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iPod touch review (2010)

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:26:02 +0000

At Apple’s last event, Steve Jobs called the iPod touch the company’s “most popular iPod,” and it’s easy to understand why. In just a few short years, the iPhone-with-no-phone has kept in lockstep with Cupertino’s halo device, benefitting from the same kind of constant hardware and software updating that has helped turned the iPhone into an iconic gadget. The touch has been right alongside the iPhone’s meteoric rise in popularity, becoming the go-to second-pocket slab for millions. There are good reasons, too. Apple boasts about gaming on the device — claiming it beats out both Nintendo’s and Sony’s offerings in sales… combined. While we can’t concede that the device is a dedicated game console, it most definitely games. And it’s still an iPod, an internet device, and a thousand other things thanks to Apple’s vastly populous App Store. Now the player has once again reaped the rewards of iPhone updates, boasting a new Retina Display, the A4 CPU, two cameras which allow for FaceTime calling and 720p video recording, and all the new features of the company’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 4.1. But despite all of the plusses, we still have to ask: is the little do-everything box still worth the premium price tag? We took a deep dive on the latest model and have the verdict, so read on to find out.

iPod touch (2010) hands-on

Hardware

If you own the last version of the iPod touch, the design of the latest version shouldn’t come as a major surprise. Instead of aping the iPhone’s new glass-sandwich looks, the touch hews close to its roots with a super thin profile made up of one part glass screen and one part all-metal back. The device still bears the smudge inviting chrome rear panel, and continues the trend of shrinking the thickness as far down as possible. We thought the iPhone 4 was crazy thin, but the new touch looks like a toothpick by comparison. In our large hands, we might even argue that it’s a little too small — but it should be just right for the legion of teens and tweens that will clamor for this come holiday time.

As with earlier version, hard buttons come in the form of a single home key, a power / sleep button (finally moved to match the iPhone’s placement at the top-right of the device, as opposed to the opposite side on previous versions), and two volume buttons on the left. Around back there’s now a small camera lens in the upper corner of the device, while a single, VGA shooter peers out from behind the glass on the front of the player. A quick note: we had a little trouble consistently finding the sleep button when using the device — it’s a bit buried in the housing.

All told, we think it’s break even in the looks department. The thinness is certainly welcome, but not a game changer. While we like the iPod touch design overall, there’s nothing present in the new version that makes it significantly more lust-worthy than previous generations.

Internals

Inside the new iPod touch is Apple’s A4 CPU, the same engine used to power the iPhone 4 and iPad (and that new Apple TV as well). We assume the device is sporting the same 512MB of RAM that the iPhone has, but we won’t know for sure until someone like iFixit gets their hands on it. The 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen is called a Retina Display, which means it had equal resolution (960 x 640) and pixel density (326 ppi) as the iPhone 4, but it’s not the same IPS panel that you’re used to on the touch’s big brother. What does that mean in real world terms? Well in our testing we could see noticeable difference in viewing angles, but only at pretty extreme positions. We also felt like the touch’s display was slightly darker than the iPhone 4 screen. In general, we don’t see this as a major detractor for the device, but there’s no question that the iPhone 4 is sporting a qualitatively better display. It may be an “iPhone with no contract” in many regards, but not when it comes to the screen.

Aside from that you’ve got WiFi (802.11b/g/n to be exact), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and Nike + support built in. No GPS here, and obviously no cell radios.

We’re a little confused by Apple’s reluctance to add a GPS chip to these devices. Since the App Store is litered with navigation software, and this could easily take the place of a TomTom or Garmin device, it seems like a short walk to paradise for the company. The touch checks a lot of boxes on the list, but true navigation is still blank, and we can’t really understand why.

Cameras

Just like Apple wanted, much has been made about the touch’s camera capability. It seems like the idea of a touch with cameras has been a long time coming (and based on what we’ve seen from case manufacturers since the last fall Apple event, we’re actually about a year behind schedule). But the cameras on this device aren’t quite the same pair that you get on the iPhone 4, and there should be no mistaking one for the other. The rear camera on the device is capable of 720p video, but that means that its maximum resolution is 1280 x 720 — and when it’s used for still photos, that resolution becomes 960 x 720 (that’s a 720p at a 4:3 ratio). Obviously this is not the same lens or sensor as the iPhone 4, and when we asked Apple about it, they said it was more a consideration of size rather than cost. According to Greg Jozwiak, using something closer to the iPhone 4’s sensor would have made the casing for the touch considerably larger. The camera is also fixed-focus rather than auto-focus, which means that tapping on the screen has no discernible result except for altering the white balance and exposure. Oh, and there’s no flash to be found. Around front, the phone sports a VGA camera (similar to that of the iPhone), but again this is a fixed-focus lens.

iPod touch (2010) camera shots

We really would have liked to see a higher quality shooter on the back of this device — maybe the iPhone 4 has spoiled us, but even something like 3 megapixels wouldn’t have felt out of place here. And we’re pretty sure Apple could figure out a way to keep this thing thin and light in spite of it.

In our side by side shots with the iPhone 4, it’s obvious that the touch’s performance for still images is far below that of its big brother. For taking quick shots (which don’t require tight focus), you’ll be fine, but if you want to grab printer-ready pics, the touch definitely will not be a reasonable stand-in. However, when it comes to video, the 720p performance was actually quite surprising, and the device seemed to have no problem capturing smooth HD content. See the clip below (and check the raw file here) for a look at what kind of results it can produce.

Sound quality

As with the new nano, the touch did seem to sound a little better than previous versions, but it’s not such an astounding difference that you should toss your last gen model in the garbage. Overall, playback seemed solid to us — at least it didn’t leave us wanting for quality. If you’re planning on using the external speaker for listening, however, you might want to reconsider. We can’t remember the last time we heard something so tinny. Of course, it’s not surprising considering the size of this housing. Even though it’s located in a similar spot as the iPhone 4’s speaker, the volume and quality of audio it produces is not even in the same vicinity. Still, how often will you use this?

Software

If you’ve used an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4, there will be few (if any) surprises here. The touch performs exactly like any other iOS device, though admittedly you’ll probably notice faster performance if you’re upgrading from an earlier model of touch. Our review unit was loaded up with 4.1, which means we had access to a non-beta Game Center, as well as some of those proximity and performance fixes Apple told us would be coming — though without seeing 4.0 on this device, it’s hard to spot the differences.

Overall, performance was silky smooth on the touch — games didn’t lag, and getting around in the OS was as painless as it is on the iPhone 4. Multitasking worked flawlessly, and for those of you using the device heavily as a media player, it makes juggling playback functions along with the other “stuff” the touch does dead simple.

The new touch does come equipped with FaceTime, though now instead of using your phone number (and SMS) to connect, it asks for your email address as an identifier. Unfortunately, only other 4.1 devices can make a connection with the touch, so we were only able to make a handful of calls. In general, the application worked as effortlessly as it does on the iPhone, though we still had some freezes and breakups even on our strong WiFi connection. Ultimately, we still see this as a side dish and not the main course for these devices. With the iPhone 4, we complained that without 3G options for FaceTime calls, the feature remains limited in use, and that’s now doubly true with the touch — unless you’re carting around a MiFi, you’re stuck mostly indoors (and probably at home) for these calls. One thing to note about FaceTime on the touch — on our device the volume seemed extremely low even when cranked up (in keeping with our experience for music playback), though the New York Times’ David Pogue told us his device sounded loud and clear. “Like an iPhone,” he said.

As we said, Game Center is installed on the device, but no games seem to take advantage of the feature just yet. We did field a few friend requests, but all we could do was look at our list of contacts. We’ll likely take a longer look at this feature when it’s accessible to all iOS 4 users, but for now the most notable thing about the app is that Game Center looks nothing like any Apple product you’ve ever seen. That font!

Wrap-up

Reading through this review, it should be clear that there isn’t actually a whole lot to say about this device that hasn’t already been said. The new touch isn’t magical or revolutionary, or even unfamiliar. What it is, however, is a product without a peer; a media player that does far more than media playing. Besides the smaller screen real estate, the touch might be better compared to a tablet or netbook — it has many of the same functions (more, in some cases). So you’re not just dropping $229 (8GB), $299 (32GB), or $399 (64GB, also, ouch) on a music and video player — you’re buying into a mini-computer, a video camera, and a game system all with a massive ecosystem.

If you’re already carrying around a smartphone with the above functions, maybe the iPod touch doesn’t make sense, but for the legions of buyers out there who have yet to make the jump (or are stuck with an outdated handset), this device’s appeal is hard to deny. Don’t get us wrong, the touch isn’t without faults — the lack of GPS and a fairly low-quality still camera come to mind — but there’s nothing major here that gives us pause (and frankly, nothing else like it on the market). With the addition of HD video shooting, the new Retina Display, and a faster A4 processor, the touch has just gone from “nice to have” to nearly irresistible.

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Looking forward to AirPlay

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:04:25 +0000

As you may have heard, Apple had some sort of event on Wednesday. In amongst the Big News like iPods and iOSs and iTunes and ~~iTVs~~ Apple TVs, Steve Jobs briefly mentioned AirPlay, a replacement for the AirTunes music streaming system used in the Airport Express multi-purpose device. I’ve built my home audio solutions around AirTunes, so this was, for me, the most interesting thing Apple announced. Details on how the system will actually work are rather thin so far but TUAW has been sleuthing around to try and figure out what we can.

First, the best bit. Jobs showed an iPad (running the forthcoming 4.2 version of iOS) being fired up, pressing a few buttons, and streaming its output to a big screen TV via an Apple TV. This addresses my number one complaint: a friend comes to my house, I show them the Airport Express system, I show them the Remote app so they can use their iPhone to control my iTunes… and they ask me why they can’t also stream their own music directly from their device. Sure, this is going to be tough on battery life, but it’s not like I’m short of chargers. They want to listen to their own music and if you could see inside my iTunes you’d know why. And now they will be able to!

I was briefly concerned that this jazzy new functionality would not work with my existing Airport Express devices. Fortunately, Apple’s sneak peak at iOS 4.2 confirms that an Airport Express will be able to receive a stream from any iOS 4.2 device, so more good news there too.

My biggest second gripe is the lack of sync. If I play the same music on two Airport Expresses (that word does not pluralise nicely), one in the lounge and one in the kitchen, they can be out of sync by a second or so. This produces some rather trippy pseudo-echo effects if you stand in between the two rooms. Apple’s Airplay page notes “For the ultimate sonic panorama, you can stream your tunes to more than one room simultaneously” — I’m hoping this means they’ve put robust syncing into the streaming protocol. Rogue Ameoba’s AirFoil software can sync streams to multiple Airport Expresses at once, so it’s certainly a solvable problem.

And then there is third-party device support. Apple lists a number of vendors who will be shipping AirPlay compatible equipment, though so far we haven’t seen anything from most of them. iHome however is teasing an AirPlay speaker set, although we only get an image and a “submit your email address for more information” link. Referring back to Apple’s product info page, these third-party devices will now be able to receive song metadata like title, artist, and even album art and present a much richer interface to control your music.

And finally, the nifty ability to stream video and photo content as well as sound to the Apple TV. Frankly, that alone might make me buy one, despite my recent whining that it is too expensive in the UK and a lukewarm reception from my colleague Mel Martin. I happily paid around

How would you change Motorola’s Droid X?

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:04:42 +0000

Last week we gave the Apple loyalists in attendance a chance to rip and rag the iPhone 4, and this time around we’re doing the same for Motorola’s best frienemies. The Droid X is without question the largest Droid in the family today, and calling it a showstopper on Verizon would probably be understating things. Now that it’s been on the market a few months, we’re curious to know how you early adopters like (or dislike) it. Did the massive screen end up being too large for comfort? Anything you’d tweak software-wise? How’s the VZW service been? Might your world change if Android 2.2 ever hits in official fashion? Go on and let us know how you’d alter this behemoth down in comments below — but give it some real thought first, cool? Cool.

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Notifo for iPhone Gets Free User-to-User Messaging, Real Time Twitter Notifications

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:12:02 +0000

Last time we wrote about Notifo, we called it a “ simple mobile notifications platform for anything ” — and really, that’s probably the best way to describe it. You take your iPhone, install the Notifo app, hook it up to your favorite services (like Twitter, or GitHub) or any of the “Projects” (read: plugins, like Growl alert forwarding, or Chrome-to-Notifo ), and bam! You’ve got push notifications coming down to your iPhone from just about anything you could imagine. All that notification sending takes two things: users to send the messages to, and a message pushing backend to handle all the heavy lifting — the same two things, as it just so happens, that one would need to create a basic instant messaging service. And so they have. In an update to their iPhone app that went live this afternoon, Notifo launched a service they’ve had in the making for about four months: free text and picture messaging. Alas, it’s only built for messages from Notifo…

Sony announces Bloggie Touch pocket video camera

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:55:06 +0000

Remember Sony’s Bloggie line of pocket camcorders announced back at CES? While those may have been a bit forgettable, the company’s just-announced Bloggie Touch video camcorder makes a considerably stronger first impression (if you can get past the name). Boasting a 3-inch capacitive touchscreen wrapped in what appears to be a brushed aluminum body, this one packs 4GB or 8GB of internal memory, and will capture full 1080p video as well as 12.8-megapixel still images courtesy of the F2.8 wide angle lens and Exmor CMOS sensor. You’ll also get a built-in USB connector, HDMI output, and of course plenty of options to easily share your photos and videos on various social networking sites. Look for this one to hit shelves in October for $180 or $200 depending on the capacity. Head on past the break for the full press release.

Show full PR text

A ‘TOUCH’ IS ALL IT TAKES: SONY UNVEILS NEW BLOGGIE CAMERA
Device Allows Easy Sharing of HD Video and Photos via Social Networks

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 1, 2010 – Making its worldwide debut today, Sony’s new Bloggie™ Touch enhances the pocket video camera category by making it even easier to preserve and upload life’s spontaneous moments.

The Bloggie Touch (MHS-TS20 and MHS-TS10) captures full 1920×1080p high definition MP4 video and 12.8-megapixel photos on 8GB or 4GB of embedded memory, respectively, offering approximately four hours of HD movie recording. Its sleek, stylish body sports a three-inch diagonal capacitive touch screen enabling intuitive operation as well as attractive shooting and playback options.

“The new Bloggie Touch addresses the growing need for premium video products with advanced technology in a desirable package at a competitive price point,” said Andy Bubala, director of Sony’s camcorder business. “We started from the ground up to develop a new system of hardware, software and seamless integration with social network services for an easy, intuitive shooting and sharing experience that anyone can enjoy.”

Boasting a clean, innovative design, new Bloggie Touch cameras feature minimal hard keys and a large, vibrant touch screen that automatically adjusts for vertical or horizontal shooting and viewing, enabling customers to shoot video right-handed, left-handed, right-side-up or even upside-down. You can record video, snap photos, or both at the same time, just by pressing two of three simplified buttons on the device. An advanced user interface features intuitive “touch and flick” recording control, search and playback operation, as well as a simple Share-it-Later function to tag the clips and pictures you want to post for easy upload when you are online.
Sony’s Bloggie Touch cameras now deliver amazingly high quality video and photos. Equipped with a F2.8 wide angle lens and a sensitive Exmor™ CMOS sensor, the new cameras achieve high resolution video and crisply-detailed still photos with less noise, even in challenging lighting conditions. Additionally, its processor allows videographers to attain 4x digital zoom and auto focus capabilities, including Auto Macro to focus sharply on objects as close as four inches away.

The ultra-compact, lightweight cameras slip easily into a pocket or purse so they can record your favorite moments anytime, anywhere. The Bloggie Touch has SteadyShot

Now I Feel Old: Schools to Get Multitouch Interactive Whiteboards [Whiteboards]

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:11:57 +0000

Time for a next-gen spin on the age-old debate of whether a blackboard or whiteboard is better in the classroom? I pose that question because Panasonic’s interactive multitouch whiteboard comes days after we saw Sharp’s LCD blackboard. Who feels old?

Measuring 77-inches, Panasonic’s UB-T880 whiteboard can be used by three people at once (making it “multitouch”), though it’s worth pointing out that one will be holding the electronic pen, with the other two using more primitive tools—their fingers.

Snazzy features such as the ability to write in FOUR DIFFERENT COLORS, highlight in THREE DIFFERENT COLORS, listen to audio on the speakers and even activate the board remotely to turn PowerPoint pages, for example, are surely worth the AU$2,869 price-tag (USD$2,500). All that’s written/drawn on the whiteboard can be saved to Word, Excel or PowerPoint once the Panaboard software is installed. [Panasonic via Gizmodo AU]

Nokia N900 to receive facial recognition?

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:52:27 +0000

I think that we all know about some of the neat software of the Nokia N900 such as Chrome and that Firmware update a while ago.

At least, that is what these people at the University of Manchester in the UK are working on. Their prototype is able to track up to 22 facial features in realtime with the front facing camera.

As you can see in the video, tt has the ability to track when the camera is tilted, or even upside down. This active interface was developed for the EU-funded Mobile Biometrics, or MoBio project.

So, will all phones have this face recognition? That would imply that instead of passwords, you have to just let it scan your face.

Source

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Prizmo is a pretty amazing iPhone app for OCR and more

admin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:42:18 +0000

There are a few apps that are great demos for the iPhone. Pulse News is a super RSS feed reader, iMovie always drops a few jaws, and Siri is a pretty amazing way to talk to your iPhone and get intelligent search results.

You can add Prizmo to the list of great demo apps, and it’s going to be a very useful app for a lot of people. Prizmo combines OCR (Optical Character Recognition), text to speech, and translation all in one place.

Prizmo, which sells for US $9.99, can scan business cards, books, white boards, or even receipts. It can output the text to the clipboard or email, and can even take a receipt and put it into a spreadsheet format.

If that isn’t enough, Prizmo can read the text to you with the addition of an optional text to speech module. There are 35 voices you can choose from, in ten languages. Each module is $2.99.

Gallery: Prizmo OCR app

Most of the program features do not need an internet connection. Scanning and OCR are built into the program. For translation, which uses Google Translate, you’ll need internet connectivity.

Does it work? Yes, and quite well. For most OCR tasks, the accuracy is very high. Like most OCR apps, you may have to fix a letter or some errant mistake, but my results were very good. You have to have a good image to start with, well lit and in focus. The iPhone camera will take care of the focus, and the app provides super-imposed grid lines to help you hold the camera straight.

After you take an image or import it from your camera roll, you can crop and enhance the image to assure a good capture. You can also rotate the image, because the OCR software wants to see the text oriented correctly. In addition, you can correct any geometric distortion in the image to make the OCR go more smoothly and accurately. There is also an option to white balance the image before the OCR step.

The OCR process is very fast, and in a couple of seconds you have the text. From that point, you can copy the text, email it, or use Dropbox or CloudApp.

A couple of things I didn’t like. The app appears to have no easy way to capture the addresses on a business card. The OCR picks it up, but the contact template doesn’t include an address field. You can create one, but you’d have to re-type everything into that field. It’s a major shortcoming if your main use of this program is for scanning business cards. I also thought the built-in help was very superficial. It connects to the developer’s website, but the text is small and the information is sparse. If you visit the Prizmo website there isn’t much more. You can certainly email questions, but I think the developer can do a lot better.

Don’t expect the app to be able to reliably read handwritten notes. While the developer says the app can read a whiteboard, I haven’t tried it and can’t vouch for that function. Creaceed, the Belgian developer of Prizmo, reports it has submitted version 1.01 to the app store and is waiting for approval. Version 1.01 is supposed to fix a few bugs and improve “field handling” with business cards. That should fix the address field issue.

Everything else worked as advertised. To be carrying around such power in a pocket is truly amazing. I’ve already thought of a lot of uses. If I was in Germany, for example, I could scan a menu, translate the text to English, or have it read to me. I’ve already tried it on receipts, and grabbed some printed instructions I wanted to have in electronic form.

There are other programs that do OCR, other programs that do text to speech, and others still that will do translations. This is the first program that integrates these functions into a solid app. At $ 9.99 it has a premium price, but for those that need it, it’s going to be indispensable.

Creaceed has a Mac version of Prizmo which is also excellent. Prizmo for iPhone works best on a 3GS or iPhone 4. It can work on a 2G or 3G iPhone if you use a Griffin Clarifi case. In the gallery, you can see Prizmo at work on a document during my testing.

TUAW Tips: 25 ways to check the hardware on your iPhone 4

admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:58:44 +0000

I received my second replacement iPhone 4 yesterday. Considering the issues my first two iPhone 4 units had, I wanted to make absolutely certain, in as little time as possible, that this replacement unit didn’t have anything wrong with it. Before I even picked it up from the store, I started putting together a list of items I needed to test as well as how I would go about doing it.

What I came up with is a series of hardware checks that anyone can perform right after taking an iPhone 4 out of the box and syncing it for the first time. This is by no means the only way to test an iPhone 4’s hardware for defects, and there are probably more comprehensive methods out there, but the following procedure is basic enough for almost any user to follow. Plus, it should catch any glaring hardware defects in an iPhone 4 right away. Click “Read More” for the checklist.

Things to check before you sync with iTunes for the first time:

Outer Casing: Inspect for cracks in the glass, visible gaps, and loose joints. The phone should be solid, with no “give” anywhere — a properly constructed iPhone 4 is pretty much a solid glass/steel slab. In particular, the front and rear glass should be flush against the stainless steel antenna band. Any gaps will not only allow dust inside the iPhone, they also act as a pivot point, reducing the structural integrity of the glass and making it more likely to break after an accidental drop. Such gaps are both incredibly rare (I’m probably the only guy “lucky” enough to get hit with this issue twice) and very difficult to see. Hold the iPhone sideways with a strong light source in the background. So long as you don’t see anything like this, you’re good to go:

Small gap, big problem

Home/Sleep Buttons: Yet another item you can test before syncing the iPhone, these buttons should perform their intended functions right away and should neither be excessively loose nor too sticky. A miniscule wiggle or a little “clickiness” in either button is nothing to worry about, but if your Sleep button is rattling around in the casing or needs Herculean pressure to get it to work, there’s a problem.

Vibrate switch/motor: Flick this switch to put the iPhone in vibrate. The button should slide smoothly, and you should immediately feel the phone’s vibrate motor kick in, indicating successful activation.

Things to check during the first sync with iTunes:

Dock connector: If there’s anything wrong with the dock connector, you’ll know right away; either your iPhone won’t sync with your computer, or it won’t charge.

Flash memory: It’s not particularly common, but if the iPhone’s flash memory chips are corrupted, this could show up as syncing errors in iTunes. One bad sync isn’t enough to pin the problem on the iPhone itself — iTunes is a fiddly beast at the best of times — but if you’re unable to get the iPhone to sync successfully despite numerous attempts and some basic iTunes troubleshooting, bad flash memory in the iPhone may be the culprit. The simplest way to test the memory is to use it; fill your iPhone with as much media as you can during that first sync. If you have a 32 GB iPhone 4, now’s a good time to go do something else for an hour or two, because syncing that much data takes a while.

Things to check after syncing with iTunes:

Volume buttons: It’ll be obvious right away if these don’t work. Note that a little bit of side-to-side “play” in these buttons is normal and nothing to fret over.

Headphone jack: Plug in the headphones that came with the iPhone. There should be no wiggle in this jack at all. You should hear sound in both headphones while playing media; if you don’t, plug in a different set of headphones to make sure it’s not a headphone problem rather than a jack problem. Test the headphones’ controls, too; play/pause, track forward/back, VoiceOver, and volume up/down should all function normally. VoiceOver should be able to pick up your voice from the headphone microphone.

Camera: Verify that the shutter opens and closes on both the front- and rear-facing cameras by taking still photos with both. Test the iPhone’s “tap to focus” feature by aiming the camera at a scene with marked differences in distance/brightness — a bright window in the background of a dark room, for example — and make sure the camera adjusts focus/brightness according to where you tap the screen. Check the photos for obvious issues like discoloration, pixellation, banding, etc. — you’re not going to get museum-quality images from the iPhone 4’s 5 megapixel sensor, but the photos should be free of glaring, obvious defects. Test that the LED flash fires when you take photos by tapping the upper left corner of the screen until the flash setting reads “on.” Now test both cameras again by taking videos with each one. Video from both cameras should be free of stuttering, and, obviously, you should be able to hear sound when you play the video back.

Accelerometer: You can test the accelerometer’s function at the same time as the camera; on-screen controls should change position as you tilt the iPhone from portrait to landscape mode. Next, open any app that accepts text input, type a few characters, and then shake the iPhone; a dialog should pop up immediately asking if you want to undo typing or cancel.

Antennae:

3G: If you’re in an area with 3G service, the iPhone should pick up a signal without you having to do anything. Test your data connection with some basic browsing in Safari; speeds will vary depending on how good your signal/network is, but if you’ve got a 3G connection, you shouldn’t have to wait several minutes for even complex pages to load. Try to avoid the temptation to test out the “Death Grip” phenomenon; not only does this vary from network to network, cell site to cell site, I’ve also found it varies from phone to phone. My first iPhone 4, purchased a little over two weeks ago, definitely exhibited signal loss in “Death Grip” mode, but my new iPhone 4 doesn’t drop signal at all, no matter how I hold it.

EDGE/GPRS: Even if you have a 3G signal, there’s an easy way to test if you can also pick up signal using a slower EDGE/GPRS connection if need be. Go into Settings > General > Network and set “Enable 3G” to Off. Your iPhone should fall back to EDGE/GPRS within a few seconds. Test your data connection again by browsing around in Safari, but be aware that the connection speed will be barely tolerable in EDGE and all but unusable in GPRS.

GPS: Open the Maps app and tap on the arrow icon in the lower left corner. Unless you’re inside a structure with thick walls/ceilings, a blue dot should appear at or relatively near your current position almost right away. The iPhone 4’s GPS antenna is both more accurate and more powerful than those in earlier iPhones — my iPhone 3G was rarely able to find me at all unless I was outside — so your position should show up in Maps quite quickly in most cases. If it doesn’t, try again outside with a clear view to the sky; if your iPhone’s GPS still can’t get a fix on your location, it may be faulty.

Bluetooth: I don’t have a Bluetooth headset, so the way I tested Bluetooth was by pairing it with my Mac for internet tethering. It took me many tries to get my iPhone 4 to pair with my Mac successfully, but I was finally able to do it by following this procedure:

1. On the iPhone, enable internet tethering by going to Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering > On. You’ll be asked if you want to activate Bluetooth; you do. (You can also enable Bluetooth by going to Settings > General > Bluetooth > On, but since there isn’t much you can do with a Mac-iPhone pairing over Bluetooth other than internet tethering, you might as well save yourself the extra step.)

2. Open System Preferences on your Mac and open the Bluetooth preference pane. Turn your Mac’s Bluetooth on, and click the checkbox next to “Discoverable” so your iPhone will be able to find your Mac. Click + to add a new Bluetooth device, and Bluetooth Assistant will open.

3. Once Bluetooth Assistant opens, your iPhone should show up in the list of devices right away. If it doesn’t, this is your first indication there might be something wrong with your iPhone’s Bluetooth. If the iPhone does show up, click on it and wait for Bluetooth Assistant to generate a passcode.

4. Here’s the part where I got tripped up. Once Bluetooth Assistant generates a passcode for your iPhone, not only do you have to accept that passcode on the iPhone, after accepting the passcode you must immediately click “Continue” in Bluetooth Setup Assistant on your Mac, or else the pairing will fail. There’s nothing in Bluetooth Setup Assistant that tells you to do this, which is very irritating — I spent about 15 minutes cursing at my Mac until I figured this out.

5. Fortunately, once your iPhone successfully pairs with your Mac via Bluetooth, you shouldn’t ever need to do it again. To use the iPhone’s internet tethering over Bluetooth, click the Bluetooth icon on your Mac’s menubar, select your iPhone, and then select “Connect to Network.”

Wi-Fi: Fortunately, testing the iPhone’s Wi-Fi is far simpler than Bluetooth. In fact, with the iPhone’s default options enabled, you’ll be prompted to connect to any nearby wireless networks. If the iPhone discovers a nearby network on its own, that’s a good sign; if it then connects to a network successfully after you tell it to, the Wi-Fi antenna works just fine.

Touchscreen: There’s two quick ways to make sure there’s no dead spots on your iPhone’s touchscreen. First, open any program that accepts text input (Notepad, Safari, etc.) and type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on the iPhone’s keyboard with your iPhone in all three typing orientations: portrait, landscape with the home button on the left, and landscape with the home button on the right. This is a good test to ensure the touchscreen registers taps along most of its surface. To test swiping, open the Photo app, select any photo, zoom in on it, and swipe your finger over the whole screen; the photo should move around seamlessly with the motion of your finger.

LCD: Considering how pixel-dense the iPhone 4’s Retina Display is, it’s questionable if a dead pixel or two would be visible at all. You can test for dead pixels anyway using the free Flashlight app, which allows you to display many different solid and patterned colors on the screen. As for the LED backlight, it’ll be obvious if it doesn’t work at all, but you can test it further by going into Settings > Brightness and dragging the slider from one end of the scale to another.

Ambient Light Sensor: The simplest way to check this is by sitting in a darkened room and turning it on and off in Settings > Brightness. In a dark room and at the default brightness settings, the display should brighten with Auto-Brightness turned off, then darken slightly with Auto-Brightness on.

CPU/GPU: Playing any graphically-intense 3D game will give the iPhone 4’s CPU and GPU a decent workout, particularly if the app is optimized for the Retina Display. The iPhone 4’s processor and graphics hardware are surprisingly robust for a device its size, so you shouldn’t see much graphical slowdown in any App Store game you fire up. Garbled or distorted graphics could indicate a fault in the GPU, while excessive heating or general slow performance could mean a faulty CPU. Playing a hi-res h.264 movie in the iPod app is a good check, too — videos should play smoothly, with no stuttering or obvious artifacts like blocks, lines, pixellation, or distortion.

Magnetometer: Open the Compass app and tap the button in the lower right corner. Your iPhone should be able to switch between true north and magnetic north seamlessly. If your iPhone is unable to acquire a signal even after you do numerous “figure 8″ movements to clear interference, the magnetometer may be faulty.

Gyroscope: The iPhone 4 doesn’t come with any default apps that take advantage of its gyroscope. Fortunately, there’s a free app called Gyroscope in the App Store that demonstrates the iPhone 4’s ability to detect its orientation in 3D space. Once you download and open this app, it’ll be obvious right away if your iPhone 4’s gyroscope is faulty, because one or more of the values for pitch, roll, or yaw won’t change when you move the device.

Things to test during a phone call:

Microphone: Test the microphone in both normal and speakerphone mode. The person on the other phone should be able to hear you clearly, with minimal distortion, if any. There’s been a few reports of failed microphones in the iPhone 4, with people unable to hear speech from callers using an iPhone 4; whether this is a microphone fault or due to an overzealous noise-cancelling microphone is unclear.

Speakers: Both the earpiece speaker and the bottom speaker should be audible and free of static or distortion. Listen for interference from the noise-cancelling mic or an unshielded/poorly shielded earpiece speaker — my first two iPhone 4 units made a very annoying “beatbox” sound during phone calls.

Proximity Sensor: The touchscreen should shut off when the iPhone is held up to your ear, then swiftly come back on when moved away. There have been reports of iPhone 4 proximity sensors randomly activating during phone calls and causing people to inadvertently hang up on calls with their cheeks (how’s that for FaceTime), but this is likely a problem with the iOS software rather than a hardware issue. If the proximity sensor doesn’t work at all, that’s a hardware fault.

All of the above tests done together take about 15-20 minutes, not counting the time it takes to sync data onto the iPhone for the first time. Putting the iPhone 4 through its paces using the tests above should find any glaring defects with the iPhone 4 right away. The last bit of the iPhone 4’s hardware that requires testing takes significantly longer to test:

Battery: I haven’t done any specific tests of the iPhone 4’s battery, but the life I’ve gotten out of it over the past 24 hours is consistent with Apple’s estimates. There’s any number of battery tests you can perform to test your battery’s capacity, but one of the most popular is putting a video on repeat and letting it play until the battery runs dry. According to Apple’s tests you should get around 10 hours of video playback out of one battery charge, but there’s some leeway in those results. I’d say that anything less than 7 hours or so of video playback on a fully-charged, brand-new iPhone 4, at default brightness, that’s done nothing but play video during that time, may indicate a battery fault.

These tests are necessarily simplistic, and they may not catch all the hardware faults that an Apple Store Genius might find with specialized equipment. That’s the beauty part, though: these are tests just about anyone can do, and if you do them all right after getting your iPhone 4, you’ll be relatively sure your iPhone 4 isn’t an out-of-the-box dud. After running through this list myself, I couldn’t find anything wrong with my second replacement iPhone 4, so for now at least, it appears the third time is indeed the charm.

Casio EX-S200 and EX-Z800 point-and-shoots spontaneously appear with ’super resolution’ zoom

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:20:29 +0000

We’re not quite sure when they’ll arrive or for how much — we haven’t heard a peep out of Casio — but Digital Photography Review is reporting a pair of new pocket shooters from the Japanese company. Both the Casio EX-S200 (pictured) and the EX-Z800 are your standard 14.1 megapixel compacts with 720p video recording and 4x optical zoom, as well as the Exilim Engine 5.0 processing the company introduced this year and the supposedly fire-and-forget Premium Auto mode. We doubt you’ll find any surprises in the spec sheet or even figure out a good reason to choose between the two, but the S200 is slightly thinner, has an autofocus assist lamp and an instant-on Quick Mode. Meanwhile, the Z800 is slightly lighter and shorter in both directions. Oh, and in case you’re curious, that “super resolution zoom” is just marketing speak for a 6x digital zoom plus algorithms that will hopefully reduce image degradation — you’re still blowing up those pixels. PR after the break.

Show full PR text

TOKYO, July 27, 2010 – Casio Computer Co., Ltd., today announced the release of the new EXILIM

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