For smartphone vendors it’s been a hugely busy and intensive few years involving keeping up with their opposing rival companies and their new products. Up until now, this ‘race’ has deluded itself into the inevitable subject of specifications. Smartphones comprise of a plethora of components these days, all of which are usually supplied to the smartphone industry in awe of getting the most up-to-date and sophisticated components into the biggest selling phones. Over the years it’s been fascinating to observe and be a part of the aforementioned components (e.g. processors, displays & RAM) improving and getting more comprehensive, making our pocket computers more powerful and usable than, for many of us, our first computers. It’s definitely apparent that the innovation of the smartphone has changed the way we access information online, but has the experience we have got, reached a point where it cannot get any better?
Author Archives: Dan Thomas
Review: Otterbox Defender iPhone 4/4S
Recently we reviewed this cases ‘baby brother’, the Otterbox Commuter for Apple’s iPhone 5 – we were so pleased with it that we decided that we would up the game and explore what Otterbox has to offer at the top end of the protection scale. The Otterbox defender is aimed at people who are in the building and construction industry and people who are often in an environment where their iPhone is at risk of being damaged.
The overall build quality of this product is nothing less of what you would expect from Otterbox, as they are renowned to implement the highest quality of materials along with a second to none fit and finish go their cases. This is evident on the Defender for iPhone 4/4S. It’s easy to see the huge amount of effort that Otterbox have put into the both the manufacturing and marketing of this case. They have a distinct niché which is likely to capture the interest of customers. Alongside this, the high quality materials and logically laid out infrastructure of the packaging makes using this product a pleasure, from all aspects.
Continue reading
Review: Proporta Hard Shell (National Gallery Edition) iPhone 4/4S
As an abundance of people own smartphones these days, business has picked up for mobile device accessory vendors – which has allowed them to become more creative and innovative with their case and their functionality and design. This is great for the consumer as they have the benefit of all the competition between the various vendors to get a fantastic choice of protection for their mobile phone.
Proporta are amongst some of the most established mobile phone case vendors and they have recently started to endeavor in the world of including famous designs and patterns onto their products. Like this one we have here; it’s part of the range which implements case designs from art galleries which are famous around the world. This particular case is from the National Gallery, London and it features a painting from the 1800s: “The Thames below Westminster”
Continue reading
Review: Otterbox Commuter (iPhone 5)
Whether you work on a building site or in an office, protecting your iPhone is very important. Whilst Apple’s after sales support is second to none – they still don’t cover you for accidental damage. We would always recommend that you have all of the correct gear in order to prevent anyaccidents causing you an issue if you happen to drop your iPhone. Otterbox have taken into account the many versatile uses a person has for their phone, and the commodities that come with it. The design of their ‘Commuter’ case directly reflects this – it implements the appropriate amount of protection for a range of environments. This case consists of two layers, one of which is a silicone layer and the other a hard shell layer. This allows for the optimum scratch and impact protection for your new iPhone 5. The hard shell layer of this case is a high density plastic with a textured back and an etched impression of the Otterbox logo to add some subtle branding. The silicone layer is relatively thin, however the thickness increases around areas of which are likely to experience high amounts of impact. Included within the packaging is; the product, a screen protector and some light instructions telling you how to assemble and remove your phone for their product.
Phone Cases: Are They Necessary?
Smartphones, they’re getting larger, thinner and most of all lighter. However this comes with the sentimental trade off about damaging your device with a £500+ price point. I was anticipating the next few words to bias – however the idea of a ‘fanboy’ war sickens me to death! I was going to mention that it in the unfortunate event of damaging your smartphone or tablet device one can become quite distressed about the repair charges that are putting a burden on the alleged “seamless” experience your supposed to have with your smartphone. Even Apple in their extensive efforts to help you won’t empathize with you about accidental damage.
Many phone accessory vendors claim that the presence of a case for your phone will prevent the need for high repair charges. However is this true?
In about 20-25% of scenarios the presence of a case is necessary to prevent damage inflicting on your phone – however the majority of cases which people use will only prevent scratching to your device. So, there’s a actually no need to marry your phone with a piece of rubber or plastic, which in some cases might event scratch your smartphone. Case vendors don’t mention that, do they? It’s not just that though. You’ll find with most mobile device protection, especially the iPad’s line of pretentious daughter branded casing, that they add a considerable amount of bulk and weight. Lets summarise; so far we’ve discovered that cases diminish the experience intended by the device manufacturer, they’re poorly made and that in most cases they actually don’t protect your device from suffering damage! And oh yes, they’re expensive.
Some might argue against this and mention that cases add to the aesthetic appearance of their smartphones. But if you bought your smartphone, you chose it over other smartphones because it suits YOU best – the aesthetics must have gone into the thought process somewhere, right? So if one desires to cover their phone with a low-density scrap of plastic – the case must have something over the multimillion-pound design process of designing their phone.
Continue reading
iPhone 5 Unlocked Pricing Unveiled
Just one day after Apple’s highly popular and successful keynote, they have released the pricing for the unlocked variations of the iPhone, as opposed to the prices which include a cellular plan. You can view such prices by navigating to Apple’s comparison facility located with their website. Apple’s revolutionary new iPhone will cost you £529 for the 16GB, £599 for the mid range 32GB model and a hefty £699 for the top of the line 64GB. As usual, Apple speculate that the 16GB model will be the one seen in the most abundance. (U.S. Pricing: 16GB: $649 32GB: $749 64GB: $849)
These prices reside under the same regulations as that of the iPhone 4S – so it could be said that Apple are giving its customers a brighter deal, however some analysts have mentioned to the press that to maximize their sales, Apple should have dropped the price slightly to give it another selling point over the iPhone 4S. Instead of this they’ve dropped the price of the iPhone 4S and decided to market that as being a somewhat superior deal than before.
Continue reading
First Look: TweetBot For Mac
TweetBot has been around on the iPhone for a considerable amount of time now and its used by many users due to its famous fluidity and functionality. The developers of TweetBot have recently finished compiling a new, iPad friendly version of TweetBot in which has been just as successful as the version for the iPhone. Very recently TapBots (the developers) have released an Alpha version of their Twitter client on the Macintosh platform. All of us here at MriOSDevices were very exited about such news and decided that it would be a good idea to produce an article notifying our users about the pre release, Alpha version available and how it performed in comparison to the other Twitter clients for the Mac.
Continue reading
iMessage Experiences Outages for Many
This past week many users of Apple’s internal messaging system, iMessage have been experiencing many outages or losses of connection whilst using it. Most of the time it’s rather difficult to identify a problem with Apple’s messaging service as the majority of the time it can be blamed on your data connection being insufficient to send a message, at least such thing is true in the UK. However it’s been recognised in places where a strong data connection is present. Some of the MriOSDevices team have been experiencing quite severe outages over the whole of last weekend.
Continue reading
Review: SGP Linear Color Series (Infinity White)
The Good:
If you are in the possession of the White iPhone 4 or 4S you will be extremely pleased with the impeccable design of this case, more so if you go for the Infinity White colored one in which I have here. If just feels so natural and looks predominantly sleek upon approaching your iPhone when its enclosed in this case.
Continue reading
GM To Bring an “Eyes Free” Siri Button to their Production Cars
One of the many very exciting, but perhaps brushed under the carpet, things in which came out of Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) a couple of weeks ago was that they have been in conversation with a dozen car manufactures about bringing an “Eyes Free” dedicated Siri button to their production cars. Upon this list was General Motors (GM) – who appear to be eloquently enthusiastic about this new collaboration of Apple’s – so therefore have announced to the press that it will be making into the likes of GM cars in about 12 months from now.
As for us in the UK – we’re unsure weather they will bring it to Vauxhall (part of GM) line of production cars, and if they do it wont be anytime soon. However it would be logical as Siri is going to become more and more useful come the future releases of iOS.
