Month: November 2013

Uh oh!  Someone in Microsoft just shat themselves; Aidan has gone and started blogging about Windows Phone again.  FYI – it led to *ahem* interesting emails the last time around.

I had some credit on the Amazon.com store so I figured I’d use it to buy the Dell 8” tablet.  That all fell apart – it’s a longer story but suffice to say, Amazon didn’t have stock.  So I looked at the 1020, loved the pictures that I saw people posting, I’m a big photography enthusiast and I thought “that might be the hardware for me”.   In the end, it cost me very little to get a grey market model from Amazon.com while I stayed in Bellevue near MSFT HQ.

The phone was delivered on Wednesday afternoon.  It had a little bit of charge and it made it through to after midnight while I was out and about and constantly playing with the phone.

First off, the camera is as advertised.  I haven’t had too much opportunity to play – photography is justifiably banned on Microsoft campuses and that’s where I’ve spent most of my time this week.  Some test shots in low light reveal very high quality images, that even a compact camera don’t appear to rival – I need to spend more time testing and comparing on a full sized monitor rather than on small LCD screens.

The start of the Xbox One queues at Microsoft Store, Bellevue, WA, USA

This is not just a point and click camera phone.  When you see real camera controls such as ISO then you know that this is a serious camera that needs to be learned.  I’ve been living in the Canon DLSR world for years so I know my manual controls inside-out and they’re second nature to me when in the field.  I’ll need to learn the controls interface on this camera to make the most of it.

It’s a Nokia Lumia so the build and screen are superb.  They got that stuff very right in their re-invention process.  I like the button layout, with the power button being right under my finger when I hold the phone in my left hand.  The form factor is a little odd with the bulge.  This phone isn’t for everyone, but photography enthusiasts will accept it for wheat they get from the unusually large phone camera and 41 MP sensor.

The large camera requires a bulge on the back

The only hiccup that I’ve experienced has been surprising.  When connecting to my Office 365 account (P1 plan) the thing won’t just connect.  I’ve had to hack around with settings just as if it was an Android phone.  I got my email configured but Office 365 isn’t set up.

Edit: I connected to Office 365 with no problems a few days later.  Remember the Azure/DNS issue last week?  That probably affected me at the time.

The normal apps are mostly all there.  I’ve yet to dig into the edge stuff like scheduled do not disturb and so on.  Podcasts … that will decide if this phone becomes something I use just on travel or if it becomes my mainstream phone.  Right now, the HTC One rules.  Dogcatcher makes podcasting pretty easy (it’s not perfect) on Android.  The stupid policies of Microsoft hamper the podcast experience of Windows Phone users outside the big countries – – but Microsoft seem to use The Curse Of Zune to needlessly ruin lots of products.

Let’s see how I’m feeling in a few week’s time.

And in the meantime, if anyone in Microsoft wants to reach out then you can find my contact details pretty easily.  This is your opportunity to try shape my opinion.  I’d hate for you to go whining around on internal mail lists afterwards – yeah, I know all about it.

I bought this €229 Android (4.2 Jelly Bean) tablet a few weeks ago and gave you my first impressions of it when it was delivered.  I thought it was good back then, and to quote 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh, I think it is freakin’ mystical now.

This is not a product tablet.  This is a pure consumption tablet.  Lenovo’s designers sat down and decided to produce a lightweight device that was for surfing, social media, occasional emails, and for travel entertainment.  I think that last one was very important to them.

You’ll not that there’s an unusual cylinder along the edge of the device.  This is the battery.  It allowed Lenovo to do several things:

• Put in a larger battery than usual (more later).
• A mini kick stand rotates out of the back of the tablet for when you want to watch video or rest the device down.
• The very thin device is formed to provide a comfortable hand grip for when you hold the device in portrait mode.

The form factor works perfectly.  I’ve had it resting on the kickstand almost all of the time since I got the tablet.  And it sits very nicely on an airplane tray/table allowing me to watch a movie even when I have a meal in front of me.

The build is an aluminium frame and lower half, and a high quality textured plastic (not tacky Samsung plastic) upper back.  The screen is excellent – 1280 * 800 is perfectly acceptable on an 8” device.  It’s all about pixels per inch rather than pixel counts when you are talking about display, as any professional printer will tell you.  device is solid.

The processor is running at just 1.2 GHz but that’s a deliberate choice by Lenovo to provide better battery life.  It runs Plants VS Zombies 2 perfectly fine and I am not planning on running AutoCAD on this thing.  It is a companion device designed for consumption, which Lenovo got 100% correct in my opinion.

Why did I buy this tablet when I was going to get a Windows tablet for work?  I had no plans on buying it.  But then I saw it on the Lenovo site and saw the battery life: “Up to 16 hours”.  That got me straight away.  Imagine flying to the USA west coast from Europe with a hop through London, without fearing that the battery would die half way there.  No running to find the 3 power sockets in the terminal at Chicago O’Hare.  No squeezing out the last drop of juice at the gate in Heathrow before boarding the 747.  The promise was too much. How did it do?

Last week I flew from Berlin to San Francisco via London Heathrow.  That’s a 1.5 hour hop followed by an 11+ hours flight, with 3 hours in London.  The battery was at 100% when I left the hotel in Berlin.  I used the tablet in airplane mode to watch video for almost every second of the flight, probably around 11 hours of video play time.  I did not go near a power socket on the journey.  I checked into my hotel in San Francisco and the battery was at 54%.  When you do the maths, the tablet would have played video for 23 hours!!!

What!!!!  23 hours of video play potential.  That promised 16 hours is a lie.  A good lie by marketing!!!!  I’ve talked with some of my fellow MVPs about this and we’re in agreement – we think Lenovo played it very safe, promising a still amazing “up to 16 hours” and delivering way beyond this.  Who would believe a statement of “up to 23 hours”?  Does this tablet drain power from dark matter in the cosmos?  By the way, the Yoga Tablet 10 has a bigger battery and promises “up to 18 hours”.

The only downside I can find are the speakers.  Every portable device will suck in comparison with the HTC One (Android phone) on this front.  I have no idea how HTC manage to do what they have done.  The speakers on the Yoga are tinny.  I cranked up the output using the supplied Dolby app.  But to be honest, my Bose headphones are plugged in most of the time, and the laptop’s volume only needed to be on 8/14 during a flight for perfect loudness.

I’ve been using the Yoga during my sleep deprived jetlag zombie hours while over here.  Surfing (Dolphin), social media (Facebook and Tweetcaster), media (Netflix and MX Player), all work superbly.  I’ve checked into flights, used the alarm, and kept up email.  Whatever I want, it’s there in the Google Play store.  And the tablet is siting on the kickstand by the bed whenever I wake up at the wee hours of the morning.

I am blown away by the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8.  It contrasts 100% with my poor quality experience with the Dell Venue 8 Pro.  To me, the Lenovo Tablet 8 has set the bar for a mini consumption tablet.  The form factor, the quality, the build, don’t forget the huge Android app catalog, and the price make this a player in the market that you cannot overlook.