Digital World: Drone Anyone?

Drone technology, especially for consumer side, has getting more matured since it started captured interest of many people roughly two years ago.

Talking about drone, DJI Phantom easily recalled from people's mind due to its reliability and quality of product, they are considered market leader nowadays. Serious air photography and video most likely choose DJI Phantom as their preferred equipment. They are be able to maintain considered premium price for drone until now since not much competitor in this particular market. Sure quite many China's unknown drone brand play in cheap price drone market but they are considered 'toys' instead of for serious usage of drone.

The immediate competitor just enter the market, who else... it's from Xiaomi who is well-known for their affordable but great smartphone products. It called Mi Drone, with its 4K capability, it priced half price of comparable DJI Phantom. It still need to see how the market will react to this, quite interesting to follow.

I did have some interest on this drone, but not at that serious level to get something like DJI Phantom or Mi Drone. Their build is quite big and not something that you will bring during travel unless you are really want to take some serious documentation of your travel. For me, I need drone that can easily bring for travelling but capable enough to do good documentation, and affordable!

Well, there surely some alternatives. One of them, that lately in news due to its getting quite big additional funding for development, is drone namely Hover Camera that being developed by Zero Zero Robotics. The company claims users can “grab, throw, and catch” the drone without damaging it. It hovers when released from grip, and by a connection to an app the drone will follow you around as you walk or move indoors and out. Simple in its function but not its creation, the Hover takes 4K video, panorama, and 13-megapixel still images. Its safety, portability, and new kind of form factor make it unique. It will be made of fibre carbon frame and measures about 7 inches square and 1 inch thick, weighing about 8 ounces (227 grams). When not in use, the drone folds to roughly the size of a VHS video cassette.

Honestly, I myself very interested to this drone since it covers what I need, the only issue is the price which said it might cost around $600 which is not cheap. Well, let's see when it officially enter the market. Watch the video below, I believe you will interested as well... 

Hover Camera - Introducing the self-flying camera anyone can use 

Digital World: Redmi Note 3

Finally, I have decided to upgrade by old Redmi Note 4G (4G version of Redmi Note) to Redmi Note 3. I skipped Redmi Note 2 because it doesn't offer much improvement compare to Redmi Note 4G. The main reason to upgrade now is that after two years of using, the internal storage started to reach minimum available space, even after moving the contents to MicroSD, this make updating apps quite troublesome because need to clear space every time need to update. Thanks so far to great temp file and cache cleaner apps from Mi Tools.

Redmi Note 3 that I bought has 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage and running Android version 5, and it supports dual simcard. It has no dedicated MicroSD card slot, but one of the simcard tray has dual functions, can be used as MicroSD card slot, but off course by doing that, you can only use single simcard. So, either you use two simcard or one simcard + MicroSD. Not sure what the reason, probably to comply with latest Xiaomi policy to get rid of MicroSD card which according to them will slowdown mobile phone performance. Probably to save some space also to make it slimmer and lighter. Yes, Redmi Note 3 is slimmer and lighter.

Redmi Note 3 has fingerprint support, so it becomes much more easier to unlock the phone. Used to use the pattern unlock, but now I love this fingerprint unlock feature.

Its 4050mAh battery size makes it lasts for the full day normal usage. It's only that due to metal body, the battery is now built-in, not changeable.

It also has improved screen quality (5.5" Full HD) and camera quality (16MP f/2, 0.1s Phase Detection Autofocus). For taking selfie with front camera, the fingerprint sensor functions as shutter.

Ah yes, one more, it has InfraRed sensor and Remote Control apps respectively, so throw away your collections of remote control, with just one smartphone you can control you TV, AC, etc. Cool additional feature.

Lastly, Xiaomi still be able to maintain its much affordable great quality smartphone. Its existence has given great lift up of China cheap product image. Cheap not necessary low quality. Kudos to the effort!

iOSApps: Steller

Steller is an apps to combine photos, videos, and text into stories. Steller is initially an iOS-based Apps, but now already has its Android-based apps as well but only running on Android 5 and above.

Steller becomes trending at the moment among Instagram users to also using Steller to create stories based on their photos portfolio. I am among those Instagram users who also hooked by Steller.

Creating a story is quite simple in Steller. Choose photos and videos to be included into the story, then choose which template to be used, then add the text into it to tell the audience about the picture or video. For each page, there are several alternatives of layout to be used. After all done, you can preview it first before publish it.

Here is an example from my Steller account. It can be embed into websites page. Loading might take a while.