(Top R) Mr. Derek Callow, (Low left) Mr. Peter Bithos and Xian Lim
Google must be your next favorite website next to Facebook or Twitter. And today, surfing rates are getting cheaper and cheaper that’s why we tend to use our mobile phones for checking our social media accounts. Last Thursday Globe and Google invited us on their event at Greenbelt 3 and launched Free zone. So what’s this Free zone thing from Google and Globe? Basically, you can now browse your Gmail, Google+ and even search in Google without charge via libre.ph. Yep. Google Search and Gmail for free. You don’t a special phone or a postpaid phone just to do this. All you need is a phone that is capable to browse the internet.
This service from Google and Globe is really great. It’s the first in the world and I think this service is great especially for those people who are just using their mobile phones for browsing their Gmail and doing some research at Google search. But there’s a catch in this promo from Globe and Google. If you search using Free zone, you can access the first page of websites from the results for free. But if you click any link in the site, you’ll be redirected to a page in where Globe will ask you to subscribe to a data plan to continue. But if you feel that you need to search for more then just go back to the Google search page and click another result for free. So yeah, the first page of the results are the only thing that is free.
For Gmail, you can check your e-mails and even send e-mails but they’ll require you to subscribe to a data plan when you want to upload and download a file. Yeah, since attaching files would mean more bandwidth needed to them. But on Google+, you can check photos and share some things to your circles.
If you want to try it out, be sure that you’re using the mobile data of your phone and you should be on Globe (Duh!). On your mobile browser, just visit libre.ph and just log-in to your Google account if you have one and then you can access the Free zone. This offer is already available to all Globe and TM subscribers nationwide until March 31, 2013. Try it out now 🙂
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You love free phones. I love giveaways. So here’s another giveaway brought to you by our friends from DTC Mobile! But this time, we’ll raffle three phones! yes! you read that right! Three phones! Remember the three DTC Mobile phones that we’ve reviewed recently? Yep, the DTC Mobile Stark, Ego and the GT2! We’ll raffle all those phones here! So how can you join the raffle? It’s pretty easy. Check it out after the break.
Valid only for residents in the Philippines and he/she must claim the prize in the vicinity of Manila.
If the winner resides in the province. He/she must pay for the shipping
All entries must be done through the Rafflecopter below.
The winner will be notified via Facebook/Email/Twitter.
You can join the giveaway which will start today, November 7 2012 and it will end at December 7 2012.
There will be three draws:
First Draw: November 24, 2012 – Prize: DTC Mobile GTV1 Stark
Second Draw: December 1, 2012 – Prize: DTC Mobile Ego
Grand Draw: December 8, 2012 – Prize: DTC Mobile GT2
The winners will be announce live at the Big Time Show
There are only a few Windows phones around in the market and one of those most affordable ones is the Nokia Lumia 610. I’ve been using the Nokia Lumia 610 for a for some time now and I’m quite impressed with the speed and performance of the phone despite having a 800 mHz processor. This is not my first encounter with the Nokia Lumia 610. Remember my helicopter ride with Nokia Lumia 610? (That experience was freaking awesome. Thanks Nokia!). The Nokia Lumia 610 had been released in the market for some time now and it is just one of the few smartphones that are priced below the PHP10,000 mark. Check out my review after the break.
Hardware and construction
One of the first things that I notice about the Nokia Lumia 610 when it was announced is the design. I really like the design and construction of the phone. It didn’t feel like it’s an entry-level phone. The design and feel just looks great. The thickness and the weight are good. Thanks to the nicely design body and curves it feels really great in the hand. The chrome and sides accents also gave a plus in looks. The one that I got is white and I really like it. The first Nokia Lumia that I got to played with is the blue one and I didn’t really like the blue Nokia Lumia 610. But all in all, It’s a beauty. I love it.
The display isn’t as great as its bigger brothers. This one doesn’t have a clearblack display like the other lumias but the display still fares well and it isn’t that wash out compared to other phones. Some people say that the 65k colors display was a dealbreaker. Well for me, it isn’t. I barely notice that the phone lacks in colors. The 3.7-inch display just fits in the entry level and midrange category. (Phones are getting bigger and bigger these days. Geez). Oh and you can type comfortably with one hand on a 3.7” display by the way. Unless you have a baby hands. Below the display is the three Windows phone buttons. It’s a capacitive one so people might accidentally press that. In my case, I never accidentally press these capacitive buttons. I got no problem with these buttons.
4 Sides of the Nokia Lumia 610
Like what I’ve said earlier, the Nokia Lumia 610 features a chrome sides which is pleasing to the eye. This is also the place on where the other buttons and sockets can be found. At the top, you can find the Micro-USB cable and the 3.5 mm jack. Nothing special and proprietary here. Don’t worry the Micro-USB and the audio jack s far away from each other. So if you plug-in your speaker and charger they won’t bump easily. The left side is left empty while on the opposite side is where the camera, volume and lock/unlock button resides. They’re thin buttons but the size is already enough for our hands.
The back cover is entirely made up of plastic but it feels really solid. I like the glossiness of the phone and it doesn’t get scratch that easily. You can also see the 5 MP camera with LED flash at the back. There’s the speaker grill at the bottom and the speakers produce a loud, clear and great quality sound. The sound quality of the speakers is just one of the things that I really like about the Nokia Lumia 610. Inside the packs a 1300mAh battery that can last up to 1-1 ½ days of regular use. Not bad for a smartphone. Smartphones these days usually have battery life that long. If you’re looking for a MicroSD slot, unfortunately you can’t find one. Windows phone 7.5 doesn’t support that and you need to have a Windows Phone 8 device in order to have a MicroSD support.
Camera
Some of you might have seen the Nokia Lumia 610’s 5 megapixel camera prowess in my helicopter ride before but I’ve tried it again in my review unit. The phone’s camera isn’t that great in some of my tests. Unfortunately, it didn’t fared well on my low-light shots and the photos are kinda washed out. Check out for yourself. Here are the photos that I’ve taken using the Nokia Lumia 610:
I can’t upload the video taken using the Nokia Lumia 610 on YouTube. Unfortunately, HD video recording isn’t available on the Nokia Lumia 610 but the phone can play videos flawlessly. I guess the Windows Phone connector for Mac automatically lowers the resolution of the HD videos that I transferred to the phone. I didn’t like the sound of the video but the quality of it is kinda good.
Software
The Nokia Lumia 610 is powered by Windows phone 7.5. Too bad the phone won’t be upgraded to Windows phone 8 but the phone is expected to be updated to Windows phone 7.8. WP 7.8 Which is like a dumb down version of Windows phone 8. WP 7.8 will have some features that can only be found on Windows 8 but unfortunately some features on Windows 8 won’t be ported to Windows phone 7.8 and apps that were made for Windows 8 won’t work on Windows phone 7.8
Since the Nokia Lumia 610 have a slow 800 MHz Snapdragon processor and a 256 MB of RAM. Some of the apps won’t work on this phones especially 3D games. A lot of apps doesn’t work with the Nokia Lumia 610 because of the lack of RAM including the Nokia City lens. That was quite disappointing since there are only a handful apps at the Windows Phone marketplace. But don’t fret, some useful apps like CNN, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Viber and many more. Don’t worry, there’s still Xbox live in here.
Internet Explorer 9 can only do up to 6 tabs on the Nokia Lumia 610. But it’s pretty damn fast and smooth.
The fluidity and smoothness of the phone is still here. I’m quite surprised to see a very smooth Metro UI on this phone. The speed is comparable to the first generation Windows Phones. But experience on the apps and games are different. Sometimes you can feel the laginess and I really hate it. But happens only on a pinch of apps that I’ve used. By the way, the Facebook app still sucks and I don’t like it so much. I hope that Microsoft should do something about their apps.
Some of the features that I really like about the Windows phone like the integration with the Social networks are still here. I guess that’s one of the greatest features of the Windows Phone. Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive are still here. It’s very usable and you can use it for offline navigation (that’s the number one in my list on why I really love to have this phone). Oh and there are some exclusive apps on the Nokia marketplace that are only available for the Nokia Lumias like the camera extras in where you can use panorama and some other cool stuffs in your camera. Pretty cool apps. Too bad there are some popular apps that are still missing in the Windows phone like Instagram and some popular games.
Verdict
All in all, I really like to have the Nokia Lumia 610 on my pocket. Well not as my main phone but as my other or backup phone. I’m an app guy, I really like to have a lot apps and I use them a lot. I can’t live without a good twitter and facebook app. Oh and there’s instagram. I really need that. I’m a hipster. Damn it. The Windows phone 8 devices are coming very soon but I doubt that it will be affordable like the Nokia Lumia 610. The Nokia Lumia 610 has been out in the market for months and it is now available at stores at around P10,990 and below. There are 4 colors available for the Nokia Lumia 610 — White, Cyan, Magenta and Black.
Disclaimer: The Nokia Lumia 610 was lend to us by Nokia Philippines for review. Thanks Nokia!
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The iPad mini recently became available in many countries. And unfortunately our beloved country, the Philippines wasn’t included in the list of the countries who’ll get it first but some online stores like Widget City is now accepting reservations and they’ll be bringing the iPad mini to your hands this Monday. In case you forgot the specifications. The iPad mini will sport a much smaller a 7.9″ display with 1024 x 768 resolution, A5 processor, iOS6 and 5 MP rear camera. The specifications is pretty much the same with the iPad 2. I guess Apple wants to target those people who wants to have a much smaller iOS tablet and they want to grab some share from the 7″ Android tablet market. The SRP of the iPad mini is $329. A lot of people were disappointed because they expected a price lower than $300. Check out the prices of Widget City after the break.
There’s no LTE variants available so you’re stuck with the Wi-Fi version. Here are the prices:
16GB – White PHP19,790 / Black PHP19,490 32GB – PHP23,990 64GB – PHP28,290
I still don’t know why the white and the black have different prices. But I guess, it’s something to do with stocks. And before I forgot, every buyer of the iPad mini in Widget City would get a free screen protector. If you can’t wait and you want to get a hands-on of the iPad mini. Check out Widget City’s Facebook page or their website and contact them to get one on Monday.
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Everybody is crazy with the new iPad and the iPad mini but some people didn’t realize that there are some tablets that are really good and competitive in the market. One of these tablets is the Nexus 10. One of the reasons why the Nexus 10 is a great tablet is because of the large 2560X1600 resolution on a 10″ tablet (that’s 300 ppi). That’s freakin larger than our HDTV and even the Retina iPad. So what else does this baby got? Well, it is already powered by the latest Dual-Core Exynos 5250 1.7 GHz Cortex A-15. That may be a Dual-core processor but that is way faster than the Quad-core processor of the Samsung Galaxy S3. Oh this tablet is also powered by the latest Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. But do you know what’s the best part of this tablet? This tablet starts at $399. That’s a hundred bucks cheaper than the current Retina iPad.
So why do I think this tablet is great?
The starting price is mich cheaper than the Retina iPad
It has a large 2560×1600 resolution
Nexus devices always get the latest Android first.
I haven’t tried this baby but by just looking at the paper, the specifications are great. But I didn’t like the design of the Nexus 10. It’s just way too curvy for me.
Nexus 10 Specifications
Dimensions and Weight
263.8 x 177.8 x 8.9mm
Display
Super PLS display 2560 x 1600 display (300ppi)
Processor
Dual Core 1.7 GHz A-15 Exynos 5250 with Mali-T604 GPU
RAM
2 GB
Storage
16/32 GB
Camera
5 MP Rear Camera, 1.9 MP front camera
Bluetooth
Yes
NFC
Yes
Wi-Fi
Yes, Mimo Wifi
Connectivity
–
Battery
9000mAh
Colors
Black
Other features
Google Apps
OS
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
Price
Starts at $399
Nexus 10 Price in the Philippines
The starting price of the Nexus 10 might be $399 (that’s around P17,000) but that tablet might get more expensive since that tablet won’t be launch here in the Philippines. Expect online stores to bring this tablet to the market. My guess estimate for the Nexus 10 when it arrives here in the Philippines is P20,000.
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CD-R King sells everything is a section of JAM Online in where the author talks about CD-R King products that you might not be familiar with. And yes, these products are real.
Oh CD-R King. You have Windmills, Beauty products and even a LED light bulb. What else do you got? Well, here’s another very interesting product from CD-R King. Introducing, the E-Bike. Yes, that’s a picture of an Electric F****** Bicycle. Well, it’s very rare to see E-Bikes at malls and some bike shops. I don’t even know how this thing works. I know how to ride and use a bicycle but I didn’t know there’s an electric bicycle that is available here in the Philippines. Anyway, the E-Bike can run up to 25kph and it comes with a headlight and a taillight. The price is steep at P14,800.00. But c’mon guys, it’s very rare to see CD-R King E-Bikes around. There are only a few CD-R King stores that are selling this thing. Check out the CD-R King E-Bike in this link. Geez, CD-R King. What’s next? A CD-R King car?
Thanks Jettie!
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Here’s the 3rd phone that we’ll raffle soon. But before that, I would like to review the phone first. Just to give you some preview of the phone, the phone would have a 3.2” resistive touchscreen, Dual Sim and a mobile TV. Yep, all of those phones that we’ll be giving away will have dual sim and mobile TV. (Well, if you’re watching the BIG TIME SHOW regularly, I previously discussed and shown some of the features of this phone. Unfortunately the phone isn’t on Android (Sorry Android fans!). The phone is powered by proprietary OS which has some features that are similar to Android. The user interface of the phone is somewhat combination of HTC, LG and Samsung Android phones. Nonetheless, the phone still looks good. Check out the break for the review of the phone Hardware and Construction
And just as we suspected, the phone is made up of plastic but it got some pretty chrome-y sides. Its design reminds me of the First Samsung Omnia. Even though the body is made up of plastic, the cellphone is very solid and the phone seems to be heavy for its size but I got no problem with that. IMO, I really like the design of the DTC Mobile GT2. I like the chrome-y sides and all.
What are those circles?
I was disappointed to see that they use resistive instead of the capacitive one. The resistive isn’t as responsive as the capacitive and this one doesn’t recognize your finger that easily. They’ll require you to use your fingernails or a stylus if you want. I also notice on my review unit that the ‘screen has dark circles when the screen is not on. But it doesn’t affect the touch experience on the phone. It is just annoying to see things like that on my screen. Oh and before I forgot, this phone doesn’t have multi-touch. Below the screen are the three buttons and these are answer, lock/on/off/cancel button and the menu button which is in the middle. Nothing special about that but I’m already used to Android’s buttons that’s why I had some confusions in it in the first place.
4 Sides of the DTC mobile GT2
At the top of the phone, you can find the Micro-USB, 3.5mm audio jack and the round charger port that is similar to the one that can be found on the Nokia phones. At the left side of the phone is where the volume rocker is placed. At the opposite side is where the camera button is placed. It’s quite nice that they placed a camera button on the side even though there’s no accelerometer. Yep, you can’t do landscape mode on the GT2.
Dual Sim slot and MicroSD card slot
At the back, you’ll notice the DTC Mobile logo at the bottom and the camera & speaker grill at the top which is quite loud but not that clear at maximum sound. That’s pretty common for phones like this. Then there’s the 900mAh battery inside. It is smaller compared to DTC Mobile Ego but this one can last up to many days since this one isn’t a smartphone. You can also see the two speakers inside too and then there’s the dual sim slot and the MicroSD card slot. Unfortunately, there’s no 3G on this phone.
The DTC Mobile GT2 packs a 1.3 megapixel rear camera and a front camera. Like what I’ve said earlier, you can’t use landscape mode to take pictures. The quality of the camera isn’t that good since it is just a 1.3 megapixel camera. Don’t expect too much on the camera of this phone but this one got a LED Flash.
DTC Mobile GT2’s Front Camera
Software
The phone’s OS is proprietary and it combines the UI elements of iPhone, Samsung, LG and HTC. The Homescreen looks like HTC but the clock widget came from LG. But when you open the Menu, you’ll see the Samsung inspired icons but you can change that to iOS. The iOS menu style is much cleaner than the other one. There are some apps that most of you need like the Facebook and Twitter which are just a shortcut to mobile sites. There’s a web browser too but don’t expect a full web browsing experience just like on your iPads and smartphones. The web browser isn’t good as the one that can be found on most smartphones.
Is that Samsung-inspired icons?
If you feel bored when you’re in a bus. There’s only one game called Gold rush. But if you want more games and apps for this phone, you can download some Java apps and I suggest that you put it on a MicroSD (The phone can support up to 8GB by the way). It’s pretty hard to play games on this phone since this is just a resistive one and I’m already used to capacitive screen phones.
Dat Antenna
The DTC Mobile GT2 also features Mobile TV. Just like the other 2 DTC Mobile TV phones that I’ve reviewed, it’s kinda hard to get a clear reception of different local channels. Well of course, that still depends on your location. The Mobile TV app on this phone is better than the other DTC Mobile phones. You can make it to 16:9 widescreen from 3:2 which is the normal size for local TV channels here in the Philippines.
Verdict
All in all, the DTC Mobile GT2 is just one of the mobile TV in the market. It features the same hardware just like the other featurephones but this one sports a 3.2” touchscreen, Mobile TV, Dual Sim and MicroSD. Those are just some of the features that can’t found on some phones. The DTC Mobile GT2 is now available at DTC Mobile Kiosks and online stores for P2,799. Disclaimer: This phone was given to us by DTC Mobile Philippines for review and raffle
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When it comes to Android, the Nexus devices are the first devices that’ll get the latest iteration of Android OS and Google just announced the Google Nexus 4, the successor of the Galaxy Nexus. The phone packs a stunning hardware at a stunning price. Yes folks, the phone sports a S4 Quad-Core processor which was highly praised as the mobile processor faster than the most processors around in the mobile market, 8 megapixel camera, 4.7″ HD screen, starts at 8 GB storage and the best thing in this phone is that it starts at $299. That’s around P12,000-13,000 (USD to PHP conversion) people! That price is pretty crazy. When the phone was leaked a few weeks ago, I thought the phone would be price at around $399-$499. But man! This is crazy! Oh and this phone is powered by the latest version of Jelly Bean – Android 4.2. There are a lot of new features on this phone. The one that manufactured this phone is LG. If you can still remember the predecessor, Galaxy Nexus. That was made by Samsung. There are some few things that you might not want in the Nexus 4 like the small 8 GB storage.
There’s no MicroSD card slot so you’ll be stock with the internal storage cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox and Skydrive. If you feel that you need more storage, there’s a 16 GB storage or you can just use USB OTG. Oh and you’ll be stuck with HSPA+. There’s no LTE in here. Well, it’ll not affect us that much in the Philippines since we need a special LTE sim to use LTE.
Nexus 4 Specifications
Dimensions and Weight
133.9 x 68.7 x 9.1 mm
Display
4.7 inch True IPS Plus display 768 x 1280 | Corning Gorilla Glass 2
Processor
Qualcomm APQ8064 Quad-Core Krait 1.5 Ghz with Adreno 320 GPU
RAM
2 GB
Storage
8/16 GB
Camera
8 MP Rear Camera, 1.3 MP front camera
Bluetooth
Yes
NFC
Yes
Wi-Fi
Yes
Connectivity
HSPA+
Battery
2100mAh
Colors
Black
Other features
Google Apps
Micro-Sim
OS
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
Price
$299
Nexus 4 Price in the Philippines I guess the Nexus 4 won’t arrive here in the Philippines but thankfully there are online stores who’ll bring this phone to our homeland. My guess estimate when the phone arrives in the Philippines is P16,500.
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Yesterday, I posted about the most awesome phone at below P5,000 that was launch last Wednesday. But there’s another phone that was launched at the same day too, the Cherry Mobile Titan, which is really has a Titan size. The Cherry Mobile Titan sports a large 5.0” WVGA screen. Sorry guys, it doesn’t pack a HD screen but the WVGA 5.0 screen fairs well but don’t expect a high ppi on this one. But even though the phone got a low ppi, the phone’s screen isn’t actually that bad and browsing the web and looking into the apps isn’t that bad. But don’t expect a Galaxy Note-like screen on this one. But hey! look at this big boy, it’ll be available for only P6,499. Yep, that’s another affordable offering from Cherry Mobile. So what are the other things that this baby got? Check it out after the break
The Cherry Mobile Titan, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy Note II
The Titan’s processor is a MTK6577 Dual core A9 1.0 GHz. Yup. That phone isn’t the same as the one that can be found on the Cherry Mobile Flare. But the main attraction on this phone is the large effin screen. The Cherry Mobile Titan has a 4 GB internal memory, which will suffice your gaming, and app needs. I think that is already decent considering its price. The phone got a 5 megapixel rear camera and VGA front camera. I’m not sure if the phone can do skype but I’m pretty sure it can. The last thing that I like in this phone is the OS. The Cherry Mobile Titan is powered by Ice cream sandwich. It’s pretty rare to see phones with Ice Cream Sandwich at a price range like this.
A lot of people are asking me which phone should they choose between the flare and the titan. Well, if you want a phone that has a larger screen obviously you should choose the titan. But if you ask me, I would rather choose the Cherry Mobile Flare because of its Qualcomm processor and the decent specs. 4.0” IPS screen looks better too and I really love to have a better screen on a phone. Oh and for those who are asking, this phone is very similar to the Konka W990. It’s practically the same :P.
Cherry Mobile Titan Specifications
Cherry Mobile Titan Price in the Philippines
Dimensions and Weight
143mm x 77.4mm x 10.5mm
Display
5.0″ Capacitive Display
Processor
MTK6577 ARMv7 Cortex-A9 Dual-core 1.0GHz
RAM
512MB
Storage
4GB with MicroSD up to 32 GB
Camera
5 MP Rear Camera and VGA front camera
Bluetooth
Yes, BT 2.1
NFC
No
Wi-Fi
Yes
Connectivity
HSDPA
Battery
2350mAh
Colors
Black
Other features
–
OS
Android 4.0 ICS
Price
P6,500
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Who would ever thought that there would be a dual-core S4 processor on a phone with a price tag below P10,000. Oh wait, the phone is even below P5,000! Jesus Tap-dancing Christ! (Yep, that came from that funny Pontiac Ad) Yes!, the Cherry Mobile Flare packs a Snapdragon S4 processor. FYI, the S4 processor that the Cherry Mobile flares have is not a krait one. To make things simpler, the processor that can be found in here is not the same as the one that can be found on the Sony Xperia T. But guys, it’s a P3,999 phone and it has a WVGA 4.0” screen. I think this phone is a steal. A bargain. The P3,999 price tag is too awesome. The phone is just awesome. It’s the best phone for its price. So what else does this baby got? This phone got a decent 5 MP Rear Camera and VGA front camera. Oh and this phone can do Google Hangouts and Skype too. If you feel that you need to open your Facebook in the middle of nowhere, there’s 3G/HSDPA too. I’m quite surprised that there’s HSDPA since most Android smartphones below 5k doesn’t have HSDPA. Aside from the S4 processor, another thing that I like in here is the Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Android 4.0 already powers this baby. It’s really rare to see Android 4.0 phones at this price. Oh and I think this phone is based on Karbonn A9+ which is available in India.
Cherry Mobile Flare Specifications and Price in the Philippines
