Review: Scroll Engage 8" Budget Android Tablet

I looked around for a long time to find a budget Android tablet with reasonable specs for my birthday. It had to have the ability to use Google Play without too much hassle, have a reasonable screen resolution and size, 1GB RAM, 8GB or more internal storage and have a 1Ghz or higher CPU and cost no more than £130. Any less RAM or CPU would be too sluggish for my requirements. After a reading a lot of reviews and comparing lots of cheap Chinese tablets I discovered the Scroll Engage by Storage Options. It provides all my requirements and more. It has a 1.2Ghz Cortex A8 processor, dual core Mali-400 graphics processor, 8 inch capacitive screen at 1024x768 and 1GB RAM and the MicroSD card slot can take a card up to 32GB.


Unboxing

The Engage was packed and presented quite nicely, with protective films over the screen and rear.  In the box there's a little manual, a Micro-USB to USB socket cable for attaching USB dongles etc, a 5V charger, cheap earphones, and a micro USB cable for connecting the device to a computer.

Build Quality

The Engage feels quite solid and has a metal back to it. In landscape mode on it's right hand edge there's a hardware power/standby button, 3.5mm headphone socket, microUSB, Mini HDMI, power and MicroSD card slot. I have bought a 16GB Class 10 card for storage of music, photos and videos. The only thing I'd criticise here is the positioning of the speaker on the back of the device, which is very quiet, and is muffled if you use the device flat on a desk or bed. I recommend SpeakerBoost app to get the volume louder.


Performance

The Engage feels fairly smooth as you can see from my video and unlike in another review I might mention, Apple's website loads perfectly fine! At least it does in Firefox, which works very well on the device. The viewing angles of the screen aren't brilliant but not bad for a cheap device and it is nice and bright. However you have to be patient with budget tablets like this, I get a fair few 'not responding' messages on some of the heavier apps, just be patient!

Apps

By default the Engage comes with a reasonable selection of apps, including a couple of interesting additions like Evernote. SlideME and ScrollApps are used by default for installing apps and Google Play is not mentioned at all in the manuals etc for legal reasons, but it is accessible using the Play widget and so far I've had no trouble installing apps, with only the occasional app not being compatible, and I really have installed a lot of apps! For some reason on some apps like Google+, the top edge of the app is not tappable, so I've had trouble Plussing posts and adding people to Circles on it probably since the Scroll is not an official Google authorised device so isn't quite compatible. Other than that I have had no real problems with the device.

Update: One of the best things you can do is install Apex Launcher, which works nicely on the device, and straight away gives you a Play shortcut!


 













Rating:

Price/Performance: 9/10
Good value for the money - a reasonably performing tablet for £100!

Build Quality: 6/10
Generally seems fairly durable.

Screen: 5/10
Viewing angles not amazing but generally fine for the price. It's also much brighter than I expected.


Conclusion

Overall I'm rather pleased with the Scroll Engage, and I think it's good value for money. At nearly half the price of the Google Nexus 7, don't expect it to be as powerful but it's still quite capable of handling the usual YouTube, Facebook, video playing etc. One thing that it has that the Nexus hasn't got is the MicroSD card slot.So if you're after a tablet for under a 100 quid the Scroll Engage is pretty good choice. It's also worth considering the bigger Scroll models for a little bit more cash.

More photos of my Scroll Engage can be found here

 

Beginners Guide: How To Rip a DVD In HandBrake on Ubuntu

Handbrake is probably one of the most well known cross-platform DVD rippers, it runs on Linux, Windows and OSX. On Ubuntu I find it's best to install from the official PPA.

1. Insert the DVD movie.

2. Open HandBrake.

3. Select Source...

4. Select the DVD on the left hand pane, as shown:

5. Wait for HandBrake to scan the DVD, a preview should appear. The default settings are fairly sensible in Handbrake, but you can check and adjust when needed. Press Start when ready...
 

6. ..and then wait while Handbrake rips the DVD...

7. Finally the DVD should be ripped and ready to play (only for personal use of course). Close Handbrake and enjoy your freshly ripped movie.

Ubuntu 12.10 Released

Ubuntu 12.10 has been released and you can download it here. Most of the changes might not be much of interest to those who don't use Unity, I use Cinnamon 2D desktop. I also like the new Remote Desktop function built into the login. Also perhaps the online accounts settings is quite interesting, though I still prefer Pidgin over Empathy. OMG!Ubuntu have done a nice little roundup of what's new in this video and their "10 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu" article. I'd also recommend Linux Candy's 12 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 12.10, which is even more comprehensive!

Motorola Atrix Work and Play Kit Unboxing and Review

I've just set up my Motorola Atrix "Work and Play" Dock otherwise known as the Multimedia Dock. It has a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, remote, a mini HDMI port, and 3 USB ports on the rear, and is powered by an 18W PSU. See more photos here.

It all feels very well built, the Bluetooth keyboard reminds me of the Apple wireless keyboards, chiclet keys, and similar weight and feel. It was all very well packed in it's box too. The dock has a solid feel to it too, nicely weighted and rubber pads for gripping a smooth table. The keyboard takes 2x AA batteries and the mouse takes 2x AAAs both provided. The little remote takes a Bios-type CR2032.

I found the Entertainment Centre to be pretty smooth. Press space on the keyboard and it plays your music while you browse your photos. Videos on the phone play perfectly too. You can advance photos on using the remote, cursor keys on the keyboard or the left-hand on-screen controls on the phone. The right-hand controls are for the music playing and volume control.

As music tracks advance there's a Notify-style pop-up and notification pop-ups also appear for new texts etc.

Next up I switched to the Webtop mode, you can switch from one to the other quite easily. In this mode the phone will display a clock instead of media controls. An on-screen version of the phone's interface appears on the desktop, which can be fullscreened too, which I put to good use with Mupen64 N64 emulator for a bit of Goldeneye! The desktop itself is based on a very lightweight bare-bones version of Ubuntu. Also I notice in WebTop mode, the screen of the phone itself can be used as a trackpad with onscreen mouse buttons.

The default browser in Webtop mode is Firefox and is completely unlinked and separate to the phone's browser. However, since I have Firefox installed on my phone I'm using Firefox Sync between the too, very handy. I also installed Adblock pop up blocker in the Webtop Firefox though for some reason the normal Adblock Plus isn't available.

Overall I'm really pleased with the Work and Play Kit, it's very handy for quickly showing my photos and videos on a big screen, it also seems to be quite well made too and the whole kit should be useful when I need to travel light. Although the kit is a year old I think it's still a very useful tool and as it's been replaced is much cheaper than it was new! I'll see how I get on with this, and next I'd like to get the Lapdock!

720p Video Recordings Using My Motorola Atrix

I recorded a some videos of the 'Rockin The Park' classic rock event at Clumber Park on Friday night, using my Motorola Atrix and I'm very impressed with the video and particularly the sound quality. Here's a couple of them:

From HTC Hero to Motorola Atrix

I've just upgraded from my HTC Hero to a Motorola Atrix. It's second hand but is in very good condition, and the 4.0-inch 960×540 screen is beautiful! The only sign of previous wear are some very tiny scuff marks on the battery cover.

The Atrix is quite a leap in performance from my HTC Hero! It has a 1Ghz dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB internal storage and a microSD card slot that supports up to a 64GB card, though i have a 32GB card that I was using in my Hero. All of this means it can run plenty of apps including some reasonable games.  I can now finally watch and record (720p) HD video and do other stuff much quicker than before. I know that many of you probably have fairly decent phones and this is normal to you but for me it's a new and awesome experience!

The Atrix runs Android Gingerbread has quite a few Motorola specific apps and widgets installed. One thing I do like is the Social app that's useful for Facebook since I don't want the awful official app installed. I wasn't keen on the original launcher so I replaced it with my favourite, Zeam which I'm used to from using it on my Hero. I used to run Beautiful Widgets on my Hero but it doesn't seem to be compatible with my Atrix so I scouted round for an alternative and found Sense Analog Clock Dark which works nicely and fits well with the default theme and wallpaper I found in the stock list of backgrounds. It can show system info and also weather, but I prefer to use the Weather widget that's preinstalled. I'm also using the handy Power Widget Lite to turn on/off wifi, bluetooth etc. Firefox is now my default browser, it works well and the sync feature is very useful. Here's a screenshot of all my workspaces:

The Atrix's rear camera does 5mp stills and up to 720P video, with a firmware upgrade it will do 1080p. I'm very impressed with the quality of the video and audio recording. It also sounds reasonable coming from the speaker(s?), I was watching a YouTube video earlier that definitely seemed to have reasonable bass to it, and sounded a lot better than the awful speaker on my Dell D430! It also has a reasonable front facing VGA camera for video calls which works well with Google+ Hangouts. I like the way in Hangouts you can switch to the rear facing camera with just a finger tap. 

Here's a photo I took earlier it was a nice sunny day:

The only thing I don't like about the Atrix is it seems to take a very long time to charge the battery, not helped by my urge to pick it up every 5 minutes! I think various apps and background processes are probably chewing up the power too while I'm not using it. It's quicker to charge if I just turn it off.  Also it arrived with an awful third-party PSU that was only 500mA, which also seemed to produce a jittery effect with the screen when the battery was very low while. Fortunately the cheap charging dock I ordered came with a decent 1000mA PSU with USB socket and cable so I'm using that. I also bought a nice and cheap wallet-style soft case which gives it a little protection, though it's slightly annoying having to remove it to put it in a dock. I'm also considering buying a new high capacity battery since they are very cheap on E-bay (£6-10)

One thing I really like is the power button that also doubles as a finger print reader so you can unlock just by swiping your finger which, with practice, I've found to be quicker than tapping in a code or pattern.

This brings to me to my favourite feature of the Atrix, the ability to connect it via the multimedia docking station to a HDMI input on a TV or monitor and use a USB mouse and keyboard to use it like a PC. Even better is the Lapdock or laptop dock that turns it into a lightweight laptop. Arstechnica did a good review of the web-top type experience with the Atrix and Lapdock so I don't need to go through it too much here but when I can afford it I'd definitely like both of these accessories! 

I've also rooted the Atrix using Pete's Motorola Tools which makes it relatively painless experience. Although I'm tempted to install CyanogenMod on it, I'm not sure absolutely everything works with CM installed, and apparently it will get an official ICS upgrade soon. Anyway, it's great to finally have a phone that only came out last year, that's fairly powerful and should hopefully last me awhile.

Linux on Film: Ubuntu on a Macbook with Xbox Kinect in a hospital operating room

Linux on Film: Ubuntu on a Macbook with Xbox Kinect in a hospital operating room via my other blog :)