Walmart Wireless via Android and Me, Engadget: Soon you’ll be able to pick up a Nexus One from Walmart. And not the Nexus One crippled to use on T-Mobile’s 3G-limited network but the one that works on the network of your choice: Sprint, Verizon or AT&T. And some say the price might be a door-buster at just US$99. The Engadget article speculates the possibility of a single Nexus One model able to connect to all of the aforementioned wireless carriers, but I doubt it.
I have reviewed the Commuter case from OtterBox and a lot of characteristics described in that review also applies to the Commuter TL case. If you haven’t read the Commuter case review please do so as it will help you decide between the Commuter and Commuter TL cases.
No Mid Section: This is one of the major differences between the Commuter TL case and the Commuter case. The outer shell of the Commuter TL case does not have a mid-section that hugs the rubber inner shell. This leads to a bit of looseness in the middle part of the iPhone.
The overall design of the Commuter TL makes the iPhone look a bit different as the outer shell is translucent. I am sure there are people who would like this but for me I wasn’t that big of a fan. As you can see from the pictures the top part of the iPhone now looks too busy and I’d rather have a solid black.
Similar to the Commuter case from OtterBox, the Commuter TL case provides a lot of protection (a bit less than the Commuter) by using a dual soft-inner and hard-outer shell combination without adding a lot of bulk. I prefer the Commuter case as the outer shell hugs the iPhone on the sides and gives it a bit more protection than the TL. On the other hand, the Commuter TL’s design may be more attractive to you with the translucent outer shell.
iPad… could be the name for Apple tablet. And the ad is nicely done: very Apple-sque. But, there is a major problem: this iPad has a bunch of connections on the back. I just don’t see this happening. On the side maybe, but on the back? No way. via jkOnTheRun
Mac sales increased to 800 million. iPhone sales doubled to 8.75 million, sold in 86 countries. US$15.68 billion in revenues and $3.38 billion in profits in Q4’09 (FYQ1’10), which was Apple’s all-time highest revenue and profit quarter. The only bad news: overall iPod sales continued to decline, but iPod touch sales were up. Steve Jobs:
The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.
Note “a major new product” so it will not be a new MacBook, a new iPhone, a new Mac Pro, a new Mac mini, a new iPod, or a new Apple TV: it will be a major new product. Cool.
Tim Cook in response to bad press regarding AT&T:
AT&T is a great partner. It’s important to remember that they have more mobile broadband usage than any other carrier in the world. In the vast majority of places, iPhone customers are getting a great experience. AT&T has acknowledged problems. We’ve personally reviewed their plans to fix it and we’re confident it’ll be handled.
And that means the iPhone isn’t headed to Verizon. Source: Engadget
… Apple’s distaste for Flash Player is both a matter of engineering taste… and politics.
A must-read regarding “Apple, Adobe, and Flash” by John Gruber.
bashful: A Frog Design prototype tablet for Apple. This sleek tablet was conceived about 27 years ago. Quite nice, I must admit. via Wired
PC Magazine’s PJ Jacobowitz and Sascha Segan collaborated with DisplayMate’s Raymond Soneira to test color accuracy, contrast ratio and brightness on the Nexus One, iPhone, Droid and CLIQ smartphones (source: “Nexus One, iPhone and Droid: Which is Brightest?“). DisplayMate‘s tests were used along with a Konica Minolta CS-200 Chromameter. So here are the results:
PC Magazine concludes:
So who has the best screen? We’d vote for the Motorola Droid. While the iPhone’s screen is brightest and the Nexus One’s colors pop, the Droid has the best balance of brightness and accurate colors on its 848 x 480 LCD panel.
Color Accuracy: Interestingly color accuracy was tied to the color gamut of the displays. The Droid had a color gamut of 98% NTSC. The iPhone was lowest at 63% NTSC. On the other hand the Nexus One had the highest at 141%. Similar to the Droid was 103% for the CLIQ. In my opinion color gamut by itself has little to do with color accuracy. To get accurate colors the colors need to be hardware or at least software calibrated to work with the OS and apps. If there was a smartphone display color calibration hardware tool (is there?) I would guess the Nexus One to have the most accurate colors since it has the most to choose from.
Update 2010.01.22 11PM: I turns out color gamut is related to color accuracy. Dr. Raymond Soneira, President of DisplayMate, corrected my thoughts on color accuracy. Specifically, based on the standard color gamut of sRGB/Rec. 709, if the display hardware has a much larger color gamut the colors will be over-saturated. The display should have a 100% of the sRGB/Rec. 709 color space for the most accurate colors. Based on information from Wikipedia, the ITU-R BT.709 (also known as sRGB/Rec. 709) has the following color space parameters:
Contrast: There are three ways to improve contrast. One is to make blacks darker. Another is to increase the brightness. And the last is to do both. The Nexus One is certainly at an advantage since it is the only smartphone in the group to sport an OLED display. Black on an OLED display is almost completely black since it does not emit any light. LCDs, on the other hand, continue to pass through light from the backlight unit making blacks more darkish grays than really black. No contrast ratio numbers were shared but I would like to see the numbers both indoors (completely dark and typical office) as well as outdoors on a bright sunny day. The Droid passed through 0.26 cd/m2 of brightness when black while the CLIQ’s brightness was less at 0.21 cd/m2. The iPhone was dead last at 2.5 cd/m2, meaning that blacks were much less black compared to the other three.
Brightness: I don’t think brightness by itself is a measure of the quality of the screen but on a mobile device like these smartphones brightness does count for a lot more than say on desktop monitor. The reason being that you’ll need to be able to overpower the sun’s reflections outside. The iPhone had the brightest display at 444 cd/m2 when displaying white. The Droid’s spec was 391 cd/m2, Nexus One was 229 cd/m2 and the CLIQ came in last at 224 cd/m2. I would like to have seen what the brightness levels were for these smartphones with a typical screen instead of all white.
To make this type of test more exhaustive I would like to see the best smartphones using other mobile OSes included in the comparison: BlackBerry, webOS, Symbian and Windows Mobile. I look forward to a Round 2.
FOXNews.com’s Clayton Morris is speculating that Apple may announce two tablets: one for AT&T and the other for Verizon. He reports that carrier deals haven’t been finalized. And how does he know? AT&T told him? Verizon? He mentions that sources within these companies told him. My guess: he does not know; he is speculating.
Two? Nope: Why would Apple build two versions? Does Apple have an iPhone that works on CDMA networks? As of this writing and two and a half years since the first iPhone the answer is no. It certainly is not a question about the company’s ability. My guess is that it has everything to do with improving production yields, lowering production costs and therefore maximizing profits.
One! If Apple were to build a tablet that works on CDMA networks there would certainly be functional differences between it and the GSM version. The GSM version would most likely take advantage of the faster 3G network by AT&T. The CDMA version would definitely be slower but you do get the advantage of wider coverage. Apple will also have to deal with different component suppliers, manufacturing lines, payment structures, etc. It would be messy. Here’s my idea: there will be one tablet, but it will work on both GSM and CDMA networks. How? Gobi.
Apple’s the Gateway: It won’t matter that it connects to Verizon or AT&T or any other 3G connection. Gobi by Qualcomm would allow connections to any data network. I hope Apple up-ends the way we connect to and pay for 3G service. I would like the tablet to usher in a new way: Apple becomes the gateway and provides seamless 3G service to the tablet and the user would not know whether it is AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. The user need not know and shouldn’t really care as long as there is a reliable connection. What the user will experience is the most dependable 3G connection wherever he/she happens to be. I would like that.
Andy Ihnatko took a bunch of pictures using an iPhone 3GS, Nexus One and a Nikon D200. Of course the Nikon D200 took the best of the three. The iPhone 3GS took photos that were usable in all lighting conditions, including fairly dark environments. The Nexus One took much better pictures than the iPhone 3GS when there was plenty of non-tricky lighting but when lighting was not ideal neither were the pictures it took.
I would have loved to have seen a comparison of something in between the smartphones and the pro-level DSLR. Say, for instance, a Canon S90. I have been using a S90 for about a month and I think it is good enough for almost any situation. (Almost because the autofocus and shutter speeds are too slow for fast moving objects.) It is a prosumer-level compact camera that takes wonderful pictures, which are much better than either the Nexus One or the iPhone 3GS in any lighting condition. And in my non-professional opinion bumps up against the quality of the Nikon D200. Importantly, the S90 is really pocketable. Yes, it is an extra device to carry around in addition to your iPhone 3GS or Nexus One, but trust me, you’ll forget you’re carrying it around (unless you like to wear tight pants) until you need to take a picture. And at that point you will be quite glad to have such a capable but oh so pocketable compact camera.
SearchStorage: Avatar was absolutely fantastic. Weta Digital, the New Zealand company that created the digital effects for Avatar, stated that the film’s detailed animations required computing horsepower, storage capabilities like no other project. Paul Ryan, Weta Digital’s CTO:
King Kong used 100 terabytes of storage. For Avatar, we have 100 terabytes of RAM.
That would be 100 terabytes of RAM in Weta’s server farm referred to as a “render wall”. Weta’s render wall contains 35,000 CPU cores. It isn’t surprising that Avatar required a new level of computing power but this is insane.
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