Category / Tablets

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Android AOTW: Launcher 7

For our first Android app of the week, I have chosen Launcher 7 by Timo Kujala.

This app is a perfect cure for those of us that have #droidrage and crave a Windows Phone. It replaces whatever launcher you have, in my case HTC Sense 1.0 for Android, with a smooth interface that looks just like that of Windows Phone 7. While you don’t get the full OS, you do get a live tile for your contacts and some bitmap images to use as app icons such as a smiley face for the messaging app and the IE logo for the browser. The status bar takes on a WP7 look when you are on the home screen and widgets are supported by being embedded in tiles. Most noticeably for me, however, Launcher 7 is less processor intensive than HTC Sense and other OEM skins and the phone therefore runs much faster in everything and multitasking actually works. While I struggle by with an HTC Wildfire, I assume that a slight performance improvement will be noticed on almost any Android device, be it a phone or tablet.

If you have an Android phone, download the free version of this. (You have to put up with 1 ad in the app list but it’s not obstructive or distracting.) You WILL love the Metro UI and then you will almost certainly want to get a Windows Phone at the earliest opportunity.

Launcher 7, Android, Free or £1.28

Download from the Android Market

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint

2012’s first iOS app of the week is Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint.

This game is incredibly addictive. Based on the game of billiards, this game is pretty simple. You use your finger as a cue to connect discs of the same colour while creating shapes out of them and scoring bonus points from combos. 20 standard levels come with the game and the rest, along with 3 arcade modes and more to come in future updates, can be purchased with a ‘Skeleton Key’ at £2.49, which the developers say will soon increase in price due to the sheer amount of content that they have planned. Watch the first trailer below and hit the link to get the app if you have nothing planned for the next week as you try to get an ‘S’ in every level.

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, iOS, £0.69

Download here or visit the website

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Deal: Grab a Dell Streak 7 for less than £100 at PC World

The Dell Streak 7 was recently discontinued and, like a certain other tablet, this action is a cue for price cuts. It has now hit the low low price of £99.97 at PC World which will get you a Tegra 2 powered slab with an 800 x 480 resolution and, while sporting Froyo out of the box, an official update to Android 3.2 ie. Honeycomb is available over the air. It is unlikely that you will ever see Ice Cream Sandwich officially on this but, at this price, you may as well give it a go. The deal is in store only so head on over to your local PC World to grab this bargain.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

The Poll: Will RIM exist in 2013?

Last time, we asked who actually uses Google+. We had a remarkable 50/50 split in the results with all who responded having a knowledge of the service.

Today, spurred on by their Biggest Flop award and our general hatred of them, we ask if Research In Motion, the failing makers of BlackBerry devices, will still exist this time next year.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

The Digixav Awards 2011

2012 is now here and Digixav’s first calendar year on the internet has come to an end. We decided that there was only one way to celebrate and that would be to give out some virtual awards to the techy things that have made this year great.

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by Henry Hunt

What we’re looking forward to in 2012

2011 is nearly over and we can all agree that it has been pretty good for tech. Nokia’s credibility returned and people began to talk to their phones. We all know, however, that 2012 can be epic. Here is what we want from the year ahead.

Windows 8

We know it’s coming in 2012 with a beta as early as January. I love the Metro UI on my phone and I am looking forward to seeing it on both tablets and computers, and not to forget Windows Phone 8 that is rumoured to be coming in the third quarter of next year.

Nokia’s Windows 8 tablet

Following straight on from Windows 8 comes the Nokia tablet that Paul Ansellem, GM of Nokia France, assured us would be available by June. Due to the recent partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, the ‘Lumia Tab’ would likely be the first Windows 8 tablet so this inadvertent announcement could give us information as to the release date of Redmond’s next OS. Plus, if it looks anything like an enlarged Lumia 800 as My Nokia Blog’s mockup suggested, the DX offices will be full of productive happy bunnies.

Nokia Lumia 900

Speaking with a French paper, Ansellem said that the fantastic Lumia 800 was like the BMW 5 series. Great, but a 7 series is better. Numerous leaks have suggested that it will be an 800 with a larger screen, the Lumia 900. The 800 is a great phone but in my opinion a 4.3 inch device with a high resolution and HSPA+ is what the market needs. I don’t give a damn about LTE because I hate Ofcom.

The inevitable rise of Windows Phone 7

With the number of apps on the Marketplace recently having broken the 50,000 barrier, it’s no surprise that our favourite OS Windows Phone 7 is growing. Unfortunately it is not yet at the same level as iOS or Android, but hopefully in the next 12 months Microsoft will catch up to their competitors and Nokia will produce some awesome handsets and WP will eat it’s way into the market.

Apple without Steve

With Steve Jobs having passed on earlier in the year, we still are not sure as to how Apple are going to cope without him. Even though Steve will have planned ahead before his passing, Tim Cook is having to fill a big gap that was left by the father of the modern computer.

RIM

I am sure that everyone is looking forward to the final nail in RIM’s airtight coffin which is most likely going to come in the coming year. So yeah. Death to RIM.

webOS goes open source

Since Leo Apotheker won the idiot of the year award, people have been wondering whether webOS was dead or not after HP announced they were discontinuing its use in their products. However at the beginning of  December, it was announced that HP would be making it open source, in the coming year we are looking forward to manufacturers creating webOS devices.

HTC going for quality over quantity

Apparently HTC are going to completely change their marketing philosophy and go for quality over quantity. Hopefully in the next year we will see something good come from the Taiwanese company instead of such abominations as the HTC Sensation, Sensation XE and Sensation XL. DEATH TO SENSE.

That is all.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

App of the week: Flipboard

This week’s app of the week is Flipboard.

Flipboard is a fantastic app that lets you add whatever content you desire to a virtual ‘social magazine’. Complete with Facebook and Twitter integration, it is more than a conventional RSS reader as it corroborates your social feeds and go-to websites in one place with a beautiful flipping interface. A free account will sync your feeds across devices, and a recent update allowed the app to work on iPhone and iPod touch. Take a look at what Flipboard themselves have to say about it in the video below.

Flipboard is now my only source for news and social updates. The app is free and gloriously ad-free and I would recommend it to anyone with an iDevice. Even Apple love it, having made it their iPad app of the year. It might also be in the running for a more prestigious award from a certain website this weekend…

Flipboard, iOS, Free
Download from the App Store or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

Why I hate RIM

In the tech world there is a large amount of hate towards Research In Motion, the makers of such pieces of shit such as the BlackBerry PlayBook and the Bold 9900. I hate RIM, as do most of my colleagues, for a number of good reasons. They are the company that everyone loves to hate and they don’t do a lot to help themselves.

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by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: iTunes 12 Days of Christmas

This week’s iOS AOTW is a simple one – Apple’s own 12 Days of Christmas app.

It is the most wonderful time of the year and therefore Apple’s annual European promotion to give away a new free thing every day from December 26th to January 6th has returned. Grab the app now to get notifications of each gift, with something sure to take your fancy. Last year we got Mirror’s Edge, a Charlie Chaplin film and the amazing Father Ted Christmas special to go with the Kings of Leon and Kylie Minogue, so the good must surely balance out the bad this year as well. Although not all the gifts may be to your tastes, remember Apple don’t have to do this and something good will surely pop up.

Merry Christmas from all at Digixav

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas, iOS, Free

Download from the App Store

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

£1 million of BlackBerry PlayBooks stolen, proves somebody wants them

The Verge have reported that a shipment of 22 pallets of RIM’s underwhelming BlackBerry PlayBook has been stolen. The goods, valued at over £1 million, were in a truck that was taken from an Indiana truck stop while the driver took a shower last Thursday. The truck had no tracking equipment and as such the 5000 tablets that were intended for Ontario are currently lost. There is a possibility that the tablets may be hitting the black market in Miami, a hotbed for stolen goods. The FBI are investigating and it is believed that, of an alleged five suspects, police have the fingerprints of one. With RIM being forced into announcing that BlackBerry 10 powered devices will not hit the market until late 2012 and taking a $485 million hit on the tablet venture, things aren’t going too well for Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. Even after numerous price cuts and multi-buy offers, the BlackBerry PlayBook is still a piece of crap that nobody is buying, but some consolation can be found in that at least 5000 have been taken off RIM’s hands.