Older iPhones Still Flying Off the Shelves

November 2nd, 2012Tech News No Comments

 

 

iPhone 5s are breaking sales records around the globe, and Apple is pretty much selling them as fast as they can make them. But UK gadget companies like Money4Machines report a steady market for second-hand handsets and brands new older models, too.

Recycling and trading in gadgets like mobile phones is something that’s really seen a boost in popularity over the past few years. In the beginning folks were selling their old Nokia 3210 for £5, but these days you can sell mobile phones, especially smartphones, at great rates.

The iPhone smartphone range is one of the top performing smartphone product lines on the planet, and there are plenty of folks who would be happy just to get their hands on an iPhone 4.

Money4Machines said,

“When folks arrive at our website and say ‘I want to sell my phone, its an iPhone’, we know we’re going to be able to offer them a great rate, even if it’s an iPhone 3G or another older model. We buy loads of second-hand Apple products, and pretty much all of them command very favourable rates for the seller.”

So, what happens to your old iPhone? A Money4Machines spokesperson said,

“Every gadget company is different. Some prefer older phones that can be stripped for their raw materials, others like mid-range phones that can be sent on to growing markets in developing economies like parts of Africa and India. High-end handsets like the iPhone aren’t usually stripped, but tend to be traded within the EU so folks who couldn’t afford the new handset can access a healthy, properly managed second-hand market.”

New LG Nexus Photos Still Looking Curiously Glittery

October 18th, 2012Tech News No Comments

 

Rumours say the LG Nexus could be with us as soon as 29th October. But it’s not exactly the release date of the latest Android smartphone many tech fans are paying attention to. Their interest is aimed firmly at the abundance of freshly leaked photos of the device.

According to UK gadget company, Money4Machines, the LG Nexus’ leaked shots now include high quality photos from every angle (verifying the initial suspicion that the back of the device is a bit sparkly) and even a couple of examples of what you can expect from 8MP camera quality.

The original source of the leaks isn’t clear, but the first online publication of the shots came from Russian language website, tech.onliner.by. The shots show LG’s first Nexus handset alongside an iPhone 5, up close front and back, sideways and – for reasons that may remain forever a mystery – next to a red toy parrot.

The Android Jellybean 4.1.2 (or 4.2 by release?) handset specs haven’t been fully released. What we do know is that it carries a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 quad core Krait with Adreno 320 graphics, an 8MP rear-facing camera with a 4.6mm focal length and 4.7inch display with 768×1280 resolution.

A downside to the device could be it’s rumoured tiny 8MB non-expandable storage and lack of Micro SD card slot. Internet buzz cites this decision – if true – it will mark a real step backwards for LG, perhaps leaving the LG Nexus dead in the water. However, if the LG Nexus performs well, it could be a step in the right direction for the LG Android fanbase who have waited patiently for a decent LG Android handset for a long time.

And as for the sparkly back, initial responses seem to brand this design choice the Marmite of the tech world – love it or hate it! But the questions is, will it sell mobiles?

Samsung vs. Apple: Japan Back Samsung

September 6th, 2012Electronics Industry Chatter, Tech News No Comments

South Korea sided with native company, Samsung, the UK sat on the fence and a US judge ordered Samsung to pay Apple an incredible $1 billion in damages. And now good old Japan have thrown their two cents into the ring by siding with Samsung in the latest round of handbags-at-dawn.

The two smartphone leaders are embroiled in numerous cases around the world. And Tokyo district Judge, Tamotsu Shoji, dealt Apple a blow by dismissing the case against Samsung. The court found Samsung wasn’t in violation of Apple patents relating to synchronisation of music and video data between servers and devices.

The US Ruling

Apple is currently trying to chase away rivals, Samsung, by seeking a US ban on eight smartphones. Apple are currently preparing for a hearing with US District Judge, Lucy Koh, in which Apple with throw their toys out of the pram in the hope of instigating an injunction against Samsung on the eight named devices. The new Galaxy S3 isn’t included in the case.

What do you think of the Samsung versus Apple battle? Are you more or less tempted to sell iPads and whatever other Samsung/Apple devices we buy? Would you sell your laptop and switch to a different brand if Samsung lose enough global cases? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Someone is Watching You

September 4th, 2012Curious Stuff, Electronics Industry Chatter, Tech News No Comments

Most folks are guilty of the odd sneaky file download for their old iPad, but most folks also assume a) it’s not too illegal, and b) no-one will ever find out.

Hmmmm.

According to the BBC, it seems someone could be watching your every move on your favourite BitTorrent site! Researchers at Birmingham University suggest a monitoring firm could easily log an illegal download within three hours.

Like this, but with sneaky software.

The three year research experiment involved Birmingham University geeks creating a piece of software that acted exactly like a BitTorrent file sharing client. The software logged all connections made to it. A slightly scary part of the results concluded that monitoring records didn’t differentiate between occasional users and high volume downloader’s.

Research leader, Dr Tom Chothia, said, “If the content was in the top 100 it was monitored within hours. Someone will notice and it will be recorded.”

It’s thought copyrighters could use the data collected by monitoring firms to seriously clamp down on illegal file sharing. Dr Chothia said,

“Many firms are simply sitting on the data. Such monitoring is easy to do and the data is out there so they think they may as well collect it as it may be valuable in future.”

But before you sell your laptops in our sell for cash UK store, it’s worth remembering that experts say the questionable legality of such data could render the entire operation utterly pointless (apart from providing blog fodder for us!)

3 Ways to Make Summer Cash on the Weekends

August 27th, 2012Curious Stuff, Selling Your Device No Comments

Heaps of our blog entries are about tech news and stuff like that, but if there’s one thing we could all do with it’s probably a few extra bits of treasure to fund holidays, cat-proof fences, chicken runs, new cars, mending old cars, etc, etc. Obviously we’re going to get the part about how you can sell your laptop to make money (it’s no.3) but we’ve also bounced around some ideas and come up with three other ways to boost your summer funds!

1. Take care of something/someone

We don’t mean in the mafia sleeps-with-the-fishes sense, although it seems most assassins are highly paid. We mean things like pet-sitting and house-sitting. In the same way we need your old iPads, folks with pets will always need someone to walk them and take care of them. Kennels and catteries are great, but some folks prefer their put buddies to be in a more naturally snugly and relaxing environment. Would you give up a little of your summer to get paid to take care of a few dogs and cats? You can register with a company like PetPals or go freelance.

2. Sell your time

Mystery shopping, answering customer surveys online – there are heaps of ways to make little bits of cash in your spare time, and those £10 per survey fees add up nicely by the end of the summer

3. Sell your unwanted stuff

This is perhaps the most workable way to make a bit of extra cash, but the problem is that it will take an entire weekend to organise (at least!) If we’re honest, we didn’t exactly put our heart and soul into the other two points, but when it comes to selling old iPads, Playstations and whatever else you’ve got flung about the place, we’re the experts!

Did you know the average UK home contains around £3,500 in unwanted junk? That’s enough to fill one of the rooms in your home (if you didn’t spread it all around to make it look less junk-ish in the loft, shed, garage etc!) Websites like Money4Machines and eBay make it virtually impossible to have a solid excuse not to do this, so why not put in that couple of weekend’s elbow grease and enjoy the rewards!

Why Did No-one Tell Us About the Robot Olympics?

August 23rd, 2012Curious Stuff, Tech News No Comments

Fancy a trip to Bristol (of all places!) to see the very latest in competitive sports? Running from 20th – 25th August, the FIRA RoboWorld Cup is set to be a mammoth even, pitting robot against robot in a bunch of games to vie for world records, medals and prizes.

According to our trusted buddies over at the BBC Technology news desk, our very own home-grown team from Plymouth University hare in with a hot chance against superstar team, Singapore, in the 6m sprint (that’s 3m one way and 3m back) Singapore are the current record holders, obliterating the previous record of 42seconds at 31seconds. UK native robots from Bristol University will also be heading out into the arena with their robot marathon runner, Panther.

So, is it your old iPad powering these guys? The boffins at Bristol University have built Panther from scratch using custom components and some pretty nifty software, but off-the-shelf robots are common at the competition. And before you think “I’m going to sell my iPad, buy a robot and kick some ass!” it’s worth remembering that even off-the-shelf robots are adapted by experts (by “experts” we mean people with access to actual technology laboratories!)

The competition ends on Saturday 25th August in a hail of glory (the football final) and will next return in 2013, which is plenty of time for you to trade in your old iPad, sell your laptop and become a robot-building mega-genius like Jaimie!

You can watch some of Jaimie’s brilliant building project videos here!

5 Pinterest Users You Need to Follow

August 9th, 2012Curious Stuff No Comments

1. Money4Machines, obviously!

We try to keep our Pinterest boards pretty light-hearted and interesting. You may be surprised to see very few pictures of Office Cat. It’s because she’s a jet-black cat and it’s near impossible to get pictures of her looking like anything other than Batman or a sleeping black hole!

2. Bright.Bazaar

What this guy doesn’t know about colours and shapes and design and offbeat quirky products and patterns and Halloween and cute animals isn’t worth knowing! At the time of print he has about 1.42 million followers and has pinned 7,735 pins. Would you sell your laptop and maybe your soul for that kind of style savvy?

3. Christine Martinez

This girl REALLY loves her dog and has a natural eye for quirky cool visuals. She’s already up to 1.3 million followers and has pinned across 42 boards on everything from fashion that’s actually wearable to random snaps she’s taken herself out on the go.

4. Mike D

Proof Pinterest isn’t just for the ladies! There’s something very masculine, simple and clean about Mike D’s pins. But they’re not boring or pushy about his obvious manliness, just chilled out, subtle and worth the occasional browse.

5. Jane Wang

She’s probably the Queen of Pinterest. Or at least, 3.5 million Pinterest users think she is! A prolific pinner and real all-around Pinterest lady, her 93 boards include some splendid technology-based collections. Check out Gear, Covet and Favourite iPhone Apps.

Do you think we should follow your Pinterest boards? Follow us on Pinterest and we’ll make sure you get a follow back, great sell for cash UK rates and somewhere to trade in your old iPad!

3 Ways to Share Photos on Twitter

August 6th, 2012Uncategorized No Comments

Novice Tweeters tend to be pretty confused when the time comes to share that hilarious photo of their cat sleeping in a funny position or demonstrating perceived humanistic tendencies, like this.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re using your old iPad or something fabulous like the Samsung Galaxy S3, you’ll still need to use a Twitter image sharing service to post pics alongside your verbal diarrhoea.

Twitter don’t run their own service because they hate us and kill puppies. But here are three of the top kahunas in the Twitter-y media-sharing arena.

Twitpic

Definitely the biggest hitter, Twitpic provides a free photo-sharing service for Twitter users. iPhone and Android both run splendid Twitpic apps. You can also upload via your browser (so no need to sell your laptop and stump up for an iPad!) If you’ve already got a Twitter account, there’s no need to create anything in Twitpic, just sign in using Twitter and off you go.

You can see our first Twitpic image here

Pikchur

Again, you can log in straight away with your Twitter account. Pikchur is probably the best app for folks wanting multi-media sharing. It links to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flikr and the rest of the band.

TweetPhoto

The main competitor of Twitpic, TweetPhoto runs a pretty compelling list of additional features like offering stat reports, favourite lists etc. It’s always playing second fiddle to Twitpic, and TweetPhoto is perhaps proof that people tend to stick with what’s popular rather than what’s best for the job in terms of technical capability (something Android geeks have been professing since the e-dawn of mobile time!)

There are plenty of ways to share photos on Twitter; encoded Tweets and things like enabling Friendfeed are two other options, but we’re bored of talking about it and Office Cat is sleeping in a funny position so we need go and take many photos.

We buy UK gadgets – your old Kindle to that Canon 350D you bought and never used because it’s actually pretty annoying having to carry an SLR everywhere with you!

 

Did You Learn form the LinkedIn Breach?

June 21st, 2012Curious Stuff, Tech-y Life Advice No Comments

A couple of weeks ago, Russian hackers poked their noses into the LinkedIn database and made off with hundreds of thousands of passwords. Ok, so LinkedIn probably isn’t the pinnacle source of embarrassing drunk photos and personal information, but in a world where electronic identity theft costs the U.K around £1.7 billion per year, it’s worth keeping tabs on your little-used social media accounts!

Don’t Re-use Passwords

We always run data erase programmes on old iPads and all the other gadgets we buy here at Money4Machines, but it’s worth doing the job yourself before you send them to us, if only for your peace of mind.

Not re-using passwords is one of the best ways to safeguard your personal information (even if you think it’s not worth safeguarding!) Yes, it’s very boring having to remember a bunch of passwords, but it’s the best way to protect your online identity.

What Makes a Good Password?

Good on the Surface, But Can it Topple the iPad?

June 19th, 2012Device Reviews, Electronics Industry Chatter, Tech News No Comments

Perhaps one of the most annoying things about the iPad is that it doesn’t have an external keyboard. But we’re committed and fully fledged iPad fans here, so there’s not a lot we have to gripe about, really.

Running Windows 8, Microsoft’s newly announced “Surface” tablet is billed as bridging the gap between tablet and laptop (and potentially toppling the iPad’s leading market position).

Available from October, two versions of the Surface were unveiled, one running Windows RT (kind of like Windows Lite for smart devices) and one running the new full Windows 8.

The idea is to get folks like you trading in old iPads and using our sell for cash service to fund an upgrade from a traditional tablet or laptop to a funky little combo – the Surface tablet.

Specs:

And that’s pretty much it on the information stakes. So before you go rushing off to sell your laptop to fund a Surface tablet, it’s worth pointing out that, historically speaking, Windows have a great track record with PC hardware and consoles like the Xbox, but have yet to prove themselves in the tablet arena. Still, props for trying and we can’t wait to try it out in October!

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