Author: Juan Carlos Bagnell

Juan has been obsessed with consumer electronics since before computers had GUI’s. Out of college he worked on a JIT computing contract which supported DOE facilities in New Mexico. He’s been featured on numerous podcasts and radio shows lending his tech insights. You can also find him in LA directing voice over actors and producing spoken word recording.
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Review: Nokia Play 360 Bluetooth Wireless Speaker (with audio quality test samples)

nokia play 360 bluetooth speaker nfc pairing android windows phone somegadgetguyNokia generally does a fantastic job of creating a whole ecosystem for their products. Getting ahead of the tech curve by releasing cases, covers, headphones, and speakers alongside their smartphone offerings.

One such example is the Nokia Play 360 portable speaker, which not only offers up Bluetooth wireless connectivity, but the ability to pair over NFC. While it features some cutting edge tech, how does the speaker actually sound?

Let’s take a listen!

Shop for the Play 360 on Amazon.

Listen to Previous Speaker Tests:
HMDX Jam Classic
Motorola Roadster II Speakerphone
Jawbone JAMBOX

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T-Mobile takes “UnCarrier” Smartphone Data worldwide for free

t-mobile worldwide dataI love watching companies actually compete.

T-Mobile is our little-engine-that-could fourth place carrier, and over the last year they almost got bought by AT&T. When that fell through we’ve seen a plucky little organization work to really shake up how we buy smartphones and service plans. It’s been fun, and their attempts at market disruption have actually forced the bigger players to adapt.

Now T-Mobile is unleashing an incredible upgrade to their data plans: free data in over 100 countries.

If you travel a lot, this has probably affected you. I’ve had several friends return from trips abroad with either huge cellphone bills or recounting frustrating stories of trying to use local carriers short term. T-Mo’s new offerings aim to end-run around that problem.

Without doing anything, without signing a new agreement or getting a new fee tacked on to your bill, T-Mo customers on a Simple Choice plan now have free unlimited data around the world. There’s a list of participating countries on the T-Mo site, so I’m not going to write it out here. If you were planning on backpacking across Europe though, chances are pretty good you’ll be covered.

Now what KIND of data you can expect is still somewhat up for grabs. I’d be surprised if T-Mo has worked out licensing agreements in each of these countries to provide super-fast 3G and 4G unlimited connections. In many areas you’ll probably be rocking EDGE, but that’s still plenty of bandwidth to get your email, look up map info, and check your socials.

Along side free data, free texting is included, and calls are 20 cents a minute, which isn’t too shabby. All in all, it’s a pretty nice value add.

Check out their bold announcement video below:

(via T-Mobile)

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UPDATED! Nine previously lost episodes of Doctor Who will be available to purchase Oct 11

patrick troughton second doctor who

And there you have it, after yesterday’s speculation (below after the “read more” link), we now have the full scoop on what was found.

Nine episodes from the Second Doctor’s run were found in a relay station in Nigeria. The Patrick Troughton story line The Enemy of The World is now complete with all six episodes accounted for, and The Web of Fear is missing one episode which has been recreated using stills and storyboards, enough to release the series to the public.

Starting October 11th at midnight, the episodes will be available on iTunes for download. For those who want something more tactile, BBC Worldwide will also start pre-orders for both series on DVD (though the BBC store was down at the time this article was being written), to be shipped later this year.

This is very exciting for us Who fans, though we always wish we could have more. This drops the number of Doctor Who episodes MIA to 97, and now I have to wrestle with the geek fanboi in my head who is desperately trying to convince me to update my long since lapsed credit card information on iTunes…

Read our original rumor post for this story after the jump.

Continue reading “UPDATED! Nine previously lost episodes of Doctor Who will be available to purchase Oct 11”

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Your USB 3 flash drive is about to get a lot faster thanks to Silicon Motion

silicon motion usb 3 controllerUSB 3 products are gaining a little momentum. It’s becoming more and more common to see them on new computers, and prices on USB 3 hard drives and flash drives are starting to settle closer to older USB 2 gear. For example, a USB 3 Kingston Data Traveler Ultimate is already less than a dollar per GB, which is less than what I paid for a “nice” USB 2 flash drive last year.

Performance is already much better than older USB 2 drives, but now it looks like it could be getting even better. Silicon Motion is announcing a new USB 3 controller, the chip which live in your computer to control USB devices plugged into your computer, which could significantly improve I/O.

Right now, on my older workstation I can get read speeds of around 80MBps on my USB3 port. Silicon Motion claims their new controller can boost single channel performance of USB 3 flash drives to 160MBps. Write speeds could almost double as well. This means that those of you who have to move tons of files around manually (photos, videos, audio), these transfers should get a lot faster. Silicon Motion also details the idea that you could now install an operating system and software to USB stick, and use that as a boot drive. Walk up to a computer, plug in your drive, and boot up your own operating system and programs.

Best of all, improvements to the manufacturing should reduce power consumption and make the controller less expensive to produce.

Check out the full write up for all the technical details.

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Android 4.3 FINALLY rolling out to AT&T HTC One’s

WP_20130503_003Better late than never? It would seem HTC wasn’t able to move through the verification process to meet their September deadline on updating all of their One phones to Google’s current version of Android Jellybean, but those of you on AT&T will finally start seeing update notifications soon!

Among the various improvements, users will see improved camera performance (hopefully a fix for some of the low light problems some users face) and new focus options for video. We’ll also see improved quick access to controls in the notification tray, so no more going to your settings menu to turn WiFi on and off.

The update should roll out auto-magically, but if you’re really impatient, you can start spamming the software update setting throughout the day. Maybe it’ll work for you?

Now HTC… When can we start talking about KitKat updates?

I kid… I kid… But no really when? [Said while doing ‘grabby hands’]

(via AT&T Blog)

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Deal Alert: Verizon Wireless LG G2 and Moto X for $99 on contract

verizon moto x amazon on saleJust a quick heads up. If you were shopping the LG G2 or the Moto X, and are currently on Big Red, they’re both currently on sale!

You can score either on Amazon right now for $99 when signing a new two year contract.

Moto’s phone represents a substantial step in design and efficiency, beautifully tailoring the software to the hardware for a premier experience. LG’s offering is a monster step forward in bleeding edge internals, besting even recent high-end phones like the Galaxy S4 and HTC One in delivering powerful hardware. You kinda can’t go wrong with either if you’re looking to drop mid-range money on a high-end handset.

VZW Moto X on Amazon

VZW LG G2 on Amazon

(via Android Police)

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Samsung Galaxy Round – First smartphone with a curved display

Pulling up the press release and seeing the picture I was a bit surprised. Previous experiments with curving screens on phones like the Galaxy Nexus usually involved curving the display from top to bottom, contouring the phone for the side of your head. The Galaxy Round takes a different approach…

The Round’s 5.7″ screen is curved from side to side, and Samsung claims this side to side curving makes the phone easier to hold and use. It could also mean that this phone will feel narrower than traditional phablets.

I think it’s an interesting experiment in design, and I’ll be curious to see how consumers respond. One nice advantage, the phone’s screen is harder to scratch if the phone is ever placed face down on a table. That curve provides a little clearance.

Samsung Tomorrow spent a little time with the handset and shot this video of one of the new gestures:

Hardware on board seems to be current high-end, similar to what you might find in the Note 3. It’ll launch tomorrow in South Korea for a little more than $1000, but there’s no official word on pricing and availability elsewhere.

(via Samsung Tomorrow)

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