What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision - MP3

Live from Sony Japan: A whole lot of Roly

Clare Newsome — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:34:00 GMT

Our intrepid editor, Richard Melville, is at Sony HQ in Japan. Before he'd even had time to un-bag his laptop, Sony was shoving musical robots his way. Here's the report, live from his cameraphone, of his encounter with the next-generation Roly...

So, this week, we're spending some time with Sony in Tokyo, exclusively getting inside info on the kit you'll be buying next year. Today we're chatting with the designers behind the Sony Rolly and getting an insight into how the cute portable music robot came to life.

Sony begin by showing a new Rolly, currently only destined for the Japanese market. Linking to your PC, you can program the motion sensitive functions of Rolly via Roll Choreographer, a PC application. It's very complex, with all manner of stats and graphs with an image showing Rolly effects.

Sony refer to the 'arms and shoulders' of the Rolly and are keen to stress and demonstrate the fun nature of the egg shaped player/speaker. By playing Footloose. We giggle a bit, but it's hard not to.

The Rolly software creates motion by analysing song tempo and mood – there's a new 'motion upload' site so you can share your moves with others too. Sony then play a Ricky Martin track, causing the Rolly to dance energetically, flapping its little ears and spinning and flashing.

Then we see delicate ballet moves to softer songs. Finally, it's the science statement: 'Neodymium magnet used in high grade speakers, low key sound reflected from floor'. One thing is clear – the small Rolly certainly produces a bigger sound than you expect.

The new 'pink' model has radio control – you can also control multiple Rollys (up to 7) and make them dance with each other. We hear a bit of Celine Dion while 3 Rollys dance with each other, simulating a bit of robo-love. They interact in cute way and we're reminded of Furbies for some reason.

By linking Rollys, you can play music simultaneously too, adding volume. There's a firmware update for the UK version due, with new 'moves' added. The Rolly is 'not a robot, it's kind of a music brain' says the inventor and Product Producer of Rolly.

He then mentions that the Rolly was conceived during the design process for the robo-dog Aibo, was invented 3 years ago and approved by top bods at Sony instantly. Sales in Japan have been above Sony expectations, though no figures are revealed...

Waterloo sunset for Samsung MP3 player

Richard Melville — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:39:00 GMT

Samsung today unveiled its latest attempt to take on the iPod (and the new Sony Walkman). The venue for the launch event was the London Eye and, get this, the band (or man) doing an acoustic was Get Cape,Wear Cape, Fly (pictured below). See what they did there?

The new MP3 player is called the Q1 Diamond and comes in 4GB to 16GB models, all boasting FM radio, BBC iPlayer compatibility, voice recording and a 2.4inch screen. Samsung have also added DNse 3.0, an audio upscaler which is claimed to ‘restore a missing sound range’ adjusting the EQ depending on the type of music being played.

The sleek black unit plays FLAC, MP3, WMV, OGG and MPEG4 files and if you want to know how it fares against the iPod Nano and Sony Walkman (plus other rivals), you can read a round up of MP3 players in the next issue, out Thursday Dec 11^th.

We’ll update you with release and price details as soon asthey become available. Meanwhile, if you actually wonder what Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly sound like, you can hear them by clicking here.

Keeping sane on the move

Andrew Everard — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:56:00 GMT

Just in case you were wondering how - and indeed whether - I've been staying sane during this protracted Far East trip, the answer is that I'm just about keeping it together.

And that's despite flaky internet connections, haphazard wi-fi, cumulative jet-lag I still haven't quite shaken off and over-officious security guards here at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair who require me to show my press badge each and every time I take a picture.

Playing no small part in keeping me from climbing the walls is this, which is just about the only thing I've acquired on this trip.

It's Yamaha's NX-U02 USB-powered computer speaker, which has opposing stereo drivers, an onboard bass-boost system, technology designed to store power and then release it as music, and no more than volume up/down and mute controls.

It's been sitting on the desk in various homes and hotel rooms for the past week or so, hooked up to the little Advent laptop I've been using for all this bloggage, along with a must-have Philips SCE7640 portable battery pack, which more than doubles the running-time of the laptop for very sensible money.

With that battery and the Yamaha speaker, all the drawbacks of the bargain Advent are answered - and best of all the Yamaha's cable is long enough to stretch to the bedside table, so I can go to sleep listening to radio from 'back home'.

At the moment I've become a late-night addict of Danny Baker's afternoon show on BBC London 94.9, which is playing right now.

That traffic on the M3 sounds nasty...

The Apple launch: LIVE!

Joe Cox — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:24:00 GMT

5.25pm

We're currently soaking up the hustle and bustle at the Apple European launch, jostling for position outside the room where all the action will take place.

We're scheduled for a 6pm kick-off, so stick with us to find out all the Apple news, with rumours of a bigger iPod Touch and longer iPod nano reaching fever pitch...

17.50

The launch starts with hearty back-slapping, celebrating the success of the iPhone 3G and looking at its spread across Europe, reminiscing about iPods past and reminding everyone of the launch of movie downloads in the UK... Pascal Cagni, a fast-talking marketing man from Apple Europe seems like he's working against the clock somewhat...

The stats come thick and fast – in the first ¾ of this fiscal year Apple has seen a 45% growth on 2007... market share growth across the board in iPods and PCs, in all the key countries in Europe... basically, Apple is the Daddy, alright?

Time to give it up for the retailers now. It's not just the online stores, of which they now boast a presence in 16 countries and nine languages, when it comes to old-school, high street stores – there are now 17 in the UK, with a special mention for the most recently opened in High Cross Shopping Centre, Leicester (nice mention for them)...

We'll leave Apple waxing lyrical for now... after all, it's the products we're interested in.

17.59

Our first glimpse of the launch in San Francisco – this is what we're here to see – is a room full of journalists tapping away on laptops... The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is where "the magic will happen"...

18.03

Our first look at the copyright warning... and now it's Steve Jobs. We're off.

18.04

We start with 'the ubiquotous iTunes', now offering over 8.5 million songs, 125,000 podcasts, 30,000 TV shows, 2600 Hollywood movies and over 3000 apps for iPhone and iPod Touch... some 65 million iTunes accounts, too. It's the number one music distributor in the US...

New content... it's HD TV shows. The shows will be a dollar more, $2.99. Watch them on your computer or on Apple TV. NBC shows will be coming back too... so that's The Office (US version), Monk, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica... on SD and HD.

Unsurprisingly... we have a brand new iTunes 8, too. The main points are: HD TV shows, improved accessibility, 'browsing' and 'genius'.

Browsing = look at albums by cover picture, browse your library by the artwork. Same with movies and podcasts.

Genius = "It's pretty cool", says Steve. It allows you to pull together playlists of songs that "work together" with just one click. Listen to a song, press genius button, and a playlist is made for you (you can refresh as many times as you like). Naturally you will also get recommendations straight from the iTunes Store of similar songs. Info being swapped between your library and the iTunes Store – anonymously, of course, they say. Combining all iTunes users' info will allow Genius to get "smarter and smarter" at recommending tunes.

18.12

Steve Jobs gets on possibly the biggest Mac we've ever seen to inturn control the projected image of his desktop. We're basically watching Steve flick through his music collection in the new iTunes8. Which is alright, I guess. Quick HD clip of The Office – the US version. Not exactly telling us much about the quality. Still, the Genius button looks like a neat function.

18.15

Still playing around on his Mac, Steve Jobs has pulled out some Elvis... so a certain member of the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision team will be happy... but we could do with ol' Jobsy moving on to something else now...

18.18

iPod has 73% of market share in US. Big slice of the pie. Over 5000 iPod accessories... 90% of US cars offer iPod integration. Cumulative iPod sales = 160 million. Cor.

And on to new products...

The iPod Classic. It's the end of the thick model. 80GB Classic goes up to 120GB for same price – "That's 30,000 songs in your pocket."

On to the nano... we whizz through the old generation, so we assume a new one is coming... sure enough we have a slimmer, longer, oval-shaped iPod nano. It has the same display – thinnest iPod ever made. Oval shaped unit, certainly pretty slim profile. Steve is a big fan... curved aluminium design, curved glass on display, enhanced user interface, accelerometer from iPhone, Genius function on the nano...

Long menus, more room for album artwork, can be turned sideways iPhone style... landscape mode.

Addition of a pop-up menu when in now playing mode...create a playlist, browse tracks etc as you listen... voice recorder added.

18.25

Oh look, Apple has done 'Shake to Shuffle'... simply shake the nano to skip tracks... we think we've seen this somewhere before...

24 hours battery life for music, four hours of video... on the slimmest iPod ever made. Did they mention the slim thing? We think so...

On to some obligatory environmental guff. The "cleanest, toxic-free iPods we've ever built".

On to colours and we have nano-chromatic... some new colours for nanos, and they certainly look bold and bright.

As for those all important prices... $149 for 8GB model, $199 for 16GB

"OUT NOW"... "BUY BUY BUY"... "CATCH THEM THIS WEEK"... says Steve Jobs.

Also new is a set of headphones, for $29, with a built-in remote control. Also, brand new iPod headphones to sell for $79 – "We think we've finally got it right," says Steve Jobs. At least he knows the freebie ones aren't much cop.

18.32

No time to breathe... it's on to the iPod Touch. New model. Same 3.5in display, but slimmer profile. What's different? Integrated volume control on side, built-in speaker (uh oh – coming to the back of a bus near you). The Genius playlist is on board, too.

36 hours of music and 6 hours of battery life.

$229 – 8GB

$299 – 16GB

$399 – 32GB

...out now

Hmm, so far a little underwhelming with the Touch. There have been little adjustments to the user interface, too... Nike and iPod software built-in, too – no need for the separate receiver, that you previously needed to connect to the nano... well, I use it, so that sounds good to me.

18.39

Lots of talk about the Apps Store, which is built in to theTouch... 100 million downloads so far in the 60 days it's been open.

More talk about Genius... though as Jobs makes live playlists, we start to question quite what connects U2 to Green Day to John Mayer... hey ho, we shall see.

And suddenly we have an Apple product manager playing the brand new game Spore on an iPod Touch. It's all happening. Real Soccer 2009 and Need For Speed will also be coming to the iPod Touch andiPhone... it's “the funnest iPod ever”. Perhaps the Nintendo DS has ruffled a few feathers...

18.47

We're still on the "funnest iPod ever", and there's new 2.1 iPodsoftware – you can upgrade your old Touch.

Also a 2.1 update for the iPhone, which should improve "lots of bugs", improve battery time and stop call drop-off... free from this Friday for all iPhone users.

18.53

Steve Jobs summing up... "We have the best family of iPods and iTunes ever, and we're ready for the holiday season."

And now we have to listen to Jack Johnson, so count yourselves lucky... he's the number one selling male artist on iTunes, don't you know...

iTunes taking over live music?

Richard Melville — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:54:00 GMT

Following a brief residency at London’s ICA gallery last year with iTunes performances from everyone from Paul McCartney to Kasabian, Apple has set up shop in Camden this month.

Every day during July, Camden’s Koko plays host to a mix of artists and bands and, after each performance, live tracks will be available to download from iTunes. You can see the full line up and try to win free tickets here.

The iTunes Live event raises the question: is Apple set to take over live music? Last year Madonna quit her record label and signed a contract with concert promoter Live Nation, combining recording, merchandise and touring rights for all her new material. The theory is that with CD sales dwindling, live performances (and recordings of live performances) are far more lucrative.

The iTunes Live audience is made up entirely of competition winners, meaning every single ticket is free with money made from iTunes downloads of the live performances. Would the global iTunes download of concert tracks make more money than 2000 Koko ticket (and beer) sales? Of course – which begs the question – how big could the ‘free ticket and pay-for download’ industry become?

Next year, could Apple take over Wembley for a week and offer free tickets to a Live 8 style event, then sell the whole day back to concert goers and the rest of the world as a premium iTunes download package? Given the resurgence of live music and importance of touring an album, it’s a real possibility…

iPhone mania – techno hype or genuine innovation?

Andy Clough — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:20:00 GMT

"I just don't get all this fuss about the new iPhone," lamented one of my colleagues in the office late on Friday. "I mean, I get hi-fi, and I really enjoy my home cinema system at home, but a phone's just for making calls isn't it?"

Well Jonny, I'm sorry to contradict you, but if the queues outside the Apple store in Kingston on Saturday morning were anything to go by, you're clearly in the minority. I'd popped into the Bentall Centre to do a spot of shopping (and no, not to buy an iPhone – sadly, I'm on Vodafone) and had to barge past the queue snaking along the first floor to get to the other (non-Apple stores).

And guess which was the most-read item on whathifi.com this weekend? No prizes for discovering it was our exclusive review of Mr Jobs's latest creation.

However, not everything went quite as smoothly as Apple might have hoped. As you'll have read already, our own Tom Parsons got very agitated with the ordering process when trying to get his new 3G iPhone online, and judging by the reports in this weekend's newspapers, early customers were left fuming when the computer system linking Apple's stores to 02's network struggled to cope with the demand.

So why all the hoopla? Well, it seems as if the iPhone is the must-have accessory, credit crunch or no credit crunch, and anything else just won't do.

I'm not an iPhone owner, but I do have an iPod Touch. So, keen to get a flavour of what the new iPhone can do, I downloaded the new iPhone 2.0 software from iTunes (it cost me £5.99) and loaded it onto the Touch. Simplicity itself.

And here's the thing. Once you've upgraded to 2.0, there are some brilliant free applications you can download to your iPhone or Touch. Apple Remote allows you to control the music on your Apple Mac computer or Apple TV using the iPhone/Touch as your remote. It logs on to your home wi-fi network and enables you to select, play, pause, shuffle and skip the songs on your computer from anywhere around the house. Very neat.

I've also downloaded NetNewsWire (an RSS reader) and have a choice of zillions of internet radio stations to listen to via the Tuner app. A free eBay app lets you watch, bid on and search for items in real time, and if you fancy something to entertain you on those long train/plane journeys, Super Monkey Ball is a great puzzle game.

Oh, and did I mention there's another app that means you can keep in touch with all your Facebook friends too?

Of course, the only thing my Touch can't do is make phone calls. So for that I need my Sony Ericsson W580i. But frankly having to take two items with me every time I leave the house is a bore. Looks like I'll have to buy an iPhone after all, Jonny!

Ordering the iPhone 3G - what a nightmare!

Tom Parsons — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:32:00 GMT

Now that 24 hours have passed, it seems a good time to reflect on the - shall we say 'awkward' - iPhone 3G ordering process of yesterday. Like many punters, myself and a couple of other What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision staffers had our bank cards out as soon as the email came in from O2 announcing the commencement of pre-orders.

Little did we know that only one of us would get one, and that an innocent PC keyboard would have met it's demise by lunchtime that same day.

Firstly, there was the website collapsing under the sheer number of visitors attempting to put their order through. The frustration of getting through pages of the order process only to be thwarted at the last moment by an unresponsive page was huge the first time, let alone on the fifth and sixth attempts (this is where one member of staff's annoyance was vented on the aforementioned keyboard).

And then they closed the website, handily offering a number to call if you wanted to order the iPhone. But alas, calling the number simply generated an automated instruction to place your order online - oh dear.

So we waited and waited, and attempted to do some work in between regular clicks of the refresh button, until finally, it was up and running again. After a couple of false starts and page errors, my order was complete - I can expect my iPhone 3G on Thursday...

...or can I? You see, the email I received shortly after placing the order begins with this vaguely worrying sentence: "Your order is still being processed and, if accepted, should be despatched to you within the next 5 days. Any iPhone 3G orders will be delivered on or after 11th July."

So let me get this straight: my order hasn't been "accepted" yet, and if it is "accepted" I can expect to receive it on launch day, or maybe sometime afterwards, like, say, Christmas.

Still, it could be worse - I could have been after a white 16GB model, which Carphone Warehouse and O2 have now said isn't coming into the UK at launch. Or I could be a current customer of O2, and suffered an even more obstructive ordering process as a result. Strange that one, isn't it?

As it is, I'm very lucky - I'm the only What Hi-Fi? Sound And Vision bod to successfully complete an order. I'll be even happier if it actually arrives on Thursday...

What I did on my holidays: the Brennan JB7

Andrew Everard — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:35:00 GMT

I've just had a week off.

So what did I do? All those things I don’t have time to do when reviewing and editing – I listened to lots of music, watched a few movies, did some reading and a spot of writing.

Busman’s holiday? Not quite: when you do this for a living, you don’t get much chance to switch off the work brain and switch on the enjoyment brain, and it takes a while to stop listening to the system and start listening to the music again.

All of which explains why I was pretty pleased when the doorbell rang on Monday morning and a courier was there with a surprisingly small box from Cambridge company 3GA, containing the Brennan JB7 hard-disk music system and a pair of speakers.

It’s a product I’d been meaning to get a listen to for a while, and a chance phone call a couple of weeks back meant I got the chance to slot it in when i had some time off. That meant I could use it as it is meant to be used, freed from the pressure of reviewing deadlines.

And having lived with the Brennan for almost a week now, I can safely say that not only do I ‘get’ what the designer was trying to achieve – I also really like the JB7. So what follows isn’t by any means a review, more a set of user impressions.

Designed for simplicity
The JB7 is the brainchild of Martin Brennan, who those of a geeky persuasion may recognise as a veteran of Sinclair and the Alan Sugar empire, not to mention the co-designer of the world’s first 64-bit games computer, the Atari Jaguar.

A Cambridge physics graduate, Brennan had long had the idea for the JB7 on the back-burner: the pitch for the unit says that “Ever since CDs were invented Martin wanted a CD player that would hold his entire CD collection.

“He wanted something as simple to use as a light switch but at the same time something that would let him find a particular track without leaving the armchair - and he wanted something that could rattle the windows when he was in the mood.”

The result is a small, simple to use and very blue machine designed to take up minimal space and yet deliver convincing performance. You probably own larger hardback novels than this – it’s just under 5cm tall and 22cm wide – and simplicity is assured by just four large buttons and one control knob.

Several versions of the JB7 are available: it starts from £309 delivered with a 40GB hard-disk, and goes up to £359 for the 160GB of the review unit. Add in the little Brennan BSP50 two-way speakers – yours for £59 a pair, and the total package I received could be on your doorstep for £418.

There’s a slot-loading CD drive for ripping discs, a USB slot for copying files to/from memory devices or iPods, or to connect an external hard drive, a full-function credit-card remote control and 3.5mm sockets for line in/out and headphones. Oh, and the small matter of onboard 2x30W amplification, meaning you really only need to add the speakers and you’re in business.

All the things it doesn’t do...
Playing the ‘anticipate the comments’ game, the Brennan JB7 doesn’t have any network capability (let alone wi-fi), won’t store video, and won’t check your email, play internet radio or let you prepare a PowerPoint presentation while you listen to music. And it doesn’t update its 2.4-million album database automatically – you just request an update disc occasionally from the manufacturer.

And true, it ‘only’ has a 160GB hard drive, whereas I know before you tell me that you could easily buy a terabyte or two for what? Five bob or so?

What’s more, it uses MP3 compression, although you can also store discs in uncompressed form if required. At the standard 192kbps rate – you can also choose 128k or 320k – that means the 40GB version will store 400 albums, or 50 uncompressed, while the 160GB will hold 1600 albums, or 210 uncompressed.

Why just MP3? Over to Martin Brennan again: “JB7 is about convenience and accessibility so we tend not to focus on compression types and bit rates – I design the low level software that deals with inverse cosine transforms, Huffman codes, psychoacoustic masking and all that kind of stuff, but when I listen to music I don’t want to deal with all that – I just want my music easy to get to.

“We do have a simple in-house high speed lossless compression algorithm that provides a modest level of lossless compression that can be performed on-the-fly as CDs are loaded. We decided against using it in this product because it wouldn't deliver any real benefit to the majority of our customers.”

And just so the hi-fi purists aren’t left out of the ‘yes, but’ game, the JB7 has springclip speaker terminals, and all the rear panel ins and outs are on 3.5mm stereo jacks, not RCA phonos.

...And what it does
This system couldn’t be any simpler to use. You stick in a CD, and the unit asks you if you want to copy it to the hard disk. Press the master control knob to agree and it looks up the disc database, and gives you the details – sometimes you have to scroll through a couple. Find the right one, press again, and off it goes – meanwhile, you can play something already stored. At the end of the rip process, the disc is ejected. See here for a video explaining all.

Finding music is similarly simple: you can search by track name or album title/artist, play whole albums or let the player run through everything stored. Again, this video explains how it’s done.

There are also seven playlists available, named after the colours of the rainbow, and into which you can program tracks. Each list has its own key on the remote – just press and hold to add a track.

Finally, you can also transfer tracks into an MP3 player – there’s a video showing how to do this, too.

I’m going to leave the serious ‘how it sounds’ stuff to the proper review, either here or in the magazine, but suffice it to say here I’ve had a lot of fun listening to the system over the past week, both through the optional speakers – which are more than respectable for £60 – and using a 3.5mm to phono adapter to connect it to my main system.

Even at the default 192kbps compression the system sounds good for all-day music, and sounds to me like it would be a very acceptable solution for a second system, a study or even a bedroom. I’ve had some fun with it blasting out everything from dance music to Elgar, and from Pink Floyd to a budget Ian Dury package I picked up in the supermarket the other night. At a fiver for a two-disc set, it was a no-brainer, and worth it for the moment the chap next door asked me what that ‘Ada’ song I was playing was all about!

Initial impressions are ‘mission accomplished’ on this one: it’s unfeasibly compact and neat, so beautifully thought through that it’s a breeze to use, and meets the design criteria in terms of the performance/usability trade-off. And above all, it’s huge fun, and the sort of product that’ll have you saying to friends “come and have a look at this.”

It’s going to be a hard one to give up when the time comes.

Who wants their music on a phone? iDon't!

Andrew Everard — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:29:00 GMT

As regular readers may know, I’m not the biggest fan of the Apple iPod.

Maybe it’s because I tend to do my commuting by car, but I’ve never really ‘got’ the appeal of having all my music in my pocket, ready for instant access.

Or maybe it’s because I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that music is something requiring you sit down and give your entire attention, not to form the backdrop to something else.

After all, you wouldn’t carry versions of great paintings around with you, just to have a swift glance now and then, would you? Music while you work?

No thanks – I find it to be a serious distraction.

That’s probably why all the news about the new iPhone – it’s now less expensive, and has ‘3G’ capability, among other features – leaves me rather cold. Yes, I carry a mobile phone around with me – it’s a company one, so I kind of have to – but the idea of using it to browse the internet while listening to music and making a call seems just too much.

And however exciting the touch-screen interface may be to the committed Apple fans, surely having to haul the thing out of your pocket just to change the volume level is more or less inviting a mugging in some of the more dangerous parts of the world?

Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll see queues outside Apple stores as the product goes on sale; after all, the day the new iPhone was announced the radio was awash with people talking about the product in terms roughly akin to the Second Coming.

But I’ll stick to phones that are phones, and music as it's meant to be enjoyed.

In calm, and quiet.

NEWS: Grundig puts a dock in a bucket

Andrew Everard — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:24:50 GMT

Just the thing for the beach, particularly boisterous garden barbecues or indeed anglers who want to scare the fish once the close season finishes on Monday, this is Grundig's £100 Emanate.

It's a weatherproof, splashproof iPod speaker system, complete with rechargeable batteries and a lock-down see-through cover for your personal player, and any similarity to an ice-bucket is entirely coincidental.

It comes with controls around the dock, and also a remote handset, and has a mains adapter for recharging. Other facilities include a 3.5mm input for other MP3 players.

It has a 2x15W output – see what we mean about scaring the wildlife? – and stands 24cm tall. It's available in black or white, direct from Grundig's online shop.

Technorati Tags: Grundig, iPod speakers, weatherproof

NEWS: Motorola's turn for movie downloads

Joe Cox — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:34:13 GMT

Following last week’s news that Apple was launching its movie download service in the UK, Motorola has followed suit by announcing a similar service for mobile phones.

The mobile phone manufacturer has announced a deal with Paramount Digital Entertainment to offer movie downloads. Pricing for films ranges from £5.99 to £8.99 and include titles such as Mission Impossible 3, School of Rock and The Italian Job.

The movies will work on handsets that support OMA 2.0 and H.264 video codecs, including the company’s new MOTO Z10 handset.

The service will initially be launching in the UK, with Germany, Italy, Spain and France following soon. Hop over to www.hellomoto.co.uk and see what’s on offer.

Technorati Tags: apple, MOTO Z10, Motorola, Paramount

NEWS: Second-gen iPhone adds 3G, navigation - and will cost from $199

Andrew Everard — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:47:00 GMT

We've just received the report from our man in the States, and the second generation iPhone really is coming.

It adds 3G capability, has built in satellite navigation, and will sell for just $199 worldwide for the 8GB version.

It goes on sale on July 11, and will be much more widely available than the old one - it'll be on sale in 70 countries over the next few months.

Some of the stats of the new version include better battery life
- Standby is 300 hours
- 2G talktime 10 hours (up from 8)
- 3G talktime 5 hours (rivals have 3 hours apparently)
- Browsing - 5-6 hours
- Video 7 hours
- Audio - 24 hours.

The new iPhone also claims much faster downloading of web pages, as Tom Dunmore of Stuff magazine reported from the announcement in San Francisco.

it was shown downloading a graphics-heavy web page, this taking "21s in 3G and 59s on EDGE. Wi-Fi was 17 seconds. The iPhone is 36% faster than the Nokia N96 in downloading a website."

UK availability is yet to be announced for the phone, but some stores are apparently already suggesting August 8th.

UPDATED: Looks like it's coming to the UK on July 11, according to some online reports.

"Also on July 11, iPhone 3G will be available in 21 other countries:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom."

The 16GB version will sell for $299, with Apple again suggesting that's a worldwide maximum price.
 

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone 3G

NEWS: TEAC iPod dock aims for budget appeal

Andrew Everard — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:52:47 GMT

TEAC's £100 SP-X2i is claimed to be 'arguably the neatest reasonably priced speaker system for iPod on the market', thanks in no small part to its use of NXT flat-panel speaker technology.

The stylish look is maintained by the use of a hideaway subwoofer, and the dock itself will accommodate almost all iPods apart from very early models and the Shuffles, but even these can be connected using the system's auxiliary inputs.

The dock also has composite and S-video outputs, with suitable cables provided, and both 3.5mm and RCA phono inputs. It'll charge iPods while they're in place, and comes complete with a remote control handset.

The speaker system uses 25mm NXT exciters driving aluminium honeycomb main speakers, and a conventional 10cm driver in the subwoofer. The power output is 5W per channel, with 15W for the subwoofer, and the main left/right speakers can be wall-mounted.

Technorati Tags: iPod dock, iPod speakers, TEAC

NEWS: Sleek Audio serves up customisable headphones

Andrew Everard — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:38:42 GMT

With virtually all in-ear headphones, what you hear is what you get. If they don’t sound right, you either lump it or buy a better pair.

But things are about to change. American company Sleek Audio has just launched its SA6. These in-ear, sound-isolating headphones allow for some serious tinkering.

They can be custom tuned using the company’s Variable Equalisation System (VQ). Simply put, the ‘phones come with interchangeable filter tips that can influence both high and low frequencies. You can alter the sound to suit your musical taste.

Sleek Audio is also looking to launch a wireless version in Autumn ’08, but existing owners won't have to buy brand new headphones.

You can detach the cable from the actual headphone body so, in theory, you’ll be able swap it for a new cable fitted with a Bluetooth receiver.

Interested? The SA6s cost £140 and are available at www.hifiheadphones.co.uk. Stay tuned for a full review in the September issue of What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, earphones, headphones, iPod, MP3, Sleek Audio

NEWS: Cowon’s D2 MP3 player is a right touch

Joe Cox — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:49:11 GMT

The iPod Touch was a fantastic advert for touchscreen technology. We couldn’t resist a good grope every time one was in the office.

Let’s hope the new, 16GB version of Cowon’s D2 MP3 player can have a similar effect.

It features a 2.5in QVGQ touchscreen and is compatible with MP3, OGG, WMA, ASF, FLAC and WAV audio files, not to mention MPEG-4 video files.

There’s a built-in FM tuner, TV output and line input for voice recording.

And, with a claimed 52hours battery life it contains almost as much juice as a Del Monte fruit factory.

As well as the 16GB version (£160), the D2 is also available in 4GB (£100) and 8GB capacities, but the integrated SDHC memory card slot means you can potentially expand this to 32GB.

Visit www.advancedmp3players.co.uk for more information.

Technorati Tags: Cowon, Cowon D2, D2, iPod, MP3, MP3 player