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Google Nexus 6P: In-Depth Review

December 27th, 2015 Be the first to comment

The Nexus 6P is Google’s latest flagship smartphone. In this article, I review the handset and the best value deals available in the UK.

Nexus 6P - Front and BackEach year, Google teams up with a major smartphone manufacturer to release an own-brand Android smartphone as part of the Nexus device family. Now in its fifth year, Google has this year chosen to team up with Huawei and LG. There are two new devices including a new flagship smartphone in the form of the Nexus 6P and a new mid-range handset in the form of the Nexus 5X.

I’ve been trying out the Nexus 6P over the past month and I can confidently say it’s my favourite smartphone to date. The Nexus 6P has a really solid aluminium construction and is well-built using the latest technology and components. It also has a fantastic camera and a super-smooth interface. It comes with some highly impressive apps from Google; most notably the Google Photos service. Finally, it’s about £250 cheaper than Apple’s iPhone 6s Plus. This makes it a really good choice if you want the latest cutting-edge technology at a highly reasonable price point.

In this article, I’ll share my experiences of using the Nexus 6P.

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How to see the invisible infrared world using your mobile phone camera

April 4th, 2010 56 comments

Using your mobile phone, you can see infrared radiation – a normally invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Ken’s Tech Tips looks at some of the physics of electromagnetic waves and explains how you can see this invisible world – and you don’t need anything more than the mobile phone in your pocket.

What is infrared radiation?

Infrared is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Other forms of electromagnetic  radiation (EM radiation) include visible light, x-rays, microwaves (the EM waves that wi-fi networks use and also the waves that cook your food in microwave ovens) and radio waves. The difference between all these different forms of radiation are the wavelength of the EM wave. We can illustrate this electromagnetic spectrum (CC-licensed image from Wikipedia):

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Effect of Microwave Ovens on Wireless Internet

April 16th, 2009 16 comments

The New Cook
Creative Commons License photo: Joshua Davis (jdavis.info)

I noticed something quite odd lately – when the microwave oven in my house was being used, I would lose all connectivity on my wireless internet connection. That lead to the internet dropping out in the whole house – internet radio, game consoles, laptops, etc.

It turns out that the issue is that microwave ovens and wireless internet operate on the same frequencies. My microwave uses a frequency of 2450MHz (check the back of your microwave as yours may be different) and my wireless (802.11g) operated on channel 11 (around 2462MHz). As you can imagine, the microwave oven outputs with a lot more power than the wireless router so totally overwhelms your ability to use wi-fi.

The solution is to change the frequency that your wireless internet operates on.

Firstly, check the back of your microwave oven and find out what frequency it operates on.

Now you’ll want to change the frequency that your wireless internet operates on. As a rule of thumb, you’ll probably want it to be at least 20MHz different from your microwave. As my wireless was operating at 2462MHz, it was well within the frequency range which was susceptible to interference from the microwave.

Modulazione di frequenza
Creative Commons License photo: Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

Here are the wi-fi channels and corresponding frequencies:

Channel Frequency (MHz)
1 2412
2 2417
3 2422
4 2427
5 2432
6 2437
7 2442
8 2447
9 2452
10 2457
11 2462
12 2467
13 2472
14 2484

It’s important to note that these are center frequencies. In other words, your wireless internet will use a range of frequencies around that frequency (e.g. channel 11 is centred on 2462MHz but actually uses all frequencies between 2451MHz and 2473MHz). Hence you need to make sure there is a sufficient gap between the frequency of your wireless internet and the frequency of the microwave. Consult this graph on Wikipedia for more information.

Check local laws too about what frequencies and power levels you are allowed to use. You can use channels 1-13 in most of the world with the exception of channels 12 and 13 in North America.

Bug inside LCD Screen

July 14th, 2007 282 comments

Argh, help! I’ve got a living bug crawling around inside my LCD computer monitor! It’s actually walking around which is quite annoying. I’ve no idea how it got in there but it’s small enough to have fit through the small holes at the back of the monitor.

On the bright side, there only seems to be one so they won’t be making babies in there any time soon. Has anyone ever had bugs inside their monitors and how did they get rid of them? The advice I’ve had so far is to wait for them to die and hope that they die off screen or somewhere where it won’t affect the picture too much.

Update (July 2010): Incredibly, this article has had 10,000 hits since it’s been published (most of them being in July each year which seems to be peak season). Please read the comments below for tips and discussion. In my case, I found that the bug disappeared after a few days providing that you don’t squish it or anything. You don’t need to do anything elaborate like taking your screen apart (and would not be advised to). Please do drop a comment below and let us know what’s working for you.  – Ken