About that iPhone Battery Life...

My friend was complaining recently that she can't hold down a half day of charge on her iPhone 3G, whereas other friends have lauded the phone for its excellent battery life. Now, both of these people tend to use their iPhones the same amount, so I don't really have a clue as to why there would be so much variance in battery life. I haven't managed to find anything conclusive online.

Defective unit, maybe? Who knows?

Support a Good Cause!

Hey everyone! I'm playing a charity concert on Dec. 20th. There will be some really awesome musicians there like Glen Burtnik and Marshall Crenshaw. You can find out more about the show at this site. If you're from the New Jersey area, I hope to see you there!

Blackberry Storm

image courtesy ZDNet

Today, I had to go speak with a professor. As I entered his office, I was a tad shocked to find the new Kanye West album (I don't recommend it) playing. I was equally shocked to find a brand new Blackberry Storm sitting on his desk. He noticed me glancing at it, so he encouraged me to play with it a bit. Here are my initial impressions:

1. The click screen takes a lot of getting used to. Not in the good way, either. It just felt slow and rather ungraceful, especially when working on something like typing quickly.
2. The screen is quite nice, actually. Nothing astounding, but it definitely was bright and clear.
3. Apparently there's Rhapsody support planned, which should be great news to any of you who might use the Rhapsody service.
4. I didn't manage to see any sort of app store. I guess the reason I expected it to be obvious was because of the App Store's prominence on the new Apple touchscreen devices.

I would have loved to get a chance to compare it to the iPhone 3G, but I couldn't find one of those lying around. My professor and I chatted a bit, and he made it pretty clear that he thinks the Storm is really more a marketing power play than an actual product, and that the Bold smokes the Storm in terms of usability and utility (he's an entrepreneurship professor, in case you were wondering). Interesting thoughts.

Touch Diamond

image courtesy Engadget

Ran into an old friend in the elevator today. He had a new phone. T'was the HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint Version, though I hear there's an AT&T version to be released soon). Here are my initial impressions:

1. Holy crow!* Resistive-touch screen technology has come a very very very long way since the XV6700. This thing has a relatively smooth upper surface, no little dips at either end of the screen.
2. The phone UI, Touch Flo 3D I believe, is much more finger friendly. Unfortunately, the screen's the same size as my XV6700. It's much smaller than my XV6700, though, and oodles lighter.
3. Screen is relatively bright, but not quite as bright as the iPhone (you guys will get very tired of my constant comparisons, I'm sure, but the iPhone is still the state-of-the-art in a number of technologies)
4. Stylus is still necessary for navigating a lot of the sub menus (TouchFlo only goes so deep before you're back to the not so great Win Mo UI)
5. The HTC keyboard is definitely an improvement over the basic WinMo keyboard, but it's still just a software keyboard.
   

Didn't get to try the web or any games on it, but I'm sure it's the Windows Mobile standard. Decent smartphone, but without a tactile keyboard or any haptic response, it's not the most friendly for anyone who texts or emails often.

*(I just read Twilight, and found that to be the most amusing exclamation ever. Oh censorship.)

[drools] Prettyness...

Image grace à GeekInc

So, I happened upon this gorgeous thing, called the HTC Touch HD (it's on the right of the above photo, if you didn't guess already). The screen is MASSIVE at 3.8" diagonally, and it really looks amazing. Granted, it's Windows Mobile, but I seriously can't wait to play around with this. Here's the info from Engadget:

"We're still sans a press release, but a friendly tipster found this quite official page at HTC's very own site, depicting the sexy Touch HD from every angle, with every spec exposed. The rumors were naturally spot on, but that doesn't mean we're any less enthused about the 3.8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, and 3.5mm audio jack. Connectivity-wise we've got Europe-friendly HSDPA, GPS / A-GPS, 802.11g WiFi (we weren't clear on that one before), Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR and a microSD slot. On the software side there's TouchFLO 3D on top of Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro. There's also a front-facing VGA camera for video calls, 512MB of ROM and 288MB of RAM. HTC expects the 1350 mAh battery to score you 390 minutes of 3G talk and 450 ours of 3G standby, with 120 minute video calls just for kicks. The phone measures 12mm thick. Still no word on availability, price, or how you're ever going to stop us from cramming Android onto this thing."

UPDATE: It isn't coming stateside, says HTC :-( Here's the news release, via Twitter.

Skyfire

I seriously need to figure out how to take screen grabs from my XV6700.

I've been messing around with Skyfire for a while now. It's been in closed beta for a bit, and I have to say, it's by and far my favorite mobile browswer at the moment. This isn't because it's the fastest, or the prettiest, but because it's the only browser so far that's really given me a desktop-like browsing experience. Flash loads in it just fine, even on the relatively ancient hardware that is the XV6700, and I've definitely enjoyed using it to watch videos on sites I usually wouldn't be able to. It's a tad annoying because the screen zooms work through a fixed aspect ratio box, but I imagine they'll perfect this as they get closer to open beta.

Check it out at www.skyfire.com

iPod Touch!

image courtesy GadgetReview

So work's finally done for the summer, and I decided to treat myself a bit. So, here's a look at the 16 GB iPod Touch.

DESIGN

Oh man, I never thought myself an Apple person, but I was sold from the moment I booted this thing up. The interface really is just as slick as everyone's been saying, and the screen is magnificent (it makes the engineer in me very happy). Seems sturdy, with it's metal back, and it fits nicely in the hand. The power button's easily accessible, though I feel like having the headphone jack next to the dock connector's a bit awkward. I had been using a 30 GB iPod Video until now, and had gotten quite used to having the headphone jack on the top of the unit. Small gripe, but it's a different feel.

FUNCTION

This thing functions exactly the way I expected it to: nearly perfectly. The OS seems to encounter slowdowns every now and then, and it does occassionally hang, requiring a hard reset. This isn't a common occurrance, but it is annoying.

Sound quality is top notch, though as usual, I ditched the standard earbuds the minute I looked at them. No offense to Apple, but while I think the branding and all is great, the functionality of the standard earbuds just isn't that astounding.

The App Store is great. I proceeded to download a few "lite" versions of games, as well as a level (which helped me hang some blinds!) Downloads over WiFi are very quick, and there were only a few times when the downloads hung.

Now to talk about the more fun features: the accelerometer! This thing makes the device pretty interesting. I love hopping into Safari, and flipping the screen sideways to make everything landscaped. I just wish I could do the same thing in the Mail app. The keyboard feels way too tiny when the iPod's in a portrait orientation.

Speaking of keyboards, this thing takes some getting used to, but I can tell that once you get the hang of the capacitive screen, you'd really be able to fly. Annoyances: predictive text can't be shut off quickly, meaning I constantly have to tell the iPod that I am not misspelling "Pen" as "Penn." Overall, very nice.

ACTUAL RESULTS

So Apple claimed I'd get 22 hours of playback from this thing. Granted, I have not exhaustively tested this by solely playing music, but I managed about 12 hours of uptime. Not too bad, but I can see people running into problems on long flights. Also, WiFi utterly destroys the battery. I was discharging at a rate of about 1% every 5 to 10 minutes. It seems the WiFi is more of a value add than a core feature. With screen brightness at the lowest setting, I bumped uptime with normal usage to about 15 hours. Just make sure you're able to charge this thing once every day or three, and you should be fine.

Final Rating: 4.5/5 - A solid media device with all of the Apple upsides, but a few nagging downsides with the OS.

Starters

I've gotten really tired of hearing outlandish claims about battery life, speed, usability, and all those metrics from overzealous manufacturers. It seems every other week, one of my friends gets a new device, and is complaining about how it doesn't actually work the way they wish it did.

So, that's where I come in. I've decided to make this blog, in hopes that I'll be able to keep track of current industry claims and, when I can, actually test a couple of these claims myself. I'm a college student, so I'm not really sure how often I'll be able to get my hands on shiny new toys, but I'll try my best to borrow them from friends whenever the time is on hand.

The posts will likely be few and far apart, as I'm a dual bachelor's/master's degree candidate, but I'll definitely keep everyone boned up on the important stuff.

Here's to keeping 'em honest.

-Sho