In my house, we joke that every case I review needs to meet the “destructo-dog and tiny terror” tests. Most cases are no match for a 100 pound labrador and a 10 month old boy, but my wife Sarah hasn’t worried once about her iPad since we started testing the new Griffin Survivor for iPad Air!
My HTC One M8 is a very tall phone. 90% of the time it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes if I am using it one-handed, hitting the top power button to lock it is a stretch. I resigned myself to just dealing with it, but then I discovered a simple utility, the aptly named Screen Off and Lock!
When I first encountered the Merrell AllOut Fuse, I was convinced they were the best sneakers I had worn in a long time. They are well constructed, comfortable, and attractive. Plus they can easily handle both pavement and trails. They were perfect … until I went for a run in them.
A recent article in the NY Times caught my eye: “As Parents Make Their Own Baby Food, Industry Tries to Adapt“. We make almost all of our son’s food, with a few exceptions, and I thought it would be an interesting read. That’s how I learned that Beech-Nut thinks our choice is downright sinister!
Ask a geek what makes the HTC One M8 a great phone, and you’ll get back a list ranging from build quality to internal specs to benchmarks and battery tests. Ask a non-tech person, and they’re likely to fall asleep discussing benchmarks. Toss an HTC Dot Case on the One and demo it, and suddenly you have everyone’s attention.
I’ve made no secret of how much I love my new HTC One M8, except how very, very slippery it can be. Since I don’t love big bulky cases, I’ve been hunting for slim but grippy solutions. STM asked us to take a look at their STM Grip 2 for the One, and it might just be the perfect minimalist solution!
I have never been enamored of skins for my smartphones. Over the years I’ve tried several, but I always found them to be too tacky, or they peeled immediately, or I couldn’t get the bubbles out. But when Slickwraps offered the chance to review their new HTC One M8 skins, I figured it was time to give skins another shot!
The HTC One M8 camera is actually a twofer-there’s the main lens and then a secondary one, designed to allow for depth of field and other fun editing tricks. The result is that the right photo can go from nice to WOW in just a few clicks!
The HTC One M8 is the best smartphone I’ve ever used. That may seem like hyperbole, but I’ve counted, and I have personally owned 10 smartphones in the last 8 years, so the One had some serious competition for the title. How did it rise above the rest? Read on to find out!
This year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety started a new crash test, the “small overlap test“. Effectively, this tests what happens when a front corner hits an obstacle, like a light pole or tree. Many, many cars have failed this test, but the videos of the Honda Pilot and Mazda CX-9 may scare you away from driving all day! Check out the CX-9 crash test: And here’s the Honda Pilot test: Scary, right? Drive safely out there, and you can see how various cars have performed in these tests at the IIHS site. Via Jalopnik
Dan took a look at the Toshiba Transmemory Pro USB drive recently, and after he’d finished with it I had the chance to test out its security features. You can partition and secure parts of the drive to keep private files on it, which is great in theory; the execution, however, left quite a bit to be desired.
Bluetooth keyboards are a dime a dozen; we’ve covered scores of them here at Gear Diary. Most are variations on the same old keyboard, but the Kanex Multi-Sync Bluetooth Keyboard falls into the “how did I live without this” category very quickly. Do you have an iPad and a Mac or PC? Then you need this keyboard.
I have been gushing about the quality look and feel of my new HTC One M8 for the last several days. It feels exactly like you’d expect a flagship phone to feel, with solid construction and beautiful cool metal exterior. A phone this nice needs quality protection, and our friends at Noreve have gorgeous leather offerings for the new One.
Over the weekend I marched into my local Verizon store and snapped up the new HTC One M8. It’s been a few years since I used Android, but the look and feel of the One were calling my name. We’ll have a full review soon, but since this phone is so new, I wanted to share a few first impressions!
I have a specific morning reading routine. While I eat breakfast, I quickly browse Feedly for news, and then I head to Television Without Pity to catch up on the television shows I never have time to watch. Replace Feedly with Google Reader, and that’s been my routine for 10 years. On April 4th, though, TWoP is shutting down!
I loved, loved, loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was a little kid. They were the coolest, especially “nerdy” Donatello. So it’s with a heavy heart and the hope that this is an elaborate joke that I’m sharing the new TMNT movie trailer, directed by Michael Bay. Try not to cry as your childhood is ruined in 90 seconds.
Smartphones can be evil when you’re drinking; you might look at your phone instead of talking with friends. or you could be tempted to call or text people who aren’t drinking to tell them the brilliant ideas that came to you after a few rounds. If you’re in the right bar in Brazil, the solution is simple: the Uneven Glass.
What’s the worst part of wanting a cupcake at 2am? It’s a tough call; your options are usually limited to something in a plastic wrapper from Quick Check, plus you need to actually talk to another human being and admit you’re buying cupcakes in the middle of the night … unless you’re in NYC, where a 24-hour cupcake ATM is opening!
Last year the folks at Merrell let us check out their new M-Connect line of running shoes, and I for one was utterly smitten. The Road Glove has been my go-to shoe, but now that I’ve had the new AllOut Fuse sneakers for a weekend, there may be a new shoe love for me!
If the error code 80C805E2 means nothing to you, you probably don’t use a Windows Phone. I’ve seen it crop up twice, with two different email addresses, and the fixes have been different for both. For my GMail, I had to delete and re-add the whole account; for Outlook, I had to wait for a text message backup to complete.
When I was a kid, my favorite show was “Get Smart”. I really wanted to be a spy, until I found out it wasn’t all bumbling around talking into your shoe and hanging out with Agent 99. But I’ve been testing the Spy Tec Inventio-HD Sunglasses the last few weeks, and it’s brought back my old childhood love of spying!