Category: Hardware

HP have decided that Google have had too much news headlines this week.

WebOS

Fresh on the awful news of sales for their WebOS (Palm) TouchPad tablets, it’s just been announced by HP that they are ending operations of WebOS.  And that’s a day or two after they started selling their Pre3 WebOS powered phone in Europe! 

The news of tablet sales were awful.  It didn’t have a chance.  Apple dominates.  Business is waiting for Windows 8.  Android tablets (an open OS) aren’t selling that well.  RIM proved that a new closed device with no app environment would have the lifespan of a fat Turkey in December.  And HP fattened up and walked straight into the butcher shop.

Bye bye HP WebOS!

PC/Consumber Division

HP has announced that they are looking to “spin off” the PC business.  That’s business and consumer stuff on the desk.  Personally speaking, I prefer HP desktops/laptops because of their build quality and ease of management in relation to software and drivers in the business.  I hate Lenovo (quite poor here compared to what I hear from American friends), and although Dell has a good business, I think the build quality of PC’s’/laptops isn’t as good – which is important for devices that users are bashing about. 

On TWiT Windows Weekly, Mary-Jo Foley suggested that maybe Samsung would buy the division.  Maybe.  And maybe it’ll be spun off/IPO’d as a new Compaq.

Oh – HP are also buying some UK software company called Autonomy.  I guess they want to be the next IBM.  Eeek!

EDIT:

Last year there were rumours about HP’s tablet plans.  Originally, the tablet was to run Windows.  Then HP “knew better” and went exclusively with WebOS.  Well, Windows 7 tablets … you know my opinion on that – wait for 8.  But investion millions/billions of dollars on WebOS, a no app OS, I think everyone knew that had no future.  Shareholders should be furious.

And as for HP in the phone market … oh come on!  I evaluated one of those back around 2004.  We had to clip a keyboard onto the bottom of it to use a “keyboard”   We ended up buying XDA (remember them?) III’s instead.

I’ve blogged before how much I love my iPad.  I read from it (Kindle for ebooks and Zinio for emagazines), I watch TV and movies on it, and it’s a handy lightweight browser when just lounging in the house.  But despite all that, the real reason I bought it was so I could take notes (Evernote) at conferences.  The battery life is simply amazing.  Unlike with a netbook or laptop, I can last all day long without searching for that lost city of gold AKA a free power socket at an IT conference.

But the sucky thing about note taking with the iPad is the keyboard.  I got used to typing on the screen, but I just cannot get used to the constant need to frequently shift through lower case letters, upper case letters, character set 1, and character set 2.  I mentioned to one of my colleagues that I’d be going to the Build conference and that I’d want to take lots of notes on my iPad.  And that’s when he introdoced me to the Kensington Bluetooth Keyboard for iPad (1).  We (work) happen to distribute these in Ireland so that made it easy for me; I swapped it out for my usual cover and gave it a go.

Yes, it adds weight and thickness to the iPad.  Not a big deal.  It gives me a functional QWERTY keyboard.  That is a big plus.  I can type away with no issue.  I was told that the keyboard would be a little spongy.  It’s like that to protect the screen when folded up.  It’s a little weird at first but doesn’t slow me down.  It does require charging via a USB lead so that must be remembered.

Note that there is different model of keyboard for the iPad 2.

My personal review: well worth the money if you want to take lots of notes or write a lot on the iPad.

It’s been a few months since I bought an iPhone 4.  I’ve been using it more than any phone I’ve ever used before, not as a phone but as a smartphone.

The feature I’m using the most is that of media playback.  Through iTunes, I’m downloading subscriptions to podcasts.  I’ve got 3 subscriptions at the moment.  Two of them are photography podcasts and the third is the BBC Wildlife monthly recording.  They come in handy when I’m sitting on the train, lying in bed, etc.  I’m even listening to them in the car thanks to a FM transmitter dongle which transmits the iPod player to the FM radio in my car.  That beats listening to the endless moaning or Cowell-music on the radio.  There is a huge and ever growing library of podcasts and they’ll keep me entertained and educated for a very long time.

Games have been entertaining too.  Angry Birds is a must have for any iDevice owner.  It’s a simple game, and it’s addictive.  I’ve tried a free sniper game where you move the rifle by moving the phone.  That’s pretty cool.  And I’ve downloaded a trial for a Star Wars first-person-shooter.  The controls for it are very fiddly but the graphics are impressive.  I never would have thought that a phone could provide better game graphics than PCs of 15 years ago.

I’ve found the map feature to be pretty handy.  In the car, I stick to my Garmin GPS.  But if I’m walking to somewhere that I don’t know, the Google map (once I allow for the usual Google map mistakes) gets me to where I need to go while tracking my position.  I’ve even used the “locate me” feature while on the train to map a location that I want to walk to as a prospect for wildlife photography.

Speaking of which, regulars will know I am into photography, in particular, wildlife photography.  That requires endless hours of waiting around for a few seconds of an animal or bird sighting when you try to capture a good photo.  That waiting can be difficult.  I turned to the iPhone recently while out in the snow waiting for a Fox to cross my lens.  The Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr apps kept me entertained, and I did some surfing on the excellent Safari browser … it does suck that Flash isn’t approved of by Apple.

And that brings me to the camera.  I own one DLSR.  When I’m out doing wildlife, it’s paired up with a big lens which isn’t suitable for landscapes.  During last week’s snow, I used the camera to take a few landscapes.  It’s got a tiny sensor which means that it is susceptible to digital noise (detail and colour grain) even at very low ISO (quality control for shutter speed).  That won’t matter to most people but it will do serious shooters.  I’ve taken images into Photoshop and cleaned then up (using the Imagenomic plugin).

It won’t match a DSLR or even an advanced compact camera but the iPhone will happily replace a basic compact camera for most people.  5MP is more than enough for most people – the “megapixie” chase that most people get trapped in is irrelevant these days.  Megapixies don’t define quality, they define maximum print size.  2MP is enough for your typical 6*4 prints.  5MP that’s in your Windows Phone 7 or iPhone is enough for A4 prints.

It’s not a bad device for showing people photos.  I keep a folder of my favourite images on my laptop and I sync that to the phone using iTunes.  Now when I’m chatting with someone (usually in the nature or photography world) I can quickly show them an image that I’ve taken.

Combined with the free Flickr or Facebook apps, I can easily take an image I’ve taken (still in the camera roll) and upload it to the net.  I rarely do that seeing as I like to post-process in Photoshop (all digital photography requires digital processing, just like all film photography requires lab processing) but I can if I want.

Thanks to the VLC app, I’ve even been watching movies on my phone.  I know – it’s a tiny screen.  But I’d rather carry a phone in my pocket while commuting on the train than a laptop bag over my shoulder.

Other utility apps prove useful.  One of the things I’ve found annoying while travelling was getting an idea of what something was going to really cost me after the exchange rate conversion.  I’ve no got an app from xe.com to tell me just that.  Now when I’m standing in a store in the USA or Norway, I can quickly convert and decide if I should buy or not.

I started wondering about where phones can go in the future.  The big leap we’ve seen was the OS becoming more interactive and the content going from stale (see Symbian) to rich (see Android and iPhone, not sure about WP7 yet).  I wonder if the next big challenge is integration into the other devices in our lives.  We’ve started using smartphones more for email, web browsing, consuming content, and using apps.  You might argue that we use them as much, if not more, than our PCs; we just use them differently.  Apple has made the first attempt with integration into some type of Apple TV.  I think the latest iOS update gave us wifi printing.  That’s a start but I want more.  I do the odd presentation here and there.  I’d love to integrate my phone with a projector.  Given some time, I think there’s loads of things we could think up.

I watched a BBC News show back in the Summer that talked about the “undiscovered country” when it comes to smartphones.  Smartphones are not suitable for older people at the moment.  Whether it is small graphics (short sight) or tiny “buttons” (arthritic hands), the show reported that older people were sticking to the older mobile phones because they were easier to use.  Maybe the 7 inch tablet will give the older generation something that they can use … but the OS will need to be lower resolution than for younger people so that the controls are larger.

Anyway, I’m hooked on iPhonics at the moment.  I could be sitting at home, watching a TV show on my laptop and I reach to my phone to check up on Facebook or Twitter.  I might use Safari to refresh the news sites to see what’s happening in the world.  My content consumption has definitely changed.

Windows Phone 7 handsets have been available here for a couple of weeks now.  They look good and interesting.  I would have bought one too … but my operator hasn’t launched them.  The other operators went live on MS’s launch day, btw.

I’ve had an LG Windows Mobile 6.5 handset for nearly a year.  At first it was good.  But then all the little things started to get to me.  The LG shell was awful.  Alarms?  Forget about setting them.  The GUI would jump-scroll when I clicked on something so I couldn’t enable or set an alarm.  As for clicking, it needed a stylus which hung from the phone by a string – that looks really cool, kids.  The screen just couldn’t handle and adult finger.  My car has built-in bluetooth for hands free calling.  When the screen is locked on a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone then it will not accept an incoming call.  Rubbish! 

Moving on with the basics of a phone … answering a phone call was a gamble.  It required sliding a control on the screen.  Most of the time, it would jump back and the call would continue ringing.  I wouldn’t dare press the green button because that would hang the call up.  And as for apps … what apps?  I’m convinced most of the problems were because of LG.  The handset itself had a bad screen and the LG shell/apps were awful.  I would love to have installed a pure/clean MS OS like I do with a PC.  OEM installs are the cause of most issues.

Anyway … I needed a phone.  I went into the shop with an open mind.  I knew I couldn’t get a Windows Phone 7 handset so I was considering Android or iPhone.  I’ve seen many people were happy with Samsung Galaxy phones with Android.  The girl in the shop was really helpful and spent a good bit of time with me, allowing the try the sets.  The Samsung screen was good and nice to use.  Android is very popular and a huge library of apps is building up.  But here’s the thing … the OEM’s are putting a shell on Android.  Would this put me in OEM build hell once again?  I was fearful that it would.

So I went with an iPhone 4 16GB.  I thought “I’ll never use 16GB”.  Hah!  But more on that later.  First impressions – this beats the hell out of my old LG phone.  It’s smooth, simple, intuitive, etc.  Second impression: Apple gives you zero documentation for setting up your phone.  I had to google to find out that I had to activate it using iTunes.  Luckily a mate who is an Apple nut walked me through things.  And iTunes is not intuitive at all.  It took an evening to get myself set up with copying movies and photos onto the phone.  I’m not impressed with how that works.

On to the apps.  That’s the magic of iPhone.  Obviously the library is massive.  Things like Tweetie, Facebook and VLC went on there straight away.  VLC is great because I can watch AVI movies on the train while commuting to work.  Tweetie is a tidy Twitter app client.  Angry Birds is a seriously addictive game.  I also got some sniper game with impressive graphics, moving the handset to aim the rifle!  I was in London last weekend and the app library was extremely useful.   I loaded the Underground map which was a lifesaver because most of the city routes were closed and the system was in chaos on Saturday night.  A cheap street map made it easy to find underground stations and places I wanted to visit, without having to enable data for the built-in maps service.

One of the nice features is the mute button.  I often find myself in meetings where I need to mute my phone.  This can be done with a few clicks on my work Blackberry.  It could be done with a LOT of clicks (some successful and some not so) on my old LG.  There is a dedicated button on the side of the iPhone 4 to mute my phone.  I can slide that, and bang, the phone is muted or un-muted.  This was clearly designed for professionals.  It’s also handy when I’m playing Angry Birds on the tram in the city 🙂

Finally, the camera.  I’m a serious enthusiast photographer.  I have some big kit but there’s times when a pocket camera is desirable.  The camera in the iPhone is pretty damned good.  I was amazed to find a HDR mode.  HDR is when you merge multiple exposures of a single scene to capture dark and bright parts and to recreate what the brain interprets as the eye moves around and compensates.  I took some shots in the foyer of the Natural History Museum and the hall of the British Museum and was very impressed.  With a DSLR I would have to set up a tripod to do the same and that’s a no-no in those places – as security informed me :-)  The video mode is pretty good too.  I recorded the kickoff of the Broncos/49ers game (go Niners!) at Wembley and the picture and sound are pretty good.  I would have loved a zoom feature but what can you expect from a phone!

BTW – I wasn’t affected by the DST alarms bug.  I’m lucky that I chose to sleep in on Sunday morning instead of setting an alarm to go out early with the camera bag.