Speech Awareness” system which let you make a call or find your phone by saying a certain keyword. You can also open a dual-window system but I got a little sidetracked by the rather clever pen…

To be honest I’ve never been a big fan of these pen things, but after trying out the little buttons on the device (which help you hop into menus and remove mistakes etc) I really started to like it. It did indeed respond to pressure properly and I recognised the doodles and squiggles as the very same style and appearance as normal paper.

Little things, the same little things I’d seen on the P9, really impressed me. The fact that I could immediately edit the image when I’ve taken a screenshot, the careful battery management that keeps it running longer and longer.

Of course, the usual things are here too. We’ve got all the Google apps (Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Play Books, Play Music, Drive and everything in between), plus a file manager, Magnifier, Weather, Notepad and much more. You can also type out documents with WPS Office, which lets you create a presentation, spreadsheet or Word document. It’ll sync your contacts, your calendar and your email via your Google account and you can of course set up standard email accounts too.

There’s also something called Clari-Fi which shows off the power of the Harman Kardon tech and how it emphasises, cleans and adds “whoomph” to your music. I must admit, I was particularly impressed with the sound on this and not just about how powerful and loud it was. It’s like stepping into an audio bubble. You can hear the direction of the sound. You can hear the different streams of audio and watch a movie, music video or even a TV show is an absolute joy. Some older videos didn’t sound quite right – one being Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy played via YouTube. I put this down to the age of the VHS-to-YouTube recording – the video was done in 1991. More modern videos played very well indeed.

Camera

Personally I’m not a big camera user with tablets. The rear camera didn’t perform terrifically well and the white balance went a little crazy if the photo had darkness and light mixed together. Close-up shots didn’t fare well.

That said, I am perhaps comparing this to the Leica kit on the P9 we recently reviewed and I don’t personally think that a camera at the back of a tablet is going to be in use a whole lot. The front selfie shooter was OK, and decent enough for Skype and other video call applications.

The camera has a range of option, including the HDR mode I used on some of these shots, a “Best photo” option, Panorama, Watermark and “All focus” option. You can also add a GPS tag, track objects when filming video and get the perfect selfie along with a “beauty” mode to try and make you look less scary. There’s also a stack of filters, a time-lapse mode and you can turn the flash on or off.

Here’s some example shots..

hdr

dav

hdr

hdr

Overall

Whilst the camera wasn’t as good as the Leica unit on the Huawei P9, the addition of that stylus was something I actually really liked in this Premium model. If you choose the 16GB standard model you do have to realise that there’s no expandable storage and that’s pretty important if you’re a media consumer – something this device is really built for.

Out of the two, the Premium model would be my choice. The sound quality and the included stand made it into a portable entertainment centre which was really enjoyable to use and a great TV-replacement for your bedroom or elsewhere.

The Huawei additions were appreciated and the build quality, battery life and device management were all top notch. It’s yet more quality kit from Huawei, who are fast becoming a serious force to be reckoned with.

The “Standard” edition, which has 16GB storage and 2GB memory and no “M Pen” for £249.99. The “Premium” edition has 64GB storage, 3GB memory and that “M Pen” for £329.99. If you’re into your artistry and like taking notes, get the “Premium” one.

Head to Currys to have a look at them or go to the Huawei website for more detail.

The post MediaPad M2 10.0 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The Acer Predator 8 is a device we have seen a few times now, but up until now I have not really had a good chance to have a play with it. That all changes today as I am in Belfast with #acerliveblog2016 and they have let me have a play with the Acer Predator 8. I am pretty pleased with overall in-hand experience as I have already mentioned in the past when I saw it after its unveiling at IFA 2015.

What really makes this unique amongst tablets, however, is the Predator Quadio Speakers that are on all four corners of the Predator 8. But is it just a tablet with a few extra speakers or is this a true gaming rig for on the go? Let’s dive into to some testing and see if we can find out.

I have been doing some comparisons with my own tablet which is a Z3 Tablet Compact and these two devices are actually a very close match. However, there are some differences. These will become clear in the gaming tests that I have put them through. Before we get into that though, I would like to just show you around the device.

Here are a few more pictures of the Predator 8 to show off some of its key features.

The styling of the Acer Predator 8 is hit or miss it will appeal to those who like the Gaming laptop genre. However, those who like slick lines and slim devices need not apply here. I do kinda like it; the rough angular edges make it sit in the hands in landscape mode very nicely, which makes it great for gaming on the go. However, when I held it in landscape mode, I was forced to adjust my grip, as it felt awkward holding it with the corner resting in the middle of my palm.

What I was really wanting to find out was how this device performed when it came to gaming, so for that I did some aside by side testing with the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact.

Here is a clip showing some of the big differences between the two devices when it came to playing Asphalt 8.

The overall experience of playing the game on both devices was an enjoyable one. I personally feel that the 8″ tablet is one of the best sizes for tablet gaming, as the screen is just the right size for being held in a similar way to that of a gamepad. It is not too much of a stretch for your fingers to hit the middle of the screen when needed.
The Acer Predator 8 has a really nice immersive feel when it comes to playing games, and this is in part down the haptic feedback provided by the inbuilt haptic engine. You could feel when the car was “boosted” and also when you crashed. It is a very similar experience to the Force feedback that you find on the PlayStation 4 controller, albeit toned down slightly and not quite as intelligent.
On the Xperia, this option was not available in the settings but then again the Xperia does not have the hardware available to use this feature. I did notice that the Asphalt 8 game did have a different icon on both devices so there may be a possibility that Acer has made a customer version for the Predator.

So there we have it, just a brief overview of gaming on Predator 8 tablet from Acer. It may be an older device, but it is a good option for those of you who are really wanting a good gaming experience on the go.

More info on the tablet can be found here and you can pick one up from Amazon now.

The post Acer Predator 8 tablet – Hands on & Gaming demo is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Lenovo had a slightly smaller presence at MWC this year. but nonetheless we still went out to see them and to see what other new products they were announcing.

Phone-wise we have already seen most of their stuff for this year. That is taken care of under the Moto banner. The latest release being the Moto X Force, which I am currently finishing the review of and it will go live at the end of the week.

They did have a new phone to talk about, but once again this will not be coming to the UK so we didn’t really take much notice of it. Even if you were to try and import one it is very difficult to actually get hold of any Lenovo mobiles, which is a shame as they look pretty good. The phone release was the Lenovo K5. It looks a pretty good and has some okay specs, more info can be found about it here.

What we were really there to see was the new Tab3 line up as these have always been very good entry level and affordable tablets. Each year they seem to improve them a little bit more which is great news for the consumer.

The range comes in three different sizes – the 7″, 8″ and 10.1″. That 10.1″ one is aimed squarely at being used in the workplace as it has Android for Work set up on the device. The ones we are going to be focusing in on though are the smaller siblings – the Tab3 7 and Tab 3 8.

Before we get into the bits and pieces here is a video of the Tab3 8 in action..

As you can see in the video this looks like it has some pretty cool features so let’s dig in little deeper. Both Tab3 7″ and Tab3 8″ are powered by a 1GHz MediaTek quad-core processor, 1GB of memory, 5-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front facing camera combinations. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is installed by default albeit with a Lenovo theme on top of it.

The Tab3 7 has a 1280 x 800 resolution while the Tab3 8 has a higher 1920 x 1080 resolution, making that a more obvious choice for media consumption in my opinion. The are both IP52 rated so will survive the occasional splash which is handy as they’re targeting kids.

Moving onto battery and memory and we can see some more differences in this area as well. The Tab3 8 comes with 16GB of internal memory and a larger 4,290mAh battery than the 7-incher’s 3,450mAh cell and 8GB or 16GB storage options. Both devices will also be available as LTE devices in selected markets, although it’s unlikely that the UK will be one of these markets.

As mentioned before the big focus of these two tablets is to be family friendly, and Lenovo have put in a “Kids mode” to keep young users safe. Leigh was able to get a demo of this on the stand for you to see…

The Tab3 7 and Tab3 8 will be available in a vast array of different colours again though this will be market dependent. The ones on the stand were black with blue detailing which looked really very nice.

The Tab3 10 does come with a slightly higher feature set as this one is designed more as a work tool than a family device (something that it will still do admirably).

It comes with 1.3 GHz quad-core chip giving it that little bit more grunt under the hood. It also has up to 64GB of storage with up to 3GB of RAM making this a real workhorse and a very capable device. Again it is running Android 6.0 out of the box with a custom Lenovo theme. Like the smaller devices this too is IP52 rated, so will take a dousing.

We also have a an on-board battery life of 7000mAh meaning you should be able to get though the day without too much hassle. Connectivity-wise this will still support USB OTG for external drives etc and it will apparently allow you to even connect up Ethernet through an appropriate adapter.

A nice line up there from Lenovo. We haven’t seen official pricing but the Tab3 7 and 8 will be most likely be sub-£150 for their base spec and then a bit more for the higher spec devices. I would expect the The Tab3 10 to retail at under £250 for the entry level with the higher spec device being a bit higher. We should see them in stores as early as June 2016

More detail on Lenovo.com

The post MWC – Lenovo Tab3 series. Hands on. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Let’s have a look at this then. First up, it’s a well-built Android 5.1.1 tablet with an 8″ 1280×800 IPS screen. Inside you’ll also find a 1.3GHz quad-core CPU plus a 5 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel front one for those selfies. GPS, Bluetooth and, of course, WiFi is here but you also get 4G via the Vodafone network.

You get 16GB of storage on-board and then you can add a further 64GB via the microSD storage too. It’s made in China by a company called TCL Communications and, at 209 x 124.9 x 8.3 mm, it’s easy to hold on one hand.

Up front the screen, which is very crisp and bright, is surrounded by thin (especially at the sides) border with the 2 megapixel camera at the top. No buttons here – they’re all on-screen.

The right-side has the power button and the volume controls on these fairly thin buttons.

Meanwhile, on the left side but virtually on the rear side is the microSD and SIM card slot behind a small flap.

Once you power it on you’re met with an easy setup process with EE-style colours (a little strange considering it’s a Vodafone branded device). This is the Tab speed 6. Vodafone have announced that they will be offering this up for a mere £125 on pay as you go (including 6GB of data valid for up to 30 days). You can also get it for £16 monthly on a contract, which gets you 3GB of data.

I’ve done a lovely hands-on video of this thing below, which you may have already seen. It’s a great way to get to know the device, so do take a look…

There’s another video here recorded by Purav D that you might want to watch too.

As you can see that rear camera is slightly pronounced but it doesn’t present any real problems. On the bottom you’ve got a 3.5mm audio port, microphone and a microUSB charging port..

I’ve got to be honest, there was no noticeable creaking or flex in the chassis and it felt strong. There was a good feel to it considering this is at the lower end of the price scale, and it wasn’t too thick either.

Inside the setup process is relatively painless as I mentioned before. The screen itself is clean, clear and sharp. We ran it through a full AnTuTu Benchmark test and it properly struggled with the 3D tests in particular but gave a total score of 18427 – higher than a Galaxy Note 10.1.

The OS will guide you through and you’ll be using and familiar with it in no time. A notification bar slides down from the top and tells you what is happening with your tablet plus it’ll let you quickly adjust things like Bluetooth, WiFi, screen brightness and much more.

Google Play is here and there’s a smattering of Vodafone apps, but they’re not annoying or intrusive and can actually prove pretty useful for keeping a track on the network and performance. There’s also a “My Vodafone” app so that you can manage your account on the move.

As for everything else, as this is an Android tablet you can alter the backdrop and move widgets and shortcuts onto your homescreen tabs. The settings will let you enable a “double tap to wake” option too, which means you won’t need to keep pressing that power button all the time. The settings screen also has a data counter so that you can keep an eye (and set a limit) on the amount of mobile data you’re using, plus you can alter the notification sound, remove and control apps, setup a VPN and enable Google Printing here too.

The usual Google apps are here, including YouTube, Gmail, Drive, Chrome, Google+, Play Books, Play Games, Docs, Calendar, Play Movies and TV, Play Music, Play Newsstand etc. You also get the standard apps such as a gallery, calculator, file manager, FM radio (needs your headphones as an antenna) and messaging. Apart from Flipboard, there’s no real meddling with additional apps here.

It’s a fuss-free environment and, as this is Android, if you have a Google account then your contacts and email will be sync’d with the cloud.

Camera

The camera images came out relatively well, although the light balance and low-light performance was pretty limited. There’s a number of options within the camera app itself, including a timer, sports mode, night mode and the ability to tag your photos with the GPS location or change the aspect ratio. To be honest though, that’s about it and I did find it a tad annoying that it didn’t have a shortcut to the gallery so that you could see the picture you’d just taken from within the app.

Here’s a selection of some images I took on the highest resolution with the back camera. Sadly it’s fixed focus, so anything not in the mid-distance is blurry.

Overall

I did have a few foibles with this, such as the lack of a shortcut to the gallery system from within the camera app and the lack of a brightness sensor on the front of the tablet. The latter meant that there was no auto brightness on the screen so, if you’re regularly changing from light to dark areas, you can find yourself tweaking the brightness yourself.

Neither are huge problems though, and overall – for a mere £125 – it’s a really good deal. It does not have a cheap feel to it, it’s not thick or weighty like those other cheap tablets you may have seen and – praise be – the screen (8″ 1280×800 IPS) is really rather good indeed. Normally, at the cheaper end of the tablet market, I’m staring at an 800×600 and everything looks big, clunky and a little bit fuzzy. Here there’s really none of that, and the OS worked well enough with the 1.3GHz quad-core CPU.

The 1GB RAM might hold you up if you start to push things, but at this price-point people will just be wanting a tablet they can give their kids so that they can play multiplayer or chat with their mates through WhatsApp while you’re driving. On that level, it’s a bargain.

Head to Vodafone for further details.

The post Vodafone Tab speed 6 Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Around back, a very grippy rear panel which has a rather funky pattern on it. The bottom of the rear houses the external speaker and, up on the top right, there’s a microSD card slot. Good for boosting the on-board 16GB, which is already enough at this price-point if we’re honest. It’s just £79 from Tesco but you can probably get it cheaper elsewhere.

Specs here include that 7″ front panel running at 1280 x 800 pixels. It looks pretty decent and the tablet itself works well in one hand. Up front there’s a VGA camera, whilst around back there’s a 2 megapixel shooter but neither have a flash and I doubt you’d use either for taking really artistic shots. Both are OK for the odd shots and perhaps your Skype video calls, but nothing more.

Powered by Android 4.4.4 there’s 1GB of RAM and a 1.6GHz dual-core CPU. Bluetooth, WiFi and a 3.5mm audio port are also here. There’s also a feature called “Acer Touch Wakeup” which lets you fire your tablet up by performing a five-finger tap on-screen. It’s a cool idea and something similar to the LG “double-tap to wake” system.

Up top, the micro USB charging point, 3.5mm audio port.

On the right, a volume control and a power button. All of these are easy to locate but there’s a certain amount of “creak” as you use the device.

Inside

Inside the OS may not be the latest but it does perform well and supports the Play Store. There’s also a wealth of Acer apps included to help you along. abDocs and abFiles let you edit Office documents on the move and rename / copy files around your device. There’s also Acer music for downloading or streaming music from your very own home PC. Kinda cool that.

A similar system is in the abPhoto application, which will store all the photos you take on your device with your desktop PC. Both of these are pretty good ideas and they work well but things have moved on a little since they were probably made.

Now there’s cloud storage and you can back up your photos there instead. However, apps like abVideo and abPhoto will at least let you watch those “special” videos and media footage that you’d perhaps like to keep on your own PC.

An Acer Portal collates all the Acer apps in one place and, using an Acer account, you can hook into all of these relatively easily once you’ve setup the corresponding PC application. abDocs will let you connect to the documents on your PC and edit those too.

Other Acer apps include a suggestions app to recommend certain apps, plus another store which is slightly confusing given the fact that Google Play is there already. Apart from that, there’s Amazon Kindle for reading your books (relatively easy and comfortable on a device of this size, I can tell you) and every other Amazon-based app you can shake a stick at – Amazon Music, Amazon Appstore, Amazon Local and Audible. This is all on top of the usual Android apps you’d expect plus a “Float Widget” which lets you put your calendar, calculator, a memo and more – all over the top of existing content on your screen.

McAfee Security comes on-board, giving you the safety and anti-virus protection, plus Zinio for reading magazines on the move and a selection of games. This being Android, everything is sync’d with your Google account, meaning that email and contacts are all pulled down from the cloud automatically. Every Google app is here too, including YouTube, Maps, Photos, Books, Movies, Newsstand, Music, Drive and Chrome – which renders sites well.

Camera

Here’s a few example shots from the rear camera. The shots were reasonable considering the resolution available, but not overly brilliant.

Overall

A fairly average contender within the 7″ tablet category this. There were a few too many creaks from the chassis and it twisted all too easily – making the screen produce some strange colours. My main gripes are the sheer amount of apps pre-installed. Sure, I can understand one or two apps, but the entire Amazon suite? This isn’t a Kindle, why is it all here? And why do I need all the other additions too?

It delivered all the apps and widgets fairly trouble-free without any real hint of a struggle, despite only having 1GB of RAM. The on-screen keyboard was responsive and it was light enough to hold in one hand.

As for the cameras, they were really just for show and you wouldn’t want to use them in anger.

It left me with a feeling that this is a tablet within a low price-range that’ll get bought for kids. Those kids will just throw it around and play Angry Birds on it. They’re not going to use the many, many Acer apps or the many, many Amazon apps or the many, many other apps – so why are they really there?

If you’d like to get yourself one, head to Tesco or eBay, where there’s plenty listed there too.

The post Acer Iconia One 7 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Another year has gone by and another Sony Tablet has arrived on our desk at Coolsmartphone towers. Today I have the real pleasure of unboxing the new Xperia Z4 Tablet.

We first saw this stunning device at MWC, which we covered live. It was here that we were kinda knocked off our feet by what it was and what it could offer. I can say that it has been a very long time coming to get this device into my hands for review and I have been eager to get into it so, without further ado, lets delve in …

It is s pretty sweet looking device don’t you think?

It is a little bit smaller than the Xpeia Z2 Tablet due to the slight decrease in bezel sizes, but that is by no means a bad thing in my book. The device is lightweight and it does not feel too unwieldy. I can envisage this being a joy to use for ebook reading etc on the train. The biggest thing for me here is that keyboard. I am very surprised to say that is doesn’t totally suck, which is a nice thing to be able to say about a Bluetooth keyboard. It is a shame that it’s not back lit but then again this is very rare thing indeed.

The keys are quite small but, with a little bit of adjustment I can reach a good-ish typing speed with a slightly higher typo rate. I am actually writing this piece on the Z4 Tablet. It is no worse than a netbook..

Here are the specifications..

• Dimensions 167 x 254 x 6.1 mm
• Weight 389 grams Wi-Fi only, 393 grams Wi-Fi + LTE
• Resolution 2560×1600 pixels
• Display Diagonal 10.1″ – Scratch-resistant glass + Anti fingerprint coating
• Processor/Soc Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 64-bits 8-core CPU  with Adreno 430 GPU
• RAM 3 GB
• Internal storage  32 GB
• MicroSD up to 128 GB
• OS Android 5.0 Lollipop
• Front Camera 5.1 MP
• Rear camera 8.1 MP
• Battery Capacity 6000mAh
• Water resistant and dust tight (IP65 and IP68 – 1.5 m submersion)

Not a bad specs list there to be fair. There is one potential area of concern though, and that is the use of the Snapdragon 810. I have been reliably informed that the tablet is not liable to the overheating issues we’ve heard about – mainly due to the greater surface-area. Only time will tell on this one guys, and I will be keeping an eye on it.

The tablet is nice in the hand I have been able to hold it for a reasonable time without any discomfort and it sits well on the lap without taking up too much space unlike the Surface Pro 3.

I have high hopes for this machine and it may even become my replacement for my Macbook Air. That is if I can find a decent video editing and stitching app that will work on Android. We’ll have to see if I am able to achieve this,  but I am looking forward to finding out.

Please come along and join me in my journey of discovery over the next few weeks.

To keep you going between now and then here are a few more pics of the tablet including some against a competitior –  the Remix Ultra Tablet.

For more info check out this link

The post Xperia Z4 Tablet – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Suggested usage!

Using a tablet whilst out and about may seem like an alien idea to some, but for many including 4G in a tablet makes it the ideal companion to take on the train, bus or even to the local cafe. Historically tablets have been Wi-Fi only with the 4G variants costing a lot more, encouraging users to tether to their phones instead.

Archos with budget range of tablets have what is potentially a great device, the 80b Helium , which has a decent price, 4G and a host of other interesting specs. I’ve been using one for the last few weeks and it’s prime time to bring you my review. Starting as always with my good and bad points.

Good and Bad Points

Good

• Nice looking tablet.
• 4G and Dual SIM capabilities.
• Micro SD slot.
• Archos networked multimedia apps are a pleasure to use.
• Pre-installed bloat is optional and removable.
• Makes an ideal on the road productivity device.
• Reasonable display.

Bad

• Only 8GB memory doesn’t leave much space for stuff.
• Front and rear cameras are pretty basic.
• 1 GB of RAM struggles at times.
• It doesn’t pickup 4G in as many areas as my phone (running on the same network).

Design

When I opened up the box of the Archos 80b Helium 4G tablet it was quite a surprise how familiar it looked.  Maybe it was the silver metal sections joining the white plastic sections, but it sure looked like my LG G Pad 8.3.

So from the front you’ve got the 8″ display with fairly large white bezels around each side. The top and bottom bezels make nice handles when used in landscape. As the tablet has onscreen navigation buttons the bottom bezel can only be described as unnecessary. The top one houses the front facing cameras, the sensors and an earpiece. If you dared use this as a phone it’s there waiting for you to do so.

The sides are made of silver plastic, the sides are also made up of the display surround which is chamfered down to the edge and this is white plastic. So it’s really not a seamless arrangement. The left hand edge is where the power button lives, the power button is plastic and to tell you the truth it’s also in the wrong place. As a longtime tablet user I’d much prefer that the power and volume buttons are side by side, especially as you’ll often find yourself using the tablet in landscape. With this arrangement you have to decide which button to hide away. The right hand edge is where the plastic volume rocker lives.

The top edge has the 3.5mm headphone socket and a fingernail backplate removal point. The bottom edge has a microphone hole for when you use it as a phone and the Micro USB port.

The back is probably the best looking part of the tablet, it’s a non removable brushed metal backplate, that has a cutout for the speaker. The backplate also has some Archos branding on it too. Above the metal backplate is a separate plastic smaller backplate, this one is removable and gives you access to the dual SIM slots and the Micro SD slot.

Overall the design is pretty nice, I’d have preferred the edges to be metal, but we can’t have everything at this price point. It is nice having a metal backplate it gives the tablet a slightly more premium feel.

Hardware

Spec wise the 80b is a bit basic, opting for some basic components to keep the price down. Here is what you get.

• CPU: Mediatek MT8732 Quad-Core 1.5 GHz.
• GPU: Mali 760 MP2.
• RAM: 1GB.
• Internal Storage: 8GB (with 4.76 GB free out of the box) .
• Expandable Storage: Micro SD card up to 64 GB (when formatted to fat32 standard).
• Screen: Diagonal Size 8 inch (20.32 cm) Resolution 1280 x 800 IPS.
• Software: Android 4.4.4 KitKat.
• ARCHOS Apps preinstalled: Video, Files.
• Wireless Technologies: 1x Micro SIM, 1x Mini SIM 4G. LTE frequencies 800 / 1800 / 2600 MHz. Data Rates LTE / 4G (cat.4) 150Mbps / 50Mbps.
• SMS/MMS capable.
• Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS/AGPS.
• Cameras: Back camera 2MP – with LED Flash, Video Encoding 1080p. Front Camera 0.3 MP.
• Battery: 3900 mAh Li-Poly.
• Video Playback: H.264 up to 1080p resolution – 30 fps/ AVI/MP4/3GP.
• Dimensions: 210 MM H, 122 MM W, 9.3 MM D.
• Weight: 320g.

A few things hamper the hardware though, the CPU, GPU and RAM combo mean that screen transitions are occasionally are a little laggy, games run at slower frame rates if at all and everything just feels a bit gloopy. The internal memory only 8 GB as well doesn’t help matters especially as you only actually get about 4.76 GB free, which means you’ll be relying upon putting files on the memory card, which if you want it for a multimedia device will be fine.

The display is quite nice despite being quite low resolution. At 1280×800 things aren’t too pixelated, although if you try and use it outdoors you will be punished for your impunity.

Benchmarks

The benchmarks all paint the 80b Helium in a fairly bad light, with the Mediatek MT8732 only getting basic scores.

• 3DMark – 4990 ( Archos Oxygen 101 – 7338, Tesco Hudl 2 – 14650, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – 16558, Nexus 7 – 10767, Nexus 9 – 24567)
• Antutu – 21734 ( Archos Oxygen 101 – 33942, Tesco Hudl 2 – 31319, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – 34860, Nexus 7 – 28017, Nexus 9 – 60230)
• Geekbench – 2110 ( Archos Oxygen 101 – 2217, Nexus 7 – 1752, Nexus 9 – 3220)
• Quadrant – 9894 ( Archos Oxygen 101 – 8964, Tesco Hudl 2 – 13922, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – 15790, Nexus 7 – 7571, Nexus 9 – 13971)

Battery Life 

The 3900 mAh battery in the 80b is an odd one, you can kill it in a few hours playing games or watching video but leave it in standby it will last for a few days, with about an hour screen on time.

Audio Quality

Audio quality on the 80b is a tale of two very different things. The rear speaker is pretty basic, low volume, no depth and very tinny. With headphones plugged in however it is different, thanks no doubt to some software tweaks. It is a decent volume and has decent depth and bass.

Software

The Archos 80b Helium tablet runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat with the Google Now Launcher installed, so you get a fairly straightforward setup with no odd gestures or skins to deal with. With it also being an Archos product you get the benefit of having the nice network friendly Archos media and file management apps pre-installed for you.

Archos do however do offer you the chance to pre-install some bloat when you first boot the tablet up, I did just to see what they’d force on you. Remember though these apps are optional and uninstallable.

Overall it is nice to see Archos still installing their media apps out of the box, it is also nice to see them offering you the chance to not pre-install the bloat at startup. How times have changed…..

Camera

The Archos 80b Helium tablet has two basic cameras, a 2 MP rear camera with a flash and no discernible way of choosing what it focuses on and a 0.2 MP VGA camera on the front. Both are unpleasant to use, the rear mainly because it decides what it wants to focus on. Certainly nothing up close, definitely not nearby and more often than not on nothing at all. The front camera at least manages to focus for selfies it just applies what looks like an 8-bit filter over the top of the image, the joys of 0.2 MP images. Needless to say I cannot recommend the tablet if you’re wanting to actually take pictures with it.

And here are the truly awful selfies of me on Sunday morning, mid DIY project.

Conclusion

When a manufacturer does too much of one thing it can now and again lose sight of the point of a device. I really felt like that with the 80b Helium, it just felt like the sum of its parts as opposed to a load of unique and useful features combining to make a decent tablet. The lack of memory, low RAM and basic processor made it feel lack lustre and the inclusion of 4G just made you wonder what someone out and about would actually do with this tablet. Yes they maybe watch a film, play a game or do some work, but all of those would be compromised and a bit slow. Without 4G this tablet would make sense as a cheap tablet suitable for media playback, with 4G it just doesn’t feel right. It does look quite nice though…..

The Archos 80b Helium 4G is available at the Archos Website for £134.99 which for a 4G tablet is reasonable, so if that’s all you want and you can live with the compromises then head over to their site.

The post Archos 80b Helium 4G – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I have now had this tablet for a few weeks now and I was holding back on the review until a few software updates had been delivered. Since I did the unboxing video back in April it has been a very busy time for the Remix as it has now shipped to all the Kickstarter backers including the Infamous KS 155 (the group that broke Kickstarter). Jide Technology (the makers of the tablet) have also been busy pushing out tweaks for the OS including a couple of keyboard fixes. There has also been the announcement that Lollipop will be coming to the device in late June. So they have been busy and I have been busy testing the tablet out as my daily driver.

Hardware

I am not going to spend too much time covering this as I have already covered it in the unboxing and first impressions piece. Here is a quick montage of some hardware pics for you to check out.

Here is a gallery showing off the tablet’s hardware

I have been very impressed with the hardware and I have not experienced a huge amount of issues unlike some of the other Kickstarter backers. The biggest issue’s I have had with the hardware have been with the keyboard and these were rectified in the first round of software updates that came out at the same time as the backers tablets started shipping.

I am still not hugely impressed with the kickstand as it feels like it will break away from the tablet. I don’t actually think that it will break off but it is just an niggling thought that sits at the back of my head. What I have found when I compared it in size with my other machines is that although the screen is 11.6”, the device actually takes up the same footprint as a Surface Pro 3. This is due to the relatively large bezels, whilst these allow you to hold the device fairly well I think they are too big. I can only hope that they are reduced slightly on the next version which I am sure is being worked on.

I do find that 11.6” is a bit too big for me and if I was going to be buying a new tablet device the biggest screen I would be going for is 10.1” as this is really the sweet spot for me. I like to be able to use my tablet for reading as well as video and I feel that the 11.6” screen is too unwieldy in portrait as the centre of gravity is just in the wrong place.

Software

This is the real point of the device these days as it offers the user a very different experience from that of a normal Android tablet. The Remix OS kinda feels like someone put a drunk Chromebook and an Android KitKat tablet in a room and let nature take its place!

Let me explain what I mean, imagine using a launcher that doesn’t allow you to have widgets on the display and that has no app drawer and you are halfway there. Then you need to bring the Taskbar from Chrome OS and the fact that you can pin the most used apps to the task bar. The next little item on top of that is that the multitasking is done in the same way as Chromebooks.

So you have all your active apps in the task bar and then you click on them as and when you need them or even Alt-Tab to change them as you do on Windows. The next unique thing that can be done here is that you can run apps in either phone mode or fullscreen mode. When running in the phone mode you are able to have up to 3 apps side by side(four is possible with overlaps).

This makes for a much neater and better multitasking system which sounds great. However in practice it is slightly jarring, I find myself wishing for the split screen functionality that you see on Windows 8.1 instead of the phone mode. I think it is because for me I just prefer working in the full screen version of apps instead of windowed phone representations. This is of course a personal preference and some of you may love the idea, but it does take some getting used to. A nice touch is that you can copy and paste between the phone mode apps without any issue which does work wonders for editing content and collaborating between two apps. You are also allowed to have an app in a phone mode in front of an app in fullscreen mode but it does not “stick” which I think is a missed opportunity as that would be immensely useful. Imagine having Hangouts open with Word underneath in fullscreen mode but that being the active window which you are working in. To be fair to Remix OS this is something that cannot be done on either Windows or OS X.

Remix OS does come with some custom preinstalled apps which are designed for the tablets screen size and to best make use of the modes concept. If I am honest I have barely given them much notice as I am heavily invested into the Android OS as it is and I have my apps working the way I want them to. On my device I also had the Chinese App store and Chinese feedback App, this is purely because I was using a prototype device and I have had it confirmed by other Kickstarter backers that this is not the case for them.

The notifications area is a bit different from what you will have seen on any other Android device, in that when you drag down from the top of the device you will see your missed notifications grouped on a per app basis. Until you tap on the apps name you will not see the information within. This seems illogical to me as to why it is a good thing as it requires an extra unnecessary step to access your information.

Alongside this you have the option for your settings which are laid out in a screen those accustomed to the Windows 8.1 tiles will find familiar it allows you to get to all the main things quickly and easily enough. To be honest I will normally just use the settings icon on the desktop.

Once you get into settings the layout is familiar to any Android 4.4.4 device, although some things are not present but that is because they are not really needed. One thing I would have liked to see is the option to invert the scrolling direction on the trackpad but alas no it is not there I am not sure if this is android specific thing or not.

That brings me onto the software keyboard, which you will hardly ever see if I’m honest it is pretty good as it is using the the AOSP layout but for those wanting swipe input you will need to download the Google keyboard which I have done.

Like on any other tablet the soft keyboard will take up half of the vertical display which make sit largely useless for any real work. But with the hardware keyboard you shouldn’t really need to use it. One thing to note is that if the hardware keyboard is connected the soft one will not appear unless it is folded flat against the back of the tablet. In this position it will most likely come off anyway due to the magnets not being able to hold it in place properly so you might as well just remove it for that scenario.

Overall I like what Jide are doing with the software I just think that there is a large amount of work to be done to polish it up and I am pleased to say that this is being done as we are currently getting updates more or less every week all of which are in response to customers feedback. This is really what the Remix Ultra tablet s about in its current form, a testbed to develop the OS for future endeavours, but more on that later.

Performance

For those of you wanting an all singing all dancing powerhouse PC replacement then this is not going to be for you in fact it is not even close. However if you are looking for a fluid and functional machine to work on then this might be a worthwhile investment. The device is running on a Nvidia Tegra 4 chipset with a 4+1 configuration allowing the machine to dial back to one core when it is needed i.e. in sleep state. That being said I have used slower tablets that have cost more so I am still impressed. I have run some benchmarks on the Remix and I am going to be using the Xperia Z Tablet as my comparison. The reason I have chosen them is I have owned it and it is similar in specs albeit with different processor manufacturers. Here goes;-

Remix Ultra Tablet

Antutu  32694
Quadrant   15857
Sunspider 1.0.2.   1155.6ms

Xperia Z Tablet
Antutu   20216
Quadrant  7215
Sunspider 1.0.2.  1629

So we can see that the Remix is performing much better than that of the Xperia Z Tablet however this is not surprising considering the different generation processors involved.

I also played Asphalt 8 on the Remix to test for lag and frame dropping here is a quick video showing this off.

It performed pretty well and I didn’t have much issue with frame dropping and lag but there was some in there. However for any one considering using this for games get a gamepad as otherwise it is very awkward as 11.6” plus bezels is a lot to wield as a gamer.

Battery Life and Power

This is one of the area that the Remix is a letdown as it should have a great battery life as it has a whopping 8000 mah battery but it just doesn’t last.

I am uncertain as to the cause of this issue but the guys at Jide a very busy trying to fix it and optimise it for longer life. I have been slightly spoiled by battery life due to my Xperia device over the years but that rate of decline is just not normal. Another handy feature is that if you connect a phone to the Remix it will actually allow it to be charged albeit very slowly. This can be done via the included Micro USB to USB break out adaptor take note Apple and others it was included for free!

The tablet can be charged wither via the proprietary connector or via a high ampage Micro USB charger. The charging times are not that different. What this does mean is that you can have a peripheral connected to the Remix whilst you charge it. Nice touch as this is something that is missing from most tablets other than the Surface range.

Other things of note

As I have mentioned a few times this tablet is very much a development tool to allow Jide to test things fro the next platform. It is very much like the a Nexus product in that respect, albeit one that is running CyanogenMod on it with the nightly updates being weekly. Jide recently attended CES Shanghai which was run in the last week or two and during that time they were there they showed off Remix OS on a variety of different form factors ranging from Tablets to All In One style devices. They are very keen to experiment and play with what can be done with the Remix OS and have made it open or OEMs to use it as the OS they ship tablets with.

Those who backed the Kickstarter Campaign after the tablets all sold out may have put a pledge of a few pound. This means that you will be getting sent a copy of Remix 1.5 when it is made final for free. Jide are looking to have this in place by the end of the year. What is Remix 1.5? Well in short it is Jide’s interpretation of Lollipop. This is great to see from such a young tech company and is doing it better than some of the bigger names out there.

UPDATE
I have been invited to test the Remix 1.5 beta and I have got it running on the Remix as I type. I will add an article in the next few days once I have done some testing. It is a big improvement so far. More to come soon…..

The post Remix Ultra Tablet – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The modern day tablet is used for a whole lot of things, be it multimedia, playing games, browsing the web, catching up on emails, writing blog posts, online shopping or just good old social media. Picking the right tablet for you and your needs however is a difficult one, which brand should you choose? Which colour? Which selection of specs? Does it need a memory card slot? It’s a minefield to those not in the know.

Archos have a wide range of tablets, spanning a range of budgets. The Oxygen tablet sits near the top of the pile thanks to its FHD display, along with that and their Fusion Storage memory solution Archos have given themselves a unique selling point. With just the addition of a large memory card you can have yourself a device with a huge internal memory, to fill with as many apps and games as you want. But is that enough? Well I’ve had the Archos Oxygen 101 tablet for the last few weeks now and we shall hopefully see. To start my review off lets have my good and bad points.

Good and Bad Points

Good

• Front facing stereo speakers.
• Great colours and angles on the 1080p display.
• Compatible with Archos Fusion Storage to boost the internal memory.
• Micro SD.
• Micro HDMI.
• A nice range of Archos Media apps pre-installed.
• Micro USB charging and Micro USB OTG ports.
• 7000 mAh battery lasts quite a while in standby.
• Makes a great gaming or mobile office device thanks to size and flexibility.

Bad

• The stock Archos Launcher is a little basic.
• It runs KitKat.
• The Rockchip Processor struggles at times.
• Volume levels with headphones in a little lacking.
• Where metal meets plastic at the back there is a harsh lip.
• Outdoor visibility not good.

Design

The Archos Oxygen 101 is a 10.1 inch Android tablet, designed to be used in landscape orientation thanks to it’s very slight wedge shape, with the bottom edge being thinner and almost flat and the top edge being thicker and curved. Not Lenovo Yoga wedge shaped, just very slight wedge shaped.

The design is pretty basic as most of the buttons and ports live in the same area on the tablet, which is the top curved edge. I suppose you could hold this tablet either way round. But I’m talking horizontal landscape mode here. The top curved edge houses the Micro SD slot, the Microphone port, Micro USB charging port, Micro USB OTG port, Micro HDMI port, a standard charging port for a special Archos cable and the volume rocker. The only slight issue with everything being on the top is that if you have a couple of cables plugged in you’ll have to make sure you don’t pick cables with large ends. For instance when charging it is a struggle to fit in one of those Sony Micro USB OTG USB sticks in at the same time, if the ports were about 5mm further apart it would be all ok. However most normal sized cables fit in side by side.

The edges don’t really have anything on them bar the headphone socket on the left and the power button on the right. The edges are plastic as is the screen surround.

The front of the tablet has the Archos logo on the bottom bezel, two front facing speakers, the front facing camera and the sensors.

The back of the tablet is metal, which is nice to have and it gives the tablet a premium kind of feel to it, however where it joins the plastic edges it is a little harsh.

Overall the design is fairly nice, it lends itself to being put in some sort of tablet stand or keyboard dock and used as a mini games console or utilising those ports on the top it is just really easy to use as a mobile office kind of device, I used it with a Microsoft Universal Mobile keyboard, a battery pack and a USB Hard drive all connected and it made a nice small laptop replacement.

Check out my brief hands on video for a walkthrough of the device.

Hardware

The hardware inside the Oxygen 101 is pretty good, here’s what you get:

• CPU: Quad-core Rockchip RK 3288 ARM Cortex A17 @ 1.8 GHz.
• GPU: Mali T764 Quad-core.
• RAM: 2 GB.
• Internal Storage: 16 GB.
• Expandable Storage: Micro SD card up to 64 GB (when formatted to fat32 standard).
• Screen: 10.1 inches, 1920 x 1200 pixels, 218 PPI, IPS, 10 point multi touch.
• Rear camera: 5 MP with Flash, Video Encoding 1080p.
• Front Camera: 2 MP.
• Battery Size: Li-Ion 7000 mAh, Battery Life – Video Playback 9 hrs 10min.
• Video Playback: H.265 up to 4K*2K resolution – 30 fps AVI, MP4, MOV, 3GP, MPG, PS, TS, MKV, FLV.
• Audio Playback: MP3, WAV (PCM/ADPCM), AAC3, AAC+ 5.13, OGG Vorbis, FLAC.
• Extras: USB OTG port, Micro USB port, Micro HDMI, Micro SD slot, Bluetooth, GPS.
• Dimensions: 240 mm x 172 mm x 10mm.
• Operating System: Android 4.4.4 “KitKat”.
• ARCHOS Apps preinstalled: Video, System Monitor, Files, Media Server.

The Processor and GPU combination are typical Archos, they’ve been using Rockchip chips for a while now. Check out the Benchmarks below to see how they fared. I did notice at times the Oxygen did slow down, normally when I first turned it on and the accounts were syncing up and the Play Store started updating apps. At all other times the tablet felt fairly quick and fluid, games played well, videos played well and in general it all was pretty good. The GPU copes well with games, it just seems when actions are shifted to the CPU it lags a bit.

The WiFi did seem weaker than on other devices, getting a weaker signal in areas in my house and work where normally I’d have decent strength, it also can’t pickup 5 GHz WiFi AC.

The internal memory is possibly the most exciting thing about the Oxygen tablet, it supports up to 64 GB Micro SD cards and once you update to the latest firmware you can combine the internal memory and the Micro SD card, so that you can have an internal memory of up to about 80 GB, which if you want to install lots of games and apps this would be perfect. Archos really have given themselves something unique hardware wise.

Out of the box you get 12.95 GB free out of the stated 16 GB.

Sound quality on the Archos was pretty good, the two front facing speakers were plenty loud enough for listening to music at home, at volume they did sound a little tinny and they didn’t really have any bass, but they were a handy addition to the unit. Playing games was enjoyable thanks to them. Sound quality with headphones in was good, albeit not the loudest I’ve ever come across it still gave a pleasant experience. At full volume I wasn’t in pain which isn’t ideal as sometimes you need that extra volume. With a little fiddling with the Equalizer the sound quality was quite good with decent bass.

Benchmarks

As always I include the benchmarks, so you can see roughly how it compares to other tablets at the moment.

• 3DMark – 7338 ( Tesco Hudl 2 – 14650, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – 16558, Nexus 7 – 10767, Nexus 9 – 24567)
• Antutu – 33942 ( Tesco Hudl 2 – 31319, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – 34860, Nexus 7 – 28017, Nexus 9 – 60230)
• Geekbench –  2217 ( Nexus 7 – 1752, Nexus 9 – 3220)
• Quadrant – 8964 ( Tesco Hudl 2 – 13922, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – 15790, Nexus 7 – 7571, Nexus 9 – 13971)

So on paper the Archos tablet is better than the Nexus 7 and inferior to the rest. If it wasn’t for the Archos Software and Fusion Storage I’d agree, personally I’d pick the Archos over a Nexus 7.

Battery Life

The 7000 mAh battery in the Oxygen 101 is pretty good, under light use I got several days of standby time and a few hours of screen on time.
Under heavy use however I got more like six and a half hours power on with four and a half screen on time. So if you’re going to be getting this as a gaming or media device for use all day you’ll need to keep near to a plug socket, however if you just want something always on around the house the standby time will keep it alive for a good few days.
Software

Archos have a history of pre-installing apps on their devices, normally I would shudder at those words. But the Archos Media and File Management apps are really really useful, the main thing is that they have Network File Sharing built in, so browsing to my network storage was an absolute doddle.
The Oxygen 101 runs on Android 4.4.4 with a basic AOSP style Android Launcher, I installed Google Now Launcher pretty soon into my time with it, the stock launcher just felt too basic and too stretched out as the icon grid was huge on the app drawer. As you can see below, the top image is the Archos app drawer and the bottom image the Google Now app drawer.
The Archos apps are really nice, you get a File Manager, a Video Player, a remote device player and also weirdly the Archos Music player has to be installed from the Google Play Store. The thing I like about them all is the Samba (SMB)/ UPnP / FTP file server support built in, so you can easily locate and playback multimedia stored on your home or work network, be it a PC, Laptop or NAS drive.
Below is the File manager app, which browses through my network without a second thought. Unlike some of the third party file managers around.
Here is the Archos Music app which again makes short work of my network storage.

Camera

Tablet photography has never been one of my favourite pastimes, neither doing it or watching other people do it. The 5 MP rear camera on the Archos took pretty basic shots, the display was hard to see what you were trying to capture and it did not like focusing on close up items.
Conclusion

Overall I’d say the Archos Oxygen 101 was a good “all rounder”. A mix of good speakers, a decent screen, a suite of nice multimedia apps, a flexible array of ports and a software trick that will give you more internal memory than you could ever want (probably!). All for approx £169.99.

Looking at each element of the tablet one by one yes you can pick holes in it, the CPU and GPU are a little lacking, the build quality is a bit rough in places and the chances of it ever getting Lollipop are a little iffy, but for someone who wants a decent budget tablet with a huge internal storage then this would be for them.

The Oxygen 101 will be available soon from the Archos store.

The post Archos Oxygen 101 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The other day I unboxed the Remix Ultra Tablet and posted an article with my first thoughts.

I have now had a bit more time to use the tablet and I now wish to share an overview of the OS as it is very similar to the Android which we know and love, with some very significant differences.

I could go into to all these differences here, but I feel that it would be much better for you to see it, so here we have a wee video showing off the OS…

So far I am liking the tablet, but there are a few things that I do feel need to be addressed if this is going to be a challenger to replace your laptop. I have been providing feedback to the Jide team about the tablet. I can only hope that they will listen to this feedback and implement the changes in the next iteration of software (hopefully the one that rolls out with the Kickstarter release).

I hope you are enjoying these posts, I would welcome any questions that you would like to see answered. I was asked one and as a result I have produced this clip for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks guys.

The post Remix OS overview. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The day where I can hopefully get rid of my need for a Windows PC forevermore (well at least out with work anyway). I have been lucky enough to get hold of a Remix Ultra tablet from Jide Technologies. These are the guys who, whilst they were working for Google, decided that Android in a tablet should be productive. So vthey went about trying to get that happening.

They initially launched the product in China where it met some success. So, spurred on by this, they made the decision to come to other markets. They approached this via Kickstarter but they also tied in with Facebook. Initially the product was only going to go to USA but after overwhelming support they announced it would come to the EU and some other regions.

Later in that very day they announced their Kickstarter campaign where you could snag a full tablet for $59 including shipping. Needless to say they were all gone in seconds, as were the ones in the $199 tier. They achieved their funding goal in a few hours and have been pushing out updates ever since. I have written a few articles about the story as it has developed over the past few weeks. Just click here for the list of them.

What is this device trying to be? A laptop, a tablet or both? I think it is safe to say that it is trying to be both. I see some pointers towards Windows 8 in the OS alongside Chrome, but it is mostly Android that I am seeing. The nice thing about it is the ability to run apps in either phone mode or tablet mode. This can mean that you can get some multitasking done in a way not really possible until now on an Android device.

As I mentioned I have been able to get hold of one of these tablets so without further ado lets get the unboxing done…

Here are some more close-ups of the tablet and keyboard.

I have no longer got my Surface Pro 3 as I have sold it. I did not need the horsepower it provided. I am very hopeful that this tablet will go some of the way to fill the gap that will be left, and I am sure that it will. I intend to to use this machine as my day to day device for the foreseeable future I will also be feeding back to the team at Jide Tech to further enhance the software, so that by the time the Kickstarter units are shipped (late May), they will have been tweaked further.

I really like the ethos that is being used in the development of the Remix OS, it is something that the community will be able to feedback into so that we can all benefit. It reminds me of the early Cyanogen days.

On first impressions I am very pleased with the Remix Ultra. There are some niggles which I will need to work through but I put these down to getting used to the OS and not the hardware or design. So far so good with my initial 24hrs. More to come over the next few days.

I will be on the podcast talking about this device in Thursday night so tune in for more then.

The post Remix Ultra Tablet – The unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

So, initial impressions are pretty good. It’s a light and easy-to-handle device which reminds me of an e-reader. The 8″ IPS WXGA screen is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, especially after my son grabbed it to install some games. It’s a blur-free experience though, with images showing up clearly on the 1280×800 pixel (213 dpi) display. This is fine until you realise that the brightness level is cranked up, so you need to adjust it down to save your battery life as there isn’t an “auto” setting.

The OS is Android 4.4.4, so no Lollipop action here and no news of whether it’ll get an upgrade. The front of the unit does have a 2 megapixel camera, which will suffice for the odd selfie and if you’re into Skype etc.

The black polished frontage meets the matt-feel rear section around the edges of the device and on this unit it’s a dark silver / grey. The right side has the volume controls and a power button, which is a little fiddly to find at first. This, though, wasn’t too much of a problem as I found the tablet to have lifted LG “double tap to wake” system, which means you can just tap the screen with your finger instead.

Also, up top, there seems to be an IR blaster. This isn’t mentioned in the specs but I assume this is what it actually is. Next to this is the obligatory 3.5mm audio port.

To the left, near the top, a small flap which hides the SIM and microSD card slot. There’s actually 8GB of storage on here, but you can whack in your own microSD to boost that by up to another 64GB.

The back, which is nicely sculpted I must say, has the external speaker grille and a 5 megapixel camera (I’ll mention the camera quality later) which doesn’t have a flash. It’s pronounced a little.

At the bottom, should you dare to make calls on this, there’s the microphone and the charge point.

Looking under the hood, we’re in fairly standard mid-point tablet territory. It has 1GB memory and runs a quad-core 1.2Ghz Qualcomm MSM8916 with an Adreno GPU. The battery is a 4060 mAh and faired well during testing, plus you get GPS, Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi b/g/n.

INSIDE

There’s a small amount of tweaks within the OS but nothing to ruin the experience. Voda have added something called “Smart Flow”, which lets you select a range of images which will then be zoomed “into”. This makes you feel like you’re flying over the scenery or background in question and is really rather nice. I’ve seen live wallpapers before but this is a particular unobtrusive idea.

Another addition is “Smart Weather”. This grabs data from AccuWeather and pops it onto the main screen so you’l know whether to grab your umbrella.

There’s also the Vodafone “Discover” application which seems to group together news and information from various Voda sources. You can drag this around to suit your requirements. you can see your device status, the latest Voda Tech Team news, signal coverage and various other bits. It’s basically like a support section and a bunch of Vodafone news snippets in one.

Other than that, it’s everything you expect from Android. All the Google paraphernalia is there – YouTube, Google Maps, Hangouts, Drive, Chrome, Google Play, Books, Games and so on. As this has a 4G SIM in the back you can, subject to coverage, expect some very decent speeds and you can of course also text to and from the device too. As this is Google, you can hook into Gmail and get your contacts and diary appointments sync’d up with the almighty Google cloud. If you have a POP3 account elsewhere, that’s fine too. There’s a mail client and solution for any email account you may have. Not only that, but Kingsoft Office is available so that you can open and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentation files – just as you would in Microsoft Word. The keyboard is swipe-style but you can also just jab away at the on-screen keys or install your own keyboard if you fancy.

Other treats include a file manager, clock / alarm, two browsers (the stock Android one no-body uses any more plus Chrome), a calculator, sound recorder and Google Now for doing that clever “OK Google” magic.

CAMERA

If you do dare to take this out to take snaps then I’ll admit the resulting pictures aren’t too bad at all. There’s a range of options in the camera and it’s both responsive and sharp. Here’s a few example shots.

OVERALL

It’s not shockingly quick, but likewise it’s not annoyingly slow. The quad-core 1.2GHz CPU can get a bit of a sweat on if you try opening a particularly hefty Word document in the Kingsoft Office application, but YouTube, Twitter, Facebook ran fine and it rendered sites quickly enough too.

The price is about right for what this is. A decent and solid mid-range tablet. The 4G speed was very much appreciated, although I think I’d be buying it on Pay As You Go and then just topping up £10 to get myself 1GB of data if I was out and about. It’s a thin, well put-together device which also just-about-fits in your rear trouser pocket. Just don’t sit down will you?

For keeping the kids entertained on long journeys this is bang on the money. Get the full pricing and availability of the Vodafone Smart Tab 4G on the Vodafone website.

The post Vodafone Smart Tab 4G Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Good

• Glorious display, with great colours and decent viewing angles.
• The large hi resolution display is ideal for gaming, multimedia or web browsing.
• 32GB Internal Memory really helps with app and game choice.
• Kickstand is really useful in all modes.
• Huge great battery means some great battery life.
• Intel chip really helps the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro fly.
• Sound quality from the speakers and sub-woofer is really good.
• Built in projector is a unique addition, ideal for those on the move (although see below).
• Multi-Window takes advantage of the large display.

Bad

• The Lenovo Launcher takes some getting used to.
• The large size isn’t that mobile or manageable in the hand.
• Some third party Android apps don’t look that great on a 13” landscape display.
• The projector takes a bit of figuring out.

Design

Lenovo continued the design of previous models of the Yoga Tablet in the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro, albeit in this model a bit bigger. So you get the same looking thin sturdy silver plastic tablet with a few metallic accents like the power button and volume rocker, a battery bulge down one side and a metal kickstand attached to the bulge, a camera on the rear and a large glorious screen round the front. Very few things have changed with this model over previous generations.

The sides of the tablet don’t really contain much, in landscape view with the bulge away from you the volume rocker is on the right, along with the Micro USB socket which has USB Host functionality and also the 3.5MM Headphone socket. The power button and projector are contained in the battery bulge, the power button on the right and projector on the left. The power button flashes when you are charging the tablet and you can configure this behaviour in the settings. The projector has a focusing button nearby on the bulge, this basically just slides in and out until you get a clear image.

The kickstand on the back seems more sturdy than other models and now has a catch to hold it in place when closed, it also has a large cutout hole where the sub woofer sits which Lenovo say you can use to hang the device on a handy hook somewhere. Not sure I’d trust any hooks I’ve got attached to stuff. The Kickstand can be rotated around to help you position the tablet wherever you want, you can open it to 90^ and use on the flat, you can spin it around and use it upright or hang it on a hook! I really like the kickstand, it makes the tablet really quite useful for a variety of things. The kickstand hides the Micro SD slot which lives under a plastic flap.

The front of the tablet is basically a large slab of glass, with a bezel about the width of your thumb around each edge. The top of the display has the front facing 1.6MP camera, ideally placed for Skype or huge tablet selfies. The front also has two front facing speakers, which in conjunction with the sub woofer sound great.

Overall the size of the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro cannot be ignored. It is one of the largest mainstream Android tablets out, taking it on your travels is going to more like taking a lightweight laptop with you. Also the size means holding it whilst using it is difficult, one handed is a no no, two handed is do able with a split onscreen keyboard. In portrait the tablet looks ridiculous, just don’t do that.

The Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is designed to be used in landscape mode, placed on a hard surface with the Kickstand holding the tablet upright. I found it to be a great media device thanks to the speaker arrangement, a great games machine paired up with a Gamepad and also a great productivity device once paired up with a Bluetooth keyboard. The kickstand makes all of these Use Cases easier.

Hardware

Spec wise the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is pretty good.

• Processor – Intel Atom Z3745 Processor 1.86GHz.
• Display – 13.3″, IPS Multi-touch, 2560×1440 QHD, PPI 221.
• Internal Memory – 32GB (Out of the box 25 GB).
• RAM – 2.0GB LPDDR3.
• Rear Camera – 8MP f2.2 wide-aperture lens, advanced glare-reducing glass, BSI 2 sensor.
• Front Camera – 1.6 Mp.
• Battery – Li-Ion 9600 mAh 3 Cell Li-Cylindrical Life up to 15 hours.
• Connectivity – Bluetooth Version 4.0, 802.11abgn WLAN, GPS with A-GPS.
• Ports – Micro USB with USB Host, Micro-SD card, 3.5mm audio jack.
• Speakers – Premium JBL® front-facing, large-chamber stereo speakers 1.5W with subwoofer 5W, Wolfson® Master HiFi audio processing and Dolby® surround sound.
• Projector – approx 40 – 50 lumens.
• Android 4.4.2.
• Dimensions –   .
• Weight – 950g.

Spec wise the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is really pretty good, the most important thing is the 32GB internal storage, it really gives the tablet some flexibility, especially when combined with a Micro SD slot. You can put media on the card and apps and games on the internal memory.

The Intel processor and the 2GB of RAM really make the tablet feel quick, I didn’t notice any weirdness with the Intel processor, those days are really over. The speakers also deserve a mention here as the two front facing speakers combined with the rear sub woofer really make for a decent audio experience. The display also is rather splendid, it’s bright, colourful and viewable from all angles. It is 2560×1440 QHD 2K, which is the same resolution as the LG G3, Nexus 6 and Note 4, just a lot larger. Yes the PPI is a lot lower but it is still perfectly readable.

Battery wise the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro has a 9600 mAh battery which on average will give you about five hours of screen on time, playing games really gobbled up the battery. In standby the battery lasted really well, just sitting on the coffee table just waiting to be touched.

Software

Manufacturers have a choice to make with the software they put on their devices, do they take what Android gives them, add a few apps for the sake of it and leave the rest to the user? Do they set a team of UI and UX software developers onto the task of making an intuitive and useful custom launcher for Android, complete with skinned apps and some rather cool additional apps? (Yes I was thinking of HTC there) or do they create a launcher, skin the lot and stuff a load of apps that aren’t of any use to anyone and just continue in this manner for years and years and years and years? (Yes I was thinking of Samsung there). Well Lenovo are some way between the last two, they have created a custom launcher that is a little basic and lacks an app drawer, they’ve skinned a few of the core apps, they’ve had a play with the notification area and the quick setting buttons and they’ve bundled a few apps that they think are going to be useful.

The launcher makes you categorise apps when you install them, they then appear in the folders on screen, you also get a screen full of Lenovo pre-installed apps. So sometimes finding an app is fiddly, if you’ve installed hundreds of apps finding that specific app might take a while. My solution was to just install the Google Now Launcher, sticking to one screen of apps and widgets and using the app drawer to find apps in the traditional way.

On a large display being able to reduce the size of a window that you’re using is handy, Lenovo have a split screen mode that allows you to open an app in split mode. It’s triggered via the button on the far left edge of the navigation bar. The only problem with this is that only a few apps are able to work in split screen mode. The nice thing is that Multi Window works when using the Google Now Launcher.

Lenovo have fiddled with the Notification drop down and the Navigation button swipe up area. The swipe up section is quite handy as it lets you easily access things like brightness and WiFi.

Other notable stuff

Benchmarks

Benchmarks aren’t the definitive way of telling if a device is “good” or not, they just give us a vague indicator of how it compares to other devices.

• 3DMark – 16558 ( Tesco Hudl 2 – 14650, Moto X 2014 – 19677, LG G3 – 17239, Oppo Find 7a – 20275, Sony Xperia Z2 – 18685, Samsung Galaxy S5 – 18720, LG G2 – 17730).
• Antutu – 34860 ( Tesco Hudl 2 – 31319, Moto X 2014 – 44253, LG G3 – 29810, Oppo Find 7a – 35958, Sony Xperia Z2 – 32384, Samsung Galaxy S5 – 27113, LG G2 – 28587).
• Quadrant – 15790 ( Tesco Hudl 2 – 13922, Moto X 2014 – 21256, LG G3 – 13709, Oppo Find 7a – 21907, Sony Xperia Z2 – 17470, Samsung Galaxy S5 – 23264, LG G2 – 19250.

Speakers

The speakers are really good, for media or for gaming they are nice and loud. I compared it to my HTC One M8 and the speakers on the Yoga have more volume, loudness, depth and bass, however compared to a decent external speaker or a separate stereo the quality is inferior. Overall though the combination of two front speakers and the rear sub-woofer makes for a pleasant experience, as long as you’re not watching low quality videos on YouTube.

Projector

The projector is a weird addition for a tablet. Initially you think, “Oh that would be ideal for watching films on” or “oh that would be ideal for a sales rep on the road to do a presentation with”, after five minutes of playing with the projector on the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro that I’d happily do either.

For me one slight problem is with the whole ergonomic feel of the tablet and the projector. As you can see from my hands on pictures the projector sits in one end of the battery bulge, so when you turn it on the projection comes out of the bulge, meaning you need to hold the tablet in portrait to control where it points. The projector creates a level image with the kickstand opened, which if you place it on a desk or something to watch a film interacting with the tablet in front of you is fiddly. Sat in my lounge I can project an image onto a wall ten foot away and it is perfectly view-able, reasonably bright and if you dim the lights things improve. Reading text isn’t the easiest, it’s a matter of adjusting the focus with the slider beneath the tablet until you can read it. Watching a film that far away would be perfectly do able, once you’d got to grips with the positioning of the tablet that is. From that distance (about ten foot) it projects an image about six foot wide. At about twenty foot away the projection gets bigger and slightly less clear, but still acceptable for a film or YouTube clip.

The software for the projector works in three ways, screen mirroring, slideshow or interactive mode. Screen mirroring basically just shows what is on the tablet, allowing you to display games or websites easily, here though the tablet works in landscape and you have to hold it/position it in portrait. Slideshow lets you pick images or presentations to display and interactive mode lets you draw on the display. Overall I liked the projector, it sure takes a bit of getting used to and at times I would rather use Chromecast functionality or just watch any content on the glorious 13” 2K display on the Yoga Tablet. I’d only really choose the projector if it essential to see the graphics on a much larger display than on my TV.

Cameras

How easy would you imagine it to be to take pictures on a thirteen inch tablet, with a large heavy battery bulge along one side? The camera on the Yoga is an 8MP camera positioned about two inches from the bottom edge, it’s part of the sub woofer and hinge lock area, that slots into the cut out on the kickstand. The camera is awkward to use thanks to the unbalanced nature of the device, however if you manage to balance it on something, you manage to focus it on something and you have decent light you’ll get some nice shots. The front facing camera is a 1.6MP camera and that is ok, again keep it steady and well lit and you’ll not be too upset at the quality. Video wise the rear can record up to 1080p and the front 720p.

Conclusion

Overall I really liked the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro, I mean I really really liked it. A lot.

At first I thought it was just too big, then I realised it really was a great piece of kit, I mainly saw it as a home multimedia hub, thanks to the great display, projector, handy kickstand and the decent speakers. Watching Netflix on it was a joy and similarly listening to music was as much fun too.

I thought I’d try out some games on it, the processor and internal memory really lend themselves to gaming and I set about playing Modern Combat 5, with a Moga Bluetooth gamepad and the volume turned up loud and I had a blast, the display and the sound made the experience really quite immersive. I also found it to be a really handy productivity device, paired up with a keyboard I typed up quite a few articles on Coolsmartphone with it.

Watching films with the projector is do able, you just need to work out where to put it, how to operate it and you’ll be good.

The one thing I did feel whilst using this was that it would be a really good device if it ran Windows 8.1. The rest of the Yoga Tablet 2 range are all available in either Android or Windows variants, just not this one. The apps on the Windows Store are more suited to large tablets and laptops, at times the apps from the Google Play Store just looked ridiculous and stretched out, which is the lazy app developers fault and not Lenovos.

The one ever so slight thing that lets the tablet down is the price, at approx £400 (current price on Amazon) it basically comes in above most other Android tablets. Yes you get a lot of decent stuff for that price, you have to ask yourself a question, are the larger high res display, 32GB of inernal storage, some fancy speakers and a projector enough to warrant that cost? I guess if you want large Android tablet with decent specs, decent speakers and a projector then you’d say yes. But if you just want an Android tablet to browse the web on and to use to order your Asda shopping on I’d say look elsewhere.

The post Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Here we are folks, the long awaited Xperia Z3 Tablet Review. First things first, why has it taken so long to get this review done?

It’s simple really. The first tablet developed a dead pixel line from top to bottom and needed to be replaced. I also decided that I was going to get a 4G version as there were some good offers around at the time of buying.

Design and Hardware

For those of you who have not seen my unboxing video that I did a wee while ago, here is the link again. It is worth a watch as it will give you a feel for the device.

The specs are as follows..

• Display: 8.0 inch
• IPS LCD,1200 x 1920 pixels, 283 ppi, Scratch resistant tempered glass
• Processor: Snapdragon 801 CPU Quad-core 2.5 GHz
• Internal Memory: 16/32 GB (I bought the 16gb), Micro SD up to 128 GB
• RAM: 3 GB
• 3D stereo sound, High Res audio, S-Force Surround
• Bluetooth v4.0
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4500 mAh
• GPS with A-GPS
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus
• Front Camera: 2.2 MP, 1080p
• Android 4.4.4.
• Connectivity: 4G, 3G, Edge, GPRS nano sim
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Waterproof and Dust resistant IP 68
• Dimensions: 213.4 x 123.6 x 6.4 mm
• Weight:270g.

These specs make it a very high end device, and this particular model costs £479 on the Sony store. However, it’s worth checking to see if your mobile network offers it, as I would be surprised if they weren’t offering deals with data bundled in.

So a quick tour around the device and the first thing to notice is how slim this device actually is. At 6.4mm thick it is one of the thinnest tablets on the market and is thinner than the new iPad Air 2.

It also weighs in at just 270g – again half the weight of the iPad Air 2. That is the last comparison I make with and iPad Air 2, I promise! When it was put next the Nexus 9 it came in at half the weight of that until you added the case, which brought it up to just over 400g. This is is still easy to hold for a long time if needed.

The top edge has nothing on it. On the right hand side is the 3.5mm headset jack, which supports the Sony DNC cancellation technology.

Next is the Xperia power key which is slightly raised and a design statement for the entire Xperia range. It’s really easy to locate and sits just above the volume rocker. These keys, as with a lot of the features, will be familiar to anyone who has owned an Xperia device in the last couple of years.

There is no camera button here, but that is understandable as it’snot really a key point for this tablet ….or indeed any tablet. This was the same with the Z Ultra. On the bottom is a flap for covering the microUSB port. This can be used, as usual, for charging and transfer data to a computer on the go. Finally, on the left, is the magnetic charging port which is really a must if you are getting this tablet. It makes it so easy to charge. Sure, I would have liked QI wireless charging but I can cope with this format.

On the rear there’s the Exmor RS powered 8 megapixel camera minus the flash. You’ll also find that NFC lives here for all your NFC shenanigans, such as Xperia Link.

Up front is that display, which shares the relatively low resolution of some of its more budget-priced competitors such as the Lenovo Tab S8 – 1920×1200. Size and resolution is where the similarity ends though. The panel here is a very good one and it is bright enough for usage outside which is really important for a 4G-enabled tablet.

The Triluminos display really works well to make the screen an enjoyable viewing experience and I am as happy with it as I was with its predecessor, the Xperia Z2 tablet. I also really like the screen on the Z3 phone tpp. This uses the same resolution and the same Triluminos tech. As is always the case with Sony’s displays recently there is a bit of tweaking done via the “Reality Display” engine when using videos or indeed photos. Although I liked this option some will want to turn it off to give a truer reflection of colour.

Lastly we have dual front-facing speakers and a 2.2 megapixel camera which is suitable for Skype and Google Hangouts, but not much more.

Overall I am very happy with the screen. I was not that happy with the adjustment in the scaling of the icons on the UI initially, however I am starting to see the benefit of this in day to day usage. So, as the saying goes I have “got over it”. This does seem to be the way that Google are going with the icons. I’ve seen other devices like this including the Nexus 9 and will be seen on the Nexus 6. It would be a nice touch for Sony to include a tool to adjust this based on user preference. Just saying..

I nearly forgot! The best thing about this tablet and one that again makes Sony unique in this area, is that the whole thing is IP68 rated. This means that it is both waterproof and dust resistant. Now I have tested the Z3 phone in all sort of liquids including sea water and when I say waterproof, I mean it. I am now trying to think of times that I would need a waterproof tablet? Answers on a postcard please!

Software

Sony have not really done a huge amount of customization to the UI. To be honest that’ll probably please a lot of people. Inside it’s Android Kitkat 4.4.4 but they have added some other extra “enhancements” to what was already a very stable OS. The main things they have done is added some of their own custom multimedia apps. Now usually this annoys me, but I have to say that the Walkman Player and the Movies app are absolutely worthy enhancements to the core apps such as “Play Music” and “Play Movies”. I prefer the way they work over the Googles offerings.

That being said, if you do want to use the Google services then you can do by all means. In-built into the Movies and Walkman Apps is the Unlimited Service in their respective forms. This will allow the user to buy or rent movies and TV shows and stream unlimted amounts of music for a monthly subscription (you can also pin albums and track for offline playback like Play music).

Another piece of software that is unique to Sony and the Z3 range is PS4 Remote Play. Yes, you read that right, you can now use your tablet as a screen for your console when your other half is watching Strictly (insert any other trivial show here). This is a huge feature for those amongst us that are gamers. I am not, so I haven’t been able to test this one fully but those who have been using it love it.

What else have they thrown into the mix? They’ve bundled Wisepilot McAfee and a couple of apps looking to get you to buy content from other stores (instead of directing you to Google Play). To be honest these things do annoy me and are resigned to trash virtually instantaneously. Track ID is on here, as is TV Sideview. Both are fairly useful TV Sideview is a companion app if you’re lucky enough to own a Sony Smart TV. Here s a wee overview of the software and UI..

Camera

The camera on the device is what you would expect from a Sony Tablet and it has not been improved since the Z2 tablet. It has a 2.2 megapixel front-facing camera, but don’t expect greatness when it comes to Selfies as they won’t be that good. Sony has always given more focus to the rear camera on their phones and tablets. I can understand the logic as it gives them a differentiator from the other tablets and phones, but the quality of the front cam is pretty bad.

Sony, we know you can make a good front camera as you have announced the C3, so let’s do it already!

The rear camera is useable, but chances are you will have a better camera in your pocket. I will not get into a rant here about that I have said my piece.

There are few new modes in the form of “Multi Camera” mode and “Face In” mode but otherwise it is what we had on the Z2 Tablet. Here are some samples using the “Multi Camera”, “AR Effect” and the front facing camera…

Summary

Sony’s ad campaign is to “Demand Great”. I think that you could safely say that in the Z3TC you can demand great, and from what I have found in day-to-day usage those demands will be fulfilled. We do need to address the elephant in the room though, which is that this is my second device after receiving a duff unit. However, I won’t make any attempt to hide that fact the whole returns process was great and lived up to the slogan in the experience. I have complete and utter faith that if anything were to happen to my new device I would have a replacement promptly, this makes this a non-issue for me.

How does it compare with its rivals? It lines up quite nicely against the iPad mini (Retina and 3). In certain areas it is better and in others it is weaker. This is something that you will need to decide on as only you can know if you want iOS or Android. For me though the benefits afforded by the intelligent design outweigh the slightly better app ecosystem afforded by iOS.

So I would stay with the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact especially if you can pick one up on a data focused contract.

The post Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact review. Greatness delivered is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Every once in a while a tablet comes along that you think is going to really up the ante and raise the bar. This is what I was hoping the Nexus 9 was going to be. Now is the time where we start to find out.

Those of you who have seen my unboxing video will now doubt be aware of how my initial feelings on the device were. After doing that video I have had some time to spend with the device and unfortunately I have and some issue with regard to the build quality and also some software. Whilst software is almost excusable, as these are things that can be tweaked and improved by updates, however the build quality issues can not be fixed that easily.

Hardware

Here is a recap of the specifications for anyone who missed them first time around.

• Display: 8.9 inch.IPS LCD,1536 x 2048 pixels, 281 ppi, Gorilla Glass 3.
• Processor: Nvidia Tegra K1 CPU Dual-core 2.3 GHz 64bit.
• Internal Memory: 16/32 GB (I bought the 32gb).
• RAM: 2 GB.
• Stereo speakers with Equalisers.
• Bluetooth v4.01.
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 6700 mAh.
• GPS with A-GPS.
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus LED flash.
• Front Camera: 1.6 MP, 720p.
• Android 5.0.
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac.
• Dimensions: 228.2 x 153.7 x 7.9 mm.
• Weight: 425g.

So what is actually going on here well the first thing I noticed after doing the unboxing was that I have been lucky enough to get a machine with a dead pixel right bang in the centre of my screen. Now that I have seen it I cannot unsee the damn thing. This was joined by backlight bleed around the edges and also a looseness of the back panel next to the Camera module. These issues aside the device is pretty good, however I personally don’t feel that it is worth the £400 that I paid for it. That aside though the device has a really nice screen which is very bright and vibrant. The front facing speakers do make a big difference when it comes to listening to music or watching videos. It is a much better audio experience that I had on my old iPads. You can really feel the power of the Tegra K1 Chip working here and the benchmarks on the whole reflect this. Quadrant did have issues but this will just be optimization issues with the app not the hardware.

Here are some benchmarks comparing it too the Xperia Z3 Tablet compact

Nexus 9

• Quadrant 11943
• Antutu 52481
• Sunspider 995.1 ms

Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact

• Quadrant 20803
• Antutu 42117
• Sunspider 1020.0 ms

When moving around the UI the transitions all feel fluid and it is nice place to be and to work. The DPI of the display is pretty high but this is clearly just the new setting brought in by the Material Design UI. It is a shame that there were the problems with the hardware that I have had as it is a really nice bit of kit and I did really want to like it.

Software

The software on the device is really a great step for Android as it makes the whole UI more usable and it actually gets rid of some of the clutter that we have previously experienced on the old version KitKat. The biggest problem here is the one faced by all early adopters, in that third party apps have not been optimized for the new OS. Whilst some of the more active developers will get their apps updated soon there will be a time period where some apps will not be working to their best. I also think that there is more work to be done on making the OS get the best out of the Tegra chipset as it does seem to bog down at time which was concerning especially as the device did get quite warm whilst this was happening. I think we will see some great things from Lollipop once the initial kinks have been ironed out, add to that the fact that the Nexus 6 will be arriving on the scene soon and then the Developers will be all over the apps issues.

Here are some screen shots an showing Lollipop in all its glory.

Camera

The camera UI has had a much needed update. Gone is the viewfinder based setting control as these are now accessed via swiping in from the left side of the screen to give you the main modes options well as there being some other deeper buried settings under the settings key. The Flash on  the back also actually has an effect on the picture which is a nice touch and is appreciated. The front camera is a basic unit and will be good for Skype and Hangouts but will not really selfie friendly. As I have mentioned a few times, tablets really are not the best thing for photos so I will leave it there for now.

Here a few shots of the UI and some camera samples

Initial verdict

Well as much as I would love to say stop reading this and go out and buy one of these devices right now, I cannot in its current state. If however you are able to wait for a few weeks maybe a month then by then most of the software issues will have been fixed and the build quality will hopefully have been improved. So by the time for Christmas shopping starts then this may very well be an item to add to the Christmas list.

We will be doing a review of this in full in the near future but for me the journey is done with the Nexus 9 as it is going to be winging its way back to Google very soon. This quite a sad decision but I feel that for me right now it is the correct one.

The post Nexus 9 First impressions is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Today we have a wealth of tablets in all shapes and sizes. You can choose between Windows 8, Android or iOS 8. There’s pretty much a flavour for anyone. I’m a fan of the smaller form factor and as a result I have swung toward the iPad Mini and the Nexus 7 in the past.

Whilst I have also owned an iPad 2 and both the Xperia Z and Z2 Tablet, they have always felt like a compromise in the wrong direction in terms of size against portability. When we started to see 8″ tablets filtering through from the big players such as Samsung, Sony and Acer, it started to get a little more interested. I have used most OS’s on tablets but I keep being drawn back to Android as, for me it just seems to fit best. I cannot really quantify this but it just works for me whereas the others don’t.

About a month ago I sold all my previous tablet devices after trying to find a good Windows 8.1 option and failing. It was around this time that IFA was happening in Berlin. During the show we had some major announcements from Sony, Lenovo and Acer about tablets so I got a little excited. Fast forward to last week and I was browsing my local PC World. Lo and behold I spotted the Lenovo Tab S8 on display. Moments later it was in my hands and heading home for the unboxing I did a couple of weeks back.

Now we can go into a deep dive and see if the purchase was worth it.

Design
I have to say I like it. Unlike the Yoga Tablet 2 that James has reviewed recently it is more of a “standard style” of tablet that we’re accustomed to. The front is dominated by a large 8″ display which has a resolution of 1920×1200 and a PPI of 283, which is more than enough for most people. In the extra space afforded by the slightly odd ratio is the spot for the Android Keys. These are the usual fare that you’d expect on a tablet- the Back, Home and Mulitasking. All of the buttons have a strong haptic feedback so you know when you’ve pressed them. We also have some front facing speakers at either end of the device, which is a nice touch and puts it a step above the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3.

Lastly we have a front facing camera which is 1.6 megapixels. It can shoot 720p video for Hangouts or Skype but there’s no high quality selfies here though.

Out back the surface is a soft and slightly rubberised affair. THis gives it a nice feel and adds a tiny bit of grip. The rear camera is rated at 8 megapixels and will also shoot 1080p for video. You also get an LED flash which is a rarity on a tablet, so it’s nice that Lenovo have added it here as they do on their Windows range.

Lastly is an Intel inside logo. Yep, you read that right Intel is the power here and I will go into that in a bit.

Around the edges, starting from the top, we have a 3.5mm headset jack which will support standard style headsets, both iPhone and Android based. It didn’t like the Sony DNC ones I got with my Z2, which was a shame but understandable as they use a non standardised five pole plug as opposed to the more common 3 pole style.

On the right is a power button / screen wake key. Below this is the volume key on a rocker. One end is flush to the side of the tablet allowing you to distinguish the difference when needed.

Onto the bottom and here we find a mic and the micro USB charging port. This is the only way to get power into the device as there is no wireless charger unfortunately.

Lastly on the left is the slot for the microSD card. This will also support the SIM slot on the 4G version should it ever get to the UK.

Hardware
Here is a breakdown of the specs again for those who missed the unboxing piece earlier

• Display: 8.0 inch, IPS LCD, 1200 x 1920 pixels, 283 ppi.
• Processor: Intel Atom Z3745 CPU Quad-core 1.86 GHz.
• Internal Memory: 16 GB.
• RAM: 2 GB.
• Micro SD up to 32 GB.
• Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement.
• Bluetooth v4.0.
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4290 mAh.
• GPS with A-GPS.
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash.
• Front Camera: 1.6 MP, 720p.
• Android 4.4.2.
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.
• Dimensions: 209.8 x 123.8 x 7.9 mm (8.26 x 4.87 x 0.31 in).
• Weight:299g.

So I mentioned Intel Inside. This is a first for me. Using an Android tablet running on Intel. I have been pretty impressed. It does stack up fairly well against the other CPU’s out there.

I mean, don’t get me wrong this is no Tegra K1 or Snapdragon 801, but it will happily perform as well as a Nexus 7 (2013) edition which ran a Snapdragon 400. It is actually a little better than that system. I have run some benchmarks on the system as a means of trying to gauge its performance.

Lenovo Tab S8
Quadrant 13012
Antutu 31567
Sunspider 761.5 ms

Tesco Hudl 2
Quadrant 13922
Antutu 31319
Sunspider 814.4 ms

Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact
Quadrant 20803
Antutu 42117
Sunspider 1020.0 ms

Nexus 9
Quadrant 11943
Antutu 52481
Sunspider 995.1 ms

Xperia Z3
Quadrant 20971
Antutu 41181
Sunspider 911.7 ms

So we can see here that the Lenovo is the lowest performing of the bunch overall but this is not really a surprise as it is being compared with some very high end devices. The closet competitor is the one that shares that Intel chipset – the Tesco Hudl 2. It actually performed slightly better in the Antutu test. Benchmarking aside the device does generally feel snappy in every way. The animations flow with grace and the page transitions are smooth. Whilst playing Real Racing 3 I didn’t experience any sort of lag at all. This is all good news as I was initially concerned as the device did seem to be lagging at first when I was playing 1080p video. This was resolved after a restart and never happened again.

I did however experience a disappointment with the screen. Whilst it is an IPS display it is clear that they are not all made equal. I was fine when viewing content from the side but when I was looking down from above the unit or from underneath I did notice some rather bad white fringing causing the display to distort. This was a big shame as the screen was otherwise very good and felt better to use with regard to the layout and DPI than the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact.

I have used the Intel Atom on Windows 8.1 and it feels a lot smoother on Android so it is clear Intel have really worked hard to make this migration successful.

Software
Regardless of a device having good hardware the whole package can be ruined by a simple thing, and that is software. The Lenovo runs Android 4.4.2 out of the box with no clearly indicated upgrade path being outlined by Lenovo yet. However, with the acquisition of Motorola I can’t see this being an issue.

On top of the Android goodness Lenovo have decided to add a heavy custom UI which changes the tablet very significantly. I have made my feelings very clear on customs UI’s before and I will state I am not a fan, but nevertheless there are a few features that do stand out.

There are some benefits in the custom UI. For example the video player has some cool controls to let you tweak the brightness and volume by swiping the screen on either the left or right. It is a nice touch. There is however, a lot of duplication of apps here. A brilliant example is the browser situation. There’s three of them. The ASOP Browser, Chrome and UC Browser.

There really is no need for this as it adds nothing to the experience apart from creating clutter. Also included is a Games app which is really just a launchpad for going to the Play store.

The calendar has also been hit by the duplication bug, with a custom version that doesn’t really add anything over the Google version.

These are just a few ones that are genuinely useful. One is the file manager app which lets you really optimise your storage on the microSD card.

Here are some more pics of the UI in Lenovo guise

If however you don’t want to use the custom UI then you can always load up another launcher. I used the Google Now Launcher and the tablet felt very much like a Nexus again so I was happy.

Camera
There’s two cameras on the Lenovo. A front-facing one at 2 megapixels which will do 720p video, and a rear with an 8 megapixel resolution and 1080p video. The rear one features all the things you would expect from a modern camera sensor. The camera UI is pretty much pure Google and is therefore very basic in its operation, but really if you are wanting to use a camera then do yourself a favour and use a phone instead being that guy with the tablet!

Here are a few pictures that I took show the camera quality.

Here’s some selfies from the front facing camera (it ain’t pretty)..

I think you can agree that the results are fairly average and nothing earth shattering here. They will serviceable for Facebook posts and the like but not really print quality.

Roundup
Overall I have been very impressed with the whole Lenovo Tab S 8 package. It really does pack a lot in for a relatively low price.

OK, I know you can get the Tesco Hudl 2 for less money. However you are getting a slightly better spec with the Lenovo in terms of the cameras and the dimensions. I would also be inclined to think that it will be updated to Lollipop sooner than the Hudl 2, but that will be a case of watching this space.

If the screen had been better then it would’ve been a real competitor to some of the higher end tablets, such as the Samsung S Tab 8.4 or Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact.

If you want a cheap but light tablet then I can highly recommend the Lenovo Tab S8 over the some of the other cheaper alternatives that are out there. Just be aware of that custom UI.

The post Lenovo Tab S8 review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Budget Android tablet, those three words can sometimes strike fear into the heart of any reviewer handed one. Sometimes though those fears are just confounded. Sometimes a budget Android tablet can actually be really good. Before I spoil the rest of this review lets have a look at the good and bad points of the Tesco Hudl 2.

Good Points

• Great performance from the Intel Atom chipset.
• Great looking device with nice accessories.
• Decent sound quality using headphones.
• Micro SD slot.
• Micro HDMI out is handy.
• Great price of £129.99.

Bad Points

• Battery life is pretty poor.
• Screen is a bit dull.
• Tesco Bloat.
• Power button is a bit awkward to press, especially in a case.
• No built in File Manager makes SD card file management a mess.
• Only about 8.4 GB of internal memory left out of the box.
• Slow screen response time makes typing at speed fiddly.

Design

The Tesco Hudl 2 is a great looking piece of kit, Tesco have always been about the colours with the Hudl range and this year’s model is no exception. I went for the orange one with two orange cases. Orange is my favourite device colour this year by the way. The Hudl 2 is a sleek, nice to hold in either landscape and portrait. The front of the Hudl 2 is a bit bezel dominated, which can be looked at as either it gives you something to hold onto when used in landscape or that it could have been a bit smaller. I like the hand holds at the side, they’re handy for watching videos and for gaming. The front also has a front facing camera, a few sensors and a microphone hole.

The sides of the Hudl 2 are littered with buttons, ports and slots. You’ve got a headphone socket, volume rocker, power button, Micro USB, Micro HDMI and a Micro SD slot. The back of the Hudl 2 has the rather cool looking speakers, the rear camera and some Tesco branding, no Intel branding though which is intriguing. The speakers are nicely placed, when holding the device in landscape your hands just sit beneath them. Quality wise the speakers are ok, reasonably loud and they as you’d expect don’t really have any bass. Using headphones gives you a much better sound quality experience.

Check the gallery of images below and also my hands on video.

Tesco Hudl 2 – Hands On:
http://youtu.be/hiJ13nRBnPo

Hardware

Spec wise the Hudl 2 is pretty good, it has a spec very similar to some of the much higher cost Lenovo Intel based devices.

• Display: 8.3″ IPS LCD, 1920 x 1200 pixels, 273 ppi.
• Processor: Intel® Atom Quad-Core Z3735D at 1.83 GHz.
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics.
• Internal Memory: 16GB (8.4 GB free out of box).
• RAM: 2GB.
• Wi-Fi: 2.4GHz and 5GHz, Dual Antenna, 802.11a/b/g/n.
• Micro-SD (up to 32GB).
• Android 4.4 KitKat.
• GPS, Glonass, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro USB, Micro HDMI, 3-axis Accelerometer, e-Compass, Gyroscope, Ambient Light Sensor, Speakers – Dolby Audio.
• Battery Life 8 hours.
• Front-Facing Camera: Resolution 1.2MP, Video 720p.
• Rear-Facing Camera: Resolution 5MP, Video 1080p (Full HD).
• Dimensions: H 12.8 CM, W 22.4 CM, D 0.9 CM.
• Weight: 0.4104 Kilogram.
• Price: £129.99.
• Available in 8 colours: Black, Blue, Cyan, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red and White.

Hardware wise things are pretty good, it would have been nice to have a 32GB model available, as the Tesco software takes up quite a bit of space. The Intel Atom chipset coped with whatever I threw at it, be it gaming or multimedia, which was nice as people are always wary of Intel in the Android world.

One thing that did really bug me was the display, it is a bit dull and in certain lights it’s a greyish kind of white. The other thing about the screen is the response time, it’s a bit slow which makes typing a bit drawn out. The display supports 10 point multi touch it’s just when you’ve got a few fingers jabbing away at it things start to slow you down.

Software

Software wise the Tesco Hudl 2 runs Android 4.4.2 with what looks like a modified version of the Google Now Launcher, they’ve called it “My Tesco”. They’ve also added a whole host of BlinkBox apps and something called Kids Zone. Let’s have a quick look at each.

The Tesco Launcher

The Tesco Launcher brings the Tesco Blinkbox front and centre. I’m not a Blinkbow customer, but if I was it would all be jolly handy. Changing the launcher from the built in Tesco one is really easy, you just search for “Google Now Launcher” in the Play Store and install it, hit the home button and you’re done. You can’t remove the Blinkbox

Kids Zone

Kids Zone is quite useful. It build upon the multi user capabilities of Android 4.4 and adds in some further restrictions. To set it up takes a few minutes, to manage it no doubt will take you an age, arguing on a daily basis about which websites and apps you’ve blocked.

Basically you need to have your Hudl 2 set up with a pin code unlock, you then enter the childs name and age and then work through the settings for each child. You can limit how long they are allowed to use the tablet and also what hours within, so no spending all night playing games. When the time runs out it kicks them out of the account and puts them back to the lockscreen. You can limit it to a specific time period after homework time or something like that.

By default Kids Zone blocks a variety of websites deemed unsuitable gauged by the age of the child. You can also add further web categories and specific websites. The other quite handy thing you can do is choose which apps are available to your child. If you only want them to use Angry Birds, the Camera and the Gallery then that is really easy.

Overall it’s a nice touch if you want to introduce your child slowly to an Android tablet this would be ideal. It just takes a little bit of tinkering to get it the way both you and your child are happy with.

The lack of File Manager

As of Android 4.4 KitKat access to Micro SD cards was fiddly. Any app can read from the card but only built in system apps can read and write to the card. Normally device manufacturers include a File Manager which allows you to move files back and forth between the internal memory and the expanded memory. Without a built one you have to plug it into a PC and transfer the files that way instead. Which is very annoying, especially if your planning on using the Hudl 2 as a media device.

Overall the software is pretty good, out of the box you’ll need to install a few essentials if your a power user and if it’s for a child you’ll need to spend a little time preparing the Kid Zone restrictions. The lack of a built in File Manager is annoying if your planning on using a memory card though.

Benchmarks

Benchmark wise the Hudl 2 is comparable to the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 I looked at the other week, which basically has the same chipset as the Hudl 2 and it costs about twice as much.

• 3DMark – 14650
• Antutu – 31319
• Quadrant – 13922

Battery Life

The battery is a bit weak and it seeks to fall fowl to the usual battery gobbling apps. Watch videos or play games for more than hour or so and say goodbye to your battery. If you just use the tablet for casual sofa use and you keep it in standby most of the time you’ll get a few days out of it, with probably about 2 hours screen on time.

Here’s my typical usage here.

Cameras

The 5MP rear camera is pretty bad, it struggles in most lighting conditions, either being over exposed, suffering from glare or noise in low light. Video is pretty basic also. The main problem with both cameras is glare and digital noise.

Here are some shots taken with the camera.

Here are a few front facing camera shots, i.e time for some bad selfies.

Here is a sample video taken with the Hudl 2.

Tesco Hudl 2 1080p video sample:
http://youtu.be/3H75b0hmcF8

Conclusion

The Hudl 2 is a great looking piece of kit and it’s an absolute bargain, used as a device to browse the web, order things from Amazon, to do some of that Social networking stuff, to watch videos or play games it’s a cracking device. In fact it can pretty much do whatever you ask of it, for £129 that’s an impressive feat. But it’s when you really start to get to grips with it that the cracks start appearing. The dull and slow to respond screen, the ridiculous situation with the File Manager app, the rather poor battery life and the low internal memory all create situations that will frustrate you.

The Tesco Hudl 2 is available from Tesco here for £129 which I feel is just about right. Nothing else really comes close to performance or

The post Tesco Hudl 2 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It’s here my very own brand new Nexus 9 32gb Wifi. I have been looking forward to this day for a wee while as I loved my Nexus 7 (2013) edition and it was in desperate need of a successor. I have been reviewing a lot of tablets recently but this is the one I have really high hopes for. I have so far been a bit disappointed by the recent launches, maybe I have high standards though. So here we go let’s move onto the unboxing, first up here are the specs.

• Display: 8.9 inch.
• IPS LCD,1536 x 2048 pixels, 281 ppi, Gorilla Glass 3.
• Processor: Nvidia Terra K1 CPU Dual-core 2.3 GHz 64bit.
• Internal Memory: 16/32 GB (I bought the 32gb).
• RAM: 2 GB.
• Stereo speakers with Equalisers.
• Bluetooth v4.01.
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 6700 mAh.
• GPS with A-GPS.
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus LED flash.
• Front Camera: 1.6 MP, 720p.
• Android 5.0.
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac.
• Dimensions: 228.2 x 153.7 x 7.9 mm.
• Weight: 425g.

Now onto the unboxing video and what we are looking forward to more than anything.

So as you can see we have a device that share the high standards that we come to expect from HTC merged in with the design language from Google. I really like the way the device feels on the hand and it is going to be a joy to use.

Stay tuned for more info as I get to grips with the new OS and have used it for a few days. We may have a winner in my quest for the best tablet for me. Time will tell over the next few days.
Cheers.

UPDATE – The tablet needs a software update out of the box so hopefully this is not a sign of things too come and is just a final layer of polish.

The post Nexus 9 Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I had about two hours with some of the team at HTC to experience what was on offer. With that in mind please note this is not a review but just hands on with the device.

The Nexus 9 is a stunning device with a large, clear 8.9 inch display. This has a very high resolution helping bring your content to life. The device isn’t heavy, so you can carry is around without any problems.

The battery is a large 6,700mAh capacity unit which should get you through a day even with a fair bit of screen on time. This is something we will really be testing later on in a full review.

Powering everything is 2GB of RAM and a 2,3Ghz NVIDIA K1 processor. This is also 64-bit.

Looking at the front, the main feature is of course that impressive 8.9 inch display with a huge 2048×1536 pixel resolution. That makes it one of the best screens we have seen on a tablet so far. A little strange with the 4:3 aspect ratio and what, on paper, seems a high PPI of 288.

This is not just because of the spec, but just using the screen for browsing content, surfing the internet or watching movies on the go – it’ll be great fun on a display like this..

Up top there is a front facing 1.6 megapixel camera which can also record in a 720p resolution, if anyone really records video on this type of camera. The main feature of the camera will be for video chats over applications such as Hangouts and Skype which should be nice and clear with the BSI lens put in.

At the bottom, under the screen there is a rather large area with nothing on it. The Nexus 9 uses on screen buttons instead of capacitive ones like you see on some other devices. It seems like a big waste of space, which is a real shame. However this is something HTC were also known for doing on the One M8. The space between the screen and the speaker just had a HTC logo on that.

Whilst I am talking about speakers, the Nexus 9 does come with the HTC trademark BoomSound speaker setup which has two large loud speakers. There’s one at the bottom and one at the top. These can be rather loud but also very clear for multimedia playback.

Looking at the top you just have the 3.5mm headset jack near the corner. This will fit any headset using this standard and, as mentioned on other reviews, there’s a massive range.

Unfortunately with the content available and no headset with me I was unable to test the sound quality. This will be covered in the full review which will be coming once we have had more hands on time.

The bottom, like the top of the Nexus 9, is almost bare. Just a single port again, this time the micro USB to charge the device. You can, if you’re not into your cloud storage, use this to transfer data etc.

On the right you have the power on/off button at the top followed by the two buttons used for volume control just underneath. This is all pretty standard for mobile tablets these days but the main difference with the Nexus 9 is the metal frame which is used to hold it all together. It looks better and makes the overall experience more premium than if plastic is used.

On the left there is nothing to see, no buttons, no covers, all you get is the nice continuous metal frame wrapping around the edge which I will say again, really adds to the premium feel you get with the Nexus 9.

On the back you might think you are looking at a stretched Nexus 5?

This has been said by many people already, and the strange thing is that the Nexus 5 was made by LG, whereas this is obviously a HTC product.Two different companies but the design looks very much the same.

Ar the top is the 8 megapixel camera with a single LED flash and this camera also records in 1080p resolution if you like taking photos and videos on a tablet.

Due to the enclosed location and conditions we weren’t able to really test the camera out to see how good it was, so will wait to pass judgement until we have one in for the full review.

In the middle is the traditional Nexus logo that you now expect on their own devices. Just below this is the HTC logo with some other numbers printed really small for trademarks etc.

Final Thoughts

In my short hands-on time with the tablet I was very impressed with the hardware, however I wasn’t too surprised as HTC always make great hardware. Pair this with the new Android 5.0 Lollipop OS and this becomes a very desirable tablet.

I will be looking forward to getting more hands on time with the Nexus 9 once our tablet comes in for review. Expect a full review with many more photos plus an unboxing and a battery / camera test.

The Nexus 9 is available in White, Black and Sand with 16GB and 32GB options over on the Play Store right now starting from £319.99,. There is also a 4G LTE version listed in a 32GB option for £459.99, but this is still listed as ‘Coming Soon’.

Thanks for checking out our initial hands on view on the new Nexus 9 tablet and be sure to come back for even more content once we have one in for a full review shortly.

Once we have this in we will be able to talk about a lot more including the final version of Android 5.0 Lollipop, camera examples, battery life and a whole lot more.

The biggest competitor to the Nexus 9 right now is the Samsung Tab S which specs-wise has a higher resolution screen, more RAM and a better front camera so it will be interesting to put them head to head.

A big thank you to once again to HTC for the invitation to London to check out the Nexus 9 and to get some hands on time so we can give an initial impression and at least get a glimpse of what to expect.

Image Gallery

The post Nexus 9 – Hands on is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Although I had to wait a little longer than I would’ve liked (due to issues with the shipping companies), it’s here now. So, let’s find out if it was worth the wait.

Here we have the 32GB model, which came from Sony UK. It is selling for £379 but Sony are offering £30 off that price at the moment.

Let’s start with an unboxing video..

As you see in the video above, the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is a neat little device that weighs next to nothing. This alone is a very impressive feat when compared with the likes of the Lenovo Tab S8 (I will be referencing this as a competition device a lot). In fact, here is a picture of them both side by side..

You’ll see that there really isn’t a huge difference apart from the Z3TC (as I’ll call it for ease) being noticeably skinnier at 6.4mm instead of 7.9mm. Here is a breakdown comparing the tablets to each other.

Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact

• Display: 8.0 inch
• IPS LCD,1200 x 1920 pixels, 283 ppi, Scratch resistant tempered glass
• Processor: Snapdragon 801 CPU Quad-core 2.5 GHz
• Internal Memory: 16/32 GB (I bought the 32gb), Micro SD up to 128 GB
• RAM: 3 GB
• 3D stereo sound, High Res audio, S-Force Surround
• Bluetooth v4.0
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4500 mAh
• GPS with A-GPS
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus
• Front Camera: 2.2 MP, 1080p
• Android 4.4.4.WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Dimensions: 213.4 x 123.6 x 6.4 mm
• Weight:270g.

Lenovo S8 Tab

• Display: 8.0 inch
• IPS LCD,1200 x 1920 pixels, 283 ppi.
• Processor: Intel Atom Z3745 CPU Quad-core 1.86 GHz
• Internal Memory: 16 GB.RAM: 2 GB.Micro SD up to 32 GB
• Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement
• Bluetooth v4.0
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4290 mAh
• GPS with A-GPS
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
• Front Camera: 1.6 MP, 720p
• Android 4.4.2.WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• Dimensions: 209.8 x 123.8 x 7.9 mm (8.26 x 4.87 x 0.31 in).Weight:299g.

Having owned several of the Xperia devices in the past 4 years I have become very familiar with the Sony UI and its customisation. However, this time around I have to say that initially I didn’t like the high DPI being used. It’s forgivable on a phone as it makes the whole device easier to use but the same cannot be said on the Z3TC as it makes it feel “toy like” and it really minimises the amount of useable space on the screen. Particularly when using the device in landscape for things like web browsing. I would love to see Sony add an option to make this adjustable for the user without the need to root the device.

The screen is as usual superb and what I have come to expect from Sony. This is perhaps one area where the Sony can justify the difference in price between the S8 and itself.

Another area is the connectivity options. As you will have seen above the Z3TC has a larger capacity for expanding the memory. It also supports NFC for file transfers and contactless payment, if it ever really takes off in the UK.

Overall I am impressed with the device and I am glad I waited but is it worth the premium you pay over the S8? This is not something that I can answer right now as I have to really spend some time with both devices until I can draw my conclusions. In the mean time here are some comparison shots

The Style cover
As an aside, the eagle eyed reader will have seen that I also unboxed the Style cover for the Z3TC. This came as part of the pre-order package deal. It is a fairly nice cover and it is a very tight fit. It covers all the bits it needs to and alleviates any concerns with carrying the Z3TC around day to day. The stand feature is a good way of propping the machine up for viewing content but it is not really suitable for use when typing.

I have a Bluetooth keyboard case that I will be testing with the devices. This may improve the productivity, however I wish Sony had thought about this and provided a Surface-style docking keyboard as an option.

Keep it here for the Lenovo S8 Tab  and the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact review over the next few days.

The post Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact unboxing and initial impressions is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Lenovo are capable of big things, they are involved in many different areas of modern day mobile technology. Be it phones, Android tablets, Windows tablets, hybrid laptops, Chromebooks and even just plain old laptops and desktop PCs. Each and every year they push out new and updated devices and their most recent new device is the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2. You know the one with the rather funky kickstand on the back! Yes the one sort of endorsed by Ashton Kutcher

I’ve been using the 10” Android yoga Tablet 2 for a few weeks now, so it’s prime time to bring you my review of it. Starting of course with my good and bad points.

Good Points

• Great design.
• Bright colourful screen with decent viewing angles.
• Really useful kickstand including hook hole.
• Intel chip gives a really fluid feel to the whole UI.
• Micro SD slot.
• Front facing stereo speakers provide a nice clear sound.
• Huge great battery seems to last ages.
• The battery bulge can be used as a handy grip in portrait mode.

Bad Points

• Cylindrical battery whilst unique looking gives the device and odd weighting.
• Plastic backplate is quite flexible.
• Angles for the kickstand are limited.
• Built in Lenovo launcher is a bit basic.
• Rear camera awkward to use.
• Bloatware is a little annoying.
• Auto brightness and graphic equaliser apps are rather annoying.

Design

Design wise the Yoga Tablet 2 is great looking piece of kit, it’s made almost entirely in a silvery plastic with a few real metal accents here and there. When you see the Yoga Tablet 2 for the first time your eyes are drawn to the cylindrical edge/end which really does dominate the entire design. The bulge is many things, it houses the power button, the headphone socket, two front facing speakers, a wall bracket mount and of course a great big old battery. It does however also add weight, along one edge which makes it a little fiddly in use and sort of forces you to use the tablet in landscape format to avoid having to hold the non symmetrical device aloft. After a bit of practice I realised that if you held the tablet in portrait mode and you used the battery bulge as a grip the whole was really stable, this worked in both my left or right hand, grip with one hand and jab at things on the screen with the other. The bulge does as I mentioned earlier house the power button, which when you are charging it flashes, you can also set this light to light up when notifications arrive. I left it charging beside my bed one night to wake up a few hours later to what seemed like a light show coming from under the bed.

The front of the tablet is basically just the huge big display and the front facing speakers, in the bezel above the screen lives the sensors and the front facing camera. The sides are made of plastic and are rather thin, they only really have the volume rocker and Micro USB port. The back of the tablet is made of plastic with a very fine textured finish, it only really bares the Lenovo and Intel branding. The Kickstand hides the Micro SD slot and the kickstand also where the hole to hang it up on is. The kickstand has four modes, closed where you use it like a normal tablet, open at 90° and you use the kickstand to raise the tablet about 2″ off the surface providing a better for typing on. The third mode has the kickstand at the same position and you raise the tablet up giving you and ideal position to watch some sort of multimedia, this angle is also good for use whilst gaming with a gamepad or something. Lastly and rather strangely is hole in the kickstand which allows you to hang the tablet on a hook.

Hardware

Hardware wise the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10.1 is pretty decent, it is similar to the Hudl 2 I looked at the other week, albeit in a more fancy looking shell and with a cool kickstand. The Intel chip used on the Hudl is a Z3735 but it’s clocked higher. Here is what you get.

• Processor: Intel Atom Quad Core Z3745 Processor (1.33GHz 1066GHz 2MB).
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics.
• Operating system: Android 4.4.
• Display type: 10.1″ IPS LED LCD Touch 1920×1200 224 PPI.
• RAM: 2.0GB LPDDR3 1066 MHz.
• Internal Memory: 16GB (about 10.75 GB free out of the box).
• Network: 802.11 abgn WLAN.
• Bluetooth: Version 4.0.
• Warranty: One year.
• Battery: 9600 mAh 3 Cell Li-Cylindrical Battery Life Up to 18 hours.
• Dimensions: 255 x 183 x 3-7.2 mm
• Weight: 619g.
• Rear Camera:8 MP f2.2 with auto focus and advanced BSI-2 sensor.
• Front Camers:1.6 MP 720p video.
• Speakers Front-facing, large-chamber stereo speakers with Wolfson® Master HiFi audio processing and Dolby® surround sound ports.
• Micro USB port with USB OTG , Micro-SD card, 3.5mm audio jack.

Intel processors and Android seem to flag up warning signals for most people, a few years ago that was true as many app developers hadn’t included the relevant code to cope with the Intel chipsets meaning that some apps just weren’t compatible. Nowadays Intel chips are used in allsorts of tablets and developers could potentially loose money if they didn’t include Intel compatibility. I didn’t come across any apps that didn’t work whilst testing out the Yoga Tablet 2.

The display was nice bright, colourful, with great viewing angles. But sometimes I spotted a few stretched pixels, at 1920×1200 it is over 1080p and I’m kind of used to the 534 PPI display on the LG G3 which is over twice as dense pixel wise. I keep spotting apps that don’t look great on such a low PPI. Don’t get me wrong the screen is great, just in this day and age I feel it’s a little low res for a 10.1″ display.

Software

Lenovo have gone down the path that many manufacturers from the Far East go, that of theming their phone or tablet to look a bit like an iPad, iPhone or even one could say it’s a bit like the Xiaomi Miui skin. Lenovo have skinned several different areas of the Yoga Tablet 2. They have skinned the Launcher, the Lockscreen, the Notification drop down, the power settings slide up and a good few of the core apps too. Lenovo have also pre-installed a few apps that they “think” you’ll actually use.

The launcher is basically just a see of icons and some widgets, all new apps get added to the list regardless of your settings in the Play Store. There isn’t an app drawer, so it feels very much like iOS which is famed for that lack of functionality. Here it just becomes annoying as you know it could be so much easier. It is easily remedied though as the Google Now Launcher is easily installable and soon brings you a Nexus ish experience.

Lenovo have also tinkered with the notification area and the navigation bar. Quite why I don’t know really, the notification bar is a bit like what you get on Miui whereby the notifications bare the relevant apps icon and has a “X” to clear notifications as well. It is accessed by swiping down on the status bar. The power toggles however are on the bottom bar accessed via a swipe up, you get the standard options plus easily changeable brightness and shortcuts to the camera, the lockscreen, take a screenshot, Lenovo Smart Switch, toggle Multi Windows on and off and also to try and work out how the Dolby Equaliser works.

Widgets are added by long pressing on the homescreen, adding wallpaper is accessed by swiping upwards on the homescreen or hitting the three dots on the navigation bar at the bottom.

Screen gestures are present in the Lenovo launcher, you can swipe up, down or double tap. Each action being mapable to the desktop menu, opening notifications or locking the screen. These actions are quite handy on a large screen device.

Multi Window mode is something we’ve been seeing on large screen devices for a while now, somewhat thanks to Samsung and somewhat thanks to Microsoft. Lenovo allow you to use up to four apps from a rather small list, but you can move the panels around as you see fit. It is quite a nice implementation really, it’s just a shame you aren’t allowed more apps in the list.

Lenovo have a range of their own apps that help you backup, clear out old stuff, manage your files, listen to music, watch videos, adjust the sound EQ, change the screen brightness depending on the angle of the kickstand, download some games. Lenovo also include a few apps like Facebook, Twitter and of course most of the Google suite.

The File Manager app is handy to have if you use a Micro SD card in the Yoga Tablet 2. Basically a manufacturer has to include a file manager as a system app to be able to access the SD card. A third party file manager would not be able to write to the card without Root access, annoyingly that’s the way Google decided it should be.

The Yoga Tablet 2 runs Android 4.4.2 and as it is a 10.1” it runs in full on tablet mode, so proper tablet optimised apps will actually use the extra screen wisely. Apps like Gmail, Plume, Expedia, Netflix, Amazon, Asda to name just a few apps that I’ve noticed split in multi panes. It’s nice to see more and more apps work well in tablet landscape mode. Apart from Instagram that still forces itself into portrait mode.

A few things Lenovo have added are quite annoying, the graphic equaliser app is a nightmare to use; similarly the app that governs the brightness of the screen depending on the kickstand position also is a bit flakey, often resulting in sudden brightness changes.

Whether or not the Yoga Tablet 2 Android tablets will be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop remains to be seen, I imagine for such a new range of devices they will be. Especially in light of devices like the Nexus 7 (2013 edition) and the Nexus 9 being prime competition. Overall I quite liked the software on the Yoga Tablet 2, it took a bit of getting used to, but the landscape orientation really works well these days, not often do I find apps that need fixing.

Other notable stuff

Cameras

Cameras on tablet aren’t ever really that good, despite what that guy at a concert with his iPad Air in the air tells you. The cameras on the Yoga Tablet 2 were quite surprising.

The rear camera Quality wise the 8MP with “f2.2 with auto focus and advanced BSI-2 sensor” is pretty good, for a tablet camera that is, in decent light it focuses as you’d expect, adapts to different lighting conditions and surprised me to be honest. The weighting of the device does make taking pictures a little fiddly though, it’ll take you a few attempts to find a nice way to hold it and snap a photo.

The front camera is positioned on the left hand bezel if held in landscape and on the top bezel if held with the bulge in your left hand, taking selfies often results in your hand obscuring the lense. Again with a little trial and error you’ll find a reasonable position to hold it in. The 1.2MP lense is pretty basic and doesn’t take that detailed a picture. It’s better than some tablets out there though.

Video quality with the tablet is ok, it focuses reasonably quick with options for 1080p or 720p recording. I took a quick video in 720p whilst out on a dog walk, nothing astounding just slightly better than I would have thought.

Video sample from the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2:
http://youtu.be/CB-3-0NHhIQ

Sound quality

The front facing speakers on the Yoga Tablet 2 are one of the main features you spot when eyeing up the tablet. They are quite good, unfortunately they don’t have the sub-woofer the higher end model has so they are just basically fairly loud speakers without any bass. They are louder than most devices I tried them against, I didn’t have a HTC Boomsound device to hand but I can tell you it’s nowhere near as loud or clear. They are perfectly usable to listen to music, the radio or a podcast.

Plug a pair of headphones in and your subjected to a fairly bland sound, just flat really. To fix this you have to use what is possibly the strangest graphic equaliser I’ve ever seen in my life where it has presets for movies, music and games along with 2 custom modes where you adjust the EQ and it briefly uses your adjustment and then goes back to what it was doing. It just made for a frustrating experience trying to listen to music. Shame.

Benchmarks

3DMark – 15774

Antutu – 33086

Quadrant – 17620

Conclusion

Overall I felt that the Yoga Tablet 2 10.1 was a great piece of kit, ideal for use as a multimedia device, a productivity device or even as a gaming device. The kickstand really helps out with the way you use the tablet, allowing you to position the tablet at a more ergonomic angle for either typing or media consumption.

You can pickup the Yoga Tablet 2 at various retailers and from the Lenovo site itself, where you can choose from either 16GB, 32GB or 16GB + LTE you can also get a Windows 8 version. Prices starts at £249.99 for the model I tested out. I feel that the Yoga tablet 2 offers quite a bit more in terms of functionality and design over some of the other recent budget tablets, although if the price was closer to £200 I think they would have a really successful device on their hands.

The post Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10.1 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Well here we have my first Intel powered Android device, in the form of the brand New Lenovo Tab S8. I picked this little beauty up in PC World for £149.99. It pretty much went on sale a few days ago. The device is so new they were not really able to give me any info on it. Good thing it has been one I have keeping an eye on since it was announced by Lenovo at IFA in Berlin back in September.

What we have here is a very light tablet with some pretty cool specs for the price. Here they are below.

• Display: 8.0 inch, IPS LCD, 1200 x 1920 pixels, 283 ppi.
• Processor: Intel Atom Z3745 CPU Quad-core 1.86 GHz.
• Internal Memory: 16 GB.
• RAM: 2 GB.
• Micro SD up to 32 GB.
• Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement.
• Bluetooth v4.0.
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4290 mAh.
• GPS with A-GPS.
• Rear Camera: 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash.
• Front Camera: 1.6 MP, 720p.
• Android 4.4.2.
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.
• Dimensions: 209.8 x 123.8 x 7.9 mm (8.26 x 4.87 x 0.31 in).
• Weight:299g.

Here is the unboxing video below:

So I am pretty pleased with my purchase here guys, I will have some review material up in the next week or so but until then check out the other content from James Pearce as he is currently reviewing the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 and the Tesco Hudl 2 both of which use the same chipset.
Interesting times ahead.

The post Lenovo Tab S8 unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Lenovo are gradually becoming a household name in the UK. Thanks somewhat to their rather nice looking and great value for money laptops and also thanks to their range of tablets. Last week they announced a new range of tablets, the Yoga Tablet 2 and the Yoga Pro Tablet 2 (or something like that). They were basically upgraded versions of last year’s Yoga tablet with some new software and some fancy new hardware features. Oh and you could choose from several different sizes, optional 4G models and also the choice of Android or Windows.

Lenovo have sent me the 10″ Android tablet which they are asking for £279.99 for on their site, so let’s start my initial impressions with my good and bad points.

Good Points

• Metal kickstand is actually quite useful. Bright colourful screen.
• Micro SD slot.
• Nice overall feel to the tablet.
• Front facing speakers.
• Overall the device feels really quick.

Bad Points

• Cylindrical battery makes it a weirdly weighted device.
• You feel like you can only really use it in landscape mode.
• Custom Lenovo launcher is a bit fiddly.
• The plastic backplate is a bit flexy.
• Strangely positioned rear camera.
• The price of £279.99 seems a bit high.

Design

Design wise the Yoga Tablet 2 is great looking piece of kit, with a few real metal accents here and there. Of course there is some plastic too, which is no doubt to keeps costs down a bit. The eyes are drawn to the cylindrical edge/end which really does dominate the entire design, so let’s deal with that first. The bulge is many things, it houses the power button, the headphone socket, two front facing speakers, a wall bracket mount and of course a great big old battery. It does add weight though, it makes it heavy in use and sort of forces you to use the tablet in landscape format to avoid having to hold the non symmetrical device aloft.

The front of the tablet is basically just the huge big display and the front facing speakers, in the bezel above the screen lives the sensors and the front facing camera.

The sides only really have the volume rocker and Micro USB port, the power button and headphone socket are on the ends of the battery bulge.

The back of the tablet only really bares the Lenovo  and Intel branding. The Kickstand hides the Micro SD slot and the kickstand also where the hole to hang it up on is.

Hardware

Hardware wise the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 is similar to the Hudl 2 I looked at earlier in the week, albeit in a more fancy looking shell and with a cool kickstand. The Intel chip used on the Hudl is a Z3735 but it’s clocked higher. Here is what you get.

• Processor: Intel Atom Quad Core Z3745 Processor( 1.33GHz 1066GHz 2MB).
• Operating system: Android 4.4.
• Display type: 10.1″ IPS LED LCD Touch 1920×1200.
• RAM: 2.0GB LPDDR3 1066 MHz.
• Internal Memory: 16GB (about 10.75 GB free out of the box).
• Network: 802.11 abgn WLAN.
• Bluetooth: Version 4.0.
• Warranty: One year.
• Battery: 3 Cell Li-Cylindrical Battery Life Up to 18 hours.
• Dimensions: 255 x 183 x 3-7.2 mm
• Weight: 619g.
• Rear Camera:8 MP f2.2 with auto focus and advanced BSI-2 sensor.
• Front Camers:1.6 MP.
• Speakers Front-facing, large-chamber stereo speakers with Wolfson® Master HiFi audio processing and Dolby® surround sound ports.
• Micro USB port with USB OTG , Micro-SD card, 3.5mm audio jack.

It’s quite a rounded package, I’d say it could do with slightly more internal memory and maybe an IR blaster to really make it an appealing device.

Software

Lenovo have always applied a skin to their Android devices and this latest generation of Yoga tablets are no different. To tell you the truth it looks a lot like an iOS skin on a custom launcher and it feels like Miui V6 with its skinned notification zone and setting slide up panel. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s nice. It also seems really quite quick, whether that’s the new device with not much running in the background or whether it’s some fancy work Lenovo have done with Intel to optimise the software to work with the chip remains to be seen.


There also isn’t an app drawer so the whole iOS feel continues through the launcher. This even extends to the notification drop down and the power settings that you access with an upward swipe on the navigation bar.

Conclusion

My initial conclusion is that the Yoga Tablet 2 is rather a nice tablet, I like the Kickstand, the speakers and the nice display. The battery is a little bit annoying as it is not so ergonomic to hold it in portrait with it, although a 10″ Android tablet should only ever be used in landscape so my point is redundant. Either way I look forward to testing this out.

I’ll be bringing you the full review in a few weeks once I’ve had a really good play with it. If you want any apps testing or you have a question leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer.

The post Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 – Initial Impressions is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The tablet market is as competitive as the phone market, with many manufacturers releasing devices in all different shapes, sizes and colours. Tesco are on their second device now, the original Hudl was a small seven inch tablet that seemed to be designed for kids or people who were deeply invested the Tesco BlinkBox media system. I didn’t really pay much attention to last years model as I’m a great fan of 8″ tablets, they offer the best of both world, they can just about cope with phone apps in portrait and can handle those few landscapes optimised apps that sometimes surprise you. I picked up a Hudl 2 from Tesco during the weekend, mainly to see if it could replace my aging LG G Pad 8.3. So lets crack on with my initial impressions, starting of course with my good and bad points.

Good Points

• Great feel in the hands.
• Nicely placed speakers.
• Great design and accessories.
• Intel chip really feels quick.
• Screen is spot on.
• Software is all a bit Nexus like.

Bad Points

• The Tesco apps/bloat is quite annoying.
• Only about 8.4 GB space left out of the box.
• Micro SD slot feels odd without a cover.
• Power button below volume button is annoying.
• No smart stay functionality for the flip case.

Design

Tesco have made a bold move this year, they’ve made the tablet bigger, better looking and a whole lot brighter. The Hudl 2 is a great looking tablet, upon opening the box I was actually taken aback by it, yes I’d ordered the bright orange one, turning it round in my hands I was really impressed.

The front of the Hudl 2 has a splash of colour at the edges and the screen has extra bezel at the edge too, this makes it nice and easy to hold in landscape, your fingers won’t catch the display. The front also houses a microphone and the front facing camera.

Holding it in landscape you’ve got port and buttons all over the place, starting at the bottom edge you’ve got the Micro SD slot, the Micro HDMI port, then on the right the Micro USB port, on the top edge are the power and volume rocker and one the top the headphone socket. I should point out that the power button size and placement bugs me, it’s a little small and it’s below the volume, so I find myself going for the volume instead of the power. It’s only because most of my other device have power above the volume, I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Take a look at the gallery and hands on video below.

Tesco Hudl 2 – Hands On:
http://youtu.be/hiJ13nRBnPo

Hardware

Spec wise the Hudl 2 is pretty good, it ticks all of the boxes for what you’d require in a modern day tablet.

• Display: 8.3″ IPS LCD, 1920 x 1200 pixels, 273 ppi.
• Processor: Intel® Atom Quad-Core Z3735D at 1.83 GHz.
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics.
• Internal Memory: 16GB (8.4 GB free out of box).
• RAM: 2GB.
• Wi-Fi: 2.4GHz and 5GHz, Dual Antenna, 802.11a/b/g/n.
• Micro-SD (up to 32GB).
• Android 4.4 KitKat.
• GPS, Glonass, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro USB, Micro HDMI, 3-axis Accelerometer, e-Compass, Gyroscope, Ambient Light Sensor, Sound & Speakers – Dolby Audio.
• Battery Life 8 hours.
• Front-Facing Camera: Resolution 1.2MP, Video 720p.
• Rear-Facing Camera: Resolution 5MP, Video 1080p (Full HD).
• Dimensions: H 12.8 CM, W 22.4 CM, D 0.9 CM.
• Weight: 0.4104 Kilogram.

Highlights in the spec list are the display, it’s bright, clear and sharp. Also the 2 GB of RAM help with the overall quick feel to the device.

The camera specs are a bit low, but no doubt people won’t be using it for any real photography.

The Intel chip is for me a bit of an unknown quantity, I haven’t used a device with one of the new quad-core Intel chips in, so I’ll be eager to try out games and multi tasking on the Hudl 2.

Software

The Hudl 2 runs Android 4.4.2 and Tesco have opted for their own launcher. The launcher looks like a modified Google Now Launcher, whereby the left hand pane shows you links to Tesco products and information. It is easily circumvented by installing another launcher from the Play Store.

Tesco have also opted to pre-install a lot of their own software, which explains why there is only just over half of the internal memory left out of the box. If you’re a Tesco customer it’s handy having the BlinkBox apps installed. If you’re not it’s rather annoying.

Tesco have also installed a Kids Zone which allows you to pick and choose what they can access. I’ve barely touched this yet, I’ll have a good play with it for the full review.

A lot of people assume that the Intel chipset will mean that some apps won’t be available, in my experience things have improved over the last few years and most apps are designed to be Intel X86 Compatible. I certainly haven’t found any missing apps in the last few days.

The official cases (or the two I’ve bought)

I bought the flip case (soft touch case) and the standard case (soft protective shell) with holes in. So far I’ve been impressed with both. The protective case with the holes in looks splendid, the fit is a bit tight but it does the job. It feels quite strange with the bump and holes, but again I’m sure I’ll get used to it. The flip case feels nicer than the other case, it’s like a soft touch faux leather almost and it offers more protection to the entire device as well. The flip part has ribs in it that can be used to support the tablet in landscape, it’s ideal for watching films on in this mode. The only annoying thing is that opening the flip case doesn’t turn the screen on, I guess the tablet needs a magnetic switch under the screen and also a magnet in the case itself.

Conclusion

My initial conclusion is that the Hudl 2 is a cracking device, especially as it only costs £129. Having a nice big display and a Micro SD slot lends itself to so many things. So far I can see it replacing my G Pad and my Nexus 7, performance wise it’s easily on a par with them both.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be testing out the Hudl 2, so if you’ve got any questions please leave them in the comments section below.

The post Tesco Hudl 2 – Initial Impressions is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I have been sent a new tablet through for review, this being The Gigaset Tablet 8 QV830 ( black version ). Never heard  of Gigaset ? well neither had I prior to hearing from them regarding this review. Gigaset is a German company that is one of the world’s largest home technology specialists, with over 160 years of experience in the premium home phone manufacture

Features :- 

• Sleek, high quality design, with an anodised aluminium black rear casing

• 8” 768 x 1024 screen

• 8GB flash memory, 1GB RAM memory

• Five megapixel rear camera auto focus

• 1.2 GHz quad core processor

• Android Jellybean 4.2.2

• Wi-Fi / WLAN

• Bluetooth 4.0, GPS

Design :- 

Upon opening the I was met with a sleek 8 inch black Android table with a rear casing that is made from a piece of  anodised aluminium that has a slight curve to it, this casing is wrapped around the edges before joining the screen, a design feature that is normally found on more high end devices. On the top edge of the device is the volume up/down rocker a micro usb charging port, 3.5 mm headphone jack, micro usb slot and power button, the bottom and sides are button free. On back of the device is 5 mega pixel camera and the speaker.

Software :-

When I booted up the tablet, I was surprised to find that it runs a almost stock version of Android 4.2.2. Jellybean, with no obvious skinning, i could only find a few pre-installed apps these being Blogger and a Help app, all the usual Google suit of apps, including Maps, Google Music Play Store, Hangouts are present.

In Use :- 

The first thing I noticed when I booted up the tablet was there was a update to the firmware of the touch panel, something I have never seen on any other device that I have used going all the way back to the G1. Once done set up was the same as any other Android device,

Once up and running I was surprised at which the tablet zipped along performing tasks, I’m convinced that this is due to the device running stock Android and minimum bloatware slowing it down. The screen was ok for general use, when I loaded up my Twitter client of choice this being Faclon Pro, I was met with a blocky horrendous user experience the text looked terrible, and blurred. Ah I have found this devices Achilles heel ! the screen is rubbish I thought but I then tried the official Twitter app and Google play books the text was fine, not pin sharp ultra HD but more that adequate so it appears that Falcon Pro wasn’t playing nice. I played some HD footage on the device which looked fine.

I found that I liked the 8 Inch form factor, my other Android device is my trusty Nexus 7 (2012 version) The Gigaset is a lot slimmer then the Nexus 7  and the aluminium does have a premium feel although a bit of fingerprint magnet, I took some comparison shots of the Gigaset with the Nexus 7 and Ipad Mini.

Gigaset claim the tablet will provide upto 7 hours of video playback, I set the device up with maximum screen brightness and playing a video on loop and it lasted 6 hours and 12 mins from full to empty, so quite a respectable return. Sound wise the Gigaset tablet has some in built sound presets these being Movie, Music and Voice Over IP, the device has on speaker to the rear of the device and I can say its “loud” the output is a bit tinny with little base response.

Conclusion:-

I was really impressed with the Gigaset Tablet, it feels really nice in the hand and I love the 8 inch form factor, its well built with a OK screen. The drawbacks being the sound is a little tinny, and despite the device having 8 GB of internal storage there is only 5 GB left over, for apps etc. And the back is a fingerprint magnet

Now here is the best news regarding the Gigaset Tablet 8 it is available for an amazing £69:99 from Currys/PC World which I think is worth every penny, order your from here  

The post Gigaset Tablet 8″ Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The lines between devices are becoming blurred these days, what with phones getting bigger, tablets getting smaller, laptops trying to be tablets, desktop PCs trying to still be relevant and Android and Windows 8 both trying their hardest to work well on all of those devices. I have been a long time advocate of a desktop PC, it is probably the most powerful and expensive gadget I have and as such I use it for every possible task going. Be it Music, Video, Photo Editing, Recording out podcast, Web Browsing, Shopping, Web Design, Blogging, Social Media, Gaming and a few other things I can’t think of right now. But I am still stuck on Windows 7, I’ve used Windows 8 on my laptop and that works well thanks to the touchscreen but I’m unsure how it would translate to a large dual monitor setup like my desktop.

The one thing that keeps grabbing my attention is these All In One devices, they’re basically a large touchscreen monitor with the OS and the PC hardware somehow built into the monitor. Meaning cables and mess would be at a minimum. Intriguingly a few Android device manufacturers make Android All In One devices and Hanspree have sent me one to review. So I should hopefully get a feel for how the whole All In One thing is going to work. Starting of course with my good and bad points.

Good Points

• A 23″ touchscreen is always good fun.
• 10 point multitouch.
• Google Play Store is installed on it.
• Micro SD Slot.
• The monitor has HDMI and DVI inputs for use with other devices.
• Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet and Miracast help the All In One stay connected.
• Adding a USB hub to the USB port extends usability.
• Combined with a Mouse and Keyboard it is really quite usable.

Bad Points

• It is basically a 23″ touchscreen monitor with a Android box attached to the back.
• The output resolution of the box is only 1280×672 which stretched across a 23″ 1080p monitor doesn’t look the best.
• The wiring is a little fiddly.
• Colour reproduction on the monitor is a little off.
• The screen is a fingerprint magnet and very reflective.
• Speakers pretty basic.
• Some apps don’t like Ethernet connections as a data source.
• Controlling it entirely with touch is rather laborious.

Design

Imagine a large 23″ touchscreen monitor (which I actually reviewed here ) and attach a small Rockchip based box to the back with some Velcro. You got that? Good because that’s exactly what this is. The monitor part is as I said a large touchscreen monitor, that has a kickstand at the back that actually conceals into the back of the screen. The monitor also has VESA mounting points on the back so you could mount this on a wall somewhere around your house. The monitor itself has a few ports on the back, it’s got HDMI, DVI, VGA, USB device for connection to the Android box, power and a few audio jacks for connecting speakers.

The Android part of this package comes from the small separate box that comes in the box. The little box has quite a few different ports for connecting it all together. Hannspree thought I’d struggle to work it out so they thoughtfully labelled every cable, port on the box and on the monitor. The box has a Micro USB port for powering it, an RJ45 Ethernet port for wired data connection, an HDMI port for connecting to the monitor and a full size USB port for connecting to the touchscreen display. The box also has an antenna for Wi-Fi connectivity and it seems to have some sort of IR receiver for controlling it, although it seems Hannspree haven’t gone with that method.

Hardware

The spec of the All In One is as follows:

• Display: 23” 10-Point Touch LED.
• Operating System: Android 4.4.2
• CPU: Quad Core 1.6GHz Rockchip RK3066 ARM Cortex A9.
• GPU:Mali-400 MP.
• Memory: 1GB RAM.
• Storage: 8GB NAND Flash.
• WiFi: Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n.
• Bluetooth: 2.1+EDR.
• Monitor Active Contrast: 80,000,000:1.
• Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (16:9).
• Terminal Resolution: 1280×672.
• Monitor Viewing Angles: H/V 170°/160°.
• Monitor Inputs: VGA, HDMI, DVI (HDCP).
• Android Box I/O Ports: Micro-SD Card Slot (supports up to 32GB external storage),  USB host (used for monitor connection), Micro USB 2.0 (OTG), Ethernet, HDMI.
• Built-in Stereo Speakers.
• Stand: Tilt -10°~60°.
• VESA Mounting 100 x 100.

A few things in the spec list didn’t initially appear to me, firstly I read that it was a 1080p device, which is true of the monitor. The resolution of the Android box is 1280×672 which is just a bit lower than 720p, which in my opinion is too low to be used on a large monitor, it makes most apps, graphics, web pages, album art and pretty much anything you look at, look a bit stretched and a bit low res. The next thing that was annoying is that they’ve split the small internal memory (about 6GB out of the box free) into two partitions, so at some point you’ll have to start removing apps to install new ones.

A few other niggles rose their heads as time went by. BBC iPlayer doesn’t recognise Ethernet as a valid data source, so it forced you to use Wi-Fi instead. The screen colour reproduction was rather weird, leaving me to fiddle with the monitors brightness and contrast controls to try and balance it out. The speakers were a bit tinny with no bass as such. The CPU and GPU felt a bit sluggish at times, trying to load up YouTube caused some initial lag, it’s mainly things that use the CPU and GPU. It coped with Angry Birds OK though.

Software

Software wise the Android All In One runs Android 4.4.2 and Hannspree have added a few little touches to make the experience a little better for the consumer. They have basically added a load of extra soft keys to the navigation bar, so you get a power button, a screenshot button, a colume control, back, home, recents and standby. These help as the functions for volume etc are hidden deep within menus normally. The Android box doesn’t have any volume controls so there had to be a way of adjusting the volume with software instead.

Hannspree didn’t really amend anything else, you’re left to your own devices really. No fancy interface, no fancy skin and no bloatware so to speak. You really do get a blank canvas to play with.

Android on a phone works well, you can deal with all elements of the UI using your hand, or in the case of tablets two hands. On a larger Android tablet a lot of the user experience comes from which specific apps you’ve got installed and whether or not the developer of the app could be bothered to code the app to work with the given space on a tablet, many apps these days do work nicely with tablets and it’s just a matter of finding them. That’s the case with this device, you’ll need to try a few apps out first to see if it looks ok on the display, Twitter for instance, the official app looks awful stretched across the screen, but instead I’d use Plume as it gives you multiple columns on screen to use.

I wanted to try out using it as a PC replacement, so I thought I’d use a keyboard and mouse with it, I had a 2.4gHz Wireless set that used a USB dongle, so I popped a USB hub into the Android box and it gave me four USB host ports that the box could recognise. Once set up using a mouse on the display felt a lot more intuitive than just using touch and the keyboard was a lot quicker at entering text than the huge onscreen keyboard was.

The BBC iPlayer app was a pain, it didn’t recognise the Ethernet connection as a valid data source, meaning that I had to switch to Wi-Fi to watch the latest episode of Tumble. I guess most people will be ok with using Wi-Fi I just thought the extra bandwidth offered by Ethernet would be useful watching iPlayer.

Other notable stuff

The aren’t many of my normal “other notable” items to cover here, as I normally look at the battery life, benchmarks and the camera.

Benchmarks

• Antutu X – 23667
• Quadrant – failed to load
• 3DMark – 2129

So it comes out low on 3DMark and average on Antutu. Benchmarks eh? They only really give you an idea of what’s happening, in real life the All In One felt like one of those budget tablets you get, where everything takes a split second longer than it should to load and sometimes apps such as YouTube or BBC iPlayer seem to stall on loading the video.

Conclusion

Overall the Hannspree Android All In One is a device that could have been something really quite cool. It would easily fit into family life attached to the wall in the kitchen, as a calendar, organiser, web browser, recipe browser or many other things. It would also be useful as a second monitor in a home office, basically running the same apps as on your phone or tablet and using the same data stored in the cloud. With a mouse and keyboard it actually became quite usable as a productivity device.

The Hannspree Android All In One can be bought here for £225 from Amazon. The monitor itself doesn’t cost a lot less than that, so you can guess how much the Android part cost. It does just feel like an after thought of a device, aimed to compete with the higher price Windows All In One devices. Yes it costs a lot less, but it doesn’t really compete. Let down by basic hardware and lack of software actually designed for such big displays.

Lastly a big thanks to Hannspree for lending us the Android All In One.

The post Hannspree CT23H0B Android All In One – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Firstly I would like to offer up an apology for the time I this taken for me to get this review up. I just wanted to make sure that I had enough time to test the tablet to its fullest.

So without further ado, the review..

Hardware/Design

Those of you who have seen the unboxing video and also my hands on first impressions will no doubt be aware of my thinking on the design on this tablet. The good news is that over the last month these opinions have not changed much at all, although I have discovered some minor niggles and annoyances. I will come onto them shortly

First let’s go around the device from the left. First is the volume up and down rocker switch and power using that now distinctive Xperia button.

On the top we have a flap covering the micro SD card slot. If this were a 4G variant then this were the micro SIM would go too. Next to this, under another flap, is the micro USB which is for data and charging. This can also support USB on the go if the appropriate cable is used, which is handy. Next up is an IR transmitter for controlling TV’s and other AV kit, then finally we have a microphone.

The right hand side is completely bare.

On the base we have a magnetic charging connector which is used with the DK39 dock. There’s also some other accessories, but frustratingly no keyboard.

Up front and at the top is a 2.2 megapixel camera for Skype and the like and next for is a light sensor. Way off to the right is a charging light that doubles up as a notification LED as well.

Sony have also now mounted the speakers on the front of the tablet allowing sound to be better directed towards you. The speakers are still fairly weak but, with the right tweaking of settings within the built-in equaliser, you can achieve a comfortable enough sound. Lastly we have a glorious 1920 x 1200 Triluminous Panel which just begs to be used for multimedia. I have been very impressed with the viewing angles thanks to the IPS display.

Sony have thrown in their usual enhancements in the form of X-Reality and you are also able to adjust the white balance on the screen you your optimum settings. I am more than happy with the display and I find it to be a really nice working environment.

Around back we also have a rear facing camera rated @ 8 megapixels with an Exmor R sensor allowing for fairly good photos. Although the lack of flash hinders it for real world usage.

Finally we have a NFC chip as well to allow Sony’s Xperia link app to be utilised easily and quickly.

The thing that really blows my mind is what is going on inside the thin 6.5mm chassis. It’s a whopping big chunk of processor – a Snapdragon 801 with 4 cores kicking out 2.3 GHz backed up by 3 GB of RAM. Thrown in you’ll find some other goodies such as an FM radio, GPS and Glonass support plus WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual band with WiFi direct for good measure.

On paper we are looking at a very powerful piece of kit and I know personally I have not really managed to make it sweat so far. All of this power is driven by a rather weedy sounding 6000mah battery but again this is enough for me. With Sony’s very good Stamina mode enabled I get through several days of light use and three of intensive. On a battery rundown test playing a HD video on a loop I was able to get just under 10hrs before it croaked. This is up there with the competition so I am happy.

The microSD supports up to 128GB if needed. I currently have a 32GB card and this is meeting all my media needs for now.

Last, but certainly not least, is that the whole thing is IP58 rated or, as Sony like to call it, life proof. This amazing bit of kit will survive being taken into the bath with you and maybe even a trip to the local pool, although probably not recommended from a child point of view (as any parent of a young child will know all about). Almost nothing will survive a few minutes with a small child!

Software

What to say about software? Well, first up, praise be to Sony. They have shipped the device with the latest version of Android – Kit Kat 4.4.2. Whilst I understand this is not that groundbreaking, it is nice to now that you’re fully up to speed with the software.

Sony have included all their multimedia apps in the forms of Walkman, Movies and Album…

Whilst none of these actually replace the default apps from Google, they do certainly compliment them. I prefer using Walkman for my music playback over the Play Music. I can’t really put my finger on it…. I just prefer it really.

The Walkman and Movies app also allow integration with Sony’s Unlimited services in the form of Music Unlimited and Video unlimited. At the time of writing the prices on these services were £8.99 for Music unlimited and up to £9.99 for a new release on Videos Unlimited.

These prices are reasonable and you can bet that if Sony has had a hand in the making of the film then it won’t be long until you can get it through Videos Unlimited. The Walkman also has a nice Sense Me feature which will analyse  the BPM of your music and aggregate it into playlists based on moods. This is a nice touch and saves you from having to make your own playlists. Although this can be done easily if you desire to do so.

One little irk that I’ve discovered after using a Nexus Device is that Kit Kat now dictates what can be saved onto your microSD. This is really annoying if you are intending to use the device to download media as it will download onto the internal first before you can move it to the SD card. Now for me I haven’t got a huge issue with this as most of my content is Music/Video and this can be moved as required, but for those heavy gamers it may be worthwhile looking to the 32GB version as the other core Android apps are increasing in size.

I do feel however that this is something that is a backwards step by Google. I hope that the developers are able to tweak their apps so that this can be resolved asap.

Now, onto the way we interact with the tablet. The screen. A lot of people have been saying that the screen does have responsiveness issues, this is something that I am pleased to say I have not encountered. However, something I have come across is the new positioning of the Android software buttons at the base of the screen. I have lost count of how many times I have accidentally pressed the home icon whilst typing this review.

I understand the reasoning of the move but it is just really annoying. I would much prefer them to be on the side like they are on the phone UI. In fact I regularly find myself searching for the buttons there before realising they are at the the bottom. I am aware of the fact that this was a Google decision and Sony have just had to follow suite but is is really annoying.

Cameras
As I have already mentioned the Z2 Tablet has two camera modules. One on the front and the other on the rear.

Both of these cameras are supported by the Exmor RS Sensor that Sony have been developing on their Xperia smartphones. I use the camera on the Xperia Z1 and here it really shines as one of the best Android camera modules that you can get. Then again, the lenses on that are very finely tuned and have been honed for camera quality. The ones on the Z2 Tablet are not quite as good, but the argument here is….. do they need to be?

I don’t think they do.

Let me explain. Most of us now carry around a phone with an 8 megapixel camera at least. If you are using an Android device from within the last year then chances are that you’ll have NFC on board as well. This means that you are going to be able to get better compose photos on you smartphone than anything you could get on a tablet.

Want to view on a bigger screen ? No problem, just beam them over using NFC. Job done.

That being said the camera on the Z2 Tablet is serviceable and is more than good enough for using in a pinch. Something I do use it for is when I am making notes after snapping a picture of my work rota. Here it has not faulted me.

All the features that we are used to are here from the latest Xperia line up. You’ll see the Superior Auto, Manual, AR Effect, Creative Effect, Time shift Burst, Info Eye, Social Live and Sweep Panoramab modes.

I have included some samples of the photos for you have a look at. These are taken in the various modes available.

The video will also be recorded in up to 1080p resolution. It has the same interface as the Xperia phones with the exclusion of the flash control as that is not present here.

I have posted a sample of 1080p footage here for you you see what the quality is like…

One thing I would add is that the X-Reality software improvements can sometimes cause the pictures to appear slightly over saturated, but as I mentioned before, this is not my main photography device as that is work is done my by my smartphone.

Performance

Ones word sums this up for me – FAST.
I’ll be honest. I am not one for really pushing my tablets to their extremes, but with this one I feel that I could start to do this. One of the most processor intensive things you can do on a tablet is to render videos and this is something that I am definitely going to try out on this powerhouse.

Even though I have not done video editing before, I have been able to test the rendering to an extent by using it to play RealRacing 3, which did not stutter or fault in anyway. It made for a visually enjoyable experience with high framerates and clarity.

The tab feels fluid in all navigation, and switching through apps is easy. When I finally get hold of the keyboard that Sony offer for this device then I honestly feel that it will cover my needs from both an entertainment and a productivity device.

Competition
It is impossible to do a tablet review with out a look at other options so here goes.

The main competitors here in my opinion are the iPad Air @£399 for similar spec or the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1@£449 and the Nokia Lumia 2520 @ £299. I have narrowed it down to these choices as these are all premium tablets in their relevant sectors.

IPad vs Z2 Tab

• IPad has better Screen res
• IPad has better accessories available right now.
• IPad is slightly smaller screen better portability
• Z2 Tab is lighter better for holding over a long time
• Z2 Tab is life proof
• Z2 Tab supports up 128 GB Micro SD
• Z2 Tab has more RAM
• Z2 Tab has better camera both front and rear

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 vs Z2 Tab

• SGTP has better screen res
• SGTP has better accessories right now
• SGTP has got a slightly smaller footprint due to smaller bezels
• Z2 Tab is lighter better for holding over a long time
• Z2 Tab is life proof
• Z2 Tab supports up 128 GB Micro SD
• Z2 Tab has more RAM
• Z2 Tab has better camera both front and rear

Lumia 2520 vs Z2 Tab

• Lumia has same res screen
• Lumia comes with 4g&WiFi only
• Z2 Tab is lighter better for holding over a long time
• Z2 Tab is life proof
• Z2 Tab supports up 128 GB Micro SD
• Z2 Tab has more RAM
• Z2 Tab has better camera both front and rear
• Z2 Tab has better Store for content
• Z2 Tab has a more evolved and better supported OS

As you can see there are some strong points for all the above competitors but I honestly thin that Z2 Tablet can stand up and be counted in this group as the best. If not the best then at least second only to the iPad Air.

From a technical standpoint it is one of the best tablets on the market, but it faces an uphill struggle in gaining market share against the beamoths of Samsung and Apple. This really is a true David and Goliath story.

Against Nokia is perhaps a more interesting comparison as the Nokia hardware is equally drool-worthy, but it is crippled by Windows RT 8.1. However, this may change when WP8.1 is released opening up the door for devs to be making apps for both OS’s. This is one area I am going to be watching closely.

So should you buy a Z2 Tablet. Yes or no?

The answer to this question really depends on your needs how Android is butchered implemented. If you are after a Nexus-like device with some added enhancements, then go for it. If you want some glamour and street-cred then vgo for an iPad Air or Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1.

I for one am very happy with the Z2 Tablet and it was well worth the wait.

The post Xperia Z2 Tablet – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

So I have had the Xperia Z2 tab for just over 24 hrs and I will thought that now might be a good time to give you some of my first impressions. Well one word really sums it up and that word is WOW. The way this tablet feels just oozes premium; from the aluminium edgeing to the newly placed forward facing speakers. Even the little things like the ports have a premium feel to them. Using the tablet on the train this morning to start writing this article it did feel a bit weird to type on but I put that down to be used to typing on a smaller tablet for that last year.

It is light and comfortable to use in both landscape and portrait orientation which is very important for a tablet. The screen is vivid and bright and the viewing angles are great when viewing both text and media. Touchscreen response is good, I wouldn’t say it’s as good as an iPad, but I am basing that on my last iPad which was the Mini.

I love the little additional features that Sony have added to the tablet, especially as I am a Xperia phone user because I can see my texts and calls on the tablet. I have used this to send a text but I have yet to try the phone call side of things.

It’s too early to comment on battery life as I have not even run it through a charge cycle yet but I have got reasonably high hopes for it given the life I have achieved from my Xperia Z1 phone. I would hazard a guess that this will get you through a day of intensive use and will give you a couple of days of light browsing /gaming/media. On the subject of media I was able to test out the Sony Digital Noise Cancelling headphones today on the tablet and I was quite impressed by them, they did really work well, it’s just a shame they are not part of the inbox experience.

Those of you that follow the site regularly will know that I also received as part of my order a Wireless charging dock for 1p (usually £34.99). This has proven to be very useful as it allowed me to have the tablet charging whilst using the Micro USB for data duties. I have played with some of the new breed of Windows 8 mini tablets and this is something that I could not get past in all my experience of using them. Let me explain: the Intel Atom processor that these systems are based on will only allow you either charge or use for data one at a time and it was the only way to charge them. So although you could plug it into a display via Display port adaptors it would discharge whilst doing so. The benefit of the Sony setup is that it will charge whilst transferring to an MHL output if you use the docking connector. This is a big win for me as this is one of the usage scenarios that I intend to try out fully when I get the MHL to test it (coming in a couple of weeks).

I mentioned in the Z2 tablet unboxing article yesterday that I was going to use Xperia Transfer for Mobile to get the info from my Nexus onto it. Now although this can be done via side loading the necessary extracted .apk file from you phone. It is not easy and it should be for the customer. However once you have it installed it does all the hard work for you and it is a great service just needs some fine tuning. I have fed this back to Sony and can only hope a change is made soon.

So that is all I have for now, there will be more to come once I get some miles under my belt with the usage of the device.

The post Xperia Z2 tablet first impressions is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

My very own Xperia Z2 Tablet has arrive. I can tell you one thing, it was well worth the wait.

When I first picked up the box it was shipped in I was concerned that there was no tablet in the box. It’s that light. Strangely so for a 10.1″ device. So, without further ado, here is the Unboxing

I have also got a few pics which I have chucked into a Gallery below. More to come as I get to grips with the Tablet and go through the setup of it.

As an experiment I am going to use Xperia Transfer for Mobile to get my content onto it from my phone.
Xperia Transfer for Mobile

The post Xperia Z2 Tablet unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.