Author Archive: Matt

LG BL40 Chocolate review

LG have produced a new form factor for the BL40 – a long, slim design with a full 21:9 cinematic widescreen display. The second edition of the top selling Chocolate is here.

The LG BL40 Chocolate

 

What’s in the box?

• BL40 Device
• 1000mAh Battery
• USB Data cable
• Earphones/mic kit
• Userguide & software

 

Have a look at Matt’s LG BL40 unboxing video for more.

 

LG BL40 Chocolate Specification:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 1900/2100 MHz, EDGE class 10, HSCSD, GPRS, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Form factor: Candy Touchscreen bar
• Dimensions: 128 x 51 x 10.9 mm ( 5×2×0.4 inch )
• Weight: 4.6 oz.
• Display: Unique 4" TFT 16 million colors capacitive touchscreen with 21:9 aspect ratio and 800 x 345 pixels resolution, Multi-touch input method,
• scratch resistant glass
• Camera: 5-megapixels auto-focus camera with Schneider-Kreuznach lens, LED flash, geo-tagging, image stabilization, face detection, Smile Shot,
• Blink detection, Intelligent shot, Beauty and Art shot, VGA video recording at 30 fps
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (WLAN), Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB v2.0 port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, T9 text function, E-mail, Internet browsing
• Entertainment: FM radio, Java, Audio player ( eAAC, MP3, WAV ), Video player ( DivX, H263, MP4, xVID )
• Platform: Latest S-Class Touch UI
• Other features: UI auto-rotate, Auto turn-off, Gesture controls, 3.5 mm audio jack, DMSE, Games, TV out
• Internal Memory: 1GB internal memory
• External Memory: microSD card slot ( up to 32GB )
• Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
• Talk time: about 3.2 hours
• Standby time: up to 250 hours

About the device

The most striking aspect of the BL40 is undoubtedly the slim, tall dimensions and screen. The front of the device is dominated by the extra large TFT touchscreen. Space remains at the top of the screen for the speaker grill and forward facing camera, and a simple silver LG logo sits below it. Its a minimalistic approach, made possible by the large screen. The dual purpose screen means menu command buttons don’t need to be hardware based – they just take up a percentage of the screen space.

LG BL40 front view

 

The top of the device has a rather tasty orange/red finish, on which sits the power/lock switch, and a standard 3.5” audio jack. The orangey finish might sound odd – but it looks VERY nice indeed.

LG BL40 top view

 

The side to the left of the screen houses the none-standard USB(ish) port, which covers both charging and data needs. Midway down the side is a dedicated music button, which whisks you directly to the music player within the OS.

LG BL40 left side

 

The right hand side has a volume control, made up of two simple push buttons, and a two-stage camera shutter control – push half way to focus, depress to take a shot.

LG BL40 right side

 

The bottom of the device again has the orange/red finish, and just a small mic on an otherwise empty panel.

LG BL40 bottom view

 

The back of the phone has another grey LG logo towards the bottom, and the camera, with flash sits towards to the top of the device.

LG BL40 back view

 

Highlights

• That screen – Responsive and bright vivid colours make this one of the best displays you’ll find on a phone
• Video playback – The 21:9 screen layout provides proper cinema-format widescreen – and movies do look pretty awesome on it!

Lowlights

• Battery life – It’s not the worst I’ve come across, but at only 1000mAh it seems to run out far too quick.
• Size/Shape – I’m totally sold on the long-and-thin shape. Yet.

Review

I guess the original Chocolate phone was a bit of a era-defining one in the none-smartphone world, and LG flogged a crazy number of units worldwide. Onc e again with the “new Chocolate” LG are trying to refine the phone. Clearly the USP here is the 21:9 full cinema widescreen display – no hardware buttons, just one large touchscreen covering all control needs itself. It actually works pretty well, and while other phones have already switched hardware buttons for touchscreens, the extra size here really helps.

The screen is visually stunning – despite being extremely slim, despite being an extremely large TFT size, its bright, colourful and very responsive to touch.

Just to get a rather disappointing area out of the way to start with – as it could well be connected tot that lovely screen – the battery is not great. I tried to get some information to back this up, but its hard work judging battery life when the phones own battery guage appears to have taken crack. It’s simply all over the place, with options basically consisting of ‘full’ or ‘empty’

Now I’ll admit I didn’t make many calls on the phone, but during light testing the call quality was perfectly acceptable, as was the speakerphone function. Callers reported dubious sound quality when I was using the mic in speakerphone mode, but I guess thats to be expected.

As usual with LG, the S Class OS is onboard, and personally I struggle with it. I like how they are trying to the best features of other more expensive phone, but in places the OS just ends up in a mess of dead end menu structures and page after page of similar sounding options. LG seem to constantly get the hardware side of things spot on, but I do think work is needed on on the software side.

I wouldn’t normally comment too much on the general phone functionality but its worth mentioning the messaging app, covering both sms and email. The long screen splits into a dual screen layout, and the messaging app mimics Outlook’s reading pane view. Your message list is displayed on the left, and the full message text of your selected item is shown on the right. I like it – a lot.

The lock screen takes the form of a large glass panel, which you ‘swipe up’ to remove, and unlock the device. However from this lock screen you can also use various built in – but customisable -finger gestures to take you directly to different areas of the OS. It’s actually a decent feature really. It’s of no detriment to the general purpose of the lock screen – I didn’t have any accidental unlocks, but does save time if you customise it to taste.

Because most phone networks don’t seem to be able to provide a decent signal to my house, I spent a lot of time relying on the WIFI, and bl40 didn’t let me down. It was fairly easy to set up – saving the network key automatically, and from then on – just working.

Although the built in browser gets the most out of the screen real-estate, I was interested to know whether Opera would install. Oddly it wouldn’t – despite the java engine launching correctly (with a on-screen keyboard taking up some of the screen), Opera itself wouldn’t install. Sticking with the internal browser did allow me to experience the multi-touch interface, and its not bad really. It’s got all the usual sweepers and pinches found on the iphone and android, but I found it to be a bit laggy, and very hard to find an acceptable zoom level at times. It also seemed to do some odd things when switching from portrait to landscape modes.

The 5 megapixel camera was somewhat disappointing in terms of pure quality, but the app itself, packed with features, was pretty impressive. There is an abundance of functionality, with multiple shooting modes, stabilisation and geo-tagging all ready to go. There is a manual focus option, but it is missing the iphone-style touch-to-focus method. Sadly despite the multitude of ISO and white balance options, photos suffered from noise even in bright conditions, and I couldn’t find a white balance option I was happy with. It’s suffers a bit with over-exposure, but this seems to affect quite a few camera phones, regardless of actual resolution. Video quality is acceptable without being anything to write home about.

As described above, the 3.5 audio jack means you can use your favourite earphones with ease. However, for a change a device manufacturer hasn’t just bunged in the cheapest plasticy headset they could buy. There’s a kit of different size rubber ‘buds’ and the earphone offer genuinely good quality sound. I’m sure it won’t be enough to please the real audiophiles, but they are much better than you’d usually get with a phone.

The music player is very much as any other – full playlisting ability, search by various different ID fields, Dolby Mobile support and various different visualisations – which do look pretty cool on the large screen.

Providing you get the aspect ratio right, you can’t help but be impressed by the video playback on the 21:9 screen. It’s large enough to be used to watch a film without eye strain, and as I keep saying, that screen is beautiful.

Oddly for such a fashion conscience phone, there appears to be only a limited number of skins (ok.. 2), and no ability to add or create your own. OS Customisation appears to be limited to the lock screen and menu background image. You can change the font size and style, but colour scheme editing is out.

 

Conclusion

The BL40 has its problems, but has enough stand out features to hide these issues. The screen is obviously, and rightly its most impressive feature, whether using core phone functionality with the dual screen mode, or watching a film on the move. Just make sure you have an AC adaptor or spare battery!

The New Chocolate has enough high-spec goodies to be a head-turner, and it’s by far the best LG phone I’ve used. It’s definitely aimed at the video-friendly side of the market, and as a video-playback phone it does very little wrong. While it’s not perfect, and not right for everyone, it’s hard not to recommend what is a very good phone from LG.

 

Review by: Mark

Elonex iGame iPod Dock review

Last week the Elonex iGame Family TV Games Dock arrived and after the brief unboxing video I connected it to the TV right away. Easy connection and setup as well as being quite attractive, what did we think of the iGame? Read on to find out!

The iGame ‘console’ dock and controller

 

The 10 second review:

Device: Elonex iGame Family Games Dock

Cost: £74.99

Summary: A cool looking iPod/iPhone dock with TV connectivity and cool sports games.

Best of: Watch your iPod videos on the big-screen and play some fun family sports games.

Worst of: Controllers a little plasticy and light, games sometimes hiccup, not the best picture quality.

Buy it now from: SuperETrader

 

What’s in the box?

• The iGame iPod Dock
• Wireless controller
• Mains adapter
• TV connection cable (composite video)
• Batteries for the controller
• Manuals and warranty card

 

See my iGame unboxing video for a quick tour of the hardware.

 

General

The main part of the package then is the iGame dock itself. It’s a circular plastic unit with a silver bar across the middle. The main unit has only three buttons, a power button, reset and a source button. Towards the front of the dock you’ll find a flap which neatly covers the dock connector when not in use.

 

On the back of the dock you’ll find all of the relevant sockets for plugging the device in. On the left is an ‘iGame Card’ socket that looks like an SD card socket. Next to that the video and audio connectors for hooking up to the TV, using the supplied cable. Enjoy your TV in the bedroom with tv beds. Finally on the end is the socket for the power cable.

iGame dock back view

 

So the other part of the kit then is the wireless controller. I’m sure almost everyone will agree that it has more than a passing resemblance to the Wii controller. It works in similar way to the Wii controller, it’s wireless and motion controlled but does not have the optical pickup on the front that the Wii-mote has. The unit takes 2AA batteries which are supplied and also has a built in vibrate function.

The iGame wireless controller

 

Highlights

• Good looking design
• Great iPod conectivity
• 10 fun games included
• Bargain price

 

Lowlights

• Don’t expect Wii quality gaming
• Picture quality isn’t the greatest
• Controller vibrate function annoying

 

Review

I have to be honest that when I first eyed the iGame and looked at the price I wasn’t expecting a lot from it. It comes in at a price point that’s not much more expensive than a regular TV dock for the iPod or iPhone but with the added gaming element I wondered if the overall result would be poor. So lets take a look.

Setting up the iGame really is a piece of cake. There’s a pretty detailed getting started guide but to be honest I don’t think that most people will need it. It’s just a case of plugging the unit in to the power cable and then in to the TV and switching on, it’s no more difficult than that.

When you first plug in and turn you are welcomed by iGame splash screen and a note saying ‘powered by Elonex’. The screen only appears for a few seconds before you are dropped in to the main menu. What you see on the menu when you first turn on depends on whether or not you have an iPod sitting in the dock.

Assuming that you have an iPod docked you’ll see a menu that lists the types of media on your device and then you can use the wireless remote to navigate through Music, Videos, Shuffle Songs, Settings and Now Playing. This is where you can set up play back of the media stored on the iPod then.

iGame main menu screen

You need to think of the iGame dock in two parts really. One being the more traditional TV dock and the other the gaming element. The reason I say this is that as I already mentioned you can play back the media stored on the iPod and obviously play the games BUT where I was surprised here is that you don’t have to have the iPod or iPhone docked in order to play the games. I thought that the iPod would be an integral part of the game playing but that’s not the case so even if you didn’t own an iPod you could play the games on the iGame!

So looking at the media elements first the iGame brings the same sort of functionality that you would find on your iPod to the large screen. You can go in to music and look through albums, songs, and artists as well as podcasts etc. The menu system is well laid out and almost identical in structure to the one on the iPod itself so takes no getting used to.

Video playback is much the same you can go in a look at the various video sources that you have and then play them back on the TV. Bare in mind though that the resolution of your iPod screen is much lower than that of almost all TV’s so don’t the iPod dock to upscale these small movies to HD for you. Sure the video will fill the screen but depending on the quality of the source footage the results can vary greatly. I downloaded a music video from iTunes to use for testing and the results were acceptable, I’d happily sit through a movie played back on there but I’d make sure it wasn’t my latest favourite, that’s what Blu-ray is for!

Music video on the iGame (anyone guess who this is?)

So media-wise the iGame dock is good. It’s handy to be able to navigate through everything from the comfort of the sofa with the wireless remote and audio playback is perfectly OK. I suspect that something like this will come in handy this Christmas with a house-full of guests!

 

On to the games part of the iGame. As I mentioned already I was surprised that you can play the games without an iPod being docked but you can! When you turn on simply press the triangle button on the controller to enter the games menu.

iGame game selection screen

There are a total of ten games included on the iGame. A god selection of sports and puzzles games:

Tennis, Bowling, Trampoline, Table Tennis, Dart and Tanks are all motion controlled action games, where you might want to stand up to play them! If you want something more cerebral then there’s SuDoKu, Tangram and Firecracker that do not require the motion control but instead use the D-pad and buttons on the wireless controller.

As you enter each game you can choose either a male or female character.

The control method naturally depends on the game that you are playing. So for example, tennis and table tennis require a more sideways motion where bowling requires that you swing the controller in a more natural bowling motion. Watching someone play the Trampoline game is definitely amusing!

If you’ve ever played on the Wii then you’ll pick the games up right away, controls are pretty intuitive really but when you start each game it does explain how the controls work for that particular one.

The Bowling game

The bowling game is definitely our favourite. Requiring you to swing the controller under-arm and press and release the trigger at the right time during the swing. Not as easy as it sounds.

Overall the game graphics are pretty good and most games are 3D. They wont compete graphically with the Xbox or even the Wii but then they could hardly be expected to! The games are fairly simplistic in that you play them win or lose then that’s it, there’s no complex unlocking of certain things when you achieve a high-score or the like but again that’s to be expected and is in some ways a benefit in that you can just pick a game, play for 10 minutes and then turn it off, they are not overly demanded of your time so you can play from literally 5 minutes to 5 hours if you want.

Additional games can be purchased online from the Elonex store and I guess that’s what we need the iGame card slot on the back of the unit for. I didn’t try to add games to the unit but I understand that new games are inexpensive to buy.

My biggest bug bare with the system was the vibrate function of the wireless controller. It’s an annoying buzzy thing inside the controller that cant be turned off it would seem. What made it worse was that almost every action in some games resulted in a buzz from the controller. Wish there was an option in the setting to turn this off but sadly there’s not one that I can find and in fact the settings menu is pretty sparse with just language and PAL/NTSC settings that are of any note.

 

 

Conclusion

Overall the Elonex iGame is an impressive product that provides good value entertainment and iPod connectivity. The games were able to keep two adults amused for a few hours one evening and we’ve been back to play for short periods of time since.

Don’t try to compare this to the Wii. The games and controls are no where near as goods as the Wii but don’t take that as too harsh a criticism of the iGame, consider the cost here and what else if can do too.

This isn’t a product that I would add to my living room but certainly a good addition to a young persons bedroom setup and a worthy addition to anyone’s Christmas list!

 

Don’t forget this is one of the prizes you could win in our Christmas competition this year too so check out the competition post too!

 

Review by: Matt