My new P(hone) D(igital) A(ssistant).

No thanks to some of my friends on FB informing me the "greatness" of the Galaxy Note.  

After we send the kids to schoo on last Thursdayl.  Wife accompanied me to Chiang Rai.  We need to do some grocery shopping in Chiang Rai's Big C because the local Maesai Tesco Lotus is still out of stock on certain basic necessities.  My son's diapers is on the 1st thing on the list. :P  Of course, this means I could take a peek at the new phone.. Big Mistake!

We reached Big C and immediately I went to look around at the mobile phone shops.  They have started selling it but there was no display set.  I asked for one but they said its all sold out!  They took in 10 sets on Tuesday and it was all out on Wednesday!  Wah... Thai people over here in CR a bit rich leh.... 

Anyway, after getting our groceries, we dropped by Central plaza (biggest shopping centre in Chiang Rai) and wife went on her own to look at some clothes while I immediately hit the mobile phone shops over here :P 

Asked around and all quote me the same price..  and didn't really managed to physically touch one as they say they don't have a display set :(.  Went to the Samsung shop and they too, did not have a display set.  But the lady at the Samsung shop very nice and was very sincere in  helping me out.  She took a brand new set out and opened it in front of me.  :S  Bad news liao.  Next thing I know, put battery.. play play and I paid for it! KNS.. a bit impulsive but the pen.... ooohhh the pen...

The first impression in my hands is that its bloody huge!  Compare to phones or smartphones this day, its pretty big.  All because of the 5.3" screen.  But its just nice for writing.  If its smaller, maybe I won't buy it.  But the size is just like the little black notebook I used to have in the army.  (just a bit wider) but its nice.  The screen is gorgeous of course.   And the pen is just nice though I was hoping it was more metallic than plasticky though.  

I have been using it for about 2 days and so far its quite positive.  It was something I dreamt of and Samsung managed to pull it off with this product.   There are some quirky things that I find it can be improved on (nothing is perfect in this world :P).  One of the major dislike is the button on the stylus.. a bit tough sometimes to find it and press it.  And sometimes its a bit tough to take out the stylus too.  Battery life is a bit bad if I turn on Wi-fi with Edge the whole day.  Then the power button is also on the side (I am so used to the top).  Finally, the size of the phone... hahaha,.. I think it does look a bit funny if I used it for making a call.  I asked wife and she says it looks ok leh.... hmm..

Anyway, this is just a short entry on the initial impressions.  I still have my Nexus One but as Google is not going to update it with ICS. I guess the Note will be a great upgrade for me.  And this phone is my most expensive ever... :P  over $900 SGD.  Still if I cliam the 7% VAT, I will get back some money for a case and screen protector :P.  

This really really looks interesting. (Galaxy Note)

Picture taken from Samsung Galaxy Note mini-website.I bought my phone Nexus 1 about 2 years ago. Well actually 3 more months is will be its 2nd year anniversary and I was scouting around for a new phone.  You will be surprised that iphone 5 was actually in my list until Apple didn't release it.  They just updated another iPhone 4S which I think is not much of a difference from my wife's white iPhone 4.  So that's out.

Scouting around I saw this.  The galaxy note!  The real real thing that really get me hooked was the stylus.  Probing furthur its a dream come true!!  The stylus is finally back!  I think I have mentioned before I like to use a pen to jot things down and I missed using my Windows Mobile or Pocket PCs in the 90s.  It was my best working organiser. 

Morever, the size is also about the same as my old Compac IPAQ 3600!!  Yes, it's a bit big for a phone but the screen size will be great for writing (I find using a stylus on my Touch Cruise a big challenging sometimes nowadays as I was so used to my N1.  

The name was well chosen too.  Note!  Just like a note book.  Alas, it was not running the latest ICS like Galaxy Nexus but the stylus and with Android, this will be a good combo.  Price wise I heard it will be about 1k SGD... pretty expensive.  Arrgghh......

My New Phone - Google Nexus 1

Its been 2 years since I got my HTC touch cruise and its showing its signs.  Takes longer to charge and getting slower to use everyday.  And although I hard reseted it to make it go faster.   It still slow compare to the latest smartphones out there in accessing the web.  Blame WM 6.1...

I have been using smartphones with windows mobile ever since when I was in the army.  Its a pretty good PDA Os( first device was the casio E500 :P before my iPaq)

So HTC touch cruise will be my last Windows phone.  Especially true when I saw my friend's Hero running Andriod.  I have read much about it and already planned to get such a device.  When the hardware and the OS is mature enough.  The phone was released only recently and you could only buy it via Google web store.  As usual, I read about it and was still undecided until another geek friend of mine who used to own an iPhone bought it and show it to me.  And I'm sold. 

I have been using it for more than a week and so far so good, it met my expectations.  There are 3 cons I find concerning this phone which I hope they will be improvements..

1st thing is that the apps can only be installed on the phone main memory (SD card for notes, photos, videos and music nia) 512MB and preinstalled with stuffs.. which left only 192mb for your other apps..  This is ridiculously small in this era leh... I do heard they are working on this and I hope they will come up with an update on this issue.

2nd is a missing stylus... yes, I still enjoying poking a screen with my plastic pen on my WM devices... Just a habit I need to get rid of. Onscreen keyboard is good but I like ease of copy and paste using a stylus on WM.  Even the iPhone did a better job in selecting text with their magnifying glass highlighting oiption(although still loose to a stylus though).

3rd is the battery life.  A bit weak as I am already a light user and it could only last less than 48hrs (less than 2 days)

So some may ask.. why not get an Iphone?? 3 reasons

1)Bloody Itunes sucks big time as a syncing software.  And you need to connect physically with the computer to copy music and files.  No such issues with Andriod. No such issue with WM too since active sync allow bluetooth syncing too! :)

2)Closed Source.  Can't change or hack the device easily as its closed source.  You can root it but confirm spoill the warranty of the device.  Again, no such issues with andriod phones., easier to root (if you want too) and you can unroot it back  :P

3)Too many iPhonies , this is a lousy reason to some but I just hate to be one of the crowd... I like to be different (call me wierd but its just me..) People using canon and nikon cameras and switching camp while I still stuck with Sony/Minolta hehe..

Price with GST included is a whopping $825.  My most expensive phone till date... But its practically a mini computer (bloody 1 Ghz processor leh).  Will last until it spoils or the Nexus 6 model is released.. :P

Sony Cybershot TX1

First of all, just want to mention that Sony didn't pay me for writing this(I do hope if they see this maybe they will :P).  Wife's friend wants a good PnS (Point and Shoot) camera and of course she immediately recalls I am a photographer and asked me to recommend and buy one for her. 

She is a good friend (best pal actually) of my wife so I cannot dissapoint her.  Her budget is 400SGD so I had a hard time to hunt around until I stumble upon an ad from Sony on a trade-in promotion for the WX-1 or TX-1.  I have an old Canon A90 that has a faulty LCD screen so I decidede to trade it in for the deal.

Went down to MS Colour and got one (with some top up from myself as she has bought tons of stuff for my kids and my wife an I have not really gave her anything). 

So decided to test shoot with the new toy as its a gift and I don't want any issue with it as it will be in Thailand.  So after testing it, I got hooked immediately by how good this little camera is.  I would say its more of a gadget camera rather than the usual PnS cam.  You can read the specs here, I'm not going to go through them but I just want to write how I enjoy using this camera as a photographer.

First feature to mention is the Panorama capture.  Here's a shot of my office below.

Basically, you focus and then starts to swipe in the direction of arrow indicated.  The camera will automatically stich the photo up for you.  Pretty neat and nice!  I had tons of fun shooting in this mode and most of the time the stiches are very well done.

The 2nd feature is the smile detection.  This is old news to some but I tested it and found it surprisingly accurate.  Though you need to smile and hold it there for at least a sec before it triggers the shutter.

The 3rd feature to mention is the handheld twilight mode.  Its a pretty interesting feature where the camera will take six consecutive shots and combine them to get you a more high dynamic range picture. Here's a sample below. Flash is not used at all.  The picture taken with this method is not as sharp but at least you can shoot handheld photos at night.

The next feature worth mentioning is the interface.  The camera literally has only 3 physcal buttons and a zoom lever.  All the rest is on the touch screen.  Yes! Touch screen like the iPhone or those monile phones.  The best is the selecting focusing point.  No longer I need to teach people how to half press the shutter to get a focus.  By touching on the screen, the camera automatically focus on that spot.  Making it a breeze to get a sharp photo.

Image quality is considered very good to me for such a  small compact camera.  High ISO photos are definitely acceptable for print up to 8Rs.  Which is more than enought for casual shooters.

Lastly, I just have to mention it again is the build quality and stylo looks.  Its cool looking and very thin.  Easily pocketable in your shirt pocket.  Making it very portable.  Sony also have some cool leather pouches for these cameras but I'm not sure how much they are charging them.  

Now for the bad things.

Battery life is ok.  Expected due to such small size but definitely can last a day of shooting.  You may need to consider getting a spare batt.

The touchscreen is a bit sensitive.  Sometimes you might accidentally hit on the screen and go into another mode or turning off a feature.

The battery compartment door is a bit filmy and plasticky (the rest of the body is all metal) so I think this is the part that will get spoilt first if you are not careful.

All in all, I find it to be the best PnS digital cam I have used so far.  And I will be getting one for myself soon :P

Andriod Rocks

I have a few friends who are really into getting a PDA phone and some of them are really into the Iphone.  Until I show them what Android can do too. :P

Iphone is great actually.  Especially the OS which basically is a scaled down version of it OS X.  But I really hate the idea of Apple monopolizing the hardware and using bloody iTunes to sync the device.   I don’t really like the form factor of the Iphone too.  (Just a matter of personal preference)  I am currently using Windows Mobile HTC Touch Cruise (surprise!) but I am already starting to plan my next purchase.  So Iphone used to be on my to buy list (I’m a bit sick of Windows Mobile) until I heard about the Open Handset Alliance and their announcement of the Android operating system for mobile phones looks really promising.  Its still pretty under development and they have cute names for their builds (current version is Cupcake… the next one is Donut)

It is really promising as since the OS is open sourced.  A lot of mobile phone manufacturers will implement it onto their PDA phones.  So far, HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG are going to produce devices under Android.  Acer and Asus is also looking into using Android as a alternative for their netbooks.  Which means I get to have a lot more hardware to choose from rather than Apple alone.  If Apple is willing to open up and allow the other hardware manufacturers to offer hardware based on their OS.. then it might be a different story altogether.  But you should know the answer.  Its next to impossible for Apple to do that so Android based phones will be on my shopping list.