Buying a smartphone - battery life

one of the things that can be a pretty important factor in choosing the right smartphone could be the battery life. Specially for someone who is not a light user or travels a lot. I had heard before that windows mobile phones do have some battery life issues, which is not a surprise considering they can be quite resource hungry even on standby. But I did wonder how symbian phones would generally fare in a test of battery consumption. I am sure other people must have tried testing too, but I came across this comparison which seems kinda popular amongst the msg board junkies. The guy had compared battery stand by time for K-Jam (Windows Mobile 5) and Nokia 9500 (Symbian OS 9), with all comms distabled for both phones (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth)

Nokia 9500

K-Jam

	K-JAM (Windows Mobile 5)	Nokia 9500 (Symbian OS 8)
After 12 hours	94%	7 bars (out of 7)
After 24 hours	78%	7 bars
After 36 hours	72%	7 bars
After 48 hours (2 days)	62%	7 bars
After 72 hours (3 days)	50%	7 bars
After 96 hours (4 days)	40%	7 bars
After 120 hours (5 days)	15%	6 bars (phew, a change at last!)

I think the difference is really marked! But I wonder how significant is the difference in battery life in recent models. Anyone wanna share their experience with their device?

Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

Smartphones for "smart" users?

yeeeaah... not really, they are just users, smart or not. like before the web made internet ubiquitous (thats a smart word for "being everywhere"), like 10-12 years ago, computer users were expected to be smart people. Now computers are as commonly used by everyone as the TV (a.k.a the Idiot Box). Get the picture?

At the moment, what matters is, what would you use your smart phone for. Until now users choose smartphones for their "needs". But it will very rapidly become a "want". Remember a time when nobody thought they really need a mobile phone? Well by year 2010, analysts are expecting 250 million smartphones to be in the market. I think the number would be higher, probably much higher. Analysts often underestimate the irrationality of the mindset of general consumers when it comes to such gadgets.

So there is no doubt smartphones are quickly going to become mainstream. The real interesting thing for me would be, what sort of smartphones would become ubiquitous? The OS would be the key differential here. Eventually it comes down to the market penetration of the OS, the ease of use, the features, as I had been saying in my previous postings. Already Symbian has such high penetration that the common user doesnt know and doesnt care what OS their phone is running on. Why should they? they never have to install it, they never have to reformat their phone because it "crashed" again, they dont have to constantly keep it upgraded with patches, they dont have to keep worrying that their current version of Windows is so outdated or that their new Windows is still so buggy and unstable. They replace their phones long before they have to worry about its OS or utilities get outdated. And even if they dont replace it, it still works just fine for years even! Thats how comfortable the general Symbian users have been all this while, such that they didnt need to bother what OS they are on.

Actually its kinda funny that a good friend of mine (Alec Ee) has been using Treo for a couple of years (for the "non-smart" users, Treo uses Palm OS), simply because he had so many problems with their phones they always had to replace it for him within the warranty period, so he kept going with it. Until finally he had so many problems with Treo he recently bought himself an O². Today he just told me that he is so frustrated with the O², he has been checking out mobile phone shops to trade it in!

Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

tried out the 40D

I tried the Canon 40D yesterday for some portraits and a private event (the Philips Aurea launch, the super TV for super elites eh?. Used the 24-70 2.8L. Well the lens I have used before, and its just awesome, no surprises there (see picture below).

The experience with the camera itself was pretty cool and its loaded with features. Obviously live view was quite helpful specially for the event and the screen is really big! like really big. The shutter sound is quite muffled, in fact the "click" actually sounds pretty sophisticated with the two way motorized mechanism for the mirror. I was using it with the battery grip so not sure how it would feel with just the camera itself. But overall I think it was a much better experience in terms of usage AND for image quality out of 350D, 400D, 20D and 5D so far. Yep I do prefer it over 5D. The noise level is better than 5D even at ISO 800! I think its the Digic III which is giving 40D the slight edge in noise level. Will be uploading more later in the week.

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6563518

Oh yea, the girl with THE eyes is Mischa, she's french Canadian. Really cute and silly! The granulated affect on the skin and the "eye-bag effect" is from bit dramatic light and sharpening. I know chicks like to have their skin look smooth, but as photographer, i dunno, I like the effect it gives with the texture (well in pictures of course! as in to see not to touch, you know what i mean?)

Bilal Zaheer

http://elanist.com/bilal

Feedback Touch Screens ...and Nokia N95 Vs. Apple iPhone

Hey anyone tried a feedback touchscreen before? like anyone wanna share their experience of the iPhone interface yet? Looks like Symbian is "touch sensitive" too now. Nokia is has already come up with their own touchscreen interface, but they've taken a step further: Tactile Feedback. What the #&*$ is that? well thats the reason why touch screen never really caught up in 25 years! On touch screens, you cant feel what you're touching, which is what even iPhone is sort of "suffering" from. But the touch screen on Nokia not only gives feedback, but each "button" or touch could feel different! so your hand knows what its doing with the phone! haha. Certainly looking forward to check it out!

There is an interesting comparison from CNet between the Nokia N95 and the Apple iPhone. I would say its a pretty close call. I guess its more about how a person wants to use their smartphone.



Anyone heard of any plans for Windows phones coming up with feedback touchscreen?

Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal/

Superbad!

Now here's a movie that really lives up to its name! whatever kind of movies you like, you gotta watch this one, its bloody hilarious! The performance of the three boys is just awesome. You definitely know at least one guy in real life who is just like one of these three (or maybe like yourself!). This one's even better than 40 Year Old Virgin.

WARNING: Do not eat or drink too much before this movie. Cuz this is one movie which would make you laught so hard and long, your stomach will hurt!

--

Bilal Zaheer

http://elanist.com/bilal

Apple taking notes from industry leaders?

Looks like even Steve Jobs has to take ques from industry leaders now and then. Like he is doing now citing Nokia and Palm? (Apple loosens grip on iPhone software)

Smart of him to open up iPhone to third-party developers, but perhaps they should have done it in the first place. Now its going to take them till February to come out with an SDK! but I suppose at least this delay is justifiable to make their phones more safe from viruses:

"... While this makes such a phone less than 'totally open,' we believe it is a step in the right direction," Jobs wrote of Nokia's stance. " - CNN, 17 October 2007.

Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

Metasploit: Cracking the iPhone (part 2.1)

for iPhone cracks and other useful stuff for it you might wanna check out this:

Metasploit: Cracking the iPhone (part 2.1)


bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

Mobile Wars!

Well actually its mobile OS wars.
Anyone heard the news about Google mobile OS? apparantly its supposed to tackle Windows Mobile and not Apple because its a software project not a mobile phone. http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/10/08/google.phone.os.vs.win.mob/

I think its still too early say, firstly cuz the software is not out yet. Secondly, yes Apple has had a great start with iPhone but its still a start (keep in mind, iPhone sales were expected to be three times higher than they actually were in the first 30 hours). Sure its a great product, but its not quite anything revolutionary enough to start a new genere of mobile/portable devices. Apple's Newton was supposed to be just that, long ago, but failed miserably, instead Palm succeeded in its place and now it has more or less disappeared into the crowd.

It sure is very interesting news. But is there room for more mobile OSs in the long run? in the mid-eighties (I'm not old! i just got into computers way too early!) there used to be a whole forest of great home and personal computers, all with different OSs and own breed of software. You dont know any of them? yeah, thats how comprehensively they were wiped out! Mobile OS's case may be a bit different, because content/software is much more platform independant now, but like I said in my previous post (go read it!) for smartphones, its all about market share and ease of use. Ok Symbian has the largest market share by far and its the oldest and most mature mobile phone OS too, so Symbian is not going anywhere. The interesting thing would be to see how the rest of the mobile OS's battle it out!

--
Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

Symbian or Windows Mobile?

So iPhone is a run-away success. Now who didn't see this coming? And what is to be learned from it? It’s been in the making for like 4 years. This could be a long discussion by itself. But one thing that is sure about any smart pocket devices, most of all smartphones, is that the only way to lead in them is through innovation and ease of use.

How Microsoft has been successful in the PC world, by hook or by crook, is a different matter altogether. I often wonder, if Gary Kildall had accepted IBM’s offer to write DOS for PC, the world definitely would be a very different place today, at least the cyber world.

Thankfully, at least the mobile world already is a different place... Let’s face it, Microsoft has never come up with one original idea for software. Every piece of software written by their developers is a hastily put together pile of code copied from someone else’s products. Is anyone keeping count of how many times they’ve been sued for this? Well here lies the good news for the smartphone users: Microsoft did not copy Symbian! Their smartphone OS is loosely based on their own sluggish and bug infested Windows. So not only Windows Mobile has no unfair advantage in the smartphone world, its inherent design will never let it surpass its competition.

A fellow software engineer friend of mine, who was then working at Microsoft, sent me the source code for Windows XP (most geeks out there have already seen this code I am sure). Windows Mobile cannot be much different from its parent. Allow me to share its source code, though I cannot share the entire source, here is main code:

/* Windows Mobile */


#include "win95.h"
#include "win98.h"
#include "winXP.h"
#include "somethingMobile.h"
#include "longErrorList.h"
#include "oldStuff.h"
#include "finguresCrossed.h"
#define INSTALL_HARD

char make_prog_look_big 1600000 ;
void main()
{
while(!CRASHED)
{
display_copyright_message();
display_start_button();
do_nothing_loop();


if (first_time_installation)
{
make_50_megabyte_swapfile();
do_nothing_loop();
random(hang_system);
}

/* printf("Welcome to Windows 95"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 98"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows XP");*/
printf("Welcome to Windows Mobile");
if (system_ok())
random(hang_system);
else
system_memory = open("a:\swp0001.swp", O_CREATE);
while(something)
{
sleep(5);
get_user_input();
sleep(5);
act_on_user_input();
sleep(5);
}
create_general_protection_fault();
}


In the long run, the clunky, resource hungry Windows Mobile has an uphill task ahead of it in the long run compared to its purpose built mobile OS's like Symbian.In the last couple of years, Symbian has out-sold both Microsoft and Palm put. Even in Japan Symbian having a virtual monopoly with its ties to NTT DoCoMo, the leading player in the world's most advanced mobile market. Symbian already has a market share 72% in smartphones. The question is really not of who’s winning the competition, right now its more like, is there really any competition?

--
Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal