Videos/Unboxings

The Red Arrows take Lewis Hamilton and his BlackBerry Q10 for a spin!

Here’s a short video for all you BlackBerry and Lewis Hamilton fans out there.

Lewis Hamilton recently took a training flight with the Royal Air Force Red Arrows and took his new BlackBerry Q10 along for the ride!

BlackBerry Q10 unboxing video

A few weeks ago James treated us to a first look at the new BlackBerry Q10. The version of the handset he had was a pre-release from BlackBerry so I managed to get myself a retail BlackBerry Q10 from the guys over at eXpansys to unbox and demo.

The Q10, with its fixed QWERTY keyboard is likely to appeal to many die-hard BlackBerry fans for whom a BlackBerry isn’t a BlackBerry unless it has a hardware keyboard.

eXpansys have both black and white BlackBerry Q10’s in stock and you can see the full unboxing below.

Hands on with the BlackBerry Swivel Holster for Q10

While belt holsters may not be everyone’s cup of tea they are the ultimate way of keeping your device secure and scratch free. Expansys sent me over the Swivel Holster for the BlackBerry Q10 recently and although I haven’t been using one with my Z10 – my Q10 has been proudly on my belt in the holster for the last week or so.

Like previous BlackBerry holsters this one is made from leather and contain the ‘special magnet’ which turns the Q10’s display off when you place it in the holster. The reverse happens when you remove the BlackBerry; the screen automatically will be on – Magic!

In terms of build quality you don’t get much better. The holster itself is crafted from genuine leather and the swivel belt clip feels solid as a rock. With the holster having the ‘swivel’ feature you can position your BlackBerry Q10 however you most find it easiest to access.

The holster is in stock at Expansys if you want some added protection and will set you back £34.99. It isn’t cheap but it is a premium accessory and money well spent if you are investing in a £500+ smartphone.

You can check out a quick hands on video of the holster below:

ChargeGenie unboxing and hands on – The perfect battery back up?

If you are looking for a back up plan for keeping your mobile battery topped up then the ChargeGenie will be right up your street. Although only 1400mAh in capacity that’s more than enough to get most folk through a day. The ChargeGenie has one super cool feature and that’s that on one side of it houses two sticky gel pads meaning the device can stick to the back of any smartphone and charging is then done via the MicroUSB port. No residue is left on the phone at all.

The ChargeGenie is clearly going to add some bulk to your smartphone but it isn’t too big that it stops you from using your device as normal. I’ve used it both with the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 and typing with the Genie on the back has not hindered me at all.

The ChargeGenie gets the thumbs up from me and I will continue to carry it with me when out of the house for extended periods of time. With it’s sticky gel pads it’s the perfect back up plan as far as I’m concerned.

You can catch the unboxing and demo video below:

Galaxy S4 vs HTC One benchmark video

Two of the hottest Android smartphones on the market at the moment are the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4. Both released at about the same time and both firmly at the top end of the market being flagship devices for their respective manufacturers.

These devices have polarised opinion. On one hand the HTC fans are rubbishing Samsung’s latest attempt while those preferring the S4 are doing the same of the HTC One. I’m constantly being asked which one I prefer or which one I think someone should buy. That’s a pretty big question and as I’ve only had my Galaxy S4 for a couple of days it’s one I’ll address later.

However, as there are many questions regarding the performance of these two devices I thought it would be interesting to run the same benchmark on both devices at the same time to give some indication. Bear in mind though that the benchmark score isn’t the be all and end all, many other factors should be considered but we’ll talk about those another time.

For now, check out the video below to see which phone comes out on top, the results may surprise you!

Samsung Galaxy S4 unboxing video

We all know that Samsung’s Galaxy S3 was one of the most popular phones last year and with the launch of the new Galaxy S4 just a few weeks ago Samsung are hoping that they’ve come up with another winning formula.

There really is no denying that the specification of the S4 has it sitting firmly at the top end but there’s also the top end price tag to match, costing in the region of £575 for the entry-level 16GB model all the way up to as much as £800 for the 64GB model. The prices are quite eye-watering.

However that money does buy you quite a lot from a 5″ Full HD Super AMOLED screen to the quad-core CPU that challenged the performance of almost everything else on the market.

This week, thanks to the folks over at Clove Technology, I’ve finally got our hands on a retail Samsung Galaxy S4. This is one handset that I have been looking forward to being able to play with to see how it compares to the HTC One that I now use as my primary device.

Initial impressions are that this is an awesome phone, great screen and slick performance but the build quality lets it down with a plastic design that doesn’t really match the specification and price tag which in comparison to the HTC One is just a bit of a let down not to mention very similar to the S3 of which I made the same complaint.

Those buying the 16GB model may also be disappointed with the amount of available memory that they have to play with, just 9GB out of the 16 is left for the user to store their apps.

However, the negatives above aside, the S4 performs really well, is thin and light and as mentioned already, has an awesome AMOLED screen.

Check out the unboxing and demo video below for more.

HTC One (retail) unboxing video

It’s been about six weeks since I first got my hands on the HTC One and I recorded the typical unboxing and demo video.

The unit I unboxed back then was a pre-release unit and although it was final hardware it wasn’t final ROM nor was it in final retail packaging, coming instead in the customary plain white box from HTC.

So for the sake of completeness I thought I would record another video now that I have the retail version in my hands to show what you get if you buy an HTC One on the high street, and also to recap the specs.

If you are looking for a bit more detail please check out the earlier HTC One demo video.