Out of the box – book from Vitamins on Vimeo.

Vitamins, a design studio based in London, envisioned a concept packaging that would make learning the features of a phone easy no matter what level your technical aptitude is.

The inspiration stemmed from creating a device that anyone could use. The team at Vitamins realised that instead of developing a basic phone, the solution to developing a phone that everyone could use lie in the product packaging itself. The design team thought that perhaps existing phones don’t need to be changed but rather the way we learn how to use the phones needed a rethink. Based on that idea, Vitamins created this concept product packaging.

The concept product packaging is definitely a refreshing shift from the mundane boxes we get when we purchase smartphones nowadays but we can’t imagine how much such wonderfully designed packaging would add to the cost of the device. Also, consider the amount of material used to make the packaging. It surely is not going to win an eco awards with the amount of paper used.

Still, the design is innovative and actually the problems of costs and material efficiency can be overcome with some clever ingenuity. Such a packaging design is certainly not impossible.

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With its QNX-based BB10 devices scheduled for release only in the second half of this year, RIM has a lot of advertising to do to drive interest to its existing product line. Canadian company is doing just that.

Take a look at RIM’s latest series of advertising highlighting the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and what some would consider the platform’s best assets, but would expressions like “I’m about action, not distraction” and “we need tools, not toys” sway you to the Bold side?

Take a look at the ads past the jump and let us know what you think. Oh, and if you’re wondering, the silly superheroes are omitted in the ads, thankfully.

As for us, we’re not thoroughly convinced. The ads come across as trying too hard and honestly, the faster RIM gets their BB10 devices into the market, the better. We so want to believe, RIM. Make us believe.

“I’m about action, not distraction”

“We need tools, not toys”

This last one is a couple of weeks old already but still relevant.

Be Bold

The Sony Xperia S boasts a Fast Capture, a feature where you go from screen switched off stand-by mode to successfully taking a picture in just 1.5 seconds. While that’s certainly fast, many want to know how the shutter performance of the Xperia S fairs in comparison to the Zero Shutter Lag feature seen on the Galaxy Nexus.

This video gives you an idea of what kind of shutter speeds you can expect from the Xperia S. It’s pretty snappy considering the pixel count (12MP on the Xperia S) but it’s not really as fast as the Galaxy Nexus’ Zero Shutter Lag.

Why is a fast shutter important? The faster the shutter, the less likely of you taking blurry pictures, It’s certainly something we can appreciate. In this respect, the Xperia S does a commendable job but again we’ll save our final word on this device when we get a review unit to test thoroughly. Also, we’re not sure if the unit seen in this video is a final production unit. As you are aware, different production versions have marked differences in performance.

Another thing worth pointing out, the Xperia S will be getting Ice Cream Sandwich, with that it’s also possible that the device will be getting the Zero Shutter Lag feature as well. While some will argue that Zero Shutter Lag is hardware dependent and a feature that exclusive to the Galaxy Nexus, we’re inclined to think that it is possible for other ICS devices to have the feature as well.

Zero Shutter Lag is officially listed as one of the features of Ice Cream Sandwich, so we’re expecting ICS devices other than the Galaxy Nexus to have fast shutters at the very least if not Zero Shutter Lag.

What do you think?

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Texting while walking can be very dangerous to you and to others. You can also be a nuisance to other pedestrians while you text and walk. So what is the right etiquette to texting and walking?

This video suggests a simple technique on how to send text messages the proper and polite way while you’re strolling along.

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Sometime in November last year, Samsung made headlines by doing something that can be likened to sitting naked in a Kancil with a hornet’s nest next to you and poking said nest vigorously with a big fat stick. Samsung made fun of Apple, and by extension, Samsung made fun of Apple users.

Now, taking that sitting naked in a Kancil with a hornet’s nest analogy, you’d think Samsung would’ve been stung to death by millions disgruntled Apple loyalist by the time the first 30-second ad finished playing. Oddly enough, that didn’t happen. While Apple fans were up in arms, outraged at what Samsung had done, the rest of the world smiled.

And the rest of the world had a good reason to smile. Samsung’s ballsy tongue-in-cheek ad campaign was funny, witty and entertaining. More importantly, it was effective.

Not meddling much with a successful formula, Samsung’s at it again with a new series of commercials that continues poking fun at Apple and Apple fans, specifically iPhone users.

In all honesty, we like what Samsung has produced. The ads are genuinely funny. They deliver a crystal clear message and they compel you to share them on your social media stream. By these definitions, these Samsung ads are the perfect textbook examples of TV commercials. And so we’ve compiled the whole series so far for you in this post so that you can enjoy them as well.

Now, we’re expecting a lot of discourse about these ads particularly from the Apple purists. They’ve called what Samsung have done as below the belt or undignified or downright nasty even, and that’s ok, we like discourses, the exchanging of opinions.

We’d like to think that at SoyaCincau.com we have a level head when it comes to tech. Android fans have called us Apple fanboys and we’ve been called vice-versa by Apple fans. We’ve been called everything in between by BlackBerry and Nokia users as well. Ironically, being called fanboys of all sorts can only mean that we’re actually playing favourite to none and we will continue to be that way.

The point we’re trying to make here is that before any Apple fans come and say “oh what Samsung did is classless” we’d like to you to view a video we got from YouTube after the jump. It’s a compilation of the “Get a Mac” or better known as “Mac vs PC” ad campaign that aired in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK from 2006 to 2009. So tit for tat then. In any case, we thought those were funny too.

Enjoy.

“Get a Mac” Compilation

All this might be cute and funny to watch now but this is a global trend that’s not going to end well.

We go deep inside the box the ASUS Transformer Prime, world’s first quad-core tablet, to reveal all its details. Some that you might be interested in:

• Our unit is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box. Most first batch units will still be running Honeycomb but it will tell you to run an update right after you’ve connected it a WiFi network
• ASUS included a cleaning cloth with the Transformer Prime. We think this is because the screen and brushed Alluminum finished and the screen are efficient fingerprint magenets

Look out for our first impressions coming soon.

Can’t wait to get our hands on this one and by the looks of it, the wait won’t be long now. What do you think? Worth the RM2,199 asking price for the 32GB WiFi-only version with keyboard?

So here it is the unboxing video of the Galaxy Nexus. It may not be as cool as the official Galaxy Nexus unboxing video but it should answer most of the questions you have about the device right out of the box, so to speak. And we added a few interesting snippets in the video as well. Hope you like it.

Are you going to get yourself a Galaxy Nexus?

We’ve featured the Sith Lord on SoyaCincau.com a couple of times and he’s appeared in a few other ads promoting a plethora of other products. Has commercialisation of movie characters gone beyond reason that it affects your relationship with the iconic character?

Actor endorsements, cross-promotion and product placement are almost as old as the medium of film itself and as a society we’ve come to accept it. However, it seems a little repugnant to use a fictional cinematic character to endorse products, and raises new issues for me, especially when it’s a character as iconic as Darth Vader. First and foremost it feels like a collision between art and commercialism. With an actor, you’re conscious that it is within their job description to play a part, and to a small degree, there is a bond of trust and honesty. However, when it’s a fictional character, it can be manipulated to espouse the benefits of anything the client wishes, reducing it from the result of a creative process to a mere corporate mouthpiece. Essentially, the character is torn from the fantasy realm, and thrust in to the real world, now just a commodity like those it is trying to sell.

Read more about it here.