Hardware

The first thing you notice with the X10 is its lighter than the HTC Desire, not by a lot but enough. This is quite surprising considering its additional 0.3 inches screen size. When you turn on the device you get the usual Sony Ericsson splash screen which really hits home the screen, its very bright and crisp and although I thought it inconceivable that an extra 0.3 inches could make difference, it really does. Accuracy to touch is as good as can be expected from a capacitive screen and scrolling is fairly smooth, no pinch to zoom web browsing or picture resizing as the device isn’t multi-touch, this stood out as I’m used to that feature on the Desire.

The dedicated camera button has a half press to focus which is a feature that is oft missing from smartphones but really helps when taking photos. The X10’s photo ability is better than the Desire, when in good lighting the camera is excellent but as soon as the X10 hits low light, the camera quality is massively reduced. It has a photo light which is a LED lamp, this actually ends up leaving a bright central patch on the pictures but still leaving the rest of the picture dark.

Charging the X10 is done by connecting the charger in the top of the phone which for me personally is  awkward. I’m often on the phone in the late evenings to friends and family and this is usually the time the device needs charging, having the micro USB connector on top of the device means there is a cable tugging your hand while you have the X10 to your ear and makes for an uncomfortable call over long periods.

Battery has been hit and miss, my average usage is heavy and during the first couple of days the X10 would last just over a full day, however as the weeks gone on I’ve found more often than not I will be placing it on charge around 9pm in the evening. This is comparable to the Desire but I fancy in an out to out battery test, the HTC device would just edge out the X10.

Software

I think the software is what really lets the Xperia X10 down. First things first, its not really a direct comparison to the HTC Desire in that the X10 has Android 1.6, where as the Desire is Android 2.1. This means a few things, firstly and most importantly for me, no native Exchange support. I’ve had my Exchange mailbox now for quite sometime and its an indispensible feature of my daily life, so I was shocked to discover no support from the X10. There is however a set of applications included on the device called Moxier which gives basic ActiveSync support. It can receive push emails, sync contacts and calendar but there are some caveats. Contacts do not appear in the dialler when you begin to type a number into it, you also cannot edit or add contacts from the devices standard contacts menu, for these items you need to open the Moxier Contacts application.  The email application is vastly different from Androids standard email app and it misses the ability to multi select messages to delete. I get over 60 emails a day and that is important.

Sony Ericcson include there own interface on the device which adds some nice animations to menus, this interface also includes Mediascape and Timescape. Mediascape is a portal for viewing all your music, video and pictures. Timescape is a timeline view for all your messages, twitter feed, emails, pictures, video, music, call logs and weather. I found myself using this hardly at all as it uses small squares for each item which means it pretty hard to get any real world information from it.

Browsing is as you would expect of a 1Ghz webkit enabled device, rendering is smooth and quick and scrolling is fluid. I still think these Android powered super phones are a great balance for browsing on the move, 3.7 inches and above, 1Ghz processors and an all day battery life makes for a good mobile internet device.

The on screen keyboard is simply terrible, there is no other way to describe it. By default haptic feedback is turned off, meaning you don’t know if you’ve pressed a key or not. A little digging in the menus and I was able to enable it but this is when things got worse. The accuracy of the keyboard is poor but it has a pretty good predictive setup which would often display the right word for you early into typing the word. The keys towards to edges of the screen would pop up like you had pressed them but not actually add the character to the text, this is was made worse by the fact that the haptic feedback would signal that the letter had actually been pressed.

This is a killer, for a device that’s supposed to be at the centre of your social networking, its a big fail, a bad keyboard experience will be with a user every time he or she uses the device. It might be compounded by the fact that the Desire keyboard is actually very good. When you press a key, you get a letter, no false positives.

Conclusion

As the week has gone on I have actually enjoyed the Xperia X10 more and more, its grown on me, despite of the issues. Looking back what has struck me is that all of the problems that would effect me are all software based and could be resolved with an update. I think the Android 2.1 update would be a great start but reading through the news this is not going to happen until Q4 this year. That’s too long, for a company like Sony Ericsson, the update should be quicker.

I have developed a small soft spot for the X10, despite its annoyances. Would I swap it for the Desire permanently? Hell no.

The Desire has the luxury of coming with HTC Sense, Android 2.1 and a by far better keyboard.

If your looking for a super phone with heavily integrated social networking then its a no brainer, get the HTC Desire.

Make sure you check out Steve Paines coverage of the HTC Desire over at his X10 mini site. Also check out my initial thoughts of the Xperia X10.

Screen

The screen is big and beautiful but even with the brightness set to its highest setting, readability in direct sunlight is heavily reduced. Here in the UK, direct sunlight isn’t such a problem, although over the last week we have had some good weather which has highlighted the issue.

My other complaint about the screen is it can be sticky, by that I mean your finger doesnt glide over, it sometimes sticks to the screen meaning a little more effort is needed. There circumstances for this are pretty specific, the screen and your finger have to be clean as when there is a little finger grease on the screen, this isn’t an issue.

Messaging

To be honest I actually think this is a problem with Android and not so much the Desire but I thought I would bring it up. I regularly send SMS messages to multiple people, most of the time the messages to the last two or three people in the list fail, which results in me having to select them one by one and resend from the undeliverable messages menu.

One thing that has been annoying is the home screen email notification, Ihave four email accounts setup on the Desire. When a new email comes in there is a notification from the menu which takes you directly the the relevant account, however if you press the home screen email icon you are taken to the last used email account which is often not the one where the new email is.

Like I said, none of the above are show stoppers for me, in fact all of them are minor items and certainly not enough to put me off keeping the device. It’s a matter of personal preference and how a device suits your needs. I need a fast device with a good browser and messaging capabilities, a camera isn’t a necessity although a bonus. This is why I whole heartedly recommend you get down to a local store and try a device before signing.

In the next couple of days I’m

swapping my HTC Desire with Steve ‘Chippy’ Paine’s Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. Steve has been running a mini blog on his experiences of the X10 so far and I’m quite looking forward to trying out another super phone and comparing it to the Desire.

More on that soon.

]]> http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/2010/04/28/desire-review-follow-up/feed/ 0 http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/2010/04/27/htc-sense-ui/ http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/2010/04/27/htc-sense-ui/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:15:49 +0000 Guy http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/?p=517 In my recent Desire review I didn’t go into the HTC Sense UI much, as I previously covered it a little more extensively with my HTC Hero review.

Well Kevin C. Tofel of jkontherun has taken the jump and managed to get the HTC Sense UI working on his Google Nexus One, Googles own version of the Desire. He’s detailed the installation process and also outlined some of the features a little further. For the folk who don’t know much about Sense UI, I would suggest taking a look at the article.

Keep it in mind that some of the tethering features, specifically the wireless tether that Kevin mentions are third party additions to the ROM he used and are not part of the stock HTC Sense UI.

So is it worth the effort and minor risks to get the Sense UI on a Nexus One? Even with less than a day of usage, it is for me. The Nexus One was fun to use before thanks to the super specifications, but it’s even better with the Sense UI. Personally, I’d like to see HTC offer the Sense UI for aftermarket installation — even if they charged $10 or perhaps $20, it would be worth it for me.

(image from jkontherun)

Well for the last couple of days I have been laid up in hospital with a severe throat infection. I’m a lot better now but that’s a different story.

I was lucky enough to have a few of my gadgets brought in for me which included my Asus EEE 1000H but not my gadget bag which contains my Palm Treo Pro. The Palm is perfect for tethering as it uses the Windows Mobile operating system. With it, I simply connect it to my laptop via the USB cable and open the internet connection sharing application which is built into Windows Mobile as standard and the computer is online, no additional software or configuration required.

So I have a laptop, I have a mobile but no cable to connect them. I had a look on the application market but the only real option is an app called ‘Wifi Tether for Root Users’. This turns your Android device into a router using the mobile network as a connection to the internet. It would have been perfect but I unfortunately couldn’t get it to work on my HTC Hero. A little searching later using the Hero’s browser and I stumbled across this forum entry on the applications Google Code pages. Its actually a Sprint Hero user with the same problem but the result was a beta version from the developers which works perfectly and finally allows my laptop to connect via wireless and access the internet!

Speeds from my hospital bed are in the region of 2Mbps which is perfect for catching up on feeds, emails  and the of course this post.

The beta version is available here to download but the usual rules apply, it is beta code and so be wary of that when installing on your device;

http://android-wifi-tether.googlecode.com/files/wireless_tether_1_61-pre1_htc.apk

The only complaint about using this method is of course the battery drain on the Hero, with both Wifi and HSDPA radio under heavy usage I can’t see the phone battery lasting more than 5 hours. I have a phone charger here so its not so much a problem but if you spend a lot of time on the move and require your phone to last I would suggest maybe another method of connectivity.

Also whilst typing out this post, the doctors have told me I can go home today which is great news.

Well eight weeks ago in a moment of weakness I ordered up a new phone contract and a HTC Hero from Mobile Phones Direct and so the switch began.

For the first couple of days despite the very slick setup of the device and seamless integration with Google’s services, Facebook and Twitter I felt deep in the unknown, well out of my comfort zone. Once I began to play with the device and experiment further it all seemed to fall into place.

Hardware

First thing I noticed about the device is the chin, whilst its not a style feature it does add functionality in that it helps with grip on the device, I can hold the phone right at the bottom with one hand and because of the chin this feels very secure.

This then leads me on to the screen which is by far one of the best smartphone touchscreens I have used. Its the first capacitive touch screen I have used on a device other than an iphone and it feels perfect, touch is accurate, scrolling it sensitive but not overly so and coupled with the finger friendly Android interface its a joy to use.

The inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone socket had me reaching for my favourite Sony headphones once again and as a portable media player the Hero really works. There is even a skip, play and pause function on the device locked screen which means you don’t need to unlock it to change playback. Just small things like this make the device feel very rounded on the whole.

Battery life is good, with heavy usage I’m getting a around 36 hours, this is with the Wi-Fi and bluetooth radios left on, some browsing, push email and an instant messenger application running all day.

Software

I felt well out of my dept at first, its the first Android device I’ve used for more than five minutes and even  basic tasks like application management took time for me to grasp. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe this to be a fault of the operating system, more a user issue. I have been so used to Windows Mobile I found myself looking at the Hero aimlessly thinking about how I would complete an action in Windows Mobile, once I got over this hurdle usage fell into place which I suppose is the same for any long term user of an operating system.

One of the things that strikes you the most about the Hero is how tightly integrated with Google it is, simply entering your username and password syncs your Gmail messages, Google contacts and Google Calendar. Taking this a step further, entering your Facebook login details then matches your contacts to Facebook friends, synchronising their Facebook profile picture, birthday, status updates and uploaded pictures, all of this from the contact card on your device. It also enables instant sharing of photos and videos to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

The big story of the Hero is HTC’s new user interface, Sense UI. This is the medium between us as users and the devices functionality. We are used to HTC bridging this gap with Windows Mobile devices using TouchFLO and they certainly do deliver with Sense. It consists of a 7 panel view which can be switched between with a simple finger swipe side to side.  These panels house widgets, on the centre panel by default is the clock with a weather panel giving you the current forecast for your current location, then the three panels to the right and left of this are easily customisable with a whole host of available Android and HTC widgets.

The other feature of this interface is Sense preconfigured scenes, which have different uses. For example the Work scene contains world times, quick access to email, calendar, contacts and stocks information whereas the Social focuses on items like Twitter and SMS messages. Its very well thought out and means you can switch between these items based on what your day will entail.

HTC has go all out with applications for Android, there’s HTC Peep which is a full featured Twitter client and widget, the Stocks app which also has its  own widget and the interesting Footprints applications. This allows you to save your GPS location, add a picture, notes and categorise them. Useful for remembering the nice restaurant you found or noting a memory of a day trip somewhere. Other applications can be downloaded through the application market, its straight forward, simple and clean cut enough for anyone to be able to use and the number of applications on there is incredible, again something I have never experienced with Windows Mobile.

Browsing with the Hero is also a pleasurable experience, Androids browser is fantastic and comparable to that of Apples iphone but not quite as speedy. It reflows text perfectly almost every time a page is loaded and renders everything I have  thrown at it, including YouTube videos from the desktop site using the included HTC Flash. In fact browsing it so good on the Hero I find myself using it more for web stuff than any other device I have owned.

One of the other things i wanted to mention here was the radio management to conserve battery life. I configured my home Wi-Fi network on the Hero and it will use that network for its data needs, during this time the 3G/HSPDA radio is turned off, saving battery. I walk out of my house and the Hero loses connection to the home network, it turns the Wi-Fi into standby and enables the 3G/HSDPA radio. Whilst this seems like the obvious thing to do as a long term Windows Mobile user its not been the case with my previous devices.

Conclusion

Overall the HTC Hero is superb device, its slick, smooth, well integrated, well connected and also looks great. It is certainly smoothed my transition from Windows Mobile and shown me that great functionality can look good also.

If like me you push the boundaries of what your phone can do and your not interested in being tied into Apples policies then the Hero is for you. 

When Google announced Chrome, there was a fair amount of speculation that it was the start of the project which could be aiming towards a browser operating system, a instant on way of accessing the web and making use of the many excellent web applications available now.

Well yesterday Google confirmed what we believed to be so and announced Google Chrome OS.

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.”

I think this is a real game changer, with the project being open source, netbook manufacturers once again have the opportunity to provide lower cost netbooks without the hassle of having to make users learn a new operating system like Linux and with the backing of a company like Google. Not only that but Googles pledge to make it ARM compatible is fairly major in itself, with ultra high efficient ARM chips running at 1Ghz like the Qualcomm Snapdragon, you open up all sorts of all day battery devices.

Its some very interesting news and I personally look forward to seeing the fruits of this challenge.

Installation was an interesting process to say the least, after discovering that my CD-ROM was failing I fitted a new one which then wouldn’t boot the WHS setup DVD. Remember the method I got Windows 7 installed on my Asus EEE PC, I formatted a spare USB flash drive using bootsect.exe and these wonderful instructions. The boot loader appeared with a Vista / Windows Server 2008 style interface which I thought was odd considering WHS is built on Windows Server 2003 technologies.

Then after this nice graphical user interface the installation went into an XP / Windows Server 2003 style text mode setup which as you can see from the picture states “Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server setup”

Eventually after the text mode phase the server drops back to the nice user interface and begins downloading a number of Windows updates. After about a total of 1 hour 20 minutes and seven, (yes SEVEN!) reboots the server was ready for use.

The whole process required little or no user input and upon the first real boot the usual Server 2003 log on screen is displayed. Once logged in you given an immediate warning about the available Server 2003 administrative tools which can potentially break your WHS with wrong use.

After that you mainly work out of the WHS Console which is a simple user interface to back end tasks for your server.

So far I’m impressed with the overall end user experience of WHS, I can see why Microsoft only really released it to system builders, the installation process is a real mix of old and new and with seven reboots didn’t make for a good experience.

The console configuration of users, folders, computers is simple yet effective and once installed I had all my configuration setup and running in less than 15 minutes.

I particularly like the options for storage, when adding storage to the WHS you can enable it as a RAID backup to another drive already installed or as purely additional storage. Also you can duplicate individual shared folders across multiple drives which gives an excellent degree of backup against hard drive failure. In my case this is perfect, where as before I have always had a mirror RAID setup in my server at the hardware level to protect against a disk failure, this has meant I’ve lost 50% of the potential storage, due to one disk protecting another.  Once more I have my laptop and PC do full image backup’s to the server which take vast amounts of space, whilst these are important, I do not consider them critical and so this vast amount of space is also wasted when mirrored across two hard drives. With the WHS, I have no need for hardware RAID anymore which means I maximise the storage, then using the folder duplication option on shared folders I can have only the most critical data copied across two drives.

I have not yet looked at add-ons and the  PC backup features but plan do so over the next week and post a little more feedback.

Those who follow me on Twitter will already know that I plan to follow in the footsteps of Kevin C. Tofel from jkontherun and replace my Windows Server 2003 file server at home with Windows Home Server.

I will go a little more in depth into the installation and my impressions in the coming week so check back if you want to follow the action.

Also this post was from my Windows Mobile based Touch Diamond via moBlog. More on that coming soon too.

I went to a company for a friend yesterday as he was away and they had an issue with internet connectivity.

Its a fairly big business and a complicated network setup, so I took my time, figured out the problem and got it resolved.

Whilst I was there one of the managers asked if I could have a quick look at an issue with a digital camera, the problem was although there were pictures on the camera several of the PC’s were unable to view them.

First thing I do is plug the digital camera into my laptop which then flashed up, very briefly the AutoPlay box, this then disappeared and as with the other computers I was unable to view the files.

I pretty much knew instantly that it was malicious but before I knew it my laptop was infected, no access to registry, task manager and folder options.

I’ve cleaned it up without too much fuss but it just goes to show that you can never be too careful when it comes plugging in removable media.

The most frightening thing about this is the antivirus system on the the corporate network and on my laptop didn’t detect or prevent the spread of this. It has to be said that I will be looking for a new antivirus.

So when the new Windows 7 RC was released I had to give it another try.

So far I’m very happy to report that it seems far more polished that the beta I originally tested and with the added bonus of it working properly with my mouse.

I have had no real issues with it or noted any bugs so far although this may change with extended use.

Performance isn’t quite like Windows XP, even with my RAM upgraded to 2GB but its very useable and I think the majority of users would be happy with the speed and efficiency of it.

For those who are wanting to try this, there are a few points to make,

1) Most of the drivers supplied from the Asus website state they are for XP, but once extracted, instead of using the asus_setup.exe, select the setup.exe.

2) In the case of the graphics drivers you will need to run the executable in Windows XP compatibility mode in order to get the Intel graphics tray application which enables you to use the F8 hotkey for switching the display modes. Once installed you will find an updated version is installed via Windows Update.

3) The only driver which won’t work is the ACPI driver which enables the hot switching of the wireless, bluetooth and webcam. There is a Vista version which will work but took a little digging around, you can get it here; Asus EEE 1000H Vista ACPI driver

If you have any questions or things you would like me to try, drop them in the comments.