My Technophilic Musings

iPhone 3G, the “supposedly” latest and greatest handhled, just continues to amaze me, with its ridiculousness of course. I mean first they dare to call a machine a smartphone that can’t run more than one app a time, need you to send the unit back even for a battery change, fix the glaring mistakes of its predecessor and call them “features” and make you believe that you are getting it all for cheap while covertly telling you that you need a minimum of 2 year 70$ contract to get it and need to pay through every hole for even software updates. And then they don’t stop this, just out is the information that you can’t tether the “data transfer powerhouse” to your laptops/PCs/Macs.

HSDPA/HSUPA my a**. I mean what good is a “3G” device that doesn’t even let you use the potential of the hyper-speeds by connecting to your bigger machines or even doing video calls. Oh right, I forgot, now you can check your e-mail at 50 messages per minute, WOOHOO!!, I’m so l33t.

So far the only good things I’ve noticed about the new release are:The MobileMe aka “sync-with-anything-anywhere” service, which although paid (obviously, its Apple we are talking about here), is still interesting. And the new SDK 2.0 that promises the 3rd party devs the same access to the phone as Apple’s devs, seems to be a step in the right direction though it remains to be seen how much of this is actually followed up on by Apple.

So, what do you feel is THE revolutionary thing about this new Cupertino offering? And of course, chime in with your gripes as well.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Apple, cupertino, HSDPA, HSUPA, iPhone, iPhone 3G, MobileME, SDK 2.0, tethering

HTC announce their shiny new Touch Diamond recently. Everyone ooh’ed and aah’ed while ogling at it until they realized that HTC has taken a step back (or forward towards matching Apple’s iPhone crap) by removing the expansion card slot from the phone. Yes, it has 4 GB of internal storage but I’d rather have an SDHC card slot with the ever falling prices of solid state memory (an 8 GB Class 6 SDHC card is worth not more than around 60$ these days). With a history of ultimate-gift-to-mankind phones like HTC Tytn, HTC Tytn II (Kaiser), iPhone, etc that excite so much on the first look and then start becoming dimmer and unwanted as the euphoria settles, we are left to wonder when will we see the real “Super Phone”. The do-it-all-be-all-end-all phone.

Well, my prediction is (Nostradamus style) : NEVER. No sir, you are not going to see your dream phone any time soon, or any time at all, for that matter.

Why do I say that. The reasons are pretty obvious, once we take off our wishful thinking hats and don the smart thinking ones.

1. A new dream every day: Around 8-10 years ago, I wished I had a cell phone. Around 6 years ago, I wish I had one with a camera. Around 4 years ago, I wish I had a phone with Mp3 player and expandable memory. 3 years ago I wished for a smart phone. Now, I wish for…. You get it. By the time something comes out, our dreams have already moved on. After all they  aren’t called “dreams” just like that

2. Where is the money: You might be ready to give a fortune (and your first born son) for that ultimate phone, but the evil-phone-conglomerate wants much more than that. They want you to be slaves. They don’t want the world to spend a huge amount in one go and then stop. They need to mint more money and too much more frequently than you’d like to spend. This is why the strategy works. Give out a phone that has slim form factor, nice UI, wi-fi, but then make the processor crappy (Touch), then lure them with a better processor but take out the wi-fi (Touch Dual), Add the wi-fi back and slap in a keyboard too, but keep’em wanting for better graphics (Kaiser), give ‘em a shiny new toy, but then lock it down in every possible (iCrap). So, you’d be stuck in the vicious circle of “upgrades” and keep the phone factory churning.

So, my dear fellow phone lovers, stop wasting your time waiting for that ultimate phone, and go “upgrade” at once, because “that” phone with just “that” one more feature…ISN’T COMING…

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Apple, HTC, HTC Diamond, iPhone, kaiser, PDA, phone, smartphone, super phone, Touch, Touch Dual, TYTN

Update: Modified the “Oxios Hibernate” app as well on public demand. Please redownload the below mentioned package. It now has Oxios Close as well as Oxios Hibernate.

Oxios developed a very useful tool for Windows Mobile (WM2003/5/6/6.1) called “Oxios Memory” sometime ago. On running it, it’ll flush your RAM (kind of) and recover substantial amounts of memory that can be used by the currently program. It is so good at this that many people run it regularly on their phones, and most of them want to run it in an automated mode (through a scheduler or a script). But the problem (so far) was that it generates a Message Box at the end for which the user has to press “OK” button to make it go away. There is no known way of disabling this message box and many attempts to work around it by scripting the “press OK” action have been very unreliable at best. Hence, it took it upon me today to remove this nagging problem and 5 minutes later we have a “clean” Oxios Memory.

Yes, no more nagging prompts

Download it here: Oxios Memory Hacked By Shantanu Goel

(Feel free to spread the message but please don’t hotlink to the file as it is anyways disabled. Provide a link to this page instead)

If you like it, then DIGG IT by clicking here or choose your favourite submission engine from the links below the post

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Hack, Oxios Close, Oxios Hibernate, Oxios Memory Cleaner, Remove Message Box Prompt, Windows Mobile, WM2003, WM5, WM6, WM6.1

Qualcomm wets it feet again in the ice-cold/boiling-hot mixture of a sea that our Mobile Phone Industry is. They decided that the all the phone makers around the globe are just churning out junk upon the unsuspecting people. Claiming to take the bull by its horns, and revolutionizing the world that whirls around it, the touted features are:

• No Battery Required
• Unlimited Expandable Memory
• Completely Waterproof
• …and weight -> weightless
• size -> oops, I lost the phone somewhere inside my fingernail

Go and see it in action at http://www.handsolomobile.com/

BUT, then come back and hit the “Continue Reading” link to know some more scoop about it

Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: batteryless, handsolo, mobile phone, qualcomm, waterproof, weightless

Even though they are using a battery with 10 times the juice of a normal one, but still the claim is impressive on 2 counts acc to me:

1. The size of the battery “seems” to be not that big for having 10 times the mAs.
2. Even with this battery, 1 year of standby and 3 days of talk time is impressive.

 But one term spoils it all for me, “vaporware”, anyone? Check out more details at Engadget Mobile.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: 1 year standby, 3 days talk time, chinese cellphones, engadget mobile, LionKing800, long life battery

This is a post about irresponsible/careless journalism/bloggism. For Gizmodo, getting that post about HTC’s latest press release out the door took precedence over actually reading the release properly and then commenting over it. The gizmodo poster’s comment is:

……but HTC’s finally released a statement saying that a fix is coming. They say that the video acceleration will be supported in the future, and will be included in software upgrades for current devices…….

I’m still puzzled, after reading and rereading HTC’s (pretty short) statement 10 times over and I can’t find where it is mentioned that they will provide video acceleration for the current devices. My point is that if you don’t read it yourself, then better not release it to your readers, (or atleast refrain from commenting on it improperly, if you must be ahead in the “race”).

Read the statement below (and for actual post on Gizmodo, click here)

Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: ATi, Blogging, careless blogging, careless journalism, driver, gizmodo, hardware acceleration, HTC, HTC Kaiser video drivers, irresponsible blogging, irresponsible journalism, journalism, MSM, performance, press release, software optimization, software upgrades, TYTN, video acceleration, video drivers, Windows Mobile, WM, WM6

Who wouldn’t agree that Morph is most probably the coolest mutant (besides Wolverine of of course ). Now, it seems that the Finnish Giant Nokia has a lot of X-Men lovers as well, as they put out their latest offering to us lesser mortals. They call it “The Morph Concept”.

Featured in The Museum of Modern Art “Design and The Elastic Mind” exhibition, the Morph concept device is a bridge between highly advanced technologies and their potential benefits to end-users. This device concept showcases some revolutionary leaps being explored by Nokia Research Center (NRC) in collaboration with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre (United Kingdom) – nanoscale technologies that will potentially create a world of radically different devices that open up an entirely new spectrum of possibilities.

Yeah, yeah, museum-shmuseum, nanotech-shanotech. All I know is that until I see this thing up on <put your favourite retailer name here>, my call is “vaporware”.

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written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: cambridge, Cambridge Nanoscience Centre, MoMA, morph, nano-tech, nano-technology, nanoscale technologies, nanotechnology, nokia, nokia morph, Nokia Reseach Center, NRC, the morph concept, The Museum Of Modern Art, vaporware

Stuck in another boring meeting? You have a way out now, because connectivetools have released their app CallJockey, which can simulate fake incoming calls. What’s more, you can select the name, phone number or one of your saved contacts from whom the fake call will appear to be coming, plus you can define the time when you want it to ring. The only limitation is that it is available only for WM5 smarphones (WM6 Standard), i.e., windows mobile phones without a touchscreen.

AND, it is FREE but only till March 1 under a promotion they are running, so go get it.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: calljockey, connectivetools, fake calls, fake incoming calls, smartphone, Windows Mobile, WM5, wm5 smartphone, WM6, wm6 standard

Just wanted to share some pieces that generated a variety of “hmmm”, “ahaa” and “wow” from me:

China Mobile set to trial LTE:

China Mobile said it will join Vodafone Group plc and Verizon Wireless in an ongoing trial of LTE technology…….The trials — which include three powerhouse network operators — underscore the momentum LTE is gaining as a leading 4G technology possibility vs. WiMAX and Ultra Mobile Broadband.

“HMMM” - U go LTE!!

Telstra Launches the i-mate Ultimate 8502 and 9502 in Australia:

Telstra and i-mate have today launched the i-mate™ Ultimate 8502 and i-mate™ Ultimate 9502. Telstra is the first operator to deploy these devices globally and both devices will be exclusive in Australia to Telstra customers. Building on a five-year partnership which has seen the successful launch of 10 i-mate™ devices on the Telstra network, Telstra has teamed up with i-mate™ again to release the Ultimate mobile devices.

“AHA” - So, they are not vaporware after all !!

Android SDK m5-rc14 now available:

*New user interface - As I mentioned when we introduced the m3 version of the Android SDK, we’re continuing to refine the UI that’s available for Android. m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.
*Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package. Check out the LayoutAnimation*.java files in the APIDemos sample code for examples of how this works.
*Geo-coding - android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
*New media codecs - The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
*Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

“WOW” What else can I say?!!

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: 4G, android, android sdk m5–rc14, cellphone, china, china mobile, google, i-mate, i-mate ultimate 8502, i-mate ultimate 9502, LTE, mobile, mobile phones, Telstra, ultimate, verizon, verizon wireless, vodafone, Windows Mobile

As everyone knows, I’m an out-and-out Windows Mobile worshipper. It’s like a girlfriend, who is very difficult to manage and understand at first, but is a great source of joy if you know how to manage her. I don’t like any other phones now; the extensibility given by WM will do that to you.

I also “admire” Nokia because of the quality and reliability they provide with their phones. Having worked for them in a project (Nokia Networks/Nokia Seimens Networks actually), I know how much testing they put in before releasing something. That coupled with the recent crap-doings by even the largest of the WM Phone companies like HTC, have made me try to look elsewhere.

Now, if this news comes true, then we are in for a treat, as the two giants might just come together to give us a sweet little toy for our “smart” cravings . Read the news and let us know how you feel about it.

PS: Don’t even mention iPhone/iPod/iTouch or any other iCrap.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: HTC, iCrap, iPhone, iPod, Microsoft, nokia, nokia mobile, Windows Mobile, WM