Kinivo BTH240 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones : Review

Frankly speaking, in current circumstances - you can say this two words simultaneously personify each other, "Affordable"+"Good". It is not kind of limited to a particular product, rather among wide range of products, as people get more aware about Technology and totally dissolve it in their daily life.  Kinivo BTH240 is an Bluetooth Stereo Headphones that supports hands free calling. It is priced at $25 (1511 INR approx) on Kinivo's official website, while you can buy it from Amazon India for around 2k INR (Note: Price on Amazon may change). This product is affordable and good at some points. So how well this performs in our tests, we'll find out in this post.

Duolingo App review : Your Personal language tutor

Many of us want to learn other languages apart from our mother tongue. Knowing one of the foreign language helps specially when we're travelling to other country and when we need to ask something to a particular person who knows that language. Duolingo is an app available on App store and Play Store for free, which becomes your personal tutor and helps you in learning foreign languages( taking reference as my country India, I'm talking about foreign language).

How to get started

First of all just download the app on your Android, iOS device. As soon as you open the app it will ask whether you're an existing user or new user. Here I assume that you're a new user, so click on new user and it will ask you to choose the language. There's a long list of language available, so I'll be choosing French for this article ( actually I'm learning French since last month). And there you go, now click on option button and select create profile just because it will save all your progress, and you'll be able to continue on multiple devices once logged in.

Overall UI :

Duolingo features traditional Card UI, the combination of simple swipes and gestures. Swiping from left to right brings a card in which you can switch between different courses. The rectangular box shows the stats of your current progress like 255 XP, 2 day streak etc. On the main body of the app, there are three tabs : one with brain symbol which is used for different lessons and select different topics and show your current progress on a particular topic and subtopics (lessons) inside. The second tab is the FRIEND's tab. It basically allows you to add friends and compete with them. The third tab with HOME like logo shows how much lingots do you have.  Outfits, Bonus, skills etc can be purchased by exchanging lingots. And there's option button on the top right for general purposes as well as dumbbell like button which is kind of test. Basically it creates a personalised lesson to improve ourselves, before everything vanishes from our mind. The course starts from basics to phrases, than from food to animals and finally from to grammar to sports, political, economics etc.

Tutor's Teaching :

There is different level of understanding and enjoyment in learning if necessary algorithms are followed. There is always a different  effect on a student by different teachers. In the world were Internet covers most of the daily chapters, learning is easy, convenient  comparatively cheaper and less mobile. Duolingo teaches with an effective way - easy to understand and simple. It basically asks you translate a sentence from English to let's say French and vice versa. Since teaching is done on digital screen, there is probably no limit on how you can teach. The basic words are taught pictures like "le garcon, le sandwich" etc followed by some voice samples which we have to write in the text box down below. Only down side of this app is bad voice output. Seriously you can't guess what actually digital voice is coming out with voice interruptions sometimes. Sometimes it asks you touch the blocks of the words for translating French to English and sometimes Multiple Choice Questions. You get three to four chances in a particular lesson, if you go wrong, you loose chances one by one and then lesson is over and you have to try again. Those chances are represented by hearts.

If you touch a word, it gives the meaning and different forms that can be used with different tenses. You can click on voice button to hear the pronunciation of the word or the whole sentence. Let's say if you go wrong, it gives you the correct answer and you loose a chance, but of course you can try again!

Conclusion:

At last it's a good application to consider, specially if you're not interested in spending money for a paid online  course of learning a particular language. Though there are some paid alternatives available, this app will enough for you and will guide from basics to grammar.

 

Pros: Good UI, good teaching method

Cons: Voice feedback

iOS devices to use Lightning port for headphones ?

There are rumours about Apple ditching 3.5mm audio jack for lightning port to be used for headphones. Apple has introduced a new specification in MFI program that allow manufacturers to produce headphones that connects to iDevice using lightning port. The main advantage of this would be in designing the dimensions of the phone and would improve ergonomics of the phone. 3.5mm audio jack are always obstacle in making the phones slim enough.

This headphones will have that much efficiency of receiving  stereo 48khz digital audio output from iOS device and will be able to send 48khz mono digital audio input. Whatever it is this decision is controversial. And as reported by 9to5Mac, apple will push out a software update in future that will enable this support in devices running iOS 7.1 or later.

[zilla_alert style="yellow"] Source : 9to5Mac [/zilla_alert]

2 basic Things that I want in iOS

 When first gen iPhone was released, iPhone OS (former name of iOS ) was considered pretty darn operating system and was also most advance in 2007. However time passed and circumstances changed. Due to introduction of other OS' from other manufacturers, competition got  tough overall, and Apple customers want, what Apple could never  provide due to on going tradition since 2007 ! A survey reports suggests about Majority of iPhone users admit to Blind loyalty to Apple. Well everything has a + side and a - side. iOS is cool but this are 2 Things that I want in iOS :

[zilla_alert style="yellow"] Source of the report : BGR [/zilla_alert]

1.Bluetooth Sharing

Though this point might not be the most logical out there and some of would say " Who uses Bluetooth! "( including some of my best friends). But I think it's not a hypothetical statement , it's a basic fact in the world out there. Bluetooth sharing is useful sometimes. Even if Apple limits this feature to Pictures and Audio, it'd be good since majority of people use this feature for the purpose of sharing pictures and audio . Due to invasion of some of the best messaging apps and sharing apps; it's value is little less now.

If you look at Windows Phone story from Windows Phone 7 to the newest 8.1, this feature was dominant since the release of Windows Phone 7.8 though functionality was still limited in Windows Phone 7.8 .

2.A basic file manager

Microsoft recently released a fully functional File Manager for Windows Phone 8.1 devices. With this release Windows Phone reached it's goal of all round perfect Operating System. It would be good for iOS if Apple would even consider giving a basic file Manager in which users could just look at the files, create folders and Cut,Copy,Paste. It would allow users to manage their data for efficiently.

 

iOS 8 is just Apple trying to be up in race with Android

In WWDC this year, there was no significant hardware announcement, which was ironic for some. However, it was the software that ruled the whole conference. We saw OSX Yosemite inspired by iOS 7 like touch, and the new programming language Swift.

iOS 7.1 Review : Should Update because of worthy performance

Apple , was really in hurry to release this update . The complaints of users , some bugs , bad performance of iOS 7 on iPhone 4  , some security bugs etc were enough reasons for Apple to be in hurry to release this update . And frankly speaking , it's an worthy update , as boosts the performance of the Apple device  . The Photos that i have here are all from iPad Mini 1st gen , because i only have that as Apple device , since I'm an Android user  . Some stuff may very from Apple device to device .

Pocket Tripod Quick Review

Not Only me , but everyone agrees that iDevices , specially iPhones have wide variety and choices and types of accessories in the world rather than Android devices with a limited choice of accessories . But this accessory for iPhone ( 5,5s,4,4s) is kinda interesting , about its form factor , portability and usability in day to day use .. Before we get started , i Really wanna thank GEOMETRICAL INC  for providing this unit for review .. You can buy Pocket Tripod for iPhone 5/5s and 4/4s each of these is prices at $26.95 .. Click Here to buy Pocket Tripod ..