The Pharmaceutical Race

My first tablet computer was an Archos 5 Internet Tablet 5 towards the end of 2009  which ran android 1.5 and also played a variety of media due to the Archos's extensive codec library.  It was during the short time of me having this tablet that I could see the potential of having a hand held computer that was not windows based, could be instantly powered on, had a large screen and could take the place of laptop, desktop or even smart phone for my daily internet activities.  This story was short lived when the Archos 5 decided to die on me, reset itself and lose all of my files and settings.  This left a sour taste in my mouth if I  could rely on this device when at any minute it could potentially do this again.

In January 2010 I saw the Ipad, laughed like other people at Apple's arrogance that they just invented the world again but still thought that it would be an android based table that I would end up with.   I purchased a cheap table from Hong Kong via Ebay for about £130 called an Eken M001 which was 7", ran Android 1.6 and had a resistive screen.  The technical specifications were similar to other tablets that are coming from the far east and are now available for about £100 over here.  Although this tablet was okay for ebook reading, minor browsing or reading your emails, again this was short lived because the keyboard was terrible for typing on.

It was after these two instances and after  recently purchasing an Iphone that I decided to purchase the Ipad.  The purchasing itself was not easy after being nearly ripped off on Ebay and after reserving one in PC World to only turn up and find out it was not in stock that I nearly gave up.  Although at the  end of January Apple showed the world that they had invented Tablet computing, my perception was they just brought a device to the market that worked, was well specced and had lots of applications that would differentiate it from calling it a large iphone.

Towards the end of 2010 we have seen the release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab at around £450, many have called an Ipad competitor and more recently the Advent Vega at £250.  I got hold of the Vega from Pc World because the specification was good, it was running Android 2.2 and had a capacitive screen.  My conclucisons on this device are it is a steal for £250 compared to the £100 tablets mentioned ealrler.  But you really need to apply the Performance Pack supplied by modaco to extend the device to include the Google Market and other services.  I would have kept the device if it wasn't for a bad episode with a 16gb SD Card which would not just work in the device.  After 3 formats and and rebuilds of the Vega I had enough, it was wiped, photographed and boxed to be sold on Ebay.  It sold within 12 hours.  Although this would could have been conisdered a bad memory card issue, it was very similar to my Nokia 5800 problem again with a 16gb SD card back in January 2008 of which I concluded was a hardware issue.  After dealing with this problem for several months I got shut of the 5800 and likewise I thought I am not being a slave to this problem with the Vega so subsequently sold this.

I was considering the Samsung Galaxy Tab and saw the device in the flesh, briefly used a colleagues and liked the keyboard but I settled on a second Ipad due to a video I saw on youtube of the Google Mail application on the Tab.  Unlike the Ipad, the Tab, like the vega, like the Eken and the Archos 5 do not use the screen real estate where ultimately the applications available for Android are all geared towards 800x400 or smaller.  You can argue the Ipad which can use IPhone applications at 2x the resolution looks terrible but there are more Ipad applications available that make use of the higher  resolution.

So , since December 2009 Android hasn't really developed on tablets and even google had said that until version 3 of Android it will not really be ready.  Whilst Samsung have done a sterling job with the TAB,  with a 1024x600 resolution the size of text on the screen in poroporiton to the screen size make it look like a childrens book with large writing.  Also the price of £450 approx is ridiculous and personally I wanted a product I know that will work for me, has a plether of applicaitons that are tablet aware and offers a welll rounded package.

The next version of Android needs to be an evolution, not lose its phone roots but show a distinct difference between a tablet os and phone os.  Google need to remove the restrictions of not allowing manufacturers  to use the market place because a tablet with Google is about as functional  as an etch a sketch.  Whilst "WIth Google" is an important trademark, it shows consuimers that this is a virgin device with no manufacturer tweaks, it needs to be freely available for any tablet that is to be launched.

Applications, applications and more applications need to be released that can take advantage of the screen real estate and offer more funcitonality than theiir smartphone os based versions. Sadly I dont believe this will happen until mid 2011 until the new version of Android is released that will allow higher resolutions and allow more diversity in devices so that they can make use of the Google services.

The hardware of the Advent Vega is the beginning of this evolution  but the OS desperately needs to catch up.  The Samsung Galaxy TAB shows what can be achieved with the right mix of hardware and Software, but it could be better as it is  shameful that you have to rely on Samsung to enhance the OS with a skin to supply a well rounded product.  This is  reminiscent of the HTC Sense on WIndows Mobile 6.5 where a skin was required to provide additional functionality.  This also the starting point of where Windows Mobile started to go wrong with manufacturers skinning the core OS, trying to hide the ugliness and lack of features which would always fall foul of when the OS was upgraded as it would mean  you need to either purchase the new model of hardware to get the new OS or wait endlessly for the manufacturer to update their skin.

In 2011 I dont know what devices I will have, but wouldn't have said in January 2010 that I would be typing up this blog on a macbook, use an iphone and own 2 ipads.  Whilst Android was and is still a market leader in mobile OS, Apple with have caught up on the hardware and OS and have certainly overtaken on the tablet front.

CES 2011 will be happening soon and this will set the scene for the rest of the year where one does not have to think hard that there will be a plethora of tablets on show.  However I do believe that unless Google changes the way they are developing  Android, restricting the minimum specification that allows manufacturers to use the whole Google package or begin to encourage developers to create a tablet version of their software; that android  could over time certainly go the way that Microsoft WIndows Mobile went; if they are not already heading down that path.

As with all races this is not just a two horse dash, there is the Blackberry and Palm offerings where I believe the Blackerry Pad will be business focused and the Palm We OS offering whilst technically fantastic will  also fall foul of here being no applications due to lack of developers and low uptake of the Palm Web OS just like the Pre now.

But as with any race we will not know until the end of the year to see who has won and who has fallen by the way side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Clean

Yesterday I made the drastic decision to get rid of all of my phones except the following:

• n900 - I am still interested to see how this develops
• E63 - a nice cheap phone that is being used as my work phone
• 5800XM - I am keeping this as a sat nav

I am getting rid of the following because I want a nexus one and an ipad later this year but here is a summary why:

• HTC Magic - Great android starter phone but limited on specification
• HTC Hero - Compared to the magic this is a breath of fresh air with the sense ui but HTCs lack of Android OS updates has shocked me. The magic is already on 1.6 whereas the Hero is 1.5 and newer applications I want to use are on android 2. HTC will update the Hero in march 2010 to Android 2 but my fears of not rolling out frequent updates where correct and as such I am abandoning non Google based Android handsets. I am of the opinion HTC either want people to upgrade to their new HTC Desire or Legend to use Android 2. Whilst this is their prerogative they have in effect stuck the two fingers up at existing owners. March isn't too far away but I believe this is a sign of things to come and I don't want to be party of it At least with a google phone I am guaranteed more frequent updates as Google develop the OS. SenseUI on the hero is great but does not bring that enough benefit to keep me on Android 1.5
• N810 - I now have the N900
• E75 - A great work horse but the 5800XM will now fill that position as being a back up device. The E75 is kind of phone you would either take out at night or away as the hidden keyboard really does make it look like a normal boring phone.
• E90 - A great communicator and specification on a phone on par with the E75. I a sad to see this go but I really haven't used it for for over a year.
• Palm Pre - There is a lot of potential with WEBOS but like the first generation iphone as there are no applications, the hardware is becoming long in to the tooth and now other phones such as the N900 and Hero with SenseUI no integrate with other social networks there is really no use for synergy. Should there be more applications that are more productive based I may look at WEBOS again. But for now, my conclusion is, it is nice to use but there is no substance due to lack of applications.
• Palm Treo 680 - An old phone I had just lying around doing nothing. Again, nice OS and lots of applications but long in tooth for me.
• BeBook Ereader - Not a phone but it will be replaced with the ipad or an android equivalent. I have not really used it and whilst it great on battery power I don't read many ebooks. Further its PDF support is limiting on the emagazines I read in that it is slow and does not render the pages well.

The replacements:

• Nexus One - To replace all of my phones with its larger screen and Google android based OS. Because I have already purchased a lot of android applications I can quite easily port them over to the new phone.
• Ipad Or an android equivalent - I am interested in a tablet device after using the Archos Android Tablet where the Ipad has caught my interest. However with the Dell Mini 5, ICD or a Tecra based Android tablet there will be others to look at.

Although 2010 might end up as 2009 with me purchasing many devices my intention ebaying the old devices is to fund the new purchased but also ensure I am not collecting clutter. I should hopefully have the nexus one within the next couple of weeks so will no doubt end up posting about it then.

E90

Well after some deliberation and the recent issues with the 5800XM I have blown the dust off my Nokia E90 (over 18 months old), reflashed it and then spent three days reinstalling it after two bundled attempts.

The previous atempts failed due to the memory card where I had similar issues to my 16gb card. I had previously used the 16gb in the 5800 but it would not work and became corrupt. A similar issue happened in the E90 the first time. I then tried a 8gb card and the same issue here happened.

Looking at both card they were both class 2, so I tried a class 4, 8gb card on the third attempt and everything now works. When I had the class 2, 8gb card in a N95 it slowed the response of the phone right down. So the moral is, class 2 for devices like ebook readers, cameras or mp3 machines. Class 4 for pdas or mobiles. The 16gb has gone in my camera and the 8gb in my N810 for extra storage.

The E90 is like holding a shoe to your ear when making calls. However it has lots of memory, quite fast processor, can multitask, has a keyboard, large screen, gps, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo, ad2p, wifi, bluetooth and ip telephony, Whilst the 5800 has all of this minus the hardware keyboard, the 5800 really slows down when doing too much.

You may ask what have I got running on the phone:

Push email
Ip telephony
Gravity for twitter
Push sync to exchange
Sms filter
Call filter
Call recorder
Sms gmail sync

Even with this running it still leaves enough ram for web browsing, blogging and the odd phone call.

The iphone can only do one thing at a time according to apple, however when I jailbroke my 2g iphone I was running ssh, php, web server, call notification software in the background and other apps in the foreground.

I have heard that apple will be be allowing push notifications to the phone where by rather than the phone periodically checking for updates or having a constant connection to the server, apple will notify the phone when something has updated so the phone can connect and make the updates. If this works, it will be a new way of doing push notification and will reduce on data being transferred from having to keep open a constant connection.

So whilst I have been looking for a phone that does everything I want I have had it for the past 18 months stuck in a drawer!

However, looking at new handsets at the moment the contenders are now E90, E71 , N97 or the palm pre. Matt Miller reports the keyboard on the N97 is poor in comparison to the E75 the device he is now favoring. You cannot use a virtual keyboard to input on the N97 as there is no software keyboard unlike the 5800, so you have to flip open the device. Whilst like my E90 I have to do this in order to type it would be good to see both options available like on the N810.

So whilst I am waiting and reading the reviews, I am typing this blog using wavelogger on the E90 as I know I have the yardstick in my hands. Should there be another communicator announcement from Nokia then the N97 will be ball parked until the communicator comes out for comparison.

As the phones cost a lot it will be worth the wait as they do stand the test of time - or at least me!

Which phone next?

Well the nokia 5800xm has reached the point of another hard reset. Web has died where it will not even load mobile versions of websites. There are two other browsers available such as BOLT or OPERA MINI but these either crash or are too cumbersome with a touch screen

I am pondering the 3g iphone now it has grown up and will finally be able to do copy and paste, mms and sat nav later this year. But I will probably want to jailbreak and then it will be on ebay for sale.

The N97 is due soon and whilst I like the form factor it still has the bad s60 browser. I will need to see the reviews before I jump as I am getting tiered of buying stuff that just doesn't work.

There is windows mobile but there is not much to say on that
The G1 or G2 but again lack of software or memory kills this for me.
I have tried two devices but find it impractical and the n810 I have again has a bad web experience.
Netbooks are too large to carry around all of the time to just get out and use.

So I am on a fence as to what to do?

Some people cannot understand why the phones just fail me. Ultimately I just use their features, buy software and run it on the device as this is what they are designed to do.

So will it be an iphone? At this moment it is a hot candidate as I just want something that works. However I will look at the new phones mentioned above over the next few months before I jump!

New social media apps for 5800XM

Finally Shozu is available for the 5800XM so videos and pictures can uploaded to a variety of social networking sites including direct blogging and twitter updates.

I have also purchased a native s60 twitter client for s60v5 called Gravity which allows you to update your twitter, to follow other tweets, to complete searches and to respond to direct messages and post pictures. It only cost about £9 including VAT and is worth the money.

Shozu is free, however it is not working very well with my youtube account where I have raised a technical support query with them.

This including Fring means you no longer have to be tied to a pc and you can complete and follow updates whilst you are on the move.

Although these applications can all run in the background I have found they are memory hogs and if you are using other applications in addition, these will slow the phone down. I have found it better to close these applications when trying to use the builtin web application because of the memory limitation.

Nokia 5800 16gb micro SD HC compatibility

I have recently started a new topic post over at my-symbian about the 16gb compatibility of the Nokia 5800XM.

The link to the thread is http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=359029#359029

It appears there are several others having this issue but I have not seen any official postings/news items regarding it.

Whilst I can use my 8gb card in the phone it does limit how much I can store and render the 16gb card I had as useless. However it does ask one question is the phone genuinely compatible with 16gb or higher or can it be fixed in a new firmware?

Lets hope we hear something soon.

So do you touch or point?

I have now had my nokia 5800 for 3 weeks but it has been an up road struggle.

I have always enjoyed touch screen phones where my first was a p800. Before this I had a catalogue of touch pdas such as the psion 5,7 , the palm v, the handspring visor, hp jornada 629, compaq ipaq, hp jornada phone/pda so I have some experience when it comes to tapping a screen.

I got an iphone last year shortly after they came out in the uk to see if I would like it. For me, this felt like a heavy weight boxing game as I hadn't had an apple device before, I have big expectations from mobile devices as I am a heavy user and there was a question if the iphone could cope with me. Lets just say it was short lived and after 2 months it was back on eBay.

I loved the interface, the web browsing was perfect and it was great to type on. I hated the closed environment where you were locked into Itunes and the Apple way of doing things. With my other devices such as Windows Mobile or Symbian I am somewhat free of this and can choose my own route on how I want to accomplish things. I jailbroke my iphone, installed a web server with php, ssh server and ftp server so I could shuttle files forwards and backwards. The only other issue I had was Linux where I would have to connect both the PC and iphone to a wireless network, ssh onto the iphone then mount the iphone filesystem over ssh in order to copy files onto it. Sounds great technically but a total headache in reality. I eventually got rid of the iphone after it decided to wipe my data from its disk even though itunes knew it had several gigabytes of "other data", but could not access it. Only a reflash would fix this issue and this is when it was packed up and flogged on ebay.

The thing that Apple got right and set a bench mark was the touch interface. They have always been at the forefront of GUI interfaces with MAC OS X and carried this over to the iphone. I have to admit after years of using point and click interfaces on psion, palm and windows mobile with a stylus, it was both novel and practical to be able to use a finger and thumb to get things done.

I enjoyed my time using Palm PDAs such as the Handspring Visor because I loved the simplicity of Graffiti for the entering of text. This was carried over onto the Sony Ericsson UIQ phones such as the P800 - P990 (this was a total disaster) . However both UIQ and Palm have totally dried up in terms of current hardware and Windows Mobile is the old elephant on top of a mini and it just a fudge. Even with the current crop of phones such as the HTC Touch or Touch HD whilst the Flow interface masks most of the windows mobile junk underneath you still cannot get away from the legacy interface.

As I like symbian, I needed a phone then S60 was a good choice. I previously had an S80 device such as the Nokia 9500 which if used today is like putting a shoe to your ear. I upgraded to a N95 running S60 which got me used to this new OS and its limitation in time for me getting my Nokia E90. This to date is my favorite all in one device with a keyboard and whilst it does not have touch it is a great workhorse. Because Nokia have been slow to bring out further high end devices - the N95 8GB and N96 weren't really upgrades in terms of hardware I got a Samsung Innov8. In terms of spec 3G HSDPA, GPS, 8M Camera, WIFI 3" screem and 16GB on board all running under S60 then this is the dream phone. However the big mistake here is the compatibility with current Nokia S60 software that is free due to the certificates not being available. All About Symbian have recently discussed this on a podcast and have said that they are looking to developers to provide the correctly signed software so it runs under Samsung S60. This has been an issue since the phone came out in August 2008 and it is still not resolved. Needless to say this phone is now on ebay as I had enough of contacting suppliers just to ask when are they bringing out a version for the Innov8. This coupled with samsung#s reluctance to release firmware to fix annoying bugs was too much and this is when I began looking elsewhere.

So in summary, I now want a device that has a keyboard, is compatible with S60 and a touch screen. ........

Now enter from stage left the Nokia 5800XM aka Tube. I got mine from ebay which originally had been sourced from Hong Kong. The phone has already been reflashed by me with the new v11 firmware and the product code changed. Again, I cannot understand why Nokia insist on phase releasing firmware at different times and areas across the globe. Again, take a leaf out of Apple's book who just get on with it and release it worldwide at the same time. I understand Nokia have a huge catalogue of phones but why should I wait several months for something.......

Since having the phone it has been hard reset four times and now I can reinstall it under two hours. However it does refuse to boot with the memory card in so this has to be removed and inserted when the phone has booted. I know there is something on the memory card stopping it but cannot be bothered to fault find as I just want it to work and have a workaround. Also the Web Feeds within the browser have screwed up with no fix in sight other than to wipe the phone again. Luckily Google reader works quite well albeit the touch interface on the web browser sometimes finds you reaching for the hammer!

So do you touch or point? Well with S60v5 it is a question of both. Whilst it is S60 underneath and the menus and buttons have been resized so you can use your finger there is still a lot of work. The S60 browser might be able to show flash unlike the iphone, however it is both slow when zooming in and out with your finger and rendering a page. Thus when you try and move the page about the screen with your finger it frequently does not happen and will move when it is ready to catch up.

The onscreen keyboard is great but I miss the auto correct feature as on the iphone. It is also
annoying to have to keep rotating the phone to type on the full size qwerty keyboard. There are occasions you need to resort to using the stylus (point) that comes with the phone to select things or use the tip of your finger nail if you have any!

But looking past these small things that can be fixed in software upgrades it has a better camera, and can record video and is more open so I can do more with it. For example SymSMB allows me to both connect to Microsoft networks or share folders on the phone. This means I can hook up my linux laptop and copy my podcasts over wifi, access my pictures or MP3s all without a cable or pc suite. It will be great when they finally get the OTA updates working so finally the cables can be burned other than for charging.

This phone will be a transition similar when I went from the 9500, to N95 to E90. I will be moving to the N97 where I am hoping this should do me as an E90 replacement. It has the keyboard, the camera, the capacity and the screen/interface.

If it will be the iphone killer, all I will say is - there is an opportunity but at the moment Nokia have a lot to fix and need to start innovating rather than following. Palm have recently done this with the pre - another contender of which I will be looking at

Lets hope they can remove the need to point and improve on the touch.