SigSays - All Things Reviewed

And the new Homescreen Tips are awesome

Find it HERE.

Edit – Just noticed this in CyanogenMod Settings, there’s a “Render Effect” setting that allows you to do this to greatly increase battery life:

As detailed on Engadget in THIS ARTICLE.

Obviously not something you would leave on all the time, but if you’re away from a charger (and won’t be near one for a few hours), and you’re down to 30%, it could be a real life saver. Great stuff from CyanogenMod as usual.

Edit 2 – Just tested the battery saver red screen mode. I just enabled screebl to keep the screen on, propped the phone up on my laptop, and swiped down, then up to unhide, then hide the notification bar every 5 minutes to keep screebl’s fail safe from turning the screen off.

I charged my phone fully, then started the test, and the stopwatch, and stopped when the battery level reached 90%.

In full color mode:

I then hooked my phone to the charger and fully charged again. I put it in red screen mode, unplugged it, and started the clock again, also hiding/unhiding the bar every 5 minutes.

I’m sold. I’ll keep it in mind when I need to stretch my battery life.

I was googling for information and kinda stumbled across it. I’m not going to link it, because it’s very much a dev build, and you don’t honestly want it anyway. It has no gapps, etc. It’s not at all a usable rom for the average person, I just thought I would post it for shits and giggles.

It lives! Now go donate so they feel obligated to finish it faster

Note – If anyone involved in CM6 wants me to take this down, email me, and I will.

Well, at least initial thoughts. I have one more piece to go, and I’m holding out on a full review until I give it a day or two to set fully and all.

My initial impressions are positive. The skins are very fairly priced, and the instructions on the website are detailed and accurate. The screen protector, was, at first, a huge disappointment. I applied it according to the instructions and got a hazy, terrible screen for my troubles. I decided to give it a while in hopes the moisture still under the screen would evaporate, and a couple of hours later, it was obvious that it was clearing up. After 6-7 hours, it was perfectly clear. It’s much, MUCH less prone to scratching than the Case-Mate Screen Protector. Seems a lot more substantial too, like it might offer at least some level of protection if dropped,where the case-mate seemed very thin. To my surprise, there doesn’t appear to be any difference in touch screen sensitivity.

On the other hand, I’m less enthusiastic about the rest of the skin. The piece for the battery cover went on easily for me, as did the little strip for the metal part.

The bottom piece is the problem for me. No matter what I do, I can’t get it to sit right on the corners. Move it one way and it bubbles out at the bottom. Move it the other way and it bubbles out at the top. I even used an Xacto Knife
to trim some excess, in hopes it would keep it from binding around the corners and get it sitting flush, didn’t seem to do a lot of good though. I’m still giving it a shot, as they say it gets tackier as time goes on.

Tomorrow I’ll update this post and show some pics of the front, as I have yet to install the peice that goes around the trackball, front, and sides. As it stands, I can suggest the screen protector without any reservations. Jury is still out on the full skin.

www.bestskinsever.com

Sign up HERE and you’ll get an email when you can download the beta release of flash 10.1 for Android.

I was looking for a good carrying case for the Apple Magic Mouse, and found I actually had one lying around my place. When I bought my MinoHD, Amazon gave me two free accessories. I got a little tripod, and this Case Logic pouch. I never really used it for the Flip camera, but it works great for the mouse. It’s really well padded and cinches closed.

Buy it on Amazon

This will be fun for track season

I just got my Car Dock from google. I haven’t had time to really do a full review, but I can at least share a few pictures and my initial thoughts.

First, same cool packaging as the Nexus One itself. Nice touch.

Second, the build quality seems pretty solid. Some of the universal mounts feel like cheap crap, this one at least feels fairly solid.

The dock uses the same USB connector as the phone, which is a nice touch. This means you can use the adapter to charge the phone, even if you don’t want to dock it.

Windshield suction cup mount appears to be solid, I’ve only had it up there for a few hours though, the next few days of temperature changes will be the real test.

And my first complaint: The voice navigation is so quiet using the built in speaker, it’s utterly worthless, might as well just turn it off and look at the picture unless there’s a fix. Odd, because the speakerphone seems to be fine for phone calls. No idea. I’ll go take some pics of the phone mounted in the dock in a few, charging my camera.

As you might have noticed, I picked up a Nexus One by Google to replace my aging iPhone 3G. I also grabbed a spare battery from google (At $25 for an oem battery, it’s a steal), but the only way to charge the battery was in the phone itself. It was annoying to have to charge your battery, then shut the phone down, remove the case, and swap the dead battery in to charge it.

Google offers a dock, but it doesn’t charge a spare battery, so that does nothing for me. I eventually found this dock on amazon, which includes a space to charge your spare battery and your phone at the same time, so I had to jump on it.

(Image from Boxwave’s Site, since I expertly forgot my camera. I’ll replace it with my own soon)

First the good:

The quality seems solid. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s not bad.

The plastic supports the phone so there’s no tension on the USB connector. Seems obvious, but a lot of older cradle designs put lots of tension on the connector.

It charges a battery too, duh.

It comes with a wall adapter, so you can charge either via a computer’s USB port or a wall outlet.

It has an indicator light to let you know when your spare battery is charged.

When connected to a computer, you can sync your phone from the cradle, add files via USB, use the SDK for ADB or fastboot (Even *I* just said “What a fucking nerd!”), etc.

And now the bad:

It charges the phone via the USB port, not the docking pins on the bottom of the phone, like the factory cradle does. This means that while a factory cradle will put the phone in “Docked” mode, and let you use it as a nightstand clock, this just acts as if the phone is plugged into a USB cable, which is basically what is going on.

If both your battery and phone are down, it takes a long time to charge both via USB. Not really the fault of the dock, just something to consider.

I use the screebl app to turn my phone off when not in use, and this dock holds it so upright, it will keep the display awake unless I manually hit the screen lock button. This is both is a pro and a con, really.

Overall, I’m happy with the purchase. I wish Google would make an OEM dock that charges a second battery, but for now, this is the best I’ve found.

Buy it on Amazon!

Rating:

Supposed to fix a few minor stability issues, the long rumored 10..6.3 just popped up in my software update.

I’ll report back later today if I notice any differences.

I’m working on getting all the pics and stuff together and writing a rough draft right now, thought I would give you a teaser.