A non-techie review of Pebble

After waiting for more than 5 months, my Pebbles have finally arrived. From the mailing packaging, it seems that it has been sent locally in Singapore.


Opening the mailing package, I was presented with Pebble's brown cardboard packaging with basic information printed on in black.


There is a "zipper" on the side of the package where you tear off to review your newly acquired smart-watch and a magnetic USB charging cable layout in white preformed plastics. Nothing to shout about the design of the packaging, it's akin to that of Amazon Kindle Fire packaging.


You might already have the Pebble app installed either on your iPhone or Android smartphone. If not, head to App Store or Play Store to download it. Before you proceed to launch the app, power up the watch by pressing the left button (the lone button on the left). Once powered up, go to your phone Bluetooth setting to pair up the devices. When done, you can launch the app. It will prompt you to download and update the firmware for Pebble. The app will also provide you with additional watch faces that you can install later. Updating the firmware and installing the watch faces is a breeze.

Pebble is charged using the provided magnetic USB cable. Just plug the USB end to any iPhone charger or computer and stick the magnetic end to the charging contact on the left side of the watch to charge your Pebble. Pebble will not indicate that it is charging the watch or if its fully charged. That is quite an annoyance but I believe that it can be fixed with a firmware update.

The quality of the watch material and made is average, not exceptional. It's plastics after all. I am not really convinced that the watch lens is scratch-proof. However I have been using it for a week, so far no scratches on the lens yet. Navigational wise, the top left of the button is the back/power button, bottom left is the charging contact. On the right, you have the up/down scroll button with the select/enter button in the middle. The back of the watch has the Kickstarter Edition wording engraved on it. Unlike earlier prototype where the serial number is a cheap sticker, the actual watch engraved the text on it


Even though the watch looks big, it fit well on a ladies hand. As the back of Pebble is flat, it doesn't really feel comfortable wearing for long hours, but it isn't that bad either. Pebble attracts a lot of attention, people around me has been asking about this special (or maybe weird) looking watch. When I told them that it can alert you of phone calls and display SMS and emails, most of them would ask how do they get one. This shows that people are generally interested in this type of smart watch. Most of them really like the text watch face. The fact that you don't need backlight for Pebble's e-paper display under normal light condition make the text display really cool. When it gets dark, you can flick your wrist to activate the backlight to view the time or messages. It as a built-in accelerometer.


I have used Pebble with 2 different OSes - iOS and Android.

In iOS, it can displays SMS and email messages. When calls come in, it will alert you which you can choose to answer or reject the call. If you answer the call, you must talk using your phone. During the 3 days usage, I get constant Pebble disconnection alert from my iPhone. I have to launch Pebble app everytime to reconnect the watch to my iPhone.

On an Android, Pebble will only display SMS notification with no message preview using the official Pebble app. When call comes in, the accept or reject doesn't work. The good thing about Android is that it is an open source OS, developer can create wonderful solution. One of those is Pebble Notifier. You can get it from the Play Store. With is app, you can setup your Pebble to display messages from email, SMS, Whatsapp, Kakaotalk, Line and many more. I really love Pebble pairing with my Android phone. And you get much lesser disconnection of Pebble from your phone in android too.

So would I recommend Pebble? It's cool and since we do have any better alternatives at this moment, I would say Yes. It's even better for women who mostly had their phones in the handbags. They will never missed any messages or phone calls from their love ones.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPhone 5 is fastest smartphone!

In my earlier blog, I mentioned that iPhone 5 edge out Samsung Galaxy III slightly. Someone wrote and argue with me that the result is fake because iPhone 5 has not been released yet. She pointed me to an article that doubt the authenticity of the result.

Well, now that the iPhone 5 is out, and the moment of truth... iPhone 5 is indeed the fastest smartphone in land. Not only that, an iPhone 4S upgraded to iOS 6 is also on par with a... quad core Samsung Galaxy S III!

Click here for the full report.

iPhone 5 edge out S3 slightly...

For all the boosting of quad core processor from Samsung Galaxy S3, it still doesn't beat a dual core A6 processor from Apple. Check out the geekbench result below:

First Look at iPhone 5

The rumours mills are working extremely hard this year. Parts of iPhone 5 have been all over the place. The final assembly of the physical phone was out even before Apple sent out the media invitation for 12th September 2012.

My first reaction to the design of iPhone 5 is... disappointed! Don't poke me, I am really disappointed and disgusted that after having the same iPhone design (4 and 4S) for the past 2 years, we are getting the same look and design again for the next one year. I mean same design but slightly thinner and longer phone. If you have not seen the iPhone 5 before, check out the video here:

Android owners will be laughing at us for having the same phone for 3 years. Apple is not moving, or are they complacent since SJ passing?

What's the purpose of having a 4 inches screen bearing a 16:9 ratio and having a weird resolution of 640 x 1136? We can't really think of what's Apple's plan with that.

To think of it again, I realised that I have wrong Apple.

What's Apple's design all about? If you were to look at the design of iMac, MacBook Pro and iPod, you will realise that the design of these products doesn't differ too much from it's predecessor. A 2007 aluminium iMac will almost look exactly like the current model. Ditto to MacBook Pro and iPod. Thus it wouldn't be strange that Apple decided to keep the changes to the design of iPhone 5 to the minimal. At least you will feel at ease with the new phone. Even with this larger 4 inches screen, the width of the phone remains unchanged. It will still be good for one-handed operation. You know what I mean if you have ever use a 4.5 or 5  inches Android phone.

With iPhone, it's all about the operating system - iOS. Everyone that owns an iPhone and tried an Android will know that. iOS is about simplicity. It's smooth and doesn't complicates. Thus the critical component of the iPhone 5 is not about the hardware, it's about iOS 6!

Let's see what surprise in iOS 6 that wasn't included in the beta for the developers! We are almost there! Just a week more to go.

Apple's Warranty Policy on iPad

Recently my iPad suddenly refused to turn-on. Since it is under warranty, I decided to bring it down to the service centre for a repair (in Singapore).

To my shocks, the service centre refused to take in my iPad. The reason given was that I have dents at the corners of my iPad. I argued that the iPad has had dents all this while and was still working well, the fault is not related to the dents. However, the service centre stands by their policy.

Apple replaces a faulty iPad under warranty and does not repair them (at least in Singapore). This could have resulted in abuse by Apple users to replace their badly deformed iPads by faking some faults. 

I am not asking Apple to replace my iPad. I just need them to rectify the fault. They can give me back the iPad in whatever condition that I have given them after they have repair it. Nobody has asked for a new replacement, it is their policy of not repairing the iDevice but replacing it.

Update: Apple has been good. They have excellent customer service and support. They have spoken to me, and had make an exception to replace my iPad for free! I doubt any other companies could emulate what Apple have done! 

Samsung Galaxy Note

I have been very fortunate to get this hot gadget - Samsung Galaxy Note. Android is the third mobile OS that I have been playing within the last 2 months. I have had a Nokia N9 (Meego) and a Lumia 800 (WP7) prior to this. So how does it fare? I will give you my short personal view.

Let's talk about the hardware. Galaxy Note is a fantastic device with 5.3" AMOLED display and a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. It features more pixels than an iPad. The brightness and color is fantastic. Except that there seem to be a slight bluish hue on the screen. It is running on dual core processor with a 1GB RAM and an internal storage of 16GB. You can add a 32GB SDHC microSD if you needed extra storage. On paper, this monster should fly.

The 5.3" size doesn't suit everyone though. However I find that it is not too big either, and it is quite comfortable to make calls but with lots of stares from people with around you. For my general usage of phone calls, messaging on SMS and WhatsApp, less than 15 minutes of web surfing, I find that the battery barely last me a day. I have to do in-between charges in the office.

In terms of UI, Samsung has put in their defacto TouchWiz UI on top of Gingerbread. Compared to other Android makers, the TouchWiz is good. You can have up to 7 pages to put in your shortcuts and widgets. However there's no way to create folders unless you decided to install third party launcher such as GO Launcher. Being Android and open, you can replace everything from Messaging app, Keyboard and Locker screen. There's no end to it.

In terms of input, the default Samsung keyboard lacks Chinese input. You can switch to Swype keyboard for Chinese input. I find that the keypress pop-up and word replacement/completion is kind of clunky. I do not know what's the cause given that it has powerful processor, I will attribute that to the OS deficiency.

In terms of camera, it takes good photo generally. However I find that it still lags by a fraction of a second between the time you press the shutter and the photo being captured. Could be an OS issue too.

I always wonder that with a high penetration rate of Android adoption should comes high internet traffic for Android browsers but it doesn't seems so. iOS's Safari is the king, capturing more than 70% of the internet traffic. I'd never know why but now I do know the reason. It is lousy internet surfing experience even on the gorgeous Note's screen and resolution. The zooming in and out of a web page is unnatural. Double tapping on a column doesn't zoom directly into it but sort of wobbles into that section. Scrolling up and down the zoomed in column is the worst. It moves laterally left-right as well. Unlike in iPhone, scrolling up and down of a zoomed in column will only move up and down. The web pages load generally fast. But if there's a flash component on the site, you will find that the page crawls. I can simply say that Mobile Safari on iPhone is the best mobile browser!

The device is responsive, however it may be slow at times and that's when you will have to start your Task Manager to clean up the memory. That reminds me of the old Windows Mobile 6.x and earlier days.

Overall, if you are an Android fan, you will love this monster. However if you comes from an iPhone environment, I can simply tell you that your iPhone is still the best. Even though the iOS UI looks a bit dated (being 5 years old), iOS5 on an iPhone 3GS should easily beat this device on Gingerbread.

Good about Note
* Big screen and easy on the eyes;
* Easy to type;
* Many customizations available;

Bad about Note
* No chinese input on default Samsung keyboard. You'll need to use swype or download third party keyboards. You might also like Google Pinyin IME which I do not like because it shows a chinese character (前往) for the Enter key be it I am typing in English or Chinese;
* Default Internet Browsing is not natural; Scrolling up and down a zoomed column moves the page laterally left and right as well. Best alternative is Firefox but unforunately it doesn't utilize the GPU and thus page rendering is slower and sucks battery;
* RAM is quickly chewed up by apps that you run, and also the background running apps. You will need to access Task Manager frequently;
* Sound volume is soft.
* Battery doesn't last the full day; but so is my iPhone.
* Android Market lacks quality apps. And there are porn apps available.

Ants Attack for iPhone/iTouch

My 4-year old son was afraid of ants. He would scream every time an ant crosses his path, no matter how tiny it is. I thought why don't I create virtual ants, let him squeezes it and kill his phobia. He felt bored shortly after that. 

I thought if I could bring in something interesting, it might attracts and retains his attention. It did but I felt bored... I pondered for a while to get myself interested. You need some challenges. So there came the Ice for freezing and halting the ants, and the bomb to help you kill all the ants. And there are obstacles (in terms of trashes) that obstruct you from kill the ants. If 3 tiny ants get away from you, there is it - Game Over!

And to add more challenges and fun to it, the ants will drop thumb pins that will prick you and kill you instantly. 

That's how the story and the gameplay are formed. It is simple enough for casual play yet challenging enough to keep retain.

I hope to have your support so that I will have more motivation to work on future titles.

A video of the gameplay here.

Thank you for your time. 

My take on Nokia Lumia 800

Nokia Singapore has launched Lumia 800 last Wednesday. It's the company first Windows Phone 7 having abandoned Symbian and Meego earlier during the year. How does it goes for them?

Nokia Lumia 800 is a quality-made product. It is "carved" out from a single piece of plastic, or I should said polymer. The OLED is fantastic with a ClearBlack display on a corning's gorilla curved glass. Touching and sliding on the glass is great. It has 3 buttons - the volume, standby/on-off and camera. On top on the phone is the micro-usb connector for charging and data transfer covered by a pop-up door. It is using a micro-sim just like an iPhone 4/4S. Overall, the impression of the phone is great physically.

Lumia 800 is running WP7 Mango. I will not go into the detail of the OS as this is written all over the internet. I will provide my short take on the experience in the 5 days that I have using it.

The WP7 OS is incredibly slick most of the time but launching an app takes a while especially for those that utilize the wifi or 3G. Take for example, People - the program launch is quick but updating of information takes a while. Third party app fares worst. My favorite WhatsApp is slow is launching and refreshing of incoming messages. Games with graphics is also lagging, sometimes the graphics stutter... It makes my old iPhone 3GS looks so much better now.

As for Nokia Drive, it's a great product! However I did notice some issue. I can't seems to add a map. I tried downloading it but the system kept telling me that I need to connect to Wifi which I have already did. In any case, I am still able to drive around with it. Directions were given in clear and precise voice instructions. It is one of the better one that I have use.

The built-in battery just cannot last. I have a full charge overnight. In the morning, I replied some emails, played a game for about 10 minutes and sending many text messages using WhatsApp. Then I took a 20 minutes drive using the Nokia Drive. By 3:30pm, my battery is flat.

The strange thing is that emails from the internet does not allow download of images. There is no option to turn it on or off. It is so frustrating.  Updated:  I was informed by microsoft that I have to physically tap on the white space that said Download Image to download the images.

Overall I would not recommend this phone yet unless you have money no where to spend and wanted a spare phone. Else still with your iPhone or Android for the moment.

A Short Review of Kindle Fire

I received my Kindle Fire today. It came in a box made of recycled cardboard. Tear open the box and you will find the Kindle Fire and a charger underneath. No USB cable is provided.

It looks cool, small and light. The screen sharpness, color and brightness is fantastic. Capacitive touch screen is good and responsive. The keyboard is easy to type probably due to the 7" size.

I will not go into the rest where you have already read in other technical blogs or review. I will just give you my few cents of opinions.

 1. Kindle Fire is laggy. Slow at times...

2. Due to the 7" size, net surfing is not comfortable. You will need to do a lot of scrolling.

3. The built-in silk browser is slow, you might want to consider Opera Mini.

4. If you are using the Fire outside US, you can't download Apps. This is restrictive and is odd considering that you are allow to purchase books.

Overall, it is still consider a value buy because where can you a tablet with a good LCD and touchscreen at USD199? It's a no brainer, but if you are looking at performance and comfortable usage then there is no other choice but the iPad.

Aztech Wireless-N Repeater

I have been looking for a good and simple wifi repeater for quite a while. I have tried configuring unused wifi router to use as a repeater but none prove good. Furthermore the configuration is not simple.

I stumbled upon Aztech Wireless-N Repeater last week in a computer mall. The Aztech Wireless-N WL556E repeater is small, and surprisingly very easily to configure. Just plug onto a socket, connect the network cable provided into the PC and WL556E. Go to your browser and enter the IP provided in the quick guide. Follow through 2-3 steps and you are done. Unplug the device and go look for a place where your wifi signal is weak yet visible enough to be repeated.

I have been using it for a week and it's been fantastic and highly recommended.