Jolla Announced Their First Smartphone, Yours For €399

6:55:00 AM dickwyn 0 Comments

Late last year a group of ex-nokia employees under the N9 and the meego platform formed a new company called Jolla Mobile and soon after that they showed off the OS which will be powering the device from the company which was called Sailfish OS. Fast forward to this day, the company has finally announced their first device which somehow doesn't have an exact name yet but for now i'll just call it Jolla's first smartphone.  This device will be pioneering the new operating system and in the hardware sides' the device packs a 4.5" display of unknown resolution, an unnamed dual core processor, an 8MP camera with LED flash, 16GB of onboard storage which is expandable via microSD slot, the ever so controversial user removable battery is present, and LTE in supported regions. The company said that this device will be yielding support for android apps. Moving to the outer of the device, which includes a two part construction which is the back cover and the phone, the design looks very simplistic and has a certain style to it and to top it off, multiple colors will be available.
"Carrying the DNA of Nokia with Colors"
"Jolla's phone might not have the apps but it's design is surely something to drool over"
I can see this phone really being a popular hit among people which are particularly keen for design because the amount of detail the team at Jolla put is just phenomenal. Personally i really like the design of it with the buttons and the two piece design, this really is the true successor to the N9 or in other words "the N9 reborn". Moving on to the nitty gritty info, Jolla is planning to launch this phone at first to selected European countries and in the near future more regions will get it. The price of the device is set at €399 or about $510, personally i think that the price is pretty reasonable but that is when i overlook the unannounced capabilities of the fresh OS. Additionally, device will be heading to users by the end of the year. It really looks like a tough battle for this new OS as they are not only competing with the heavyweight contenders but they also need to take on the new kids on the block which include Ubuntu, Tizen and Firefox. It seems to be a tough battle but i think Jolla is able to make it if they get the operating system correct because currently hand swiping gestures is pretty popular, so they are on the right track. In the same context they are having 3 pre order options for the device; the first one is a zero cost option which will include you a reservation of the device when it finally comes to your land; the second one is will cost you €40 and will get you a limited edition version of the device, a t-shirt and a priority status for you pre order; finally is the €100 deal which includes an exclusive back cover for the device, a t-shirt, and a €100 rebate off the total price of the device. You can check out more details here. As to more of my thoughts, i can't convey it because the company still has not officially revealed details on the sailfish OS in whole, so this will continue in a follow up article. To check out more photos of Jolla's first smartphone click here 
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Camera360 Ultimate App Review, The Best Camera App Ever

2:06:00 AM dickwyn 0 Comments

Preface:

If i'm not mistaken this is my first ever proper review for this year, well moving along this time around i'll be doing things differently. First up is that i've been testing out this app for about 5 days now and i felt that i was ready to do a review. Well as usual i'm using my Galaxy Note GT-N7000 to test things out but i did have a chance to head over to the Nokia store and tried it out on the Lumia 920. Additionally before this i've only used one third party camera app which is the cameraZoomFX app. Personally i'm the type of person which does not like to modify things and i like to keep things to the most stock level. Also at the start i actually felt pretty fed up with the app because of the preview menu after taking each photo.

Introduction:

Camera360 is a camera app which is pretty popular on android as well as iOS. Just recently they announced that they now have 100 million users worldwide. Well in the 21st century where smartphones dominate the world and apps are a key part of the smartphone experience, Camera360 does the right thing as they have an app for the top 3 most popular mobile OS's in the market currently which are android, iOS and Windows Phone 8. In plain sight the UI of the app in all the 3 platforms it exist in might look a bit different but deep down the features are still there. 

Design & Layout:

To be frank here, at first i did find the app a bit frustrating because of the layout and the small icons on the left side of the screen. But i conquered the ordeal by trying to click out each and every button there and then after that i was used to the UI and everything went on pretty smooth. Then after that another problem popped out and it was the preview menu which popped out each time i take a shot. But then i solved this problem by changing the shooting mode to fast shoot. After that ordeal the app actually worked pretty fine and all of the buttons and toggles actually seemed properly placed.
"The UI might look densely populated but actually its not, its just perfect..."

Features:

The camera360 app is categorized as a camera app but actually its features span into the world of photo editing. Well it does not have very in depth photo editing centric features like increasing the brightness or changing the contrast but it does have something more simpler and hassle free. These are called filters and this app has a lot of them and in my period testing it i was unable to try out each and every one of them. But the ones i tried was pretty cool and the best filter by far is the random filter which chooses a random filter for each photo but actually i highly recommend using the random filter because it gets the best out of the image. At plane sight they say that the random filter is random but who knows maybe they have some engine powering it. You can check out the photo above in which i took a single photo and added a few filters to it. As to most third party camera apps, there is also a HDR filter on this app which seemingly works pretty good is some situations. 
"Filter, Filters and even more Filters"

Performance:

In my time using it there was a minimal amount of lag but there is a slight frame drop on my phone when i close the app. Overall i did not experience anything too unbearable and the app performed pretty well. Taking photos are really pretty fast and the loading time of the app is actually a few microseconds faster than the stock camera app on my phone.
"Lag is not an issue here"

Conclusion:

In conclusion i will be making the step forward and from now onwards i will be using this as my main camera app on my phone. I do have to address in a few issues i faced while using the app, the first is the UI which as i said earlier a bit confusing when you first open the app. If the developer could like implement a walkthrough guide for first time users about the whole UI of the app then that would just be amazing. Another thing is that with certain filters it takes a tad bit more time to save, i'm not sure if that's a problem with my phone or the file size is just too big. All in all if i were to give this app a score in a scale of 1 to 10, i would give it a solid 9/10 because the features it brings to the table is just phenomenal and is the only app i currently know which has that much of filters. In addition to that, the UI of the app is actually fairly simple after you use it a few times. Finally if you're just wanting a camera app on your phone, the camera360 is actually a fairly good balance between features and simplicity. In contrast i would like to thank Kerry, my rep from camera360 for introducing this app to me. Check out some of the images i took with the app below...
"Camera360 is a spectacular camera app which can help you capture moments not only in perfect clarity but also with a touch of style, the filters present in this app are really a lot."
[+] Pros:
  1. Has a ton of features
  2. Literally has the most filters i've ever seen
  3. The random effect filter works surprisingly smart, bringing photos to life
  4. App launch time is relatively quick
  5. The stabilizer feature is very nifty
  6. has setting to turn your volume rocker into a shutter button
  7. The tilt-shift and color shift mode is pretty cool
[-] Cons:
  1. lacks the function to share directly to Instagram
  2. UI somehow feels a bit messy and unlabeled on the android version
  3. Takes some time to save images with the implementation of certain filters
  4. Lacks a toggle to change the aspect ratio
  5. Lacks video camera support (only available on iOS via a separate app called Movie360)
What are you waiting for, Try it now!: 

Sample Pictures:

The Magic Color filter allows you to select certain colors to display 
The Sketch filter, gives the picture a nice touch
The Magic Color filter in action, a very nice filter...
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