Ever since Apple announced the iPhone 4S having “A5″ processor, everyone has been pointing to the below image from a test run by Anandtech and saying that the iPhone 4S will be twice as strong as the Samsung Galaxy S2. I beg to differ.

AnandTech's GPU Comparison Featuring SGX543 MP2 and Mali 400

While the above test doesn’t have any discrepancy, one major thing is that the SGX 543MP2 results are from an iPad 2 (a tablet) while the Mali 400 results are from a smartphone. Thus, we can’t readily take this to directly and accurately predict the comparison results for iPhone 4S because there are other things to consider:

1. Mali-400 lags behing SGX543MP2 in “offscreen” tests which are done for resolutions greater than native SGS2 resolution (SGS 2 resolution is 800×480 while test is done at 720p) and brute triangle pushing. Samsung didn’t have to optimize their GPU implementation for this because SGS2 was never going to run a game at 720p resolution and would also need to push lesser triangles for similar detail. Hence they could easily make this trade-off to get lesser power consumption and heat generation

2. Mali-400 goes hand in hand with SGX543MP2 in all other tests as seen on glbenchmark.com

3. It is naive to think that the same SGX543MP2 implementation as iPad 2 will be present in iPhone 4S. Even if iPhone 4S is slated to have “A5″, a lot depends on the actual clock speeds (CPU and GPU), graphics memory, etc. Apple will do similar trade offs like Samsung (and Apple has already done this with A4 in iPad 1 vs iPhone 4) and the real results would be available only then.

So,  the end result is that we will have the real comparison only when iPhone 4S is out.

PS: Not that the results matter anyways since firstly, the comparisons should now be moving to upcoming Nexus Prime and not SGS2 and secondly, the raw power of these GPUs won’t determine much since they cater to two completely different OSs and would have a lot of software and ecosystem dependencies on the user-perceived outcome.

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled SGX 543MP2 vs Mali-400: Is iPhone 4S GPU Really Twice As Strong As SGS 2?, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Samsung just uploaded a teaser video to Youtube which hints at the upcoming Android phone Nexus Prime with IceCream Sandwich. It has a sideways glance at what people believe is the Nexus Prime. I’ll deconstruct the image a bit.

Nexus Prime Image in Samsung's Video

Nexus Prime Image enhanced by an engadget user

The things to take away from here:

1. The phone will have a curved display like Nexus S

2. It has a power button on the side (right side, since it’s marked with the power icon)

3. The interesting thing however is the 3 dots on the left side. People claim that it could be related to camera or volume controls or even speaker grills. But I think that they are for dock connection. Anyone who has owned a Nexus One has seen the same 3 gold dots on the bottom used for dock connection. I believe that on Nexus Prime they have been moved to the side mainly because Prime has (or is supposed to have) a 16:9 screen and hence the optimal placement in a dock would be horizontal and hence the sideways placement.

Let me know what you think

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Deconstructing The Samsung Nexus Prime Video, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

I bet all of you know about grooveshark, the awesome music service. And sharkzapper is a cool chrome extension that puts the control and information about anything playing in your grooveshark chrome tab into a little button on the address bar. It is a very good extension but I felt that what it was missing was lyrics. Before I could comment on the extension’s chrome market page, I noticed that it has a github repository. “Open Source”, oh joy. So, I forked the repository and after some hacking around, I’ve now added support for automatic searching and fetching of the currently playing song into the sharkzapper popup window and it updates itself whenever the song changes.

What was even cooler that I learnt a bit about using YQL in the process

I’ve sent in a pull request to the author of the extension to the original author of the extension to merge this code. In the meanwhile, if you would like to try this out, you can hit up my github repository, download the code and install into chrome by enabling developer mode and choosing “Load unpacked extension”.

Happy listening

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Adding Lyrics to SharkZapper for Grooveshark, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

This is a solution to the issue that I faced today while installing a javascript file from userscripts.org as an extension into google chrome (Yes, Chrome supports installing greasemonkey javascripts as extensions). I had already installed this script once into my browser earlier but when I tried installing it again today, it started giving me a weird error “Could not read source file”. I tried all possible means, like putting it on a different server, installing from local disk, changing versions, deleting all cache, etc but still the issue persisted.

Finally looking into the source code of the chromium browser svn repository, I got a clue. What google chrome does when you install a script as installation is that it first downloads the script, then it calls a function ConvertUserScriptToExtension to convert the script into a google chrome compatible script and then installs it. Now, since I had already installed this script once, I found that the script was already existing in my downloads directory, so while downloading chrome renames it to <file>(1).js (i.e., appends a number to it to distinguish from the original file). But it seems like that the path sent to the conversion function still uses the original name/path and it somehow finds that the older file is not the downloaded one but also doesn’t know which is the current downloaded one and hence fails with an error “Could not read source file”.

Solution: Pretty simple. Just delete the original file present in your download directory and then try installing the script and it will install fine

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Chrome Script/Extension installation error: Could not read source file, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Swype just released their latest beta version 3.25 for Android phones but most of the folks are facing a “parse error” while trying to update to the latest version. If you are one of such folks, there is a simple solution that I just tried and got working. Instead of updating from the swype installer, you need to update manually. Uninstall your existing swype, then uninstall the existing swype installer on your phone. Then head over to http://beta.swype.com/android/get (from your android phone) and download and install the new swype installer again. Then open the new swype installer and use it to update to the latest version. Done . And I must say the new version is pretty spiffy

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Swype 3.25 Beta Pre-release Parse Error Solution, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

This post is about my open source remote bandwidth usage stats logger project.

I’ve been wanting to log the internet bandwidth usage at my home for quite some time since I don’t really find the stats put out by my ISP to be completely accurate. But I have multiple devices at home that access the internet so it is not feasible to install a bandwidth monitor individually on all these devices as I’d still need to add up all logs and many of such devices don’t even have a way to install a monitoring software installed (e.g. my PS3, my TV, my media players, etc). So, I thought of monitoring the usage at my router. It is a smart one (Asus wl-500w) and I can install various linux software on it but then it requires a hard disk to run most of them which I don’t turn on all the time. Moreover, even if I could run the software directly from router flash, it doesn’t have enough space to store the logs (neither is it a good idea to keep writing to the flash often).

Hence I came up with the idea of a light weight remote bandwidth usage logger where in the router has to do the bare minimum possible (here, it just has to make a GET call to a webpage with current status of received and transmitted bytes, accomplished by a single line of wget command). The system is completely open source and is intelligent enough to keep track of things even if router reboots or the bytes count wraps around the 4 GB limit (because of 32 bit data structures used). The logging and parsing is all done on server side and provides various useful things.

Few of the features of the system:

• Very lightweight in CPU/RAM resource usage on host as well as server
• Outputs easy to browse html and graphs
• User defined directory structure to decide the granularity that is wanted
• yearly, monthly, daily stats and graphs
• Provides quick access to extra stats like last time the host connected, last known host IP etc
• Provides total download/upload numbers as well as detailed
• Estimates uptime of remote host
• Can use a DNS name or IP to avoid (or call out) spurious amounts of usage logged by a spurious IP

Remote Bandwidth Stats Yearly Stats

Remote Bandwidth Stats Monthly Stats

Remote Bandwidth Stats Daily Stats

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Remote Bandwidth Stats, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

My project Kinect on PS3 got featured in this month’s Chip magazine . They have a special gaming edition of Chip Insider which featured the project along with a 2 page interview of mine. If you buy chip, do look out for it on pages 46 and 47. I also have a scanned image of the pages below.

Interview Page 1

Interview Page 1

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Featured in Chip India August 2011 Edition, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Recently I received Huawei Ideos U8150 phone for review. This is an Android smartphone meant for the entry level market. I had the phone for a few weeks to put it through its paces and here are some of my thoughts about it. I am not going to expand a lot on the general Android points as we all know about it but will concentrate succinctly and to-the-point on the aspects which can make it or break it for this phone against its competition in the similar price ranges.

Huawei Ideos

Display: The display is average and pretty much on par with the other handsets in this range. It’s a low resolution QVGA (320×240) screen. While it’s usable but not a brilliant one and would give a sublime web browsing experience. The brightness of the display was average as well, nothing to write home about but not below the competition either.

Touchscreen: A good thing about this handset is that it has a capacitive touchscreen. A few entry level phones skimp out on this and put a resistive touchscreen but not so with Ideos. The screen response is pretty good.

Android Version: Ideos sports Android 2.2 Froyo which is again a good thing since this is the latest I have seen in any entry/mid-level and most high end phones as well. Gingerbread is still too new and I’m happy enough with Froyo. A lot of other phones are still stuck on Eclair 2.1.

Camera: The camera is ok’ish with its 3.2 MP sensor and no LED flash. It works well for well lit subjects but is useless in dark. The quality of photos taken is average as well. Nothing extremely bad but nothing very good as well, just good enough for capturing spontaneous moments when you are not carrying your proper standalone camera with you.

Connectivity: Ideos has 802.11n wi-fi and 7.2mbps HSDPA 3G for connectivity. wi-fi connected to my router in a snap and it also has hotspot (or wireless tethering) capability for upto 8 devices. 3G connectivity was ok. Speedtest results came out to be similar to my Nexus one over both wi-fi as well as 3G.

Built: Ideos is built sturdily but looks a bit tacky with its shiny back. But then again, it’s hard to find a good looking phone in entry level smartphones which performs according to it’s looks as well. I didn’t try any drop tests on it but I’d fathom it’d easily survive any short falls. The phone is also pretty light and small, easy to pocket.

Performance: Ideos has a Qualcomm MSM7227 processor, rated at a clock speed of 528 MHz. This processor is fairly standard in almost all the entry level devices and is good enough for daily usage and most of the apps. But most games would struggle on it. If you are buying this (or any other entry level smartphone) with the correct expectations of it performing according to it’s price range, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

Web Browsing: Web browsing is mediocre on Ideos because of it’s low resolution screen, low specc’ed processor (which also results in lack of Adobe Flash). If you plan on using the browser for your web needs, don’t bet on opening any javascript heavy pages quickly and should look mostly to fill the void by using specific apps for the services you are trying to access.

Battery: The phone is good on the battery and it was able to last around 1.5-2 days on a single charge for medium usage even though it houses just a 1200 mAh. This is on-par, if not better, than most other phones in this range.

GPS: The GPS was quick to get a fix and retained it to a good accuracy almost same as my Nexus one. Using Google maps on this phone was a breeze.

Other Notes: The phone bundles a free 2GB microSD card and also stereo headphones. The headphones are average at best like most other phones and you should really pair it with a cheap set of Creative IEMs that will give you a much better output while staying on a budget.

Conclusion: While the phone is not a powerhouse in itself, I’d rate it pretty good in it’s price segment. If I had to buy an Android smartphone on a budget around 8000 INR, it’d be a toss up between this and the Samsung Galaxy Pop S5570. So, this is a +1 recommendation from me for this phone.

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Huawei Ideos U8150 Review, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Google just released the latest version of its Music app  that ties into its cloud player service Music Beta. This brings the version upto 3.0.1 and adds a lot of fixes, crashes a lot less and now even works on Samsung Galaxy S with Gingerbread which was broken earlier. If you are outside the US and not able to download the app from the market, then download it from here: http://www.multiupload.com/KIM5LQDL0K

I just tried it on my Nexus One with Stock Gingerbread (2.3.4) and it works awesome. Picked up my music from the Google account immediately and even recognizes the third party equalizers like MusicFx…

Don’t forget to say Thanks

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Google Music Beta Latest APK version 3.0.1 for Android, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Google just launched an encrypted search portal which is a Godsend for people on public networks since there is a lot that can be gleaned from your search queries. For doing your protected searches, however, you have to go to a different portal which I linked to above. Now, the omnibar (the address bar in Google Chrome) also serves as a search box but searches on the normal google portal by default. Here is a simple, few seconds process to switch it over to encrypted search.

1. Click on the wrench/tool icon at the top of Google Chrome and go to Options.

2. On the “Basics” tab, go to the “Search” item and click on “Manage Search Engines”

3. Go to the very bottom of the new page that opens and you will see three empty boxes.

4. For the first box (leftmost), give any nickname for the engine. I gave “EncryptedGoogle”

5. For second box, give a keyword that invokes the new search engine. I gave “encrypted.google.com”

6. For last box, give the url for the search engine. This should be

https://encrypted.google.com/search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

7. Press Enter and the engine will be added to the list. Then hover over the engine row and click on “Make as default”. And you are done.

Happy safe searching

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Use Encrypted Google Search As Default in Chrome, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings