For all my complaints about my Xperia…I must admit…I use it pretty heavily despite the minor drawbacks. Since I received the new device I have not had problems with the clock….now the realy clincher will be the timing…need music keyboards and drums that actually respond to the rhythm of the beat.
A small request. When will it be heard?
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PRELUDE
This post was intended to be a long dissertation on all the flaws in my new “smart phone” and the android platform on which it was developed. You might even be interested in that knowledge from me. But let me switch gears from discussions of geeky stuff like platforms and code to reality.
The reality is that the world we knew 15 or even 10 or perhaps even 2 years ago is nothing more than mere nostalgic wanderings and musings.
GEEK
As I sit in Tokyo sipping a latte at Excelsior Cafe, labouriously typing out a blog on my 4-inch cell phone touchpanel screen, I can’t help but wonder what new idea or thought pattern will take root and modify our lives forever.
Shouldn’t I just enjoy, sit back and relax?
BOOKS?
For one thing, I wonder how much longer we will expect our books and news stories to remain fixed linear devices for transmitting a single story. Archaic.
When books can be instantly accessed via content providers like Kindle, you should also be ale to read different versions on the fly. For example, why not have a menu item to select the audence level? Adult, Preteen, &Youth are just three of the levels I would have liked when I read Postsingular. A great scifi book for my kids to read with some interesting ideas bout offline memory storage for humans BUT I wish I could just “turn off” a few explicit portions about cross-dressing sexual SM behavior that really adds nothing.
RANDOM ROUTING
Why must a book always follow the same pattern?
TOUCHSCREENS
Why is it so hard to type with one finger? Two thumbs is a little faster but no less frustrating. Time to get Bluetooth wireless keyboard…
MOVING ON
And so today’s great idea or thought is tomorrow’s reality and next week’s old news. Hard to keep up. Don’t blink.
Lunch is over time to move on. Back to email jail.
Dylan
Popularity: 9%
On 1 Apr 2010, Sony-Ericsson and DoCoMo released a new Android Smart Phone in Japan called the Xperia. The rest of the world knows this phone by the name Xperia X10 but DoCoMo identifies it as the Xperia SO-01B.
Eager to try out the latest hype, I signed up on a wait list about a week after the initial release of 50,000 units sold out, and waited about another week until the second shipment of 30,000 units trickled down to my neighborhood good-deal phone dealer. Apparently, I was lucky since other stores and DoCoMo shops in the Tokyo area were still reporting in excess of 40 people on each of their waiting lists–literally thousands of people waiting for the new SonyEricsson device. Thus far, I’ve had my Sony Xperia X10 Smartphone since 17 April 2010–just over a month–and I have learned much about the strengths and weaknesses of the Xperia device and the Android platform.
Let me cut to the chase: If you drool over the Android platform and you love having the most impressive specs, this is probably the phone for you. I admit I purchased the phone based on specs alone: 8.1 Megapixel camera, 384MB of RAM, 1GB of internal storage, 16GB external SD card included, 1 GHz Snapdragon QSD8250 processor, Timescape and Mediascape to tie up e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and all my music, photos and videos; all runing on Google Android 1.6 (affectionately called “Donut”). And of course, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a gorgeous 480×854 pixel 4 inch display. Did I mention the battery is removable and replaceable?
It looked like just the device for people like me who wanted an iPhone-like device but without the SoftBank service–a SmartPhone that could do it all–reduce personal clutter, combine devices–like an FM radio, voice recorder, cellular phone, camera, and laptop (for short e-mails and quick web searches)–and still leave room for upgrades and games. So I got one.
But I am disappointed. Seeking perfection, I got possibilities. Hoping for the Holy Grail, I got a promise. Quite simply, the interface and the apps lack polish. It is not clear to me if this a hardware limitation or an Android limitation, but the end result of the package is a less than completely satisfying experience–at times it is downright frustrating. I give it three stars on a scale of 5. However, over 100,000 units sold in the first 20 days of the Japan campaign. DoCoMo is targeting sales of 1,000,000 units total. So maybe I am just asking too much from my phone. Read on to learn more and make your own call (pun intended).
Out of the Box:
I pulled my Sensuous Black Smartphone out of a well designed and good looking black box. The shape of the phone was immediately appealing and fit my hand perfectly. The phone was not usable without a SIM card. Powering up without the card brings up the screen and an emergency call setting, but you cannot access any of the features beyond this. Inserting the Sim card was an exercise in patience. I was loathe to damage my new phone and at first I was worried about breaking the plastic back. Now that I know how to pull the back off, I can do it with ease and without worry (you have to put your fingernail into the slot on the bottom of the phone and pull the back off with a peeling motion.)
With the sim card now installed, the included 16GB memory card confirmed in the device, and the back replaced; I pressed the power on button for the required 1+ second. A quick Sony-Ericsson vibration notified me that the phone was indeed powering on. 10 seconds to display “Sony Ericsson” in white letters on a black screen, 7 seconds later “DoCoMo” appears in similar font, and then finally, 9 seconds later, 26 long seconds after pressing the power button for the first time, the phone is displaying a beautiful blue screen with the local time and date. Fortunately, it only takes this long on the initial power up.
Once you swipe past this time display, there are three home screens: center, left and right. On the bottom is a drawer that stores all the apps. And on the top of the screen is a function display with the time and status of the phone and another drawer with notifications such as missed calls and new e-mails. This was all new to me since this was my first Android device.
So far so good.
The next thing I wanted to experiment with was the camera. As a camera buff, I expected a lot from this device. I was disappointed. The focusing speed is adequate, the options sufficient, but the lag from pressing the shutter button to actually getting a shot is much more than the average waitress can handle. This is not the device to hand to someone to get a picture of you and your friends when you get together for an impromptu reunion. Especially if you are in a dimly lit restaurant. Often, the camera refuses to take a photo until the first image is saved, but there is nothing to let you know that you must wait. So the poor waitress keeps pressing the button to no effect. Of course, you can get a photo if you are patient, but it takes several frustrating tries. Once the image is taken though, if there is enough lighting, the image is sharp and impressive. The macro focus is nice and gets in close. But low-lighting really stumps this camera. Hard to get a decent image if you are in a dim restaurant or outside at night. There is no flash, just a bright light that you have to manually turn on.
The dialer is adequate with lots of real estate dedicated to the important buttons. But the Contacts interface and call history leaves much to be desired. If you select English as the interface language, you get the alphabet in tiny letters from A-Z along the right side. You can try to aim for a letter close to the letter you desire (not possible to get it right every time with those tiny letters) and then scroll from that point. If you select Japanese as your language, you get the hiragana syllabary followed by the alphabet from A-Z. Selecting the Japanese language for the phone also allows you to modify the reading of your contacts–a feature not available under English. Each of your contacts has a strange silhouette icon until you select a photo from your SD card (note, it does not allow you to jump over to Facebook to pick a photo….so good luck running around taking photos of your friends or finding a way to download images from the Internet…you cannot download images using the Android Facebook Apps. Apparently only the browser has figured out how to save images…)
The history page displays missed calls, and sent calls all on one screen. You cannot parse this out. You also cannot delete individual calls. You can erase the entire history or keep the entire history. Poor interface planning. Also, if one person calls you a lot….they will show up for every single entry. There is no way to “stack” the calls from a single person. Again, poor planning on such a capable phone.
Voice quality on the calls is adequate. If you are in a quiet location, you will have no trouble hearing the other person. If you are on a noisy subway platform, in a party, or other loud area, you are better off plugging in the included headphones to have your conversation. You will hear the other party, but not as clearly as you might like.
Finally, I had to try out TimeScape and MediaScape. The all-in-one solution that Sony claims to have perfected in this phone. So perfect was this to be, that Sony kept the old version of Android 1.6 rather than upgrading to 2.1 or 2.2. I was not impressed. I wanted to find a song from an album but all MediaScape wants to show me on the opening screen is recently played, recently added, most played, and shuffle. You have to press one more button to find the album lists. And if you somehow get the wrong album art loaded, no amount of cajoling with get the system to recognize the new and better album art. Weak. I have turned to using MixZing for music and find this app is much better at presenting just the information I need and even shows the player in the Notification bar making access a snap.
TimeScape was fun, but the tiles are not easy to work with. One kind of touch brings them to the forefront. Another kind of touch allows you to jump to the source. Pressing infinity is supposed to link to the other methods of locating that contact. And somehow grabbing the upper left side allows you to delete a tile (the information remains, but only the tile is no longer displayed). I managed to perform this once, and have since lost the magic touch required to remove a tile from the lineup.
Timescape would be a great place to have your home page if it worked all the time. But it sometimes hangs up or hiccups for a second and makes you forget that this is supposed to be a high-spec machine. The spinning and reassembling looks cool the first time, and becomes tedious after a while when you just want the data.
So what about YouTube and Google? YouTube plays wonderfully on the device. The App that handles YouTube gives great results over the high-speed DoCoMo network. But I have been unable to store videos as bookmarks or in favorites. I also cannot download YouTube video to my device using this App. Othewise, no complaints at all about performance or quality of the YouTube App. The Google Map and Google Searches work splendidly. Especially when combined with the GPS and network locating services.
But the keyboard input does not lend itself to praise. The autocomplete and autocorrect are not very good…and that is disappointing considering how difficult it is to land on the tiny keys and always get the letter you want. Turning the phone sideways gives slightly larger keys, but then the page you are typing disappears and you no longer have any hints about what the field is that you are filling in. Only the field is visible–the rest of the page is no longer displayed until you complete your entry or return to portrait mode. I ported the HTC keyboard to the Xperia and experience a much better keyboard, much better autocorrect, and a nicer layout. However, I lost the ability to input Japanese characters and there was no quick method to switch to the Japanese keyboard from the HTC keyboard. However, this proves to me that the limitation is in the App, and not in the device.
Battery life was much shorter than on my existing DoCoMo cell phone. But of course, using the SmartPhone for every feature I was placing much greater demands on the battery. At least I can purchase a spare battery that I can swap when the juice runs low. With a lot of download access, GPS, WiFi, and 3G access, I found that I get about 9 hours of use. After a few charge cycles, I can now even get upwards of 12 hours (with less use of 3G, WiFi, and GPS). But still nothing stellar. I would like to be able to go at least 24 hours without a charge and still have decent use of 3G, the GPS, WiFi, etc.
The screen looks marvelous, even with the original screen protector in place. Removing the obvious screen protector reveals a sticky screen that seems to collect greasy fingerprints and scratches. At first, I thought the scratches in the screen were in the glass, but on close inspection, there is another screen protector beneath the upper, obvious one that is intended to be removed. This lower level protector is much harder to remove, but it can be removed if you work from the edges. This lower protector is thick and apparently is not present in all markets. It is definitely on the Japan phone.
With all of these issues, you might think this phone is not worth the effort. But it does have a bright side. It is the infinite updateable, upgradable device…so any flaws should be easy to overcome with a simple App download right Well….
If you want more real estate and more features on your desktop, you can turn to?apps like “Home++”, “Panda Home”, “Open Home”, “atHome”, “SweeterHome”, “DxTop”, etc. I tried Home++ and Panda Home and liked them very much. Great features and awesome ideas for interfaces. Really well thought out. But they seemed to slow down overal performance of the phone an cause additional non-specific hangups. I removed them from my phone despite my great interest in their features.
I also tried several dialers. Some improved on the way calls were handled, but none had superlative interfaces. I liked “JBook 2″ the best of these for handling English and Japanese contacts. It has alphabet on the left and hiragana on the right.
If you don’t mind lower res photos, Toy Camera produced nice images and somehow allowed the shutter process to work more efficiently. (Probably because of the smaller file size, images saved faster, improving performance).
Juice Defender and Juice Plotter were great additions to help solve the battery drain problem. But these also gave me interesting non-specific errors that were difficult to repeat. I have removed these programs for the time being to help identify the culprit of my non-specific problems.
And “MyDoCoMo” allowed me to view my bill in real time. A real bonus.
Where MediaScape fell short, “MixZing” came to the rescue. An awesome app to control and play your music.
Raziko is a great way to get all your FM stations in noise-free perfection. Even better than an FM tuner and you can listen while on the subway platform. Goes beyond regular radio since the screen displays the program and sometimes even the song playing.
As an update to this brief review, I took my phone in to DoCoMo today to have it replaced with an identical model. This was to hopefully solve a series of random Force Close errors and stuck clock in the status bar. I will give this new phone another couple of weeks. But I don’t think this is the phone for me. I may just have to revert to my old standby Keitai and part with this attempt at smart phone.
Only time will tell.
Aloha, Dylan
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I’m sending Tweets, IM’ing on Facebook, chatting on Skype while listening to tunes provided by Youtube and Pandora. And that’s just the background stuff. I”m also reading, researching and typing up my Thesis and preparing for my defense while sending e-mails for work and notifying friends of my upcoming graduation. Hold for a minute while I take this call from my Skype autoforward….Dial a number in Tokyo, get me anywhere in the world….The plain, simple cell-phone that hangs from my belt seems so 2000. No apps, no wi-fi, no mega screen.
What next? I hope that I can drop the keyboard and just think the words onto the screen….
Popularity: 13%
Ushahidi geo-locating service for Haiti Earthquake response
Ushahidi means witness in Swahili. In 2008, software designers built this open-source product to track elections in Africa and protect civilians by allowing volunteers to report areas of violence so that the population could avoid these areas.
In January 12, 2010 the Earthquake in Haiti brought a whole new use to this product. People were trapped and needed a way to ask for help. In increasing numbers, they turned to their cell phones. Text messages, Twitter Blogs, Facebook posts….social networks were exploding with requests for help and reports of people in need. But who would see these messages? Who would get this information to the rescuers on the ground? How do you put all this data together?
Patrick, a Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy PhD student who was involved with the Ushahidi project immediately saw an opporunity to combine the power of the Internet and the the powerful mapping and geo-locating ability of Ushahidi. The US Government had just declasified and released Global Hawk images that were immediately combined with maps. 10-year old mapping data, Lonely Planet Guide books, OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and Google Images were combined with information from hundreds of student volunteers who scoured the internet for social media and reports. The Haiti diaspora volunteered thousands to help translate Kreole messages into English and provide local knowledge of the land and localisms. People came together to add software solutions to combine with the human brain power that became the network that was critical in deciphering the bits and pieces of information as people tried to get help to their loved ones. The Ushahidi Platform system relied heavily on all this information. Crowd sourcing helped drive reliable twitter reporters to limit the false alarms. The US Government and other aid agencies then began to rely on the pooled information that Ushahidi was providing. Several partners on the ground set up a 4636 text number that could gather the messages. The damage was done in Haiti. The power of volunteers fought to save lives.
Through volunteers combing the Internet in a basement cell at Fletcher School, and others spread across the world, information was correlated, confirmed, and then delivered to the rescuers to save lives. This was the first time this tool was used in this manner. And the timing was critical. The UN was completely wiped out, hundreds stationed in Haiti died when one building collapsed. The experts who would have been relied upon to provide the critical knowledge needed to expedite the relief effort were the ones who needed relief and were not able to help.
Thanks to Fletcher volunteers, many of those lives were saved.
(c) Dylan Monaghan
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If I was in charge of the calendar, you would not have to remember if you had 30 or 31 days in the month. You see, right now, we have 12 months that we have attempted to squeeze into 365.242199 days. The Egyptians started this tradition of 12 months each with 30 days. But as you have probably already figured out, this got out of sync pretty quickly. Winter appears in the Summer months after about 700 years. So that won’t work out for those who like to make simple plans. They added leap years and rules, but still stuck to the inefficient 12-month, guess-what-day-of-the-week it is system.
Well I’m going to solve all that. You see, I am creating my own calendar. It’s really simple. See if you can follow along with me:
There are 365 days in the year. This translates into just over 52 7-day weeks in a year, or 26 14-day weeks. There are exactly 26 letters in the English alphabet! Coincidence? I think not! So in my calendar, there will be 26 months identified a-z and each month will have 14 days. Military Folks can identify the months with their Alpha-Beta-Charlie identification, Travel agents can name cities and states like Alaska-Berlin-Cairns. And since each month will start on the same day of the week, everyone will always know that the 1st is a Monday. No need to check the calendar to be sure. You would send an e-mail to a friend to meet on Monday Alpha 01 or Monday Alpha 08. No one would ever make a mistake on the day of the week ever again. Easy right? When is my birthday? Tango 03. Would be the same day of the week every year. O.K., someoone is asking about the extra day. What do I plan to do with the extra day?
Easy, that is just an extra Sunday. Leap year? Two extra Sunday’s The Extra days will always be Zulu days. So you could have Zulu 15 or Zulu 16, but they would always be Sundays. So you could have 3 Sundays in a row. But Alpha 01 would always be a Monday.
26 Months in the Year. A simple idea who’s time has come. Remember, you heard it here first!
D
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I’ve always enjoyed art. Art of all kinds. I am drawn to artists (unintended, but well placed pun!) and truly enjoy their work. My favorites would be Dali, Gaudi, Albert Daniel, Joe Dowson, and Escher. While in the Hague, I took a stroll through the Escher museum. Interesting journey through the mind of a graphic artist.
I also must make mention of the young artists. Deviant Art is a great place to view good, modern art. 
Leah’s art and photography caught my eye. She just left Tokyo but as you can tell, she wishes she was back in the vibrant city that never sleeps.
Joe Dowson is one of my favorite native Hawaiian artists.
And so many more. Who is your favorite artist?
Popularity: 11%
Someday, someone is going to figure out that I don’t like iPods. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the convenience of digital music. I like what the iPod has done to music. And I think the design is a cool and refreshing device whose time has come. But it is not perfect. And I am looking for something a little cooler, a little more in tune with the way I listen to music.
And one of my major complaints about the iPod is the way I get the music into the little box. In order to play CDs that I own, I must sync my iPod to a single computer, and spend hours ripping the hundreds of CDs into that machine. Further, if the album is duplicated in the CD database, or if it is stored in a manner that is not to my liking, I have to spend some time editing the entry, genre, album name etc. I just don’t have the desire to spend this kind of time. I wish someone could just take all of my CDs, put them into a memory storage device, with the album covers, and then send me the whole device. Ultimately, this device would be portable and plugable. I should be able to copy these tunes to my car, my home stereo, my office desk, and anywhere else I might want to listen to music. I don’t want to be tied to an iPod. I don’t want to carry my iPod. I don’t even want an iPhone. I want to go as simple as possible…
And while walking around one of the shopping centers in Den Haag, I found a Bang & Olfsen store. For those of you not familiar with this high-end brand of audio equipment, don’t bother price shopping. This brand comes up with some of the best fidelity, and truly unique style of music machines. I loved their vertical CD player.
I walked into the store and told the salesman what I was looking for. He walked me right over to the $8,000 digital music system. I fell in love the instant I heard the concept. They take my CDs, covert them to a lossless format, upload them to a box, and then give me a stereo system that would meet most of my needs. Most, but not all.
I found the organization system great. The concept of matching songs was neat–you pick the first song, the machine picks all other songs that match the beat and style and unending music begins to play in a way you’ve never heard before.
I like this system! But I want an iPod price…
D
http://www.bang-olufsen.com/beosound5
Popularity: 13%
Lucy 222
While I’ve been away from my blog (last post was three months ago!) I discovered that exactly 222 Casinos sent me comments. I beleive this is a lucky omen, although I probably should have waited until that number was 777 before I deleted their comments…..But I digress,
The number 2 is pronunced futatsu when counting things in Japanese. It is often abbreviated as “fu” when used as a compound or when reading specialized license plates in Japan. So 222 = “Fu Fu Fu”…which is the Japanese way of making a snide laugh. Kind of like “Ha Ha Ha” in English. So the joke is on the Casinos? I don’t think so. Someone is paying for all that oppulence….I don’t think it comes from the kindness of their hearts. So why then, do tell me why, we continue to try to beat the odds and play games of chance that are rigged against us. Do we somehow hope beyond hope that we will be the one lucky winner? That somehow we will emerge on top?
Well, it turns out that if you are addicted to gambling and games of chance, chances are you will NEVER be cured. It is hard-wired into your system. And it turns out that it is males ages 16-24 that are most easily hooked. And once hooked, 4% remain hooked for life. So if you are one of those who is “hooked” can you ever go “straight” again?
Well that depends. If you really, really want to quit, then there is only one way. You MUST quit cold turkey. You can never gamble EVER again. Once you take a sip from the well, it tastes so good you have to go back for more. Don’t tempt fate. If you really want to quit, you must find the reasons within you. You must understand that you are hard-wired for this weakness. If you really don’t want to lose your family, your job, your real friends (not your compulsive gambler friends) you have to quit cold turkey. NO ifs ands or buts….
Go search the web for what ails you….but just don’t touch the stuff. It will draw you back into its fold and you will never be released. I hope that you can recover.
D
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