Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 03 Aug 2013 00:25

Raja Bose wrote:The WindowsPhone keyboard is the best I have seen till now and might even be slightly better than the iOS one....iOS soft keyboard set the standard. The Android stock keyboard kinda always sucked.....I make tons of mistakes on my N7

The funny thing is this seems to be different for different people. I always thought the iOS keyboard was better than Android ones. One of my friends who actually owns an iPhunwa on the other hand seems to have a terrible time with his keyboard, making mistakes which make his messages quite hilarious at times. Of course, we have autocorrect to blame for some of those.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Aug 2013 00:28

i have read oled's consume less power albeit not as good at gaming fast transitions.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Aug 2013 01:04

^^^I dunno about latency issues with OLED, but they still have issues with color accuracy. If you use your phone as camera and take shots, you may notice that the white balance is wrong, but you don't really know if it is wrong or the display you are using is wrong. OLEDs tend to have more green & blue and may be set to a higher color temperature. However, OLED screens have improved quite a bit in the last few years.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Aug 2013 01:08

nachiket wrote:Why does the Moto X have an OLED screen? I thought only Sammy was obsessed with those. IPS LCD screens almost always look better than a comparable OLED. Just put a Sammy S3 or S4 next to the equivalent HTC device and you'll immediately see the difference.

I have put the S4 and HTC One next to each other and found that I prefer the S4 due to the crispness of the screen.
See the S4 display compared to the iP5: Galaxy S4 Display Technology Shoot-Out

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 03 Aug 2013 01:35

Mort Walker wrote: I have put the S4 and HTC One next to each other and found that I prefer the S4 due to the crispness of the screen.
See the S4 display compared to the iP5: Galaxy S4 Display Technology Shoot-Out

OLED's have a long way to go in the brightness department, which is apparent even in that comparison. The S4's display is on par with the much older Iphunwa5 in most respects except Black level and PPI where it is better, although the actual PPI for PenTile displays is less. Its brightness is still nowhere close to the Iphone's. The old HTC One X had a better display than the iPhone 5 I think. So I don't know how you find the S4's display to be more crisp than that of the new HTC One.

In any case, Sammy has been playing around with OLED technology for years now. Their OLED displays are probably going to be better than anything Moto can get its hands on, unless they buy them from Sammy.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Aug 2013 02:15

^^^The iPhone5 came out last year. It is not that old and is current. The iPhone5s will come out some time this Sep/Oct. Brightness is an issue outdoors. Text looked more crisp on the S4 compared to the HTC One. The HTC One is brighter though.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Aug 2013 03:12

MW & RB, I got a SIII. The browser does not resize like the old HTC Inspire. I used to sweep to enlarge text size to read BRF. Inspire used to reformat the window. The SIII browser just stays there! What browser do you guys suggest?

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 03 Aug 2013 03:43

ramana, would it be something to do with auto-fit settings? just a wag!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Aug 2013 05:18

ramana wrote:MW & RB, I got a SIII. The browser does not resize like the old HTC Inspire. I used to sweep to enlarge text size to read BRF. Inspire used to reformat the window. The SIII browser just stays there! What browser do you guys suggest?

Use the Chrome browser for Android.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Aug 2013 05:21

nachiket wrote:Why does the Moto X have an OLED screen? I thought only Sammy was obsessed with those. IPS LCD screens almost always look better than a comparable OLED. Just put a Sammy S3 or S4 next to the equivalent HTC device and you'll immediately see the difference.

Battery consumption probably? OLEDs actually have deeper blacks becoz it is really black (pixel is off) rather than pixel trying to approximate what black looks like. With the PureBlack+FastMotionHD displays in the current GB Lumia with high refresh rates, very low blur, great visibility outdoors, IPS doesn't look as soup-e-rear.

Sushupti · Post by **Sushupti** » 03 Aug 2013 05:30

Raja Babu, do you know if any of the latest phones (well AP inside them ) are using MIPI's M-PHY?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Aug 2013 06:58

^^^No idea if any commercial display uses M-PHY. I have used D-PHY onlee in MIPI DSI....saala required multiple channels due to bandwidth constraints.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Aug 2013 07:25

a mysterious group is going to release a Namo branded android phone for 21K in Sept called SmartNamo saffron2

http://www.gizmodo.in/news/The-Narendra ... 553513.cms

-6.5-inch FullHD (1920x1080px) touchscreen
-1.5GHz quad-core Mediatek MT6589 processor
-2GB RAM
-32GB internal memory, microSD card slot
-13MP rear cam, 2MP front cam
-3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
-Dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) with Dual Standby
-GPS with A-GPS
-3150mAh battery with 2.5 hours talktime, 180 hours standby time
-172.9x93x95mm
-230 gms
-Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean

The Saffron 2 also ships with an additional 3150mAh battery, a 32GB microSD card (taking your total memory up to 64GB), as well as a Bluetooth headset.

Given these high-end specs and the great freebies, the Rs. 21,111 price tag seems quite good. The Saffron 2 will be available in the market in September, the company said.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Aug 2013 07:30

one awaits with bated breath the SmartRahul phone, with no display but a HD photo of Yuvaraj pasted where the screen should be!
and a 32 GB SD card containing speeches by diggy raja and soniaji.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Aug 2013 08:17

managed to fix the wifi range problem in my house by taping a parabolic cardboard antenna behind my routers single antenna. used extra material from the tinfoil lined hat and undies I always use to keep at bay guvmint sponsored thought/crotch control spies and agents. one "bar" improvement in the five bar scale on my laptop . cellphone wifi also works where it never did before.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Aug 2013 10:24

Raja Bose wrote:
nachiket wrote:Why does the Moto X have an OLED screen? I thought only Sammy was obsessed with those. IPS LCD screens almost always look better than a comparable OLED. Just put a Sammy S3 or S4 next to the equivalent HTC device and you'll immediately see the difference.
Battery consumption probably? OLEDs actually have deeper blacks becoz it is really black (pixel is off) rather than pixel trying to approximate what black looks like. With the PureBlack+FastMotionHD displays in the current GB Lumia with high refresh rates, very low blur, great visibility outdoors, IPS doesn't look as soup-e-rear.

Yes, lower current draw and lighter in weight. IPS has better color accuracy.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Aug 2013 10:31

Singha wrote:managed to fix the wifi range problem in my house by taping a parabolic cardboard antenna behind my routers single antenna. used extra material from the tinfoil lined hat and undies I always use to keep at bay guvmint sponsored thought/crotch control spies and agents. one "bar" improvement in the five bar scale on my laptop . cellphone wifi also works where it never did before.

You increased the gain (amplification) on your router's antenna. The increased power density may be in violation of Indian spectrum laws, but who is there to enforce? Perhaps other businesses and governmental agencies using the same spectrum in your neighborhood? Many businesses do something similar to this in the US, only to be hunted down by the FCC and fined. In the US it is usually some other commercial entity that reports the violation to the FCC.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 03 Aug 2013 22:25

Have had the chromecast for some time now. It is an incredible device for the price. A short review --

Few things first. The things that it do, by itself is not remarkable. As some muj mentioned, you can run a wire from your laptop to your TV and pretty much see on TV whatever you see on laptop. That is like arguing you can connect your PC to your TV and dont need to buy a console -- or a TV remote is useless because you can press buttons on the TV itself. Fair enough. The way it does things though is what makes it remarkable.

It does a few things and does it remarkably well.

1. It is small and cheap, Setting it up is quite painless, took me under 4 mins.
2. My TV does not have HDMI CEC, it will work just fine with HDMI, but can do gimmicks with HDMI CEC like the device switches on the tv. With just HDMI, you can use it, but have to switch on your TV yourself.

So once you have it installed, for apps like youtube, netflix, google play music on android phone, laptop, iphone and such, you can "cast" it to the TV, it queues it up and plays it. The way it plays it is that it does not stream it from your laptop and/or tablet, but directly pulls it from the cloud. There are two advantages to it -- your phone is not encoding video and sending it, so its battery does not run down. It is simply instructing the device what to play. The second advantage is that you can continue to use your phone/tablet to look up other things to play and/or do other things, including seeking, skipping, volume control etc. I have used miracast on my phone -- it just made the phone very hot and ran down the battery.

The issue with such apps casting their video is that developers have to build support for it. HBO Go, Pandora, Hulu etc seem to be building support. For unsupported apps, web videos you might have "found" -- like Daily Show with Jon stewart for example

Chrome browser can cast a tab. This it does by encoding the video/audio and streaming to the dongle, so you have to have your laptop open -- think of it like a long wire from laptop to TV. One minor advantage though, you can switch tabs and do stuff in other tabs -- the tab that is being projected still gets streamed.

Optionally it can also cast the entire desktop. So you can do powerpoint giri on TV and/or projector with HDMI input without wires.

Anyway, I found it quite useful. It does a few things and does those few things well, I ended up watching a lot of longish content which I would have otherwise not watched. Like this one: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episode ... sode/1073/

I would recommend it.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Aug 2013 00:07

^^^Versus a WiDi dongle, how does ChromeCast fare? I have used a WiDi dongle and it seems to have the same wireless remote display features in HD and doesn't need an access point (it uses WiFi direct which is P2P).

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 04 Aug 2013 00:12

RBullah, wouldn't chrome be the default browser in android?

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 04 Aug 2013 00:21

somehow I am never a fan of chrome browser.
have never used it in my kamputer and my phone though an android fan.
I most often use local browser not the chrome.

also wrt keypad I use sony xperia kbd which I like bettre than google kbd. i have disable these apps.

phone is sony xperia tl.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Aug 2013 00:52

SaiK wrote:RBullah, wouldn't chrome be the default browser in android?

It wasn't afaik unless they changed something

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Aug 2013 01:05

Raja Bose wrote:^^^Versus a WiDi dongle, how does ChromeCast fare? I have used a WiDi dongle and it seems to have the same wireless remote display features in HD and doesn't need an access point (it uses WiFi direct which is P2P).

As I mentioned, widi reencodes video and streams to dongle. Draining battery and not having things like Dolby surround. In theory widi and miracast support 1080p and dolby. In practice DRM on Netflix etc doesn't allow it. Also costlier.

Think of this (obviously it is not functionally equivalent) as an apple TV with your phone / tablet as remote. You do app selection, browsing etc on phone tablet, choose video, hit play, it instructs the dongle to fetch it from the cloud and play it. Widi on the other hand does equivalent of airplay mirroring.

If your phone, tablet were doing widi or miracast, at this point they would heat up and drain the battery. The phone / tablet is fetching from the cloud, decoding the video, encoding it and transmitting to the dongle.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2013 05:31

^^^So it is somewhere between a STB and a WiDi dongle. Does the Chromecast dongle require a separate power cable?

Otherwise I wonder how the dongle does all such heavy lifting using only the power from the HDMI interface which is pretty miniscule.

The Miracast overheating thing might be a implementation issue on Android. Chacha is also trying to push Miracast into automotive.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 05 Aug 2013 06:30

krisna, My old HTC Inpsire browser would resize when I swiped to enlarge the text. The SIII Galaxy phone doesn't. May be some settings is the issue. I don't like to add more that required apps.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Aug 2013 10:33

new problem detected in my phone. when typing SMS found it. the top-rightmost key which is "p" has become insensitive....it wont take any touch input but the areas around it like 'o' , the SMS send button and 'l' are working.

is this a screen problem or a SW problem?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Aug 2013 17:02

Looks like MSFT cut price $100 on the Surface Pro. I still think it's too high and should have been cut $350.

The new MBA has been out for a couple months now with Haswell CPUs and have seen a 4-5 hour battery life improvement.

girish.r · Post by **girish.r** » 05 Aug 2013 17:07

Singha wrote:new problem detected in my phone. when typing SMS found it. the top-rightmost key which is "p" has become insensitive....it wont take any touch input but the areas around it like 'o' , the SMS send button and 'l' are working.

is this a screen problem or a SW problem?

Hi,

Did you change the orientation and try? If it works with a tilt then could be related to screen.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Aug 2013 17:27

didnt help. but since I can turn it landscape mode and it works am not going to bother with taking the dog for warranty repair and the whole process....

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2013 17:51

Singha wrote:new problem detected in my phone. when typing SMS found it. the top-rightmost key which is "p" has become insensitive....it wont take any touch input but the areas around it like 'o' , the SMS send button and 'l' are working.

is this a screen problem or a SW problem?

if touch in the same area works for other apps...such as browser then its not a HW issue clearly.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Aug 2013 17:53

ramana.. some times "fit to screen" setting goes against zoom

chilarai · Post by **chilarai** » 05 Aug 2013 19:54

next time you scan a document , proof read it. due to the compression algo used , xerox scanner seems to alter numbers in scanned documents even when its not OCRing.

http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/08 ... n_scanning

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 05 Aug 2013 20:53

To the learned maulaners - how is the LG Google Nexus 4? It is retailing at Croma retail at INR 25,490 for 16 GB version.

Read good reviews about the screen resolution and display and not too good about the main camera; I like the specs of 1.5 Ghz Quad Core with 2 GB RAM...that is serious hardware as far as this mango-abdul is concerned.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2013 21:05

^^^Do they have LTE in India? If not, Nexus4 is a great Android phone....in fact I would say the best Android phone (till the next Nexus). I prefer it over any of the Sammy turds. If you are buying an Android phone for the camera, then don't do it. If you want a smartphunwa with a good camera, GB is your best bet pretty much.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Aug 2013 21:08

The Nexus 4 is a decent device, but battery life is a little short and it heats up quickly if you do games. If you have a choice get the Sammy Google Play Edition Galaxy S4, but it is more expensive.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Aug 2013 21:43

don't know if any device out there that does not heat up while playin games.. btw, are these li-polymer or li-ion batteries?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2013 21:48

All mobile devices noticeably heat up when doing heavy lifting.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 05 Aug 2013 21:48

Raja Bose wrote:^^^Do they have LTE in India? If not, Nexus4 is a great Android phone....in fact I would say the best Android phone (till the next Nexus).

The HTC One version with vanilla Android is better. But it'll be more expensive than an N4 and I don't know if they sell it in India.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Aug 2013 21:50

^^^The N4 heats up more than other devices. It suffers from thermal throttling, Anand Tech has documented it. It has Li-polymer batteries.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Aug 2013 21:54

^^I guess depends on what user wants....more warmth or more lag.