My 4G Nexus 7 Order Details

Just thought I would let everyone know I have placed the order for my 4G LTE Nexus 7 from o2. Although it is slightly more expensive at £319.99 compared to the google play store price of £299 (which still states: coming soon) I wanted to have the 4G version in my hands as soon as possible and the information I received a few weeks ago told me that it would be available as an exclusive to o2 until November and to be honest I couldn’t wait that long to get it from the Play Store!

The device is set to be in my hands on Friday 13th September (as long as Friday the 13th doesn’t throw in any surprises!). NOTE: If you want it like me on launch day, make sure you order by 4pm on Wednesday the 11th September.

For the £320 or so I also received a ‘free’ Official ASUS Premium Cover for the Nexus 7 and 2GB of pay & go preloaded data which is a nice touch although I am technically paying £20 more for the case and data.

After the O2 credit has expired I shall be using a free service called Samba Mobile: http://www.sambamobile.com/Home/Samba which allows you to rack up free mbs of data by watching the odd advert every now and then. The only catch per se is the fact you have to pay for the sim card everything else is free, use this code: MSE100 to get the sim card for only £1 including delivery, be quick as this code expires 11.59pm on 11th September ( I will post an article with full details on the Samba Mobile Broadband Service very soon)

Stay tuned for a full review on the device, the Asus Premium cover, speed tests on the O2 network and more information on Samba Mobile.

Written by Charles Kerr

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• EXCLUSIVE New Nexus 7 4G LTE UK Release Details (techkerr.wordpress.com)

How to Control and Monitor your DSLR for £50

My name is John, I am a tech enthusiast, photographer and aspiring engineer. I will be doing a few posts for this blog every once in a while. Follow me on Twitter @John_Omi

In the photography business, people can be very demanding. As everyone wants to look their best as physical appearance is very important. When you take a photos of people, the tendency is that they want to see what they look like right away. This usually results in them crowding around your cameras tiny LCD to get a glimpse of themselves.

The most common solution for this problem used by many portrait photographers is to connect a laptop to your camera as a monitor, however there is another way. For quite a while, it has been possible to control DSLR cameras with Android tablets thanks to clever app developers. In this setup, I used a free app called DslrDashboard.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Purchase a generic Android tablet

For £38 I found was an Allwinner A13 7” Tablet on Ebay with 4GB memory and a 1.2GHZ processor. This is by no means a powerful tablet but does the job.

 

For around £40, there are many Allwinner tablets on eBay:

 You can also find this same tablet on Amazon:

2. If your tablet is running Ice Cream Sandwich, update it to Android Jelly Bean

This step is completely optional but will greatly improve the user experience of your tablet. If your tablet is unbranded, this process will most likely requires rooting and flashing your tablet. I only recommend doing this if you are an experienced Android user or have strong computer skills.

Here are ROMs for the A13 tablet with installation guides:

http://www.techknow.me/forum/index.php?board=131.0 – You will have to register to gain access to this forum.

3. Upgrade your tablets battery

Again, this step is also optional but if you have basic soldering skills you will want to do this. The Allwinner A13 Tablet came with a weak 1200mah battery that lasted 2 hours of moderate usage, most generic Chinese tablets are also like this. After a few days of usage, the poor battery life became unbearable to use. In order not to feel like I had wasted my money  to make my tablet useful away from home, I was forced to upgrade to a 3800mah battery from eBay. This battery cost £12.99 including delivery.

Here is a link to the battery I bought:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-7v-3800mah-Replacement-Battery-for-A13-A10-Allwinner-7-8-9-Android-Tablet-/190888177133?pt=UK_iPad_Tablet_Accessories

It took me 5 minutes in total to replace the battery, It involved De-soldering the existing one and replacing it with the new larger battery.

4. Download DslrDashboard from the Google Play Store.

 

5. Connect the tablet to your DSLR using a mini-USB cable and an ODT cable

This cable came with the tablet I bought. It’s simply a micro-USB to USB female cable.

6. Switch on your camera and you’re good to go!

The best part of this setup is fact that is costs a fraction of even the cheapest camera monitors but, has more functionality than most camera remotes and remote software. For filming, I would suggest a tablet with a faster CPU.

Written by John Omisade

Please give a warm welcome to our newest author: John

Hello everyone, thanks for reading my first article on the 4G nexus 7 release details. I got a much better response than I expected and thanks for all the shares, views, comments and voting in the poll it’s great to know what you guys think!

Without further ado I would like to introduce our newest author to the blog, John. Like myself john is a keen technology enthusiast who particularly enjoys engineering. He specialises in photography and phone and tablet repairs in particular so if you need help or advice in that area I’m sure he would be happy to help in any way. Follow him on twitter at: twitter.com/John_Omi

I look forward to reading and learning from johns articles as I’m sure many of you will! His first article will be out very shortly!

Stay tuned for more from me and him very soon, keep it locked to techkerr.wordpress.com (warning big things are coming) 😉

Written by Charles Kerr

EXCLUSIVE New Nexus 7 4G LTE UK Release Details

This is my first blog post 🙂 however I’m going to cut straight to the chase:

I have received exclusive details from ASUS UK regarding the New Nexus 7 4G LTE release date in the United Kingdom. I understand that I am the first to know this exclusive information so it is very exciting for both myself and many people as I am looking to purchase the 4G version of the new tablet from Google.

Firstly a bit of background information on the New Nexus 7 and original release detail: (Skip ahead if you already know this bit!)

The Brand New Asus Nexus 7 was released in late July by Google at their breakfast press conference, some other brilliant devices were announced, more on those later.. It came with a vastly improved 1920 x 1200 1080p Full HD display (323 ppi), 80% faster (compared to the original Nexus 7) Qualcomm 1.5GHz Quad Core Snapdragon S4 Pro Processor, slimmer and thinner body with a soft matte black finish, running on the latest and greatest Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system, 2GB RAM, and a new 5 megapixel camera round the back.

The tablet was officially released on July 30th to Americans, but sadly international users desiring the tablet were saddened to hear that the device would be arriving in “the coming weeks”. Throughout the past few weeks since its release we have learned from Google that the price of the New Nexus 7 tablet for the 16GB wifi model would be £199, £239 for the 32GB version and £299 for the 4G LTE model. We learned from Ebuyer that they would have the wifi model available on the 24th August (this Saturday) and we then learned from an ASUS press conference in London that the official release date for the New Nexus 7 would be on the 28th August (the day after bank holiday monday).  Along with these details there were many stories floating around the internet as to when or if at all the 4G model would arrive in the UK, however I now have official details from Asus via questions I asked them on their twitter account.

The first question I is asked them “When will the 4G LTE Nexus 7 (2013) be available to buy in the UK?” which they were unable to answer at the time, however got back to me with a date of the 13th September, great news for many people as it is much sooner than the answer I received from Ebuyer who stated it wouldn’t be available from them until December.

After ASUS’ Official UK Twitter Page responded with a date I then asked them when I would be able to preorder it from the Google Play Store or from retailers to which they responded by stating it would initially be exclusive to O2 until December  and they were unsure on other dates, after receiving this I then asked them a crucial question: whether the device would work on multiple frequencies and multiple networks including 3G and 4G, the best part was that their answer was YES meaning similarly to in the US the same device will work with other 3G and 4G networks in the UK other than the already established EE network.

I was extremely happy to receive this good news as it seems the 4G LTE version would be arriving only around 2 weeks after the wifi model! 🙂

Please follow my new blog for more Nexus 7 news and soon a full review as well as my news, reviews and thoughts on many other pieces of technology! Stay tuned.. 🙂

Written by Charles Kerr