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:

Vintage 6mm f/2.8 fisheye Nikkor lens can see behind itself, sells for $163,000

News

April 29, 2012 at 9:09 am

A lens that can see behind itself? That’s an interesting proposition. This 220-degree viewing angle fisheye Nikkor lens was presented by Nikon at Photokina in 1970. Despite its amazing fisheye capabilities the lens is still fast at f/2.8, a property that’s due to its massive construction, with 12 elements in 9 groups that will dwarf any camera attached to it.

We’re sure the engineers that created this mammoth lens had a great time watching people being awed by this monster lens. The 6mm f/2.8 fisheye measures 24cm in diameter and 17cm long, weighing 5.2Kg (11.5 pounds). Its production started in 1972 and was only made available as a special order for scientific, industrial and special effects applications for shooting portraits and architecture.
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Sony Alpha A37 and NEX-F3 shown in photos, receive 16.1-megapixel sensor and tilting displays

News

April 29, 2012 at 2:56 am

Sony is refreshing the lower end of its Alpha DSLT and NEX mirrorless cameras, with the Alpha A35 and NEX-C3 slowly disappearing from retail. The official announcement of the new generation cameras, the Alpha A37 and NEX-F3, is said to come on May 17th 2012 however, an Indonesian publication attended a Sony event in Jakarta and lo and behold, Sony had the still-announced pair of cameras on display.
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MIT shows wonder glass that is glare-free, self-cleaning and anti-fogging

News

April 28, 2012 at 4:49 am

We’re already moving to a world dominated by amazing high-resolution displays, like the ones in the 3rd generation iPad, retina screened smartphones and 4K and QFHD televisions. To protect these displays and make them nice to touch, and look at, we cover them with glass. Unfortunately, glass comes with an annoying property, it reflects light, making it hard to see behind them under light.

Well, a group of researchers at MIT has managed to strip glass from glare, making it practically unrecognizable as glass to the eye. If that wasn’t enough, the new multifunction glass is self-cleaning and anti-fogging. The video below shows how water droplets simply bounce off form the glass surface.
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Jean Michelle Jarre inspired AeroPad Two iPad speaker dock is the most futuristic yet

News

April 27, 2012 at 4:14 pm

It’s pretty hard to get excited about an iPod, iPhone and iPad speaker dock anymore but this one is special, as special as the man who is behind the company that makes them.

The AeroPad Two is a massive 86 x 30 cm (33.9 x 11.8 inches) machine that can pump out your tunes through four 30-watt speakers, with the speakers in each pair positioned across each other, and an 80-watt subwoofer; that’s a lot of air-moving power!

It has a 30-pin dock connector and enough space to dock your iPad, or otherwise it would be willing to dwarf your iPod, iPod Touch and iPhone.
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New leaked Galaxy S3 photo and manual collaborate to Galaxy Nexus-style device with home button

News

April 27, 2012 at 9:01 am

Another day, another Samsung Galaxy S3 (a.k.a. next Galaxy) smartphone rumor. We’ve already seen a slightly varying set of specs and some widely different purported photos of the Galaxy S III, including ones where the the phone’s insides were supposedly in a dummy case.

Today is the first time that we have two collaborating pieces of evidence. First at the top you can see a photo that was received by PhoneArena from an anonymous tipster. The first eyesore is the physical home button and fixed options/multitasking and back buttons, which go against the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich playbook.
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Google X Lab founder takes photo with Project Glass, pretends to upload it on Google+

News

April 26, 2012 at 4:21 pm

We’ve already seen Google’s Project Glass augmented reality glasses in public, worn by Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a charity event, however this is the first time that we are seeing them on video and supposedly in action.

Google X Lab’s (the company’s incubator of fantastical futuristic products) founder and head, Sebastian Thrun, was at an interview with Charlie Rose, wearing his team’s latest prototype. This is of course a pair of Project Glass eyewear. On their previous appearance, Sergey didn’t actively use the headset, but Sebastian has been a bit more forthcoming.
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Samsung Galaxy S III turns up in benchmark with dual-core Exynos 4212 SoC besting the best of Android

News

April 25, 2012 at 5:14 pm

Samsung has managed to build a lot of anticipation for its next Galaxy S smartphone, the often-speculated Galaxy S III, forcing us to bunch up the almost daily rumors into lengthy weekly pieces.

With the London Unpacked event now only one week away, we’re starting to see even more evidence of the new device. It has already popped up in videos, wearing a dummy case though, and in a couple of benchmarks.

This latest leak however is pretty tasty as, if proven right, it might have given us a full list of specs for the Galaxy S III. The smartphone has now popped-up in the popular AnTuTu benchmark and has even managed to top the charts, beating the quad-core Tegra 3 powered Asus Transformer Prime tablet.
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Sad panda: HTC will favor thinness over battery life

News

April 23, 2012 at 4:12 am

We were truly hoping that 2012 would be the year of all-day battery life for our gadgets. There was even good indication for that following Samsung’s commitment to the same goal and the improved efficiency of the latest generation mobile SoCs, like the NVIDIA Tegra 3, with up to 61 percent lower power consumption than Tegra 2.

As we’ve said before, manufacturers have to strike a good balance between battery life and portability, avoiding to get into the extreme thinness wars. Unfortunately however HTC seems to have been hanging out with the wrong crowd.
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A future with gadgets made of asteroid-mined minerals and Google’s bosses’ plan for space domination

News

April 22, 2012 at 3:36 pm

What do Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, Microsoft alumnus Charles Simonyi, billionaire Ross Perot Jr. and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis have in common? Apparently an aspiration in mining asteroids, and making even more money of course.

After conquering the world-wide web, your phone and your smartphone, the Google duo has outer space ambitions and in their plan they will be joined, among others, by the above named billionaires and visionaries and a few former NASA employees.

The group of investors have formed a new company, named Planetary Resources that will be unveiled this coming Tuesday by Peter Diamandis and former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki. Planetary resources said in a short press release:
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Samsung Galaxy S III rumors weekend overview: hands-on video, specs and did Amazon Germany spill the beans?

News

April 22, 2012 at 10:02 am

Not a week passes without a couple of new rumors and purported leaks of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S flagship smartphone. Though Samsung hasn’t confirmed its name yet, we’ll assume for now that it will be called the Galaxy S III, following the naming convention of its predecessors.

So here’s a summary of this week’s rumors in an easy to digest form.

GSM Galaxy Nexus IMM76I Android 4.0.4 update may fix your connectivity woes, here’s how to get it now

News

April 22, 2012 at 4:00 am

When finally the Android 4.0.4 IMM76D update reached GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus owners, some reported occasional GSM connectivity issues and signal loss. So after only a couple of weeks, Google is already pushing an incremental over-the-air update to Galaxy Nexus devices that maintains the Android version at 4.0.4 but improves the build number slightly at IMM76I.

As usual Google isn’t mentioning what this update improves and fixes, but users that have received the update are reporting that it does indeed fix the connectivity bug. Reports are also coming in that there could be some other minor fixes as well, but nothing confirmed yet.
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Valve’s Handbook for New Employees: managers worldwide tremble

News

April 21, 2012 at 6:19 pm

We got a taste of what it’s like to work at Valve, the successful game software company behind Half-Life, Portal but also Steam, last week through a blog post by developer Michael Abrash. Though this latest news doesn’t add anything to the company’s wearable computing research plans, it does give us another glimpse inside the company and another dose of envy.

To refresh, Valve has no hierarchy, as illustrated by the original post above, which might be hard to comprehend at first but is an incredibly smart, and awesome, idea. You see Valve, as most tech companies should be, is all about creativity and ingenuity that risks getting buried under typical company structures. So to get new joiners up to speed to its idiosyncrasies, Valve has created a “handbook”, which has now been leaked, and you can have a look at here.
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Display shootout: HTC One X vs. Galaxy Nexus (vs. iPad 3) screen comparison

Featured The Lab

April 18, 2012 at 6:02 pm

The two hottest Android smartphones right now are the new 4.7-inch HTC One X and the incumbent 4.65-inch Galaxy Nexus that we have reviewed in-depth here. A key hardware distinction between the two is the use of different display technologies. Both have a 720p resolution, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus features a PenTile Matrix Super AMOLED display while the HTC One X has a standard RGB Super IPS LCD2 screen. You can read more about the differences between Samsung’s PenTile Matrix technology and standard RGB here.

Now, we can easily argue that the display is probably the single most important hardware feature of any mobile device so we’ll be taking an in-depth look between the two Android smartphones. We also have a 3rd generation iPad handy with its amazingly sharp and most importantly color accurate display, so we’ll occasionally be throwing it in our comparison for good measure.
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What are 4K, QFHD and Ultra HD resolutions?

Guides

April 17, 2012 at 4:44 pm

To say that full HD, that’s 1080p resolution, has completely taken over would be a lie, and already there’s a lot of name dropping of new higher resolution standards called 4K, QFHD (Quad HD) and more recently Ultra HD.

We’ve already seen new and upcoming home cinema projectors, TV sets and computer monitors touting the new standards, while camera gear able to shoot at these resolutions are being pushed to professionals.

So what is 4K and QFHD resolution and what’s in it for you beyond a marketing scheme to make you buy new gear.
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