thats about it, i guess

1. i can only sigh. i think i will buy the acer neotouch. the 1ghz snapdragon, i think, will let it remain relevant for some time to come yet. but it will be the most expensive phone i have ever bought. this month i will eat home everyday.

2. why not android? this is still the early days of android. i just heard that in the us, they are mulling plans to upgrade every single android phone to 2.1. some phones will actually need to be wiped to do that. and before this, the situation was that other than htc, the other manufacturers were not interested in android roms at all - samsung, lg, etc. as for htc, even without official os updates, there shld be something to flash the phones to.

but the situation outside the us is less clear. will the samsung spica and the gw620 get android 2.1?

the platform can wait - to develop a 'modus operandi' so to speak - how updates are handled, at least.

and because it will only become more popular, there will be better and possibly even cheaper android phones to come.

and the gw620 and spica are not the most powerful phones around. the spica can probably be considered quite fast for now (although its limited by its 128mb of ram) - but its samsung 800mhz arm 11 maybe only around half as powerful as a 1ghz snapdragon.

a few months down the road, when other phone plan, used by my mom, is up for renewal, i'd probably see a better selection of android phones that i am seeing now. something cheap, with plain android, easily upgradeable os, and running at least a 1ghz snapdragon or omap3.

by then, the high end phones probably would be running tegra..

3. if the samsung omnia hd were as cheap as i saw it a week ago(when i could not number port because my singtel contract hasnt run out), then i'd simply opt for that. but now the pricing aberration has been corrected (well at least ang got the benefit from that after i alerted him to it), its no longer an outstanding buy in my books.

its got more video processing power than the acer, but less cpu. i think i'd be more interested in cpu than gpu, for not every app is video acceleration dependent. and it runs symbian s60 v5, which could be considered as young a platform as android, since compatibility with the vast library of symbian apps is not assured - they'd mostly work with s60 v3 - non touch screen phones.

htc magic enters my consideration!

a few other things to note...

m1, besides trying very hard to get rid of the htc tattoo(starhub's is 268, theirs is 68) , which i wouldn't touch with a 10-foot-pole because of its non-480x320 screen resolution, is also pretty rich with their subsidy on the htc magic - its only $98 now! this i can consider....its almost the same phone as the htc hero, only lacking the senseUI and the flash enabled browser. it would take some effort to put a hero rom(i wonder if that includes the flash capable browser? i think it shld!) on the magic, but that should work. and when skyfire for android is out, it will browse flash too anyways..

.....this adds yet another choice..acer neotouch, samsung spica, lg gw620, omnia hd or now this, the htc magic...

but yah, its lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack is a very big problem from my point of view..so the leaders in my mind are still the neotouch and the gw620..and the omnia hd if its 138...

my brain is melting

so irritating, there was a deal for omnia hd gold edition at a shop near bugis thats 150 cheaper than what starhub is selling it for. starhub is selling at 388 with the 25/mth plan i have in mind, with the 100 number port discount it'd be 288 - but it'd be 138 at this shop. 138 for such a well-specced phone is a deal i cannot resist - even if the quickoffice suite on it can only view documents and i gotta pay for the version that can create/edit. but it may not be available anymore by next monday, when i can finally switch providers.

the cheaper choices left to me would be the samsung galaxy spica. very fast processor for the price. but no office suite. it'd be 88 with singtel, and i can get a 4/mth bill rebate.

or i could get a lg gw620 from starhub at 38 after the 100 number port discount. slower chip than the samsung(528 vs 800), and smaller screen (3 vs 3.2). but it has a office suite(again viewing only) and a 5 row hardware qwerty keyboard. the qwerty is something that interests me..

or i could go for the 248 acer neotouch, with singtel, with 4/mth bill rebate. high cost up front, yes. but this is one of the handfull of phones with a 1ghz processor - the other 2 i can think of are the nexus one and the htc hd2, both much more expensive. running winmo it will have no issues with web browsing, and it will have the full office suite. and the screen is big at 3.8in, which could mean the touchscreen is less challenged for real estate when i use the onscreen keyboards...

i really don't know....i just hope that the omnia hd deal resurfaces so that its an obvious choice and i don't need to think so much about this!

the near future?

1. drupal+'backup and recovery' content
2. spamtitan..possibly the whole messaging shebang.
3. on-site support

a 2nd hand chinese phone

i got my parents(i leave it to them to split..who wants the sony w910 and who wants this one) a changjiang a968 tv-phone. and they don't seem happy about it.

why?

its loud. its big. the on-screen buttons are big. as a phone its useful.

and it can watch(and record) tv. n tune(and record) radio. and play mp3s.

its a non-smart phone geared to do only specific functions, and after plying with it for a day, i think it does them all ok(played a bit of bejeweled on it too).

why don't they like it? because its chinese and its 2nd hand.

i mean, on the other hand, i'm proud of it. it cost me only $80..thats cheaper than a handheld tv! and it comes with phone, radio and mp3 player too!

its got an ancient arm 7 (unlike the 1ghz snapdragon on the neotouch or the 800mhz arm 11 on the spica which i'm eyeing), but because it does all its require to do(my guess is they use hardware codecs for the video/music bits). mp3s play. pictures display. tv reception is clear(from my room). phone talk quality is ok. its loud like no branded phone too(well, the sony is louder than my e51 and still my mom thinks its not loud enough).

but yah, its not a versatile platform onto which you can install new functions(i.e. not smartphone)..and most of all, it doesnt have a html browser...so i'm still going to get either the neotouch or the spica at the end of the month. not a chinese phone(apparently they all use similiar arm 7s..even the iphone lookalike sciphones..i'd rather it can watch tv anytime rather than look like an iphone, really...)




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recently i took a few pictures at chinatown..they're here.

2tor, tvgorge and america's unemployment

This is what i'd like to see become ever more common. Essentially i don't see the difference between attending a lecture live, viewing the video of the lecture in real-time, or time-delayed. And i think if the tutors and students can interact like we do on facebook, its probably alot more efficient than 'visiting hours'. At the very least, something like facebook is 1. sharing knowledge since others can see the result of the discussion and 2. can take the place of some 'visiting hours'...a 80/20 thing...80% can be a facebook style discussion, 20% actual face time...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/2tor-20-million-online-education/

Why i cannot access bbc iplayer or hulu here is purely due to profit motives. Advertising uk and american products to asia and maybe south america is a waste of time and resources to most uk/american advertisers. Thats all. They're not going to waste their bandwidth streaming their video to unimportant markets. Thats it. So how does this work?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/tvgorge/

The employment rate is like working-population/population-looking-for-work. So if more give up and stop looking for work, the unemployment rate will drop.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/02/employment-report-20k-jobs-lost-97.html.

Laptops on my mind...

The cheaper version of the Asus 1005HA is slightly slower and has 8.5hrs battery life. the dearer one is slightly faster and goes up to 10.5hrs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DYIXN2?ie=UTF8&tag=hl0f-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=B002DYIXN2

The HP mini 311 seems to be a reasonable compromise..6hrs battery life and is ION based..so it will play HD content..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ONCBVC?ie=UTF8&tag=l0476-20&link_code=wql&camp=212361&creative=380601

The HP elitebook 6930P has even longer battery life than this, but its rather more expensive. The Dell Latitude 6400's battery life is probably the 2nd longest of any laptop out there...

http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/notebooks/laptop_latitude_e6400/pd.aspx?refid=laptop_latitude_e6400&cs=04&s=bsd

Otherwise, i may also give the cheaper and lighter Asus Eeepcs , Acer Aspire Ones and MSI WindBooks a look to see how they measure up in weight/performance/price...

justice

more of what sgEntrepreneurs is saying about the JooJoo..essentially Fusion Garage has more or less let CSL buy them out...but really..see http://lzsays.blogspot.com/2010/02/smartdevices-smartq-v5-and-v7.html for a sample of the competition...there are dozens of chinese manufacturers making things like these...the open competition there would hopefully deliver us a well-designed, powerful, easy-to-use product thats also cheap...

http://sgentrepreneurs.com/news-stop/2010/02/04/csl-partners-fusion-garage-and-makes-strategic-investment/

the story goes like...boxee makes an app to allow boxee users to access the hulu site easily...hulu finds a way to disallow that...boxee does it again...hulu breaks their effort again...and so on so forth...when essentially what boxee does is to wrap the hulu website in a nice interface thats more tv-like instead of the web-browser interface that people experience when they access hulu on their computers...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/02/04/boxee-responds-to-nbcs-jeff-zuckers-misleading-statements-to-congress-re-hulu-boxee-relationship/

and yeah, of apple...the thing is , flash is integral to the internet now. html5 may be the solution, but just like ipv6 at the time of its introduction, its not here now, and its going to take time before people adopt it. and if i want to browse the web now, i cannot get a full web browsing experience without flash support. i'll deal with the future when it comes.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/04/adobe_responds_to_apple/

and the other thing.. apple makes 1 smart phone now. they may or may not have a couple more models in the future. they may or may not accede to adobe's demands and let flash be integrated into their phone os' browser. but what google has done is to offer every single firm that wants to make a smart phone a free os to make that phone with. and also for every single app maker a platform to release their apps for, for free as well.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/smartphone-shipments-hit-new-record-148?source=rss_mobilize

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/apples-iphone-slips-googles-android-gains-858?source=rss_mobilize

and one more thing, steve jobs, like our great leader, may be growing old...like us, time is not on apple's side...

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/02/03/0034214/Why-Time-Flies-By-As-You-Get-Older

SmartDevices SmartQ V5 and V7

the smaller one on top is the V5, the bigger one below is the V7...

.they 're really darned interesting..

both are powered by a 600-667mhz arm11, supposedly with hardware video acceleration and thus able to play video clips of supposedly up to 1080p..but yah, they both have hdmi output...

they also read e-books..

they also have 2/3g(probably with usb dongle), wifi and a choice of ubuntu, android and wince6 for os..u could do normal full featured flash supported web browsing on them...

the smaller one costs us$210.53, the bigger one us$270.68...both are a fraction of the cost of anything else in the western markets...

wonder how long the 2000mah battery on the V5 or the 4500mah battery on the V7 would last...

this is a review of the V5...i expect the V7 to be identical except for the screen size and battery capacity...

the PEN-EPL-1, citrix NIRVANA and shaving sim cards down to size..

1. i've always maintained that its ok to wait on dslr bodies..with every passing day, they become cheaper and better..moore's law or something like that...now i pity all the ep-1 buyers...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/03/olympus-intros-600-12-3-megapixel-pen-e-pl1-micro-four-thirds-c/

2. holy shit! thats cool! shit does the spica have a tv-out?!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/02/citrix-nirvana-phone-provides-the-full-desktop-experience-byo/

3. so the problem that the ipad can't use 3G because nobody has a micro-sim is not such a big problem after all..hahah...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/02/micro-sims-can-probably-be-fashioned-from-shaved-down-sims/

htc alternatives...where is the samsung android community?

1. the qualcomm msm7200 528mhz chip on the hero and magic is slower than the 800mhz samsung on the galaxy spica. both are arm11.

the hero has flash support in its browser. it costs $400-500 with a $30 plan.

like the galaxy spica, the magic doesn't. its much cheaper, at $100-200.

the hero and the spica will play divx and xvid clips, the magic won't.

2. the msm7225 528mhz on the tattoo is like the 7200 on the hero/magic, but without gpu. and the screen is 320x280 instead of 480x320. that means most android apps now cannot run on it. and the lower processing power means the video heavy stuff don't run so well anyway.

3. i could opt for the htc magic and wait for flash browsing to come to the android platform as i would if i got the galaxy spica. some more, its going to be much easier to find community support for the htc than the samsung.

but the 528mhz chip is a drawback i keep looking at...and it would need work to make it play divx/xvid on top of being slower...

i think the spica is still the best compromise...

i can live with using stock android for awhile. then i'd put a flash capable browser on it. and then if information is available i'd root it and make it install apps onto the micro-sd card...hahahahaha

i've been obsessing the whole day about this..

i'm so into the idea that i can watch videos with core player and surf net with skyfire on that 3.8in 800x480 screen of the acer neotouch....

but the battery wouldn't last too long...5hrs talk time...and the call quality is suspect....

on the other hand, the spica seems to be a better phone overall...it will play the same vids too, albeit at lower res and on a smaller 3.2in 480x320 screen, and likely , be it skyfire or opera mobile or fennec or the native android browser, a full browsing experience will come..and the battery will hold.

and android is a big draw for me too...100s..1000s of apps to browse and play with?

i mean, seriously, although the 1ghz snapdragon on the neotouch is indeed the fastest thing in the land right now, the 800mhz arm11 on the spica is not bad too..2nd fastest android phone(bar the nexus one i think)? and is essentially as fast as the nokia n900 or the iphone 3gs...

and its cheaper too.

Nav4all maps, android and the JooJoo

All those people who have gps phones and want free maps, better do it NOW..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/01/nav4all_shut_down_by_nokia/

2 sites about android..

http://www.androidcentral.com/

http://androidandme.com/

This is quite interesting...

http://sgentrepreneurs.com/news-stop/2010/02/01/fusion-garage-vs-ipad-new-partnership-with-mobile-player-in-sea-and-new-funding-round/

1. the joojoo is launching at exactly the same price as the base version of the ipad. who exactly has heard of fusion garage or joojoo? otoh, who hasn't heard of the ipad?

nevermind that the ipad cannot play flash in its browser and i don't know if the joojoo's will, i don't think theres a sales contest.

btw, freescale demonstrated their 7in touchpad already. the device was supposed to sell for us$199. the design is just waiting for some OEM to build it. and you could put unr or android or whatever on it..chrome os perhaps..

2. they have lots of legal issues with techcrunch.

3. if techcrunch is to be believed, pegatron are the people who own the ip on the hardware. which could be why

In return, Fusion Garage will pay “royalties” to this partner.

the writer was also saying...

I found the word “royalties” used as highly interesting as royalties are usually paid to someone who owns the intellectual property. In this case, it seems a bit odd that Fusion Garage will be paying royalties to this mobile phone partner. Perhaps the press release coming out this week will clear up the air.

of course, the press release can clear the air..but actually..whats stopping pegatron(or indeed anyone) from building the thing on their own, maybe put unr or android on it and power it with a 2ghz freescale, and sell it as a eeePad or something? after all, fusion garage itself exactly claimed that they did not steal any ideas from techcrunch since techcrunch essentially told the whole internet about the crunchpad.. whats making pegatron wait is probably the legal outcome between techcrunch and fusion garage, i suspect.

meanwhile, the ipad will sell millions, opening the way to 10x more arm-based whatever-pads to be sold afterwards....

bang for the buck

1. these are the fastest buggers in the land...

The nexus one , htc hd2, toshiba tg01, lg eXpo and acer neotouch all use a 1ghz qualcomm snapdragon. i believe the acer liquid has the same but underclocked to 768mhz.

2. the ones that are available here are all expensive shite!

the sony satio,samsung i8910 nokia n900 and the iphone 3gs use a 600mhz arm cortex a8(similiar architecture to the snapdragon, and lacks hd acceleration too), which does maybe 40% more calculations per clock cycle than the simpler arm11. so a 600mhz cortex a8 could be seen as something akin to a arm11 running at 840mhz...

(the motorola droid has the same but underclocked to 550mhz. the palm pre unclocks it even more to 500mhz)

3. why is the jet much more expensive than the spica(uses the same proc) or the lg km900(which is functionally close to the jet)?

the samsung jet and galaxy spica use a 800mhz arm 11.

of the lot, the acer neotouch and the samsung galaxy spica seem amusingly good value. with a $25.68/mth singtel plan, the neotouch is $248(with the cheapest data plan at $39/mth this drops to $198), while the galaxy spica is a mere $138.

they make everything else look overpriced.

480x800 3.8in vs 320x480 3.2in

resistive tft screen vs capacitive amoled

i.e. within winmo 6.5 works with flash vs android flash support has to wait a bit or takes fiddling?

gps but no software preinstalled vs theres google earth/maps

400h standby + 5h talktime vs 650h standby+11.5h talktime

$248 vs $138

$110 for the bigger screen area(nevermind its got less goodness!), normal web-browsing(now!) and the seriously fast proc? but it runs winmo! any free fun apps? whats that stick u poke the screen with called again?

the neotouch is almost like a gameless be-phoned be-browsered psp...the spica seems a more phone-y compromise...

haiz...specs comparison below...

http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=2965&idPhone2=2958