Friday, January 10, 2020

Instruction manual for Xiaomi Redme AirDots TWSEJ04LS true wireless earbuds

The Xiaomi Redme AirDots TWSEJ04LS true wireless earbuds looks very identical to its cousin Xiami Mi AirDots Basic TWSEJ02LM.

The key different between them is that Xiaomi Redme AirDots has a large physical button on each of the earpieces, while the Xiami Mi AirDots Basic is using touch sensitive surface instead of physical buttons on its earpieces.

The Xiaomi Redme AirDots TWSEJ04LS features a 7.2mm dynamic driver, Bluetooth 5.0 support, and IPX4 rated waterproofing.


Despite selling at a very affordable price, its sound quality is pretty much satisfactory. It is able to produce strong punching bass, energetic treble, and lively vocal.

Before using the product after unboxing, remember to remove all the plastic films and stickers on the earpieces. The plastic films are isolating the earpieces from getting power charge, and need to be completely removed to ensure you can re-charge their built-in battery properly.

The casing itself is also a charging dock for the earpieces. You can find a USB port at its outer surface for charging purpose.

To re-charge the earpieces, put them in place inside the casing, close the cap, then connect the casing to a USB charging source.

When charging, you can observe a dim LED light in front of the casing. The LED is red when charging, and turns into white when fully charged. The white light will automatically turn off itself after 1 minute.


Using the earbuds:

To use the earpiece,  press its button for 1 second to turn it on (white LED on the earpiece will light up).

To turn off the earpiece, press its button for 5 seconds (red LED will light up for a while).

Use your handphone's Bluetooth function to search for Redmi AirDots_R to do pairing. No pairing password is needed.

You can use the earpiece either in left ear only, or in right ear only, or in both ears. When both are used, you can get stereo sound effect. If only one of them is used, it will be running on mono mode.


Resetting the earbuds:

If you find anything not functioning well, you can try resolve the problem by resetting the earbuds.

First of all, take out both the earbuds from the casing, and then proceed to turn them off.

After that, press the earbuds button for 15 seconds respectively. When you see the earbud's LED is alternating between red and white, put it back into the casing. It will then be reset and all previous settings will be restored to factory default.

You will need to redo the Bluetooth pairing with your handphone before it can be used again.


Features and functions:
When there is incoming phone call:
  • Press the earbud's button once to answer the call
  • Long press the button for 1 second to reject the call
  • Double press to toggle between mute and voice
  • When in a call, press the button once to hang up the call
When there is another call coming in while you are already on a phone call:
  • Press the button once to answer the other call, and put the first call on hold
  • Long press to reject the second call
  • Double press to switch between the 2 calls
To listen to music played from your handphone, when not in any call:
  • Press the button once to listen to music with the phone's default music player
  • Press again to pause the music

To call up the handphone's virtual assistant, when not in any call:
  • Double press the button to call up virtual assistant (Siri, Google Voice Assistant, Xiaomi XiaoAi, ...). After that, you can issue command to your phone by talking to the virtual assistant. For example, you can ask it to open up Google Maps and guide you to a destination. You can use the earbuds to listen to the turn-by-turn driving instruction with voice navigation.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

U Mobile GoPayz e-wallet with virtual and/or physical prepaid cards

GoPayz is a challenger e-wallet operated by U Mobile Services. It is a second e-wallet in Malaysia after AirAsia BigPay that issues physical prepaid card to its users. It is the third of its kind in Malaysia that issues virtual prepaid card, after BigPay (Mastercard) and Boost (UnionPay).

In fact, GoPayz has gone one step ahead of BigPay, which only issue virtual and physical prepaid Mastercard to their users. GoPayz accounts by default have 3 virtual prepaid cards, namely UnionPay, Mastercard and Visa.

On top of that, its users have the option to also carry physical prepaid card(s) with a one time card issuance fee of RM16 per card. There is no annual fee nor yearly SST to keep the GoPayz physical card.


Unlike BigPay which  has a large stored-value capacity of up to RM10,000, this GoPayz e-wallet only has a capacity of RM5,000 for its Premium Wallet Accounts (RM200 for Basic Wallet Accounts). The capacity limit is shared among all the UnionPay, Mastercard and Visa prepaid cards.

With a physical card on hand, you can use GoPayz to pay to merchants that accept UnionPay/Mastercard/Visa at their outlets. Another advantage is that you can withdraw cash from your e-wallet at local banks ATM machine, with a very low cash withdrawal fee of RM1.00 only. You can also withdraw from overseas ATM machine, with the cash withdrawal fee of RM10.00. This rate is in fact cheaper than rival BigPay Mastercard.

Beside being yet another e-wallet just like the others in the market, GoPayz seems to have ambition to disrupt the traditional financial services, including the insurance market, unit trust market, and even foreign currency exchange market.


GoPayz introduces self-service financial services for its users to buy insurance and/or unit trust at a very affordable rate, by eliminating the agent commission and reducing the administrative expenses involved. It works together with licensed life insurance company Sun Life, general insurance company Chubb, and online unit trust company FundSupermart Malaysia to come out with its financial services products.

Should their self-service financial services business model be successful, it will affect the insurance agents and unit trust agents who make their living through sales commission. We can foresee that the sales commission rate might be significantly reduced in order to compete with market disruptors such as GoPayz financial services.


Tuesday, January 7, 2020

KERUI biometric fingerprint padlock

Traditional padlocks typically work by unlocking using a matching key or password.

The drawbacks of a key padlock including:

  • It is inconvenient to have to carry the key along with you.
  • If you forgot to bring the key, or your key is lost, then you will have trouble unlocking the padlock.
  • If your key is broken, you will also have trouble unlocking the padlock.
  • The key can be easily duplicated.
  • The padlock can be prey open without using the key.
  • It takes quite some effort and time to unlock the padlock.
The drawbacks of a password padlock including:
  • Password can be forgotten, especially when long time not using.
  • It takes quite some effort and time to unlock the padlock.
Now, with a cost of less than RM50, you can actually get a biometric fingerprint padlock from online shop.


The biometric fingerprint padlock just looks like other ordinary padlocks. The different parts are that it has a fingerprint scanner on it, it operates with a rechargeable Li-ion battery inside, and it has a micro-USB charging port.


The padlock also has a small triple-colour LED indicator light. When the battery level is low, the light will be flashing in red. When the battery level is extremely low, it will also produce beeping sound to provide alert for recharging need.


When charging, the LED light stays in red. When recharging is completed, the light will turn off by itself.

The padlock has a standby time of at least a few months before the need of recharging again. It can go through up to 9,000 times of unlock cycle for a full charge.

This padlock can register up to 10 fingerprints. 2 of them will be "administrator" fingerprint which can be used to initiate registering of new fingerprints and also to delete stored fingerprints. The other 8 normal fingerprints can only be used to unlock the padlock.

For new lock without any stored fingerprint, it can be unlocked with any human fingerprint. Once registered with one or more fingerprints, only the registered fingerprint(s) can be used to unlock it.

One thing I like about this padlock is its super fast unlocking speed of less than a second with matching fingerprint.


By using this biometric fingerprint padlock, I no longer need to carry padlock key or remember padlock password. It is really very convenient and easy to use.

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