Alexis Philippides

Email: alexis@stuff-review.com

Profile: Alexis is the founder of Stuff-Review and the primary editor. He's a blogger, an engineer and a web entrepreneur. Alexis has been building and managing websites for over 12 years. An eternal sufferer from gadget lust, he tries to keep his passion in check by writing overly lengthy pieces on technology and consumer electronics. Soft spots include digital cameras, high-end audio separates and portable devices. At times, his electrical engineering background peers out in technically convoluted articles, but otherwise he provides down-to-earth reporting.

Latest posts by Alexis Philippides:

Samsung Galaxy Note 5.3-inch smartphone benchmarked, deemed worthy (video)

News

September 6, 2011 at 4:33 am

We’ve already expressed our excitement for Samsung’s mammoth new phone, the 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED Galaxy Note, in our previous coverage. Well the good folks over at Techblog.gr got the chance to run the Quadrant benchmark on the device at the IFA show floor and got some unsurprisingly impressive results.

The Note runs on a dual-core Samsung 1.4GHz processor and managed to score 3,624 on Quadrant, ever so slightly better than even then 1.2GHz Samsung Galaxy S II score, putting it ahead of every other Android smartphone in terms of processing performance.

It’s important to note, however, that the Galaxy Note features a screen resolution of 1280×800 pixels, meaning that it pushes 2.7-times for pixels than the Samsung Galaxy S II (with resolution 800×480). That alone makes the benchmark result even more impressive. You can see the benchmark for yourselves at around the 4.5-minute mark on the video after the break

Of course, performance doesn’t come cheap, the Samsung Galaxy Note is expected to hit Scandinavian shores — Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark — first, in November, with a price tag of around 670-750 euros ($1,000). The phone is then expected to arrive in the UK a the start of 2012 but no US availability in the horizon yet.
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Google Doodle celebrates Freddie Mercury moving and singing in 8-bit style

News

September 5, 2011 at 11:21 am

Freddie Mercury, 70-80’s rock idol and lead singer of the Queen, would have been 65 today. Despite dying young, at the age of 45, he left a rich legacy as a songwriter, with songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions”; even greater however is his legacy as a live performer and entertainer.

Queen guitarist Brian May, wrote on Google’s official blog: Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though physically he is not here, his presence seems more potent than ever. Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams.

True to form, Google has designed an animated Doodle, which can be seen on its front search page today. We nominate it as the most entertaining Google Doodle yet.
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Sony’s HMZ-T1 OLED 3D head-mounted display is a 750-inch screen in your home

News

September 5, 2011 at 9:19 am

Sony has been hitting home runs with its new tiny high resolution OLED displays. The company’s latest announcement is a futuristic headset, the HMZ-T1, hosting a pair of 0.7-inch OLED displays. Each display, one for each eye, is capable of a 720p HD resolution (1280 x 720), offering full 3D support for movies and gaming with zero crosstalk — that is, each eye will be seeing a totally different image, unlike current 3D TV technology. Sony is claiming that the experience is similar to being in a movie theater looking at a 750-inch screen from 20 meters away.

OLED panels offer very fast refresh rates, so fast moving action is a non-issue for them, while contrast ratios are also very good because OLEDs can be bright and colorful but at the same time offer deep blacks. Sony has paired the displays with a newly developed optical lens and with 45-degree wide horizontal viewing angles, you can imagine the level of stomach-turning immersion this headset can provide.
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iPhone 5 available first week of October from Best Buy, pre-orders sooner?

News

September 4, 2011 at 12:14 pm

BGR has received and internal document from a source claiming to be a Best Buy insider detailing preparatory work for an iPhone 5 launch in the first week of October. The document also mentions the iPhone 5 launching for Sprint, though if you ask anyone from Sprint we’re sure they would not want to talk about it. The “leaked” document also suggests a pre-order period, which would mean that the iPhone 5 will be announced very shortly, although Apple hasn’t yet sent invites for the usual launch event.
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Amazon Kindle 7-inch Tablet, customized Android and $250 price tag

Editorials Featured News

September 4, 2011 at 6:57 am

There has been a lot of noise around the internet, over the past few weeks, about an upcoming Amazon tablet which will be competitively priced and supposed to finally give the iPad some much-needed competition. TechCrunch’s Siegler blogged yesterday that he has seen and handled the device, which will be a 7-inch tablet simply named Amazon Kindle, but unlike Amazon’s other Kindle devices this one will feature a normal, rather than E-Ink, color touch-screen.

It will run a very customized version of Android with a user interface similar to what we are used to from Amazon, dark, blue with bunches of orange. Content, such as books, movies and apps is presented in a carousel format, à la iTunes Cover Flow.

The device is said to have a form factor similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook but no cameras whatsoever and no physical buttons on the front. The back has a rubber feel and the speakers are on the top of the Kindle tablet, if you are holding it in landscape mode, and the power button at the bottom. Based on the information provided, we’ve made a quick mock-up (see above) of what the Amazon Kindle tablet could look like.

The 7-inch tablet is said to retail for $250 and Amazon is targeting November for launch, while it’s ironing out the software side.

So here is what we know:
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Toshiba’s FlashAir SDHC memory card with embedded wireless LAN can transfer back and forth over thin air

News

September 3, 2011 at 3:00 am

We really like technology that makes things easier and frees us from arduous tasks. There is something extremely frustrating, after a hard day of shooting, to have to take your SD card out of the camera and plug it into your computer to upload your pictures, or god forbid fishing out a USB cable for your camera. That’s why we love the whole concept of Eye-Fi‘s wireless SD cards, which send photos directly from your camera over the air to your computer or Wi-Fi enabled devices.

Toshiba thought, well what happens if you actually want to send pictures or other files the other way around, and that’s how the creation of their FlashAir SDHC card came about. As Toshiba envisions it, this will enable two-way transfers between cards, and the devices hosting them, using embedded wireless LAN technology for tasks such as sharing photos between two cameras or pulling photos to your camera from photo sharing sites. Toshiba is also claiming, lower power consumption than other cards with similar functions.
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HTC Titan 4.7-inch and HTC Radar 3.8-inch Windows Phone 7.5 Mango smartphones announced (video)

News

September 2, 2011 at 5:25 am

HTC has made a titanic, but expected, announcement; its first pair of WP7.5 “Mango” smartphones. The first and biggest phone is the appropriately named HTC Titan (a.k.a. HTC Eternity). With a 4.7-inch Super-LCD screen (800 x 480) this is HTC biggest phone yet and actually the largest-screened Windows Phone ever — it is larger than the HTC Sensation but lacks the 960×540 resolution, probably because WP7.5 will still have a maximum resolution limit of 800×480.

Obviously, the bigger news here is Microsoft’s updated operating system. With over 500 claimed new features, which will put Microsoft back in the catching-up game to Android and iOS. The Titan however is no slouch with a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. We doubt that the 1600mAh battery will be enough to power this beast — but maybe HTC will follow-up with a ‘Special Edition‘ later, we’re being ironic of-course. The phone will weight 160g (5.6 oz) and the measurements, which you can see beautifully displayed in the image gallery after the break, are 131.5 x 70.7 x 9.9mm (5.18 x 2.78 x 0.39 inches).
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Samsung announces Galaxy Note: HD 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen and built-in stylus

News

September 1, 2011 at 3:19 pm

Samsung has just announced a new Android device, the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, which challenges our perceptions of what is a phone. This is the first smart phone to go past the 5-inch barrier, the Dell Steak featured a 5-inch screen but it has now been discontinued. The Galaxy Note however doesn’t feature just any type of screen but a surely gorgeous 1280×800 (that’s 285ppi) Super AMOLED (not Plus) screen together with a stowaway pressure sensitive stylus, named S Pen, which can be used for drawing and note taking. In fact Samsung will include a number of applications which will take advantage of the S Pen while also releasing an SDK for third-party developers.

The phone will need a lot of power to drive that kind of resolution, and that will be brought by an unidentified Samsung dual-core 1.4GHz processor powered by a large 2,500mAh battery. Despite the size, the phone will weigh 178g (6.3 oz) and measure 9.65mm (0.38 inches) thick.

The Galaxy Note will run Android 2.3 together with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. Front and back cameras of-course with 2 and 8-megapixels resolution each, with the rear camera able to shoot 1080p video. The Note will support HSPA+ but we are hearing it will also be LTE-capable. We know that everyone will say its too big for a phone, but we like, no, we really like big screened phones, and we’d love to get this baby into our hands; hopefully we won’t look too silly talking to a big piece of slab.

Video after the break.
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Fujifilm FinePix X10 premium point-and-shoot camera announced

News

September 1, 2011 at 6:12 am

Fujifilm has just announced the FinePix X10 (previously rumored as the X50), a new retro looking point-and-shoot camera, which can confidently claim to be the younger brother to the X100. The X10 goes directly in the category of high performing compact zoom cameras, together with the Olympus XZ-1, Panasonic LX5, Nikon P7100 and Canon S95. The X10 will feature the largest sensor size for a point-and-shoot, 2/3-inch 12-megapixel EXR-CMOS sensor offering sensitivity up to ISO 12,800 — the other P&S’ above have sensor sizes of around 1/1.8-inch. Fuji has paired this with a 28-122mm (4x zoom) f/2-2.8 Fujinon lens featuring a newly developed optical stabilization mechanism.
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HTC Eternity and HTC Omega Windows Phone 7.5 Mango specs leaked

News

September 1, 2011 at 3:58 am

You may be aware that the IFA trade show is taking place in Berlin right now, and HTC has an event going on today. Well detailed specs of two new Windows Phone 7.5 Mango phones have leaked which are certain to make their presence fully know soon.

First is the HTC Eternity on the right, with a 4.7-inch WVGA Super LCD screen and single-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor. The phone has an 8-megapixel back and 1.3-megapixel front-facing cameras, dual LED flash and 720p movie mode. The handset has ample 16GB internal storage and a 1,650mAh battery.

The smaller 3.8-inch HTC Omega will run on the same 1.5GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and support for 14.2Mbps HSDPA networks.
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Sony NEX-5N already in stock at Amazon US, coming to Amazon UK on September 5, 2011

News

August 31, 2011 at 5:42 pm

We just though you should know that Sony’s new mid-specced NEX-5N digital camera is already in stock at Amazon US, selling at around $750 (above the $700 Amazon pre-order price), for those who can’t wait to get it in their hands. Having a peak over at Amazon UK, the camera is set to be released on September 5th, so that could be an indication that the official US launch date is not far off either.

As a refresher, the NEX-5N has a new 16.1-megapixel APS-C sensor and can shoot up to an ISO 25,600. Autofocus has been improved and shutter lag has come down to 20ms. The NEX-5N has slimmed by 15mm from its predecessor and can manage full 1080p HD video with ease. We think the NEX-5N is a great choice for its ease of use — it now features a touch screen panel — low ISO performance and really good video.

We’re sure your are going to appreciate this video.

HTC Sensation Special Edition with bigger battery, 1.5GHz clock-rate and Beats by Dr. Dre

News

August 31, 2011 at 4:19 pm

HTC is getting ready to release a special edition of its Sensation smartphone. The new version of the HTC Sensation will come with a set of Beats by Dr. Dre earphones and feature technology that will supposedly work with the headset to optimize sound quality. HTC had announced its partnership with Beats Electronics earlier this month and this will be the fruits of their labor.

The bigger news, in our opinion, is that the HTC Sensation Special Edition will run the Snapdragon Qualcomm 8260 dual-core processor at a higher clock-rate of 1.5GHz (instead of 1.2GHz). While the biggest relief for all will be the higher capacity 1,730mAh battery up from 1,520mAh. The Sensation definitely needed a boost in terms of battery life and users have been resorting to third-party OEM batteries claiming to offer higher capacity. Hopefully the new battery will be available to all HTC Sensation owners, not just for the Special Edition, although you already know many ways of keeping you phone charged on the go.
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Sony Alpha A77, A65 and NEX-7 ‘magical’ OLED EVF panel

News

August 30, 2011 at 6:25 pm

It’s difficult to hide that we are enamored with Sony’s new line of digital cameras. A big part of the allure of both the Alpha A77 and A65 cameras and the NEX-7, is the new OLED electronic viewfinder (EVF).

EVFs have the advantage of allowing you to see exactly the same image your camera’s sensor sees and the image it will eventually record, together with any effects, while providing a host of useful information. They also allow manufactures to do away with the optical mirror and create slimmer cameras. Their disadvantages however are that, they are usually not as large or contrasty as optical viewfinders, they are obviously made out of pixels with a finite resolution and might find it hard tracking fast moving action.
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Wacom Inkling Digital Pen makes you want to draw

News

August 30, 2011 at 4:24 pm

Wacom, makers of fine digitizing tablets, have just revealed a new digital pen for those who regularly put pen on paper to draw but still want their designs in digital form. We’re already loving the idea and wish we could actually draw, but lucky creatives than can, will be able to just use their favorite woody surface, attach to it the a small clippable USB receiver and draw using the Inkling digital pen.

Anyone who has toyed with the idea of drawing on a computer must have come across the name Wacom. Wacom has been making high quality digitizing tablets for decades. However drawing on a tablet with a virtual pen creates a disconnect to those who are used to drawing on physical media. Here comes the Inkling, the idea is that it uses ink like a regular pen, and unlike other similar pens like the Livescribe, it doesn’t require special media. You simply draw as you would, with the instant satisfaction of seeing your ideas come to life on paper while the USB receiver, attached at the top of your favorite media, captures your drawing together with 1024 levels of pressure. You can even add different layers as you draw.
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