imchrisblanco

HTC Fest: Evo Design 4g, Amaze 4G, & Dropbox Partnership!

2011-10-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

HTC has been busy lately, when its not signing checks to Microsoft they are partnering with Beats Audio and most recently, Dropbox. Here's a look at two new devices and what that partnership with Dropbox means to you:

HTC Evo Design 4g (Sprint):

While the original Evo 4g was my first android phone and will always have a special place in my heart, the Evo Design improves in nearly every facet of its older brother. The Design has 4in screen (sweet spot!) and qHD display and a 1.2 ghz Snapdragon. The upgrade in pixels and shrinking of the screen means the pixels are jam packed and actually display more information than the original Evo by virtue of the increase in pixels. The device is all black and has a brushed aluminum battery cover that gives the device an expensive look and feel, and the device is not too much larger than the latest iPhone.

This device is launching with Gingerbread and Sense 3.0, mind you Sense 3.5 is launching on a variety of HTC phones but apparently not for this middling device. While it is a budget friendly $99 on contract, this adds to my fragmentation frustration. The camera on this device is a 5mp that is capable of taking nice stills and up 720p video. None of that compares to whats up next.. battery life: HTC knocked it out of the park on this device. I am not longer thinking about single core, GPU, blah blah because this device and its standard 1,520 mAh battery can last well over 24 hours. The standby on the Design 4g allow for your phone to barely sip battery life when not in use, providing well over a day's worth, which is more than I can say for my iPhone.

I'm on Sprint and this device is quite appealing to me, the battery life, the $99 price tag, qHD and my favorite, 4in screen! I don't care about dual core as much as I do up to date software and seeing that the Design is launching with Sense 3.0 I don't see a bright update rich future for it, that being said it looks like a great device and a steal compared to other $99 phones.

HTC Amaze 4g (T-Mobile):

Much like the recently released HTC Sensation, the Amaze 4g offers many of the same aesthetics with a 4.3in Super LCD and qHD resolution. Physical buttons include the usual except for a camera and a camcorder button. I don't believe I have seen this before but the best camera is the one you have so why not make access to pictures and videos lightning fast. As seen in the second picture, the phone maintains a silver and white frame offset by the black LCD, and looks rather sharp. The Amaze 4g has a look similar to the Nexus One and its a look I am quite fond of, a unibody-ish design that feels great in the hand. The white battery cover is plastic and is quite slippery, although in white phones in general, fingerprints are much better camouflaged than with black phones, but a soft touch or matte finish would have been more amazing than a glossy white.

Without getting into whats 4g and whats Faux G, this 4g phone is able to connect to T-Mobiles new 42mbps (theoretical) speeds and the battery has been beefed up to 1,730 mAh to handle the drain 4g has. Under the hood the 1.5 ghz Snapdragon and 3/4 gig ram (seriously why not just go for the full gig) keep Sense and Android 2.3.4 running smoothly. Once again this is Sense 3.0 not 3.5 that runs on (and only on?) the HTC Rhyme (codename: The Female Phone). The camera settings have been tuned up for this phone including Panoramic pictures, macro, and other sought after features and takes rather crisp images. The video portion of the camera can shoot up to 1080p but the default is set at 960x540 so that is plays at full resolution on the phone. Oh and not mentioned too much, is the fact that this phone comes with NFC, giving it a bit of futureproofing once Google unveils Google Wallet for the rest of the NFC equipped phones other than just Sprints version of the Nexus S 4g. Overall the phone looks pretty stellar and offers many of todays specs but at this point, everyone is better off holding off to see when and where the Galaxy Nexus lands.

Dropbox:

HTC has announced its partnership with Dropbox to preload it on all of its new phones coupled with 5gb of free storage! That is pretty nice considering after ages of sending out invites and linking my .edu email I am still sub 5gb. No word on what devices will be grandfathered into this deal but no matter what this is exciting. Dropbox makes transferring files between devices seamless and intuitive. Now with Beats Audio exclusive and the Dropbox partnership HTC is able to deliver awesome value-added and differentiation without needing to tweak software, however I don't see Sense dying any time soon, no matter how much I'd like it to.

Nokia Lumia 800 (Nokia N9)

2011-10-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Nokia has finally launched... excuse me announced its first Windows Phone 7.5 Mango phone the Lumia 800. If it looks familiar thats because its nearly identical to the Meego running device the N9 that launched many months ago in Europe. The Lumia 800 does ad an external camera button as well as repositioning the flash to above the camera, but other than that they are identical. Where they differ is that Meego OS is dead (I still want an N9) and WP7.5 Mango is a promising and slick OS. Mango has brought a ton of great features to window phones but this is the first release since the unholy alliance of Microsoft and Nokia, and Nokia offers slight differentiation than other windows OEM's. First of all Nokia is bringing Nokia Drive, the first turn-by-turn navigation on the platform, Nokia Music that offers online radio stations and Mix Radio, as well as ESPN's Sports Hub. While all those things sound great and promising, was this really worth abandoning your own OS for? So that you can install your navigation, music and sports hub?

While I am a fan on Windows Phone Mango, I am not a fan on the hit the specs took for the worse.

Nokia Lumia 800 Nokia N9

Price (on contract)	$585+	$650+
Processor	1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255	1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3860
Display	3.7-inch curved AMOLED Gorilla Glass 800 x 480	3.9-inch curved AMOLED Gorilla Glass 854 x 480
Primary camera	8 megapixel dual-LED flash	8 megapixel dual-LED flash
Front-facing camera	none	VGA
Video recording	720p at 30fps	720p at 30fps
Cellular	quadband UMTS / HSPA (14.4Mbps) quadband GSM	pentaband UMTS / HSPA (14.4Mbps) quadband GSM
WiFi	802.11 b/g/n	802.11 a/b/g/n
NFC	No	Yes
Memory	512MB RAM	1GB RAM
Storage	16GB internal storage	16 / 64GB internal storage
Operating System	Windows Phone 7.5 Mango	Meego 1.2 Harmattan
Battery	1,450mAh	1,450mAh
Quoted Battery life	Up to 13 hours talk time Up to 7 hours video	Up to 11 hours talk time Up to 4.5 hours video
Weight	142g / 5.01oz	135g / 4.76oz
Thickness	12.1mm / 0.48in	12.1mm / 0.48in

Maybe its bias but I prefer TI OMAP to Qualcomm anytime, and going from 3.9in to 3.7 is a bad call, as is cutting the ram in half, but worst of all is the removal of the front facing camera (HELLO, DID MICROSOFT NOT JUST BUY SKYPE?!). One welcomed change can mainly be accredited to Windows Phone being efficient as battery life for watching videos has jumped from 4.5 hours to 7 hours with the same, 1,450 mAh.

What I do like about this phone is how attractive it is, especially how the color is on every layer of polycarbonate plastic so a nick. Say you pick the blue one and drop it, a scratch would normally expose white or silver below the color, but on the Lumia 800 the color remains consistent throughout the device. That coupled with the Gorilla Glass ClearBlack AMOLED make for a sturdy device that can withstand an impact. While this device is ergonomic and the contours of the edges give the device a slim appearance, the truth is that 12.1mm is pretty chunky. With the recently announced Motorola RAZR measure just 7.1mm, nearly half of this Nokia, it's hard to call it anything but a chunky monkey.

Nokia and Microsoft have team to introduce "the first real Windows Phone" device and for the most part I am excited to see sexy hardware on a buttery OS like Windows Phone but I certainly have my reservations that keep me from even considering buying this off contract. In the days of dual core, high pixel density, and app catalogues that take advantage of all that; Windows Phones and Nokia sadly fall behind. The worst part is that this phone was announced in summer and a US release date is being pushed to early 2012, by then who knows what phones will be out and how old this device will look.

Lighting Review: Cobra Universal Car Mount

2011-10-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Arriving at the end of midterm week, I was very excited to try out the relatively new Cobra mini mount. To give some background this is my 3rd car mount. My first was a universal mount for my HTC Evo that was vent mounted, I continued to use this throughout my tenure with my Nexus S. Upon switching to the iPhone I wanted a sleeker mount that was more form fitting, so I purchased an iPhone 4 mount. This worked well until I wanted to use offline navigation from my Nexus S and it wasn't compatible. Enter Cobra mount with Ever-last Breakaway technology, what the mouthful of a title equates to is a very stick surface that holds your phone firmly in place without leaving behind any sticky residue.

My first impressions were great, I liked the compactness as well as the fact you can put any device on there, not to mention it looks really good compared to other mounts. Upon first installing the unit you want to make sure you clean off the area of your car you would like to mount it, I used some rubbing alcohol and micro fiber cloth. After that, the installation is as easy as pealing off the sticker, firmly pressing down, and lowering the lever in the back. When trying to peel off the factory sticker you get an idea of just how sticky this ever-last is, I certainly gave me confidence that it wasn't going anywhere. But I have to admit that at first I was hesitant to try out my iPhone 4s on the dock and elected to instead use my Nexus S as the tester.

The first drive I deliberately tried giving my Civic the fast & furious treatment and take corners faster than I normally would, and the Cobra handled them better than my car did. On the way home I switched the iPhone into the dock and it stuck without giving an inch. Now where things get less than perfect is the removal of the phone. Maybe it was my technique but I had to use two hands to remove the phone to make sure I didn't uplift the base. Sufficient stickiness to hold the phone in place, but just slightly difficult to take off. Now I have read online that some users have suffered from reduced stickiness with continual use so I am re-applying my Cobra sticker to ensure the sticky portion is covered in dust when not in use.

Overall I am a big fan of the Cobra mini mount. Its compact, stylish, securely holds the phone, and can be had at Amazon for the steal of a price of $19.99. Out of all the mounts I have owned this is definitely my favorite and I've even read people have mounted tablets on the Cobra mount and it kept them snugly attached to the mount. I will update this review in a week to see how it holds up against day-to-day use.

The F word in Android (Fragmentation)

2011-10-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

While this chart does not show every Android phone produced, it gives a chilling image at how big a problem fragmentation is and the need to solve this issue. The walled garden approach from Apple has ensured each device is running the latest and greatest of iOS, contrary to the open-source Android that puts its OS on a large range of devices but doesn't quite ensure each of them will be able to get the latest updates.

Android is open-source and available for anyone to put on any device without Google saying a word, however in order to be a Google-certified device (Market, Maps, etc.) you need to abide by at least some of Googles rules, so why not put more enforcement and restriction on update guidelines. Personally, this and the speed at which devices become nearly obsolete [looking at you Samsung Galaxy Epic Touch 4g] results in lower consumer satisfaction and lackluster consistency throughout the user experience. Most of fragmentation is the result of OEM's slapping their own skin on top of Android to differentiate themselves in software rather than hardware. HTC's Sense added a lot of sexiness in the early days of Android but now more closely resembles a circus. Too much weather splashing across the screen, too much carousel, just too much. Samsungs Touchwiz was an iOS KIRF for quite some time but recently added widget resizing (now native to ice cream sandwich) and some other neat features, but again, not the "pure Google experience." Between skins and carriers adding bloatware, update cycles have been horrendous.

My heart goes out to Thunderbolt owners... once the joy of being the first 4g LTE phone wore off, you were stuck with Android 2.2 Froyo (March 10 release), 3 months after Google had already announced 2.3 Gingerbread. The date is now October 28th, with Google recently announcing the largest and best innovation to Android, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, yet the Thunderbolt owners are just now receiving OTA updates for Gingerbread! Why not just scrap 2.3 and move right into 4.0? How long will it take to get 4.0? Questions like these remind me that if I'm using its Android, its Nexus or nothing.

Enough picking on HTC, I also want to mention a slightly stranger scenario, one in which LG introduced the G2X to T-Mobile boasting the first Dual-Core Tegra 2 chip, 512mb ram and best of all, a pure Google experience with no skins, just vanilla version of Gingerbread. Today LG announced that the G2X will NOT be receiving the upgrade to 4.0 ICS, it baffles me that a phone that was released less than a year ago, offering vanilla Android, and with a great spec sheet is unable to upgrade to ICS. If I was an owner of the G2X I would certainly not be happy.

This annoyances or odd manufacturer decisions paints a picture that Google and Android are heading towards, if not completely submerged, in a fragmentation dilemma. My personal hopes are that Google and recently purchased Motorola collaborate on a series of pure Google phones (any finally kill Motoblur), and push the industry in the right direction. ICS is so sleek and boasts so many features that skins like Sense and Touchwiz are outdated in comparison, and slapping them on the next generation of Android phones would be detrimental to the future. Yes, the numbers already prove me wrong, Android is growing at a ridiculous pace but they must enforce that 18 months update policy they mentioned at Google IO this year.

Phones for Tomorrow

2011-10-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

This blog will follow my take on the latest and greatest that technology has to offer.

Today I am looking at the best of the phones on the market or soon to market, and obviously a lot depends on whom your carrier is but regardless competition is heating up between manufacturers. Personally I think the top 3 are: iPhone 4s, Galaxy Nexus, and Droid RAZR

iPhone 4S:

While the specs might show its processor as a middling phone, the truth is in the software. There the entire system has been made in house and optimized to make the 800 mhz processor whip the 1.2 ghz Exynos in the Galaxy S2 when loading web pages. This phone however is the only one not to offer LTE, for some that may be a deal breaker but personally, LTE is a total drain on battery with marginal benefits unless you are out downloading films while your cruising the town. Until the next generation of LTE proves to be efficient with power, I am holding off on being excited about it. This bias may comes from my disdain of my current sub 3g speeds the iPhone 4S is getting on Sprint but I regress. While iOS brought over 200 new features, many of them were already native to Android, like not needing a PC in order to start using your phone, the notification center, and a much needed upgrade to notifications. The iPhone does have the smallest screen but because of that, it is the most pocketable of the bunch and the smaller footprint is welcomed in my jeans.

Droid RAZR:

This phone totally intrigues me and if it didn't have MotoBlargh I would be lusting for this phone. It is disgustingly thin, measuring only 7.1mm, making the iPhone look chunky at 9.3mm. I mean I thought the iPhone was slim, I can't even fathom how this feels in the hand and in the pocket. If you are a person that drops your phone a lot, then this is the phone for you. The back is made from Kevlar, yes the bulletproof vest stuff, however Motorola goes out of its way to make sure you don't try and stop bullets with this phone. Furthermore this phone has been dipped in some high tech fluids to cover all the circuits from water damage and Gorilla Glass to protect from drops and falls. The phone has a very fast CPU, TI makes awesome phone processors as proven by the next Nexus using TI as well. The display on the RAZR will be awesome as well, qHD and Super AMOLED Advanced should be plenty sexy, offering tremendous colors and wide viewing angles. Add an 8mp camera with 1080p video, a slim and light package that somehow manages to fit an LTE antenna inside to offer Verizon's 4g is a highly compelling package that may even steal some thunder from the Nexus. However, the RAZR suffers from the same exact issue from every Android phone that isn't the Nexus, FRAGMENTATION! This phone was announced 9 hours before Google and Samsung released Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus. No announcement of when the RAZR will receive ICS and not to mention that ICS does away with physical hardware buttons, something the RAZR still has unfortunately.

Galaxy Nexus:

The new beast has come to down. Google likes to set the standard with its Nexus devices, and the bar has been set high. The phone is 4.65' in of HD goodness, HOWEVER I have learned this screen manages those extra pixels by using a Pentile Matrix pixel arrangement which is basically cheating. Meaning you are more likely to see pixels when zoomed in, moreso than the "magazine" quality on the Retina Display. Nonetheless, the phone does away with physical buttons and allows for the 4.65in to not take much more real estate than the 4.3in form factor. ICS looks awesome, the zero shutter between pictures and the overall refinement shown throughout the system finally makes Android look sexy. Mr. Duarte has taken a lot of ideas from his time at WebOS and brought over to android as shown with all the swiping throughout the system, especially noticeable in the notification bar where you can now triage through your notifications. The Nexus packs the same 1gb of ram as the RAZR, double that of the iPhone 4S, but still only has a 5mp camera. From the examples I have seen the camera looks fantastic but I still wonder why GoogSam opted for a lower megapixel camera in a day when 8mp has become the norm. It seems anticlimactic for a flagship device that is to set the standard for all phones to follow. Regardless, this phone is a beast and still manages to be slimmer than the iPhone while maintaining the ergonomic contoured display that fits the face great.

Takeaway:

All of these phones are great. It's coming down to which OS is preferred and that's a toss up as iOS 5 is pretty damn great and Ice Cream Sandwiches promises refinement and power. I currently own the iPhone 4S and love it but I recently traded for another Nexus S so that I can try out ICS when it comes out, so you can't really go wrong with any of these.

My Sprint iPhone 4s Review

2011-10-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

So Sprint finally brings the iPhone to the Now Network, and its a mixed bag. I originally switched to Sprint after AT&T's iPhone and network work quite a disappointment, and the HTC Evo was a beast unmatched before. Its hard to believe that less than a year ago the Evo was not only the first "4g" phone but also the first 4.3'' android phone. After feudal attempts to extend the battery of the Evo and customizing it to the limit, I decided it was time for the "pure Google experience" and purchased an out-of-upgrade Nexus S 4g. While I loved the Nexus S and I still think the size is perfect with its 4' screen; its existence on Sprint has been littered with less than stellar network connections. Fast forward to today, the iPhone 4s sits very pretty in my palm, and its rather bitter sweet.

Hardware / Software:

The iPhone 4s is nearly identical to the iPhone 4, with only slight variation of antenna that intelligently switches depending on how your holding it, finally ending the "death grip". While the 3.5'' screen does feel a little small, the ips display looks awesome from every angle, and the retina display still has the highest pixel of any phone after over a year on the market. The main attractions of the 4s are certainly the blazing fast A5 chip, the upgraded 8mp camera that shoots 1080p, and Siri.

The A5 chip inside the iPhone 4s makes everything feel buttery smooth. I have experienced how powerful the chip is first hand from using the iPad 2 as my daily driver, erasing the line of a desktop vs. tablet experience in terms of load time and performance. On the iPhone the A5 makes web pages load faster, apps launch speedier, and allows for the camera to record excellent 1080p video. Speaking of the camera, it takes astonishing good stills. The colors are vibrant and the upgraded sensor can pick up a ton of light in low-light conditions. I previously thought my 5mp Nexus S took really nice stills that were on par with the iPhone 4's camera, but after comparing the 4s to the Nexus S, it wasn't even close. The 4s takes much more detailed pictures, sometimes megapixels mean nothing but in the case of the iPhone 4s, they are certainly put to use.

Siri is the humble personal assistant that schedules meets, sets alarms and helps with text dictation. I found siri the most useful in setting alarms. Holding down the home button from a couple seconds launched siri and simply saying "wake me up at 8" gets a response of "OK, I've set your alarm for 8am" as easy as that. The same is true for locations or getting directions. The only time Siri isn't useful is when the network is to congested which renders it completely useless but I'll get to that later. Voice commands isn't new and Android has been doing it since Froyo but never have you been able to speak so naturally or carry a "conversation" with your phone. You can remind it whom your wife, brother, etc. and it will remember so the next time you say call my... it does just that. Siri is from what I can remember, Apple's first release of a beta product. While that has been a big knock against Google which releases everything in Beta and has the world be its testers, Apple is a lot more meticulous than that. Siri must have been good-enoughand well, it is good-enough, not great but definitely good-enough.

Network:

Oh Sprint. The only network that markets have unlimited data but the asterisk doesn't tell you that is Edge data not 3g. I've run over a hundred Speedtest on my iPhone 4s from the exact location that I have taken it in the past and I am seeing half the speed of before. Where I would consistently get .7-.9 mbps, I am now seeing .2-.4 mbps, in case your wondering the threshold for 3g is .6-1.2 mbps. I went in to Sprint today to see if my phone was an outlier but the rep confirmed my fear, that these speeds were the new norm. Sometimes it isn't noticeable, until it is. When an app takes over 5 minutes to install, thats a fail for you Sprint. When I keep seeing the circle of Edge on the top left corner, thats a fail again. Overall, I am pretty let down on the speeds but I've been monitoring my data and there is NO way I can go to a tiered plan, so c'mon Sprint, prove you serve a purpose other than a future duopoly with Verizon.

Overall:

The iPhone 4s is sick, and I love it. But everybody is different and in the age of 4.65 in displays that feature 720p displays (I'm looking at you Galaxy Nexus), I understand if a grid of icons and a 3.5 in display feel bland to you. The thing about Android is, within months the Galaxy Nexus will look like trash compared to the competitors. The product cycle on Android is not consistent with my upgrade cycle with Sprint. If I could update every 6 months, I would probably stick with Android but on the 2 year cycle, the iPhone makes so much more sense because when my contract is up, it will be right in time for the iPhone 5s.