Although you may know ColorWare for its custom paint job service that gets your gadgets in the right color for your taste and charging you accordingly, the Wedge looks to be the companies first ever standalone product that may actually serve a purpose. ColorWare's $250 Grip handle case for the iPad was the first product ColorWare has introduced, however it fell short from our expectations. Keeping up with the companies tradition, the Wedge is made out of a solid slab of aluminum making it last way beyond the life of your tablet. The Wedge is uniquely designed to fit the iPad, iPad 2 and most other tablets and e-readers but might look best with an iPad 2 in the front seat don't you think?
The Wedge enables the user to place a tablet in both landscape and portrait viewing orientations at four different viewing degrees - 40, 60, 70 and 80 degree angles that are also depicted at the top of the Wedge. Each of the four stand slits are lined with a soft Ultrasuede material and the bottom surface of the Wedge has been fitted with a non-slip rubber surface. ColorWare's Wedge won't come cheap at $200, but at least you've got the power of fully customizing it from head to toe and picking from a slew of color options including soft-touch and glossy finishes, Ultrasuede lining colors for each side without increasing the price. We really like the Wedge stand so far, it looks like it belongs inside a Lamborghini Reventon.
Amazon's new fiery hot $200 Kindle Fire tablet is finally here with us. We're going to give it the unboxing treatment it deserves so be sure to check out the gallery down below. Amazon has a very strong ecosystem that is shown when using the Kindle Fire. Music and videos are streamed from Amazon's cloud service and apps can be purchased and downloaded from Amazon's very own Appstore. Although the Kindle Fire sole heart is an Android operating system, the Kindle Fire is heavily skinned and customized per Amazon's taste creating a more unique user experience that differs from other Android tablets on the market. Though after using the Kindle Fire, it seemed to be a bit sluggish and not quite up to par with other tablets in terms of speed and responsiveness.
The Kindle Fire boasts a 7-inch IPS touchscreen display with 16-million colors at 1024x600 resolution, WiFi, dual-core processor and 8GB of internal storage plus 5GB of free Amazon Cloud storage. The 7-inch form factor feels absolutely great to hold with one hand and feels like you could take it with you everywhere you go without sweating a single drop. It also makes it more comfortable to type on the on-screen keyboard that has a spacious key layout. The back is coated with a black soft-touch rubbery texture found on Amazon's Kindle e-readers and it adds a good level of grippyness to the device, but also easily shows oily fingerprints. The screen is crystal clear, bright and reading text on it is very pleasant. I'm amazed Amazon managed to keep the price so affordable yet built a very solid tablet with a great screen. Aside from a power/sleep button at the bottom, the Kindle Fire doesn't have any other buttons or switches. There are two large speakers at the top which aren't as loud as the iPad 2's speaker, 3.5mm headphone port and a micro-USB port for charging at the bottom.
Browsing the web feels a bit slow even though Amazon's praised Silk browser that is said to handle most of the rendering of pages via the cloud doesn't come close to the fast loading speeds of the much pricier iPad 2 over a WiFi network. Granted you should not compare the two against each other as these are both completely different tablet categories. On the other hand, streaming videos and movies is amazing. Each load in the blink of an eye and start playing instantly with respectable picture quality. This is where Amazon's own services show a very strong presence in the Kindle Fire that not even the iPad competes with iTunes for instantly streaming content. Also, Amazon Prime members get access to Amazon Instant Prime library of over 10,000 movies and TV shows and can stream all of that for free.
Amazon's Appstore isn't what we would call a thriving ecosystem and it isn't filled with quality apps and the vast selection you would find in Apple's App Store or even in the Android Market. Don't worry, you'll be able to get your Angry Birds fix with the Kindle Fire as well as many other apps tailored to run on the Kindle Fire.
The Kindle Fire comes to your doorstep inside Amazon's famous frustration-free, eco-friendly packaging with only the bare essentials included inside that is a wall power adapter. There's a slew of sleeves and cases already out for the Kindle Fire, we recommend Amazon's own Zip Sleeve for a quick protection solution, although it is overpriced. We'll have a review on it very soon. The Kindle Fire might not be the snappiest tablet around, but as a budget tablet, the Kindle Fire is worth its price without any doubt. It'll make for a nice present this holiday season for someone who uses Amazon more than anything. And that's just our first impressions with the Kindle Fire after only a day!
Having seen our fair share of styluses of many different shapes and sizes, this one is yet another uniquely shaped stylus made for capacitive touchscreen devices with a greener and echo friendly approach. While other styluses only want to be made out of cold aluminum, the Estylo is made out of wood and even claims to be the first and only stylus that is made from wood. It was mainly designed for artists who use tablets like the iPad, but pencil lovers will also come to appreciate the Estylo's wooden pencil-like characteristics. Much like the Stylo, the Estylo features a highly conductive dual-tip design that will let you achieve between 5 to 70 degree angles without having to put any pressure down on your screen. Unfortunately, it isn't clear out of what material the tip is made out of.
The Estylo comes in 8 colors with embedded magnets that let you cling it to your iPad 2's bezel or Smart Cover. You can pre-order the non-magnetic Estylo for only $8 while the more colorful magnetic Estylo models can be had for $13. Video after the break.
Another stylus made for the iPad 2 and other capacitive touchscreen devices was introduced to the world via Kickstarter, only this time it's different. While many styluses on the market were designed after a pen or pencil, the Stylo looks like it has been designed in the future. Instead of creating a rounded rubber tip which almost any stylus now days has, the guys over at Just Think Design thought this one out hard and long and designed the Stylo stylus to have a dual-end double slanted flat rubber and foam tip design and a streamlined aluminum body with built-in rare earth magnets so that it can magnetically cling onto the iPad 2's bezel or Smart Cover for easy storage and transport.
The Stylo is heading towards the right direction with forward thinking and different approach to what styluses today are able to bring to the table. There's no knowing whether the fixed angled tip of the Stylo works better than the more traditional ball point tip, we'll just have to wait and see. You can pre-order the Stylo in silver and black for $20 over at Kickstarter. Video after the jump!
Apple's decision to make Siri an exclusive feature that belongs to the recently released iPhone 4S has been question quite a lot ever since Siri was announced. At first we all thought it had to be the iPhone 4S' better, faster and improved hardware, but as it turns out, people have successfully ported Siri to fully and flawlessly (with some mic hiccups on the iPod's side) work on all current iOS 5 devices including the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2 and the iPod Touch 4G. Jailbreaking is still required though. Here's a handy guide on how to install Siri on the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch if you're feeling adventurous, or possibly betrayed. Just goes to show you that Apple did everything to entice users to jump ship and get the iPhone 4S with its voice assistant genie.
Well this is an unusual update coming from Apple. Bad news if your favorite color is orange, Apple has discontinued the orange colored polyurethane Smart Cover and instead replaced it with a dark gray polyurethane color. The price remains unchanged at $39
We've got yet another incredibly interesting capacitive stylus straight out of Kickstarter that targets Adonit's Jot stylus in hopes of shooting it down with its missile looks. The Zeppelin stylus is made out of machined solid aluminum with a contoured body shape, but its secrete isn't the missile style cap that serves as the Zeppelin's protective tip cap, but also as a visually appealing rocket stand. The tip is made out of a coiled teflon coated tempered stainless steel with a sprint base that allows for multiple writing angles and eliminates any clicking and tapping noise on the iPad's glass touchscreen, unlike the Jot's plastic disk that makes a quite audible tapping sound we've discovered while reviewing it.
The Zeppelin's stainless steel coiled tip is said to offer an ever clearer, unobstructed view for more precision over the Jot's clear plastic disk and ball point tip. Built-in magnets allow the Zeppelin to magnetically cling onto the iPad 2's bezel. In any case, the Zeppelin is available to pre-order for $25 and should retail for $59 once the Kickstarter funding is successful.
Thanks for the tip, Ken!
Gadgetmac
Gadgetmac is a technology-focused publication dedicated to serve up the latest and best in-depth reviews and news.
