Posts

iPad Mini – An initial review

This is a small post with my thought of the iPad mini having used it for about 4 hours. I’ll write a fully fledged review when I get the time. The hardware The iPad has very good build quality. The screen is large for its size. Charger port is quite good as it can be inserted either way. Initial Setup Thankfully, you don’t need a computer to set the device up, as mine is broken. Just turn it on, wait about a minute and you’re greeted with a 5 to 10 minute setup wizard. This wizard was easy to use and follow, and it setup all the basics, such as my iTunes account and wii details. It also managed to restore all the apps, plus settings, from my old iPod touch, via he iCloud service. This, I thought, was useful. The interface This thing is very easy to use. Launching an app is a simple as tapping the icon on the home screen. Going back to the home screen is as easy as pressing the circular button on the front of it. You can see open apps by double pressing the home button. The interface is also very smooth. Launching apps is reasonably quick, and there is no lag when scrolling web pages, unlike on my budget android. Using it The apps available for the iPad are very good quality. Unlike Android, the apps seem to have very good quality. They are also very easy to use. Typing on the iPad is also decent. The keyboard is big enough for me to type comfortably on for long periods of time, such as for writing this blog post. It is also reasonably accurate. Conclusion Seems like a reasonable device. It is quick, and easy to use. If you have the money, buy it. Or get a nexus.

Working on a WordPress theme

So I’m working on a WordPress theme. I’m basing it off the default one, and I’m hoping it’ll be an improved version of the default. You can see an early version of it on this site! I’m hoping it’ll include the following features! […] If people have suggestions, feel free to contact me.

New comments system!

I have installed the Disqus commenting system onto the blog! This will greatly improve the comments from the WordPress default. I hope this might encourage people to actually comment on the site.

Recent lack of posts

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I’ve been concentrating more on my exams than I have on the website. So, some quick updates: – Exams nearly over! (yay) – New site theme and I updated everything on my site – My custom theme is postponed for a while. Sorry if anyone actually wanted it. That’s it really. I’ll start posting again once I have stuff to post about.

Gonna make a custom theme

Exactly what the title says – I’m making a custom theme for the website. You can view a preview of it at http://rymate.co.uk/test/ (it’s far from completion)

Blog theme changes

 Well, it turns out a lot of people who visit the website don’t actually get past the home page (and read this blog). So I’ve changed the theme.  I hope you like the new theme! 🙂

Review of the Orange Rio

The Orange Rio is a good mobile for the price, with a good keyboard and easy to navigate menus. But it is let down by the web browser and the email functionality. Rating:3.5 out of 5 stars. […] The phone itself has got some reasonable components. The keyboard is reasonably ok, but the keys are a bit small, so you may find yourself correcting lots of typo’s if you have very large fingers. The navigation keys are okay, just remember that this isn’t a blackberry, so you can’t just slide your finger over it to control the phone. Its also quite obvious that the phone has been made to look like a much more expensive phone, as it has a chrome trim around the phone, and its styled much like a blackberry phone. The glossy finish is however a huge trap for fingerprints, so it gets dirty quite quickly. The back of the phone has a rather pathetic speaker, so I recommend getting some external speakers if you plan on using it for music. It also has a 2MP camera, which is alright, but you won’t win any awards with it. […] The home screen of the phone is reminiscent of a modern smartphone. It has customizable home screen widgets, and it has 3 home screen areas. The widgets are accessed by pulling out the drawer at the left side of the screen. There are also shortcuts that are accessed by pulling out the drawer at the bottom of the screen. […] The main menu of the phone is easy to navigate, and has all the options you’d expect from a phone, such as contacts, messaging and the browser. Menu items are big enough so you don’t click the wrong one when navigating. There is also some menu screen animations for people using the buttons. […] The phone come with some built in apps, most of which are rather poor. It has 2 web browsers built in – a really bad wap browser and Opera Mini 4.2, which cannot be upgraded to the latest version. I feel Orange/ZTE could’ve at leas made the Opera browser upgradable, as that would’ve improved the browsing experience greatly. Also the built in email functionality is very disappointing. Although it did sucessfully setup automatically for my gmail account, it had limits on how many emails it could store at a time, and send/recieve was broken for me. It also came with something called Orange Widgets. It was good in theory, but due to the lack of 3G connectivity, it was too slow to be of any use. Everything else that came with it however worked fine. Downloaded java apps didn’t work nearly as well as the built in apps. They tend to crash a lot, and there is a bug whereby forced text entries (i.e. text popups that have no cancel button) don’t work properly, and the app has to be terminated by pressing the end call button. […] The orange Rio is a pretty good phone. It’s not the best, although it isn’t gonna be the best for only £40. However it is a really good value phone, and I would’ve recommended it to a friend had the Orange Rio II not come out. Although it has its flaws, it is still good. I will therefore give this phone 3.5 out of 5.

Might start adding reviews onto the blog.

As I’m not always gonna have software to release or random news to blog about, I might start doing software/hardware reviews on this blog. Maybe it’ll even attract more readers! I’ll try to do at least one review a month, that way people won’t wonder off.