October 17, 2013 - TBNI.Blog - The Official TBNI.Blog

Spigen Tough Armor Case for Apple iPhone 5/5s Unboxing and Review

October 17, 2013 by TomBoyNI

With the addition of the Touch ID Finger Print sensor on the new iPhone 5s it has meant that case developers are still working on the technology for my usual style of tough cases such as the Griffin Survivor, or Otterbox Armor / Defender Series. Obviously anything for the iPhone 5 that covers the home button will not be compatible with the new iPhone 5s’ Touch ID Sensor.

And like anyone with a new toy I want to play with it, so at this point covering the Home button isn’t the option I want to use. A quick search on the net then pointed my in the direction of a manufacturer called Spigen. I haven’t owned a Spigen case, nor seen or used one before so on taking some online reviews at their word I ordered myself a Spigen Tough Armor case. It was pretty expensive at £20 from Amazon, however if the reviews are correct it should be a £20 well spent.

As usual with Amazon it arrived quickly and on taking it out of the box I was pretty impressed. The case feels solid, and well manufactured. It looks good, the white version complementing the white iPhone well. The subtle branding of the case looks smart. The explanation of the tech behind it is basically impact diversion. The case takes a knock and the design of the case then spreads the forces from the impact throughout the case, keeping the forces away from your phone. The result is it shouldn’t break. Thats the theory anyway and the inside of the case has nice lines running from corner to corner, maybe this is an illustration of the force distribution or something. I think it looks like flight plans plotted on a flattened out globe, but anyway that hardly matters.

One thing I really did like about this case is that it comes with a serial number that you type into the Spigen website and it checks the authenticity of the case. As you will see from previous posts I have been a victim of counterfeiters before and this is a really nice idea by Spigen. Something other premium branded and high cost case makers should consider implementing,

The phone fits well into the case. The buttons are responsive, power and volume buttons are covered. The remaining ports and silent rocker switch are left open. There is a cut out on the rear for the shiney Apple logo to peek through, ye know just in case some one might not be aware you are using an iPhone.

G-Form Extreme Case for iPhone 5/5s – Unboxing and Review

October 21, 2017October 17, 2013 by TomBoyNI

Having been using my G-Form Case for my iPad since April 2012 and with it still going strong, (although a little dirtier than when it started life) I had a G-Form case ordered and sitting on my desk about 10 days before I even had my iPhone 5s. I had made an enquiry with G-Form to make sure it would fit (which it does) and that order was placed.

I am a huge G-Form fan, the iPad case I use is this one :

https://tbni.blog/2012/04/27/april-2012-review-g-form-extreme-sleeve-for-ipad-and-others-up-to-10/

I have had my iPad safely homed in it for 18 months and it has been in some strange and wonderful places. The iPad is still absolutely immaculate, the case although the yellow shows up any marks is still 100%, the material is uncreased, unfolded with no scuffs or tears. It is generally in a back pack but I have 100% faith in the job it is doing in there, after all back packs are not generally one of the safest nor more stable places on earth!

It is for these reasons that I decided to entrust my brand spanking new release day iPhone 5s to G-Form.

The case feels tough and strong with the reassuring ‘squigginess’ of the G-Form material. The case has a certain ‘tackiness’ or ‘stickiness’ that means you can put the case on the dash of your car and most of the time it will sit there, however it wouldn’t be as sticky as, for example, a Griffin Survivor. It slips into your pocket and out again with ease, something the pure silicon cases don’t. And it isn’t a dust magnet, so unlike the silicon cases when you put it into your pocket it doesn’t come out as if it has just done an impression of a vacuum in your pocket.

The case is face-safe, in that it has a raised lip sitting above the bezel of the screen, meaning you can place it face down on a desk and the screen won’t touch the desk.

All ports are open and plugging in the official Apple sync charging cable causes no issues, however the official Apple 9 pin to 30 pin connector won’t fit in, you would need the cabled adapter if this was an accessory you relied on.

The camera ports caused me no issues when taking photos, with or without the flash.

The full screen is open so using the Touch-ID fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5s isn’t an issue.

Nook Simple Glow Light – UnBoxing

October 17, 2013 by TomBoyNI

In my previous post I mentioned my Nook Simple Touch. A short time after I bought this Banes and Ernst dropped the price of the Nook Simple Glow Light to £49.

I had mentioned in the above post that one of the only faults with the Nook Simple Touch was the fact that without a source of light you couldn’t read from it. The Nook Simple Glow Light solves this problem.

The Glow Light is a back lit e-Reader and makes reading your Nook anywhere a complete possibility. It has been mentioned across the web that the back light isn’t great, however I think that it is important to point out that there is nothing else at this price point offering such a complete e-Reader experience. The light isn’t as uniform as that of the likes of a Kindle. However it is perfectly usable making reading in the dark a doddle!

My advice however is, if you are going for a Nook, go for the Glow Light, I didn’t think having a back light would have made much of a difference, however it only took me a matter of hours before I realised how handy it would actually be. The most obvious on is in bed. No back light means a bed side light at the minimum needs to be on. The just by lying on your back you arm is likely to cast a shadow on the screen blocking off part of that ‘page.’ The back light removes any such problems and at such an affordable price point you should definitely considering making the extra investment in the Nook Simple Glow Light.

Finally one other difference between the two is that the Nook Simple Glow Light comes supplied with a waller charger (plug & lead – the lead doubles up for data transfer purposes also). The Nook Simple Touch comes only with a charging and data transfer lead, if you don’t already have a compatible wall charger you will need to buy one or rely on charging through a USB port on your computer.

Nook Simple Touch UnBoxing

October 17, 2013 by TomBoyNI

I already had a few options for readings whilst on the go, the first being books and magazines, but c’mon it is 2013 and actual books are heavy and awkward. I know to some people I have just committed a crime against humanity by stating that actual books are in some way less than the perfect item to place your eyes upon, but for me they are ideal. I had my iPad, iPhone, and more importantly with the mobile internet do we actually need to read one specific thing when there are millions of articles and pages to read online?

That opens up thousands more questions but I think it is safe to say that at some point most people will come across a title that they want to read, something that they have a genuine interest in and the internet just won’t cut it.

It is this point for me that an e-reader has a role. I am not a ‘big’ reader, I have probably read about 10 books in the last as many years however there are a few books that have appeared in the recent past that have made me look at a techy way of reading them.

So the iPad and iPhone are options, iBooks seems like a good solution too, and with Apple’s OSX Mavericks coming very soon with iBooks built in Apple seems to have a great solution. One main problem is the screen, the screen that is so perfect for so many things just doesn’t suit reading, then you have battery issues, an iPad lasts hours, an e-reader can last months.

Then along came the biggie, the price reduction in the Banes and Ernst Nook Simple Touch e-Reader. Coming in at £29 it made e-Readers very affordable. So I bought one, and they are great. With a program called Calibre you can convert many different eBook formats to be compatible with the Nook, it evens handles pdf files reasonably well (a little laggy, but completely functional). The biggest benefit in these e-Readers is the e-Ink, and the paper type display, it greatly reduces any eyestrain and makes reading from the tablet much easier on the eye. It is actually like reading from paper.

Books can be downloaded from the built in book store (accessed via wifi), or for some other source and transferred to the Nook, remembering Calibre you have a huge library of both free and paid books available.

The next big advantage is the battery life, one charge can last up to three months, say no more!

Late 2013 Apple iMac UnBoxing

October 17, 2013 by TomBoyNI

About 3 months ago I had a great setup for my computer needs, namely an early 2011 i7 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro with a Apple Cinema display for my desktop requirements.

As my requirements changed I decided it was time for a change in the computer. Now as any Apple user knows, ‘when you go Mac, you don’t go back,’ so it was time to upgrade. The rumour mill was going mad online of a new iMac coming at the end of August. I seen it is a good time to change. So towards the end of July I sold my MBP and Cinema Display set up and squirrel’d the money away to patiently wait on the imminent product refresh from Apple.

The end of August came, and no iMac refresh came. Then along came the iPhone announcement and its subsequent release on 20th September 2013. No new iMac. During this time life without a computer was pretty tough. I did get myself a Netbook to cope with the emergencies and the iPad was worked hard until 24th September 2013 when Apple announced the iMac refresh : http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/09/24Apple-Updates-iMac.html

Finally time to get my hands on this beast. I decided to bit of maxing out of the specs in order to get a long life out of it. As it was a custom build it had to be ordered online, the delivery time was given to me as some stage on 11th October 2013.

It was this date that it arrived. Delivered by UPS, whom I found to be bound down by red tape in relation to their deliveries but that is an entirely different story!

Anyway the iMac was here and specc’d as follows :

Specifications

3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X4GB
1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
Magic Trackpad
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User’s Guide
Accessory Kit

So with this spec I decided to max out the processor, the graphics and take on a Fusion Drive (some nifty technology that combines a standard spinning hard drive and some flash memory – the storage capacity of a HDD, with the speed of an SSD). I stuck with 8Gb of RAM as this is user upgradable, and much cheaper to do yourself than having it done in the factory.

Having only been using the machine for a week I am already hugely impressed, the Fusion Drive seems as capable as the SSD I had in my MBP, the speed of regular tasks is supreme, I have done a little video editing (for the FAKE Otterbox video posted 2 posts earlier) and the speed of conversion was breath taking in comparison to what I was used too. I have a couple of USB 3.0 external drives connected and they are super sharp in relation to the USB 2 speeds I had been working with. The 27″ screen needs no comment other than ‘STUNNING!’

As yet I haven’t really pushed any aspect of this machine, I am looking forward to playing about with some GoPro footage to see how the graphics card handles some HD editing. It was this sort of tasking that my old machine had started to splutter.

So in what is ultimately a very quick initial thoughts posting I am massively impressed with this machine, it was expensive, but I can see this being an investment that I will continue to enjoy for many years.

Oh and of course I got AppleCare, something I have never had to use thankfully, but anyone who I know that has can not sing its praises highly enough.

Specifications

Disclosure :