Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 UAE Launch


By Khaled Akbik

We were invited to Galaxy S4's sneak peak by Samsung in Dubai a few days ago and had the chance the view firsthand the prowess of Samsung's flagship device.

What's New?

The device comes with an impressive 13MP camera, 1920x1080 (441ppi) resolution, 1.9 quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and it comes in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB versions + microSD card slot.

Samsung has built on its impressive feature set with some new intuitive features that puts its flagship smartphone ahead of the pack with additions like S-Translator, Group Play, Sound and Shot, Story Album, Smart Pause, Air View/Air Gesture, S Health and many more.

We're currently sourcing a device to review at length and go through the multitude of added features on the device as well as trying out the battery life and processor capabilities. For now though we were able to go through some of is main features in the 2-part video below.





Certainly, this is a device that is both powerful and easy on the eye and is a clear contender to the new additions in the very competitive smartphone market of today. What do you think? HTC One or Galaxy S4?

The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available in the UAE on April 27th, will retail at about AED 2,700 ($733) [price to be confirmed].












Saturday, April 6, 2013

LG ND5520 Dual Dock Speaker Review

By Khaled Akbik

The good folks at LG were kind enough to give us this beautiful device to test it out. Here's what we think about it.

Overview

Many of us today own multiple devices where we store our media files and music on and access the Internet from. Many of us have a combination of an iPad and an iPhone or Android phone, or an iPod and an Android phone. The LG ND5520 was built with these people in mind.

The device has two docking stations, one that has a 30 pin iDevice dock and another with a micro USB. The iDevice connector works with any iDevice (iPods, iPads, iPhones) except for the new generation iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone 5 that require Apple's Lightning adapter to work. This is quite a limitations for those who have upgraded to Apple's new offering or those who have just caught up with the rest of the world, choosing to be Apple users.

Thankfully, I have plenty of devices in my arsenal and was able to test it with the following: iPad 2, iPad Mini, iPod Touch 5th generation, iPod classic, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and a Nokia Lumia. Of course I had to use Apple's propratiery 30 pin to Lightning adapter to get the iPad Mini and iPod Touch to work on it.

The LG ND5520 retails at AED799 ($217).

Look and Feel

The device's design is quite simplistic yet beautiful. It is evident that LG had performance and sound quality in mind when they designed this. The device I reviewed was white all around (the only color available), with a touch enabled pad that also acts as a display screen showing the current status, time, functions, etc of the device. I found myself playing with this touch pad quite often.

The ND5520 has a USB slot at the back as well as an antenna jack to boost the built-in radio's performance. It also comes with an extension piece that acts as a supporter for whenever an iPad is docked on it and an infrared remote control.

The App


LG has also developed an app (iOS and Android) that turns your smartphone into a remote control as well, just in case you've misplaced the actual remote or you're simply too lazy to reach out for it. The app is brilliant and does everything the remote does with a few extended functions like putting the device to sleep, setting folder presets, muting and looping tracks.

Unfortunately, there is no app for phones running Windows 8 at the moment. However, the phone does work as any Android device would over Bluetooth.


The Docks and Connections


One thing I loved when I first fired up the device is when the clock automatically set itself as soon as I docked my Note 2 on it. I love smart devices that do such things on their own.
The ND5520 acts as a speaker for whatever you're playing on your device, movie, YouTube, music, etc.

The device has 5 modes it runs on:
1. iPod (this covers pretty much all iOS devices)
2. Radio
3. USB
4. Port
5. Bluetooth (displayed as BT on the device)

I found it rather strange that it doesn't have a mode for Android. While you can play media from an iOS device when docked, you can't do the same with an Android device. The only way you can do that is through Bluetooth, which works well enough, but quite limiting since I can only connect one Bluetooth device at a time. It's means if I'm listening to music from my Android device through Bluetooth I can't use the app on another device as a remote control since it also runs over Bluetooth.

The iOS, USB and radio are straight forward. The port is used if you plug a 3.5mm jack positioned at the back with your music player, the device here functions as any headphones or standard speakers would.

Both the iDevice and micro USB docks charge the device when docked as well.

Sound

The LG ND5520 sounds brilliant. I fired up Pink Floyd's High Hopes as a first test and I was extremely impressed with the quality of sound. Everything sounded crisp and clear with no noise whatsoever, even when cranked up to the highest volume level. The bass level is supported by the device's size, as mentioned earlier, LG designed this with sound quality in mind.

If you're worried about sound quality with this device, don't be.

Verdict


Multi-dock, with added value of Bluetooth  USB, radio and 3.5mm jack port together with an accompanying smartphone/iPad app, remote control, alarm clock, multipurpose touch front panel display, affordable price and great sound...this is an outstanding device.

It's only drawbacks are the outdated iDevice connector, which could easily be addressed by using the 30 pin to Lightning connector, and that Android only works over Bluetooth, which works just as good, but we're all for equality and all that.