All My Reviews

Yep, it’s Chinese New Year eve yesterday and I jailbroke my iPad2, finally. My iPad2 is now happily on iOS5.01 and I am a happy man, maybe but we will see. Jailbreaking has its certain risks but I am still glad that I have done it. To be honest, I install cracked apps once a while but I still end up buying them later. I guess jailbreaking my iPad2 is just like giving freedom to it.

On this occasion, I used the GreenPoison’s Absinthe jailbreak software. It’s not extremely difficult as I just need to update my iPad2 to iOS 5.0.1 and then run the Absinthe on my Mac, and click the Jailbreak button. It only took like 5 minutes to finish jailbreaking and installing Cydia. My first mistake was to have the Passcode turned on. The first two rules are to turn off the Passcode and VPN. I didn’t know it until the Cydia installing process as the jailbreaking process was a success. As usual, I googled for the failure and it was then only I knew that I broke one of the two rules. Anyway, I just re-jailbroke it and it worked.

One frustrating thing that happened on my iPad2 while on jailbreak iOS 4.3.3 was the the iTunes sync failed to work after sometime. That meant that I had to copy out all my IPAs before jailbreaking to iOS 5.0.1. I should have tried to re-jailbreak it at iOS 4.3.3 and test the sync. However, what’s done was done and after jailbreaking to iOS 5.0.1, I downloaded a random app and tried the sync almost immediately. It worked and I guess I will be syncing quite often from now on just to be sure that the sync work and save me the trouble of backing up the IPAs next time.

So far, I have only tested the multi gesture and it is not what I have expected. I thought I could use multi gesture in Safari. However, I would be interested to see how the notifications work, which I haven’t tried yet.

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Paradise Island

When I first bought my Android HTC Desire, I was very excited. That was the first time that I bought a newly launched smartphone. I owned quite a few mobile phones before this but they were already in the market for sometime. The build quality is great. In fact, everything about it is great only to be let down by the limited internal memory space and the problem with multi-touch when playing games. Due to these two problems, I am only using my HTC Desire for stuffs like e-mail, social network, document transfer and web browsing and some light gaming which don’t require multi-touch. Paradise Island is one of those games which could keep me playing for quite a while. I call it semi-addictive.

It’s free

Paradise Island is available and free on both Android and iOS. It is like one of those tycoon games where you build a city and collect taxes from the buildings that you have built. Different types of buildings have different taxes collection duration and caps. Some buildings can take up to 20 hours or so before you can collect money from it. It’s hardly challenging but I like to see how it looks once I have access to all the buildings. I like the simplicity.

Collecting money and piastres

On a smaller screen like my HTC Desire’s 3.7″, Paradise Island actually looks quite good. I have it installed on my iPad2 but Paradise Island’s resolution doesn’t look good on it. Furthermore, I have already been playing Paradise Island for months on my HTC Desire before I bought my iPad2. Hence, I decided to stick to my HTC Desire rather than having to rebuild Paradise Island on my iPad2. Paradise Island only takes a few minutes of my time a day as I only enter the game to collect the money. The game itself actually runs in the background so you don’t have to be in the game all the time to collect the money.

Piastres is special money in Paradise Island where you will need to purchase some special buildings. Collecting Piastres is difficult and it’s the way where the developer hopes to earn some money. There are currently three ways to increase Piastres, build a building that will earn you a piastre in about 20 hours, complete some designated tasks or purchase from the developer.

Battery consuming

Sooner or later, I will have to reorganize all my buildings either to make way for new buildings or to make it look better. When Paradise Island is running in the background, it consumes little or not noticeable amount of resources. However, when you are actually in the game, it will use up the resources very quickly.

Finally…

There are practically no cheats in Paradise Island. Several gamers have tried moving forward the time. It did help by collecting the money faster. However, the they switched back to the current time, Paradise Island branded them as cheaters automatically and it will take them 24 hours before they can collect money from each of the buildings that they built. I think I will still keep playing it unless I change my HTC Desire which I probably will resort to playing Paradise Island on my iPad2 instead.

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HP Touchpad

On 18th August 2011, HP announced that it will discontinue it’s mobile devices line. It includes the new HP Touchpad and Palm phones. You would probably know about it already since it was quite a big news in the tech world. But what has captured the interest of gadget lovers is not the decision to discontinue those products and they are probably even less interested in the future of HP tablets and mobile phones. The fire sale is the headline. Everyone is waiting for their local retailers to slash the prices; from £479 to £115 for the 32GB model and from £399 to £89 for the 16GB model. For that price, anyone is interested and that includes me. At first, I doubt that UK would follow the trend when US first announced that there will be some sort of fire sale. But it is true now and as soon as HP Touchpad is selling in fire sale mode, it’s sold out.

Right now, I wish that I should have bought it at full price and then wait for HP to announce a refund of the differences. That’s quite a huge risk to take though. Anyway, the time has passed and I should move on. I have indeed moved on and I found myself checking Argos stock on HP Touchpad every now and then. I am not obsessed with HP Touchpad since I already have an iPad2. The deal is just too good to pass.

I am thinking, if I had a HP Touchpad right now, what will I do with it.

Digital Photo Frame and Clock

This is a nice though. A 9.7-inch digital photo frame plus clock would be great. I have been dying to get myself one but most of the digital photo frame plus clocks in the market rely on main power supply. HP Touchpad could easily hold its charge at least 7 hours. Well, there will be a few with its own battery but they certainly can’t do more than HP Touchpad.

Android

Everything is possible nowadays. Getting HP Touchpad to run on Android is not rocket science. Imagine the possibilities that will be opened up by having Android on board on a HP Touchpad? Endless! A good quality 9.7-inch 16GB Android tablet priced at £89 is almost impossible to get.

Use it as it is

I am a gadget lover but I am not an extensive user of gadgets. Take iPad2 for example, I only use it for games, e-mails and internet. I did try to use it as a secondary screen using Air Display but it still needs some improvements in terms of speed and usability. Accessing Twitter, Facebook and e-mails is quick and easy. I believe HP Touchpad could do the same too.

Finally…

Until I get my hands on one, it is still quite a mystery device to me. To be honest, I am most likely to retain WebOS rather than install Android or any other possible tablet OS that will be compatible or made compatible with HP Touchpad. WebOS will be obsolete if no one take up the challenge to revive it from HP. I kind of like the idea of owning it since HP Touchpad is probably the first and the last tablet to run WebOS.

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