OnePlus 2 Review – The Flagship Killer That Could

September 3, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Manufacturer OnePlus have outdone themselves once again. The OnePlus 2 is a flagship killer that is really really hard to get hold of.

The OnePlus 2 is one of this year’s best, and boldest, smartphones. It’s not just a radical designed phone, no sir, it’s the whole package. Quite frankly, it’s a remarkable device. It would have been this year’s best smartphone, price to value ratio, if it weren’t for that horrible invite system.

OnePlus 2 Review

Amazing price to value ratio, it has an elegant and classy screen tone, a reliable fingerprint scanner and an almost excellent camera image quality.

The thing is, their invite system is just painstakingly horrible. Getting hold of the device means that you either a) have all of the Greek pantheon on your side, or b) you’re just incredibly lucky.

OnePlus 2 specs

5.5-inch 1080p screen;
Snapdragon 810 proc;
3 or 4 gigs of RAM;
16 or 64 gigs of storage space;
Dual SIM;
Almost excellent camera;
3,300mAh battery.

OnePlus 2 Design

When you first lay your eyes on it, the OnePlus 2 won’t feel like anything special. Considering it’s manufactured by a company that is borderline unknown in the mobile industry, you could be prone that it comes packed with a design that shocks and awes.

The OnePlus 2 isn’t designed to be sold off of shelves. You can only acquire it directly from OnePlus and the odd importer here and there – Amazon also lists the OnePlus 2 but at a stupid-expensive price of $500 plus. Don’t spend more than $400 for the high-end model.

Anyway.

The thing is, you need an invite to be allowed to pay for the device. As I write, these invites aren’t that easy to receive.

Sure, it’s a strategy to increase its hype and anticipation by limiting stock. But consider the middle-man retailer here. If somebody else was in the middle, let’s say Verizon, you can bet your sweet tush that the OnePlus 2 would definitely not cost $329.

But enough with marketing.

When you hold the OnePlus 2 next to the HTC One M9 and LG G4, it isn’t overshadowed but it doesn’t necessarily excel. It’s just a phone that feels great in the palm of your hand.

The original OnePlus One was built out of plastic, mostly anyway. The next gen smartphone also has plastic bits and pieces here and there, but its sides are made out of magnesium alloy. It gives an aluminium feel, which makes it pretty cool to the touch.

Magnesium alloy is also slightly lighter than aluminium, but this doesn’t make the OnePlus 2 light. In fact, the phone weighs about 175 grams. That is 20 grams heavier than the LG G4. Nothing worth fussing over about.

Moreover, because after the initial weight-shock, and comments about how it’s meatier than most phones on the market, you’ll completely disregard its surplus and fall in love with what it can do.

If you have petite hands, just like me, then you’ll have some issues holding it with one hand, but not something that I consider to be a deal breaker. If you do have minuscule handsies, the OnePlus 2 allows you to tweak how reachable soft keys are – you can switch between hardware soft keys and software ones.

Also, you can easily relocate the back and recent apps keys.

However, if you’re looking for something really slim, then I don’t think the OnePlus 2 will satisfy your needs. It’s 9.9 millimeters thick.

OnePlus 2 Covers, Connections

Mostly, it resembles the OnePlus One, but it does have its random moments when it feels unusual. Mainly because of the magnesium alloy that gives it that weird, futuristic vibe. The back mirrors the OnePlus one – it’s fuzzy and a little rough.

It sports a high-friction build-material and I’m quite shocked that no other mobile manufacturer has adopted it – it’s been present since the OnePlus One. The thing is, sometimes, it feels like you’re holding a shaved puppy.

If you don’t fancy this, you can pick other covers for about 30 bucks a pop. Including kevlar and wood materials. I found the kevlar cover to be the best pick out of all of them.

The phone’s back can be easily peeled with your fingers. It won’t give you access to its battery, but you’ll have an open door for the dual SIM slots.

You won’t find a microSD card slot, so I recommend you go with the more expensive model that features 64 gigs of storage space. Also, the OnePlus 2 is not waterproofed.

You have one button on the left side of the phone that turns all notifications off except those who have priority. It’s an easy way to silence you phone, but at the same time, allowing phone calls to go through.

It doesn’t have a microUSB socket, instead, it features a USB-C slot.

The benefit? Everything is going the USB-C way. The downside? Throw out all your other cables because they won’t work with the OnePlus 2. You won’t have the Speedy Gonzales USB 3.0, and to be honest, I have mixed feelings regarding USB-C.

USB-C is reliable and I haven’t found its fault, but I don’t see its point.

OnePlus 2 Fingerprint Scanner

An impressive piece of hardware is the fingerprint scanner. OnePlus takes tips from Apple’s iPhone Touch ID sensor, and Samsung Galaxy’s S6 scanner. You’ll find it located just under the Home key, on the front of the device.

You aren’t required to swipe your finger all over the place. You just need to hold it there for a few of seconds and voila. Indeed, it is slower than what you would find in an iPhone 6 scanner, but it is as reliable. It can store up to five fingerprints.

OnePlus 2 Screen

It has a big 5.5-inch screen. It’s larger than the iPhone 6, HTC One M9 and the Samsung Galaxy S6. Display quality is excellent.

Screen type? The trifecta of excellency – LTPS, IPS and LCD.

Because of the LCD, the OnePlus 2 won’t have the same dark as night black color scheme as Samsung’s S6 OLED. Still, it’s above the decent standard. More so, the backlight and contrast are comparable with high-end smartphones.

In a normal darkened room setting, its quality becomes obvious – it can’t output the same backlight as the S6’s OLED. In a normal lit room setting, you won’t see a difference.

The IPS gives the OnePlue 2 incredible view angels, with just a few losses of brightness here and there. Colors are pleasant and full of life. I’m happy to announce that this device doesn’t have an overly saturated palette. I’ve seen some pretty nasty devices in my time.

Instead, it takes a more relaxed approach. There are no reds that pinch your eye sockets, and there are no weird shades present. I can honestly compare it to the iPhone 6. Pleasant and comfortable for viewing purposes.

The LTPS, which is another screen architecture, helps the phone cut down on how much power its display uses. This equates to more battery life.

Tones are warm, and colors seem natural. That’s what you must look for in a smartphone. It has a shocking 401ppi density that rivals the one, pixel by pixel, found in the iPhone 6 Plus. It’s 1080p display is just superb.

The LG G4 and Samsung Galaxy S6 are better and have a higher pixel density counter because they use QHD. Noticeable? Just barely when up-close. Remember, you’re paying under $400.

Corning Gorilla Glass 4 encompasses the display and brings top-notch brightness. The OnePlus 2 isn’t a fingerprint magnet, and because of GG 4, it’s somewhat scratch proof. This doesn’t mean you can smash it without consequences – please, behave yourself sir, or madame.

However, the auto-brightness setting needs a little bit more polishing. Maybe in the next gen OnePlus. It does work, well enough, but it makes the screen too bright when you are indoors, and it doesn’t react that well when you go outside.

Bottom line, the display is to die for.

OnePlus 2 Android, Oxygen OS

The OnePlus 2 is more than capable of running Android 5.1 Lollipop, and the following Marshmallow. It has the Oxygen UI on top of it all. What does this mean? Well, it’s just a custom user interface with lots of features – some more covert than others.

It will look, and feel, exactly like your usual Android 5.1 Lollipop, with a ton of new features for power users. It sports a Nexus-like style.

One additional feature than you won’t find on your usual Android 5.1 device is Shelf. It’s basically an extra home-screen where you can add your most used apps, contacts, widgets and the likes. It’s not that great, but I got the feeling that OnePlus will update it in the following 12 months so you could actually use it without thinking it’s useless.

Oxygen gives users customization possibilities. You can make your phone fit you, not the other way around.

You can switch menu system color schemes, switch between software and hardware soft keys, or simply alter whatever icon sets there are for installed apps. This might seem overwhelming at first, but even a non-geeky user will find his way easily.

OnePlus 2 Performance

OnePlus 2 doesn’t fall short when it comes to performance. Android Lollipop also helps it run better in this area.

It runs smooth as silk with no lag issues.

The Snapdragon 810 proc, which is currently the high-end chipset from Qualcomm, ensures that the OnePlus 2 runs as as flagship phone. It has an octa-core CPU comprised of four 1.8GHz Cortex-A57 cores and another four, less powerful, Cortex-A53 cores. The Adreno 430 GPU makes the smartphone capable of running everything on the Play Store.

The main issue is heat. Complaints have arisen, mostly on internet forums, regarding the Qualcomm octa-core CPU. The consensus is that OnePlus should have gone with the weaker MediaTek Helio X10 chipset.

The OnePlus 2 gets quite warm without provoking it too much. Normal web browsing will make the top half warm, even if it’s for 10 minutes. Yet, OnePlus have put some safety nets in place so that their smartphone doesn’t reach molten lava levels.

The Snapdragon 810, while not the best regarded proc out there, is a good component that fits the OnePlus 2. It’s paired with 4 gigs of DDR4 RAM, which is just excellent. Most flagship smartphones use DDR3.

OnePlus 2 Camera

The OnePlus 2’s camera is super. The camera app? Not so much.

For 329 bucks, it’s quite shocking that it has a rear facing 13 mexapixel camera unit, and that the front one sports 5-mp. But you should never trust these numbers, because even the cheapest phones can carry a 8 megapixel camera.

The thing is, for this kind of money, the sensor is just excellent. It’s not even made by Sony, which makes the majority of sensors for smartphones.This one is built by Omnivision. Never heard of them until now, but its known as top-dog in China-made phones.

It features dual LED flash, later-assisted focusing and optical image stabilization. It doesn’t compete with the S6 or LG G4 in this department, but it outputs great quality.

However, the thing that most disappoints me is the awful camera app – which might just be a launch bug. Fingers crossed.

Why is it so bad? Because it’s based on the standard Android camera app that doesn’t have a smart UI. It lags a little bit and zooming isn’t well, working as it should. It feels lackluster when compared with everything else.

OnePlus 2 Battery Life

Huge amounts of stamina, insane amounts I might add. I found it to last approximately two days between charges. On a continuous 720p loop it reaches the half-day mark. Intensive use breaks it to 24 hours plus.

It’s somewhat similar to what you can find in a Samsung Galaxy S6. Also, it’s better than the LG G4 and the HTC One M9.

OnePlus 2 Sound, Call Quality

In this area you will find decent quality elements. They are not exceptional in any way. Call quality is clear, with random noise present. Good thing this isn’t often at all.

The call speaker is also clear, and the secondary mic found on the top edge provides active noise cancellation when you’re speaking to someone.

But it doesn’t have that sound that just punches your ear hole, like flagship phones sport.

You can find a single speaker on the bottom of the phone. It’s mediocre, with respectable high volume. It can cope in the kitchen or when you’re taking a shower. Listening to music or podcasts won’t offer an excellent experience, but not a horrible one either. It’s just mediocre.

OnePlus 2 Verdict

Should you buy the OnePlus2?

Yes. A thousand times yes, over and over again. For $389 it’s a steal. Price to value ratio is fantastic. The camera needs a little bit more polish, however, but that’s going to most likely be patched through an update by OnePlus.

You don’t have a microSD slot but you get 64 gigs of storage space.

OnePlus 2 Price – $329 or $389

Go buy it if you have an invite.

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Alienware Rolls Out 4 Gaming Laptops And X51 Desktop

August 28, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

The in-house PC gaming brand owned by Dell has just made it public that they will be updating some of their devices. The announcement took place at the PAX Prime gaming convention that is held annually in Seattle. The gaming PCs include 4 gaming laptops and one desktop.

Alienware stated they are not putting out new designs, but rather enhancing their existing products. Alienware X51 is a desktop that is famous among professional gamers who require full power systems for touring.

X51 is getting a boost and jumps straight to the sixth generation Core i5 and Core i7. We can also expect faster DDR4-rated RAM. More news about Alienware’s 4 Gaming Laptops is expected from the IFA tech trade that will be held in Berlin in a week.

Another cool feature the new X51 promises is an optional liquid cooling. This translates into a combination of a pump and a radiator in a single device.

The design of the new X51 won’t blend in with your decor, but it promises a lot of high end features. The device is matte black with a green strip on the sides. The inside space is limited, so the CD drive has been sacrificed and expelled from the new model. But instead users get a removable tray for the GPU to compensate for that.

X51 R3 will be compatible with its Graphics Amplifier. However, before you go all out and buy yourself one of those, you should keep in mind that the amplifier is half as big as X51. Kind of a turn off, to be honest.

With two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, built in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 8GB of RAM and a CPU liquid cooler, Alienware seems to have worked hard to please the gamers’ niche and meet their demanding requirements. But have they succeeded?

What do early verdicts predict? We can’t deny the updated features are pretty attractive. However, this would be a wise choice only if you were specifically looking for a small gaming PC.

Props to the clever cooling solution as well. Alienware hit the nail on the head with that one. But the additional costs of a buying a separate graphics amplifier and also an external graphics card fail to fully justify this purchase.

If you’re a gaming enthusiast with a liking for small PCs and you want a sleek frame, the X51 R3 meets most of the expectations but leaves some space for improvement.

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Facebook M stands for Mediocre or Mistake, You Pick

August 28, 2015 By Karen Jackson 1 Comment

Facebook M has been unveiled yesterday. It’s a personal assistant currently in beta, and it’s being tested by about 200 totally random users in the Bay Area. Facebook M is quite unique, mainly because it employs human power. These trainers-of-the-M are capable of completing real day to day activities like buying an item or making a reservation.

We don’t know what the M will turn into, what we do know is that it won’t be your run of the mill personal assistant. Well, if it’s different it should be better, right?

Well, not exactly.

Digital assistants are pretty weak at the moment. Regardless, they are forced upon consumers. M seems to be a different kind of beast – seems to be. At the dawn of this millennium, when flip phones where introduced to voice control, people where in awe. It ended up being a gimmick that you could show off and laugh in its face.

Technology is growing exponentially, and tech industry behemoths are trying to revive it. It does have tremendous potential, but Facebook M will be found inside the Messenger app and it will be text-based. This is a huge mistake.

Why?

Cortana, Google Now and Siri are personal assistants, but they are quite different from one another. The only common ground is that all three of them live in their own ecosystem. Highly popular ecosystems which we carry on a daily basis.

Zuckerberg’s M doesn’t have its own home. Unless Facebook is planning on unveiling their own OS anytime soon, it’s not going to have it in the near future. Digital assistants need their own hardware in order to be fully integrated, and subsequently useful.

There are too many steps a user has to make to get to M. But, if they play their cards right, Facebook might just hit gold. The Messenger App is installed on almost every smartphone on the planet. Zuckerberg just announced via Facebook that on the 24th of August 2015, a Monday, one out of seven people tuned into the social media platform.

That’s approximately 1 billion people.

Facebook is looking a little bit naive with their promos. In the screenshot below, someone asks M what is the best burger joint in Chicago, and the DA replies with a link. Why would you need to use something else when you already have Google?

M stands for Mistake

Why would you use M in the first place? You need to type sentences in the Messenger App, coherent sentences mind you, so Facebook M understands what you are asking. You could just type keywords in Google and get the desired info.

If there’s a problem with the reservation then you either have to a) type more messages, or b) call the restaurant yourself. Why not do this in the first place without going through all this hassle?

Text-based is confusing, and more so annoying as hell. Phrases can be misinterpreted, and ladies, we’ve all had a ton of text-based fights with boyfriends or girlfriends. It’s not a pretty sight.

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Former Apple CEO Relaunches Obi as Obi Worldphone

August 27, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

John Sculley, Apple CEO from 1983 to 1993, took the industry by surprise today when he unveiled a relaunch of Obi, now called Obi Worldphone.

With help from Robert Brunner, Ammunition design founder, Obi Worldphone looks pretty darn cool and unique. It’s an inexpensive phone with mid-level performance capabilities.

The new Android smartphone has been launched in two different models.

The Obi Worldphone SF1 which costs $199.
The Obi Worldphone SJ1.5 which costs $129.

Both models will be available this October. The company’s target demo is 25 year olds and younger. John Sculley is aiming the new redesigned Obi at emerging markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

With Xiaomi and Huawei reigning kings in China, surpassing Apple and taking the first and second place in the country, it is unknown at the moment if John will try to tackle this market too.

Both Obi Worldphone models will feature your usual components like Qualcomm and MediaTek procs, with the latter being used for the $129 Obi. Corning Gorilla Glass, a Sony camera and Dolby sound for both smartphones.

The thing is, Sculley and his company will focus more on how the Obi Worldphone looks rather than what it’s equipped with. They want to be a design-led company, he told Engadget.

Sculley thinks that they have the upper-hand when it comes to competing with mobile industry giants like Apple, HTC and Samsung. The smartphone manufacturer notes that because these companies are so huge they don’t have that much liberty to play with design or branding material. They tend to move slower.

This, paired with the Obi Worldphone being a fresh start-up, makes John’s company more free to swap components and change smartphone designs to better server users.

The $199 model is a 4G and LTE equipped smartphone. It has a reinforced fiberglass body due to Corning Gorilla Glass, and it’s 5-inch display is sharp and crystal clear. It has two Sony camera units with flashes on the back and the front. The SF1 features a Snapdragon 615 proc with 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of storage space. For $249 you’ll get 3 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of storage space.

The cheaper SJ1.5 model has 3G support, a MediaTek quad-core proc and 16GB of storage.

Both models run on Android 5.1 Lollipop and both phones have dual SIM slots. The latter is a must-have for emerging countries.

Initially, it will see the light of day in Pakistan, Turkey, India, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Keynia, Thailand, Saudia Arabia, the UAE, Indonesia and Vietnam.

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Rovio Fires Employees Even Though Angry Birds 2 is a Hit

August 26, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Angry Birds maker Rovio is firing employees due to money problems, even though Angry Birds 2 is a hit.

The Finnish company is having serious troubles paying the bills and it’s going to cut approximately 260 jobs. This comes after a 110 employee lay-off in October of 2014.

When 2013 ended, the company had 800 employees.

News that Rovio is laying-off people comes as a huge surprise considering that their latest release is a big hit across the world.

Angry Birds 2 sits at 50 million downloads in one month. It has topped the charts in the U.S. App Store market and the Chinese one. Also, as you can see down below, Angry Birds 2 is sitting nicely in many other countries.

However, Angry Birds 2 is starting to fall in these charts. Sure, 50 million downloads is huge, but their freemium model isn’t working as the company expected.

For those of you who don’t know, freemium means that an app is basically free but it has an in-game currency which you can buy with real-world money. With in-game currency you acquire items that either let you use a spell more or unlock a certain part of the game early.

This model, even though highly popular, doesn’t seem to work for Rovio. Games like Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Clash of Clans and Game of War are pummeling the top of the charts for months – all along using a freemium model.

Basically, Angry Birds 2 isn’t enough for the company to solely exist on. Rovio has expanded into Seoul and Tokyo, Shanghai and Vancouver, Los Angeles and New York City, London, and Stockholm. Their Espoo HQ is found in Finland.

This does not resemble your average indie game dev studio.

The Angry Birds franchise was one of the first to be a huge mobile hit. The likes of which were never seen before on the App Store and Play Store.

It quickly grew from a thousand people playing it to millions of users paying a few dollars just to download the latest title. Rovio’s Angry Birds is indeed designed for mobile gaming, but fans don’t like it that they moved towards the freemium model. Micro-transactions and waiting doesn’t mold well with the game itself.

Rovio makes additional money from Angry Birds merch. The company sells licensed materials, and they sell a ton from teddy bears to pens and notebooks.

But as it becomes less and less popular, those items could very well become irrelevant.

There is one last glimmer of hope for Rovio – The Angry Birds movie. They have been working on the movie for some time now and it’s expected to be released in May of 2016.

These lay-offs, Rovio says, will affect the whole company except the teams working on the movie. This is a huge risk that might determine the fate of the company. Let’s see if their play pans out!

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We’re All Guilty Of Breaking The Internet With Ad Blockers

August 20, 2015 By Karen Jackson 3 Comments

Advertisers are tearing up looking at this year’s numbers: as much as $21.8 billion estimated to be lost because of ad blockers. Publishers are pointing their fingers and nodding their heads at the naughty users who are downloading and using browser extensions to keep their screens ad free.

If you haven’t been living under a rock in a cave in the mountains in the last decade, you probably know the internet is saturated with advertising. They’re there before the movie trailer begins, they’re blinking at you obnoxiously when you’re searching for pasta recipes and they even try to lure you in by claiming you’ve won a set of spoons.

So it’s no wonder ad blockers use has spiked in an equal proportion with that of advertisments. Not only a few users feel overwhelmed by ads, with a big chunk of internauts raising their eyebrows at YouTube’s pre roll ads and choosing silent ads on Twitter.

There has been a 41% ad blocking growth in the last year. A quick look at Adobe and Pagefair’s data lets us know 16% of all the users in the United States use ad blockers, while browser extensions have quadrupled in the last two years world wide.

The numbers are even higher in some European countries like Poland and Greece where as much as 34.9% of internet users keep ads at bay with ad blockers.

While Youtube, Facebook and Twitter users enjoy ad free time on their gadgets, publishers are thinking up strategies to regain their lost territories and keep feeding us ads on top of ads. There are the adepts of the tough route: unless you use ad blockers, you’re banned from their site.

Others took a gentler approach, politely asking their users not to install ad blocking softwares. The Guardian‘s approach is one of the smartest. They used their ad banners to let the user know they’ve detected ad blockers.

The banner goes on to ask the users if they wouldn’t mind supporting the Guardian “in another way”. By clicking the link, you can become a supporter.

Advertisers seem so hurt (well, they are bleeding money), they feel obliged to remind us we’re sort of breaking an unwritten contract here. We, the internet users, receive free content from them, the publishers, in exchange of tolerating ads. With this broken ecosystem, what’s in store for internet users?

In the long run, we could be looking at ad blockers becoming so widespread the advertisers are compelled to use ads that are less invasive and simpler. We could live with that.

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Megabots Asks for Help on Kickstarter to Defeat Japan

August 19, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

U.S.-based robotics company Megabots has taken to Kickstarter to ask for help in defeating Suidobashi Heavy Industry. Megabots challenged the Japanese team, and now they want your help so they can upgrade their robot. Money is needed, tons of it – $500,000 to be accurate – if the US team wants to reign supreme.

The challenge, in form of video, went viral, and Suidobashi Heavy Industry replied a week after. They said yes, but under one condition – the fight will be melee, not ranged.

Two ginormous robots will fight to the death, metal to metal, in a duel that will be forever known as the first real Robot Rumble.

Megabots needs money to change their offensive ability from ranged to melee – the US company was boasting their precise, and powerful paintball attack, but it doesn’t have any use now. They need to upgrade their robot to be more melee oriented. Like they put it, they want their robot to be a ” real punch thrower,”.

If they garner enough support, Megabots will be able to upgrade their propulsion system, so their robot moves faster, and also punch to maim.

They also need a new armor coating, so the robot can take a beating without too much damage to its internals.

Lastly, the company wants to improve how the robot looks – because the 12,000 pound metal beast isn’t scary enough.

They need about $500k within the next 30 days that will be used for all expenses – including event fees. In a couple of hours after going live on Kickstarter, they managed to raise $100k.

If you donate $1,000 you’ll be able to ride inside the metal beast. If you cough up more cash, $5,000 to be exact, you’ll have the possibility of controlling the robot, and smash innocent cars – all in a safe, and fun environment.

The company notes that they will surpass the initial $500k goal in no-time.

Grant Imahara of Mythbusters, and creator of Battlebots is part of the Megabots team. Also, an expert representative of NASA, and the CEO of Autodesk have promised to bring the team’s dream to life.

The Kickstarter campaign doesn’t only intend to improve how the robot looks, or fights. It also wishes to construct a more suitable, and safer cage for the person inside the metal beast’s belly.

The Japanese robot-maker spent about $1,4 million to build their Kuratas robot. It’s an 8,000 pounds, 30 hydraulic, BB Gatling gun equipped son of a gun. Kogoro Kurata, which is the blacksmith and designer that brought Kuratas to life, was inspired by the 1980s anime series Votoms.

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Alienware Alpha Review – A Pint-Sized PC

August 17, 2015 By Karen Jackson 4 Comments

Who says that you can’t have a PC gaming console?

The Alienware Alpha is a pint-sized PC that has a special place on the podium along with PS4, and Xbox One. It’s tons smaller than these two console mammoths, and its performance is on par.

What’s the deal with the Alienware Alpha?

Back in 1996, Alienware was founded by two tech enthusiasts Nelson Gonzalez, and Alex Aguila with the purpose of video-gaming in mind. In 2002 Dell expressed its wish of acquiring the company, but the deal didn’t went through until 2006. Now, Alienware is a subsidiary of Dell Inc.

The Alienware Alpha was first announced as a Steam Box, but it ended up being based on a custom-built user friendly XMBC UI.

The Alienware Alpha is controller-friendly, and you can find an Xbox 360 gamepad in the box – for no additional cost.

It matches the PS4, and Xbox One, but it retails at a much bigger price without the possibility of upgrading its GPU, it’s equipped with an entry-level CPU, and RAM, which limits its performance.

I recommend going with the more expensive Alienware Alpha model that sports a faster quad-core Core i7 CPU, and 8 gigs of RAM.

Alienware Alpha Review

It looks beautiful. Glossy plastic covers its sides, and on the front of the Alienware gaming console you can see its power button constructed out of the company’s logo. Near it, two USB 2.0 ports reside. The top of the console is somewhat divided into a trio of lines, and there’s a cut-away corner which shows-off more LEDs.

Design-wise, the Alpha is more than pleasing, I might go as far as calling it eye-candy. When added to a police line-up it can be found guilty of looking gaming-sexy.

Measuring 200mm wide, 56mm tall, and 200mm deep, it’s much smaller than its console counter-parts. The PS4 is shorter, but not by much, and the 3mm difference is unnoticeable, however it’s wider, and more deep. The Xbox One is the biggest of them all.

The Alienware Alpha console weighs much less than any other console. It’s 1.54kg, and it looks petite when compared with the 2.8kg Sony console, or the 3.2kg Microsoft box.

Why is it so weightless? Mainly because it doesn’t have a built-in optical drive, and it uses an external power brick.

It’s a dust-magnet, but you can get passed this mildly annoying issue because when it comes to build materials the Alienware console doesn’t feel like a block of cheap creaking plastic.

Everybody is calling it the Alienware game console but everyone tends to forget that it has PC blood flowing through its veins. Its base panel is easily popped off by removing the four screws found at the bottom of the console. The plastic lid that encompasses its internals and the sides, can be lifted away to showcase the engine under the hood.

Inside the Alpha you’ll notice little plastic shrouds that help hot air navigate from the CPU, and the GPU. They are easily removable with only a couple of plastic clips that keep them tight in place. It’s a gateway towards chipsets, and the rest of its interiors.

It’s designed for upgrades, but unfortunately not all of the components inside can be changed. The most important part, the GPU, can’t be removed as its soldered onto the motherboard.

The basic, naked Alienware Alpha model comes with a memory slot free, a dual-band 802.11ac wireless card, and a 2.5-inch HDD. The CPU is sitting nicely in a LGA 1150 socket.

Connectivity is good, and wireless connection doesn’t flop-out when you most need it, although it also depends on your ISP.

The Alpha Alienw has a Gigabit Ethernet, and a Bluetooth 4.0. On the front of the console there are two USB 2.0 ports. On its rear, you can find two additional USB 3.0 ports, the input, and output HDMI plug, and an optical S/PDIF connector. Just under, behind a flap-thingy, there’s your fifth USB port which has been built for a Valve USB controller, and other similar gadgets.

The Alpha UI has been perfectly designed for the Xbox 360 controller which can be found in the box. Don’t expect a revolutionary OS, it has Windows 8.1 with basic features. The Settings Menu is comprised of basic networking, video and audio options. There’s a specific option which lets the user change the LEDs color.

The Power Menu is where you’ll go to either reboot, or shut down your system, and also an option to open your Windows desktop.

It being a Valve golden-child, Steam’s Big Picture mode divides the screen into three menus:

Store
Library
Profile Page

Your library of games, and the store can be navigated on a horizontal menu, where you’ll also find links to friends, and a browser.

It’s intuitive, and easy to use. If you’ve meddled with a gaming console before, or Steam, you won’t notice anything game-changing. Newcomers won’t have issues navigating around in the library, or the store.

However, even though it’s highly intuitive, and beginner-friendly, it’s not that perfectly constructed. You’ll observe weird fonts throughout the store, the library, and in-game. This is because there’s a huge divide between Valve, and Alienware who built the UI.

Colors can be changed, but you don’t have this option for fonts, or navigation.

Alienware’s virtual keyboard is present, but it’s totally different from Steam’s on-screen one. Sadly, neither of them are as intuitive as they may see at first – nor the software.

The Alpha software is borderline mediocre when it comes down to how quick it runs, and there are some driver issues as in there’s no proprietary Nvidia Geforce Experience app that you can install so you get the latest updates. The Alpha console-manufacturer hasn’t announced when, and how users will receive them.

The alliance between Alienware, and Valve means that you will only have access to Steam while using the UI. There are thousands of games available on the Steam store, thousands more than on any other console. This is worth noting for those of us who want to use Origin, or Uplay.

For Origin, and Uplay you’ll have to connect to your desktop.

Describing it as an Alienware gaming console is faulty in its essence, and by removing the possibility of using multiple stores it doesn’t really break the console illusion, but still, it would have been nice to have them up for grabs.

The Alienware Alpha can also be used for work, watching Netflix, YouTube, and even web browsing.

The GPU is a generic Nvidia chipset, but don’t let this sink your boat. Under further investigation, it was revealed that its architecture is based on the desktop version of the GTX 750 Ti/GTX 860M chip.

It can be categorized in the mid-performance range with 640 stream processors that are clocked at 1,020MHz. Theoretically speaking, it features 1.4TFLOPS. It’s lower than the PS4 peak of 1.84, and higher, but not by much, when compared to the Xbox One’s 1.31TFLOP.

The dedicated GPU memory is DDR3, and it’s installed in single-channel mode which poses as an obstacle for performance. It looks bad when you compare it to the shared memory of the PS4, and Xbox One.

The Alpha’s GPU is paired with an Intel Haswell CPU that can reach a maximum of 2.9GHz without Turbo Boost.

Tested in Battlefield 4 at Ultra Quality settings, and 1080p, the Alienware Alpha was sitting confidently at 27 frames per second. In Bioshock Infinite the console was outputting 44 fps, and in Crysis 3 it managed to produce whooping 28 frames per second.

Even though it can run AAA games on Ultra Settings, I don’t recommend you sacrifice stability, and game fluidity for pretty colors and sharp textures. At High Settings the Alpha jumped towards the 40 fps mark in Battlefield 4, and an average of 60 in Bioshock. Crysis 3 managed to beat it down a bit, but performance increased up to 33 frames per second.

It’s crucial that you know the minimum framerates. The Alpha didn’t disappoint, and it actually performed rather well. In Battlefield it witnessed a down-spike to 22 fps on occasion, and 30 frames per second in Bioshock.

Its direct competitor, The Syber, is slightly faster, but not by much. The Alienware Alpha runs well in the gaming department, but for a $500 machine we expected much more. It’s on par, performance wise, with the PS4, and Xbox One, but its architecture is not.

The Alpha’s hard disk is definitely not up to modern standards, and the 500GB 5,400 RPM disk runs like a snail. The Alienware Alpha has slow loading times, but not something that should be taken into account as a deal breaker. It took approximately 40 seconds to boot, and apps, once they were launched, never struggled with maintaining their flow.

Still, this is a poor mark to achieve for both PC, and gaming console standards.

Considering how small it is, and how its internals are cramped inside the little Alienware box, we expected it to reach Mount Doom levels. This wasn’t the case, and the Alienware Alpha strays away from the trend. The CPU, and GPU were constantly between 71, and 79 degrees.

The Alienware is also not a noise-hog. It runs quietly, with a little bit of rumbles here and there when the machine is stretched in demanding game scenes. Nothing that’s worth fussing over anyway. It’s comparable with modern consoles.

It requires just about 22W in idle mode, and it can reach a peak of 101W. Power consumption isn’t a problem when comparing with the 110W Xbox One, and the 125W PlayStation 4.

The Alienware Alpha comes in two different configurations.

The base model costs $500, and is the cheapest of the bunch. It has an Intel i3 Haswell processor, and 500GB of storage space. If you want to upgrade it, you’ll have to cough up almost $100, but you’ll get 8 gigs of RAM, and 1TB of storage space.

The next configuration costs $850, and it comes equipped with a Core i7 proc, 8 GB of RAM, and 2 TB of storage space.

Both configs come with Windows 8.1, which can be upgraded for free to Windows 10.

It is possible to replicate this exact config by building your very own desktop PC, but you won’t have the mini-ITX case, the Alpha XMBC-based UI, nor the Xbox 360 wireless gamepad.

The Alienware Alpha comes with a 1 year limited hardware warranty.

Dell currently sells them packed with 6 free games.

The $850 one, although incredibly expensive when compared with the PS4, and Xbox One, is more versatile than its console counterparts. If you don’t plan on using it just for gaming, you can use Windows 8.1, or 10, for work, streaming movies, or listening to music.

I would like to point-out that adding a SSD will make your life much more easier, and your machine faster. The equipped Alienware hard drive of 5,400 RPM is outdated, and the 7,200 RPM one will soon follow in its path.

It’s also worth nothing that even though Dell is the manufacturer, and also retailer, you can find the Alpha at a cheaper price at Amazon, or BestBuy.

Verdict

Should you buy the Alienware Alpha?

It’s worth considering if you don’t plan on buying a Sony, or Microsoft gaming console, and if you’re more PC oriented. The big downside is that you can’t upgrade the GPU, and your machine will be obsolete in a few years. More so, considering that DirectX 12 is just around the corner.

Because it’s so PC oriented it proves to be versatile, and Windows 8.1 works perfectly well with this Dell gaming console. However, it is unaware at the moment how many compatibility issues are present in Windows 10.

The 5,400 RPM hard disk really holds it back from achieving its true potential, and you’ll have to acquire, separately a 7,200 RPM HDD, or an SSD – although, a worthwhile 500 GB SSD retails at $200, more or less.

Trustworthy Alienware retailers are Dell, Newegg, Amazon, and BestBuy.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

The Flock is a Game That Ends After Enough Players Die

August 16, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

The Flock is a video-game that will shut itself down after enough players die within its universe.

It’s a first-person, team-based multiplayer game that takes place roughly a thousand years into the future, in the post-apocalyptic year 3000.

Players compete to own a mysterious unknown object described as The Light Artifact, which slightly resembles Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but just slightly.

You battle with other gamers for the artifact, and you will eventually die.

Each death brings The Flock closer to its goal – once the 215,358,979 mark is reached, new players won’t be able to acquire and play the game. The universe will shift towards its final phase.

Dutch studio Vogelsap, the developer behind The Flock, sets an unique challenge for players, and creative director Jeroen Van Hasselt thinks that inserting a story in a multiplayer game, particularly its ending, will please gamers who are unsatisfied of the current industry standard.

Players will play as one of the Flock, which Jeroen describes as ” a hideous race of skeletal beasts”. The Flock have taken control of Earth after humans went extinct.

The counter mark that foretells the end of phase one may seem completely made up, but Vogelsap assures us that they have taken into account how many players might end up playing The Flock, and other undisclosed factors.

Their goal is to make gamers play The Flock a reasonable amount of time, in order for them to fall in love with the universe, and its characters, but at the same time, they don’t want to beat a dead horse to the pulp.

They estimate that the game will run its course within a year, afterwards phase 2 can begin.

But Jeroen notes that its up to players when the last phase of the game will start – it could be a year, it could be more, but in no case it will be less than 12 months.

Van Hasselt wished to say that they won’t add to the population counter unless the game is also released on Xbox One, or PlayStation 4.

The game is slated to be released for PC on the 21st of August 2015.

It wants to rise up to the likes of Destiny, and World of Warcraft, but there’s an avalanche of failed video-games that sought to reach a high-peak, only to end up seeing the top from the base of the mountain. This may well be the fate of The Flock, but we are rooting for them!

The rather unknown, and small studio realizes that gamers won’t be playing their game year-in, year-out, and they say that they would rather have players experience an exciting video-game for a couple of years, than pump it with futile expansions, and hats.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3

Samsung And Apple Better Put Their Boxing Gloves On

August 13, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Samsung and Apple are in the lead on the smartphone market, but for how much longer? The Korean tech giant is expected to introduce two new smartphones, possibly the new version of Galaxy S6 edge, that will have a curved screen, and Galaxy Note 5, their newest phablet.

If Samsung usually holds on to device announcements until September, this year they might want to get a head start over their main competitor, Apple. The latter will probably announce the latest version of iPhone (6s or 7) on September 9. This would give Samsung enough time to beat Apple to market.

It’s no secret Samsung has been struggling to make ends meet and satisfy the market’s requirements. This stemmed from the slow manufacturing process caused by the curved screen of the new smartphone.

But Samsung can’t be happy looking at the numbers. Their sales are sluggish, with most recent reports showing their incomes have decreased by eight per cent as a whole and as much as thirty eight per cent only in the mobile division.

This is happening as a result of the fierce competition on the smartphone market. With Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi breathing down the necks of Samsung and Apple, the fight for territory is only now beginning.

Samsung and Apple are currently holding the first places on the Australian market, but the jury is still out for who’s winning the third place. With Sony, HTC and LG witnessing severe sale drops, other cheaper manufacturers seize the moment to expand to new markets.

We’re talking about Xiaomi and Huawei, whose devices are on the rise. They are already on the first place on the Chinese market and now they have their eyes set on Australia. There’s no wonder their smartphones are doing well. Xiaomi released the Mi Note in January, selling it for $487, as opposed to Apple 6, for which you had to pay $1286.

Huawei decided for another strategy. They went ahead and increased their prices. It was a bold move, but it paid off. Only in the first half of 2015 they witnessed their revenues doubling, reaching 7.23 billion dollars.

They’re also looking at an increased demand. During the last six months their shipments spiked by thirty nine per cent as opposed to the last years’ deliveries. With Samsung and Apple staying on the high end edge of the smartphone spectrum, is Huawei’s strategy getting the firm on its path to number one?

Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge sales didn’t match Samsung’s expectations. While they can blame it on the ever changing smartphone market, that doesn’t change the fact the competition is advancing at a strong pace.

Image sources 1, 2, 3

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