Journal
Quick feature, weight, and size comparison of the new Samsung Tab 10.1, the Motorola Xoom, and the iPad 2.
While the Samsung Tab has some short comings, you got to love its weight and thickness. Its cameras are not as good as you might have wished but those are still way better than what can be found in the iPad.
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Not even a year ago, I had three of the top Android Phones available for testing, all running Android 2.1 Update-1, and all running on Verizon’s network, and thought it would be fun to run a couple casual benchmarks. The comparison of the three phones (Motorola Droid, HTC Incredible, and Motorola Droid X) that were cool then, can be read here. Over this weekend, I had the chance to take a closer look at two of the current top phones from Motorola and HTC, the Motorola Atrix and the HTC ThunderBolt.
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Occasionally, when driving in my car, I would like to capture what I am seeing passing by, the landscape, clouds, or simply what’s currently going on outside. For the driver that’s a pretty hard if not dangerous thing to do, but even for a passenger, it’s not an easy task to operate a photo or video camera considering all the moving and shaking that’s happing inside the car.
We have tried a couple car mounts, most of them, like windshield suction-cups for instance, were rather flimsy and could hardly support a mobile phone or Flip Mino. So it was finally time to build our own and inspired by a project that was featured in Make Magazine (08/2008) we went to the nearest Home Depot. We didn’t diligently prepare a Bill of Material and instead adjusted our project plans based on what was available and affordable. Here is what we ended up buying:
Total = $21.20
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We are really lucky, to experience another technological revolution. After the Personal Computer and the Internet, the Smart-Phone as a front-end for Cloud-Computing seems to be the next radical alteration, once again saving the tech industry, not just in the Valley, but in every other related tech center around the country.
It always needs at least two players to have a game and Android and the iPhone seem to be those players this time around. Even when considering Nokia’s, BlackBerry’s, and Windows Mobile combined huge install base, it still looks very much like “game over” for them. In a fast paced technology it’s all about momentum and growth-rate; market share is gained and lost during periods of transition and change.
Droid vs Incredible vs Droid X
I had three great Android Phones available, all running Android 2.1 Update-1, and all running on Verizon’s network, and thought it would be fun to run a couple casual benchmarks. So here we go, we took a closer look at the original Motorola Droid, the HTC Incredible, and Motorola’s Droid X.
I know, I know, this isn’t a fair fight, the Droid was last year’s coolest Android device launched in late Fall 2009, while the Incredible and the Droid X are brand new phones .. well, I guess this just proofs that the half-life of an Android Phone Generation is currently about 8 months.
Please, don’t take this comparison too seriously, it wasn’t performed scientifically, not even close. Generally @tompaulus and I ran the tests 3 to 5 times and picked the median. We took standard benchmark related applications from the Android Marketplace and made sure that the phones were not running too much other stuff in the background while performing our tests.
Meet the contestants:
Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)
System RAM: 225 MB
Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
System RAM: 404 MB
Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
System RAM: 476 MB
Droid X WIFI Download Speed
Here we were looking at the Wifi upload and download speed, measured with the SpeedTest.Net application. However, we are just showing the download speed. Upload speed was capped by the ISP at about 1000 kbps, which all three devices were easily able to achieve.
WIFI Download Speed [kbps]
Quadrant is a CPU, I/O and 3D graphics benchmark application, freely available in the Marketplace. It computes a single value over a large number of tests:
An3DBench is a 3d benchmark based on the Android version of the jPCT 3d engine. It runs seven tests from fill rate to complex scenes.
The original Droid features a 5 MP camera, while the two new models both come with 8 MP cameras built-in. Only the two Droids have dedicated hardware shutter buttons, which makes taking steady shots quite a bit easier. We took pictures at the best possible resolution and transferred them without editing.
We didn’t like the Droid’s camera too much when it came out and it seems that the Droid X’s camera has it’s issues as well. However, nothing that cannot be fixed with software (Hey Moto, are you listening?) Here are the blown-up samples :
While the HTC Incredible is heavily branded with the HTC Sense UI, the original Droid came as a Google Experience phone, meaning Motorola didn’t put the MotoBlur overlay on. The Droid X is highly customizable, i.e. you can get as much or as little of MotoBlur as you like. Some of the Widgets look and also work very nicely and even MotoBlur haters may (only very secretly of course) use a little blur if nobody looks.
The Incredible’s screen seems to be a bit glossier and also a bit sharper, which is not really a big surprise since the Incredible and the Droid X both have about the same screen resolution but the Droid X has to spread the pixels over a larger area.
What remains to be said is that the Droid X really is incredible. I don’t like the row of four hardware buttons too much and the phone might really be too big for some and certainly doesn’t look and feel as elegant, sophisticated as the HTC Incredible but it certainly is fast and at the same time very light, .. dashing.
( Updated for AppleTV 3.0.2 )
Hello AppleTV, sometimes someone will find you annoying because you happen to do something … or more likely, because you don’t. I don’t want you to change something about yourself just because, and you know, we are all annoying at times, and some people are too quick to criticize. Oh, forget about it, enough is enough … you will get hacked again, NOW!
I have an AppleTV for many months now and even with good tools like Handbrake and the unfortunately discontinued VisualHub, it’s really annoying, having to convert every AVI or DivX encoded movie to make it play on the AppleTV. Other then that, it’s really a great device which doesn’t require much attention.
Meaning the task at hand was to mod. the AppleTV to make it play all sorts of movies, not only those that were encoded in a format that has Apple’s blessing. Nothing more, nothing less.
This used to be accomplished easily. However, the most recent two software update to 3.0.2 broke this added functionality, but not for long …
The 1st step was to enable ssh on the AppleTV. This used to be very hard and required opening the enclosure. Not anymore! The atvusb-creator project (currently at version 1.0b10) describes in detail how to put software onto a USB-Flashdrive that when inserted before the AppleTV boots enables ssh. Again, since Boxee, XBMC, or SoftwareMenu weren’t necessary, I happily opted-out.
AppleTV Firmware Files
1.1.0: 2Z694-5248-45.dmg
2.0.0: 2Z694-5274-109.dmg
2.0.1: 2Z694-5387-25.dmg
2.0.2: 2Z694-5428-3.dmg
2.1.0: 2Z694-5485-1.dmg
2.2.0: 2Z694-5499.dmg
2:3:0: 2Z694-5573-24.dmg
2.3.1: 2Z694-5587-18.dmg
2.4.0: 2Z694-5660-029.dmg
3.0.0: 2Z694-5789-067.dmg
3.0.1: 2Z694-6004-003.dmg
3.0.2: 2Z694-6013-013.dmg
With ssh now enabled, the rest was done in the matter of minutes. And since I had all the required codecs installed on my Macbook already, the remaining tasks were simply to copy the files over to the AppleTV, to put them into the right location, and finally to reboot the device.
ATV USB Creator Log:
2Z694-6013-013.dmg selected
Extracting boot.efi …
Extracting recovery seed …
extracting atv_recv.zip
Creating USB Flash Disk…
umount_disk settling delay (10 seconds)
partition the target disk
umount_disk settling delay (10 seconds)
install recovery onto target disk
copy files to target disk
remove recovery hfsplus GUID
umount_disk settling delay (10 seconds)
change recovery to real GUID
umount_disk settling delay (10 seconds)
install patchstick onto target disk
copy files to target disk
Complete! (0:01:47)
With ssh available, copying files can be done via scp, or Fugu, or Tranmit, the target location should be the home folder of the frontrow user account:frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
Next step was to ssh into the AppleTV and run the ATVFiles installer script and move the components into their final destination:
After rebooting the AppleTV via sudo reboot tools like fugu or transmit work well, copying files over to the AppleTV. When watching the AppleTV, there is now a new menu item, Files, which for instance allows browsing of the frontrow user’s home directory structure, the location where movies are best copied to.
If you just want to play a movie every now and then that doesn’t happen to be a mov or mp4 file, this is a quick and easy way to make it happen.
While Boxee or NitoTV are much more capable, they also seem to make the AppleTV more sluggish.
We were looking for a small, inexpensive, and eco-friendly headless Linux server that would support some low traffic services like providing a Maven Repository (Nexus), a Source Code Repository like GIT or SubVersion, etc.
The MSI Nettop 100 Barebone System seemed to be a close to perfect match, for what we had in mind, especially when considering that the missing pieces like memory and harddrive could be found in our scrap box. The MSI Nettop is one of the first Dual-Core Atom N330 Processor computers, has a very small footprint, consumes only 35 Watts on average, and costs about US$ 150.
A 64-bit Linux server with 4 virtual cores for about $150 didn’t sound too bad. When we received the box, we were amazed by the built quality of board and case as well as by the power of the dual-core ATOM chip.
… but first things first .. what do you really get, when ordering an MSI Nettop Barebone and what is missing:
Let me be clear, .. here is what’s NOT included:
Listen, let me be very clear, .. the MSI Wind Nettop Barebone has only a VGA socket (no DVI or HDMI) meaning even if you want to run it headless, you still need a VGA-Monitor to do the initial setup. Please note that the VGA port does not provide a composite video signal on the un-used pins, i.e. inexpensive VGA-to-Composite-Video converters are useless.
Before configuring the BIOS, we needed to install memory and harddrive. While the Nettop supports up to 2GBytes, we had an un-used 1GB stick available, which we installed. The perfect memory module would look like this:
2GB, 200-Pin SODIMM, DDR2 PC2-4200, 533 MHz, CL=4
Faster memory, like PC2-5300 doesn’t provide any advantages, the frontside bus is limited to 533 MHz after all. However, down to CL 4 (CAS Latency) is supported, i.e. we got lucky that the scrap box memory (Crucial CT25664AC667) is unbuffered CL=4 memory.
The internals of the very well and solid built metal case provides space for a full size optical drive (5.25″) as well as a full size desktop harddrive (3.5″). However, we only had a 2.5-Inch laptop drive available, which is very quite and also less power hungry, i.e. eco-friendly. The harddrive bay is right on top of the processors heatsink, making it a less desirable location. Since we didn’t want to install a SATA optical drive, we put the harddrive into the muchcooler optical drive bay, which required a 3.5 to 2 X 2.5-Inch Bay Converter as well as Hard Drive Mounting Bracket. However, placing the harddrive away far away from the heatsinks not only prolongs the harddives life but also makes the whole system run a little cooler.
With memory and harddrive in place, we connected VGA-display and a USB Keyboard (anodized aluminum Apple Keyboard) and booted the system. By default the bootscreen was disabled and fast boot enabled, giving us only a VERY short moment to hit the delete key after hearing theBEEP. The 3rd or 4th attempt was finally successful and we were finally in the BIOS.
Since we didn’t have a CD-Drive connected, we had a Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit server distribution prepared on an SD-Card. After configuring the boot-option, as well as boot the screen settings in the BIOS, the Ubuntu installer came up on reboot.
Now, with Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (64-bit) server installed, there is much more to tell. The box runs smoothly and quietly, without any problems so far. It sits here in my room connected to the router via Ethernet cable but without Keyboard/Monitor/Mouse. So far, I have webmin, the browser-based interface for system administration for Unix installed and the above mentioned Nexus Maven Repository Server.
My name is Wolf Paulus, a photographer, hiker, hacker, technologist based in Ramona, California.
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