Play blackjack for money

Good day to you all and welcome to my first full article in this series. Sadly it’s not the Satio article you’re hoping for, that’s been delayed because my girlfriend has gone away for a few days and taken the phone along with her, anyone would think I bought it for her….well I did actually but still, how dare she, it’s just inconsiderate!

Don’t worry though I have the HTC Magic and my new little green robot friend to talk about instead. Incidentally I do mean Android and not some sort of new hi-tech, eco-friendly mechanical helper….sadly.

Let Me Hold It:

Device boxes are often uninteresting and this is no exception aside from the fact that it’s surprisingly small. The device is presented to you on removing the lid, as is the fashion these days, while the headset (which I’ll come back to), charger, leather pouch and boring printed things lie beneath.

The Magic’s predecessor, the HTC Dream/G1, was irretrievably ugly and really not suitable for anyone with eyes so thankfully new designers appear to have been employed to make an Android device you wouldn’t be embarrassed to hold. They’ve done a good job and the Magic, in white, is a good looking device, just avoid the highly questionable MyTouch 3G version in merlot from T-Mobile! The dimensions are good and materials feel solid but not quite as weighty as an iPhone. Also unlike the iPhone, it isn’t as wide as a broadsheet newspaper and as a result is pleasant to hold for either one or two handed operation. The 3.2” capacitive touchscreen is bright and responsive while the Android related hardware buttons reside beneath. The trackball works ok but it largely redundant beyond moving around individual letters in text.

Let Me Use It:

As you’d expect the device runs through some setup screens upon first use, though you’ll be wanting a Google account to make full use of this. From here on in it’s a standard Android experience and there’s Donut in store depending where you live or if you take the sensible option of getting rooted and install the latest Cyanogen ROM.

With Android you’ll immediately notice the simplicity and user friendliness. Flicking between the various horizontally arranged home screens is enjoyable, particularly when you see that the wallpaper moves along with it. Perhaps the most compelling thing is to drag up the application drawer from the tab at the bottom of any home screen. It’s pleasing to use and can be smoothly dragged back and forth or simply thrown open or closed with a quick swipe. The drawer gives you a grid of icons and if you need telling what to do from there I suggest you turn off your computer, give all your electronics to the charity shop and move away somewhere to drink out of coconuts!

Less apparent at first but equally, if not more useful is the notification bar. This appears at the top of the screen showing the usual standby details as well as notifications of new events, active downloads, application updates etc. It behaves similarly to the drawer being dragged down smoothly to show you notification info which can then be dismissed or used as a shortcut to the relevant content. The usefulness of this became apparent when I received an SMS while in the middle of something else. Upon receipt, the SMS text is scrolled once across the notification bar like a news ticker, if you miss it just drag the bar down to read it again all without leaving what you’re doing. Never again do you need to quit something just to read “wuu2” from that friend you’d really rather just ignore.

Customisation is at the forefront of any Android experience because who wants to stare at screen after screen of icons on a black background? Well apparently quite a lot of people do but iDon’t (thanks for the pun Verizon) and it’s as easy as a long press on the home screen to mix things up. Long press an empty area to see a menu of shortcuts, folders and widgets you can add there. Long press an existing home screen item to move or dispose of it. Things got even easier once I realised application shortcuts could be dragged straight from the drawer to the home screen using the same long press method. The danger is in the widgets, they’re addictive and I soon found myself downloading as many as possible to try them all…..and then deleting the vast majority again! Apps are plentiful too via the Android Market, thankfully the majority are free and there are some really great pieces of work.

So it’s all plain sailing for the Magic then? Well, not quite. Media capabilities are good but nothing new, the camera is really not that great, especially in low light, and music playback is certainly nothing special not least because of the supplied headset. Headsets are a frequent HTC failing and this one is inexcusable unless they’re perhaps targeting the Ferengi market. The earphones are too big, not comfortable to wear and seem to manage not to block out any background noise…perhaps to distract from the lacking audio quality. What’s worse is the lack of a 3.5mm jack so you’ll be looking towards Bluetooth for a better experience.

Finally I can’t help but feel that this device is in infancy. Android is moving along fast and improving all the time but the internal hardware here is still first generation. The 528MHz Qualcomm processor is outdated and my particular Magic is short on RAM being a Google branded (32B) device. This results in performance hits when trying to get clever with the phone. It can multi-task but the price is a bit of lag which can be annoying at times.

Let Me Keep It:

Overall the HTC Magic is a great phone, I’m happy to use it every day and Android is definitely here to stay. The hardware can just about cut it for now but it will be blown away when the imminent 800MHz and 1GHz Snapdragon devices land along with Android 2.0. To that end I say this device is a good introduction to Android and a better experience than most other touch screen phones (let’s all laugh at WinMo) but not as speedy as an iPhone.

Definitely happy to keep it.

Cheers,

Mik

Filed under: Android, Article, Opinion, impressions
Tags: Android, HTC Magic, Mik's Opinion

(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Hi guys and girls,

I’d like to introduce something new for you, it’s “Mik’s Impatient Opinions”. Think of this as a review source but in a rather different way to the normal, in depth reviews you’re used to. After all there’s plenty of other people already doing that and I neither see the point or can really be bothered doing the same thing!

So instead I’m going to give you something a little more personal. I’m typically short on patience, quick to form opinions and quick to condemn. I think in this way I can cut to the chase and tell you what you really need to know in an efficient and possibly entertaining way though I expect some things I write may not be what fanboys want to hear.

I won’t be doing detailed comparisons, I don’t intend on spending hours taking photographs and I won’t be covering massive amounts of handsets but I will try to use my own style to highlight things that will affect your every day user experience with a device or application etc.

So keep a look out for my first article, especially if you’re considering a Satio, and I hope you enjoy what I write for you.

Cheers,

Mik

Filed under: Announcement, Article, Opinion, Rants, impressions
Tags: Mik's Opinion

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I had originally promised you a camera comparison between the Sony Ericsson C905 and the Nikon D80, but I didn’t have time to do this comparison back then. Now, we’re back with a large comparison between the C905 and the Nikon D90 (don’t have the D80 with me currently, so this is the other choice).

About this duel
All the samples shot with the C905 were shot with automatic settings and flash disabled, unless needed. All the samples were shot in high quality JPEG mode. The Nikon D90 was set to aperture priority mode (f/3.8), with flash disabled. All the samples were shot in RAW (uncompressed file format), and converted to TIFF with Adobe Lightroom 2.2 using default conversion settings.

It’s important that you’re aware of the fact that you can completely change how the pictures look when you shoot in RAW format. If they’re too dark, you can simply knock up the exposure in the post-processing without affecting the quality of the picture. This is not possible with pictures shot in JPEG format, which means the C905 is suffering from a severe disadvantage even before we kick off the comparison.

It’s also rather important to point out that there’s no such thing as a perfect RAW converter, and that they’ll all convert the RAW images differently. Most of the unprocessed RAW images, in my opinion, are better than the converted ones, but like I said earlier on, you can always change the look of RAW images.

I will briefly comment on each set of samples, and pick a definitive winner in the end of this post. All the following samples are 100 percent crops of the original pictures. The JPEGs are unprocessed and the RAW images have been converted, as explained earlier on. To cut down on the bandwidth, I’ve decided not to include the full resolution samples. Continue reading “Duel: Sony Ericsson C905 vs Nikon D90″

Filed under: Article, C series, Camera, Comparison, Cyber-shot
Tags: c905, C905 camera, Camera, duel, Nikon D90

(5 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Sony Ericsson’s CEO, Hideki Komiyama, predicts that the cell phone market during 2009 will be very tough, the main reason for this being the low consumer demand due to the global economy crisis. Despite that, in an interview with Reuters at this year’s CES, he stated that “others are falling apart but we are holding up,” referring to their main competitors, such as Nokia, Samsung and LG. He also points out that, despite the fact that they overtook Motorola’s No.3 place in the mobile phone maker leaderboard in the third quarter, their shipments volume wasn’t all too different in comparison to the previous quarter.  Rather, he attributes their change of  position to competitors’ weak performance. That’s why they’re waiting for the Q4 earnings report, in order to make official estimates about 2009.

Here comes the good part, though. They’d realised that they haven’t exactly reached those profit margins in the low-double-digit percentage range they’ve been targeting since 2007. That’s why they’re rethinking their sales strategies. They plan on releasing more high-end devices, rather than the less profitable low-end ones, even if it means releasing less products than originally planned. They’ve been doing exactly the opposite the last 2 years.

He also hinted that they’re developing some kick-ass smartphones for 2010, but refused to give any further info. “At this moment we’re under heavy rain. You have to look for shelter. But when you’re in the shelter you start preparing, for a recovery”, he said. Hit the source link for more info.

Source: Reuters

Filed under: Article, Market, Upcoming

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

It would be impossible for me to do a comprehensive, technically detailed write-up of how Sony Ericsson turned the million Euro incomes to expenses, and I’m sure it’d be rather uninteresting for you as well. That’s why I’m not going to do that nor try to do it. I will, however, try to sum up what went wrong and how. As you’d expect, this rant will reflect nothing but my personal opinions and thoughts on Sony Ericsson’s past and current decisions, as well as what seems to be Sony Ericsson’s future plans. Also want you to know that I’m uncertain whether or not this piece is finished. I can’t make up my mind on whether I should add more to make it more clear, or leave it as it is, so apologies in advance if parts don’t make any sense to you.

The copy/paste-strategy

Sony Ericsson changed its product strategy a few years ago. The company saw huge advantages of making use of the same hardware and software platforms with only few minor changes. Initially, the strategy worked out very well - probably because it was still of limited use.
Sony Ericsson announced the rather amazing K750 back in very early March 2005. The K750 is one of Sony Ericsson’s most innovative phones ever, period. It was such an immense update from K700, and the camera - which was the most interesting feature about it - was built upon the camera of the S700, and greatly enhanced. I doubt it came as a surprise for K750 users when it was announced the best camera phone of the year. The K750 wasn’t one to miss, and sales surpassed all expectations. Continue reading “Someone needs a wakeup call…”

Filed under: Article, Corporative, Cyber-shot, Future, Market, Market share, Rants, Technology, Walkman

(27 votes, average: 4.07 out of 5)

 Loading ...