HTC's next flagship phone

After almost two weeks of being stuck in customs, it's finally here. And not a moment too soon. My original HTC Evo 4G is running low on space, so I pretty much can't install new apps, or even keep some of them updated.

The new HTC Evo 4G LTE boasts a 4.7" Super LCD2 screen with 16:9 aspect ratio at 1280x720 resolution, compared to the original Evo 4G's 4.3" LCD screen with 15:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 800x480.

The rear camera still protrudes, just like the original Evo. However, there's no glass (clear plastic?) that can be scratched like with the original Evo. You'd have to really go out of your way to try and scratch the camera lens on this one.

The new kickstand, missing from the Evo 3D and Evo Shift 4G, returns for this true successor to the original Evo, is much sturdier, and can be used three-ways.

Prices are coming down...

Ordered and received a 32 gig MicroSD card and adapter. Expected a Class 2 (picture shown online was a Class 2, and the one that came with the Evo was also a Class 2) and got a Class 4, so good news for me.

The price was higher than I would have liked, but low enough that I took the plunge. Just wish the adapter would have arrived earlier, then I probably wouldn't have had to reset my ringtones and notification sounds.

Completely reset the Jawbone Prime

Press the buttons in this sequence: Noise Assassin, Talk, Talk, Noise Assassin, Talk, Talk.

The above sequence will reset the Jawbone Prime to its factory settings. Why would you need to do that, you ask? Well, the reset procedure found on Jawbone's website doesn't unpair the Jawbone from your previously paired device... at least, not as far as the Jawbone is concerned.

That creates a problem because the Jawbone Prime supports multipoint--that is, the ability to pair to more than one device at the same time. So even if you remove the Jawbone Prime from your previously paired device, the Jawbone will still try to connect to it. And when it does that to a device that's no longer on, it wastes a lot of battery.

The reset procedure on Jawbone's website might unpair all but the first device the Jawbone paired with, but what happens when the first device you paired it with is no longer in use? Your new device becomes the second device to the Jawbone, and in my case, the battery life became halved from what it used to be.

By resetting it to the factory setting, all devices become unpaired, which should eliminate the multipoint/battery problem.

Download this from your iTunes Store

Oh, right, new phone

So two weeks ago, the new cell phone that I ordered from Radio Shack's website arrived via FedEx. It wasn't activated until Friday night (hence the posting of 4G speed test that night), and I didn't take any size comparison pics until now. I did take a picture of it earlier, a few days after I got the official Android 2.2 update (codename: "Froyo").

Anyway, it's a pretty "big" phone. The screen size is 4.3", which is actually the same size as the original PSP, although the resolution is a lot higher, making for a much crisper display. It is pretty thin, however, about the same as my previous phone, the Sony Ericsson W580i. The phone's camera protrudes a bit, so to be on the safe side, I bought a silicone case to make sure that the lens wouldn't touch anything when laid down on a flat surface.

Sprint 4G

So, apparently, I do get Sprint's WiMAX network in my area, although just barely. And as Sprint has yet to announce service in my area, that means they're still in the testing phase.

Nevertheless, I've run some speed tests, and after 15 tests, the average download/upload speed is 2905.6Kbps/630.9Kbps. That's not too bad, but there were also several times where it could not connect to the test servers at all--in fact, that happened during my first three tests. It seems that during those tests, it tried to connect to some very far away servers, perhaps the GPS could not properly locate the location... So when I made the video, I was fully expecting the same terrible result, and to my surprise, it got the highest download speed (4493Kbps) of all my 4G tests--I haven't been able to replicate that speed at all. (The fastest upload speed in my tests was 988Kbps, by the way.)

Compared to Sprint's 3G, the average after 10 tests is 1785.1Kbps/795Kbps, with the fastest being 2598Kbps/922Kbps, and the slowest at 661Kbps/637Kbps.

It is also interesting to note that, when Wi-Fi is enabled, while the speed tests consistently showed around 9.xMbps/0.9xMbps at the same test server, the phone only showed up to around 6Mbps for download, though it did get around 1Mbps for upload. So perhaps the actual download speeds when not on Wi-Fi could be faster. When I get the Froyo update next week, I'll try the USB tether and test it from the laptop, and see if it makes any difference.

So-called "Retina Display" is nothing new

Much has been made about Apple's "new" Retina Display that they're using in the iPhone 4. People are saying how amazing it is to look at, etc. Of course, shortly after Jobs announced this new achievement in technological wonders, experts have come out to take him down a notch. But that's not what this blog posting is about.

There's no question that a display with higher pixel density, or pixels-per-inch, will help make the display crisper. When I noticed that my sister's Panasonic DMC-TZ5 had a sharper display than my DMC-TZ3, the benefits were known to me immediately. I have since gotten the DMC-ZS3, which retains the same 3" LCD, 460K pixels display.

Out of pure curiosity, I decided to crunch some numbers to find out how many pixels-per-inch (or ppi) my more than one-year-old camera's LCD has (which is the same as the more than two-year-old camera my sister has). Before that, I did a quick measurement of my 17" laptop, which has a native resolution of 1440x900... the display measured 9" from top to bottom, so it's only displaying at 100ppi. Not very impressive, but to be honest, it works well enough for my day-to-day use.

Anyway, knowing the my camera's display uses the 4:3 aspect ratio, it was not difficult to figure out, without using a ruler, what the length and width of the display is, since the 3" number is for the diagonal length. (It's 2.4" x 1.8", by the way.)

The next step was to figure out approximately how many pixels run through the width and height of the display, as the 460K count is for the total number of pixels in the entire area. The count may not be exactly 460,000 pixels, but should pretty close. Employing some simple algebra, it appears that the display on the 3" LCD is roughly 783x587. (If you do the math, you'll see that brings the total pixel count to just under 460,000 pixels; if you increase the pixels by just one to each side, you'll get just over that count.)

That's enough for us to figure out how many dots (or pixels, in this case) there are per inch of the LCD display. Divide the number of pixels by its respective length in inches (783/2.4 or 587/1.8), and you'll get a few decimal points above 326ppi.


Now, what's that magic number which Apple has dubbed as the "Retina Display"? 326ppi.
(To be fair, using the same formulas, the iPhone 4 would have around 329.65ppi.)

I also vaguely remember a commercial for, I think, a Nikon digital camera, which boasts a higher resolution display than my camera, which was from a few months ago, so there's definitely no shortage of consumer displays that are better than what Apple is touting as their Retina Display. Further, I found through Google search that the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G1, which was released in 2007, has a 3.5" display with 921,000 pixels. Working out the math, that puts it at 2.4" x 2.1", with a resolution of approximately 1108x831, and 395.7ppi.

Wow, technology that's at least 3 years old is so revolutionary.

Anticipation

Neither Radio Shack nor Best Buy had any in stock, so I had to order it online. Now it's just a waiting game.

Crush your enemies

Command me, lord

A completely revolutionary device

A Geography Lesson

...brought to you by CNN.

Let's play some Tetris, mother******

A compilation.

Trolololololo

In case you missed it, this is a clip from the Jimmy Kimmel Live show that aired after this year's Oscars. It's a parody of a recent viral video, which I'll embed below...

Dicapac Waterproof Camera Case

Back when I was checking the prices of the ZS3 with Google for price drops, I would always see underwater cases listed. Of course, their prices being almost as much as the camera itself (and now with the camera's prices having dropped, they cost more than the camera) meant that I would never consider them. I would rather just buy a waterproof camera than have to deal with the extra hassle.

However, recently I decided to see if there were cheaper alternatives, and found the Korean-made Dicapac. They're not so much camera "cases" as they are camera "bags." But they are waterproof (up to 10m/33ft), and much more affordable, so I decided to give it a try.

The bag is quite a bit bigger than the camera, but it was basically designed to work with almost all compact ultra-zoom cameras, rather than for one model specifically, which I'm sure also factors into the lower price. With exception of the mode dial, the camera's buttons are fairly easy to operate, but of course more difficult than if the camera wasn't in the bag. The camera's flash is partially blocked by the lens enclosure, but this will most likely be used mostly in the daytime, so probably won't be an issue. For recording video, audio will be somewhat muffled, which is hardly a surprise--you're basically wrapping the microphone inside a bag.