WebOS-powered TouchPad

I am a big fan of Palm products. Those days it was cool to carry a Palm PDA, and if my memory did not fail me, my first Palm product was a Palm Pilot series. Palm gave me the impression of building nifty products but not a world shaker one. However when the webOS was first unveiled in 2009, I thought it is the mobile platform to go, with Windows and Linux both dominating the desktop market. The thoughts of web connected device, taking advantage of the Web 2.0 technologies, was just salivating.

Since then, a handful of Palm devices were launched sporting WebOS. I love the simple interface but the form factor never grew on me. With the products mostly focused in the US market, strangely if I may add, I never got to own one until now.  Then HP acquired Palm, and it got me lighted up. A PC giant (or a ex PDA big player in Jornado and iPAQ), and an promising next generation mobile OS maker, perfect marriage or a disastrous divorce in making?

Unboxing TouchPad

Fast forward to last month, the first webOS tablet with HP DNA was launched. As I was in the market for a tablet, it didn’t take me too much of deliberation before I placed a pre-order. I didn’t even have the chance to test run the product even though a demo unit was available during the pre-order event. I admit I was a tad disappointed by the form factor (again!) once I caught a quick glance on the demo unit. But I thought I will be wowed over by the implanted webOS, or at least I was looking forward to that.

The TouchPad was finally delivered to me yesterday. As I un-boxed the unit enthusiastically, I realized I was no longer bothered by its form factor, despite it being thicker and heavier than the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 and iPad 2. Perhaps the nagging concern of form factor had worn off. The 9.7inch gorilla glass is tightly fitted and enclosed with a piano finish housing, defusing a sense of refine touch and quality feel. The clean design blends well with  two slim, chrome-looking buttons (power and volume). The microphone, headphone socket and the home button are so discreet, it will not be surprise if anyone were to hold the tablet upside down. The clean line design however is interrupted by the speakers’ positions, as the Beat-by-Dre speakers sit too deep into the tablet. Unfortunately, the “not flushed with the housing” design make the unit looks like a manufacturing defect.

Highly Polished & Piano Finish Housing

Power on the Touchpad, I was greeted by the HP logo. It took awhile before the first setup wizard screen appeared, but since this was just one time, I had no complains. The setup process required me to connect to a WIFI hotspot so this requirement needs to be taken note of to potential buyers. (This is afterall a Web gadget). Otherwise the whole setup process was simple and a breeze, another tell tale sign that HP wants to keep the whole experience simple. The 1024×768 screen resolution looks a bit low on the otherwise decent display. The display looked gorgeous until I placed it side by side against my favorite Samsung Galaxy S2. The color appeared marginally pale and lack of “punch”.  On the other hand, the touch sensitivity is great and while I like the ripple effect I suspect it is designed with a reason behind. More on that later.

Holding TouchPad with one hand can be challenging

On the webOS, I love the concept and the implementation of the application cards. It is not new but I think in webOS 3.02 it is more polished now, perhaps with the help of bigger screen estate. I like the idea of glancing all the active applications like a deck of cards, and ability to stack them up or side by side. To close the application, a swipe up gesture is good enough. No worries of whether the application has exited or not, or which button or menu to press to quit the application. Simple and consistent gesture.

The JustType proves to be very useful for me as it not only provides context search, but also brings all the possible search to you in one place. A keyword search will give me a comprehensive list of available search options. I can trigger a google search, or I can search against the application catalog or wiki. I can even post a status about the keyword(s) in Facebook.  Google and Apple should take note of this (and the simple card style launcher), but I suspect they would be too proud to acknowledge such conveniences.

Multi-tasking is another selling point although I have to say it looks like webOS 3.0 might have fallen into the same “speed trap” as Android during its Eclair and Froyo days. The tablet seems to show signs of lagging when I opened many applications. So I do make a point to swipe out applications I do not need (in case you still have not internalize this, it means I quit the app). Perhaps a reminder from HP that human being can only do so much of multi-tasking.

Apart from the cards concept, the system UI layout is clean with just a status bar at the top, displaying active notifications and system status. The home button will lit up in a subtle blinking mode whenever there is new notification,which is functionally and aesthetically pleasing. For a content intensive application, the content could be organised in multiple pages which can be swiped and layered neatly within the application window, or opened up as a new card. Again, simple and consistent navigation experience.

TouchPad is slim and sexy if you compare them against a Desktop

Life is never perfect, so are electronic gadgets. There are some petty annoyances such as dummy Wifi status icon that does not show the wireless strength. The main gripes I have with TouchPad is the occasional lags, and the lack of applications. I should be forgiven if I have mistaken that the ripple effect (which animates for every screen touch) is designed to assure user that there is nothing wrong with the touch accuracy and sensitivity. The lag should and needs to be fixed in the next release of software update. It can be frustrating when the tablet takes a few seconds to wake up (which I suspect happens when there’s a new notification in the background while the tablet is in deep sleep) , or the application takes its time to load up.

As for the meager application catalog, I believe it is a matter of time developers will jump onto the bandwagon, so long HP doubles up its release of webOS devices and appliances to the market. This will in turn build more demands for the developers. After all, if Rovio, the Angrybird “farmer”, chose to release its game at the same time as the TouchPad’s launch, it does say something about how keen the developers in general are to join in the fun. (The last I remembered Rovio took a while before they release the Windows Phone version of their birds and pigs game). It is a chicken and egg situation (with no pun intended)  but the ball (or is it the egg?) is apparently in HP’s court.

Regardless, there are some applications which I think should be part of the default application offering. For example, there is no application for YouTube, one which is so synonymous to Web that excluding it from a Web-oriented device is like taking a steering wheel away from a car. It may well be a case of HP wanting to prove a point that they have Flash support, as the workaround (of a missing YouTube app) is to playback the videos from YouTube’s desktop version site directly. Even a Youtube video search from JustType fires up the YouTube web page directly. I have to say though, the playback is as good as what you would experience from a desktop, buttery smooth without stuttering.

As a matter of fact, for every of the web sites I surfed, the web browser will always open the site in desktop format (not mobile) automatically, and you won’t feel any dysfunctional or crippled navigation as you would experienced sometimes from a smartphone. Perhaps, there is an underlying message HP wants to send out here. That Touchpad is a desktop in a tablet form, and a simple one too. Now, my TouchPad is starting to look more sleek and slim, oh yeah!

Take the category of smartphone as an example. I would rate HTC for its famed Sense experience, which help to ramp up a newbie experience with Android (and Windows Mobile previously). On the other hand I see SonyEricsson being in the leader in its camera functionality having used its Xperia Arc and compared it with all the Galaxy S series. That said, HTC Sense is getting too complicated as the company tries to be sophisticated for its products to be ‘smart’. But I have digressed.

So when I read reports that raved the new Samsung Galaxy S II as the best Android smartphone to date I thought it is a bold statement. Don’t get me wrong as I think it is yet another fine product by the Korean company but that statement needs to be contextualized.

Improvement wise there’re plenty to talk about, whether we are pitting it against its predecessor (Samsung Galaxy S) or its competitors. The setup experience is more seamless now, mostly with the help of Android Gingerbread OS. All my previously installed apps were restored once I signed in my Google account. The only gripe I have on the restoration process is that the user data were not reinstated which means i have to rely back on backup apps like titanium backup. In any case, this is a default Google (Gingerbread) feature so I can’t fault Samsung for this.

The other significant improvement is its home launcher. The infamous TouchWiz, labelled as iPhone wannabe previously, may have some traces of iPhone footprint in the latest version. It may not be the best home launcher in the market today, but it definitely (and finally) has its own DNA with neat features such as its nifty widget management functionality. Hopefully the Korean continues to build on the success of its software, just as it has demonstrated for its hardware. After all, the marriage of software and hardware is what makes the phone (or any electronic gadget for that matter) smarter

The biggest improvement, as both techies and newbies will attest to unanimously,  is the speed. While the newbies may likely pay tribute to the obvious dual core processor, the more knowledgeable one would point out the plenty of RAM memory available (about 400MB). Talk to the techie, especially those who had previously owned the lag-troubled SGS,  you will be enlightened that the (other) key contributor of the performance boost is the choice of file system used in the new SGS II. No more crappy RFS, Samsung’s version of FAT file system. Samsung has finally embraced the EXT4 file system wholly, and in that light, it is a testament that they do listen to its customers feedback, especially the voices of xda-developers.

Having used HTC Desire HD and Sony Ericsson Xperia earlier (not forgetting SGS), I personally prefer the new Samsung Galaxy S II over the former two. It doesn’t mean SGS II beats both phones hands down.(eh, although the bias side of me may say that, especially against HTC Desire HD). No matter how complicated HTC has transformed its Sense experience into, it is clearly still the leader in this space at this moment with its rich features (widget offering, remote phone management, etc). New Android users, especially those jump-camping from iPhone camp, will appreciate this. What left me with a sour note on HTC products is its mediocre hardware offering, particularly its LCD display and camera. The LCD display differentiator, lies not about how many pixels the manufacturer can squeeze into that 3-4 inch of physical screen (retina display anyone?), but how it renders the color of the images (still or motion), as close to the reality as possible. The same goes for the camera compartment. This is where Xperia Arc’s BRAVIA® Engine (for its reality display) and Exmor R™ for mobile CMOS sensor easily thrash HTC Desire HD. Xperia Arc however disappointed me with its measly storage and memory (I ran out of internal storage space after restoring all my apps, and my available RAM is always less than 100MB!). Coupled that with a “fat” bloatware installation footprint, it is a recipe for disasterous performance.

Video Sample of SGS II, 720P mode

As an advanced user, I can definitely overcome most, if not all, of these software deficiencies in SGS II, vis-a-visa HTC Desire HD (and probably all the HTC products as well). SGS II’s Super AMOLED+ is a worthy competitor to SonyEricsson’s BRAVIA® Engine, so it is hard to call out who is the world-beater here, at least to my naked eyes. On the other hand, SonyErcisson’s Exmor R™ CMOS sensor is the clear winner to me for its exceptional low-light sensitivity. However, SGS II camera sensor is no pushover (except for taking photos in poor lighting condition). Thus, it was a close fight between Arc and SGS II for me, but the latter eventually won me over for its extravagant storage and memory,  dual core for future proofing, not forgetting a wider base of xda-developers support.

In a nutshell, is SGS II a perfect (Android) smartphone? No unless you set the right context. That said, if somebody were to ask me, I would rate SGS II and Xperia Arc highly with SGS II taking the lead over Arc by a hairline margin. As for HTC Desire HD (and probably Sensation), probably a distant 3rd.

Note: Don’t take the last statement too seriously, I am just utterly disappointed by HTC products after all these years of owning the likes of HD, HD2,  Desire, Desire HD

Other Interesting reads

• Samsung Galaxy S II Torn Down, Analyzed, and Found To Be Top Tier
• Camera showdown: Samsung Galaxy S II versus Xperia arc

A couple of years ago, when SonyEricsson decided to re-invent their new flagship mobile product in Xperia X1, I bought their vision, literally. The phone, despite running on Windows Mobile platform, wowed me with their sleek design and their UI panel concept. Hey, I even contributed to their vision by developing a navigation panel. The quality of the phone was far from perfect, and I promptly returned the phone back to the service centre when they offered a buy-back proposal to appease my dissatisfaction. That was my last impression of a Xperia product.

Then SonyEricsson ventured into the Android segment, I had a close look at X10. I loved the big screen, but got turned off by its Eclair-Android platform when its competitors were already beginning to release Froyo-based phones. In fairness to them, X10 was launched around the same time (or just after) Froyo was announced by Google . Not wanting to take any chance, I had to give it a pass, and went on the rendezvous with the likes of Desire Series and Galaxy S.

When I switched from Samsung Galaxy S for the HTC Desire HD, I find myself constantly frustrated by the latter’s multimedia capability. The screen display looked so pale when pitted beside the Galaxy S; Photos and video capture function was (and still is) so bad that I have given up using my phone to snap candid photos and videos.

So when Samsung first announced the Galaxy S II earlier this year,  my mind was immediately fixated on the Galaxy S successor. Just as I thought I have to endure another month or two, came the new SonyEricsson X10 successor. I was originally invited for the Xperia Arc product launch event but I had to give it a miss due to my busy work schedule. Opportunity usually does not knock on your door twice, but for Xperia Arc, it sure did. The whole select, browse and purchase experience seemed to be predestined. I was casually reminded to give the phone a second thought. By chance I happened to walk pass a SonyEricsson outlet so I went in to have a close look on Xperia Arc, although I was attracted to the Xperia Play instead. It finally ended with a deal put forth to me by an associate, which was too good for me to give it a miss. Within 14 days, I finally had my hands on the new Xperia Arc.

The unboxing experience was pleasant. I got a misty silver Arc, and as I inspected the phone before powering it on, I thought the silver look finishing does add a tint of elegant feel to its sexy appeal.  With the new Arc, SonyEricsson seems to have perfected its sleek arc design since the Xperia X1 days. Opening of the battery cover was easy although I was so worried I might just break it with the prying. Thanks to its light-weight casing, the phone feels so much lighter than my Desire HD, and made me realised how much of weight I have been carrying all these while since Galaxy S days. Upon powering up the phone, I was greeted by a vibrant colour, high contrast display. It just reminded me the feasts my eyes have been missing in the last 6 months with the dull-looking Desire HD screen. Having said that, the jury is still out (at least for me, until I see for myself), on how the Bravia Engine display would fare against the new Super AMOLed Plus in Galaxy S2.

On the other hand, I am not a big fan of “bling bling” chrome trimming, and the 3 long chrome buttons at the bottom of the screen. If the misty silver finish adds to the classy look, the chrome trimming and buttons minus it off. The 3 system buttons (back, home and menu) are not backlit, even though SonyEricsson tried to use two tiny led points to indicate the positions of the buttons. While I can appreciate the tactile feels that only a physical button can offer, i thought the size and layout of the three system buttons spoil the otherwise sexy and classy design of Arc.

Once powered up, I was greeted by a very well thought-through setup wizard process. Setting up my office and personal accounts and having all my emails, contacts and calendars synchronised into the phone was a breeze, although I would attribute that largely due to Google Android platform. Within seconds, I could start using the phone productively, no need to worry about phone content migration. The key missing feature I found in Arc is the Market app restoration. I had thought it is a Gingerbread feature, as I had experienced in my Desire HD where the market actually restores applications when I upgraded the phone to Gingerbread.  So the call for rooting the phone, and thanks to Chainfire’s Gingerbreak, I got it rooted fairly quickly and uses TitaniumBackup to restore all my applications and data.

The operating of the phone feels smooth and fast overall. There are some momentary lags here and there, and most of the time the lags happen when there is multi-tasking going on (e.g. running an app while another app is being installed). The boost in speed is also largely attributed to Gingerbread, which I thought has addressed some of the memory management and multi-tasking issues in Froyo and Eclair. The challenge I think most OEM face is how their software development effort can be seamlessly integrated into Android platform, and I thought SonyEricsson did very well here. The home launcher may not be as sophisticated as HTC’s sense, but it sure has its own DNA unlike the Samsung’s home interface. Perhaps because of its lightweight, the launcher operates with almost zero lag as one switches from one home screen to another, with live widgets and wallpapers running in the background.  That said, I thought SonyEricsson suffered from its own success. While it has set a very high bar on its user interface with a lot of bells and whistles (e.g. animated navigation actions), it seems to have lost sight on how to make its application usable from the content experience point of view. The concept of Timescape is good. HTC has similar concept in Friendstream,  Motorola has MotoBlur (I think) and Samsung has SocialHub, but I thought Timescape has a more complete concept around content aggregation and syndication. The navigation and interface is sleek too, I love the animation of messaging cards stacking up on each other. But will I be able to productively use it to share and review all the social media messages and updates? I’m not sure, and so the answer is probably not.

Camera wise, Xperia Arc beats Desire HD hands down. Thanks to the Exmor R for mobile, a Cmos sensor supposedly leveraged from that  found in Sony’s full-fledged camera series, Arc could really take good photos in poor lighting condition. There were already reviews on carrying out real life comparison between Arc and other mobile devices (e.g.  here and here), so I would not want to repeat myself here. The video capturing capability is as good, if not better, than Galaxy S, and definitely put all the HTC devices to shame. If anybody really cares about camera feature or visual display, HTC phones should not be in their shopping consideration at all. Arc has a simple video editor pre-installed, good and easy to use tool if you just want to save a section of the captured video. Any more sophisticated needs beyond that, you should look for a proper video editing app or transfer it to your desktop for further editing.

No matter how good the device is, there is always shortcomings, and Xperia Arc is no different. Apart from the poor chrome trimming and buttons layouts, the doubt over Timescape’s practicality, there are some nagging concerns on the Wifi performance, occasional lags and the “bloat wares”. But my main gripe with the phone *so far* is lack of community-based development work. No doubt there is work-in-progress on CM7 porting, some modification on UI and bootloaders, but the results are insignificant when you compare them against the development widespread in the HTC community. I think it is time for developers to realise there are better phones out there in the market.  On the other hand, the manufacturers need to be more open on how the developers can gain access to their products, to entice them to develop useful applications. That is why HTC remains to be so popular in the xda-developers community, despite some of its mediocre offerings that can be found even their flagship products. Fortunately, SonyEricsson is beginning to think likewise to engage the developers, with their attempt to reach out  in xda-developers forum, and officially sharing how to unlock their signed bootloaders so that developers can try out different custom ROMs on their phones. Having said that, not all mobile users would be bothered by such factor, but I think there must be a fine balance which manufacturers need to handle. For now, I can only hope for a better change, and for a start, I am looking forward to the Gingerbread 2.3.3 upgrade in the next 2 weeks.

HTC Desire HD

When I first had my hands on the Desire HD, I actually thought I fell in love with it. The overall quality is just what you would have expected from HTC; The use of good quality material (over some cheap plastic material assembly), the polished user interface including the initial set up process. The phone feels heavy but it makes you think of the good solid material instead of the negative aspect of the weight. The tactile feedback on the screen gives a “tight, controlled mechanical” response you would expect from a high quality haptic technology based components. The initial take of the phone then was this should be what HTC Desire was 6 months ago. But it turned out to be more than 6 months gap.

Like all romances, love at first sight is never definitive, and with Desire HD it is a good classic example of that. The quality one can expect from HTC is not just about the positive ones. There were still alignment issues with the housing and casing covers, and the stability of the HTC applications that were bundled with the phone remained questionable, just to name a few. Before this blog entry degenerates into rants, let me just highlight three key areas that had subdued my enthusiasm about this phone.

With all the fantastic technical specifications that Desire HD is carrying, the phone fails miserably in the screen display and camera department (of course in my humble opinion). If Samsung Galaxy S had changed my perception about what a mobile phone can do as far as video recording and playback are concerned, Desire HD proved why the former is the best selling Android phone in the marketplace today. That is despite all the great things you can find about the phone itself. At a first glance, Desire HD screen display looked fabulous. The Super LCD screen appeared to have match the bar set by Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen. But when I placed my Desire HD and Galaxy S side by side,  my jaws dropped and I was almost screaming, “What is so super about the SLCD!?”.

From the video below, the display on Desire HD is simply washed out. The display colors looked faded and flat, whereas in the Samsung devices they looked vibrant. Looked at the contrast and brightness!   The conclusion I got?  I would never want to watch any movie on my Desire HD, if I happen to spot somebody around me carrying a Samsung Galaxy S.

Moving on to the video recording capability. Despite the specification of being able to take 720p video, Desire HD  was never able to match the video recording capability I had experienced in Galaxy S. The ghostly motion effect is still there, especially if the video is taken in an indoor setup (flash is a moot point because I could record a smooth video indoor with Galaxy S). If that was not bad enough, there was a severe bug in Desire HD, that resulted in video recorded with random stuttering effect. So when you are trying to take a HD video, this bug becomes a big joke. Incidentally this bug occurred only when I set the video camera mode to 720p. Essentially, the phone had problem recording at 30 frames per second in high definition. There are “dirty” workarounds, but I was never happy with this video recording function since day one.

a sample of video recording using Desire HD. Notice the freeze in 0:16 frame.

Then comes the software aspect of the phone. I remembered when I first got HTC HD2 more than a year ago, I had to endure the buggy SMS application for more than 2 months. If text messaging is an essential mobile function for you, that bug effectively rendered the phone unusable. Despite the bad experience, I remained hopeful when Desire HD was first launched in the market.  HTC development team must have learnt a big lesson out from that saga and delivered a better quality product this time round.

How wrong was I again! One of the selling point of Desire HD is that it is “smarter” than before with its Htcsense.com.  The latter is essentially a service based feature which enables the phone owner to locate and control the phone remotely. Theoretically one can locate the phone with the help of GPS, or initiate a ringing on the phone so you can locate its presence acoustically. One can even initiate remotely, to redirect phone calls and text messages, or wipe out data in case of emergency. Sounds great isn’t it? And of course I said that is in theory, because until last month, I could do nothing of these, even though these were advertised features. The  HTC support acknowledged that the performance stricken services (or applications) in htcsense.com were buggy and the development team was working on it. Being an IT-trained professional, I can understand how software can never be perfectly free of bug. However, the line should be clear between a software in alpha stage versus one that is go-to-market ready. HTCsense.com was clearly at a former stage, so it baffled me why the product was being launched in the first place. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise given the pressure to launch in the market, but it looked like somebody in HTC had done his maths. That the market share gain (through early product launch) will take care of the market share loss (due to the product quality problem).

A web-based service that looks good but not functional at all

On the otherhand, the HTCsense.com could also be more smarter than it is. As of now the services become useless when the phone battery get depleted. Imagine you discover that you have left your phone at home when you reach the office.   You want to remotely redirect your phone calls and/or text messages, only to find out that your phone is “uncontactable” because it runs out of battery. But I digress.

In all my correspondences with HTC support, it was clear to me that they could not commit a time to fix the problems. I gave up, and was looking to sell away the phone, or to do something about the phone myself. With xda-developers.com, I could save a hell lot of my time from building my own ROM or optimizing my kernel which I did for my previous phones. I found Leedroid custom ROM and kernel, flashed it, and the phone finally became what it should really be in the first place. However, there are things that do not change, such as  the hardware limiting issues (i.e. screen display). In other cases, such as the overall product and customer experience with HTC,  it is almost like a carbon copy of the previous one when I had HD2.

It is a déjà vu again.

ZiiO 7" Tablet

Earlier this week, I was privileged to have my hands on Creative ZiiO 7″ tablet, even though it was just a development unit. Given that (that it was just a development unit), the exterior finishing was not expected to be polished. The tablet was however loaded with the latest firmware that would supposedly shipped for production, so the hands on experience will still be close to that of a retail unit.

For a tablet, what draws to one’s attention is usually its form factor and its screen display. Admittedly, the first impression was a mixed feeling. The size of the tablet, defined by a 7″ wide screen, coupled with its all-white outfit, would definitely catch an enthusiast’s attention. This is especially so for somone like me who had already experienced a 6″ Kindle and a 10″ iPad, the two extreme end of a tablet-type devices. Of course, Kindle belongs to a different league altogether, given that it is a dedicated e-reading device. However, the size and weight of these devices should give a tablet-shopping buyer a good reference of what he needs to look out for, for there is no one perfect tablet in the market that fits all the needs.

Holding ZiiO 7" with one hand is convenient

Once ZiiO 7″ catches your attention, the screen display might possibly drops yours. I was definitely disappointed by the screen display, especially after having used to colour vibrancy that Super AMOLED display offers, in my Galaxy S and recently Galaxy Tab. The colour is a little flat, and further impacted by the viewing angle. If there is anyway to describe the visual impact, it feels like a 3M privacy screen filter fitted on it, albeit a little exaggerated. Ziio sports a resistive screen. While it is probably one of the most sensitive resistive screen in the market today, Creative’s decision to stick with it sets me scratching my head given that capacitive screen has becoming a norm these days.  But I was quickly reminded that Ziio 7″ is Creative’s entry model for their Android tablet product line, and costs just 1/3 of Samsung Galaxy Tab’s price tag. Fair enough, but unless you are a budget-conscious shopper, or one who is about to buy the China-made i-Pad lookalikes, wow will be the last thing you would say when you power on the Creative’s ZiiO.

Usability wise, Creative ZiiO is very capable, despite having to navigate over the resistive screen.  The screen was responsive, so were the applications. I was told that ZiiO uses its own processor, ZiiLABS ZMS-08 HD Media-Rich Applications Processor. While I have not benchmarked its processor in the 7″, I tried on ZiiO 10″ which uses the same processor, and the result was astonishingly good, scoring a 3000 over points in CPU. To give some context, my over-clocked Galaxy S could only manage half of what ZiiO has achieved. ZiiO has a stereo speaker, but I could not make out its quality given that I was in a cafeteria at the point of testing ; Just not a conducive environment to test sound quality.

Creative Zii applications

ZiiO is still running the older Android Eclair (2.1) as we speak, even for the retail units. However, I was told that Froyo (2.2) should be released for upgrade very soon.  As I unlocked ZiiO 7″ tablet, I was greeted by Creative’s own simplified lock screen and home launcher. Neat, I told myself. At least the company is going to the right direction in developing its own DNA. On the application front,  Creative have a few customised applications, ZiiMusic, ZiiVideo and ZiiPhoto. Given Creative’s specialty, I have no complaints with their multimedia playback software, although ZiiMusic did hang on me once before I had to reboot the tablet to solve it.

ZiiO's Kindle

Having used Kindle for a while, I naturally tend to compare ZiiO with the former, as an e-reader. ZiiO, with its weight almost twice that of the Kindle 3 (400g vs 241g), definitely feels heavy if one were to read over a prolong period of time. For a quick read, I would think it is definitely capable. What I was impressed is ZiiO’s night mode feature, which not only dim the backlit display, but also also toggle the display foreground and background color, so that the screen would not be too glaring. Although it can’t beat e-ink technology, the night mode feature is the most welcome feature, if you always like to read at night.

In a nut shell, for $359 SGD, I think it gives the China-made A-Pad a run for their money (go support Singapore products!). Looking from another perspective, if you are planning to spend $200-300 for a digital photo frame, grab this Creative ZiiO for its value for money, since it could do what a digital photo frame does, and more. But when pitted side by side with the bigger brothers, I could sense that Creative ZiiO 7″ is shouting out for his super-brother (not ZiiO 10″! fwiw) for reinforcement. I heard it will be coming …

Snap shot video of the hands-on (in a noisy cafeteria)

I have always have the desire to learn about (mobile) life beyond Windows Mobile,  after having owned numerous Windows Mobile devices for the past 5 years. Then came iPhone, in 2008. But despite its edge cutting user experience and its hundreds of thousands of (useless) applications, it didn’t wow me over. I admit I’m not a big fan of Apple, but that has nothing to do with me not joining the fruity camp. I think it’s a great mobile product to start with, and had redefined the usability of mobile devices. It forces telco to sell data plan as a mainstream service. There’s many good things about the consumer focused phone, but just not enough to replace the likes of my trusty Xperia, Touch HD and subsequently HD2 as a productivity phone.

Then few months ago, I had a taste of Android on my Touch HD, albeit booted from Windows Mobile using haret (just think of it as a PC that can dual boot between Windows and Linux). I thought Android was an unpolished product then, with a great potential to woo over die hard Windows Mobile users.

In the past 6 months, many Android based phones had launched, but they were either too small for my fat fingers, or did not look appealing to me. Most importantly, until Android 2.1 (or Eclair) was released, there was no good way to integrate Android with Exchange Server backend.

Last month, a couple of new Android Eclair phones were launched, and one of them caught my attention. The phone “Desire” is so aptly named. Sporting a screen of 3.7″ size, running HTC sense and most importantly has support for Exchange Server integration,  it looks like a good phone to replace my HD2, which had been on steriod for the past few months.

So when Yeez decides to renew her telco contract, I shamelessly offer her my professional service to set up her HTC Desire, and in the process, for her to experience the steroid boosted HD2 and for me to test-play her HTC Desire for the next few weeks. 

But it took me 2 weeks before I could lay my hands on the desirable phone, as the phone was out of stock island-wide since day 1 due to its overwhelming demand and conservative supplies from HTC (as I understood HTC allocated only 100 units to each telco on day one of its release). Fast forward to yesterday, upon first powered up,  I was first greeted by the familiar shell interface, HTC Sense, which has been around in other HTC Android and Windows Mobile phones. The Android version of the HTC Sense supports a wide variety of widgets, and I believed it is based on Android App Widgets framework. This is a big contrast to the Windows Mobile version of HTC Sense, which has been developed from ground up, based on Lua scripting language. Ok, it sounds little too techie here, but bottomline, you should be able to customise the Android version of HTC sense with other non HTC-sense widgets easily. In the Windows Mobile camp, you would need skilled developers to custom build additional “home tabs” which will only run on HTC-sense powered Windows Mobile devices. That said, I am alittle annoyed with the fact that I can only have 7 “widget screens”, even though I could work around that “limitation” by choosing different “Scene” (each scene has its own set of home widget screens configured).

Installation of third party applications into HTC Desire, like any other Android phones (and iPhone if I’ve to be politically correct), is seamless through Android Market.  I installed a few applications, including big installation packages such as NDrive.  There are some installed applications such as SMS widget counter, File explorer,  Bluetooth transfer app, etc which I deemed basic and should be part of the Android base system. Or maybe I have been spoilt by Windows Mobile for the last few years. On the otherhand,  there are good applications such as Tapatalk which I had been hoping for during  the Windows Mobile  days, and I reckon the lack of “easy to use” UI SDK as the main reason why developers are slow in porting their applications to Windows Mobile.

Applications aside, setting up HTC Desire was a breeze, in particular setting up Exchange Server account for my push mail needs. In a few minutes, all my company mails, calendars and contacts were downloaded to the phone. While the PIM features in Desire (or Android phones for that matter) is not as extensive as that in Windows Mobile, it’s  more than adequate for one to connect to workplace, e.g. scheduling a meeting with a list of  invitees,  setting out of office,looking up company’s global address book, etc. And because I had setup my HD2 favorite people previously, the Desire’s favorite widget screen shows the same list of favorite contacts after synchronising with the exchange server. Neat!

Now here comes my biggest gripe(s),  to date. I always pin-secured my phones, and its no different for HTC desire. The problem with HTC Desire, and possibly for any other Android phones, is that if I choose to have numeric pin, I would still face a full qwerty keyboard to enter the pin when I try to slide unlock the phone. It may sounds like nitpicking, but just imagine you have to tap 8 key codes quickly every time you turn on the phone to make a call or do a quick read of new messages. It didn’t help that Android phones (or at least for HTC Desire) seem to have only one single power management mode; regardless of whether the phone is on external power source or battery, or whether the phone is idle or running some active services.

Apart from these gripes, there are other small nags such as occasional screen lags, inability to have full access to application configurations (probably require rooting). Still, I think it has been a refreshing experience, and is the smart phone that is capable of replacing my HD2. This is even more so with the next version of Android, Froyo,  rumoured to be available for HTC Desire in a couple of weeks time, and reportedly to be 5 times as fast as Eclair. Of course, since its made by HTC, one can easily head over to xda-developers to satisfy ones desire for the dark side.

My sister-in-law bought HP mini netbook recently, and I helped her to setup over the weekend.

I was pleasantly surprised to see HP InstantWeb application pre-installed in the netbook. Firstly, I have read about the application from the internet but this is the first time I have seen it in person. Next, I thought it’s cool for HP to custom build this small application that enables user to quickly access email or web surfing without having to wait for a long boot time. Although Windows 7 has improved the boot up time significantly (works out to be around 40s on my laptop running on 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate) , it’s still considerably slow for a mini netbook.

A decade and a half later, I got the opportunity to install Obuntu, one of many variants of Linux operating system, in my old tablet (TC4400). Prior to this, I had trouble with the tablet’s bootup, even from the external cdrom. Apparently there was some power problem with the motherboard. Fed up with the problem, I decided to boot up using a Obuntu cd that I got over the internet (first yay!), and ended up installing the operating system into my tablet. The power issue never surfaced with a Linux-based system, so I’m happy (second yay!). Within 30 minutes, I got the system setup, and ready for use! (third yay!)

More impressively, I had the system boot up and ready to surf within a minute! (fourth yay). Now I am contemplated to ubuntu-ised my mini-1000 netbook as well…

I recalled reading Steve Job’s argument on why 3G is not bundled in its 2G iPhone product; He said that 3G consumes more battery juice than its predecessor. Yes it does and so does WIFI which can be found in its first generation of iPhone.

Fast forwarding to now, the new iPhone 3G S is touted as a turbo charged iphone 3G with its HSDPA technology. Again it’s a technology found in my Dopod c730 two years ago. Anybody who wants to argue that Apple always does thing better than its competitors should really question how better is it for this context? That we are able to have 3.5G broadband at fraction of power consumption? I don’t think so.

Then BGR has reported undesirable high pitch noise when iPhone 3G S plays some sound files. One site blamed it on the bluetooth headset, and claimed that he had no problem with another. Surely we can infer a more objective conclusion from all these can we?

Posted from my Touch-HD