Shantanu's Technophilic Musings » Phones

SGX 543MP2 vs Mali-400: Is iPhone 4S GPU Really Twice As Strong As SGS 2?

Shantanu Goel — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:23:23 +0000

Ever since Apple announced the iPhone 4S having “A5″ processor, everyone has been pointing to the below image from a test run by Anandtech and saying that the iPhone 4S will be twice as strong as the Samsung Galaxy S2. I beg to differ.

AnandTech's GPU Comparison Featuring SGX543 MP2 and Mali 400

While the above test doesn’t have any discrepancy, one major thing is that the SGX 543MP2 results are from an iPad 2 (a tablet) while the Mali 400 results are from a smartphone. Thus, we can’t readily take this to directly and accurately predict the comparison results for iPhone 4S because there are other things to consider:

1. Mali-400 lags behing SGX543MP2 in “offscreen” tests which are done for resolutions greater than native SGS2 resolution (SGS 2 resolution is 800×480 while test is done at 720p) and brute triangle pushing. Samsung didn’t have to optimize their GPU implementation for this because SGS2 was never going to run a game at 720p resolution and would also need to push lesser triangles for similar detail. Hence they could easily make this trade-off to get lesser power consumption and heat generation

2. Mali-400 goes hand in hand with SGX543MP2 in all other tests as seen on glbenchmark.com

3. It is naive to think that the same SGX543MP2 implementation as iPad 2 will be present in iPhone 4S. Even if iPhone 4S is slated to have “A5″, a lot depends on the actual clock speeds (CPU and GPU), graphics memory, etc. Apple will do similar trade offs like Samsung (and Apple has already done this with A4 in iPad 1 vs iPhone 4) and the real results would be available only then.

So, the end result is that we will have the real comparison only when iPhone 4S is out.

PS: Not that the results matter anyways since firstly, the comparisons should now be moving to upcoming Nexus Prime and not SGS2 and secondly, the raw power of these GPUs won’t determine much since they cater to two completely different OSs and would have a lot of software and ecosystem dependencies on the user-perceived outcome.

Deconstructing The Samsung Nexus Prime Video

Shantanu Goel — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:59:28 +0000

Samsung just uploaded a teaser video to Youtube which hints at the upcoming Android phone Nexus Prime with IceCream Sandwich. It has a sideways glance at what people believe is the Nexus Prime. I’ll deconstruct the image a bit.

Nexus Prime Image in Samsung's Video

Nexus Prime Image enhanced by an engadget user

The things to take away from here:

1. The phone will have a curved display like Nexus S

2. It has a power button on the side (right side, since it’s marked with the power icon)

3. The interesting thing however is the 3 dots on the left side. People claim that it could be related to camera or volume controls or even speaker grills. But I think that they are for dock connection. Anyone who has owned a Nexus One has seen the same 3 gold dots on the bottom used for dock connection. I believe that on Nexus Prime they have been moved to the side mainly because Prime has (or is supposed to have) a 16:9 screen and hence the optimal placement in a dock would be horizontal and hence the sideways placement.

Let me know what you think

Huawei Ideos U8150 Review

Shantanu Goel — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:52:19 +0000

Recently I received Huawei Ideos U8150 phone for review. This is an Android smartphone meant for the entry level market. I had the phone for a few weeks to put it through its paces and here are some of my thoughts about it. I am not going to expand a lot on the general Android points as we all know about it but will concentrate succinctly and to-the-point on the aspects which can make it or break it for this phone against its competition in the similar price ranges.

Huawei Ideos

Display: The display is average and pretty much on par with the other handsets in this range. It’s a low resolution QVGA (320×240) screen. While it’s usable but not a brilliant one and would give a sublime web browsing experience. The brightness of the display was average as well, nothing to write home about but not below the competition either.

Touchscreen: A good thing about this handset is that it has a capacitive touchscreen. A few entry level phones skimp out on this and put a resistive touchscreen but not so with Ideos. The screen response is pretty good.

Android Version: Ideos sports Android 2.2 Froyo which is again a good thing since this is the latest I have seen in any entry/mid-level and most high end phones as well. Gingerbread is still too new and I’m happy enough with Froyo. A lot of other phones are still stuck on Eclair 2.1.

Camera: The camera is ok’ish with its 3.2 MP sensor and no LED flash. It works well for well lit subjects but is useless in dark. The quality of photos taken is average as well. Nothing extremely bad but nothing very good as well, just good enough for capturing spontaneous moments when you are not carrying your proper standalone camera with you.

Connectivity: Ideos has 802.11n wi-fi and 7.2mbps HSDPA 3G for connectivity. wi-fi connected to my router in a snap and it also has hotspot (or wireless tethering) capability for upto 8 devices. 3G connectivity was ok. Speedtest results came out to be similar to my Nexus one over both wi-fi as well as 3G.

Built: Ideos is built sturdily but looks a bit tacky with its shiny back. But then again, it’s hard to find a good looking phone in entry level smartphones which performs according to it’s looks as well. I didn’t try any drop tests on it but I’d fathom it’d easily survive any short falls. The phone is also pretty light and small, easy to pocket.

Performance: Ideos has a Qualcomm MSM7227 processor, rated at a clock speed of 528 MHz. This processor is fairly standard in almost all the entry level devices and is good enough for daily usage and most of the apps. But most games would struggle on it. If you are buying this (or any other entry level smartphone) with the correct expectations of it performing according to it’s price range, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

Web Browsing: Web browsing is mediocre on Ideos because of it’s low resolution screen, low specc’ed processor (which also results in lack of Adobe Flash). If you plan on using the browser for your web needs, don’t bet on opening any javascript heavy pages quickly and should look mostly to fill the void by using specific apps for the services you are trying to access.

Battery: The phone is good on the battery and it was able to last around 1.5-2 days on a single charge for medium usage even though it houses just a 1200 mAh. This is on-par, if not better, than most other phones in this range.

GPS: The GPS was quick to get a fix and retained it to a good accuracy almost same as my Nexus one. Using Google maps on this phone was a breeze.

Other Notes: The phone bundles a free 2GB microSD card and also stereo headphones. The headphones are average at best like most other phones and you should really pair it with a cheap set of Creative IEMs that will give you a much better output while staying on a budget.

Conclusion: While the phone is not a powerhouse in itself, I’d rate it pretty good in it’s price segment. If I had to buy an Android smartphone on a budget around 8000 INR, it’d be a toss up between this and the Samsung Galaxy Pop S5570. So, this is a +1 recommendation from me for this phone.

A short Tablet/Smartphone survey for a project

Shantanu Goel — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:10:06 +0000

I need a bit of your help in filling out a short survey that I need for a small project of mine that I’m doing with a friend. It will take maximum of only 2-3 minutes of your time. Please fill it out below. If you are reading this in an RSS reader and not able to see the form, please click here to go to the original post to see and fill the form. If you are facing any problems with the survey or have any queries/suggestions etc, please use this contact form to send them to us.

Much Thanks!!

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Android vs iPhone: Security Models

Shantanu Goel — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:02:49 +0000

Android and iPhone OS (iOS) have been at loggerheads for quite some time now. This is a take on which has a better security model to protect its users. I thought of writing it up because there have been a lot of discussions around me lately about which platform is more secure and I keep repeating the same points over and over at every one of them, so thought that in future I’ll just point them to this page

Disclaimer:

A. I don’t guarantee this post to be absolutely correct as I’m no security researcher or expert but I do have some interest in this field and I’ve been a developer for some time now on different architectures and OSs especially at OS/driver level and that too in the mobile devices field, so I “might” actually be right about a few things here and there..

B. I’m an android user myself but not of the fanboy variety. I’ll be happy to switch camps any day I get something that appeals to me better. I have love and hate points for almost all platforms available but I’m using android because “for me” it’s love points slightly outnumber the hate points.

OK, on with the points then. Here is the table that I created for this showing points I considered and which side wins each. Don’t start flaming me though just by seeing the table I will be discussing the points as well below it.

**Android vs iPhone: Security Models**
	Android	iPhone
Distribution Medium Security
Approval Process	NA	NA
Phishing	Lose	Win
Local Security
Permissions	Win	Lose
Environment/Sandbox	Tie	Tie
Open vs Close	Slight Win	Lose
App Development Model	Slight Win	Lose
Damage Control	Tie	Tie
Summary	?	?

1. Distribution Medium Security: Apple vets every application that is put on the app store while Google’s Market Place is unrestricted. How does this affect you security wise?

a. Approval Process: The biggest myth is that the vetting process is what will save you from malware on app store. IT WON’T. The Apple app approval process isn’t defined anywhere but in general it just states that it checks for apps to do what they say they will do. But they don’t check the source code of the apps and static analysis of binaries can only take you so far (Heck, they have even been inept at catching a whole lot of apps that were using their disallowed private apis which can be found easily using simple tools) . So, anyone actually wanting to write a malware can do it trivially by making the malicious code to run after the app has been approved. The trigger could be time based or could even be done over the web remotely. The app could even have encrypted payloads or download new pieces of code over the web and run them. So, we can safely say that approval process is something that can’t make things secure for you that way.

Result: No one wins

b. Phishing: This is where App store can protect you if someone put an app claiming to be from someone that it isn’t. e.g. Someone could make an app that claims to be from “Bank of America”. In apple’s case, I’m 99.99% sure that the app won’t pass the screening but in Android’s case, there won’t be any hassles for it to reach the marketplace. It could be pulled soon after as google learns about it but still even one person’s damage here is much more than what would have happend on iPhone.

Result: iPhone wins

2. Local Security: What about the security in the OS itself once an app is on your phone? This is an important question because 1.) As I noted above, Apple’s app screening process isn’t robust enough to catch malware 2.) People can bypass the official distribution medium easily. Android allows to install apps from other sources on most phones by just enabling an option and a huge number of people jailbreak their iPhones and get/use this capability.

a. Permissions: On Android, an app has to explicitly declare what capabilities/data of the phone it wants to access/use and the user has to explicitly give it those permissions before it is allowed to install, irrespective of from where/how this app is being installed. So, it works even if you are installing the app from your SD card and even if you have rooted your phone. On iPhone, there is no such mechanism of restricting apps. All apps are equal and can access a lot of resources unhindered without the user knowing. So, while installing a single player only game on android you can immediately be suspicious if the app is asking for internet connection or access to your contacts data but on iPhone you will not come to know about this.

Result: Android wins

b. Environment: On both platforms, the apps run in their own sandboxes with unique uuids

Result: Tie

3. Open vs Closed: Most of the Android code is open source while for iOS, only darwin kernel and some other things like webkit etc are open source. Now, this in itself doesn’t gurantee to make Android secure but its code does get a lot of scrutiny from open source community as well as lot of other big name companies with commercial interests in Android which allows it to find and fix more bugs and loopholes than iPhone can.

Result: Slight win for Android

4. App development model: Most apps for Android are written in java while those in iPhone are written in C/Objective-C. While I’m myself a big time C lover (Majority of my coding is in C/CPP) but it is indeed a very unforgiving language where you need to be very careful with what you write and has much greater chances of exploits, .e.g, Buffer overflows, as compared to java (Interestingly, all the jailbreaks for iPhone OS have been done using such exploits and have been made available day 0/day 1 mostly.)

Result: Slight win for Android

5. Damage Control: What if an app actually got through everything on any of these platforms and started spreading? Both of these platforms have kill switches in the hands of Google/Apple which they can use to remove such malicious apps from the users’ phones remotely.

Result: Tie

Summary: Well, there is no clear winner. Apple is quite good when it comes to protecting you from phishing (though that advantage goes away if you jailbreak and use alternative means to install apps) and Android has a real sound local security system (though it also has the flaw that users might not always understand why an app is requesting a certain critical permission and install it anyways). So, take your pick and let me know what you picked and please do tell me if I’m wrong in any of my points or missed out on something that needs to be compared.

How To Debug Android Widgets

Shantanu Goel — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:42:42 +0000

For most new android app developers (like me), it is a bit puzzling how to debug the android widgets or how to put a breakpoint in an android widget code. For normal applications, it is quite simple as when you press “debug” on the eclipse toolbar, it launches the emulator (or connects to existing emulator/device), syncs your application and launches its main activity and puts the control in your hands if you have put a breakpoint. For widgets, it seems a bit tricky because there is no activity to be launched, so eclipse just syncs your widget’s apk and installs it and that’s it. So, is it possible or not to debug widget code? and if yes, then is it very difficult? Fortunately, it is possible and very easy to do but just slightly less intuitive and I couldn’t find any information about it at Android developers website and learnt it by just fumbling around for a few minutes so thought of posting here for the benefit of other newbies like me.

So, all you need to debug your widget code is almost same as what you do for normal applications. Just follow the below steps:

1. Press “debug” on the eclipse menu (or “run” it doesn’t seem to matter)

2. Once the widget apk is sync’ed and installed onto your emulator/device, switch your eclipse workspace to DDMS mode. You can either do this by pressing the “DDMS” labeled button on your top right corner or if you can’t find it, then do it by going to “Window->Open Perspective->DDMS”.

3. Select the process name of your widget from the list of processes shown. By default, this list appears at top left of DDMS window. (See screenshot below). If you can’t see your widget’s process name in the list, it is possible that the widget is not added to the home screen yet. So, do so.

4. Press the green debug button above the process list (See screenshot below)

5. And that’s it. Now, if you had put a breakpoint in the code, do something that executes that piece of the code.

Click To Enlarge

Let me know if this helped you out or if you see anything that I missed out. Happy coding

Apple is Magical: Daniel Eran Gilder is the Living Proof

Shantanu Goel — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:49:53 +0000

Update: Removed the post as the person in consideration has contacted me with the explanation of what went down. I’m not sure if it is completely true or this is just as a response to this post but anyways, as I had contended in the original post that it was a stupid little thing that didn’t really warrant any attention or a post but I still did it just because I’m weird, so in the light of the developments, I think it’s best to remove the rants and focus on actual discussion. I’ll be discussing the points put out by Dan over his blog or might make a post about them here..

Android Froyo And Nexus One: Everything We Know

Shantanu Goel — Sun, 23 May 2010 17:44:18 +0000

This is an effort from my side to consolidate everything about Android Froyo with respect to Nexus One. It is mainly concentrated towards listing the features/fixes that we have seen in Froyo that weren’t announced in Google I/O, things that work with nexus one, things that don’t and possible fixes/workarounds known, what the announced features actually feel like in real use etc. Will keep updating this post as I get more info, get more fixes, etc. Please do let me know if I’ve missed something or there is some new development that should be updated here.

UPDATED:

27-MAY-2010 (Added things missing since Eclair and few other notes)

25-MAY-2010 (Added market missing apps fix, 802.11n and other features)

24-MAY-2010 (Added more un-announced features/fixes/changes)

To start with, just a quick recap of things that were announced and their look/feel/working in real use (First is the announced feature and then after ":" is the effect that we see)

Feature/Fix	Real Effects seen by us	Remarks
JIT for Dalvik JVM	Apps are quite fast, visible difference animation effects, scrolling, games etc	None
Better Exchange support with calendar sync/GAL /remote wipe/account-auto-discovery/administation	Works as advertised	Exchange support still not upto the mark. e.g. No support for selective folder sync, subfolders are not synced automatically, no phone number/location for GAL contacts, no “move to folder”, no search, etc.
Backup Application data/settings/history in cloud	Yet to experience	I’ve enabled the settings for this but haven’t switched to another ROM yet or figured out how to test it in some other way.
Cloud Messaging to activate intents	Works as advertised	very cool feature. Try out this chrome extension to send links from chrome to your phone: Chrome2Phone
USB Tethering and Portable Wireless Hotspot	Works as advertised	Real skin-saver. Works great and easily.
Javascript V8 Engine for Android Browser	Much faster javascript execution	Much better browsing experience noted.
HTML5 support/Device Access (Camera/Accelerometer etc) through Browser	Work In Progress. See Remarks	Contrary to what many people tell you, this is still not there. HTML5 support is an ongoing thing and device access through browser would be present in Gingerbread (Next Android iteration, supposedly 3.0)
Better Voice Input Integration	"Seems" better.	Now, I don’t have any tangible means to measure this but it seems to be working relatively better and it even seems to understand my non-US accent much better.
Flash 10.1 beta support	Works as advertised	Almost every flash functionality in all sites I visited work ok. Please note that you need to install Flash from market as it doesn’t come "built-in". Just search for "Adobe" in market.
Install apps on SD card	Not tested.	This feature requires support from apps to integrate this and currently no apps support it. There is a command that you can run from adb shell "adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2" but it will cause "all" your apps to install to the card plus users report problems on missing apps as SD card is not available immediately at boot up.
Better global search integration for apps	Works as advertised	Now, apps can allow search to search within their data. Right now the official twitter app supports this and you can search your timeline from the main android search itself.
Update all apps in one click/automatic updates	Works as advertised	None.
Stream music from PC to phone	Yet to test.	None. As pointed out by Hugo, it is not clear yet that this is supposed to be part of Froyo or GingerBread.
Improved crash reporting to developers	Works as advertised	Really useful to the developers as it sends complete report about the environment and stack trace etc.
Purchase music/apps on android market and push directly to device Over The Air	Yet to test	New market website that allows this hasn’t appeared yet. As pointed out by Hugo, it is not clear yet that this is supposed to be part of Froyo or GingerBread.

Now, we move on to things that weren’t announced but we found them in the updates. This may be because these pieces were too small or specific to nexus one to have warranted a place in the Google I/O keynote.

Feature/Fix	Remarks
Erratic/Crazy Touchscreen behaviour fixes	This is about the erratic behaviour of the touchscreen that sometimes all the touches were being registered at the wrong places and one had to tap twice on the power button to fix it. So far, it seems that this has been fixed.
Multi-touch fixes	This seems to be a hardware problem and there are no "fixes" to it as such but there seems to be a new touchscreen API in the 2.2 Froyo SDK that google is encouraging developers to use to alleviate this issue somewhat by doing some filtering/scaling within the Android framework.
SMS App fix	The messaging app had a nagging issue that many times it showed the first few words of a text message as the sender instead of the actual number/sender. This seems to be fixed now.
Capacitive Touch Button fix	Nexus one was quite famous for its mal-functioning cap-touch buttons that didn’t seem to register the touches of a user. We had to press slightly above them most times to register a touch. This seems to be fixed now and feels much better.
Multi-Color Trackball	The nexus one trackball can now display multiple colors instead of just white. e.g. a nee facebook update received makes it glow blue
Better Camera/Gallery Interface	The new camera/gallery interface is just awesome and much easier to use. Feature wise I think the new options are focus settings, zoom settings and storage location quick switch, flash on during video recording for night video capture. I must also mention that auto-flash works much better now as earlier it used to almost always fire even in quite ample light but that maybe just me.
Bigger Camera Pics	Somehow the pics are a bit heavier in size. Earlier a max resolution, finest pic used to weigh around 900-950 kB for me but now they are around 1.09-1.1 MB
Keyboard Quick Access to numbers/punctuation	Now, you don’t need to switch to the number mode by pressing “123?” key to input number/punctutation. Just press anywhere on the keyboard and drag it towards the preview/suggestion bar upwards and two new rows will appear with numbers and punctuation.
Library Projects	This is something for the devs. Now, you can create library projects so that you can make a library and share it across your different apps. e.g. you can use same library of code for your paid and free versions, etc.
wi-fi n	yes, it supports 802.11n now
End call with power button	You can enable this in accessibility settings
vcard support	Nexus one can now handle vcards that someone sends through sms or bluetooth for contact information

Now, on our list are things/apps that don’t work or issues that plague the new update. We will also be listing the workarounds/fixes if known for them.

Issues	Fix/Workaround/Remarks
Seesmic app keeps giving "Connection error" with froyo	Simple fix is to delete your existing account in seesmic. Setup a new account and uncheck "Secure connection" in advanced setup.
Swype doesn’t work	Just uninstall swype and swype installer and download/install them again and it will work.
Pure Calendar doesn’t work	New versions have been released to make them work
Android market doesn’t show a lot of apps	As of now, android market is not showing a lot of paid/copy-protected apps on the market for froyo users. There is a workaround for root users available here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=687371
Worse radio/3G performance	Several users at modaco/xda-devs report worse performance with 3G. They say downgrading back to previous radio fixes this but try it at your own risk.

Things missing since previous versions (i.e. Eclair):

(Thanks to Marc for suggestion)

Things missing

No “.com” button on the default Android keyboard

The final part of this post is for things that were rumored to be in the Froyo update for nexus one but aren’t present:

Rumored Feature/fix (Not present in Nexus One Froyo Update)

FM Radio Receiver

FM Transmitter

That’s it for now. This is a huge post and I must have missed out on a lot of things for sure. So, if you remember something that I have missed or something has changed over past few days after I wrote/updated this post, please do let me know in comments.

Android Froyo Update File

Shantanu Goel — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:36:34 +0000

Just a quick post to tell you how to update your Nexus One to Android 2.2 Froyo immediately without waiting for google to send it to you OTA.

Download this file from google’s servers: http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF50-from-ERE27.1e519a24.zip

After that just follow the below mentioned steps:

1. Put it on your SD card and rename to update.zip

2. Power off then hold trackball and press power again to boot into recovery

3. Go to Bootloader -> Recovery

4. Press power button + Vol. Increase

5. Apply the update

The Future Of Cell-Phones Is Here

Shantanu Goel — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:30:59 +0000

My company had a video contest a few days ago (which yours-truly won by a handsome margin ). The topic was “Future of Wireless” as perceived by the employees but with the catch that it had to be done in just 10 seconds or less.

Now, everyone know that there is rarely a moment when I can think like a normal, sane person, and hence took a rather “alternative” look at what the future holds for us. (Hint: “Mine is bigger” jokes are gonna be in fashion again ). Take a look below and don’t forget to leave your comments on how you liked it. So, without further ado, I present to you “Welcome To A Phone-Y Future”.

NOTE: If you like it, you can digg , reddit or stumble it