Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on June 24, 2009 by CyberNet.

It was a tough decision, but I decided to upgrade my iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS. I wasn’t sure if the new features would be enough to justify the purchase, but I figured I should be able to sell my iPhone 3G on eBay and recoup a good chunk of the cost. So I pre-ordered the phone, and got it delivered to me last Friday morning.

I’m not going to do a full-fledged review because I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of those already. Gizmodo has a really good in-depth review, and so does Engadget if that’s what you’re looking for. Instead I really wanted to focus on the camera, and then briefly throw in my thoughts on some of the other features.

–The Camera–

They bumped up the resolution of the camera to 3.2MP, but the thing I love the most would have to be the auto/manual focus capabilities. I’ve never seen a camera that would let you choose which spot you want to focus on simply by touching it on the screen, but I’m sure that will be the next big thing on point-and-shoot cameras. Combining this with some camera-specific apps I found (more details in a later post) will make this a valuable device to be carrying in my pocket.

I have quite a few friends who ended up grabbing the iPhone 3GS, and one of the first things there’s always comments on is the quality of the images. Some are surprised at how good they turn out, while others say it could be a lot better. I think for a phone the camera is pretty darn good… except in low-light situations where a flash is a must-have.

I took some time to walk around Millennium Park in Chicago since it’s right down the street from where I work, and along the way I took some pictures. I didn’t just take them with the iPhone 3GS though, I also took the exact same photos with my Canon XSi Digital SLR for comparison sake. The iPhone doesn’t really let you adjust any settings when taking photos, and so I decided to set my DSLR to fully automatic mode in the spirit of keeping things fair. I did my best to split each of the photos so that you can really see the differences when they are side-by-side.

The “Bean”

Click the image to view a larger version

Garden/City View

Click the image to view a larger version

Concert Hall

Click the image to view a larger version

Flowers

Click the image to view a larger version

As you can tell from the example photos the iPhone 3GS isn’t the best camera, but it’s pretty good for those times you don’t have a dedicated camera on you. One thing I did when taking the photos above is I let the iPhone focus on the center without manually adjusting it. I noticed, however, that if you’d tap the screen to focus on a different part of the photo that the brightness would also adjust accordingly. So after you get used to working with the iPhone’s camera you might be able to take some pretty nice photos.

–The Other Features–

Here’s my quick thoughts on the other new features:

• Speed – I didn’t think the speed increase would make that much of a difference, but it does. Hearing a stat like “2 times faster” doesn’t really put things into perspective until you sit down to use it. Everything is snappier… switching between apps, loading websites, playing games, and so on. Plus there’s double the amount of memory, and because of that I noticed Safari has never unloaded from memory. That means the websites I was viewing when I closed the browser will be there (without refreshing) the next time I open Safari.
• Video – There is no doubt in my mind that this will become my primary method for capturing videos. Previously I had used a point-and-shoot camera for taking videos since I don’t like hassling with a bulky camcorder, and I love having a video stored as a single downloadable file. Given the amount of free space I have on my iPhone I’ll be able to save hours of video.
• Voice Control – I think I’ll be surprised at how much I’ll use this. I tested it out on a few contacts, and also for controlling my music, and overall it worked pretty well. What makes this useful for me is that I can activate this even when my phone is locked by holding down the Home button, or by holding the button on my headphones. So I really don’t have to take the phone out of my pocket to call someone if I’m already listening to music. Now if only it would read the name/number to you when receiving a call with your headphones on.
• Maps – Having the map rotate in the direction you’re facing was also a big selling point for me. Working in downtown Chicago it can be tough to figure out which way the GPS wants you to go when you’re walking since the little dot doesn’t move very fast. This makes finding your way when walking a lot easier, but I noticed that a lot of things seem to cause interference with the compass causing it to be inaccurate at times.
• Support for Apple In-Ear Headphones – I bought Apple’s in-ear headphones a few months ago because they had some really good reviews, and I have to say they are the most comfortable pair of headphones I’ve ever owned. The main reason I got these headphones was because they supported hands-free calling with the iPhone, but the volume up/down buttons never worked since this was a hardware limitation. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that all of the buttons on the headphones are now fully supported on the iPhone 3GS.

I was running the iPhone 3.0 software on my iPhone 3G about a week before I got my new phone. Apple definitely tuned the overall performance of the software with this release, and combining that with the new hardware makes it that much faster.

There are also a lot of little things around the operating system that I’ve noticed, and I really like. Such as being able to display the remaining battery level as a percentage (on the iPhone 3GS only, apparently because previous iPhones didn’t have an accurate enough battery meter). Or the fact that when an SMS/MMS fails to send it just places an exclamation point next to the message, but it will still let you keep entering more if you want. Before if a message failed to send you’d have to wait to send that one before you could try sending another.

Overall I’m really happy that I upgraded because I use my iPhone for hours everyday when commuting on the train. For some people the upgrade may not be worthwhile, but I spend more time on this than I do my personal computer. So it’s a device that I like to keep up-to-date.

Feel free to jump into the comments and shoot us your thoughts/questions on the iPhone 3GS.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

MyFive: Things We Wished the iPhone 3G HadiPhone is Popular on FlickrReview: Sony Cybershot DSC-H2 Megazoom CameraSony Cybershot DSC-T9 Review From PC MagazineHP Develops A Camera That Makes You Look Thinner

Those wacky kids in the Star Wars universe had it figured out a long, long time ago. If IBM’s recent predictions are any indication, we may finally be catching up.

The company this week issued its yearly “Five in Five” list, which outlines bold technology predictions for the next five years. At the top of the list: holographic phones.

The phones will beam holographic, 3D images of, one assumes, the person calling you. Also on the list, batteries that breathe air and cities that are powered by the heat of their own servers.

“All this demonstrates a real culture of innovation at IBM and willingness to devote itself to solving some of the world’s biggest problems,” IBM VP Josephine Chang told Bloomberg in an interview. Bold, sure, but a company that spent $5.8 billion (about 6.1 percent of its revenue) on research and development is allowed to dream big, right?

To put things into perspective a bit, it’s worth noting that the company was a bit off with its 2006 predictions (though it does have a year to go, I suppose), predicting such things as instantaneous speech translation ala Star Trek.

Tokyo has lots of kiosks in train stations to quickly feed or caffeinate busy office workers. For those interested in doing it even faster, and without needing to fumble around with small change, there are now more and more self-checkout machines being installed. The kiosk staff can tend to other business while people who just want something small can just scan the product, instantly pay with RFID-based e-money like Pasmo or Suica, and be on their way.

This particular system is developed by NEC, which also combined it with PaPeRo, their interactive robot. We shot some video of that test case below, which is looking more and more like our retail future. Can robots provide the kind of customer service Japanese expect? Well, in automated transactions such as vending machines they can provide even better service. Combined with a human, such as to answer questions or recommend items, there’s potential to do better on that front as well.

Robots will have the chance to make normally impersonal activities even more personal at lower cost, but there’s always the fear that we’ll be buying our clothes and cars from robots down the line. Robots that not only know every detail about the product, but about us and our preferences. I, for one, welcome our new retail robot overlords.

HP’s disregard for Intel’s officially scheduled Sandy Bridge launch continues today, with the news that Singaporean malls are already stocking Pavilion dv6 laptops with the new Core i7 silicon lurking within. It’s the same quad-core i7-2630QM chip that popped up on a dv7 spec sheet not too long ago — it runs at 2GHz by default, but dynamic overclocking and disabling of cores can take that up to the 2.8GHz mark. Keeping it company inside HP’s 15.6-inch laptop are 4GB of RAM and AMD’s Radeon HD 6570M GPU. The entire machine is described as indistinguishable, in terms of construction, from HP’s current crop of dv6s, leaving the precious internals to justify a price of 1,899 Singapore dollars (about $1,460).

[Thanks, Wayne]

Continue reading Intel’s Core i7-2630QM Sandy Bridge CPU spotted inside an HP dv6 in Singapore

Intel’s Core i7-2630QM Sandy Bridge CPU spotted inside an HP dv6 in Singapore originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 03:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  VR-Zone  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on July 20, 2006 by CyberNet.

Opera has been doing a great job with putting Web browsers on small screens and the Nintendo DS will be no exception. This Japanese video shows the browser in action and demonstrates how it will make use of both screens. The bottom screen will be used to show the page you are browsing while the top screen is used to zoom into a portion of the screen.

Opera is very smart for going after the small screen market because there is a huge gap there. Companies like Microsoft put Pocket IE on their Pocket PC’s but it is almost so useless that you don’t even want to use the Internet. Even though putting Opera on your Pocket PC requires some money it is definitely worth it because of how much it increases your productivity. I am sure that the Nintendo DS Browser will just be another trophy in their case.

News Source: Pocket Gamer

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Promote Opera Mini With 3 Great BannersLet Opera Power Your DevicesVideo: Novell XGL In ActionVideo of Google Earth 4.3 in ActionOpera for Nintendo Wii…I’m Speechless