ZinZam

New Phone

December 16, 2011

So I finally bought a new phone. I opted for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray. Having been turned off by a large amount of humungous android phones with questionable industrial designs (or should I call them mobile internet tablets?), sony finally released a decent android phone. A word of caution, if you have large fingers this phone is not well suited for you.

The Xperia Ray is the perfect upgrade to my SE W705 feature phone. The design reminds me of my old Lenovo Z61t Thinkpad with its premium matted black finish and parallelogram profile. Being a smaller phone it fits in the hand well and is suited to single handed operation, unlike a number of larger phones which are a struggle for those with smaller hands.

The screen at 3.3" compared to the 3.5" is just as tall as the iPhone screen, but due to the 16:9 aspect ratio is not as wide making the portrait qwerty keyboard a challenge to use (if they weren't already difficult enough to use), to combat this Sony Provides a T9 style keyboard borrowed from their feature phone line and something I am very familiar with, and an in-house implementation of a swipe keyboard that makes word input entry lightning fast. I have had no problems reading the screen in outdoors conditions.

Coming from feature phones the only features you are likely to miss are built in utilities for Stopwatch (there is a widget for egg timer but not as integrated as the feature phone), and Torch light, but as the fruit company says, there is an app for that.

The rest is fairly standard for a Sony 2011 handset with a 1 GHz Qualcomm chipset which makes the experience just as smooth as my iPad. The phone simply gets the job done and any whinging over imperfections is largely misplaced due to their irrelevant to the phone functionality.

Coming in at 100 g on the scales the phone is on the ligher side of the scale of android phones while still packing a 1500 mAh battery providing comparable battery life to similar handsets. Thanks to the smaller surface area of the screen along with a much more balanced chipset, the phone provides longer battery life compared to some of the larger 4" devices.

The only things missing are a few utilities to match the functionality of Sony's feature phone OS, and a hardware shutter button for the camera (but no-one seems to provide them anymore).

The camera is acceptable and with autofocus you are going to get acceptable pictures comparable to a cheaper point and shoot. I'll be honest it is no match for my Sony Alpha camera or Canon Powershot G7, but it's not meant to be.

As a digital convergence device, combined with a 16 or 32 GB microSDHC card it will allow you to carry the phone as a single gadget with decent audio playback capabilities and battery life for a whole day of heavy use or two days of light use (including listening to music for an hour long commute), and no need to take a separate point and shoot many places. Unfortunately the phone does not come with walkman in-ear headphones, but with a standard 3.5 mm jack you can use any headphones.

At only 9 mm thick it is ideal for those who wear tight jeans lending itself to bulging less in your pocket and being easier to get out when there is an incoming call.

With a guarantee to be upgraded to Android 4.0 this coming March, the phone is feature proof, but as is it is a capable handset.

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Consumer Electronics

July 17, 2011

I spend a lot of time both playing with and researching consumer electronics. I would say I know more about them than I would probably like to. One of the reasons is that they just plain suck. And the Achilles heel of most modern consumer products,... software.

Time and time again mobile phone manufacturers leave out important features (I'm looking at you Motorola leaving out FM radio on the Atrix). Try and find a consumer router which is stable, has 802.11n simultaneous dual band with 3G router stick support and gigabit, oh wait there is none. Laptop computers with their varying build qualities, and missing features. Want bluetooth, well that is extra, want 3G sorry not an option.

Then there is display technology. There are many different display technologies out there, you might hear them marketed as AMOLED, LCD, LED, CRT, and Plasma. Really there are three, OLED (Super-AMOLED, AMOLED), liquid crystal (LED, TFT, LCD), and excited phosphor (CRT, Plasma). Unfortunately there are many different types of LCD technologies such as MVA, PVA, S-PVA, IPS, TN, etc.

TN or twisted neumatic is the cheapest, it is also the worst, having poor viewing angles, poor colour gamut, and usually having a limited colour depth, and tends to end up in products because of how cheap they are. Not only that manufacturers will rarely tell you which type of panel they have included in a product, and when they do not guarantee specifications they have been known to change the panel type during the products production life leading to disappointment for people who buy the product with a certain expectation. The easist way to tell if a panel is TN is if the producer does not guarantee viewing angle, or if the viewing angle is given as 170/160 degrees rather than the 178 that S-PVA and IPS are capable of. What is worse is that while 160 degrees in the vertical sounds ok, over those 160 degrees these panels suffer colour shift. Normally this is ok because when you put your TV on a stand at home it is horizonal, but if you want to mount a TV vertically on the wall, as you walk past the colour will shift as you walk by. These panels can be used in the same product range as high quality panels which can throw consumer off.

Imagine a laptop screen, these are normally TN panels due to constraints in the market, buying power, price pressure, etc... You sit dead centre in the screen so it isn't so much of a problem from the side, but you have the ability to adjust the tilt of the display, unless you tilt the display just right it appears dull, tilt it even further and reds turn green. You may still be able to read some stuff on screen, but the display is quite clearly wrong. This is why is is critical for products like phones and tables to use better display technologies are they are designed to be used from any angle.

So while you can spend $300 on a netbook and get a rather decent atom processor, you will invariably end up with a TN panel screen with a spinning HDD. Buy a $500 tablet, and you will end up with a much more expensive, but better quality screen with an IPS or S-PVA panel and solid state storage (much of the cost).

Lack of quality screens in laptops has been frustrating purchasers of premium laptops for the last decade as they have no choice in the matter. Led by consumer ignorance and the fact that and LCD is not and LCD, but all there different types are actually very different. The lack of marketing has meant that the screens are treated as something that is there rather than a must have. If consumers could somehow learn what IPS meant for them just as they learnt what LED meant for them, OEMs would be forced to market products that contain these "must have" components.

So much consumer electronics produced is junk that is destined for the bottom of your drawer a year or two after it has been produced (if not sooner). Yet with so much choice in a saturated market, consumers find it hard to understand all the widgets that are integrated into a piece of consumer electronics and end up making poor choices (usually based solely on price).

It is little wonder that companies that understand consumer frustration and are producing products with premium components are doing better than ever. But with many companies that find it hard to differentiate themselves from other companies, taking a leap and going into volume production is a huge risk many are not willing to take.

Consumer choice is good, but is there too much choice out there at the moment stifling innovation? It is not until someone buys something in a real huge quantity that we start to see the huge price reductions that allow consumer products to advance, and most OEMs don't have the market share for it to be them, and aren't willing to take the risk. Perhaps this is why there is still no affordable bluray ODD option for premium laptops from top tier OEMs.

Then of course there is software, in a rush to get to market, software is often poorly coded. A great example is Google holding back the honeycomb source code saying "we cheated to get to market quickly". As consumers get tired of waiting, quality is been thrown toward the wind allowing competitors with the quality to sail even further ahead.

I have a lot of consumer electronics, and I don't like it knowing that most of it will be redundant in a year or so, or that manufacturers are unable to create products that meet my expectations (e.g. there are no 1 TB hybrid laptop HDD options at present).

Of course it never helps that manufacturers show off at CES, and then 6 months later do not have a product on the shelf, or worse have quietly canned the product.

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A Cellular Update

February 19, 2011

Today I just received in the mail a Bigpond turbo modem, dispatched on the 7/6/2010, I specifically instructed Telstra to not send me one as I had bought one from the T[Life] Charlestown, I then accused them or charging me for a device that I had not requested, nor received, and now, more than 6 months later I have this device. I should probably send it back to them, it seems that someone at my previous address has been hoarding my mail and have only recently forwarded some of it to me, that is right, all the stuff that Australia post failed to forward under the mail redirection that I am paying for. I am still missing mail however which is frustrating none-the-less. I think there is much wisdom not using your rental address for postage, given just how many organisations keep your personal information on file.

In other news, I am looking to escape the vodafail network, and there is a glimmer of hope with the upcoming release of the Motorola Atrix mobile phone. Released in the US as 850 MHz, it is coming to telstra's Next G network, on an undoubtedly expensive plan (the "Big day out proof/beach proof" Motorola Defy is $49).

To be blunt and honest, none of the new phones impress me _that_ much, for all the dual core, Full HD movie capabilities, without a vast improvement to the software they are all kind of meh. The biggest thing that kept me back from purchasing a Motorola Milestone/2 was the software, or lack there-of. I am not even talking about homebrew, because a promise of homebrew software is not a reliable "feature".

The biggest problems are fragmentation within Android. You would not buy an android 2.1 handset now given how much better 2.2 performs with respect to battery life, and responsiveness on the same hardware.

The other promising handset is the Motorola Pro, coming soon to Europe, it is unlikely to be picked up by a carrier in Australia, due to it's less than exciting no-nonsense business look.

I have been looking for a full qwerty android handset for a while and have so far been left beyond disappointed.

Motorola Milestone 2

This looked like being the most promising handset for me, but fails for several reasons. The slider has no spring to it, which feels weird, especially for such a heavy phone. After numerous complaints about the original Droid handset, you would have through Motorola would have addressed all the complaints in it's second incarnation like that have on every other handset they make. This is simply not the case. Despite having an FM tuner described in the manual, the phone simply does not have this feature (and is advertised as lacking it). This immediately puts it out of my league. I listen to triple J on the way to and from work, and despite what people say about just using internet radio, there are a few problems. Using internet radio would require at least 2 GB of data per month, something that in Australia is expensive, and I see no reason why I should pay extra for something I already get for free, and is not subjected to massive network overcrowding and drop outs (read: poor HSPA performance on the vodafail network).

To put it simply, the milestone 2 promises to work, but fails to deliver, which is a pity given it has all the correct hardware (yes it has a FM tuner), it is just the software (no driver or app exposing the FM tuner).

HTC Desire Z

I was excited about this phone for a while, until I saw videos on the internet showing just how bad the Z mechanism exposing the qwerty keypad was. It just does not stay shut like it probably should. Combined with not being on any networks and 900 MHz only, has ruled this handset out. The last factor is that the handset would unlikely get a blue tick from Telstra, Motorola and Sony Ericsson phones just have superior coverage capabilities, probably the most important aspect of any phone.

Camera

None of the phones I have been looking at have a physical shutter button. This is important for taking quality low light stills, pressing a soft button on the face of the device just isn't sturdy, and simply does not work when you put the phone in behind an area you cannot see and need to take a photo. This is part of my resistance to touch screen devices, they require constant attention of two senses when in the past, you could concentrate with the sense of touch on the device, and sight on a second task.

It also surprises me, that while 1080p recording is coming to mobile phones, I have not heard a single murmur of AVCHD support. The OSS fanboys do not like h.264, but is is here to stay, and is compatible with my sony alpha A33, sony handycam, PS3, Windows 7 laptop, and youtube. Given how well these devices I already have interoperate, it seems wrong that the new phones on the market are many steps backwards. Hopefully manufacturers will fix these criticisms in time, but for now, buttonless phones are all the rage.

Windows Phone 7

While developing for windows phone 7 is my cup of tea. The locked down marketplace (going against everything that made windows the desktop platform of choice), and the regression of too many features from Windows Mobile 6.5 into oblivion have ruled this platform out. (At least until they reinstate copy & paste, and unlocked app loading, SD card changeout support, and decent camera controls to name a few).

Conclusion

While it may not be the fastest, or have the most megapixels. Maybe I am just best off buying a Motorola Pro. At least I would have less to be disappointed about with the device.

Smart phones take a device that once operated like an appliance, and turn it into a PC, a generic device that does a lot of things mediocre, highly dependant on that application authors do with the platform to add value. When I buy a phone, I expect it to just work like an appliance, no xda-developers required.

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Libertyvasion 10 Years in the Making

August 23, 2010

It was 10 years (17 June 2000) ago that James "The Finn" Atkinson posted the first preview of phpBB, at the time a UBB clone to an online developer community for feedback.

Since that day not the interest in the project has only grown. Developments in PHP and the inevitable re-discovering of good programming style and secure code development methods by the PHP project and community have shaped phpBB as it grew feature wise and userbase through the 1.x series until it was eventually supplanted by phpBB2.0.x.

phpBB2.0 made use of a concept new to PHP developers (but long since known about by Windows desktop developers) MVC, that is model-view-controller. This removed the spaghetti arrangement of having the HTML (view) mixed with the PHP code (model and controller portions). phpBB2.0 was not a true MVC arrangement and suffered from repetition, and uncesessary complexity, while being simple to understand made it difficult to extend elegantly.

Next came phpBB3.0, which started life as the phpBB2.0 codebase extended. Because of this inheritance, phpBB3.0 inherited many of the same problems of the phpBB2.0 code base. phpBB3.0 did introduce new concepts such as a semi-modular design, but missed the boat on introducing a true MVC design like its contemporaries.

Three years after the release of phpBB3.0, it has proven itself as a worth secure contender, leaving the security record of its predecessors behind it. Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of phpBB3.0 is the new proSilver template. The proSilver template features a true separation of concerns CSS based design.

This brings us to where to from here? In the 10th year of the project, phpBB Software Limited held a conference in New York City, Libertyvasion to reflect on the past and discuss the future. phpBB3.1 is the immediate successory, but phpBB4.0 is being discussed. phpBB4.0 will be built on the Symfony framework, and being based on PHP5.3 will finally allow true use of classes and namespaces to introduce a MVC approach.

The question is now, can phpBB catchup and continue to innovate in the areas it successeds to survive as it has in the past. In an era of Social Media, forums will need to market themselves as being part of this new phenomenon to avoid being drowned out by the large brands in social media.

The libertyvasion event was a great way to meet old friend, make new aquaintences, and to listen to and become involved in the future development of the phpBB project.

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Terrestrial Radio is not an Epic Fail!

July 18, 2010

I know that the Motorola Milestone (and other Android phones) do not have an FM radio. However being interested in the Milestone due to it's inclusion of a physical keypad I have been searching the Internet to see if there is an third application for it. The reason this could be possible is that because feature phones have had FM radio for nearly a decade and with the reduction in components (and thus component cost) of a feature phone, many features are always bundled on a chip. It turns out that all these Android phones use chipsets that include an FM tuner, however none have FM tuner applications.

This could be for several reasons including Google concentrating on other areas of Android before developing the software components of an FM radio. This is quite important because often a reduction in component list will involve moving components from hardware land to software land. I believe that by this token mobile phones use a software FM radio (thus why they instantly tunes between channels).

Moving back to the Android land, there are two phones which are actually one phone, the HTC Desire, and the Google Nexus One. So while they have the same internal components, the HTC Desire has an FM radio application while the Google Nexus One does not. This must mean that google have so far not allocated resources to developing an FM radio application, requiring third parties (like HTC) to supply their own, with many not (I'm looking at you Motorola).

The Android platform is not the only platform to be guilty of skimping on the features as the iOS platform does not include FM radio (yet the iPhone supposedly has the hardware to do so, I guess that it would negatively compete with the iPhone store).

So why did I say terrestrial Radio is not an epic fail? Every thread I have read on an Android or the Motorola forums asking if Motorola will provide and FM tuner application the first reply inevitably says "just use XYZ internet streaming application" and "FM Radio = Epic Fail!". This kind of posting is far from mature and smells of North American arrogance, let alone being far from helpful.

There are four terrestrial radio bands worldwide, AM (Amplitude modulation), FM (frequency modulation), DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast), and DAB+. In Australia we have AM, FM, and DAB+, where DAB is used in parts of Europe. In addition to this radio is streamed via Satellite Radio thanks to Sirius in the USA, and via the Internet. It is of my opinion that in the USA due to the regionalised licensing of terrestrial TV and Radio broadcasting system that a lot of people find the content sub-par. In Australia we have radio networks, I frequently listen to the Triple J youth network, (and sometimes the DMG Nova network). Various posts to forums have hit the nail on the head, it's not always about the music and some people tune into specific programmes on the radio such as Hack on Triple J. Let me put it this way, many people still tune to AM broadcasts on the car radio, for the content despite the audio quality.

So what about internet radio? I know that a majority of terrestrial radio services in Australia offer an internet radio stream. However the quality of the FM feed often exceeds the quality of the online feed. Not only this unlike in North America where many mobile networks provide unlimited data on phone plans, in Australia many plans include no data with the highest caps providing a measly 1 GB of data. This equates to 17 hours of 128 kbps quality radio. Not only that, to maintain the stream you need to be in a good 3G reception area, stray into a 2G or EDGE zone and find your stream struggling. I know most internet streams are 64 or 96 kbps and not 128, but that does not improve the situation. You still only get two days of 9 to 5 radio enjoyment per month using the internet, unideal for something that would otherwise be free. On the other edge of the sword, go on an overseas holiday (let's say to New Zealand) and miss out on all the local radio programmes.

So this is a call out to smart phone manufacturers, you have a long way to go to produce phones that are as smart as many of the feature phones currently on offer. You have slowly implemented copy & paste (except Windows 7), multi-tasking and the like, now you need FM radio to truly be a replacement to a feature phone. Perhaps including DAB+ support would greatly help justify the extra cost of purchasing a smart phone.

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The World is Real

April 03, 2010

It is good enough to make blanket statements, and to hold your principles and values with an iron fist. But that is not the real world.

Antitrust" wrote:

This isn't a game! In the real world, when you kill people they die - for real! And in the real world you're fucked!

And in the real world, your prejudices hurt people. It causes some to fall into depression, and yes, people do die. Some people are so deeply held in their prejudices they cause other people to die, but that's ok because it's not them.

But that isn't their principles, their values, to have people dying, so what causes this? A lot of people follow the perceived popularised values in their community in setting their values and principles that leads to them instilling other peoples values on others, not their own.

So before you say something insensitive, find your values and face the truth, in the real world, with your prejudices people die, for real. But don't forget to respect other people's values.

Step outside, take a deep fresh breath, and be yourself. If people won't accept you for who you are, your values, your personality, fuck them, and ignore them.

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Soundwave 2010 Wrapup

February 25, 2010

I went to Soundwave 2010 last weekend.

Although My Chemical Romance pulling out was disappointing, I was very pleased with the replacement act as Jimmy Eat World. Although they played more from their Futures and Bleed American albums, I have now ordered three other albums, Clarity, Chase This Light, and Static Prevails as they played some tracks from Clarity and Chase This Light that I liked.

Anyway here are my comments I posted on the soundwave forum.

smithy_dll" wrote:

I had a very enjoyable day, I ate lunch on the way there and had dinner on the way home. I was unable to meet up with my friends who turned up later due to the phones, but oh well.

I saw,
Taking Back Sunday, good
Eagles of Death Metal, were ok
Emarosa, didn't stick around too long, stage 5/6 was horrible
Alexisonfire, they were pretty good
Paramore, sounded tight, just like a CD
Placebo, kind of meh as expected,
AFI, didn't stick around too long
All Time Low, felt out of place with all the kids with white wristbands, a little flat sound, but a good energetic set, involved the crowd, Zack kept throwing away picks and collecting bras
Janes Addiction, can't say I'm a huge fan
Jimmy Eat World, Was near the front, amazing
Faith No More, only stayed until they started playing poker face, crowd near the front wasn't as friendly as jimmy eat world.
HIM, couldn't be bothered sticking around, right sound, wrong stage
A Day To Remember, Sat under the tent listening to the set, some random let a kid sit on his shoulders for a song

The tent at the metal stage was very welcome, last year it turned into a mud bath.
But they messed up with stages 5/6 and 3 being so close. The cold water in the chillout room was very welcome.

And now for some (very out of focus) pictures from my phone.

more...

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New Skate Shoes arrived

February 15, 2010

My new skate shoes arrived today, Nike SB Paul Rod.

Check them out.


Aren't they great.

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Replacement Motherboard on the way

February 14, 2010

So a couple of weeks ago I got sick of the "bugs" in my DFI motherboard and returned it to the retailer under warranty. The replacement is finally in the post so I will be able to install it next weekend after it arrives on Monday or Tuesday.

There is no sign of even an ETA on my laptop, so I am still waiting on news from Lenovo on that one, but I doubt I will be able to get it before my Birthday.

With these new toys, I will be able to continue testing the new version of zinzam.com and hopefully move faster in being able to get something fresh online.

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Ordered a new laptop

February 09, 2010

I ordered a new laptop, so it should get here in a few weeks, hopefully before my birthday. Happy Birthday me.

Anyway here are the specs...

• Thinkpad T410
  
• Intel Core i5 540M 2.53 GHz
  
• 320 GB 7200 RPM HDD
  
• 8 x DVD Burner
  
• NVidia Quadro NVS 3100m 256 MiB
  
• 4 GiB DDR3 1066 MHz (two DIMM)
  
• 1440 x 900 pixel WXGA+ LED backlit display
  
• Legendary thinkpad keyboard
  
• Thinklight
  
• Ultranav trackpad/trackpoint, multi-touch
  
• Finger print reader
  
• 2.0 Mega pixel web cam
  
• Qualcomm Gobi 2000 WWAN PCIe card, HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, GSM, Ev-Do, 1xRT aGPS, GPS
  
• Bluetooth
  
• Intel Centrino 6200 802.11a/g/n WLAN
  
• 5 in 1 card reader
  
• 4 USB (one powered)
  
• Intel QM57 chipset
  
• eSATA
  
• Displayport
  
• 56 kbps modem
  
• 802.2ab gigabit ethernet
  
• IEEE1394 firewire 400
  
• 6 cell battery
  
• 2.27 kg
  
• VoIP optimised with mute button and array microphone
  

This will replace my current Z61t, same size, same weight class, a lot more powerful. I need to think of a name following along in the Yu-Gi-Oh theme, I had reserved mokuba, but assigned that to my desktop.

The only things missing from my z61t are IRDA (now use bluetooth), mic and headphone port are combined (I have logitech USB headset, G330), and S-Video (did anyone ever use it?).

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