When did vacuum cleaners become gadgets?

A vacuum cleaner. Yes. There I said it. This post is about a vacuum cleaner.  I'm a nerd and obsessive about things being organised and cleaned appropriately, especially the carpet in our family home.  We've had a German manufactured Sebo model for more than 15 years and it still works.  But it's like a ball and chain when using it.  Getting the kids to take responsibility for their own cleaning jobs has always been a sore point — a challenge before giving them a ball and chain to do vacuuming with.  While I'd seen Dyson brand and become aware of the profligate nature of James Dyson's patented 'cyclone' technology which power their range, I looked at Dyson's as another brand of ball and chain, if not prettier and sexier looking.

Over the summer I was out with the missus at our local John Lewis department store, when before you knew it, we were talking about portable vacuum cleaners with a  sales assistant.  We took it home and of course I test drove it. Well, that was it. Hooked.

It doesn't have a computer on board.  No software.  It's all mechanical but runs off a battery.  But damn, this thing works and better than the Sebo. No wires, much lighter, cleans better (even animal hairs) and with their assorted suppled attachments gets to the places you often wanted to clean.  The only downside is that  the supplied battery lasts 15-minutes, and only 6-minutes on the high suction mode for tough carpets. So we bought a second battery to flip over to. It stands up as strange space age device the hidden corner of our hallway. As an extra touch, it has a docking station to have it docked against a wall like it its supposed to be there.  Nice.

Vacuuming now happens daily. Mess is hoovered up in seconds. The kids just get on with it. We don't have a dustpan and brush anymore.  We don't use the Sebo anymore. Anyway, it's called the Dyson DC35 animal. Thought you should know.

External lenses with the iPhone 4S: the iPro lenses

During the Olympics, I got rather excited when I read an article of an Olympic press photographer who was using an iPhone 4S as his mainstay camera and shooting some great pictures.  On closer inspection, he was using an external lens system by Schneider Optics, the product line being the iPro lens system.

Ever since putting down my Nikon DSLR a few years ago, I’ve been trying to find the most satisfactory solution which gives near picture quality to SLRs, but with the convenience of compacts.  I bought and sold the Panasonic G1 in the last 2 years, largely unsatisfied with its speed of operation and sync for daylight and flash pictures.  With these other types of non SLR camera, the trade offs to the performance and optics are obvious, but the gains are increasingly that in a world where our smartphone dominates our everyday experience, that it is increasingly the preferred device to take photos which will end up on our on-line galleries and social networks, which in turn are used for our end of year calendars, season greeting cards and increasingly, hold our visual data for productivity and collaboration applications.

Without going into a full-blown review, which I’m sure you can find elsewhere, the iPro lens system is made up as you can see below, with 3-lenses and a case for the iPhone 4 and 4S which utilises a bayonet mount for each lens. Each lens is of the fixed type and corresponds to 35 focal lengths accordingly for both stills and video:

The nice touch is that unused lenses, become part of a lens case and a handle which attaches to a screw attachment on the iPhone case, thereby making a sort of mini monopod as shown in the next picture:

Packaging wise, it came in 2-boxes.  One for the iPhone case with the wide and fish eye lenses and handle, the other holding the telephoto lens.   Setting it up took a few minutes, with care being applied to getting the iPro case onto my 4S. I should add the case fitting is very tight.  Getting it off, was tricky and Schneider Optics should look at this as an area of improvement for their next version.

In terms of usability, beyond the novelty, it was nice.  I found the wide and fish eye lens most fun.  Don’t expect stellar quality as the lens a function of the optical capability of the iPhone 4 and 4 itself and their own glass working with it.  But remember, my aim is not taking stunning detailed RAW images, but photos to add to my cloud service apps and social networks.  To that end, it played nice.  Another improvement I’d like to see is the bayonet fitting for each lens to the case to be less fiddly (as handling miniature and delicate lenses like this open up the accident factor if you’re in an odd place), but as a a solution for getting a better range of photos with my iPhone 4/4S and keeping it as small a possible, this is very good, not not great.

One point of note, is that the iPhone’s flash does not work with the iPro lens, thereby forcing daylight scenario photos and thereby opening up the limitations of the iPhone 4 and 4S low light capabilities to the newly crowned iPhone 5.

An iPhone 5 equivalent set of lenses and case is current under development at Schneider Optics and you can bet it will be available in a number of months, given this iPhone 5 model size should see us to a 5S in about a years time. Attending a friends wedding at the summer enabled me to get a real tour of duty for a day and experience for how practical the iPro lens were to use and assess the quality of the photos.  I liked it, and it is quite a pull in wedding conversations with the “where did you get the cool tech from for your iPhone” sort of line.

If you want better range of fun factor with an iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPro lens is well worth a closer look.

Nearly a month with the iPhone 5

The relationship we have with our smartphones nowadays, like the standard mobile phone before it, is the most important we have in terms of devices running our lives in connectedness with the modern world, western industrialised or not.  Mail and collaboration, productivity, utilities, games, music, video, books and the web itself mark the cornerstones of what has changed in terms of we expect to have since Apple launched the iPhone to great intrigue and derision back in 2007.  For me, and most other smartphone converts in the industrialised world, we’ve not looked back.

My old 4S was a very, very good smartphone, but when I got Google’s Ice Cream Sandwiched Nexus S, I really appreciated and wanted the larger screen in an iOS smartphone.  The question then became when that would happen and would it force Apple to make design trade offs, based on their previous statements that 3.5inch screens were designed optimally for one-handed use.

Ordinarily, I could have and perhaps should have waited since I only had the 4S for seven months.  Problem is, smartphones lose value very quickly as the ante is upped with the latest model.  Losing £200 resale value on an unlocked mint condition unit, happened in an alarmingly short time.  I suspect the larger screen is the main value differentiators in most people’s eyes (like mine).  Most notably, and as we’ll come onto, each iteration of iOS software is designed to work optimally with each new generation of hardware.  What does this mean?  It means that you see signs like seeing how a little bit laggy the Apps Store loads on a 4S and knowing that in a another 12-months, it will may well be the basic entry model and the minimum requirement for iOS 7.0 (though to be honest, I expect the iPhone 4 to still be the very minimum).

So after, a month, was my £200 net cost increase for the same phone (albeit larger) worth it?  I have to look it at that a number of ways.  Let’s take the basics which I have to admit to:

1. I’m a geek and spend a disproportionate amount of income using, playing and learning technology.  Implicitly this mean a regular nature upgrades of favoured products
2. I really wanted a 4 inch iOS device to bump up the screen usability compared to what I have on the Galaxy Nexus – which I preferred in screen estate.  Have I said that already?

Of course that does not say in the main what I think of the device, so in predictable fashion here are my bullets:

In your hand use – very light as you will know.  I mean it feels crazy light.  Feels more like a slippery bar of soap than the previous 4/4S.  If you’re prone to drop, get a case immediately.  But do I like, yes.  The taller dimension is actually a better hold in my relatively large hands.

Speed – yes, definitely snappier.  It’s the small things like the Apps Store opening up so much more quickly.  Add to that my son and I opening Football Championship Manager 2012 on the new device for the 1st time and being surprised how much quicker than the 4S it was.  I mean, fast.  Add to that the ICS’d Galaxy Nexus, is starting to feel slow.

Screen – freakishly sharp.  While still Retina display, they’ve enhanced the vividness of the colours, blacks and contrast, which always looked washed out to my the preferred image on the Nexus with its OLED display.  Parity, by my eyes, restored.

Camera – faster.  Much better in low light.  Nuff said.  Photographers rejoice.

Wireless – being in the UK, have yet to early adopt when it comes to Everything Everywhere (T-Mobile and Orange) as the first UK 4G service rolls out imminently.  That said, 3G performance feels quicker possibly due to the CPU, GPU, RAM combo on the new hardware.  5Ghz wireless N is now on board with the new Broadcom chip.  This baby now connects around my home access point at 150Mbps.  Bear in mind the iPad mark I, connects at 65Mbps on 5Ghz wireless N.

Battery – based on my own profile of use, it seems to be less than par with the 4S which is disappointing.  Not a lot, but noticeable.  Check the Ars review on that.

Each iteration of iPhones brings further superlatives. I mean packing that much better tech in a model which is larger (but more miniature inside), lighter and faster.  True Moores Law stuff, Intel must be weeping.  As an end-user with limited appreciation of other smartphones (i.e. 2 previous Android models), the iPhone 5 is stellar.  If you don’t believe me, grab a cup of coffee and read the mind-boggling detail AnandTech goes into in terms of its review.