Voyager 2 still alive and kicking
NASA did successfully restart a module of Voyager 2 space probe due to a wrong bit that was disrupting science data transmission back to Earth.
This reset was done on a 33 years old spacecraft while traveling around 55000 km/h on the edge of our solar system, 13.8 billion kilometers from the sun.
This is when “good design practices” reaches new heights. Three hooray for JPL.
Xperia X1 review: one month impressions
It’s now more than 1 month that I’m using the X1 and I have mixed feelings about it that I’d like to express.
The phone itself is performing very well. The mix of the small size and the high res screen it’s not very common in high end smartphones with touch input such as HTC’s HD2, Apple’s iPhone or the new Sony-Ericsson Xperia X10 but is nice for small fingered people. As a great plus, the hardware keyboard is simply gorgeus.
My initial concern was on the black paint finish of my Xperia since many owners reported scratches on the metal surfaces. I’m currently not using any kind of protection on the unit. The only “protection” is my good will in keeping it safe and not store it in my pocket with other items as keys or coins. After one month of day to day use, I got only some minor sign on the battery cover corners.
The unit size and weight is very good and the display readability is also very good. It suffers full daylight if you have direct sun on the screen, but if you have indirect daylight the display looks very good. The optical joystick and the hardware buttons are very useful too. The two silvery buttons are the same of the WinMo soft buttons by default but I immediately remapped them to my like using the standard Windows utility. I found that having a direct access for task manager is really useful.
There are some drawbacks also. The battery is very short lived. I have no idea if the cause is that my unit is a used one (the battery was manufactured in mid 2008) or a unit problem, but is very difficult to have more than a single day of charge with little usage (but with activesync, multichat client and skype on iSkoot enabled). This is not a big trouble unless you have chargers at home, at work and in the car, but could be annoying. On a heavy and constant usage the battery do not lasts more than few hours.
I’m using an UMTS only operator (3 Italy) and the reception is not very good. I did not perform extended tests in this area because is not easy to evaluate reception without a professional lab setup. On the sensation side, it seems to me that the Xperia is not good as Nokia or Rim (Blackberry) units but I had to test it some more. On data connection, for sure, having only a single bar of HSDPA reception allows only limited dowload of data. To have a good browsing experience you need to have at least two bars.
Another very bad component, notably the most annoying of all, is the camera unit. As soon as the light is not excellent, the camera is totally useless. The small LED illuminator is not enough for any purpose, the autofocus is slow and difficoult to operate with the hardware button and the shutterspeed is awful. The result are movement trails and badly exposed pictures. On the other end the resolution is good for a mobile phone and the outside results are acceptable. The colors are a little bit under saturated (expecially noted on reds) but the lens distortion and corner effects are acceptable. It’s good for a random shot walking out with your family. If a compact camera replacement is in your radar, the X1 is not the good choice.
On software side, Windows Mobile 6.1 is suffering its pre-touch revolution concept and even the newest breeds in WinMo world (6.5 or 6.5.x) will not solve this issue. The stock ROM from Sony-Ericsson is good and stable but is bounded to WM 6.1. After some weeks of test I choose to change the stock ROM with a tweaked one. There are many good chefs on xda-developers X1 forum and it’s easy to find a good ROM replacement. I’m still looking for the perfect one and I’ll dig a little more onto this topic in a dedicated post.
Regarding GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth, I had little usage of them so I still have no final toughts.
More to come…
Xperia X1 review: first impressions
A couple of years ago, Sony-Ericsson landed on windows mobile smartphone market with its first handset, the Xperia X1. The handset was one of the most intriguing ones before release, given the very high specs (for the time, of course).
As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with it and I even almost buy it but got stopped by the bad feeling of the UI just few moment before hanging out my money. When the handset hit the market, things begun to change. Even if it was one of the top handset of its class, it was developed by Sony-Ericsson and was manufactured by HTC itself, some flaws begun to appear. Many people reported bad reception and the very bad habit of some plastic parts to crack without any given reason (especially for the silver one). The black one paint, on the other side, was very prone to peeling off. Even the software, despite its brand new panel interface (created by Sony-Ericsson), was not running fast (but, in my opinion, this was a WinMo 6.1 problem more than Sony-Ericcson’s).
Long story short, it was a first class phone with a very high price and some serious drawbacks reported on the internet. Not the best choice for everybody, right?
But being in love for something is being a blind idiot (or something very close, at least for me) and I followed with some sadness in the heart the various review and tests from all the possible internet sources. I also followed the forums on xda-developers with all the very nice mods and upgrades that those great guys release every day.
On xda-developers you may find people that complains about the X1 and people that really love it. The same is for other blogs and articles scattered around the internet. Somehow I managed to convince myself that some of the problems that the various Xperias around the world were experiencing were caused by the users themselves (did I say that I fell in love with it?). Thanks to the release of the X2 and the announcements regarding X10, X10 mini and X10 mini pro, it was not difficult to find a used (or maybe new, if you’re lucky) X1 on e-bay for less than 200€.
Right now, even in Italy, is possible to find a decent data contract (more on the topic in a later post), so I set my mind and decided to buy a used X1. Finally my dream could come true.
I won the auction and I manage to get a used black X1 in very good conditions. Only two minor marks on the battery cover were telling me that it was not brand new. I was very excited about that and I was secretly hoping that many of the drawbacks that I read on the internet were non-existent.
My X1i out of the box
The phone itself is quite small, expecially if compared with today top performer slates. Its metal body (the black unit is not eye catching as the silver one) scores a round 160g instead of the 145g in the specs. Even with the added weight (the iPhone 3GS is 135g as a comparison), the Xperia is not bulky and fits easily in every kind of pocket. The only thing you have to check, is not to have other hard objects in your pocket or you may scratch the surface badly. The Xperia is still from the old generation of smartphone so it has a resistive touchscreen with a recessed area. This means that dust and stains are difficoult to remove from ist angles and that some controls of the absolutely not finger friendly Windows Mobile 6.1 user interface are difficoult to activate.
... now on front.
I admit to have small fingers so I rarely use the included stylus, I prefer to use my fingernail, but someone with big fingers could have some problem activating the controls because the display is small (it’s 3 inch though) and have a really high resolution (480×800) providing with really sharp pictures. Currently is probably the highest pixel density of every mobile equipment you may find.
Now with its full display galore. =)
The touchscreen is flanked by the standard call / hang buttons, two programmable hard buttons, the panel button (used to activate the panel selection interface), an ok button, a d-pad and a clickable optical sensor.
Detail of the front buttons
A two stage camera button and a volume rocker are also available on the side.
Close up on side buttons
On the top of the unit there’s also the on/off button that is also used to activate/deactivate the low power mode and a 3,5 inch standard headphone jack (that is really a good choice).
Top area closeup.
The real bonus of the X1, and one of the main reason I fell in love with it is that if you slide the display on its unique arc rails you have a four row QWERTY keyboard that is wonderful for writing . The keys are nicely spaced and it has a very nice push feedback.
Even a QWERTY keyboard in!
Using the arc sliding function, the display is slightly angled and is good to be operated because the display is facing towards the user while the keys are in a more natural position for the hands.
This is the unique Sony-Ericsson arc slider mechanism
Now it’s time to begin to fiddle with the system… The overall external feeling is very good. Now I need some more time to roadtest the system and the hardware to see if it’s hiding some drawbacks under it’s shining hood (for sure is a fingerprint magnet…).
More to come in a next post.
Designed for the purpose
Browsing around I found this small and interesting app. Just a bounch of KB that aim to the target of protecting your sensible data and try to recover your WinMo smartphone if get lost or stolen.
The author proposes a social engineering process too, to let users recover their hardware.
Small, nasty and effective. It’s the kind of app you shouldn’t miss in your handset.
Design flaws…
When “design flaws” curse hits, there’s nothing that could save you.
Rethink it 