Sanyo Energy Booster USB Output Charger

This is nothing new, since it's at least one year old, but we decide to write an simple introduction for this cute item.

The Package
The sealed package comes with a charger, 2 eneloop AA-sized rechargeable batteries, and a dual-use USB battery cable.

The Magical USB Cable
The USB cable has two simple uses - charging and discharging. When you plug in the USB side into the charger, you can charge most phone mobiles with the standard mini USB and USB-ext. Otherwise, you will need the original charging cable.
Conversely, you can plug in the USB side into the computer, and the mini USB side into the "DC IN 5V" slot of the charger, this way the charger will blink in blue, indicating the AA batteries are recharging.
Note: The USB cable is not capable to transfer any data, and is solely for charging/discharging purpose. The cable can, however, be substituted by another USB cable - in fact you must change the cable if you want to charge any device other than those with mini-USB jack.










Feature over other AA battery mobile chargers
There are many other choices around which enables to convert AA-sized battery into mobile device energy, sometimes as cheap as €3, so why did we pick this Energy Booster?
- the mobile devices with higher energy requirement (like iPod, but not iPhone^) can be charged. Read: Sanyo KBC-E1 can't charge iPhone. With two batteries instead of one, the Mobile Booster is capable to add up the mAh of two batteries, so charging a piece of 1500mAh battery is no challenge. Two fully-charged batteries can charge an iPod Touch to around 55%.
- the charger can also be used as a AA-sized Ni-MH battery charger, albeit the speed is very slow. A full recharge of battery requires an overnight charging.

^ iPhone can't be charged by this charger, but can be charged by the internal lithium battery version. You might be interested in Kensington's Power Booster instead.

Stain issue
The white color might look elegant or beautiful, but its shell is very newspaper unfriendly. A slightest touch of newpaper will dye the machine to a disgusting yellowish color. To make thing worse, if you attempt to wipe the stain with a plastic rubber, the charger's surface might scratch.

Infos
Official Site for Sanyo Eneloop

Call and SMS Firewall (Android/WM/iPhone)

Ever get random phone calls during a meeting or an exam, just to realize they are telemarketing cold calls, persuade you to buy something you absolutely don't need whatsoever? We all do, and their bombardment seems to be unending. Besides yelling the four-letter words to the malicious talk-time killers, we can take a more proactive approach – call firewall.


Firewall for different phone operating systems
All software/apps below have the ability to block specific numbers, block specific prefixs, and block SMS.


Android
aFirewall – This Android app has a special “scene mode”, where different call block policies and be applied throughout specific times of day and days of week. Can be downloaded in Market, the free version should be enough for normal use.


Tested on Google G1, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, Motorola Milestone

Alternate choice: Panda Firewall

Windows Mobile
Call Firewall 1.4 – This WM software is a freeware. Can automatically add blocked call as an Appointment (editable in Notes). The full name of the software is “Novan Digital Labs CallFirewall”, just search Google for a download.


Tested on LG KS20, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Diamond2 Topaz, HTC HD2 Leo, Samsung Omnia i900

Alternate choice: Mcleaner 1.4

iPhone
MCleaner (should require jailbreak) - download at http://www.mcleaner.com/
Panda Firewall (require jailbreak)
Disclaimer: Jailbreaking iPhone may void warranty and may brick your phone

Android 2.1 for HTC Hero

Official Android 2.1 update for HTC Hero not yet available
Early December, a leak of screenshot shows that HTC Hero will get an official 2.1 ROM, and yes, it's later official that an update will be available in early 2010. Quite a wait, yes. For those who are impatient, we recommend a try on a custom ROM done by behnaam.


Unofficial tryout of an unofficial Hero Android 2.1 Rom
This thread on HTCPedia.com forums has the most stable Hero Android 2.1 build around. It's cool to update if you are impatient to try out all the new features, to use apps only availble to latest versions of Android (Namely Google Goggles).As of today (2 January 2010), the latest ROM, "HERO21 Community" v1.8 lacks the HTC Contact feature in the HTC Sense interface. The speed of the ROM is barely acceptable - and become unacceptable once we acquired the Motorola Milestone (aka Droid). You get some, you lose some. A review on the Motorola Milestone is on the way. (Around 388 euros for Motorola Milestone).

Alternate build for HTC Hero
After a couple of hours of experience last week, we reverted the Hero to the ROM by MoDaCo, which can be found here. (WaveSecure is a great app addition in the ROM)

How to install custom builds to HTC Hero
- Install a patched recovery image (Read how and download here in MoDaCo's forum)
- Download the ROM and copy in to the Micro SD card. Download the latest Radio ROM if necessary.
- Boot the HTC Hero in recovery mode: Start your phone with the home button pressed. Use the Recovery Image to run a "nandroid backup"
- After running a "nandroid backup", wipe the machine, and apply the zipped Radio ROM. If you apply the Radio ROM, after applying, reboot the device, and enter the recovery mode again.
- Apply the zipped custom ROM, reboot after done.
Warning, the above customization might void the warranty of phone. It might also has a chance to brick your phone if some steps were not followed. Use at your own risk.


Click on the respective links for the buying info for HTC Hero white / silver or Motorola Milestone (GSM only, they are not CDMA ones, sorry American friends)

Motorola Endeavor HX1 Review.

A Google search for "HX1" will normally only get you a "Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1" review, which barely helps.

Recently, we have acquired a Motorola HX1 bluetooth headset. We don't do unboxing, as there should be a plentiful of them on Youtube. We did, however, take a couple of photos of our very headset.

Price
We got this piece of small headset in Hong Kong at HK$1280 (€110), it was easily the most expensive bluetooth device we've bought - we could have gotten the Jawbone Prime thing below this. We picked the Motorla "清" Endeavor HX1. It's the second product with a Chinese model name - the previous one was the A1200 "明" Linux based phone.^

Setting up
I couldn't wait to unpack the phone in office, I dismounted the packaging on metro. Setting up a connection is amazingly easy and user-friendly - as I wore the headset and turn it on, it has internal voice instruction in English to help me pair up the machine with my HTC Diamond. It took me no time to finish the whole pairing thing. Note that I didn't even need to read the manual.

Voice Quality
I tried to make a call when I was in an East Rail Train, the railway notorious to every Hong Kong citizen as each compartment of the train is equipped with five televisions which keep spamming ads very loudly, damaging the ears of the passengers. My friend took my call and found that my background voice is acceptable and my voice was able to be heard quite clearly. Then I tried to activate the stealth mode with a single press on a button which I suspected to be the stealth button, and poof! I heard "Stealth Mode On", while my background noice was vanished, as reported by my friend.

My friend was astonished and could not believe that I was on the loudest train on the world. He commented my voice was a little bit "stacked" though. (After reading manual, it does say the voice will be a bit distorted when the stealth mode is on)

Further tests involving talking in front of a loudspeaker was equally impressive for the recepient (although you might be unable to hear them because of your own noisy environment)

Comfortability
Despite that the package was bundled with two sets of clips and earplugs of various sizes, we found it quite a challenge to obtain the best result. Both the two earplugs will make the ear painful after using for an hour or two. Besides, it would need experience to calibrate the HX1 for the other side of phone to hear clearly. A misplacement inside the ear canal could result in hearing hasard on the other side of phone.

Overall comment
Despite being dissatisfied by the awfully designed phones, Motorola impressed us this time with the preipheral. If you need to work or stay in a noisy place for long time, this HX1 will be your choice (providing your budget allows - the price seems to be vary greatly among different countries, as we heard the retail price in mainland China for HX1 is double that than in Hong Kong). Normal users can buy a headset paying a less prohibitive price.

Caution when buying
Interested users have to notice that the headset's voice instruction has different languages but should be not changeable. So if you buy in mainland China, you get Mandarin voice instruction, if you buy in Hong Kong, you get English.

^ Side note: 明 means bright, 清 means clear, but 清明 is the Ching Ming festival, the grave-sweeping festival (wiki here))

Lenovo to honor 87% discount mis-pricing of desktop computer

Late last month, precisely 2PM HKT 27 October 2009, the Hong Kong section of the Lenovo website had a minor error, the prices were incredibly low. The license alone of the newly launched Windows 7 Premium 32 is believed to be more expensive than the whole machine. It was believed that Lenovo had some minor problem distinguishing between Hong Kong dollars and US dollars. (Pic: click to enlarge)

The news spread fast among forums. Users from some local forums like HKGolden and HKEPC attempted to order multiple machines. It was believed that more than 100 machines were ordered within the short period of time.

Initially, those smart customers were not hoping to get a successful order, since not long ago, Dell Hong Kong made similar mistakes and was shamelessly voided affected orders with no compensation whatsoever (whereas Taiwanese users get a 20%-off coupon in a case where discount and price interchanged).

Affected customers were contacted by Lenovo from 30 October, confirming that their order are honored provided that a supplementary Non-Reselling Contract was to be signed. As of today, the order are being processed (and some buyers are blantantly reselling the machines in smaller local forum)(links deliberately not given)(good luck to them).