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).

Props and Slops for HTC Tattoo vs other HTC Android phones

Props:

• Compact size - smaller than G1, Magic, Hero and of course Dragon.
• Internal FM Radio - in a cheaper model, not in the flagship models!  Quite a surprise
• Speed - the speed is comparable with HTC Hero
• Changable case - unlike most models, the case can be replaced easily, so you can buy another case when you sell the phone and claim it's like new :P
• More friendly price - while most phones are at least €300, this one is cheaper.
• 3.5mm audio jack - yes, of course.
  
• Android 1.6 Donut!!
  

• New Market - the old Market is crippled and worked like crap before Android 1.5 Cupcake, you usually won't be able to find the software you really want, while install a pile of other crappy programs.  With Android 1.6 Donut, at least you get to view the screenshots of the apps.  (I have no doubt to say Apple's AppStore is waaaaaaaaay more user friendly)
• "Quick Search Box" - now we can search most items in one integrated interface, including Apps (by name), Footprints, SMS, Peep (Twitter), Web, Contact etc.  Slower than iPhone, but the feature is still very useful.
  

Slops:

• Smaller display - smaller size, smaller display, common sense.  This machine has a QVGA resolution.
• No trackball - the trackball is addictively good, HTC should continue making them (if you switch from the ones without trackball, chances are you won't mind at all)
• Weaker hardware specifications - it's a beginner Android phone anyway
  

HTC Tattoo Buy Links:

Computer Universe <- Best site to buy a phone for residence outside America ships worldwide.  Voucher code for €5 off : (See this entry of our blog)

Alternatively, there are fascinating Android phones coming out in November, you can also wait for a Motorola Droid or a SonyEricsson Xperia X3 (3 November).

Like WM phones, it's usually pointless to "upgrade" to a second Android phone

The practical reason for changing an Android phone to another Android phone.

True, hardware specification might be quite different from handset to handset, but the core of the phone are usually the same.

As the moment, you can't expect 

• a safe Bluetooth file transfer feature
• a real radio function (i.e. not via Internet)
• alarm when power-off

While the buddies on xda-developer.com keep trying to break the Bluetooth restriction, the radio one is a hardware constraint that it is not possible to change.

The power-off alarm function, however, is an Operating-System level constraint.  I remember that my very first mobile phone 10 years ago could wake me up even if it was switch off.  While most phone running proprietary system will easily have alarm when you switch off the phone, those "smarter" phone systems, including Android and also Windows Mobile, cannot have this feature.  This is kind of lame, but we might have to realise the rationale behind this.

When an Android or a Windows phone is switch off, the entire operating system won't run, except the clock, which will consume a tiny flow of battery.  While it is relatively easy to trigger the alarm time based on the clock, the problem is to get the phone ringing, it would not be able to sound without fully launching the phone.

If you pay enough attention to new Android phones spouted by so many brands – HTC G1/Magic/Hero/Dragon etc, Samsung Galaxy, that Motorola "Droid" monstrosity, Sony Ericsson Xperia x3 – they only have slight differences.  With or without keyboard, CPU choice, ROM size, camera resolution, screen size.  The operating system is, however, the same.  A very basic G1 should be enough for newbies to familiarize with the system.

I have tried both HTC Dream (G1) and HTC Hero (G2), in some cases Dream served me better than Hero, especially if I were texting heavily.

Brief thought on Samsung "Mirror" series Digital Camera (ST500/ST550/TL225/TL250)

The dual-screen digital camera by Samsung, known as "ST500" and "ST550" "Mirror" series, (also known as TL225 and TL250) in USA.

The front and rear LCD screens are the feature of this 12MP DC.

Basic stats are not quite detailed in this article because we are not interested in it (sorry guys).

(Amazon Link) 

12.2 megapixels, 3.5-inch rear touchscreen LCD, MicroSD card slot, 4.6x optical zoom, 1280px720p HD recording, and the biggest "feature" is... the front 1.5" LCD screen - for your self-portrait.

Take a look at their press release:

• When you tap the front LCD, it turns on and automatically goes into Self-Portrait mode, ensuring that the user will always be framed exactly the way they want. You can also turn on the front LCD with a simple selection through the intuitive interface. As soon as you smile, the camera automatically takes the picture. But the Dual LCDs do more.
• In Children mode, the front LCD plays a fun animation to capture a child’s attention while taking their photo.
• Shutter mode ensures you take a photo of your subject while they’re smiling, the front LCD will display a “smiley face” when the shutter is pushed halfway thus signalling to the subject they should smile.
• Function Info helps you to know the features of every function, with the front LCD providing a visual readout of key camera settings, including whether or not the flash is engaged or if macro focus is in use.
• With Self-Timer, when taking a group photo using the self-timer, the front LCD will show a preview of the shot as well as a visual countdown timer so that everyone knows exactly when the photo will be snapped.

Our Thought
We would actually stick a mirror onto any given digital camera instead. This should save you a hundred bucks.