Another slow news Sunday so thought it may be a good idea to highlight some of the good stories that have appeared on the site in the last seven days just incase you missed them.
Pay and Go iPhone 3G now available Xperia X1 unboxed
Microsoft continues with licensing fees Zune software coming to Windows Mobile
Meet the Nokia 5800 touch screen phone Fring for iPhone released
HP Oak hitting Europe Bad news if you want a HTC Touch HD in America
The Wacom Bamboo Fun is one of Wacom’s entry level graphics tablets.
For those who don’t know what a graphics tablet is, think of it as a pen and pad that replace the mouse as a way of controlling your computer. (You can use a special mouse on these pads as well, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who actually uses them)
Some people just use it as a replacement for their mouse as it can help with RSI or just because they prefer the pen input over a mouse, but most people will use it in art packages for everything from photo retouching to painting their own Mona Lisa.
What’s in the box?
Wacom Bamboo Fun Specification:
Quick tour
The setup of the Bamboo Fun couldn’t be any easier – it just plugs into a free USB socket and after the installation of the drivers you open up your favourite art package (or install the included applications) and start drawing your very own masterpiece.
At the top of the pad are ‘Express keys’ that you can customise in the drivers to do common shortcuts, and the big circular thing is the ‘Touch Ring’. This is used for things like zoom in and out, or scrolling – all very useful.
The thing that will take some people a little time to get used to is that the surface of the pad represents the whole of your monitor, so top left on the pad is the top left of the monitor and bottom right is bottom right. So unlike your mouse where you lift it and the cursor stays put, when you put the pen to the surface the cursor jumps straight there.
When you are just in normal applications or on the desktop then you can use the pen to single or double click just like you would with a mouse – the pen also has left and right click buttons built in.
This natural mapping and the use of a pen instead of a mouse make graphics tablets good for people who suffer from RSI as tablets provide a less physically stressful input method.
The pen is also pressure sensitive – in this case 512 levels of sensitivity – so in programs that support pressure information, they can translate the pressure that you applying and change the affects on the program. The simplest example of this is when you are in an art program and set it to use the pressure to set the transparency of the strokes – light pressure with the pen produce light marks, pressing harder with the pen produces heavier marks, very cool and very different to using a mouse.
Some other examples of things that the pressure can control include brush width and brush colour, and these options differ from program to program, so I won’t even attempt to list all the possibilities here.
What this means is that using the pen is very much like using a normal pencil or paintbrush – with the big advantage that on a computer you can press UNDO 😀
The pen also has an ‘eraser’ on the other end, which is also pressure sensitive – so if you want to rub out part of your art then just flip the pen upside down, exactly as you would if you were using a pencil in the real world. Very useful for erasing mistakes or softening edges.
The eraser is really a second tip, so if you want to tell the program to use that end of the pen for something different then you can.
And it’s not just traditional painting programs that can use these tablets either, some of the 3d art packages also support the pressure information to allow things like sculpting.
For anyone who’s worried about the pen nib wearing down, don’t as you can replace the nibs very easily – there are even 3 included in the package.
The Review
I’m primarily a programmer, but every now and again I do things like photo retouching, website design, game art etc, and so a couple of years ago I decided to have a look at graphics tablets.
Without question the most respected name out there was Wacom – but I couldn’t really justify anything expensive and in the end I picked up a cheap tablet from another manufacturer. I use it occasionally and it’s functional at best, and I’ve always wondered what a real Wacom tablet would be like.
The Bamboo Fun is targeting people just like me in many respects – people who don’t want to spend lots of cash, but like the idea of having a graphics tablet as an input device for doing their doodles or photo retouching. As the name says, Bamboo Fun.
The pad is dead simple to install, and once I’d realised that Wacom pens don’t actually need batteries, I was good to go. (Wacom tablets use their own technology that is different to other manufacturers)
I opened up my trusty art package and away I doodled. I tested out the pressure sensitivity input in all it’s various guises and generally made a very pretty mess of the screen. The ExpressKeys are useful for commonly used tasks, as is the Touch Ring, but being placed at the top of the tablet isn’t ideal – I realise that it’s there as otherwise they’d have to put 2 sets on (for left and right handed people) but they are just a little awkward at the top.
After a bit of playing I realised that something didn’t quite feeling right with the pen interaction. I decided to try the included software instead, as that would obviously show the pen at it’s best.
So I installed Photoshop Elements and once I’d worked out how to use the program and enable the pressure sensitivity stuff, I was away and doodling again.
Again something wasn’t quite right. The sensitivity of the pen at the light pressure end of the scale was a little poor, so it went from near zero to mid pressure with very little change in actual pressure on the pen. I tried holding the pen differently and tinkering with driver settings, but I couldn’t get it quite where I wanted it to be.
In a general input sense the pen was accurate enough though, so for actual input, the tablet is fine. The size of the working area might frustrate some, but at the end of the day if you want a bigger area, you buy a bigger tablet.
On a personal note, the other slight niggle was the feeling of the nib on the surface of the tablet. It felt a little ‘scratchy’ to me – but this might be improved with a different type of nib.
Highlights
Lowlights
Conclusion
As an input device to just replace a mouse the Bamboo Fun is fine. As a tablet for the occasional photo retouching or just messing around in art packages, kids will love it, then again it’s fine.
If you are looking to do lots of artwork and need delicate control from the pen, then I’d try another of the Wacom pads instead.
Review by: Iain
Want to have a closer look at the Android OS in action, T-Mobile have just posted a web page with an emulated G1 to have a click around. It is a bit limited in functionality but you can see what some of the interface is going to look like. They have also posted a page with a 360 degree look around the phone and you can event flip the keyboard up and down. Here is the link if you want to take a look.
Introduction
As Matt mentioned earlier I have been playing with the Eten Glofiish for the past week or so. This was the first time I had used a Windows Mobile device that wasn’t manufactured by HTC which was one of the main reasons for wanting a shot of this phone. Another reason was the full DVB TV which I’ll tell you more about as the review moves forward.
The 10 second review:
Device: Eten GlofiishV900
Cost: SIM free only: £464.13 (Inc VAT) from Clove Technology.
Available to pre-order from: CLOVE technology (Go and buy one from here)
Summary: As far as Windows Mobile devices go this is fairly bog standard but then we look at the phone and see there’s just a little more to this than meets the eye.
Best of: DVB TV, Box & Packaging, GPS Folder (See below), FM Radio, SMS Service
Worst of: Screen Flicker, Bottom App Section
What’s in the box?
Well we wont go into too much detail about what’s in the box as we have an Unboxing Video already online.
Specification
Matt has posted the specs along with the Unboxing Video already so have a look there before reading on.
General
The Eten Glofiish V900 didn’t really follow in the same design the other Glofiish handsets out there (not that there is a specific Glofiish design). Weighing in at 147g it’s not quite the lightest handset out there but saying that it really isn’t heavy either.
The front end of the phone boasts a large 2.8" 480 x 640 touch screen. Sitting at the top of the screen there is a front facing VGA camera for 3G Video calls and an earpiece grill which houses two system indicator lights.
The left hand side of the phone has just 2 buttons and the DVB antenna which looks like a stylus when tucked away. The button at the top is the rocker volume switch which I have to admit would have been better on the right hand side for comfort. The second button is defaulted as Voice Command but can be customised.
Moving over to the opposite side we find the power button, reset pin hole, MicroSD slot, camera button and the Stylus.
The top of the handset has nothing but a simple GPS logo etched in.
At the bottom we find (from left to right) the 2.5mm Jack socket (please stop this device manufacturers), miniUSB port and the microphone.
At the top left hand side on the back of the phone 3.1MP auto focus camera with the self portrait mirror, LED flash, and large speaker sitting just to the right of it. Underneath this lot we see the Glofiish name and windows logo printed on the removable part of the back cover.
Removing the back from the phone allows you access to the Li-Ion 1530 mAh battery and simcard area. The first thing I noticed when removing the back cover was a label saying "Don’t Tear" which if I’m being honest I have no idea what it relates to but can only guess that its talking about a piece of plastic film that’s been stuck to the battery to make it easier to remove..
Highlights and Lowlights
+ DVB TV
+ GPS
+ FM Radio
+ Screen Size
– Screen seems to get brighter every now and again causing a flicker effect.
– Flimsy Antenna
– No full paper version of instructions
Review
The phone is priced quite highly which for me was a downside, even with the DVB and GPS. If I was to pick a group of people that would be interested in this phone I would go with the Windows Mobile fan who just wants a little more tech in his technology.
When I took the phone box out of its very nice "Special Delivery" pack and bubble wrap the first thing that caught my eye was a very simplistic yet eye catching box. In saying that I found it funny that the box told you where to buy it despite the fact that by having it you have already bought it (or had it for Free like us). Opening the box was very refreshing, no confuddle of leaflets, cables etc… just a very plain cardboard insert housing the phone which did however take me a wee while to get the phone out of there as I had not seen Matt’s video at this point. Underneath the initial cardboard insert lay a cardboard box which was very neatly packed with the cables and leaflets that normally clutter every other box.
Powering on the phone gave a very bright orange background which if you look at the glofiish website seems to be their trade colour. After running through the normal Windows Mobile set up it loaded the spb Shell interface which in general I am not a fan of but it was nice for a change to see it coming built in.
Navigation was very simple as you’ll find that all Windows Mobile systems handle the same way. The D-Pad wasn’t however just as easy to navigate with. I found this quite cumbersome and slow to respond. I decided that for the remainder of my trial I would only use it if needed.
There were lots on nice things sitting inside the programs menu like the GPS folder which had a GPS viewer, Location SMS and Satelite Data Update tucked inside it. The next "nice thing" was the Multimedia folder which had the FM Transmitter, FM Tuner and Mobile TV Player inside. I played a lot with all of these tools and loved everyone of them. The FM radio needed no headset to play which was a great feature and the Location SMS was simply fun to use.
If asked to describe the Mobile TV Player I would say I have mixed feelings. After speaking with Matt we thought that it might only be possible to get this service working on London or Birmingham as those were the only 2 cities in the UK listed in the presets however after fiddling about with the settings a little more I eventually found a section that would allow me to scan deeper and low and behold I had Digitial TV working on the phone. This was met with a little annoyance as it did take over 10 minutes to scan and load the channel lists.
At the bottom of the today screen there is a section that contains nearly every app / program the phone has, I found this really annoying as I prefer to have a clean desktop but would admit that this could come in handy if your not as fussy as I am.
The MicroSD slot was a nightmare! I had to use the stylus to insert and remove my 8gb MicroSD as the slot was sunken so deep a mere mortals fingers would struggle to get anything in our out of it.
If you were to ask me what I would change on this phone I would say remove the D-Pad, remove the app /program launcher at the bottom of the today screen, include a paper user manual, fix the software on the Mobile TV to allow for a quick scan, sort out the MicroSD slot and more preset Cities and strengthen the antenna. Having said all that there are a number of features I would hate to have changed such as GPS, SMS and FM radio.
Conclusion
I used the phone for over a week and found it very easy to use. Having never used another manufactures windows mobile device I was surprised to see that there was so much that could be tweaked / customised from one device to another and that Eten took advantage of this. I enjoyed using the phone and despite it’s downsides and would honest still buy one for the TV & Radio systems alone. I think it was a very bold move for Eten to include the TV on the phone but I think it was a move which will pay off for them.
If you are interested in this handset then why not pop over to CLOVE technology where you can pre-order this handset for £464.13 (Inc VAT).
Posted by: John
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.