Showing posts with label gadgets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gadgets. Show all posts

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Review: Xiaomi Redmi 1S (a guest post!)

Today, I'm giving my readers the very first guest post on Topaz Horizon. Ever. This contributor has actually written three guest posts on Topaz Mommy so he's no stranger to my blogs. Everyone, please welcome Vince Sales. I'm okay with him writing on my blog because I have this massive crush on him. But don't tell him that! (Photo captions are mine.)


Guest post from Topaz Daddy here. Frances said she couldn’t do this review, so she pulled me out of tech journalist retirement (yeah, I used to be one) to review the Xiaomi Redmi 1S that everyone’s been talking about lately. I haven’t written a gadget review in ages, so I will keep it short and sweet. No tech jargon here, just the fun stuff!
It's a really nice phone. Simple, sleek, solid, good weight. Feels good to hold.


What’s the fuss?
If you’ve never heard of Xiaomi before, the story so far goes something like this: So, like, you know, there’s a company called Xiaomi that’s like the Apple of China. And, like, the phones they make are really really good. And dude, they’re like super cheap, like half the price of what you’d expect. There’s the Mi 3 that goes for just P10,599; so awesome. Then there’s the P5,599 Redmi 1S that’s like a mid-range phone with an entry-level price. Totally cray-cray.

So is it all too good to be true? Should you get a Redmi 1S? And what about the selfies? Scroll down to find out.


The Screen
Like most smart phones nowadays, the screen on the Redmi 1S is honking big. They squeezed a 4.7-inch screen in there, and it can go toe-to-toe with other big screens from more high-end phones, like the iPhone 6’s 4.7-inch screen (but not the 6 Plus’ 5.5-inch screen). Beside the iPhone 5’s itty bitty 4-incher, the Redmi looks like it’s from the future.

Very bright and clear screen. And it's survived falls, too. 


The Build
If you’re looking for a shiny metal obelisk, you’re looking in the wrong place. This isn’t the steel Mi 3 or an aluminum iPhone. The Redmi 1S is made of plastic. This is not an entirely bad thing. It doesn’t feel as rich as top-of-the-line Samsungs or iPhones, but the plastic doesn’t feel cheap at all while keeping the phone light and strong (and cheap). And it can do something that most other smart phones can’t: you can change the back casing. The Happy Chinese New Year red case actually looks pretty darn good.
Dahil Chinese New Year na, the red one is just perfect for the season!
Redmi vs iPhone 5s


The Battery Life
I am told that battery life that lasts for more than a day is a good thing. That would make the Redmi 1S’ battery life pretty good because I normally got through a day without charging. I am not a very heavy user of phones. Your mileage may vary.


Living with Android and MIUI
The Redmi 1S runs Android with the highly-acclaimed and controversial MIUI slapped on top of it. Everything they said about it is true. It’s brilliant. It works like a dream. It feels like iOS, and it copies features from all the right places. 

I’ve been an iOS user for most of my smart phone life and MIUI has won me over. This is mostly because (in the Philippines at least) MIUI integrates brilliantly with Google services, plus a hundred tiny little things that are too many to mention. I like how it handles notifications. I like how you can choose to prioritize Wi-Fi over cellular data. I like the different colored LEDs that tell you what kind of alert you’re getting. I like the automatic over-the-air downloads. I like that it’s dual SIM. And so on. So, yeah. I like it.


The Camera
Once you have a proper camera (like my pride and joy Olympus), camera phone pictures all look lousy to you. So I was surprised to find out that the pictures from the Redmi 1S were surprisingly good. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Some selfies from the front camera.

Macro.

You don’t get the control of an SLR, but you can select focus, which is good. And also the LED illuminator actually lights things up nicely when your subject is in range. I didn’t even notice the LED illuminator was going off most of the time, but the shots still came out looking natural and not harshly lit.


Redmi for you? For me?
I found a lot to like with the Redmi and precious little to dislike. Big screen, great camera, MIUI, and that price (PHP5,599)! Be still my heart. It’s hard to find a better deal than that. 

For that price though, you should know that you don’t get LTE nonsense or metal construction, and you don’t get a bleeding edge processor. But if you’re looking for something more fancy, you’ll probably want to trade up to the Mi 3 (or the Mi 4 if you can find one). For most people, there’s plenty of smart phone right here for an outrageous price.


Specs Highlights

Xiaomi Redmi 1S
PHP5,599

Screen: 4.7-inch, 720x1280, 16M colors, 312 pixels per inch
Processor: 1.6GHz Quad Core
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 8GB (expandable up to 64GB via microSD)
Camera: 8 megapixels (rear), 1.6 megapixels (front)

OS: Android 4.3, MIUI version 5 skin 

*A unit was lent to us generously for review, but all opinions are honest and unbiased.

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Tuesday, July 01, 2014

My Molami earphones are haute love!

Last night, I blogged about listening to sleepy, sad music. What I forgot to share (and it's really worth sharing!) is how I listen to my music.

In style!

But of course. Thanks so much to my absolutely luxe Molami Bight earphones.
You might think that an earphone is an earphone is an earphone. Like, it's all the same. Nope. These earphones not only make listening to music look sophisticated, the sound quality that comes out of its tiny, gold-plated earbuds is also actually sophisticated.

Molami is the baby of industrial designer Maria von Euler. While developing Molami, Maria wanted headphones for women—nope, she didn't mean cute and pink. She wanted a marriage of fashion and beauty, a stylish accessory for us women that also flatters our face and neck, and complements our hairstyles. Yes, headphones that complement our fab hairstyles! A big reason why I never used headphones, for example, is because they're ugly. Seriously. They either look juvenile, clunky, plastic, boring, obvious. Ugly. I have never met a headphone that I liked.

Until I met Molami. Just look at their headphones:
The Pleat. Light, sleek and made to flatter our jaw. 
Made of napa leather and gold. Covers ears for complete sound isolation.
The Twine. It's designed to mimic a scarf/headband for a sound-surround experience.
Bandeau design is made of silk, satin and chiffon.
The Bight. For discrete style.

The Bight is the one I own. At first glance, it's all black napa leather and cord with gold. The earphones are designed to attach to the ear at two points. All other earphones just plug into the ear canal. After a while, the ear canal tires of the pressure.
The Bight has the EarClick System. The gold lace part goes into your ear canal while the soft nub (removable and washable) goes into the groove above the ear canal. Two support points! This way, my ears never get tired to listen to my music!

My earphones are made of black napa leather and gold. Other versions are white napa and gold, black stingray and silver, and black napa and black hardware.

Woven black cord and gold hardware. So simple, so classic, so luxe!

My earphones pack into a canvas pouch. Can't keep them in plastic because plastic deteriorates leather and I have to also protect the gold parts from getting scratched when I put it in my tote bag.

The Bight is meant for commuters so it doesn't completely block out the environment. In my case, I work from home but I need to keep an ear out for my little kids and the doorbell and all the house stuff that can't be ignored. And yet the sound that comes out of my tiny Bight speakers is strong, clear and whole. Not tinny or scratchy or hollow.

I especially like the Bight because it makes voices sound so distinct—very important to me when I'm transcribing interviews. In fact, when I posted this on Facebook, it's my writer friends (not my music-lover friends) who got really curious!

Thanks to my son, Vito, for taking these photos of me and my Molamis!

Molami headphones are exclusively available at Rustans. For more information, like Digits Trading on Facebook.

Product photos from Molami website's press page.

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Sunday, March 09, 2014

Topaz Beauty: Unboxing my Epilady epilators!

Okay, I know it all seems to be fashion and beauty on this blog lately. And books, too. Well, I'm a stay-at-home mommy who's getting a wee bit too pregnant to roll her round self all over the city so I have nothing exciting to talk about except for my fabulous fashion and beauty finds!

Anyway, I'm super duper excited to finally get my Epilady!!!

I bought them from CashCashPinoy last week. My friend, Nicole of Beauty & Sparkle, knows I've been looking for epilators but I balked at the prices in PCX (heller, 7K!). So when I saw that CashCashPinoy had a bunch of these on sale, I snapped them up for only P3,898!
Grammar edit! Correct: "is". The subject is "payment"!

An epilator is a device that removes hair. I used to own one in the early 2000s but it conked out on me around the time I got married (one must be hairless on one's honeymoon and my honeymoon lasted almost three years so the poor device died on me!) so I've been looking for Epilady since.

I bought my first one from Watsons but they never restocked. So I've just been going to Strip for my hair-removal needs. But Strip is soooo expensive. So I can't be hairless all the time. Then hooray for online shopping!

See all those tiny tweezers? They make for super fast and painless hair removal. Well, painless for me because I only use this for my body but not for my nether areas. I hear from fellow epilator owners that that kind of pain removal is intensely painful!!! So for that sensitive area, I still prefer going to the waxing salon.


I also got a facial epilator for the imaginary hairs on my face. Yup. I must really get rid of that magnifying mirror. So now I have shopper's regret because there's really no hair on my face. I used it on my (imaginary) unibrow but I darn near pulled out all of my eyebrows.  

But I'm happy! Super happy! Now I don't have to spend a ton just to be smooth and hair-free! So freaky with waxing salons because they charge you by the body part. You know, like lower leg, whole leg, underarms, chest, tummy, forearm, whole arm. And since it's so pricey, I always just say, "Just the lower legs please."
But now with my Epilady epilators, I can do my whole body in the privacy of my own home for soooo cheap. Hooray!!!

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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Why I'm scared of the BlackBerry

My phone fell twice in the toilet last year so it's been dying on me. I've been asking people on Facebook what phone to get for months now. I always get very passionate answers on why I should get the phone they think I should get. I noticed that people in the creative fields (arts, publishing, etc) said, "iPhone!" and the rest of the world said, "BlackBerry!" Since I'm a magazine editor and a writer, the answer is obvious but I still hemmed and hawed.

Before I could decide on it, my office decided for me and gave me a BlackBerry. I think it was ready for pick up by November. But I only remembered to claim it last week. That's almost 2 months of forgetting I have a new phone. And now it's been an entire week since I got the phone. Finally, the Third World Nerd took it out of the box and charged the battery a few hours ago. I still haven't touched it.

It's not that I'm tech-challenged. Part of the reason is I'm really not a phone person. I have two phones--for my Globe (personal line that I've had since 2003) and for my Sun (free from my work). People who know me or work with me get exasperated with me because I seldom answer phone calls, I rarely reply to text messages and I always misplace my phones. For the entire month of November, I forgot to charge my Globe phone. Then I forgot where I kept it for the whole of December until Vince found it under a pile of papers last week.

My phones are almost always on silent so when I misplace them (which is often because my toddler plays with them!), I never could find the damn things. And I never feel the need to look for my phones when they're missing. And when they run out of battery power, I forget to charge them. On weekdays, I almost always ignore my phone after 6pm. On weekends, my phones are forgotten.

But now I have a new BlackBerry. And I am not excited to use it because everyone tells me, "You'll LOVE it! You'll be so ADDICTED to it! You CAN'T LIVE without it!" That enthusiasm makes me very apprehensive. And now I'll confess why.

Late last year, I became addicted to Twitter and Facebook. To my horror, I found that I spend 2-3 hours just refreshing for updates, replying, commenting, sharing, RTing. That's 2-3 hours every single day. That's 2-3 hours a day that I could've spent reading a book, reading the magazines (a year's subscription to Vanity Fair, Glamour and Allure!) my husband bought for me as a birthday gift, writing, blogging, cooking healthy meals, putting on lotion, deep conditioning my hair, doing my own mani-pedi, seeing friends, sleeping. Sleeping! I could use those extra 2-3 hours of sleep every day dammit! But no. I spend those precious hours on the social networks.


It would've been okay if I earned money from all the Tweeting and Facebooking. But I don't. If you noticed, I don't blog that often anymore. Blame my addiction to social networking. Blogging makes me money and I've neglected it just because I'm stalking people (really, that's what social networks are for). I have to stop. Obviously. I'm not disciplined enough and it's controlling my life.

So just as I resolved to wean myself from Tweets and FB updates, the BlackBerry arrives and everyone says I can now Tweet, update my FB, check my email anywhere and everywhere. "Isn't that so great?!" they trill. That's like giving a recovering alcoholic a free pass to a fully stocked bar.

I'm in trouble.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Aha! Another bag I want!

Sooo many invitations on my desk and email inbox right now. Lots of gadgets being launched, like the new Sony VAIO, the new LG green something, the new HTC Desire 2.2. That's Third World Nerd territory, though, so I'm browsing the Fossil website instead because also in my inbox is an email from OK!'s associate fashion editor Kabbie Rodriguez. And she said I should check these Mulberry Alexa lookalikes:
Fossil Vintage Re-Issue Messenger, $208
Fossil Vintage Re-Issue Flap, $148

Oh no! Well, it's very similar to the Alexa but it's still not the Alexa. The good thing is it doesn't have the price of the Alexa so... maybe I want one! But Vince already ordered the yellow Cambridge Satchel for me. It's his Valentine's Day gift (thanks, Vince!) so I really really shouldn't buy a new bag. I really really shouldn't!

But I'm going to Megamall this week to check it out anyway!