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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 ;-)

 

 

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.

Good shows iPad's dominating the enterprise environment

Amazon, Android, Apple, Good Technologies, IOS, Tablet, WP7, iPad, iPhoneEdward Kiledjian

A recent activation report by Good Techbologies showed that the iPad and iPad 2 continue to dominate the tablet in the enterprise market (96% of all activations on Q3 2011 compared to just 4% for Andoird). On the handset front, the iphone commanded 28%. The most popular Android phone was the Evo 4G at 1.6%.

“This quarter, we saw Android smartphones gain in percentage of total activations,” Good Technology senior vice president of corporate strategy John Herrema said. “This is likely due to the consumers holding back purchases of new iPhones in anticipation of Apple’s latest release (the iPhone 4S) — as our reports indiciate, consumers are setting the agenda for enterprise mobility.” IPhone 4 activations fell from 32.4% during the second quarter to 28.3% during the third quarter as a result of that anticipation.

Important Note: Good's numbers do not include Blackberry or Win Phone 7 devices (since RIM uses BES).

You can download the full report here.

 

 

GHSA determines road risk of using a mobile phone while driving

Android, Apple, Behavior, Driving, Google, IOS, Microsoft, Risk Management, WP7, WebOS, iPhoneEdward Kiledjian
An American association called the Governor’s Highway Safety Association recently released a report that use of a mobile phone correlates with increased risk of accidents in the United States of America (USA).
To arrive at their conclusion, the association reviewed 350 scientific papers, published between 2000 and 2010, related to highway safety. Their review clearly showed that distracted driving accounts for 15-25% of all crashes (ranging from small fender benders to accidents with fatalities). Nothing here should be surprising as it based on common sense. What was interesting however was their assertion that “no conclusive evidence on whether hands-free systems [are] less risky than hand-held use”. 
They determined that text messaging (SMS) posses the highest and longest risk since it required the driver to stare at the mobile screen for long periods while composing and sending the message. The next highest risk was dialing a number but the risk duration was [understandably shorter]. Finally they determined that talking on the phone posed the lowest but longest duration risk.
Even with the release of this report, the GHSA stated that they would like to see more research conducted into this subject with more emphasis on prevention.
GHSA Report : Link 

IDC predicts users will download 183 billion apps by 2015

Android, Apple, IOS, Microsoft, WP7, WebOS, iPhoneEdward Kiledjian

June 28 2011, IDC released an interesting report entitled “Worldwide and U.S. Mobile Applications, Storefronts, Developer, and In-App Advertising 2011–2015 Forecast: Emergence of Postdownload Business Models”.

They make a bold prediction that users will download 183 billion apps by 2015 (compared to 10.7 billion in 2010).  They further predict that the revenue model is changing from the traditional model (fee charged during initial purchase) to a freemium model (where the app is free but users may purchase additional functions though in-app purchases and advertising). 

A September 2010 Pew report suggests that 35% of the US adult population has a phone with applications. They further refine the statistic by stating “that means that 24% of U.S. adults are active apps users”. App users are also desirable consumers because they “[…] are younger, more educated, and more affluent than other cell phone users”.

Combine all of the above and it is clear that apps are money makers and are here to stay.