If you loved the iPhone 5s and it’s compact power house features than this might just be your time again in the spot light, Apple has sold a lot of 4 inch iPhones in 2015 so there back at it again with the iPhone 5se which in short is a pumped up iPhone 5s with newer generation of specifications. Talking about design contrary to the rumours of a smaller iPhone 6 design Apple has done nothing to change the design of the iPhone 5s which some would argue that that’s backward thinking of Apple or plain lazy, but some who believe that the iPhone 5s’s design was superior would think if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, I personally loved the design of the iPhone 5 line and though it was an improvement of the 4 but not completely different. Specifications are that you’ll get the new A9 chip set which is very fast and will be no slouch in the benchmark tests, the camera has been bumped to the 12mp shooter which can shoot Apples branded gifs. Other changes to the product is that it will cost $399 for the 16gb model and $499 for the 64gb model no surprise there from Apple and you will be able to get the iPhone in pink!!… Sorry rose gold which I think looks better than the tramp stamped rose gold 6s. Just from these reasons will you buy the iPhone 5se?? Or will you wait it out again for a year?? Make sure to let us know on Twitter by sending us a tweet @techzoneuk !!
Huawei and Leica make a partnership
Huawei has really shook up the mix this year with their partnership with Google to make a best in class phone the Nexus 6P, in their own line up the Mate 8 which is a 6 inch monster of a phone which even the US and western market are eating up, you would of thought that the team would of stepped back and 
congratulated them self’s ?. But no their marketing team seams to have a different goal in mind for their company and now they have made yet another controversial team up not this time with a software giant but which a niche camera maker known as Leica, Who if you dont know who they are and why they are so important then to break it down into simple terms for non camera nerds, Leica makes niche camera’s which have been well known for their superb image quality and build construction which also comes at a Niche price up from $5000.. yeah you read that right !. So what does this hopefully mean for the Asian smartphone maker ? hopefully this means that the next generation of phones they produce will be paired up with best in class cameras and software such as what HTC had with Beats and their Boom sound technology, We don’t actually know what this relationship means for their phones but hopefully the Frankenstein Baby of a phone that is created in this partnership should be focused on image quality something the Mate 8 struggles in. Things that the camera maker should do in my opinion to make the camera experience better would be:
1. Make the software focused on pro like shooting such as manual focus and exposure ect.
2. Put better glass in the phone such as somewhat of an equivalent of F1.6 upwards which will allow for super shallow depth of field and maybe some bokeh .. please…?
3. Make the design look sexy such as the Leica M series retro sex baby, im into that.
4. Last on my hope lists is put a honking great sensor in the phone nothing is better than a larger sensor which will allow for better low light and high ISO performance.
Obviously this is just my hopes and dreams for smartphones in general when it comes to camera technology, but whats stopping them doing so the modern market has shown that we want a flagship phone with the perfect Instagram photo production not just having to pay for a separate phone all together such as the ASUS Zenphone Zoom which i personally think is a different mess all together.
Let me know what you would like to see in this match up on Twitter @techzoneuk .
My EDC 2016 Edition !
An everyday carry is the things and gadgets I carry on my self every day to enable me to do what I do. I split my carry into three sections really, 1 being left hand pocket, 2 as right hand pocket and the last section is what I will carry in my bag every day. Everything you see is what I carry everyday whether it be for work or studies.
Left Hand Pocket:
The left hand pocket is reserved for my phone and what I’m carrying right now is the Nexus 6P which was swapped for my One Plus One. Overall judgement is a great device I love Android and will not be going to the dark side / fruity side any time soon. The 6P’s camera and build are Sublime but I’m still a sucker for a big phone and the 6 plus just doesn’t do it for me. Case wise I’m using a Spigen tough armor case which just keeps my device from dings which I’ve managed to get already.
Right Hand Pocket:
Really how I’ve mentally had this pocket labeled as the “essentials ” reasons for this is that I carry anything that needs to accessed all the time but something I won’t be pulling out constantly (meaning every 30 seconds… I can’t help it I’m a social whore ;)) so what I do carry in this pocket this is my simple leather wallet which I still prefer a large simple fold wallet over a minimalist wallet I wish I could get into one but I just couldn’t see my self using a minimal wallet without being frustrated the last thing that lands it self in my pocket is my car keys because it fits well and I’m not daring enough to carry that with my phone.
Other Items:
Other Items that i carry on the daily are that i always keep a camera on myself, the two cameras that i carry on myself are the Sony NEX 5 for my videos and photos, paired both with the 18-55mm lens and also i have the Olympus 50mm 1.4 for brilliant low depth of focus. The other camera i carry is the Olympus OM 10 with the 50mm 1.4 lens, this camera is a 35mm film camera which may be considered old but i still love shooting on film. Watches that i do carry are one smart watch and one traditional watch, the smart watch that i wear on the daily is my Pebble classic which does everything i need in a smart watch but i do sometimes want to wear on the daily a more traditional and better looking watch which in this case is my citizen divers watch.
make sure to send us your EDC on twitter !(@techzoneuk)
All eyes are now on Huawie with the Mate 8
No one can really lie right now the Nexus 6p from Huawie was a jaw dropper even if it wasn’t a good phone (which is wrong) just because the Google giant has never used a company as unknown in the western world as Huawie but now that hype is over, western consumer now looks to Huawie in hope and anticipation for their own unrestricted device hopping that we see something better from the Smart phone manufacturer. The phone that they have put up to the benchmark is the Huawie Mate 8 which is needless to say a mammoth of a device at 6 inches plus bezel, to cut it short the device is beautiful and a bigger brother to the Nexus 6p without the camera hump and all. But the phone has one problem and that’s the software it runs a heavily skinned version of Android 6.0 which looks like a Frankenstein monster of IOS which kind of leaves me as a reviewer kind of disappointed because the stereotype for many people when they say whats on a Chinese device, they always say that the software or the operating system lets it down because the Asian market is still so stuck on the IOS obsession of look which may be great for them but back here in the west we expect a totally different style of Android, for Huawie to really get the attention and development that they need, they need a good operating system to build from which the NEXUS brand really gave them, i think for the company to be taken seriously they need to get their act together with Android because we in the western world live in a market which is saturated with the same kinds of products which has only been minor shook up by the arrivals by small companies such as One Plus. 
Question? what do you think ? do more Asian companies need to enter our market to bring innovation ?
Tweet me them @techzoneuk
pictures from Huawie and Google Play
Does the Iphone Need to be thinner ?
Apples mandate is to make beautiful hardware for us the consumer and it seams to be that it has become that yearly, Apple wants to sell us a Thinner iPhone with extra functionality. But the question is has Apple sucked this selling feature dry? The iPhone 7 concept and leaks indicate that Apple is going to loose functionality by removing the headphone jack in return for a few more millimetres of thinness, this isn’t the first case of a smartphone manufacturer dumping the headphone jack for a thin phone such as Oppo but this proved to be somewhat of a turn off by consumers because we as a community are not that far into the future that we can use wireless for everything, it’s a nice edition that Apple hopefully will be proving wireless earphones with the newer iPhone which will be a first but are you ready to get rid of the headphone jack? The only positives we can take from this is that maybe this will be the push for audio and headphone manufacturers to make wireless not just a premium feature but as a standard. If losing bulk is the aim of the game in Apples eyes then I could honestly see Apple pushing its own in house wireless charging standard and then ditch the lightning port in the future, which again would bring a whole new set of worries and problems for Apple consumers. If we look at the other side of the fence where android is involved it looks like manufacturers have totally seen another kind of dream and this is to keep the device to a certain extent thin and light but now pushing to fill a thicker phone with extra battery life since the innovation in battery technology hasn’t really crawled forward any further yet.
Question of the day is: do you care much about a thinner lighter device? or would you give up a few millimeters for a couple more hours Netflix and chilling?
Let me know on Twitter @techzoneuk
How i made my home screen Minimal but Productive
Minimal and Productive may sound a tad odd when joined together when we refer to android home screen many come up with images in their heads with clutter and widgets floating everywhere but at last we have broken free of the Android gingerbread and cupcake days and nowadays you can make your home screen looks at least professional, this is my home screen on my love of my life the One Plus One its a big phone but that doesn’t mean that i want widgets floating everywhere and having a tone of apps on my home screen which i cannot control, but at the same time i want all of my apps to be accessed quickly and to have a reasonable amount of widgets that are at informative to me. Starting at the Launcher i am using, normally i used Nova Launcher but i have broken away from it not because its terrible or has a flaws in any way i still regard it as my go to launcher when i get a new device or i want the close to Nexus feel, I wanted to try a new Launcher for a while now just shake it up and i wasn’t disappointed at all getting Action Launcher 3 PRO (£3.99) it’s a tad expensive for a Launcher but what you do get from it is a great feeling experience, you may think i only have 5 icons on my screen but in fact i have 5 folders full of apps which is really the beauty of this Launcher you can hide apps in a folder behind a icon which if you swipe up reveals the folder but if you tap on the icon it acts as a normal launch of an app that you have set as that icon, what this does is keep all of my home screen looking minimal but also allows me to stock hoard all of my needed apps beneath, if i were to swipe to my right i would have the quick page which is another hidden beauty its a page dedicated towards having widgets and apps if you want, what do i have ? i have my calendar widget and my Wunderlist widget. If you swipe to the left i have the quick scrolling app list which allows me to have a blown out view of all my apps which is great when you need to find that one app in a pinch instead of swiping endlessly on my app draw which i still have in the middle of my dock with the icon of a finger print for a personal touch (Icon pack being Candy Cons £0.00) . If you like my Home screen you send me a picture of yours on twitter @techzoneuk !
BlackBerry Priv: the shake up Android needed from BBerry
Android phones every year stay consistently the same , large screen beefy specs which is great but it’s just not what I feel androids really meant to be all the same since we’ve really seen barely any innovation in handsets for a while besides the occasional industry ripple such as a curved screen which really hasn’t taken off , I want to go back to the days with hardware clicky keyboards and flip phones but we just cant but blackberry is saying no to this and remaining defiant, yes I did say blackberry they are still a company believe it or not… And there new BlackBerry Priv is nothing less than amazing in every way it has its famous build quality and keyboard, a pretty stock build of android and its packing the latest specs which I won’t go into much because about every android phone right now that’s a flagship has the same specs go date , the phone it self is a tad expensive and the focus of the device is in the name priv for privilege and privacy which is corny but I wouldn’t deny having a secure android phone isn’t really a bad thing right not since the last stage fright scare and concerns over vulnerability for android users, privilege truly does it justice though with a curved edge screen and about every bit of attention to detail went into the build quality.
So the big question lays not answered and should you buy the damm thing ?? I would say nothing more than yes if you want to pay a handful more for a premium built phone that seams to have no compromises and you just want to relive the physical keyboard days which I think were the best not going to lie about that, well if that fits you to a T then go out and get it because i think this is the first phone i have seen that there is no downside of buying the phone.
The One Plus X
Afters the failure of a launch for OnePlus’s second generation flagship it looks like they are quickly trying to shove that mistake under the carpet and bring back the hype with the One Plus X Tagged “Powerfully beautiful” i dont know how you feel about that but its also tagged the “oneplus mini” by many blogs and tech sights which i think is a better name, rumored specs is a mediatek processor with 8 cores 3 GB’s of RAM and a 5 inch or a 5.5 inch 1920 X 1080 p screen which the screen size is debated we will know by the launch on October the 29th , Some rumors have indicated towards the handset being very similar to the I phone 4 in design which other Asian OEM’s have done the same, like it or not it seams like they are going to the metal and glass design which some would be a god send just like the HTC One M8/9, all of these are great but its the price which many people are screaming at; rumored to be under $200 which would not only put it in the budget and mid ranged price range which i think makes a lot of people turn away from the company even more due to poor past actions and releases by other companies,so will this be the phone to address the fail ours of the One Plus Two ? well if the rumors live up to their name we should see at least NFC back which the Company really did make a muck up by removing that. Software again is rumored and is very likely to be Oxygen OS the light weight skin over Android which about no one has complained about. when it comes to the outcome of the device maybe this should of been the device to release before the Two ? maybe is they had removed NFC on this device and realized their mistake they might of been able to stop the tremendous failure that the OPT was to many people ? well we know one thing and that’s One Plus is going to have a hand full this time round when it comes to impressing and getting back their previous customers.
Windows 10: 2 months after
So its been 2 months since Microsoft released Windows 10 to the masses (even though most of the community knew about it about a year before) and virtually every one i know has already got the upgrade if their laptop or machine is not choking dust from the vista and Xp days or they are dying in the wait to get it or miffed off at the fact they’ll have to pay for it because they havent got a genuine copy of Windows 7 or 8 installed on their machine. I think the biggest hype that Microsoft made about the whole Free upgrade ordeal still hasnt worn off for many because of the fact that this is the first time in many people’s eyes that Microsoft has has give something away for Free ! but there are still the many who belive that if your not paying for the product then you are the product similar to the view people has on Google and we’d be right to think this due to the rising concern about the sharing of our personal information because of the nestled deep privacy settings that can be turned off but it doesnt looks that great on Microsoft for doing so. the greatest fame to windows is that virtually every program that requires a x86 system can run on windows which is great for any one who was worrying about compatibility issues with windows something that Mac users still have some issues with in 2015, but has Windows 10 managed to gain the respect and the audience back from it’s flop of windows 8 ? i would agree obviously having the Free upgrade part of it sweetens the deal but for many users its the perfect blend between tablet and desktop operating system something that if you have a touch screen you can take advantage of but if your prefer good old mouse and keyboard which is another one of its advantages is that you can choose whether to have a start menu with live tiles or you can have a start screen from windows 8 which i personally dont know how any one could like that but its an option that you are not forced into using, I cant really comment on performance due to everyone has unique and different machines with different volumes of RAM and difference CPU architectures but for the machine that i have been testing on which i a AMD FX 6300 CPU running is 4 gz and 8 GB of RAM which Windows 10 is running within the virtual machine of which i have donated 2 CPU cores and 2GB’s RAM, which the reason why i had given this VM a very low system hardware package is to simulate for the many users who will get Windows 10 but would be running a laptop or old machine with this lower or older hardware which from my testing i have found out that Windows 10 truly does fly on lower system hardware using the 32 bit OS so if its performance your worried about i think you’d be beneficial to take the upgrade because it does show a bit of fresh new life into a old machine. Talking eye candy now is all out the UI design and its top notch with flat and saturated colours i personally like the design its not unlike how Apple made Yosemite “all grown up ” which i think is a wise decision if we look back to the awful Vista and in some cases Windows 7 days (cough cough yes i am a bit of a hypocrite in this situation as i am still running windows 7…) navigation is still a bit of an issue for me due to the use of the file manager directly copied and pasted from 8.1 all but a few additions are the same which was one of the reasons why i did not upgrade to Windows 8.1 pathetic i know over so much of a small issue but because the file explore / manager is were i spend most of my time in Windows i did not see the need and the idea why Microsoft had to change it so much, Im still a bit wary about the out of the Box Overdrive being a start up item and still is harder than it needs to be remove… Dear Microsoft i know you want us to use your whole ecosystem but you dont have to ram it down our throats ! Ive already covered edge and i being great and lightweight regardless of the Chrome fanatics. Would i still recommend that you Upgrade Hell yeah if you have a system that needs new life or if your already into the Windows 8 experience unlike my self.
Windows 10 on the raspberry pi was is a disappointment?
When Microsoft announced that the raspberry pi was going to get a version of windows 10 im not going to lie I was freaking out I really thought that that raspberry pi was going to get a big boost up in credit thinking that this version of windows 10 would have a desktop and graphical interface but with a watered down features list could this really be the next step up for the Pi I asked myself but unfortunately this did not happen instead we got Windows 10 Internet of things which didn’t piss me off but I didn’t think this would be the case some ways because of the hype that they made about it And in some cases I think the Pi community thought the same and had the same reaction because of the lack of many company’s taking the Pi serous I think this was why Microsoft did not decide to take it all the way with windows 10 which I think needs to happen for younger people and older people to get into using this amazing piece of design.
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