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Veho 360 Bluetooth speaker review

Apple, Blackberry, Bluetooth, Google, Holidays, Hotel, Playbook, Smartphone, Speaker, Tablet, Travelling, Veho, WP7, iPad, iPhone, technologyEdward Kiledjian

 

Although this is primarily a European product, it is often easily available on ebay and I wanted to conduct a quick review for my readers. I received this as a christmas gift and have been using it daily for about 3 weeks now.

Quick look

The Veho 360 is a small cylindrical battery powered speaker. It stands 5 cm tall and 4cm in diameter.  The device has a  2.2 watt speaker that shoots sound out from the top. On the side, it has 2 ports: a charging port and a 3.5mm audio port. You can use the 3.5mm port to connect the speaker to a non-Bluetooth device.

Herein lies one of my pet peeves with electronic devices… why do I need a special proprietary tip USB cable to charge it?

On the bottom of the device is a little switch with 3 modes: Bluetooth, off and 3.5mm audio in. As you can imagine, the first mode turns on the speakers Bluetooth radio, the second mode turns off the speaker and the last mode allows you to use it with the 3.5mm audio in (thus saving battery by turning the Bluetooth radio off). The switch itself is easy to use and mode selection is clear with a solid click feeling when you change modes.

Cost

You can find this speaker online for about $50US.

Battery

The company recommends charging the unit for 4 hours for a full charge. I conducted a couple of charge discharge cycles then timed the duration of the battery and was able to get between 3.5-4 hours of constant playback. The battery is not replaceable and I was not able to identify the quality of the battery so I expect it to support 300-500 charge cycles.

Pairing

Pairing the device was simple. I simply moves the switch to Bluetooth mode and my iPhone asked if I wanted to pair with the Veho. It was that simple. If you want to pair it with another device, you have to force the original device to forget the Veho, switch Bluetooth off on the original device,  switch the toggle to off and back to bluetooth and the new device should see the pairing option.

Sound Quality

You control the volume of the device using the volume rocker of your source device (iphone, ipod, etc). Now let’s make it clear that this is not a high fidelity speaker system.  Sound quality seems to be a little better with the 3.5mm audio in (compared to Bluetooth mode).  Bluetooth has limited tranmital capacity and should not be used if you are an audiophile. 

For a small pocketable speaker, I was expecting lots of distortion at the higher volume levels but to my surprise, it handles higher volume levels well. As expected, you can start hearing sound artifacts and degradation as your Bluetooth source moves farther and farther away from the speaker. For normal use (5-10 feet from the speaker with open access) you won’t notice this. I pushed the Bluetooth connection to its technical limits and although the audio does degrade, I didn’t lose my connection once (staying within the allowable maximum Bluetooth distance standards of course).

Recommendation

Overall I think this is a nice little speaker especially if you want something small that travels well. I do with I could charge it with a regular USB connection.  How does this compare to the Jawbone Jambox or the Logitech Mini Boombox?

I have tried the Jambox and can say it is far superior to the Veho. The Jambox offers cleaner, louder and richer sound but costs 3 times more.  If you need something with longer battery life, louder volumes and the ability to add feature via loadable speaker apps then go for the Jambox.

I have not tested the Logitech mini Boombox yet so if Logitech wants to send a sample, email me ;-)

 

 

Wozniak : believes some Android features are better than the iPhone

Apple, Google, IOS, Nexus, Wozniak, iPhoneEdward Kiledjian

Before people start sending me hate mail, Woz still believes the iPhone is a better overall experience but believes Android performs some functions better. One of those features is voice commands and built-in navigation. With all the phanphare around SIRI, WOZ says the Android version performs better (for him at least). 

In case you missed it, WOZ went to the Google campus last month to take ownership of a freshly baked Google Nexus phone (although his Android phone of choise is still the Motorola RAZR). WOZ said  “The iPhone is the least frightening thing. For that kind of person who is scared of complexity, well, here’s a phone that is simple to use and does what you need it to do.”

The fact is Apple has bought a bunch of mapping and navigation companies but has yet to announce anything concrete. When of when will Apple finally offer some type of IOS bundle navigation. 

As for SIRI, we all know it is beta and Apple is likely collecting voice samples to improve the accuracy of its speach recognition engine. Plus many of SIRI's add-on features (like finding a pizzeria) still don't work outside of the US. 

Read for more details.

 

Google acquired another 217 patents from IBM.

Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, PatentsEdward Kiledjian

Engadget is reporting that Google recently acquired 217 patents from their big blue brother( aka IBM). The transaction was posted in the USPO assignment database on Tuesday. Some analysts have looked at the patents in question and have said they include techniques related to email administration, Instant messaging, video conferencing, presentation software and the like.

Just a reminder that they also acquired another 1000 patents from Big Blue in July of 2011, 1023 in September of 2011 and bought Motorola Mobility which also had a vast patent portfolio.

Could they leverage these patents to protect Android against legal attacks from Apple and Microsoft?

Read More: Link

Internet Explorer 6 is dead. Long live IE.

Browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Google, Internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, USA, WindowsEdward Kiledjian

Many of us thought IE 6 was already dead but it seems we were wrong. As its share of the web browser market fell to below 1%, Redmond finally gave it a one-two sucker punch. IE6 is now officially down for the count. Roger Capriotti , the Microsoft director in charge of IE marketing said : “IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away.”

StatCounter’s latest report shows that Chrome 15 is now the most popular single version browser in the world (surpassing IE8). Combining all versions of all browsers, Internet Explorer is still king of the browser hill.

Read More: Link

Smartphone activations don't matter (iphone or android)

Android, Apple, Cell Phones, Google, IOS, Microsoft, WP7, WebOS, iPhoneEdward Kiledjian

Whether you’re in the Apple or Android smartphone camp, at one time or another, your side used creative statistics interpretation to justify why you are the market favorite. The numbers used most often are total activations or total devices sold. But how important are these numbers?

Until a platform reaches critical mass, it is very important for the manufacturer to keep pushing the platform forward. With critical user mass come the apps which in turn will drive additional growth.  So a platform needs enough users to make the platform interesting to developers but after that point, who cares!

I want Google and Apple to spend less time trying to creatively interpret statistics and more time improving their user experience.