The Pureview 808′s camera boasts a pixel count of… 41 megapixels. That’s right. It’s not a typo. Forty-One Megapixels. It’s a camera resolution that outdoes any other smartphone, all compact cameras, and most of the DSLR cameras too.

The 41 megapixel camera produces still shots that measures 38 megapixels. But the default photo size is 5 megapixels. What Nokia’s trying to do with their new camera is oversampling, so as to produce higher quality images. Each pixel in the 5 megapixel camera shot is made up of 7 pixels on the image senor. This allows the camera is average out the sensor input to effectively remove noise, thus providing image quality that is unprecedented on camera smartphones.

The 41 megapixel image sensor also lets you zoom… without digital extrapolation like other camera smartphones would do. To produce zoomed in photos, less of the image sensor is used, and there is less (or no) oversampling, but every pixel from the resulting image really comes from the image sensor. No moving optics involved, and no digital extrapolation. A key advantage of this solution is that there is no noise from any motorized zoom mechanism like often happens with compact digital cameras.

Is the 41 megapixels overkill? Well, if you care very much about good image quality that you can capture anywhere you go… well, there is no better way to achieve that with a camera smartphone that you can carry around with you all the time.

The Pureview 808, unfortunately, is otherwise a little dated in other aspects. It’s a Symbian phone (yeah, didn’t Nokia already want to abandon Symbian?), has a 4″ display with 640×360 resolution, a single-core 1.3 GHz ARM 11 CPU, and a rather clunky form factor. Oh well, the space is needed to house its amazing 1/1.2″ sensor (yes, beats about all the compact digital cameras out there).

Would you get the Pureview 808?

For me, I’m quite decidedly done with Symbian phones. Regardless of how they rename it. But the 41 megapixels camera with Carl Zeiss lens is quite awesome hardware.

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Several months ago, I did quick review of the recent line up of Android phones. Nothing stood out as particularly spectacular that would represent a significantly worthy upgrade to the Nexus One. Sure, there were many better phones, but none were, in my opinion, all-around significant enough improvements. Then SGS2 arrived, and it qualified as significantly better for several reasons:

1. 8 megapixel auto-focus camera
2. Dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU
3. Super AMOLED Plus display with true RGB subpixels
4. 1GB of RAM, 16GB built-in flash memory
5. Very slim (8.49mm) and very light (116gm)

Notice that I omitted to mention the large 4.27″ display. You see, I don’t actually consider that an advantage. I’ve figured that a 4″ display is more than enough. I don’t see any compelling reason why a phone needs to have a 4.3″ display. One of the reasons I liked the Nexus One was its diminutive size. Alright, the Nexus One isn’t exactly diminutive, but it’s more compact than the previous phones I’ve owned (Nokia N97 and N95 8GB prior to the Nexus One). The SGS2 was, in terms of its surface area, too big. I know some people will love the 4.27″ sized display, so this could be a rather subjective matter.

The thinness of the SGS2, at just 8.49mm, is really something spectacular. It might even help win over people (like me) who feel that the display is too large. I’m quite happy that Samsung got rid of the chrome edge that adorned the original Galaxy S. Gorilla glass completely covers the top surface of the SGS2, except for the speaker at the top and the home button at the bottom. The phone’s shell is somewhat featureless, which gives it a very clean look. Overall, this large thin black slate is simply gorgeous. I’m almost willing to forgive the 4.27″ display.

I was still very worried about the size of the SGS2. That is, the size in terms of surface area. It looks very big, too big. It felt too big even when I play with the demo sets. But after using the SGS2 for several hours, it turns out that it didn’t feel too uncomfortable to hold in my hands. I think it could be that my hands are relatively large (at least by Asian standards). On hindsight, I realized that my Nexus One was slightly too small in my hands, lending a sense of insecurity that the phone would slip out of my hands. I liked that the Nexus One doesn’t make much of its presence felt when placed in my pants pockets. The SGS2′s 125.3mm x 66.1mm surface area, however, was just a little too much, and the 8.49mm thinness was not enough to make up for it. Again, I think a 4″ display would have been better. Alright, I’ll stop complaining about the display’s 4.27″ size for the rest of this post.

The SGS2′s display is superb! The Super AMOLED Plus is really magnificent. I’ve simply not seen anything so brilliant. The display is very bright, and the colours come out very vibrant. In fact, the display is so brightly lit that I thought it must have been set at maximum brightness, and I subconsciously worried about how it would drain the battery. But it was not so, on both counts (i.e. it was nowhere near maximum brightness, and it is supposedly quite energy efficient). Viewing photos and watching videos will be so much more enjoyable with such a splendid display.

The SGS2 fails in the “nice to touch” department. The all-plastic shell makes it feel cheap, and the plasticky buttons don’t feel good to push either. The power button of my Nexus One failed me after almost one year of use. I sure hope the SGS2 buttons will be more hardy. The textured back cover helps to make a more secure grip when you hold the phone, and it’s a good thing that Samsung didn’t make it glossy to blend in with the rest of the phone’s overall look.

Like many other Samsung phones, there’s a chin at the back of the SGS2. It’s actually not as pronounced as it looks in photos. I’ve found a usefulness for the chin: It’s something to grip as I pull it out of my pocket. The real purpose, of course, is probably to help the phone balance properly when placed flat on its back, because the 8 megapixel camera housing also protrudes slightly from the back.

One of the thing I love to do very much on my phone is to take photos. I’ve been stuck with 5 megapixel camera phones for many years, starting with the Nokia N95 8GB, the N97, and then the Nexus One. The SGS2 is not just an upgrade of megapixels. It’s the picture quality that has also improved. My Nokia phones clearly produced better quality photos than the Nexus One did. I guess, generally, Nokia made better camera sensors than HTC. I can’t compare directly with Nokia now, but the SGS2 does seem to produce better photos than the Nexus One (again, I’m talking about image quality, not about megapixel count). Better than the iPhone 4 too, if I may add. The shot-to-shot time on the SGS2 is also much faster than the Nexus One, but I still no match for the iPhone 4.

Although the Nexus One’s 1GHz Snapdragon CPU was no slow-coach, newer more demanding applications are starting to push its limits, and this year, everyone starts to look at dual-core processors. The SGS2′s dual-core 1.2GHz Exynos processor, based on ARMv7 Cortex A9 architecture, is the current champion of mobile phone CPUs, with no competition in sight at this time.

I wasn’t looking out much for better sound quality when I was deciding if I should get the SGS2. But when I took my first phone call on the SGS2, I immediately noticed the superior sound quality of its earpiece over that of the Nexus One. The bass reproduction is strong and clearly present. Voice is crisp, and overall sounds are crystal clear. I’m also pretty surprised at the quality of the earphone output, using a proper pair of earphones (I’ve made it a habit of immediately abandoning the free earphones included with any music-playing product). I’m not going to critique it like an audiophile would expect of audiophile-class equipment, so I’ll just summarize thus: It’s the best I’ve heard from any mobile phone.

GPS fixing speed on the SGS2 is remarkably faster than the Nexus One. In places where it might have taken a minute for my Nexus One, the SGS2 took like 10 to 15 seconds. Getting an accurate fix on your map location is now a lot more convenient. I am quite surprised that the SGS2 can even get a GPS fix while it is indoors… 3m away from the nearest window.

Last… and certainly not the least, something that is very important: battery life. I think it is safe to say, it beats the Nexus One. So far I’ve got less than 5 full charges on the phone. Each cycle the battery seems to do better and better. Of course, it will plateau somewhere and reach its optimal performance level. Right now, it’s doing about 2% battery drain per hour with light use (yes, the phone is actually used… not that I’m just leaving it on standby without touching it).

So that’s my thoughts on the SGS2. Apart from the oversized display, I’m liking everything else about it. I feel it’s a worthy upgrade from the Nexus One.

Pros:

1. Super AMOLED Plus display is awesome
2. Long battery life
3. Quick GPS fix
4. Camera quality
5. Overall good looks (of the handset)
6. And… the original 5 reasons at the top of this post

Cons:

1. 4.27″ display is too big
2. Cheap plasticky feel

Incidentally, I found myself quite liking Samsung’s firmware. I had originally planned on jumping to CyanogenMod 7 as soon as I can, but I’ve decided to stay with Samsung’s firmware. At least for now. I’ll write more about this another time.

If you like links to full SGS2 reviews, try the following:

• http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/28/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-review/
• http://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Samsung-Galaxy-S-II-Review_id2728
• http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-review-26148446/
• http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/samsung-galaxy-s2-930907/review
• http://www.trustedreviews.com/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-i9100_Mobile-Phone_review

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If you’ve not heard about it, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden announced (MacRumor link) their discovery that iOS devices recorded location data in a hidden file in iOS devices. Personally I felt this was more of a publicity stunt to raise their profile. It turns out that Allan’s and Warden’s discovery wasn’t much of a discovery anyway, because 4 years earlier, Alex Levinson, a student from Rochester Institute of Technology, already made public his discovery of about the same thing. He published his research in a computer science conference, and subsequently contributed a chapter to a book on iOS forensic anaysis. (Source: Tech-Ex and Gigaom)

Then, guess what? This isn’t even something unique about iOS. Android also does about the same thing. CNET asked Google a series of questions, and Google was apparently unable to comment on all of them immediately.

Location tracking isn’t even about the embedded features of iOS or Android, or other smartphone operating systems. Don’t you know your telco already knows where your phone is at any time? Yeah, cellular location isn’t as accurate as GPS positioning that your phone may be capable of obtaining, but it is pretty darn good too

Inside your workplace, your IT networking people also have access to location information within their network. I’m not just talking about nailing down your access to physical network points, but about location tracking using Wifi triangulation. These are enterprise wireless features that have been available for many years. Have you heard of 802.11-based asset tracking? How do you think they work?

Then there’s more and more. How about your EZ-link card? Your cash card? Some can track where you’re spending money, how much your spending, and what you’re spending on.

You are always being watched. Some way or other.

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So with my mobile contract up for renewal, it is a good time to take stock of what the Android platform is offering in terms of the mobile phones available on the market. We have been quite lucky here in Singapore because many of the flagship Android phones have come to our shores pretty quickly: Desire HD, Nexus S, Incredible S, etc.

Before I start on the recent Android phones, I just want to look back at how the Android platform has developed. At the beginning, Android phones were not much more than proof-of-concept. They were geek toys, bought primarily by people who are developers or those who just needed to have the latest gizmos. The software was immature, and it was inexcusable that the hardware was also crappy. The same manufacturers that made Android phones made other types of phones with much superior hardware. I had remarked to friends and colleagues then that the Android platform needed a phone with decent hardware on par with the competition before it can be taken seriously.

Android phone hardware started to turn around with the Motorola Droid (which bravely pitched itself against the iPhone), and soon after the Nexus One became the Google flagship that represents the coolness of the Android platform.

It’s very exciting that Android phones have, since mid-2010 I’d say, come to the forefront of the mobile phone battle, competing at the same level as Apple’s iPhone. Let’s not think that it’s an unfair comparison for the reason that it’s many manufacturer’s versus one manufacturer. From a platform perspective, Android has not just gained traction with consumers, but positioned itself to win the same kind of consumers targeted by the iPhone.

Why do I say that? It’s because nowadays people are buying Android phones simply for their good hardware spec and/or good hardware design. People are buying Android phones not because of Android per se. In fact, some people don’t even care about the Android. It’s important to know that you’ve got to get good phones into the hands of consumers first. Then, let the platform sell itself.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone in the Android ecosystem. Manufacturers focus on building great hardware, and leverage Android for the software. Consumers get choice from the diversity of phone models, and benefit from (hopefully) consistent user experience. Application developers have access to a larger market (although admittedly the diversity of hardware could be challenging). Then, of course, Google is happiest to see the Android family flourish. (I always worry that one day Google will become evil.)

How does the landscape of Android mobile phones look now? They are plenty of new phones since the Nexus One. I’ve looked at several models and unfortunately, nothing stands out as hugely improved over the Nexus One. Let’s look at them anyway.

HTC Desire: I’ve got to mention this for completeness. This is the Nexus One’s sibling, almost identical in every way, except that the HTC Desire has physical buttons in place of the Nexus One’s capacitive touch buttons, and lacks a 2nd microphone for background noise cancellation.

HTC Desire Z: It’s main highlight is a slide out QWERTY keyboard, but otherwise, nothing spectacular. It does have a slower CPU than the Nexus One.

HTC Desire HD: This phone upgrades the main camera to 8MP, and sports a nice 4.3″ LCD screen. Still no front-facing camera though. It has a newer revision of the Nexus One’s Snapdragon CPU (MSM8255). Personally, I do find 4.3″ screens a little too big.

HTC Desire S: This is a small evolution of the HTC Desire, adding a front-facing camera, and the newer MSM8255 CPU like the HTC Desire HD.

HTC Incredible S: Like the HTC Desire HD, but now adds a front-facing camera with 1.3MP, and has a slightly reduced screen size at 4.0″. 4.3″ is too big for me, 4.0″ works okay.

Samsung Galaxy S: This is probably one of the earliest Android phones sporting a front-facing camera. The main camera is 5MP, while the front-facing one is VGA resolution. Samsung uses their own Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 CPU running at 1GHz, and its PowerVR SGX540 GPU is arguably faster than any Android phone made by HTC.

Nexus S: Unlike the Nexus One which is made by HTC, Google chose to go with Samsung with their second flagship phone. It uses the same CPU/GPU like the Samsung Galaxy S. Camera-wise, still a 5MP main camera and VGA front-facing camera. It has a 4.0″ curved Super AMOLED screen. The Samsung camera is much better in quality than HTCs, even better than the 8MP on the HTC Desire HD. The Nexus S, unfortunately, doesn’t have a MicroSD slot, although it does have 16GB of flash built-in.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc: Sony Ericsson has produced a variety of Android phones, including the Xperia X10, X10 mini and X10 mini pro. Their phones generally look pretty sleek. I’ll just skip them all and fast-forward to the Arc. The Arc joins HTC phones in using the Snapdragon MSM8255 CPU clocked at 1GHz (the Xperia X10 series phones were underpowered, in my humble opinion). It has a 8MP main camera, which produces pretty good quality images (a strong point of Sony Ericsson’s phone cameras), but doesn’t have a front-facing camera.

So there you have it. For the clean, untainted Google experience, the Nexus S is the phone to go with. It is not a huge improvement over the Nexus One.

But hold on, there is a little issue with the Nexus S. There are apparently two, I just discovered, models of the Nexus S. One is the Google Nexus S phone we’ve all heard about. It’s made by Samsung. The other, is the Samsung Nexus S. This is also made by Samsung. Apparently they are really different phones. The former has a Super AMOLED screen, while the latter has a Super LCD screen. The specifications on GSMArena.com says they are otherwise identical, but a HardwareZone.com review says the latter is slightly thicker, slightly heaver, and battery lasts somewhat less (due to higher power consumption of the Super LCD screen compared with the Super AMOLED).

Which phone is carried by our local telcos? StarHub and M1 clearly states Samsung Nexus S. SingTel is somewhat ambiguous, simply calling it “Nexus S”. I think it’s a good chance that it’s te Samsung Nexus S. It’s somewhat of a disappointment.

So… we’re back to the start. No real successor to the Nexus One.

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This “problem” used to be limited to enterprise-type phones like Blackberries. But now, I’m faced with the same issue on Android.

I cannot understand why an Open Source platform like Android would subscribe to the idea of such a misfeature: To allow Microsoft Exchange server to remotely wipe all data on my phone. The misfeature was recently backported into the source of CyanogenMod 6 ROM. I’ve setup my phone to sync with Exchange, so that I can finally be compliant with my company’s corporate direction to use Microsoft-based collaborative mechanisms. Email, contacts and calendar, working very nicely on my phone. It’s really cool, since now both my phone and MacBook Pro can collaborate on Exchange.

Except that, now, my phone is asking me to grant the Email app the privilege to wipe all data on my phone. Huh? But… it’s my phone! Ok, if you say the company data belongs to the company, fine… then wipe the Exchange related data. Exchange email, Exchange contacts and Exchange calendar. But surely, not wipe all data from my phone?

Thank goodness for source code being available. I was annoyed enough to figure out what was changed, reverted the change, and rebuild the ROM. That’s the beauty of open source.

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So the iPhone users around me will say, since I’m right-handed, why am I not using my right hand? Interesting question. I suppose, holding a phone doesn’t take a lot of strength, nor dexterity. It seems like a secondary activity that can be delegated to the non-master hand, so that my master hand is free to do other things. Like taking notes while answering a call. Type on a keyboard. Open a door. Eat. Hmm, and operate a certain type of heavy mobile machinery while traveling on the road. These other activities are best done with my right hand.

If the iPhone 4 had to be held with the right hand, it seems somewhat inconvenient to carry out other tasks simultaneously.

Then, I saw the connection. The iPhone doesn’t multitask. Neither, probably, do their users. I can just imagine, if an iPhone user were on the phone (held the right way, of course) walking down toward a door, they would hang up the call, return the iPhone to the owner’s pocket (or wherever), then open the door (the right way too) and walk through it. After that, the call can be resumed. Too difficult? Well, basically you should just sit still when making a call. Try not to do any other thing at the same time.

Sounds really silly?

That’s why iOS 4 now has to support multitasking.

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Ok. What do you need? For folks who have not rooted your phone, you are out of luck. You will have to. As mentioned, the GUI doesn’t do what is needed. We need to get beneath the hood. So, before you go on, check that:

• Your phone is rooted.
• You have the adb tool (from the Android SDK).
• Your phone has USB Debugging turned on (under Settings, Applications, Development).
• You are comfortable with “vi”.

So here goes. It’s really quite simple. (I think the difficult part is really in the above.)

1. Connect to your phone over USB and run the adb shell (adb shell).
2. Edit the file in /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf and append the text from the block below. Put in your NUSNET userid and password in the identity and password lines. Save the file.
3. Stop and start wifi.

ap_scan=2
network={
ssid="NUS"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
eap=PEAP
auth_alg=OPEN SHARED
identity="<nusnetid>"
password="<password>"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
priority=2
}

You should be able to connect to the NUS wireless (NUS SSID) network now. This NUS SSID is encrypted so your communication can’t be easily eavesdropped by other wireless users. You have the added benefit of auto-login. (The NUSOPEN SSID requires web-based captive portal logon, and the communication is also unencrypted.)

Update: You may want to add ap_scan=2 at the start of your wpa_supplicant.conf file to connect to hidden NUS SSID.

Update: The NUSNET userid now needs to be in domain\userid format (e.g. nusstf\comabc or nusstu\a01234567) because something got seriously mucked up recently.

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I guess I’ve had enough of the N97′s slowness. The handful of firmware updates across the months have certainly improved things. But the Nexus One is a whole lot faster, not just in its camera application, but in just about everything. It is like upgrading to a new generation of PC. Nokia made some strategic choices with its hardware specifications which did not pan out well for me. I suppose if anyone wants to label a phone as being a multimedia computer, they ought to make sure it will perform like one.

The other joy about the Nexus One is the size. Finally, after years with a couple of N-series phones from Nokia, I’m now holding something that actually qualifies as sleek and compact. It’s reasonably light too. The Nexus One doesn’t even feel bulky when contained in its neoprene pouch. It feels really solid too, particularly since it has no moving parts at all.

Then, while I had not expected to see improvements in terms of voice call quality, but I think the Nexus One does perform better than the N97. I’d have thought that Nokia would get basic voice call functionality working superbly. However, the Nexus One has the advantage of active noise cancellation from an extra microphone. The benefit of the activate noise cancellation is really at the other end of the call, so I don’t really know myself, but I’ve heard and read a lot about how it works beautifully.

But I think the most fascinating thing is, perhaps, that the Nexus One is more like a PC than any other phone that I ever had. More so than Nokia’s multimedia computers. I rooted the Nexus One within a few hours of receiving it, and I’m still discovering how much like a PC the smart phones have become. (Well, it’s not like I didn’t already know, but when you actually play with it yourself, you experience the things that you could only have read about previously.)

I have other “issues” with the Nexus One, but I’ll save those for another posting some other time.

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Despite what many other reviewers have said, I don’t think the Nexus One is the nicest looking phone. But it is certainly the best looking of any Android phone to date. (No, I don’t like how the iPhone looks either.) The fact that it now has really decent hardware, such as a superbly fast CPU, plenty of RAM, GPS, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, etc, makes it a whole lot more attractive as a serious competition to modern smart phones. Yes, I’m not going to be sold on to any Android phone simply because it is Android powered. The Nexus One also has, finally, a decent 5 megapixel camera that has been sorely lacking in other Android phones (save for the recent Motorola Droid), and although I never believed it would outdo the likes of any modern Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Samsung camera phone, I think it will be “passable”.

So, I became interested to see if the Nexus One will work for me. It helped that there were some real Nexus One at work that I can touch and play with. The Nexus One’s camera is surely a downgrade for me. But I think, overall, it had enough pull factors to turn the decision in its favour. I also like the fact that the phone is branded and sold by Google directly, with “stock” but yet cutting-edge software that hasn’t gotten mutilated and maimed by any phone manufacturer.

I’m still not very trusting of Google. But I think they won’t turn evil in the next couple of years, or at least not for the lifetime of this phone. So I decided to take the plunge to try out living in Google world. I’ve not been much of a Google-citizen before this.

The other day, I wanted to sync my data, and Google was “down” (well, basically the network broke somewhere between my working network and Google’s network). I think this cloud business is rather smokey. But this cloudy business seems to be very popular, so I’ll go along with it for now.

Probably another attraction for me is the fact that the Nexus One was like a computer. Yes, Nokia has been telling us their phones are multimedia computers. But the Nexus One runs really like a Linux PC. This will definitely be interesting to people who like to poke their fingers into operating systems. It’s time for me to catch up on some new recent technology.

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Back home, a quick check in twitter-world confirmed that others are twittering about their problems on SingTel Mobile too. So it is not that the few odd cases that I am personally aware of. So it seems that SingTel Mobile network was mucked up for a couple of hours from this late afternoon to some time in the evening. It isn’t even the first time. I blogged about it previously (which interestingly shows up as the number one search result for “singtel network down” on Google right now).

Let’s say those few hours of downtime today amounted to approximately 2 hours. That’s 0.023% down time, or 99.977% uptime. That’s bad. Phones are supposed to achieve 5 9′s… 99.999% uptime.

There’s nothing much more to say than I’ve already posted about previously. I just want to rant a little about the inconvenience of having a working mobile phone when you need it.

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