Bucket Tech: Mobile World Conference 2017

Life as we know it revolves around our mobile phones, with many now using smart phones for os much more than just phone calls goes to show how important these devices are to our life. I read a joke last year that if you had to fall down, you would first check if you phone was fine before noticing if you were injured, which could very well be true for most of us! With technology constatnly evolving, consumers demands increase with them wanting the latest and greatest device available. This push saw mobile device manufacturers create updated or new devices every year and now almost in under a year .The biggest stage for brands to showcase their top models is at the Mobile World Congress currently taking place in Barcelona. This past weekend saw some big releases and today we're just going to give you some of the highlights. 

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus

The Chinese giant wasted no time in showing to the world it's key smart device, the P10 and P10 Plus. Taking over from the P9, the P10 epitomises everything the company stands for. They are quickly becoming one of the top players in the market and with good reason to. They are in the forefront of the latest tech and do not compromise on quality of  their products. The P10's key features are the Leica Dual-Camera 2.0 primary camera on the P10 and the Leica Dual-Camera 2.0 Pro Edition on the P10 Plus. Both cameras have a 12-megapixel RGB sensor,and 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and enhanced fusion algorithms, with superior technical and artistic photography features to garuntee you professional pictures on almost every click. The P10 and P10 Plus also for the first time feature Leica front facing cameras to complete the total photography package on the devices. Both devices are also avialable in a selection of unique colors as a result of the first cross-industry partnership with Pantone Color Institue, the world's foremost authority on color. Key technical features of the phone are the new powerful Kirin 960 processor and all new EMUI 5.1 which is Huawe''s latest high performance SoC chipset. 

Blackberry Keyone

Also known as the BlackBerry Mercury, this device is set to be the one that kick starts this almost dead mobile devices life in the market. I have a softspot for Blackberry, I've owned two of their devices, both of which are still in great working condition, apart from the battery life on one but their phones were practical, smart and proper business orientated. The Keyone see's a change from what we usually expect from Blackberry but also incoperating all the things we loved about them. For one, it has a full key pad as well as a touch screen. It runs Android OS v7.1 (Nougat). At the heart of the Keyone is a Octa-core 2.0GHz Cortex - A53 CPU on a Qualcomm MSM8953 Snapdragon 625 Chipset. Pretty powerful stuff for this phone. It has 32GB internal memory with a microSD slot capable of up to 256GB. The devices expected release date is April 2017. Blackberry has a lot to do to gain back the markets trust but I think the Keyone could be the catalyst for this. 

Nokia 3310

While we on the subject of comebacks, remember this one? I did a post a few weeks back about the announcement but had no idea what to expect. I said I doubt they would remake the exact phone we were used to all those years ago because it isnt practical in this day and age, while most say they would love one, would they really use it? I doubt it. So Nokia thankfully didn't just recreate the 3310 but brought out an updated version of the classic phone. The 3310 is going to be an entry level phone that would be affordable to almost anyone so don't expect anything fancy from this device. It has a color screen but a small one that measures 2.4 inches. It has an internal memory of 16MB and microSD slot up to 32GB stick. It has a 2 megapixel camera with LED flash. There is really nothing really to write home about this device other than it's name and it's claimed standby battery life of up to 1 month but I forsee a lot of sales due to its nostalgic nature.

Sony Xperia XZ Premium

4K HDR screen on a mobile phone? Yup, Sony have managed to do that on the XZ Premium. with 960fps uper slow motion capabilities. While this seems amazing, the first time I saw Quad HD screen on a phone I was blown away by the clarity but there is one major draw back, it kills your battery. Hopefully Sony have found a way around this. Can't have your key feature being the number one reason your battery is depleting.  The 5.5" screen isn't the only thing the device is good for though, the phone comes with motion eye camera that enables the super slow motion capturing, it's water resistant with an IP65/68 rating which is the best you can get when it comes to durability. It has Hi-Res Audio with Digital stereo for true sound quality. More details will be made available closer to its release date in April this year. 

Bucket Tech: Blackberry Passport

Surprisingly, the Canadian manufacturer is still around and hasn't filed for bankruptcy, whats even more surprising is that they're still allowed to make phones but the biggest surprise of them all is that their latest offering is actually quite good, in fact its more than good as it matches and beats most of the top smart phones in the market right now. The only problem with it is that it looks like a freaken tile!

It's called the Passport, because its the same size and shape as a passport in Canada/ USA. It adopts touch screen functionality and Blackbery's trust worthy QWERTY keyboard that made the brand so famous in the early 2000's. This phone is being marked as a turning point for the company as it is aimed at up class business people who need something versatile and smart enough to do things that you can only do on a PC, such as multi page spreadsheets, etc. But we've heard that before from the company, their Z10 (which I have) supposed to be the device that turned things around for them but with it having to use data and not their RIM server which incorporated BIS, people were not too keen and opted for other brands

Now I know what you're thinking, its a Blackbery and it's bound to give you endless shit after 1 year and that damn clock of death will show up sometime in its life span but here's the thing. After the success with the ranges of chat phones, they didn't really do much to improve on it but after the knock they took, they did have to reinvent the wheel. Although the Z10 didn't prove to be the market changer they had hoped it to be, it became the platform to develop from. The Z10 gave birth to BB10 OS which I must admit had it's flaws at first but after the last few updates, the OS is practically faultless. The Passport comes with the latest OS 10.3 which is custom made for the Passport. 

I said the phone matches and in some cases is better than some of the phones offered on the market today, how? Well to start of with, its running a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set which is the best on the market with a Quad-core 2.26GHz Krait 400 CPU with 3 gigs of ram! Basically you're sitting with the V12 of processing plants when it comes to hand held devices. With this much ram and processing speeds, there shouldn't be a reason for the phone to run slow at all, even with bloatware. 

Memory wise, it has on board 32gig with MicroSD up to 128gig. The Passport comes with a 13 mega pixel primary camera with auto focus and optical image stabilizer. If the camera is anything like the Z10, its bound to be great. Secondary front facing camera is 2 mega pixel, again not bad. 

Cosmetic wise, the phone looks weird, the 4.5 inch square screen with the keyboard below is a first.. It will take a while to get used to a square phone but functionality wise, what is has on paper makes it a game changing phone for the company. Whether people will take to it is another story, the company already has so much bad reputation but like Apple there are some BB loyalist and some of the old users might get drawn back because of the keyboard but for me they're still playing catch up. In terms of quality of product, I think its great but in terms of things like apps for the phone, they going to need to do a lot of convincing to developers to make them create their app for Blackberry devices. It will be interesting to see how this one does as it really is a great phone but how the market will react to it remains to be seen.

Staying on the Dark Side

So on Saturday I bit the bullet, I got the new BlackBerry Z10 smart phone. My cellphone contract was due for upgrade since December and I delayed my renewal, pondering which mobile device I should get. Studying the various deals and devices, seeing which fitted my profile the most and I made my decision. Now one would think after having a BlackBerry for little over 2 years, I would not make the same mistake again but I beg to differ. I had the BlackBerry Bold 9700, which in my honest opinion is one of the best devices made by the company. It was the perfect size, it looked stunning, its features were great but it lacked processing speed big time! The first year I had it, it was fine and worked perfectly, then the dreaded clock started showing up and the general crap followed, phone freezing, restarts on its own and eventually the battery gave in. By the end I was so frustrated with it, I wanted to throw it far away from me.

Now after hearing that you'd think I'd never go for a BlackBerry again right? Well, I'm that guy who decided to give them a second chance, you see like I said in my post a few years ago, I'm not taking sides. To me there is no "Team BlackBerry" or "Team Apple", I like good devices irrespective of whom makes them. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is one of the best devices on the market but apart from is bulky design, I know alot of people who have it and it just seems too delicate for my line of work. The last thing I want is for me to drop the phone and the screen stops working, then having to send it in for 2 weeks to repair. Yes that happened to someone at work. The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is probably the best phone out at the moment but have you seen the size of that thing?! it will never fit into your pocket!

So realistically I only had 2 options, the iPhone 5 or the BlackBerry Z10. Just a quick look up at the specs and you'll see that the BB edges the iPhone in most departments but there is a risk involved. Over the years there have been hardly any complaints from iPhone users but BB's have had endless, so it hasn't got the best of reputations but it has a chance to prove us wrong. When I got the phone, the first thing I noticed there was no home button, in fact there are no buttons on the screen. Apart from the power button and volume controls, there isn't anything else. Everything is touch orientated, so that did take a while to get used to (when I say a while, I mean about an hour). Different way of swiping the screen triggers different things. The screen itself is a beauty, boasting 768 x 1280 resolution and clarity to rival the Samsung S3 it really is a joy to look at. The touch screen is very responsive and quite a pleasure to use,  even typing can be done with ease. Once you master the hub and the menu's the phone is a breeze to use.

Z10's interface is very user friendly, its the layout is very similar to the iPhone but has its own uniqueness with the BlackBerry Hub. The App Store, or "BlackBerry World" is being populated on a daily basis with new and exciting applications. I've downloaded about 15 so far which are great. The phone came preloaded with a few which included your key social media ones such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare. All apps work well but I have picked up a few glitches on the Twitter App which Im sure will be rectified. 

The disappointing thing for now is that I have to wait till March for WhatsApp as their developers haven't released a version for the Z10 as yet. Also just like iTunes you can now purchase music from BB World, the prices are very similar to iTunes, with a single costing R8.99 and an album R94.99. The Camera, finally a decent one for BlackBerry! I'll be honest I haven't played around with it alot but the quality is brilliant, the features are great and 1080 recording! yes please!

Now with the new BlackBerry 10 range it was announced that BIS will fall away seeing that the OS needed a faster network to operate on, thus making you buy data for it. The package I took was the TopUp 200 from MTN which costs R409 per month for 24 months. It includes R200 airtime and 250mb data. I'm new to this data thing so I have no idea if 250mb will be sufficient for me, I will however be making use of Wifi where ever possible as I don't want to take the risk. BIS in general is rumoured to be being shut down permanently in June after BlackBerry purchased RIM and made the decision, this will affect ALL BlackBerry users. Now I'm not quite sure whats going to happen to all those who have taken out contracts which included BIS but I know MTN will be releasing custom BlackBerry deals for their customers. Its yet to be seen if BBM will remain as unlimited data since hardly much gets used by the service. To end off, BlackBerry has an certain future going forward, they were slack in the past but with the 10 series its looking bright but will it be enough to convince everyone else?

Blackberry 10

January 30th will see the global launch of the Blackberry 10 series smart phones. Much has been said about this device over the past year and how it would compare to its major rivals as many of the current Blackberry devices hardly hold a flame to whats out there in the market. I've owned a Blackberry for the past 2 years now, the 9700 Bold to be exact, honestly I think its one of the best phones made. The size, shape, design and capabilities of it is brilliant. Downside to the phone is obviously the battery life but ask any Blackberry user and they would tell you the same thing, another major downfall is the memory, not the SD card but the cache, the phone gets remarkably slow if accessing many applications, then the dreaded clock pops up not allowing you to do anything until it processes what needs to be done.

Blackberry's holding company RIM (Research In Motion) took a major hit in the markets last year especially in Europe and the USA. The advantage Blackberry had with its BIS service almost became null and void since data prices were dropped dramatically, allowing users to purchase other smart phones. Blackberry still did well in regions that still have high data prices, South Africa included but seeing that that was no longer a major draw card, something had to change.

With the 10 series it seems that this change has come and in a big way! No longer will having BBM be a stand out feature of the phone  and I'm hoping they've at least fixed up the processing speed problem, the last thing people would want is a slow phone, especially with Samsung, Apple and Nokia all entering the market with super fast processors and operating systems.

I had the opportunity to look at the Blackberry Z10 Alpha version, the size was similar to the iPhone5 and the OS was the one they used on the Playbook. The developer that was using it said the phone was pretty good but battery life was an issue, there has been a Beta release which differed a bit from the Alpha seeing an increase in size, so maybe a bigger battery?

Blackberry Z10 and X10

There are two phones in the 10 series being launched, the Z10 which is the flagship. A full touch screen phone with all the bells and whistles to compete with the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy's and the X10 which is a half and half, well more like 3/5th's and 2/5th's. The X10 is similar to the 9900 where it has both touch screen and a keypad facility. I like that they still keeping that trend as some people prefer using the keypad to type instead of the touchscreen.

Samsung Galaxy S3, Blackberry Z10 Alpha, iPhone 4

 There are many videos online with reviews on the phone itself and so far it looks rather promising, many seem to think this will be Blackberry's "last hurrah" but if it can capture the market like it did before, how can it be the end? I have spoken to many Apple and Andriod enthusiasts, they all had good things to say about the phone but obviously in an indirect way, so generally speaking we have quite the phone on the way. I've been holding out on renewing my contract purely because I want to get this phone. Not to say I am a Blackberry fan boy, for a person that averages a gig a month on data, BIS comes really handy, especially with data prices in our country! Roll on January 30th and hopefully early release dates for the phone.

Fruit of choice

If you're in the market for a new cellular phone, the most talked about devices are undoubtedly the Apple iPhone or a Blackberry smart phones. Sure theres 100's of others to choose from, like the Sony Ericssons, Nokia's , HTC's & Samsung's but the top 2 best sellers are the ones that share their names with fruit. Now if you're like me, the most important features to the phone must be:

• Fast internet
• Good camera
• Processing speed
• Good screen resolution
• Easy to use but not too childish
• Oh and make phone calls of course!

Now if you have to go through all of those key facts, one can easily find any other phone on the market that fits for what I need. It get mores technical as choice varies and so does price, plus with call rates differing from various networks it makes things even more complicated! I had the Nokia 5800 express music, and it served its purpose. The 3 megapixel camera was a major down grade from my previous 5 megapixel I had on my N95 but I learnt to live with it. The build quality is what got to me on the 5800, within a week I already started experiencing problems with the slide keylock function on the side, it worked at times, and didnt. That and the back cover clips are more flimsy than light bulb glass, the first of those broke off within the first 2 months. It did how ever hold on with the 3rd clip being more solid. The touch screen interface was simple and easy to use, it did how ever lack good app's and struggled when you installed a lot of them.

Apple iPhone4

Seeing that I already was used to touch screen one would have thought the iPhone4 would have been the obvious choice. Yes it is pricey but at the time Vodacom offered a pretty good bundle at R250 per month with 110mb data, while it had all the quialities I needed I just found it pointless as I am in the market to get the 4th Gen iTouch iPod, which is basically the same thing as the iPhone but without the phone. When I travel I like to listen to music instead of the boring crap certain airlines choose to show. So by me having this one, I couldnt make use of the mp3 player since South Africa Airline Safety regulations require all cell phones to be switched off despite what ever mode it is in. So I'd be wasting a good mp3 player. There were other factors too that weighed in, like is 110mb enough for uploads, downloads, and app use? Then there was the usual worry of my clumsiness and the durability of the LCD screen, I tend to drop things a lot. I was extra careful with my Nokia but some how that stopped but the phone it self still lives on.

Blackberry 9800 Torch

The Blackberry on the other hand meant going back to buttons, and not the kind I was used to, tiny flippin things that when first gazed upon you feel like you might smash 10 at once. There were 2 options I was looking at, firstly  the Torch which is both touch screen and has a keypad. The new OS6 it comes with is pretty good so I've heard, and it comes with a 5 megapixel camera so I could take decent pictures again. The other option was the 9700 bold, which is a fairly old model on the market but still has features that would make some of the latest androids look like a toy. The downside for this model was the size of the screen and camera being 3 megapixel. Cost wise getting the a Blackberry worked out the best in terms of internet use. With BIS I have unlimited internet, so I can tweet all day long with out wondering how much my bill is going to be, plus there major plus is BBM. Yes its a glorified instant message chat service and the iPhone has whatsapp but by my god it is brilliant! I now know why most of my friends forced me to get this phone, just for BBM. 

Blackberry 9700

Well as per that last sentence you would have made out I have settled for a Blackberry, the 9700, like I said its practical and I love how the internet integrates with most things on the phone. The tiny buttons look daunting but believe me you really have to try to press more than 1 button. The design of the keypad is brilliant with each button at a certain angle so that when pressing it, you press that one alone. The build quality is pretty good and it looks great, there is the cheaper 8520, which some say is the modern day Nokia 3310, but there is a major difference between the 2 phones besides having 3G and Edge, the 9700 has the new OS and a 3 megapixel camera. The screen resolution is much sharper as well. The camera doesnt take the best pictures, even when compared to my old Nokia but I've gotten used to carrying my cybershot around for proper pictures so it doesnt bother me that much. The internet services are quick and the trackball is very responsive. So far the phone seems like a winner in my books, there are certain bugs I've picked up like certain app's freezing from time to time but no major problems to report of as yet.

People who get these phones do tend to take sides, so you're either an Apple or a Blackberry person, I on the other had seem to be partial to the both. They both are remarkable phones and if I had the finances I would have gotten both but for now the Blackberry will have to do.