Play.com are now offering the iPhone 3G for sale without any simlock. That’s right you can buy the phone from them and use it with any UK sim card that you have like Vodafone, T-Mobile etc as it is officially unlocked and ready to use. This is not a software unlock so updating the phone will not break the unlock.
- This is a genuine Sim Free mobile phone and therefore unlocked to all UK networks.
- It is not unlocked from a UK or European network and is available due to EU legislation ensuring the sale of sim free mobile phones.
Now the downside is the price, a whopping £549.99 for an 8 Gig model and £599.99 for the 16 Gig, that’s pretty steep but at least there is now a way to use the phone legitimately on with your current network. One word of caution, a new model is rumoured to be just around the corner.
Should I add a Tilt/shift lens to my photography kit bag ?
The PC-E Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED.
In 2008 Nikon introduced the PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED lens, at the time this was the latest in a series of tilt/shift lenses that offer effective manipulation of: perspective, distortion and focus. Ideal for photographing landscapes, architecture, or panoramas, this (PC) or Perspective Control lens simply corrects linear distortion and aberration to deliver images closer to a true human eye view. This lens can be used on many Nikon D-SLR cameras, and it offers a multitude of possibilities beyond its functions as a precision correcting tool.
Functions
The larger knobs at the top and on the side of the lens are for tilt and shift adjustments; the smaller locking knob (on the right side of the lens) keeps adjustments in place after they are set. The aperture stop-down button, for checking depth of field and for use with manual exposure operation
What’s in the box?
Bayonet Hood HB-41,
Flexible Lens Pouch CL-1120
Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED Specification
- Focal length – 24mm
- Aperture – f/3.5 – 32
- Lens construction – 13 elements in 10 groups (with three ED glass elements, three aspherical lenses, one with Nano Crystal Coat)
- Picture angle – 84°, Maximum 101° when fully shifted
- Closest focus distance – 0.21 m / 0.7 ft
- Maximum reproduction ratio – 1:2.7
- Aperture blades – 9 (rounded)
- Filter attachment size – 77 mm
- Focusing – Manual focus
- Dimensions – Approx. 82.5 x 108 mm / 3.2 x 4.3 in.
- Weight – Approx 730 g / 25.7 oz
General
This lens is both a special-purpose lens and also a very effective wide-angle lens. It provides both the pro and serious amateur photographers with a groundbreaking, effective solution for many photographic challenges, as well as offering a whole range of new and exciting avenues for creative exploration. It has a good solid build quality and is a great lens to handle. Despite the multitude of moving parts and complexity of the lens functionality it feels very solid and reliable.
Pro’s and Con’s
- Many photographers will value the capacity to more efficiently correct images during a shoot. Considerably reducing the postproduction needed on the images afterwards with software.
- This lens has many characteristics that mean it is well suited to a variety of tasks and offers both a wide angle-of-view combined with dramatic depth-of-field control. Ideal for capturing stunning landscapes.
- The lens allows the photographer to quickly adjust the aperture with a stop-down button, or with the aperture ring.
- Many of the functions also mean that this lens a great choice for close-up macro work, with a minimum focusing distance of 0.7 feet and the capacity to fine tune focus with perspective control.
- The small locking knobs for the movements can be tricky to reach, depending on how the lens is tilting.
- Three aspherical elements virtually eliminate all types of lens aberration even at the widest aperture.
Review
This lens offers photographers ‘complete control’ over all its features. Its controls are easy to use and I found it very intuitive to use straight out of the box. The features include an aperture ring, aperture stop-down button, focusing ring, shift knob and tilt knob. The use of Nikon’s Nano Crystal Coat, 3-element glass lens and aspherical elements come together to create a lens that offers outstanding optical quality, with minimal flare and chromatic aberration.
Those photographers who are most likely to find this lens a practical addition to their kit would include architectural, interior, landscape and stock image photographers. Although I feel it has a great deal of creative range and options opening up new potential for any photography enthusiast.
It offers you unbelievable control and the ability to manipulate depth of field in new and interesting ways.
Unfortunately the price means that it’s a very expensive piece of kit to purchase if you are just looking at experimenting with its many interesting possibilities. But it functions extremely well as a 24mm lens and with the additional options it offers you for many photographic disciplines it could be worth its weight in gold and function as a very versatile tool in your camera kit.
Conclusion
I guess I would recommend this lens to any professional photographer. It seems currently the price tag would need a little justification for a specialist lens like this to find its way into many enthusiasts’ kit bags. It can of course always be considered a very good option as a 24mm lens with outstanding built quality and durability. To really benefit from this lens you either have need a practical functional need for its corrective capabilities: as in architectural photography for example. Or just be prepared to experiment and explore your creative potential with added control over the focal plane and depth of field. I personally found this lens a joy to use and more importantly I found it inspired me to challenge myself and discover new avenues for creative expression.
It was refreshing as a digital camera user to find a tool, which gave me back a real sense of creative control and interesting ways in which to use the technology. I also own a lens baby and it is the only lens I can draw a comparison from, its very similar but in a more professional way, it also has a very high level of durability and a fantastic build quality, where as the lens baby in comparison is more of a junior level lens.
Review by: Stuart Birchall
The guys over at cnet have managed to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009 to see Skype for iPhone in action and it will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. While most of the features aren’t too surprising there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.
Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.)
Skype left a few more skills out of its maiden iPhone voyage. SMS, setting up a conference calling group, purchasing SkypeOut credit directly, and being able to field a second incoming Skype call are a few. File transferring and getting Skype voicemail native on the phone are two more. We expect to see at least two of these added in the next version, but we’ll hope for more.
Read the full details over at cnet news
The Apple iPhone ships with a decent camera. I took hundreds of vacation pictures using only my iPhone and they were all satisfactory. However, the camera app on the iPhone has no settings, so all photo editing must be performed on the Macintosh or PC.
Digital Film Tools has created a new iPhone app named Cropulator that enables the user to crop pictures on the iPhone using the standard pinch gestures. The price is $0.99 cents in the Apple iPhone app store. Below is the feature list from the developer’s website:
Swapping faces in a picture used to require the skills of a Photoshop expert. The same task can now be accomplished on the Apple iPhone.
When the application starts, the splash screen below appears. Follow the instructions and pick a photo on your iPhone that contains two or more faces.
The largest wireless tradeshow in North America starts Wednesday in Las Vegas. Typically there is a lot of news that comes out of this conference, especially for devices and services for US carriers, and handsets headed for America. Some of the headline speakers include Mike Lazaridis the CEO of RIM (maker of the Blackberry), Robbie Bach who is the head of the Entertainment & Devices Division of Microsoft, and strangely enough Billy Crystal who is a comdian (i don’t know what he is planning to talk about). There was also some controversy surrounding another headliner at CTIA, Al Gore, former US Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner initially wanted to ban the press from his keynote, but was forced to back down after an uproar from the chattering class threatened to overshadow his appearance. I wonder what he was planning on saying that was so secret he didn’t want anyone outside of the industry to hear?
Might this be the coming out party for Android? I seriously doubt it, after Android had such a poor showing at Mobile World Congress, but hope springs eternal. Pay attention next week for much more news.
A great guy that I met through twitter has shared his experiences using the iPhone as a productivity tool. We all know the iPhone is a fantastic device for media but can it really cut the mustard as a smartphone? Wyatt decided to test it out with a project to create a study guide to get him through his Emergency Medical Technician re-certification course without carrying anything extra to class including the EMT book for the next 6 months. The catch here was that it had to be updatable as pre-hospital procedures change during an EMTs career and easy for any other EMT to understand if read. You can read his progress to date over at his blog and it makes interesting reading. Especially when you consider the updates coming with 3.0.
This is the first Blackberry touch screen handset from RIM. At a glance it looks fantastic, but can it compete with the iPhone?
The Storm 9500 is exclusive to Vodafone here in the UK – You can see what Vodafone have to say about it by clicking here.
The Blackberry Storm 9500
What’s in the box?
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RIM Blackberry Storm 9500
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Battery
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Quick guide manual
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Mains charger (UK/US/EU)
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Stereo headset/handsfree
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1GB Micro SD card
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Pouch case
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Data cable
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Screen cleaning cloth
Check out Matt’s Blackberry Storm 9500 unboxing video
Specification
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Dimensions: 112.5 x 62.2 x 13.95 mm
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Weight: 155g
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Battery Capacity: 1400 mAh
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Display: 480 x 360 pixels/3.25 inch
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Network: GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band), WCDMA: 2100 HSDPA (Single-Band)
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Camera: 3.2 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
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Video: Video Recording supported formats: MP4, 3GP, H.264 & H.263
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Music: Supported formats: MP3, AAC, ACC+, eAAC+ & WMA
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Messaging: SMS, MMS (with video), E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, MS Exchange, BlackBerry), Instant Messaging
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Memory: 1GB (internal)
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microSDHC (external)
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microUSB
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3.5mm Audio Connector
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Bluetooth (2.0)
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Navigation: AGPS, BlackBerry Maps
General
The Blackberry Storm 9500 looks impressive with its large 3.25 inch screen. It seems quite striking after looking at previous Blackberry phones with their QWERTY keypads that take up much of the handset.
Front – 3.25 inch SurePress touch screen, ‘call’ and ‘hang up’ buttons, menu button and back button. (The ‘hang up’ button is also the power button)
Blackberry Storm 9500 front view
Top – on the top of the handset are 2 buttons. From the picture below, the left side is a mute button and the right side is a keypad lock.
Blackberry Storm 9500 top view
Bottom – There’s not much on the bottom of the handset except for the microphone
Blackberry Storm 9500 bottom view
Right side – Right convenience key which is set as default as the camera soft key, Volume control buttons (also used as zoom with the camera function) and 3.2mm stereo headphone socket
Blackberry Storm 9500 right side view
Left side – Left convenience key which is set as default as the voice command soft key, Micro USB socket used for USB connection and charging the phone.
Blackberry Storm 9500 left side view
Back – The speaker is located near the bottom of the handest (left side of the picture below). The back cover encloses the battery, sim card and micro SD card. The 3.2 MP camera and flash can also be seen here.
Blackberry Storm 9500 back view
Highlights
- Large 3.25" high resolution screen – great quality
- 3G connection
- 3.2MP camera with auto focus
- Rotating display
- SurePress touch screen
Lowlights
- SurePress touch screen (yes, I have put this as a highlight too. You’ll need to read on to see why!)
- No WIFI
- Touchscreen QWERTY keyboard can be difficult to use
- The size of the handset is a bit on the large side
Review
The Blackberry Storm 9500 is definitely a great looking phone, and the screen size and resolution is a definite highlight. The casing is black and chrome plastic and the back battery cover is brushed metal which gives it a classy, professional look.
Before I had even switched it on I found the handset rather cumbersome due to the larger size and weight. But, that’s just my personal opinion of course. I’m sure some people with bigger hands than me won’t find this an issue.
Once switched on the first thing that grabbed my attention was the brilliant display. Very sharp and erm, well. big! The inbuilt accelerometer rotates the display depending on the position of the handset. It rotates both the the left and right which I guess will be quite handy for left-handed users. Unfortunately I found that the accelerometer was a bit slow to respond at times.
The SurePress technology included in the Storm gives a spring-like effect or physical button-like effect when pressing on the screen. The idea of this I think is great. It’s designed to eliminate any type of confusion between navigating and confirming/selecting. For example, navigating through the menu – you highlight what you want to select but touching the screen. You can see if you’re on the correct icon before pressing the screen to actually select your option. The best part is that whilst on a call you are unlikely to accidentally select any options on the screen with your face!
Now, I seem to be raving about the SurePress technology here but you may have noticed that I have also placed this a lowlight. The reason for this is that because the whole screen is designed to be clicked it does actually move. This makes the handset feel a bit flimsy and surprisingly makes it feel a bit cheap. Shame really.
The sound quality during calls is clear and the microphone filters out background noise quite well. The numeric keypad for dialling is huge! Very user friendly! There is also the option to use numbers stored on the sim card as well as the phone’s memory.
Moving on. 3G!!! Ok, this doesn’t actually make a big difference for me but from browsing forums many people much prefer 3G to EDGE technology as 3G is faster. Other Blackberry handsets seem to all use the EDGE network connection so the Storm using 3G seems to be a good selling point.
Then there’s the WIFI. or lack of in this case. I’m not really sure of the reasons for this. It’s been suggested that the carriers want users to use their mobile broadband network and that’s the reason there’s no WIFI. Anyway, this is a definite lowlight for me.
The software and general setup is almost identical to that of the Blackberry Bold, Curve and others. The obvious difference being the integration of a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard. When the phone is held in a normal upright position it is a 20 key SureType QWERTY keyboard (which can be set to multitap), and when it is rotated either onto its right or left side a full QWERTY keyboard is presented. The Storm 9500 also supports the copy and paste function which can com in handy.
For messaging, SMS, MMS, Email, and Instant Messaging are supported. Multiple email accounts can be added and the inboxes can all be kept separate. Push email also alerts of new emails in each account.
Blackberry’s built in web browser looks great on the large screen but navigation using the touch screen takes a lot of getting used to. There’s a bit of a wait sometimes while scripts are loading which seems to be a bit of a common theme though the Blackberry range.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be opened and edited with the built in viewers. The full version of the Office application would need to be purchased in order create files.
Other applications include a memo pad, a Task application, a calculator, and password keeper. Maps software which works with the GPS function is also included
The music player is capable of playing MP3, AAC, and WMA files and the built in speaker on the back of the handset gives surprisingly good quality sound.
The 3.2MP camera produces quite impressive images. The colours are great and the auto focus comes in handy. Unfortunately the quality lessens when the image is enlarged which can only be expected as 3.2MP in the (if you’ll excuse the pun) bigger picture is not that great. I found the video camera quality pretty poor. Especially in lower light. The colours seemed to change whilst filming as if the camera was trying to correct the white balance, but this ended up producing ‘off’ colours.
A clever addition to this touchscreen smart phone is the magnetic strips in the pouch. When the handset is placed in the pouch the magnetic sensor (which I’m guessing is in the back of the phone hence the metallic back cover) senses the magnet in the pouch which in turn switches off the display and locks the keys. This is an energy saving feature of the phone.
Conclusion
The Blackberry Storm 9500 was a strange device to review! I seem to have had many positive points written out, yet if I’m honest, I just didn’t seem to like it!
Just seemed a bit to bulky for me. It sometimes seemed a bit sluggish in its performance and I although I got used to the touchscreen QWERTY keyboard I just couldn’t type as fast as I could on actual buttons for making so many mistakes!
The Storm 9500 definitely looks great and the screen quality is brilliant. The SurePress screen is a brilliant idea but you’ll either love it or hate it. Unfortunately it’s not my cup of tea.
No WIFI. I missed it. But, that’s personal preference I guess. Just as well Vodafone’s network coverage didn’t let me down.
There are many people out there who say that the Storm 9500 is a huge competitor to the IPhone. You’ll just have to see for yourself!
Reviewed by: Emma
Various websites are reporting that Beta testers have been told April 30th is the release date for the most anticipated Palm Pre. Check out the two news blogs that follow.
I bought this game a few days ago and was planning on writing a review but the guys over at Digmo have posted up their review and it covers everything I was going to say. Wolfenstein 3D Classic contains all six original episodes and all of your favourite memorable enemies such as Hans Grosse and MechaHitler, and comes with two new clever control systems designed for the iPhone by technical visionary and id Software founder, John Carmack.
Pop over to Digmo for the full review of my current favourite iPhone game.
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