My masterful plan to use the Nokia N8 and the Galaxy Tab for some photoblogging for Carrypad and UMPCportal via the wordpress application failed at CES in Las Vegas. Internet connectivity was terrible (despite having a Sprint MIFI) and so I abandoned it quickly. Barcelona should, if last year is anything to go by, be a lot better so stay tuned for a lot more posts. I’m going to be trying hard no to post photo after photo without any information. That would be boring.
Again I’ll be dragging along my trusty old Canon S2IS with its simple video capability that allows me to edit on Windows Movie Maker and to connect via USB for live blogging. I still can’t find a combination that beats it. It should allow me to upload some videos fairly quickly too.
Total kit list goes something like this:
Nokia N8
Samsung Galaxy Tab
Gigabyte Touchnote netbook (with ssd and 2Gb upgrade)
Canon S2IS
Universal power pack (50wh)
USB cables
SD cards
Total weight is still going to be in the ‘backpack’ range unfortunately.
One extra service I want to try out this time is Audioboo. I’ve been testing it on the Galaxy Tab and I’m impressed. The audio quality is fine and it slots nicely into my Twitter stream. I won’t be including it on the website though as I want it to be something unique for my Twitter followers. If you haven’t heard of Audioboo, check it out. It allows you to record a piece of audio, in my case through the Samsung Galaxy Tab built-in Mic, and send it to their servers in a single press. They then send it into your Twitter stream and make it available, with RSS, in your own channel. You can find a few segments I’ve done with the Galaxy Tab here
Join me over at Carrypad and UMPCPortal over the next week. It will he fun!
The sun is out, the Galaxy Tab is charged and I have a few things to do in town so its time to hit the road and go mobile today. I want to do some more Galaxy Tab photography too so stay tuned for that along with a few posts via WordPress. All this practice will help with my work at MWC next week.
Looking back on the date of my previous post about a Solar, mobile PC for 2011 I think its time for an update.
Firstly, WOW!, the Galaxy Tab is working out amazingly well for me as a productive device and PCs just can touch it in terms of social apps, location, tracking and microblogging. I’m still using my netbook for long-form writing but as time goes on, I’m writing longer and longer pieces on the Galaxy Tab.
As for battery life, the Tab is returning a minimum of 7 hrs (that’s a hugely busy day on it) and a maximum of 2 days. The battery inside is 10wh which is 1/5th of the battery on a 7hr netbook. With a charging voltage of 5v at around 1500mah it’s something that can be run from 500gm of power pack for a week. Wherever you are in the world, are you going to be away from a source of mains power for that long? The only problem is that the charger is fairly unique in delivering a quick-charge via up to 2A over a USB port. You will have to search long and hard for a solar-powered or battery pack solution to support that. The only option is to trickle charge it from a standard USB port overnight. It really does take that long but it might work for you. With a 420gm weight, no moving parts, a Gorilla Glass hardened screen and a good range of cases and covers available, I won’t hesitate to recommend it to travellers.
If you really need Windows though, you might want to wait a few months. I saw a some new ultra-mobile PCs based on the Intel Oaktrail platform at CES in Jan and the efficiency is looking good. Samsung will be launching the TX100 (aka Gloria and PC7 Series) in March and the message from Samsung is that you’ll be getting 9hrs battery life in under 1kg with an SSD, 2GB of RAM. It’s the perfect setup for some ultra-mobile and ultra low power computing. The screen is somewhat exposed as it’s got a tablet/sliding keyboard form factor but that’s the only thing that causes me any concern. Expect something in the region of 45wh on the battery capacity though. This is no smartphone!
Finally though, we’ve seen some indicators that more smart-books could launch in 2011. Honeycomb, the tablet-oriented version of the Android operating system will support multicore ARM architecture and should stimulate developers to make more pro-oriented apps. Expect the pricing of these ‘HD’ apps to be more than you’re used to on a smartphone but don’t expect anything near the prices you get charged on Windows. Devices like the 7hr, 800gm, Toshiba AC100 would come of age if Honeycomb got ported to them and then things would get interesting. The AC100 has a 15wh battery and costs around 200 euro!
2011 will be a great year for low power computing and for those that have occasional access to mains power, maybe that solar requirement will drop away as we move within the 10wh / day requirement. Off-the-power-grid computing will be easier than ever.
I hope to do some off-the-grid travelling during the summer and of course, ill report here if I find anything of interest in the meantime.
[This post written in portrait/thumbing mode on the Samsung Galaxy Tab using the WordPress application.]
If you need to know what’s really important in a tablet design, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve done a LOT of research. In this article I pull all that knowledge together in a huge list of tablet improvements, based on the good old Samsung Galaxy Tab.
The iPad and Galaxy Tab were great, great examples of early consumer tablets in the market and for me the quality and mobility of the Galaxy Tab meant that it worked well in my family of devices. I’ve used it for over 3 years and in in the early monthf of ownership I compiled a list of issues and improvements. The list applies to other tablets too so if you’re designing or buying tablets for the market, this is the sort of list you should already have on your whiteboard. If not, take this one and make it better.
The list is over 50 items long and is split into three sections. Changes that could be made to the current Galaxy Tab are listed first and this is a good place to scan through if you’re looking to buy a Galaxy Tab. The second section includes what I would call reasonable hardware expectations for second-gen or late 2011 high-quality tablet. I don’t expect all of these features to be included but it’s a list of possible improvements. The third section is a little way-out there and includes hardware changes that may not be possible this year or could be too niche. I did have a section including third party software but that list got very long indeed and is not really relevant here.
IMPORTANT: There’s more to be added to this list and a great discussion about tablets to be had here. Chip-in with your thoughts too. You’ll have ideas that no-one has through of yet so don’t be afraid to dump them in the comments below. If it’s not too wild (lets keep it within a 2-year timeframe) i’ll add it to the list and credit you.
Software and experience changes
Web browser. Faster, mouse/finger over. Higher quality. Plugins. Password sync. Common gestures.
Better protection of UI experience under load. (Run UI in separate core? Possible hardware change required for that.)
Improve UI physics. Response rate needs to be 20ms or less. (I believe from my audio work in the past that 20ms is where delays become noticeable. I could be wrong but you know what I’m getting at right?) Try a drum-machine programme, It’s impossible. (Android 2.3 bring in features that can improve this through the use of the NDK)
DLNA improvements. (Receivers and senders need to improve compatibility.)
Protect the audio playback from stutters in multitasking scenarios. Critical. (How about a ‘dedicated’ mode where the application is brought to ‘realtime’ status, in effect, like iOS does.
Vastly improved audio library features. playlist import/export, cross-fading, id3 tag editing, jukebox mode, cover retrieval, radio streams, integration with Last.fm amd similar services. Much quicker media scanning.
Easier way to auto-organise applications list. Sort-by: most used, alphabetical, recently added, categorise (based on market categorisation) Apps list is as important as an audio catalogue. Genres, personal ratings on client should feed back to Market.There are a ton of improvements that can be made here.
Samsung apps style improvements. Lose the wood-grain effect or allow theaming! Some feature improvements are also possible.
More video content to buy / stream. Major issue outside the U.S.
Full BT 3.0 (wifi TX support, near-field pairing)
Longer battery life (of course!) Important – battery save mode that schedules network usage. Significant improvements will require hardware changes.
More tablet / pro apps to be included via the Samsung catalogue
Better gallery with sort, date search, rename, tagging, face detection etc. Stock Gallery is very limited.
Better printing support. Google Cloud Print service should fix this.
Apt-x codec support over BT A2DP. (Or some other HQ wireless audio transmission capability)
SMS remote kill feature
Compatibility with camera applications
Timed profiles, turn to silence.
Improve speed of re-scanning WiFi access points. Can be extremely slow in some situations.
Occasionally boot-up time can run into 2 minutes or more. This needs to be improved
Hot-swap SIM cards (where applicable)
Slippery when dry. The smooth, easy wipe finish needs a couple of high-friction areas for book-reading
AC3 and DTS soundtrack handling. (Down-sampling to 2-channel and pass-through for HDMI)
Lower the lowest screen brightness (for in-bed, next-to-partner usage.)
Essential Hardware changes:
Longer charger cable (and micro-usb port)
Camera Quality: Glass lens, better sensor, continuous AF when recording video. Lens cover. Flash options. HD recording.
Camera shutter release button
Fm receiver + transmitter
USB OTG support for external storage, keyboard, mouse, other peripherals (midi, dvb-t, external cam)
Better GPS. Sensitivity, speed.
Analogue video out built-in. Is that old-school? E.G. VGA, S-Video, Composite
Indicator lamps – multiple for use with different applications. Programmable colour.
indicators and alerts need to feed to paired Android phones.
Replaceable battery
Kick-stand
SDXC card compatibility
Higher quality screen (at same or lower power utilisation.)
For the ultimate tablet:
Digital radio reception. DAB (Update: and other standards)
Digital TV reception. DVB (Update: and other standards)
Digitiser for graphics and handwriting input.
HQ audio recording. External mic over BT? Array mics.
Near field payments support (Probably best on a phone tho)
Daylight readable screen (transflective)
Quick Fingerprint reader for security.
Midi support (be a midi sequencer/controller)
HQ Audio synthesiser and audio effect support in hardware. (for use as effects unit)
Built-in mini projector
Remote mini handset accessory for using tablet as a phone. (Over BT with address book, dialling, voice dialling, CLI
Screen extension (slide-able, removable)
PVR facility and dock. (hardware video encoding – 720p)
Wi-Di and wireless audio over Wifi
Rear panel controls and gestures area.
Glasses-free 3D (plus content)
…and lastly. Lets have a penta-boot system with Windows, Android, MeeGo, Ubuntu and WebOS!
Update: Reader contributions
Better device security including encryption of sensitive information (BryanB – via comment below)
Good design and implementation of user interface frameworks and the design/implementation of the applications. Really poorly coded application user interfaces can use all the CPU available. [Chippy: I think that’s really part of the Android framework though.] (Sam – via comment)
Samsung Keyboard Editor – (Max – via comment)
A hinged back cover with a kick-stand that would allow easy battery replacement, SSD upgrades, and safe storage of extra SDHC cards. (jjsjjsva via comment) [Chippy: I love that SDHC storage area idea. That’s a winner!]
You have to love this time of the year, CES is starting and companies are providing all sorts of sneak peaks into what they have been working on to keep our gadget appetites suitably moistened.
Opera haven’t disappointed with quick preview of a new version of their popular mobile browser designed specifically for tablets. Announced on the Opera blog, this new version appears to be tailored for the larger screens of tablets.
Opera used the Samsung Galaxy Tab to preview the browser meaning an Android version is certain although I also suspect an iOS version for the iPad will be announced, especially with the rumored iPad2 looming for sometime this year.
As you can see the browser uses Operas visual bookmarks layout called Speed Dial and appears to run smoothly on the Galaxy Tab although its hardly surprising given the hardware.
As far as I am aware this will be the first browser customised specifically for tablets so it should be interesting to see what other features Opera can pack into this new edition to differentiate it from the vanilla mobile version.
What a perfect test it was to be away from home for 5 days. I took the Nokia N8, the Galaxy Tab and my Gigabyte netbook with me for Christmas in England and all three were needed. Convergence doesn’t exist.
The N8 makes a perfect phone. Voice calling is strong and reliable. It’s a perfect pocket, internet-connected camera too. In typical low-light, moving kids scenarios it beat my old N82 hands down. Video footage has been great too. I’m confident that there isn’t a better personal camera out there. Try having a compact camera ready for all the moments I captured! As for maps, well it wasn’t the best. I didn’t have to do much with turn-by-turn and when I searched for an address offline. I couldn’t find it. I had to go online to resolve that problem. Clearly I need to download the local map again but with Google maps supporting caching now, the advantages for OVI maps are fading. MP3 capabilities are good, the always-on clock is useful and timed profiles are a winner. Structurally I feel its going to last and although internet is relatively slow compared to my Galaxy Tab, it’s there if needed in an emergency. I used Gravity quite a few times.
The Gigabyte netbook came out twice in the last 2 days and I’m glad I had it because I had a server issue. Try ssh, server testing, ping, traceroute and submitting a ticket on the Tab. Under pressure, it’s no use in these scenarios at all. For admin work, there’s no way you can survive without windowing, a full browser with mouse and keyboard. No way!
As for the Tab, it became my buddy. Used way more than the phone or netbook it was used for comment handling on my blogs, emails, chat, sms, Facebook, Twitter, maps, contacts, calendar, ebooks, casual web, RSS reading, games, photo presenting, pdf reading (stored itinerary) and this – blog writing. I even used it for remote access to my PC although that was more of a more webcam experiment than anything else.
I knew there was a space. Carrypads are here, are valuable and show just how much fits into the ‘tweener’ space. The Origami concept of 2006 was spot on. Shame they didn’t have the technology to actually make it happen back then!
Anyone else out there, enjoying the three-device strategy?
We’re all unique customers and all have our unique requirements. I categorise myself as the ‘boy scout’ type. I am not a fan of highly converged devices (the Nokia N900 was not something for me) but I do like being prepared with a good, mobile set of computing and communications kit. I have a tendency to want to cover as many scenarios as possible with my mobile devices but I balance that with the realisation that you can’t have one device for each task. Some convergence is needed. But how much?
Sometimes we’re lucky in Europe, sometimes not. With the Galaxy Tab we’re generally lucky because Germany was one of the first countries to get mass-market availability. It’s also one of the first places to get the Galaxy Tab HDMI Docking Station. Model number: ECR-D980
Recommended price is 49,90 Euros but let me just say this now don’t buy it for that price. Not only is it available for much less (I bought it for 36 Euro) but it simply isn’t worth 50 Euro. It’s nothing much more than a stand and a break-out cable and once you’ve bought the HDMI cable to go with it, you’re looking at a lot of money just to get the digital video signal from one connector to another.
Yes, there’s no HDMI cable included which completely caught me off-guard. I ended up heading out to the local electronics shop where, of course, the lowest cost cable was out of stock. I paid 29 Euro for a mini HDMI to HDMI cable which is again, too much. The other thing you’ll need is the power cable from your original Galaxy Tab because again, it’s not provided and you need it to activate the HDMI port. That means if you want to charge the Tab somewhere other than the dock or use the cable for PC connectivity, you need to remove it from the dock. A royal pain in the arse and certainly not user friendly. The other cable problem has to do with the original USB cable. It’s all of about 50cm long and just doesn’t reach to most plug locations. Samsung have not thought this one through.
One more thing, there’s no 3.5mm audio cable proved either but I guess that won’t surprise you now.
As you’ll see in the images, there are just the three ports on the dock. Mini HDMI, 3.5mm audio and the power cable input. Analogue video is not exposed on the docking port so you’ll have to buy another cable for that (17 Euro street price) which means you’ll have to remove the device from the dock, stop charging and connect the A/V breakout cable. Again, not elegant. The build quality is good and the base-located speaker openings are routed well.
You can also flip the Tab into landscape mode and use the dock as a stand…
Once you’ve got over the cable issue and got things connected up, you’ll see various output styles that depend on device orientation and application control. For example, the home screen flips to fill the screen when you put the device in landscape mode. YouTube plays in full-screen regardless of device orientation. Games, such as Asphalt 5 HD, only show in landscape mode and video playback through the local video player or through the DLNA ‘AllShare’ player always show in full-screen.
I tested the output on two devices. One, an LG digital TV, the other, an LG monitor (both 1080p capable) and got two different results in terms of quality. It also highlighted some audio issues that you need to be aware of.
The LG digital TV worked well and seemed to display in a ‘native’ resolution although there were a few lines missing at the top and bottom of the screen. If the monitor has 1080 vertical resolution and the Tab, 1024, why are there lines missing? There’s some overscan or scaling issue here on my TV. Playback of videos from the local storage was great and a 1080p trailer played just beautifully although without sound due to the lack of AC3 down-conversion. I’ll talk more about that in a minute. Google Earth was fun too although the up-scaling from 1024×600 definitely shows up on-screen! I even tried a racing game. By holding the dock and device in landscape mode you can use the Tab as a controller and watch it on the screen. It’s fun but not that practical with two cables hanging out of the back. Roll-on wireless HDMI because that game/controller scenario could really be something special.
On the second screen, an LG monitor, I got poor results. The screen showed the Tab as a 1080i input at 30fps but the resolution was very poor indeed. The home screen and browser text was pixelated and ugly; The scaling on this device just didn’t work-out, even after checking monitor configuration. For reference, the display is an LG W2261VP as seen here on Amazon. Interestingly, when I played out a 1080p video, the quality was perfect as on the LG TV.
Audio playback
Audio is presented in digital format over the HDMI cable so you have the opportunity to break that out from your TV or HiFi system if supported but it it would have been nice to see an S/PDIF or TOSLINK connector for direct routing to a Hi-Fi system. Sure, many A/V Amps have HDMI inputs now but many (including mine) still use dedicated digital audio connectors. On my LG TV the digital audio pass-through worked and allowed me to connect my home Hi-Fi through an optical digital link.
In the monitor configuration mentioned above you need to be careful about audio because although an analogue audio out put is provided on the dock, this is disabled when HDMI is working. If you are using a monitor without audio subsystem and speakers, you need to make sure that monitor can decode the audio to an analogue audio port or pass it through to another digital audio port. With a TV, you’ll probably be OK. At least you’ll have built-in speakers and you’re likely to have a digital audio pass-through too.
Multi-channel audio
I experienced a problem with digital audio when you get to surround-sound tracks like AC3 WMA multi-channel or DTS. The Galaxy Tab does not decode these tracks to a stereo track for playback, either on-board or through the HDMI port. It would be OK if the raw digital audio track was simply passed through to the HDMI cable but doesn’t appear to be. There’s no way at all to get a surround soundtrack to an external decoder and this is something that could catch a lot of people out. The only hope here is that Samsung include this in the next firmware or that I’m an idiot and have missed some configuration somewhere. [It could be that my TV is not passing through the raw digital stream to my Hi-Fi. Let me know if you have a the dock and have success with raw multi-channel digital audio pass-through]
Powerpoint Presentation
The ThinkFree Office presentation software outputs in landscape mode only which means that although the HDMI output is always full-screen, you’ll have to rotate the HDMI dock through 90 degrees for on-Tab viewing. I tested a demo presentation with an image and default transition and although the transition wasn’t smooth (see performance issue below) it was acceptable and interesting to see. A downloaded PPT with no transitions, worked well.
Bedside dock problem
The main reason for me buying the dock (apart from testing it for Carrypad) was to use it as a bedside dock. It would be an easy way to charge and an easy way to bring my media server content up to the TV I occasionally use. I also wanted to hook up some mini speakers for music. The problem is that as long as the HDMI cable is connected and there is some form of connection at the other end, the backlight stays on. If your TV completely disconnects the HDMI (and any terminating resistance I that I suspect is being detected) then it might work for you because unplugging the HDMI cable turns the backlight off but if you’re not lucky, the backlight stays on. Even at low levels it’s too much for many people and in my situation, i’ll have to leave the HDMI cable disconnected until needed. That’s not what I call user-friendly! A ‘bedside’ app that fixed these problems would be perfect. Timed profiles, easy access to alarms, backlight off (or very low-light clock) and other features would make it perfect.
Performance issues
Plugging in the HDMI cable affects performance. It’s easy to see. The UI goes choppy and things take longer to operate. For video playback, the Galaxy Tab screen is frozen so there’s no real issue there but you’ll notice it in mirrored-screen scenarios. Although this is a noticeable issue, it hasn’t affected the way I wanted to use the dock for A/V operations. If you’re thinking of anything like PowerPoint presentations (from ThinkFree Office for example) then there is a slight smoothness hit.
Remote PMP using DLNA
If you have the mini-HDMI cable though and are confident that you have content in the right format and a TV that will work then the dock could make a really nice and good-value remote video playback unit. I’ve been testing out various DLNA solutions and although Windows Vista media server doesn’t work and Twonky Media Server (on Vista) isn’t working 100% with the Tab, I’ve been getting better results from a pure Windows 7 solution although not without the occasional problem. In a working set-up it makes quite a tidy remote media player using the provided ‘AllShare’ application. Note that large libraries take a long time to show on the AllShare application and don’t appear to be cached for future use.
For most people, I don’t think the HDMI dock is worth it. If it was 30 euro with a cable then, yes. If it was 35 Euro with a cable and power adapter – a must-buy but I’d recommend waiting for price drops or and aftermarket solution before going ahead unless you have a specific need that is covered above.
However well it works out though, I’ll probably always be reminded of the poor power cable solution and that 20 euro HDMI cable I had to buy and when those surround-soundtracks don’t play, I’ll be annoyed all over again. The HDMI dock hasn’t really worked out for me yet. Be careful when you make your purchase because it might not work out for you too.
