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Reviews - page 125

645 Pro Takes The Best iPhone Photos You Have Ever Seen [Review]

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There.

645 Pro bills itself as an app which will turn your iPhone into a DSLR. At first glance, it seems like this has been achieved by mimicking the buttons and LCD panel of a modern SLR, and to an extent that’s true. But the real meat here is under the hood: 645 Pro shoots uncompressed JPEGs and TIFFs, and gives the closest that we’re likely to see to RAW images from the iPhone’s camera.

Sony Tablet S: Finally, An Android Tablet That Isn’t Just Another iPad Clone [Review]

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The Sony Tablet S does things different for Android tablets, but does it do them differently enough?

One of the first things you’ll notice about the Sony Tablet S is its design. It’s not flat, but a wedge that fits comfortably into the hand, like a magazine with its cover folded back on a hot summer day. The Tablet S looks wholly unlike any other tablet on the market. It’s something original, something that instead of simply trying to be an iPad knock-off has its own distinct design language. And it’s without a doubt the best thing about the Sony Tablet S. It’s just a shame that this brave and wonderful sense of identity in a sea of iPad clones is only skin deep.

Mattebox Might Be The Best iPhone Camera App Around [Review]

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Mattebox is the closest you'll get to using a high-end film camera on your iPhone

I’ll come out and say it at the top of this review: Mattebox is hands-down the best camera app I have used on iOS. That it was launched in December of last year and I only found out about it today is something of an embarrassment.

If you love the richness of features and tweakability of something like Camera+, then Mattebox may not be for you. But if you ever picked up a Leica and loved how the camera seemed to disappear, allowing you to just get on and shoot, you’re gonna be out by $5 in the next few minutes.

Able Planet Headphones Cancel Noise, But That’s The Boring Part [Review]

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People with tiny pin heads might avoid these headphones. Photos Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
People with tiny pin heads might avoid these headphones. Photos Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

For anyone who spends a lot of time in trains and planes, noise-canceling headphones are pretty much essential. But if you’re walking the streets, then noise canceling can be a pain or even a hazard, isolating you a little too much from your environment.

Luckily, the Able Planet Linx Audio Clear Harmony headphones sound pretty good with noise cancelation both on and off. And they’re also comfy enough to keep on throughout a long journey.

Carry Your Camera Gear Across The World With The Think Tank International [Review]

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Think Tank International
The Think Tank International is ready for stowing in a carry-on compartment near you

The International ($350), from Think Tank Photo, is similar to every other piece of rolling luggage you’ve probably used, with a retractable handle and rolling wheels, but on the inside, instead of keeping your dirty drawers stowed, it secures treasures of a different kind: your plethora of expensive camera gear. And it does so admirably.

The Great New Alupen Pro Stylus Also Writes On Paper [Review]

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The Alupen Pro: Thinner, healthier and pen-ier than its fat predecessor Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
The Alupen Pro: Thinner, healthier and pen-ier than its fat predecessor Photo Charlie Sorrel (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

I was a big fan of the Alupen when it launched — so much so that I went out and bought my own. It was chunky, looked like a metal pencil and felt pretty good in my big hands. Then came the Wacom Bamboo stylus and our love affair was over.

Now, though, the newer skinnier, cleverer Alupen Pro has got me two-timing the svelte Bamboo. Why? Because it has a biro built in.

This iOS App Blows Your Mind In Four Dimensions [Review]

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Watch out for the cuboid shadow of the 4D object later on
Watch out for the cuboid shadow of the 4D object later on

If, like many people, you find Mondays just too much to cope with, you might want to avoid today’s app. It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to make your Monday feel any better, and in some cases it will just fry your brain until next Monday. Which would be a shame, because you’d miss out on a whole weekend.

Be forewarned, then: The Fourth Dimension is an app which will mess with your head. Deliberately. Even though the aim is education and expansion of knowledge, it will still mess with your head. You will emerge from the experience only fractionally the wiser, and quite a lot more confused than you were at the beginning. Don’t worry, this is perfectly normal.

The GuitarJack Puts Ten Thousand Guitar Effects Right In Your Pocket [Review]

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GuitarJack
It's Shiny. It's Pretty. It's GuitarJack.

There are no shortage of gadgets out there that allow you connect your guitar to your iPhone, putting the power of The App Store at your guitar’s disposal. But if you’re looking for the best of what’s around (see what I did there?), Sonoma Wire Works’ GuitarJack ($150) has a mixture of beauty and talent you’d do well to consider.

The CASELLET Case Keeps Your Credit Cards Safe But Doubles The Size Of Your iPhone [Review]

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The CASELLET comes in white, black, and pink, and is complimented by a brushed aluminum rear panel.
The CASELLET comes in black, white, and pink, and is complimented by a brushed aluminum rear panel.

The CASELLET is a snap-on case for the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S that also doubles as a wallet for your credit cards and bills. Unlike most other wallet cases, which are traditionally made from leather, this one’s made from a durable plastic that aims to provide you with better impact protection against dings and drops.

It will hold up to four credit cards on their own, or three credit cards and a few bills. It comes in black, white, or pink, and it’s complimented by a brushed aluminum backplate. As you’d expect, it provides access to your camera, volume rocker, mute switch, and more. The CASELLET is the spawn of a very successful Kickstarter project, but is it actually any good?

Speed Turns Your iPad Into A Car GPS, Also Tells You How Fast You’re Going [Review]

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speed for ipad

Renowned developer Steven Troughton-Smith has released the iPad version of his popular Speed iPhone app. Thanks to the iPad’s larger 9.7-inch display and Retina resolution, Speed for iPad is the perfect GPS for your automobile. Not only does Speed track your location on a map, but the app tells you how fast you’re going and the distance you’ve traveled.

Drafts Is Your iPhone’s New Inbox [Review]

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Drafts will become your default way to capture text
Drafts will become your default way to capture text

When I first heard about Drafts, I thought “What’s the point?” After all, who needs an app in which to draft messages before sending them off to Twitter, or mailing them, or otherwise disseminating them to the world at large? My Twitter and mail apps take care of that already.

And then I used it, and it has turned into possibly the handiest little note-taking app I have on my iPod Touch.

Big Blue’s Bluetooth Speakers Take Your Tunes Back to Mono [Review]

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Big Blue : Live

Everyone knows the iPad’s speaker is, well, weedy. To compensate, Big Blue Audio has just released two new Bluetooth speakers to give a lift to music, movies and game-playing on your iPad.

Available from Brookstone, the Big Blue and Big Blue Live resemble kitschy white kitchen appliances. The $149.99 Big Blue packs 30-watts of aural pleasure for music lovers, while the speaker’s little sis, the $99.99 battery-powered Big Blue Live, is designed more as a portable companion for amplifying phone calls and apps. These new speakers are introduced to compete favorably both bang wise and buck wise versus other popular wireless speakers of similar specs / dimensions, for example the Logitech Boombox and the Jawbone Jambox, respectively.

With their sci-fi looks and packaging, they are certainly noticeable — but do they sound good too? Read on….

Banjo Social Network Aggregator Adds Instagram, But Fails To Impress [Review]

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Banjo is busy, and shows me rather a lot of strangers
Banjo is busy, and shows me rather a lot of strangers

Banjo is an iPhone app that aggregates pretty much all of your social networks’ data in one place. And a new update has just added Instagram, making it pretty much the most comprehensive option yet. There is a problem, however: While the app itself is dead easy to set up, and even works with iOS 5’s own Twitter integration, it is a complete mess in use.

Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe iPad App Is Just Heavenly [Review]

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Universe

Celebrity physicist Brian Cox is famous in the U.K. for making physics accessible to the public through bestselling books and several popular TV series. Now he brings elements of both to a gorgeous new iPad app: Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe ($6.99).

Featuring amazing animations and lush, high-production video, the app will sweep you back in time to witness the Big Bang, and then look ahead to the universe’s end, when the last black dwarfs will fizzle away to entropy.

As Prof. Cox points out: while the universe evolves momentarily from order to chaos, now is a precious window of time when life is briefly possible, for us to be able to contemplate the universe…

Monolith Makes Your iPhone Look Like It Belongs To Don Draper [Review]

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Monolith got teak in my iPhone, bless 'em.
Monolith got teak in my iPhone, bless 'em.

One of the saddest things about tech is that unlike other fashionable things, the aesthetic trend that might dictate what gadgets look like for a few years never gets a chance to come back into style. The most we ever get is the chance to be nostalgic about the look of an old gadget, not to fall in love with the aesthetic behind its design all over again, as if new.

For example, debatably thanks to AMC’s period drama Mad Men, Danish mid-century design has really come back into style. A whole new generation of people have come to discover and love a design trend that a mere two years ago, all but a few people would have, at best, only known by a couple musty old relics collecting dust and mouldering in their grandparents’ garage. Watching Don Draper slip into an Eames lounge chair, or pour himself a drink from a gorgeous teak sideboard, or turn on a tulip lamp designed by Eero Sarinen, though, rejuvenates these items by allowing us to see them as they were meant to be used and experienced. It removes real, living objects from the obscurity of textbooks and turns them into fresh ideas, ready to be used again.

It’s for this reason that I love seeing wood in a gadget. It takes a trend that was ubiquitous in the 70s and 80s, when home electronics were big and bulky enough to be mostly considered a kind of furniture, and presents it as a refreshing anecdote to a modern trend in tech design that puts the emphasis on more impersonal and space-age materials like plastic and metal, silicon and glass.

For me, wood can imply an intimacy — a device is yours, it was made for you — that makes it a perfect material for a smartphone: a device that is, by definition, the gadget with which most of us have our most personal relationship. And while Apple understandably doesn’t make iPhones out of wood, I’m delighted that a company like Monolith does, by offering a stunning line of natural wood backs for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that are as practical as they are beautiful.

Voice Dictation Works Well On Older iPhones [Review]

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Record, transcribe, send text on your older iPhone
Record, transcribe, send text on your older iPhone

Voice Dication, or Voice Dictation – Voice To SMS, Email, Facebook, Twitter And Other Apps to give it its full name, is a voice control app from Europe, designed to offer something vaguely Siri-like to those of us still stuck in the Dark Ages on our pre-4S iPhones.

Does it work? Well yes, actually it does. Better than expected.

Brains, Brawn, And Sex Appeal: Retrospective 5 Is A Camera Bag You’ll Want To Carry [Review]

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The Retrospective 5 from ThinkTank

I love the look of old canvas camera bags; they have a style and charisma that the bags of today can’t touch. But the problem is, canvas bags often aren’t comfortable to wear, and they also lack the padded protection of today’s more modern sacks.

With the Retrospective 5 ($137.50), ThinkTank aimed to blend the vintage look of yesteryear with the comfort and protection of today’s modern bags. They were trying to meld the best of both worlds when they created the Retrospective 5, and I think they succeeded.

Barefoot Atlas: Tour The World With Your Kids Before Bedtime [Review]

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Every one of those icons has a story to tell
Every one of those icons has a story to tell

Barefoot Books World Atlas ($8) is a kind of digital globe for children, giving them easy access to a simplified cartoon overview of the whole world.

From the orbital view (for want of a better word), you see the globe peppered with hundreds of colorful icons. Spin the globe and zoom in. The little icons grow and become tappable controls. Each one reveals a snippet of information in text and audio form (read aloud by the UK’s favorite TV geographer (yes, we have those), Nick Crane). There’s also a photo to look at for each fact, which is often much more informative than the icon was to start with.