Apple iOS 4 review: Getting there (iPhone, 3GS, tech, news, report, "David Lim", "iPhone Repair"

This post is sponsored by Auckland iPhone Repair Specialist 0211172222
http://tiny.cc/iphone0s40

Introduction


iPhone 4 launch day came and went and Number Four has taken over. Today, as the dust settles, we hope to move away from the hype and take a clear-headed look at what’s new in the iOS4. No, this isn’t a full-featured iPhone 4 review, nor is it intended to introduce you to the OS basics.


Instead we’ll stick to the new stuff. And Apple promised lots of that: multitasking, homescreen wallpapers, a revamped email app, and more. Here is our brief scoop on all the new stuff and all that’s still missing.


What’s new:

Homescreen wallpapers
Folder organization of the homescreen icons
Multitasking and fast app switching
Google/Wikipedia search in Spotlight
Bluetooth keyboard pairing support
SMS character counter
SMS search
Email threading
Unified Email inbox
Email archiving is now available when you setup Gmail
Spell checker
iPod music player can now create, edit and delete playlists
5x digital zoom in still camera
Touch-focus in video capture (for video enabled iPhones)
Keyboard layouts span over QWERTY, QWERTZ, and AZERTY
Minor icon design facelifts
Video call support (only in iPhone 4 and only over Wi-Fi)
iBooks e-book and PDF reader
What’s still missing:
No Flash support in the web browser
No true multitasking for all applications
iOS4 for iPhone 3G has limited new feature set
Poor performance on iPhone 3G
No quick toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or 3G
No social networking integration
No info widgets on lockscreen or homescreen
SMS tones are still not customizable
No mass mark emails as read
No proper file browser or access to the file system
No USB mass storage mode
No vibration feedback when touching the screen
No Bluetooth file transfers to other mobile phones
Contacts lack a swipe-to-delete or mass delete feature
No SMS/MMS delivery notifications
No smart dialing (but Spotlight is a somewhat of a substitute)
No DivX or XviD video support and no official third-party application to play that

The whole iPhone is too dependent on iTunes - you cannot add the same type of content (video, photos, apps) to the phone from two computers, a regular file management interface would have been much better
With the iPhone it’s never about what the phone can or cannot do. The iOS 4 however seems finally determined to catch up with most of the today’s smartphones. You’re not to expect miracles though – such as a file browser, USB mass storage mode, web Flash support, and other stuff that seems irrelevant to Apple.
Anyway, we’ve tested iOS 4 on both an iPhone 3GS and a 3G. It’s worth noting that a lot of the new features aren’t available on the now discontinued iPhone 3G. Worse yet, the iOS 4 is heartbreakingly slow on the 3G. We somehow feel though that the average iPhone user is way more likely to go straight to Number Four than bother install the latest OS on an older device. Or at least that’s what Apple would prefer.

Text-ads on your Blog with BidVertiser.

Note: If you have any question about Apple iPhone 3G, 3GS or Apple iPhone 4 repair, unlock, jailbreak or broken screen replacement, feel free to get in touch with Abby Technology Limited.

We specialise in the mobile phone repair, iOS, UK cell phone network unlocking, software upgrade 4.1, "unlock 4.1", "jailbreak 4.1"  and Apple iPhone repair in North Shore, Auckland; Wellington, Hamilton and Christchurch, New Zealand.

__________________

This post is sponsored by:

Abby Technology Limited

Mt Roskill, Auckland, New Zealand

Mobile: +64212640000, abbytechnology[a]gmail.com

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro review: Mini Me... ssenger (tech, news, report, update, "David Lim", Auckland)

Introduction  http://tiny.cc/xperia10

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro will have to stand on its toes to be seen but it doesn’t have to yell to be heard. Small and boxy, this certainly is not just another mobile phone. The X10 mini pro will impress many with the degree of miniaturization.

And it’s not just a likeable chubby – the X10 has the element of surprise on its side. It hides a capable keyboard behind its back and you wouldn't guess it's a full-featured smartphone from a first glance.

Even though there are so many Minis around – and no less Pros – the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro doesn’t risk getting lost in the crowd. Ironically, it’s the diminutive size that makes it prominent enough. A fact’s a fact: full-QWERTY smartphones just don’t get any smaller than that. By the way, did you notice that boxy and squarish messengers are on the rise lately? You can’t help it – market trends call the shots.

Four of a kind is not bad at all for Sony Ericsson and their Android operation. They have a funny thing going on though. They just keep zooming out on the XPERIA X10. So is the next thing we’re likely to expect from them an X10 wristwatch?

Key features

Ultra compact body

Physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, 3G with HSPA

Customized Android OS v1.6 with Timescape UI

2.55" capacitive touchscreen of QVGA resolution

Qualcomm MSM7227 600 MHz CPU

5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA video recording

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g

Built-in GPS receiver and digital compass

Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute

Standard miniUSB port for charging and data

Stereo Bluetooth with A2DP

microSD card slot with support for up to 8GB (a 2GB card included)

3.5mm-compatible audio jack

Android market

User-replaceable battery (as opposed to the X10 mini)

Main disadvantages

QVGA resolution doesn’t do Android graphics justice and limits the number of compatible apps

Dated OS version

Limited Android homescreen functionality

No alternative battery covers bundled

No smart dialing

No Bluetooth file transfers from the gallery

No Flash support for the web browser

Basic camera interface and features

Web browser lacks intuitive zooming methods

The XPERIA X10 mini had to be as compact as possible and Sony Ericsson do deserve credit for keeping most of the functionality intact. A valuable feature was inevitably sacrificed though. Proper text input is all but essential in a modern smartphone and the XPERIA X10 mini pro is going to do something about it.

The X10 mini pro has grown in all directions but it’s a matter of mere millimeters – a negligible price for what you get. The extra space has also allowed Sony Ericsson to make the battery user-replaceable. Not that this was a critical flaw for the X10 mini but users were right to complain. It’s now been fixed in the pro.

We did like the original Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini, and this was in no small part due to its cute smallness. The mini pro is perhaps even more impressive. If you’ve seen and held the X10 mini in your hand, the idea of a full QWERTY keyboard would’ve seemed less than brilliant. But Sony Ericsson did it and it looks like they did it right.

Text-ads on your Blog with BidVertiser.

Note: If you have any question about Apple iPhone 3G, 3GS or Apple iPhone 4 repair, unlock, jailbreak or broken screen replacement, feel free to get in touch with Abby Technology Limited.

We specialise in the mobile phone repair, "Sony Ericsson repair", "Sony Ericsson Unlocking", digitizer, iOS, UK cell phone network unlocking, software upgrade 4.1, "unlock 4.1", "jailbreak 4.1"  and Apple iPhone repair in North Shore, Auckland; Wellington, Hamilton and Christchurch, New Zealand.

__________________

This post is sponsored by:

Abby Technology Limited

Mt Roskill, Auckland, New Zealand

Mobile: +64212640000, abbytechnology[a]gmail.com

Damian Dinning on Nokia N8 video plus 35 camera samples

Nokia released a huge collection of Nokia N8 camera samples - 35 untouched images of various subjects and shot in various conditions. Also, the second part of Damian Dinning's talk about the camera has been released - this one covers the video capturing prowess of the Nokia N8.

Yesterday Damian Dinning detailed at length how he and his team have tuned the camera and offered a single sample. Today's drop however is massive - 35 photos taken straight out of the Nokia N8.

Here are a few photos, you can find the rest at the bottom of this page. Note that some have been shot in full 12MP resolution, while others were taken in 16:9 ratio (9MP)

As promised, Damian Dinning also talked about video capture on the Nokia N8 today. The 720p videos are recorded at up to 12mbps bitrate using the H.264 codec while the audio is captured at 48kHz in 128kbps AAC format.

The video uses a process of pixel binning (so one pixel in the video uses the combined information from several detectors from the image sensor), which "in reasonable lightning conditions" results in no noise at all. This allowed the R&D team to switch off the noise removing algorithms in daylight altogether and preserve as much detail in the video frames as possible.

But the still image resolution of the Nokia N8 image sensor is 4000x3000 pixels, while HD video is just 1280x720 pixels in resolution. This sizable difference leaves plenty of headroom for the pixel binning process and enables another cool feature - video zoom.

Sure, it's digital zoom rather than optical - however the pixel binning process allows for zooming without interpolation, preserving detail and sharpness almost intact between 1x and 2x zoom and all the way to 2.5x. This lead to the decision to limit digital zoom at 3x where the image quality already starts degrading. Damian Dinning says that the digital zoom on the Nokia N8 is as good as optical zoom - check out the crops below to see for yourselves.

Dining notes that the video source of these crops was captured with pre-production software and there have been even further improvements made to the camcorder software since then.

Unfortunately, there's no video sample, just the crops. We've seen a video sample from the Nokia N8 before though and we were quite impressed (and we imagine things have improved since then).

Finally, Dinning goes on to discuss the Active Hyper-focal Distance feature of the Nokia N8. The N8 team decided on a different approach than the traditional auto-focus methods used for video by today's camera phones.

It keeps objects located between 60cm and infinity sharply focused. This limits how close objects can be to the Nokia N8 when you shoot them, but this approach has the advantage of never letting all other subject get out of focus and trying (and possible failing) to regain focus.

Nokia's audio engineers also had a role to play in the camera tuning - make the audio captured along with the videos as good as possible. They use the two microphones (one on the front and one on the back) of the Nokia N8, to make it a suitable camcorder for all situations.

They've implemented new algorithms that can handle anything from quiet sounds to very loud ones. The front facing microphone (on the display side) is very good at capturing speech, which is vital for videos where you narrate as you shoot. Another set of algorithms works to reduce wind noise, further improving the audio quality.

Here are the rest of the camera samples from the Nokia N8. If we could only get some videos as well. Enjoy!

Text-ads on your Blog with BidVertiser.

Note: If you have any question about Apple iPhone 3G, 3GS or Apple iPhone 4 repair, unlock, jailbreak or broken screen replacement, feel free to get in touch with Abby Technology Limited.

We specialise in the mobile phone repair, Nokia Unlock, Nokia Repair, software upgrade, iOS, UK cell phone network unlocking and Apple iPhone repair in North Shore, Auckland; Wellington, Hamilton and Christchurch, New Zealand.

__________________

This post is sponsored by:

Abby Technology Limited

Mt Roskill, Auckland, New Zealand

Mobile: +64212640000, abbytechnology[a]gmail.com

Unlock iPhone 3.1.3 3G 3GS with blacksn0w (jailbreak, "David Lim", Auckland)

Sn0wbreeze 3.1.3 is now available for download which can jailbreak iPhone 2G, 3G and iPhone 3GS (old bootrom only) on iPhone OS 3.1.3. We have already published a detailed guide on how to jailbreak using Sn0wbreeze and unlock using ultrasn0w. Ultrasn0w unlock is for iPhones with baseband 04.26.08 baseband. If you are on 05.11.07 baseband, then you may use Geohot’s blacksn0w unlock which was released last year with blackra1n.
Follow the simple step by step guide below to unlock your iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS (old bootrom only) on iPhone OS 3.1.3 using blacksn0w. iPhone 2G users should follow the guide posted here (Mac version of the guide here).
How to: Jailbreak iPhone on 3.1.3:
Step 1: Follow the guide posted here to jailbreak your iPhone 3G or 3GS using Sn0wbreeze 3.1.3 on iPhone firmware 3.1.3.
How to: Unlock iPhone 3G/3G (old bootrom) on 3.1.3:
Step 2: Once you are done with the jailbreak, you can now unlock your iPhone running jailbroken firmware 3.1.3 by using blacksn0w from Cydia. To do this:

• 
  Start “Cydia” on your iPhone.
  
• 
  Touch on “Manage” tab on the bottom.
  
• 
  Now touch on “Sources” as seen in the screenshot below:
  

• Touch on “Edit” and then on “Add”. You will be prompted to enter a url source as seen in the screenshot below. Type “http://blackra1n.com” and touch on “Add Source”.

Cydia will now automatically update your sources by following a series of automated steps.

• After installation is completed. Search for “blacksn0w” in Cydia and install this application. This app will automatically unlock your iPhone so that you can use it with any carrier.

Step 3: Now simply restart your iPhone. Voila! You are now running a fully unlocked and jailbroken iPhone on firmware 3.1.3 on your iPhone 3G or 3GS.

UPDATE 1: A working exploit for iPhone 3.1.3 05.12.01 Baseband has been found. Moreinfo here.  Text-ads on your Blog with BidVertiser.

Note: If you have any question about Apple iPhone 3G, 3GS or Apple iPhone 4 repair, unlock, jailbreak or broken screen replacement, feel free to get in touch with Abby Technology Limited.

We specialise in the mobile phone repair, UK cell phone network unlocking and Apple iPhone repair in North Shore, Auckland; Wellington, Hamilton and Christchurch, New Zealand.

__________________

This post is sponsored by:

Abby Technology Limited

Mt Roskill, Auckland, New Zealand

Mobile: +64212640000, abbytechnology[a]gmail.com