Hasta La Gadget!

Apple doesn’t change things for the sake of change, and that’s why we’ve had to wait a few years for a redesign of the iMac. When a fresh model does arrive, though, it arrives in style: for 2012, the iMac is slimmer than ever, with a crisp new casing that borrows aerospace construction methods and iPhone display technology to wrap together a beautiful, slim computer that’s pleasing to the eye whether or not it’s powered up. Still, as Apple’s mainstream desktop, the new iMac has to perform, too, and with space at a premium there are some interesting choices to be made as to what goes inside. Read on for the full SlashGear review.

Design

Visual sleight-of-hand and some impressive manufacturing innovation have helped Apple come up with a new design for the 2012 iMac, which from certain angles leaves it looking as slender as a MacBook lid. In fact, the heavily tapered aluminum rear narrows to just 5mm at the edge, though it bows out toward the middle to accommodate everything that needs to fit inside an all-in-one computer.

That accommodation and construction uses everything Apple has learned so far from unibody notebooks, scaled up to suit a 21.5-inch or bigger desktop. So, you get carefully stacked logic boards and custom speaker enclosures, along with a single central fan that pulls cool air from a row of holes under the front edge, and pushes it back out of vents behind the tilting stand. You also get minimal upgrade potential: the 21.5-inch iMac is an entirely closed box, with nothing intended to be user-accessible, while the 27-inch iMac has a small panel by the power socket that allows access to the memory but nothing else.

“Apple’s production magic is friction-stir welding”

Apple’s production magic is friction-stir welding, more commonly used in the aerospace industry, and repurposed for the new iMac to bond the front and rear panels together. Traditional welding the seams wasn’t possible, thanks to the slimline build, and so a technique where the panels are pressed tightly together, heated, and fused was implemented. There’s a sizable reduction in weight, too, versus the old design – the 21.5-inch iMac is down 8 pounds to 12.5 pounds, while the 27-inch version is down 9.5 pounds to 21 pounds – which is useful if you’re moving the computer around.

Face-on, meanwhile, and you’d be forgiven for not realizing that you were looking at a new iMac. The black screen bezel and slim aluminum chin look just as they did before, and it’s only when you see things from the side that the new design stands out. The obvious loss from the blunt-edged last-gen model is the optical drive, with the 2012 iMac following the trend of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina and focusing on digital distribution for apps and multimedia.

On the back, as before, there are the ports clustered to the left side and the power button on the right. No matter which size iMac you choose, you get the same connectivity: a 3.5mm headphone jack, an SDXC memory card reader, four USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt ports, and a gigabit ethernet port; inside, there’s WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. Up front, there’s a FaceTime HD camera above the display, together with a pair of digital microphones that can use beam-forming technology to isolate your voice from ambient noise.

The new iMac’s speakers deserve a little attention on their own, given that they’re nothing like as anaemic as we feared they could be given the 40-percent smaller chassis. In fact, Apple has been able to accommodate two 20W amplifiers, one driving each of the speakers, which themselves fire down from holes alongside the front-edge air intakes. Despite the unusual positioning, sounds feel like they’re coming directly from the display and quality is strong. These speakers are easily capable of being cranked up to uncomfortably loud levels, without encountering any distortion until you’re at the very top end of the scale.

Display

Finessing the iMac’s display is no small part of the redesign process for 2012, though there’s more to it than pure pixels. The LCD panels themselves are the same as in the previous-generation – either a 21.5-inch LED IPS screen running at 1920 x 1080, or a 27-inch LED IPS running at 2560 x 1440 – but the way they’ve been assembled has changed.

Called full lamination, it’s a technique where the cover glass is fused to the LCD panel rather than sandwiching them together with a gap in-between. Apple – and others – have already used it to good effect on phones and tablets, but the 2012 iMac is the first time it’s been implemented on such a large display. The upshot is a thinner panel overall, by around 5mm, and an improvement in picture quality.

Despite the LCDs themselves being the same as before, the combination of full lamination and a new anti-reflection coating process makes a real difference when you’re sat in front of the iMac. Colors are brighter and punchier, the screen is impressively bright with consistent backlighting, and viewing angles are broad, with no inversions or color mangling even when sat almost side-on to the display. Graphics appear as if they’re swimming right at the surface of the glass, rather than being slightly inset from the black bezel.

Apple quotes a 75-percent reduction in reflection, helped by the so-called plasma deposition system which coats the glass layers with more precise coatings of the same materials used to cut glare on camera lenses and fighter pilots’ helmets. It’s a tough thing to measure exactly in a real-world setting, though there’s an obvious cut in reflections (see image above where a flash from camera is minimized) when you set old and new next to each other. We spent far less time tweaking the degree of tilt of the new iMac versus the old to find a position where artificial lighting and the sun didn’t prove frustrating, and even once we’d set up both to our liking, text and graphics simply look better on the 2012 model.

Fusion Drive

Until now, the iMac has been offered with a choice of up to two different storage options: traditional hard-drives, for those who want the most capacity, and SSDs, for those who want the most speed. The 2012 iMac keeps both those options, with a 1TB HDD the default (5,400rpm on the 21.5-inch; 7,200 rpm on the 27-inch) upgradable to 3TB HDD on the 27-inch, along with a 768GB flash storage option on the 27-inch.

For 2012, however, Apple adds a third option: Fusion Drive. A hybrid of HDD and flash storage, Fusion Drive pairs 128GB of speedy solid-state memory with either 1TB or 3TB of HDD capacity, promising the best of both worlds. On the one hand, the flash storage is far faster than the typical spinning-platter drive, but Fusion Drive is also a fifth of the price of the SSD option.

“For everyday use, the cost of FusionDrive is unbeatable!”

We’ve seen hybrid HDD/SSD drives before, of course, but Apple takes a slightly different approach. Rather than the relatively small amount of flash memory other companies have used for caching a few frequently-accessed files on their models, Apple’s Fusion Drive has a full 128GB of flash which allows a far greater number of files to be kept in the faster part.

Chunks of the OS, the apps you use most frequently, and the media you commonly play are all prioritized automatically, while over time OS X learns which content is infrequently required and shunts that to the more capacious, but slower, HDD. A true SSD will inevitably be faster across the board, but for everyday use Fusion Drive is hard to argue with, as the benchmarks in the next section demonstrate.

Specifications

All new iMac models use Intel’s Core i5 quadcore Ivy Bridge chips by default, with the quadcore Core i7 processors available as options on the more expensive versions of each core configuration. The cheapest 21.5-inch iMac uses the 2.7GHz Core i5, supporting up to 3.2GHz Turbo Boost, while its more expensive configuration gets the 2.9GHz Core i5, with up to 3.6GHz Turbo Boost. The latter can be built-to-order with a 3.1GHz Core i7, with up to 3.9GHz Turbo Boost.

As for the 27-inch iMac, that starts out with the 2.9GHz Core i5, with the more expensive pre-build getting the 3.2GHz Core i5. The build-to-order on the latter is Intel’s 3.4GHz Core i7, with 3.9GHz Turbo Boost. All of the chips come with 6MB of L3 cache.

Memory is 8GB as standard across the range, comprising two 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 chips. The 21.5-inch iMac can be specified with up to 16GB, while the 27-inch iMac can go up to 32GB. However, only the 27-inch iMac has user-accessible memory slots: the four bays are accessed via a panel behind the stand, whereas the smaller iMac isn’t intended to be user-upgraded. In short, if you think you’ll ever want more than 8GB of memory on the 21.5-inch iMac, you should bite the bullet and upgrade at the point of purchase.

Then there’s the graphics. Space constraints mean that Apple opts for mobile GPUs rather than desktop chips, though they’re the same Kepler-based NVIDIA GeForce examples that we’ve seen in the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina. On the 21.5-inch iMac, the entry-level model gets the GT 640M with 512MB of dedicated GDDR5 memory, with the more expensive model stepping up to the same GT 650M as in the Retina MBP, only with 512MB of memory (rather than 1GB).

On the 27-inch iMac, the entry-level GPU is the GeForce GTX 660M with 512MB, while the most expensive pre-configuration gets the GTX 675MX with 1GB of GDDR5. The latter is also the only 2012 iMac that supports a graphics upgrade, with the GeForce GTX 680MX with 2GB of GDDR5 memory a $150 addition.

Performance

Apple provided us with a 3.4GHz Core i7 iMac with 8GB of memory, the top-spec GTX 680M GPU, and the 1TB Fusion Drive; all together, it’s a configuration priced at $2,599. We kicked off with Geekbench, a synthetic test of processor and memory performance, and the iMac scored a whopping 14,064, around 50-percent more than the 2011 model could manage. It’s worth noting that Apple’s portables have narrowed the gap between mobile and desktop, however; the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display scored 12,970 in Geekbench.

In the SunSpider test of browser performance, the new iMac completed in 133.3ms (faster is better); the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro scored 179.5ms in the same test. Cinebench, a test of processor and graphics performance, saw the new iMac score 42.72fps in the OpenGL category, and 7.32 points in the CPU category. Again, in contrast, the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro scored 34.40fps and 5.74 points in those categories respectively, with its 2.6GHz quadcore Core i7 and 8GB of memory.

FusionDrive certainly doesn’t hurt. In the Blackmagic test of disk performance, the iMac managed read speeds of 409.6 MB/s and write speeds of 318.7 MB/s using the flash/HDD hybrid. Given the flash storage is prioritized until capacity becomes an issue, it comes as little surprise to see those rates up around where recent all-flash models from Apple have performed. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, for instance, came in at 431.7 MB/s read and 382.7 MB/s write with its 500GB solid-state drive.

The difference is particularly clear when compared to a 2012 iMac without FusionDrive. We also tested a 21.5-inch entry-level iMac, with Intel’s Core i5 quadcore 2.7GHz, 8GB of RAM, and the standard 1TB 5,400rpm hard-drive. In Geekbench, the iMac scored 9164, but the big change is in drive speeds: without the hybrid technology we saw 90.7 MB/s read rates and 107.2 MB/s write rates.

All those numbers add up to a machine – when equipped with FusionDrive, at least – that simply flies in day-to-day use. Apps generally load in under 2-3 seconds, and while the iMac might use mobile versions of graphics chips, it’s still eminently capable of photo and video editing, and conversion; iMovie and Aperture run with no lag. Gaming is also more than possible, though we wish that – as on some all-on-one computers we’ve seen – there was a video input to use the great display with an external console. However, it’s possible to drive a second external display; up to a 2560 x 1600 panel, in fact, as well as the iMac’s own screen.

Value

The new iMac range kicks off at $1,299 for the base-spec 21.5-inch model, while the 27-inch iMac starts at $1,799. It’s worth noting that of the two 21.5-inch configurations, only the higher-spec can be outfitted with a FusionDrive, which means $1,499 plus $250 for the drive upgrade; there’s also a good argument to be made for maxing out the memory on the smaller iMac, since it can’t be upgraded later, which is another $200.

All versions come with an Apple Wireless Keyboard (a wired keyboard with numeric keypad is a no-cost option) and a choice of Apple’s Magic Mouse, the Magic Trackpad, or the wired Apple Mouse; for $69 you can have both the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad. Those who simply must have an optical drive can pay $79 for the USB SuperDrive, though any external DVD burner should work.

The all-in-one computing market is small, but it’s not non-existent, and the new iMac does have a few rivals. Dell’s XPS One 27 runs at the same 2560 x 1440 resolution as the 27-inch iMac, and starts at $1,400 for the non-touch variant. That, however, uses Intel HD integrated graphics; if you want a discrete GPU, you’re looking at upwards of $2,100 and NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 640M, a weaker graphics chip than Apple’s entry-level 27-inch model. It does support multitouch, should that be a buying decision.

Vizio offers 24- and 27-inch All-in-One PCs, though they both run at 1920 x 1080 resolution, and the GPU – only discrete on the 27-inch – maxes out at the GeForce GT 640M LE. The range of processors is more humble too, with only the top-end 27-inch model getting a quadcore Core i5, though the maximum price of $1,539 makes them competitive for budget buyers.

HP’s Spectre ONE is a 23-inch, $1,300 option, meanwhile, kicking off with the same 2.9GHz quadcore Core i5 processor, but less RAM and a lesser GPU. Several of these all-in-ones offer a secondary flash caching drive, though typically around 32GB in capacity, and as such are less practical than FusionDrive.

Of course, the big difference between the iMac and these other all-in-ones is the OS: if you want Apple’s OS X, then the only way to get it is to buy a Mac. All of the alternatives come with Windows 8, and while that’s a capable platform, it’s not Mountain Lion, and thus a deal-breaker for many users.

Wrap-Up

The new iMac is a beautiful piece of hardware, that’s clear to see. Apple’s clever construction techniques have enabled a stylish, distinctive all-in-one, but more importantly they’ve legitimately improved the user-experience, too. The full lamination process takes the same display pixels as from the previous generation iMac and makes them work harder and look better; you’ll appreciate the many pounds dropped from the overall weight of each system from the moment you lift it out of the box.

“We’d recommend every buyer tick the FusionDrive option box”

With style comes a handful of compromises. As with Apple’s recent notebooks, there’s less room for user-upgrades: adding memory is basically the only thing that you can do, and even then that’s only an option on the 27-inch model. With both, then, it’s a case of digging deep when first ordering, particularly since having experienced the speeds on offer from FusionDrive, we’d seriously recommend that every buyer tick that option box.

DIY enthusiasts may miss the upgrade possibilities, but everyone else will be enjoying an incredibly capable computer. With strong performance the 2012 iMac proves that beauty needn’t be merely skin-deep, and that all-in-one needn’t mean conceding speed. That, and Apple’s creative use of components and design, makes it our pick of the all-in-ones.

Apple iMac 27-inch (2012) Review is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’ve got a Gmail account and you work with the iPhone or an iPad, you may have been jealous of all the extra fabulous features that your Android friends and family have had that you didn’t in a Gmail app – that era has ended. With Gmail 2.0 for iOS, you’ve got a perfectly simple interface that’s so stripped down, you might think something is missing. In reality you’ve got the best-tuned Gmail app experience yet offered on iOS – though that should be true every time there’s a release, it’s gotten particularly well improved over the past this time around.

This new version of Gmail has, first and foremost, easy access to multiple accounts. Perhaps you’ve got an account for work, another for personal business, and another you use to keep in contact with your granny. You don’t want those all mixed up, do you? Gmail 2.0 makes it perfectly simple to switch between them on the fly with a simple tug of the display – right up where your profile name is – check the new arrow and make your faces appear.

The 6 months since the team at Google announced they’d be creating a whole new Gmail experience for iOS have been spent not just adding usability features, but adding aesthetic cues and tweaks as well. You’ll find that this version of Gmail is flatter and smoother than ever before, even going so far as to update the color scheme of the icon for the app – white now takes over the previously dominant red – or does it emphasize it?

This version of Gmail allows you to see much more in-detail invitations to events via Google+ as well as the ability to give a +1 to Google+ posts without leaving the app. In short, this version of Gmail entices you to join Google+ more than ever, and we expect this trend to continue through the future as well. Access posts, RSVP, or jump on down to the mobile web if you absolutely must – but stay if you can!

You can download this version of Gmail from the iTunes app store right this minute for absolutely no cash at all – it’s free! You’ll need a Gmail account to work with Gmail, of course, but you can create a profile from the front screen of the app as well.

Gmail 2.0 for iOS Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

One of the takeaways from our iPad mini review was quite how travel-friendly the smaller tablet proved to be in comparison to the full-sized version. The 9.7-inch iPad has grown progressively slimmer across its generations, but the 7.9-inch form factor has bag-friendly advantages in its narrower width and shorter length. The fact that it’s so easily used one-handed makes it a more direct alternative to a Kindle or NOOK for ebook reading, too. While the WiFi-only model’s design begged to be included in your bag or purse, the 4G version finally has the flexibility to match.

We’ve thoroughly reviewed the iPad mini in its WiFi-only form, so we won’t re-tread old ground. Suffice to say, embedded cellular data makes far more sense on a smaller tablet; all too often the 10-inch-scale slates end up only being used around the home or office. Being able to get online, check email, use navigation apps, and stream media without worrying about if there’s a WiFi hotspot nearby really does step up the usefulness of the iPad mini.

The obvious omissions of the WiFi-only model remain, chief among them being the absence of a Retina display. That’s presumably down to component availability and price (though we’d be surprised if it wasn’t present on the iPad mini 2) but, while it’s clearly grainier when viewed side-by-side with the fourth-gen iPad with Retina, the fact remains that in running all of the existing iPad apps out of the box, the iPad mini hits the marketplace running.

One of the most useful elements of the iPad mini is the mobile hotspot functionality, allowing us to ditch a standalone data card. Convergence often comes with compromise; yes, most modern smartphones can be turned into mobile hotspots, but usually at the sacrifice of most of your day’s battery life. Surprisingly, the iPad mini far out-performs the average standalone mobile hotspot for runtime, especially if you leave the display off.

With realistic usage – a mixture of browsing, video playback, emailing, messaging, music playback (both streamed and local), ebook reading, and some FaceTime – on a combination of WiFi and LTE, the iPad mini reached an incredible 19.5 hours (of active usage; 3 days, 3 hours standby) with 35-percent still on the gage. With the display off and mobile hotspot mode in use, we exceeded twenty hours, far in excess of the roughly 3-4 hours a typical hotspot would give you.

If you’re a frequent traveller, then those numbers are probably looking very appealing. Quickly sharing your LTE connection with a laptop (or indeed another tablet; you can have up to five WiFi clients connected at any one time) can be a lifesaver when you’re on the move, and the knowledge that you’re doing so without sacrificing overall runtime is incredible. Throw in the fact that the cellular iPad mini also has true GPS (which the WiFi-only model does without) and – with the right combination of apps – it turns into a serviceable navigation device too.

There’s a not-inconsiderable premium to be paid for the cellular version: starting at $459, it’s $130 more than the comparable WiFi-only model. Then there’s data costs on top: AT&T offers 250MB for $14.99 per month, 3GB for $30, or 5GB for $50, while Verizon’s tiers come in at 1GB for $20, 2GB for $30, or 5GB for $50. Alternatively, both carriers allow the iPad mini to be added to their shared-data plans (“Mobile Share” on AT&T or “Share Everything” on Verizon), which allows the tablet and your smartphone to dip into the same data pool. AT&T also offers a two-year agreement option, with a $100 subsidy in return for the commitment.

More expensive, then, but with LTE the iPad mini feels like it’s how the tablet was meant to be used. Flexible and long lasting, there’s none of the compromise that usually comes with 4G (barring cost) and all of the features that we appreciated from the iPad mini WiFi. If you’re often on the move, it would be the iPad mini WiFi + Cellular that we recommended for your bag.

iPad mini 4G Review (Verizon) is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 comes the most well-rounded Amazon content delivery system you’ve ever held in two hands – but that’s all it is. This device is being sold as exactly the device it was meant to be: the Amazon Vending Machine HD 8.9, and it takes its job seriously. If you could never bring yourself to pick up an iPad and the Apple-bound content environment that is iTunes, nor could you purchase a Nexus 7 or 10 as connected to Google Play, Amazon might be the third heat you were looking for.

Content Delivery System

It’s a mistake to compare the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to any other tablet on the market not inside the Kindle Fire family unless you’re a software developer, a hacker, or you’re just about to jump into the digital content arena and have never before purchased yourself a digital video. With the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, the iPad 4th generation (the one with the Lightning port that’s in the store now), and the Google Nexus 10, you’ve got extremely high definition displays, and it’s there you should start if you’re demanding to see the best hardware package.

But here’s the thing: there’s a massive amount of Android tablets on the market today, each of them able to access the whole of the Google Play store. There’s several iPad models in the line’s history, and a set of rather similar Kindle Fire models tablets out there able to access the Amazon content system – but Amazon’s system doesn’t stop at the Kindle Fire. The only system that stops at the hardware (and vice versa) is the iPad.

What the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does is place the Amazon content system directly at the center of a machine that’s been checked and approved by Amazon itself. With that, it’s been limited to the Amazon content system so that you can be assured an experience that Amazon approves of – Apple does that same thing with the iPad. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is indeed a fabulous place to access your Amazon content.

The connectivity on this device is wi-fi but a 4G LTE bit of AT&T mobile data is available from Amazon if you pick up the edition with that ability. The offer behind that LTE is interesting at $50 a year, but with a limit of 250MB of data a month – this means you’ll be able to use this device for email using that data, and if you start watching streaming content or downloading media, you’ll go over in no time at all. Watch the overage costs rack up and that smile will turn upside down real quick.

Hardware

The display is extremely nice, bringing on a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels over 8.9 inches, that being 254ppi. That’s less than the iPad 4 and less than the Nexus 10, but up at this resolution we’re not able to tell the difference without getting up real, real close – closer than we’d get on any normal day, that’s for sure.

Colors are reproduced extremely accurately and with the darks on this machine being as deep as they are, we’ve been using this machine as a content machine via the miniHDMI as a top pick. Downloading an HD video from Amazon’s collection and playing it on the device or through the microHDMI port to an HDTV makes for a massively impressive experience – amongst the best on the market if not straight up the best there is with a wire.

The speakers on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 are Dolby powered and stereo – bringing on two channels for real. The speakers on this device are loud enough that you’ll not want to be a room away from a sleeping baby when them turned all the way up – you’ll wake that baby up. It’s unfortunate that they’re facing backwards as most of the tablet universe still has them aiming, but holding the tablet with two hands has the sound bouncing off your palms – that’s good enough for most.

Battery life on this device is rather good, especially since you’re only working with wi-fi connectivity at this time. LTE might make you bust down a bit quicker when it comes around, but for now you’ve got a couple of days at least with daily usage as a game-player and TV show downloader/watcher. Chatting on Skype (which is, mind you, generally OK but certainly not the nicest Skype experience on the market by a long shot due to less-than-perfect video quality) will drain your battery quickest.

There’s also a rather nice case/cover that you’ll probably want to pick up from Amazon if/when you purchase the Kindle Fire HD 8.9. It’s made by Amazon and looks like what you’re seeing above, complete with a magnetic “smart” off/on function (as the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does indeed have that sensor) and has a rubbery bumper that allows it to stand up like you’re seeing here too.

Performance

With the processor mentioned above you’ve got a suitable environment in which you can play most if not all of the most high-powered games on the market. What you’ll see in the video below is Asphalt 7, a racing game, opened and tested in a real basic way just so you can see how quick everything renders out and responds – just as nice as the nicest devices on the market today.

We’ve heard of some people having small problems with the user interface and non-immediate opening of apps and switching between screens, but any such problems were negligible from our perspective. This is a high-quality device and Amazon has created a user interface over the top of Android that should do the original creators proud.

You’ve got a processor from Texas Instruments that’s one of the rarest on the market today, the OMAP4470 dual-core used only on the Nook HD family, Samsung Galaxy Premier, the BlackBerry Dev Alpha B, and a variety of oddities. This processor works perfectly well for this device, comparing in performance with the other dual-core processor on them market in a very general sense to the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor we’ve seen on a large number of smartphones this year including the Galaxy S III and HTC One series.

The processing power here does not bring us as ultra-swift a system as we’re seeing on the Nexus 10 or the iPad 4th gen – but the difference is invisible if you’re not using both one next to the other or doing extensive processor tests in a lab. Once you’ve got it in the lab, on the other hand, you’ll find the device ranking up on systems such as AnTuTu benchmark system with a score of 7247 – nowhere near the quad-core competition.

Store Access

If you’re not planning on purchasing videos from Amazon, you don’t want to use Amazon’s system for music, you’ve got no intention of purchasing any ebooks from Amazon, and you don’t want to use Amazon’s App Store, this is not the tablet for you. This unit is first and foremost a window into the Amazon library of digital content, and you’re going to have to pay for it.

The Amazon store exists at all corners in this device, and the different kinds of media you’re consuming here sit right up front and center. The first display you see on this device once you’ve started it up is a giant set of icons in a side-scrolling gallery that says quite clearly “you’re about to start” rather than “welcome to your Amazon tablet.” If there’s a scale from tablet interfaces that goes from standard computer to window, it starts at Android, moves up to the iPad, and ends at the Amazon Kindle Fire – this is not a device you’re going to use like your notebook or your desktop, it’s a consumption window.

X-Ray

There’s a brand overlay that exists between two different bits of in-content excellence that come with this device working with content from Amazon called X-Ray. This system works in videos as a direct connection to IMDB, showing the actors that are working in essentially any given scene and with books showing keywords and connections to them throughout the story you’re reading – find all the Ali Babas in the story and link in to them with ease.

This system works with a lovely collection of ebooks and videos coming from Amazon – not every single piece of content coming from Amazon, but certainly enough to warrant calling it a great selling point for this tablet. We’re always wondering who the heck that guy is getting his face cut off by the monster in the horror film scene we’re watching – now we know!

Kindle FreeTime

The folks at Amazon have come up with an extremely simple home screen replacement app that brings forth an environment for your kids. This environment is created by you, the parent, and is so simple that you can’t mess it up. You open up Kindle FreeTime and select the profile you want, deciding there what settings you want your child to work with and what apps/media they’re going to be able to see, and bang, you’re done.

From there the person in that profile – child or not – needs a password to exit again. That’s so simple that we wish Amazon would release FreeTime for the Google Play app store – please? Pretty please? For now you’ll need a Kindle Fire to use Kindle FreeTime – and for some parents that might be a deal-maker.

Wrap-up

If you’re deeply invested in the Amazon universe for content, this device is the best content delivery system you’re going to be able to buy today. It’s the biggest tablet Amazon makes at the moment and gives you access to all of your Amazon-held content in high definition, top to bottom. It’s not an Android tablet (as far as the Google Play store is concerned), it’s not an iPad, and it’s not a Windows device. It’s a unique tablet that’s deeply engrained in the Android environment.

The price of this device in its wi-fi configuration – that being the one we’re looking at here in this review – is $299 USD, and for that price there’s no competition unless you want a smaller display and a different content environment. For Amazon users, there’s nothing else – unless of course you consider the smaller version: see our Kindle Fire HD 7 full review as well.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The difference between the Google Play Nexus 4 and the T-Mobile Nexus 4 is neither in the hardware nor in the software, but in the cost and agreement you’ll be making with T-Mobile – but that doesn’t mean we can’t give some more time to Google’s own smartphone hero for Android 4.2 Jelly Bean – for science! First be sure to take a peek at our original full Nexus 4 review as done by our own Vincent Nguyen, then have another dive in with the slight differences between it and the T-Mobile edition – must be something for the massive difference in price, right?

Hardware

I had major reservations about the LG Nexus 4 after having experienced the strangely slippery hardware of the LG Optimus G (see our full review here). I’m not talking about any sort of slipperiness in an ephemeral sense – I mean the plastic and glass that makes up the bulk of the device is literally slick. As it turns out here with the LG Nexus 4 though, any little bit of grip friendliness lost is more than made up for by the fabulously well-crafted curved edges of the front-facing panel.

Both the front and back panels on this device are made of Corning Gorilla Glass 2, the newest in undeniably tough glass action from the biggest name in reinforced glass panels for mobile devices today. Under the back panel you’ll find the same Crystal Reflection pattern that the LG Optimus G has, many different squares of reflective material creating an ever-changing pattern of light and dark. The name “NEXUS” sits on the back in big clear letters so you know what you’re using, too.

The display on this device is a lovely 768 x 1280 pixels across 4.7-inches of IPS PLUS LCD. That’s 320 PPI, just above Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus at 316 PPI (PenTile* in that case), and the Nexus S which was all the way back at 235 PPI. For comparison purposes: the iPhone 5 (and 4/4S) sit at 326 PPI and the highest sharpness on the market today exists on the HTC DROID DNA at a massive 440 PPI (across 5-inches of display, no less).

*See more on Samsung’s PenTile choices here: “PenTile keeps you happy for Longer” – as spoken by Philip Berne for Samsung (Philip is also a columnist for SlashGear, mind you.)

The Nexus 4′s display is as bright, sharp, and vibrant as your eyes can handle – so says DisplayMate. Touch sensitivity on this display has been nothing less than top-notch, and viewing angles are essentially perfect. This device works with an RGB subpixel arrangement rather than the PenTile we’ve seen on several recent device including the Galaxy Nexus. LG’s choice here means that that any pixelation you might have noticed in the Galaxy Nexus is gone here and the display experience is easily one of the best you’ll find on any smartphone or tablet out today.

This device also works with not just wireless mirroring in the near future with Miracast, but SlimPort as well. With SlimPort accessories you’ll be able to mirror your display via full-sized HDMI while your device charges at the same time – quite similar to what the HDMI converter accessories for MHL-compatible devices do. Here though you’ve got compatibility with HDMI, VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort too – though just the HDMI accessory exists at the moment.

Also note that the Miracast standard wireless technology exists on several devices at the moment, also including the Samsung Galaxy S III. You wont find so much as a peep from this technology in the Nexus 4 at the moment, though – we must assume that it’ll show itself once more accessories working with the Miracast standard hit the market. It is strange that Google would market the device as having said abilities without them being utilized right out of the box – isn’t it? Have a peek at a column by the name of Miracast Accessories: don’t jump in head first just yet for more information on the future of this technology – the imminent future, that is.

Camera

The camera is a vast improvement over the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’ clunky 5-megapixel shooter, and not just because you’ve got a few more megapixels to toss around here. It would appear that LG, Qualcomm, and Google have come together to create a camera experience here that’s sharp and clear. It’s not perfect, and we’re not quite ready to say it beats out the Samsung Galaxy S III, Nokia Lumia 920, or iPhone 5, but it’s certainly a contender.

The panorama mode as well as Photo Sphere create images that are impressive to behold, but again, are not perfect. While the stitching of images together to create a whole are rarely done without error, the final product is almost always worth keeping. Have a peek at a couple of Photo Spheres in action in the following: [Mall Parking Lot], [Gas Station], [Arcade] – each are posted to Google+ in full-on exploration mode so you can see them in their natural state. Google cross-promotes their social network and the software here as Android 4.2 Jelly Bean+ will bring on this Sphere ability to all devices that run with it from that point onward – fun stuff!

Initial Cost and Data Plans

Once again, let’s not forget that you literally get the same device from T-Mobile that you’d get from Google here, packaging and all. That said, the off-contract price for the T-Mobile-sold Nexus 4 is up at $499, that being approximately $150 more than the off-contract model you can buy from Google Play. Considering the fact that the Google Play online store is completely sold out of the device right now, with a 4 week wait (for some) before device delivery, you might want to drop that $150 to get it sooner.

The device is available from T-Mobile attached to a 2-year contract for $199.99 (this being that $150 less than the Google Play $349.99 price), which you might as well go for if you’re planning on working with T-Mobile one way or another. T-Mobile has a large collection of monthly plans for data, text, and talk, with the largest being a lovely $124.99 per month for unlimited action for all services with 10GB of data working at full speed (with throttling after that). This plan also includes hotspot abilities so you can share data from your smartphone to your other devices as well as 10GB of cloud storage.

Though T-Mobile does have several unlimited data plans, its worth mentioning that you will be “throttled” after the specified amount of data is used each month. Throttling data speed means you’ve got significantly slower data delivery than, in this case, T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ network normally delivers. You’ve also got a $79.99 per month plan that includes unlimited data, text, and talk, this time with 2GB of high-speed data before throttling.

Wrap-up

The LG Nexus 4 is just as awesome a Nexus device as any that’ve come before it. Google continues to bring forth stronger and stronger devices, amalgamations of power here in addition to standardization for developers. With this generation comes one of the most powerful processors on the planet along with one of the strongest cameras on the market and a rather top-tier experience for not just the expert Android user, but the average smartphone lover as well.

The only thing you’ll want to keep your eye on is the fact that this device does not work with 4G LTE – if you need data speed in a mobile way, this isn’t your best bet – not yet, anyway. If you’re in the shade of the great wi-fi gods on the regular: no worries. Outside of data speed, this is easily one of the most fabulous smartphones on the market today.

T-Mobile LG Nexus 4 Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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