CES: Palm Pre is what I want

Sony's bendy TV, Nyko's own Wiimote, Samsung's sleek P2, touch-screen Walkman, I can go on for days. CES is the convention that holds the Microsoft conference, which merely reiterated the stuff found in a previous developer's convention (Windows 7 beta is available for download though), but it's also the convention where all the other brands converge and show their wares.

One in particular looks like my ticket to touchsville- the Palm Pre. While I predict that it seriously won't kill the iPhone, people who know their tech will probably say that it's better. Of course, the iPhone will be guaranteed to have a new iteration by June or so and complete specs for the product aren't readily available (I'm curious about a few other features that it may or may not lack), but for now, the Palm Pre looks real nice and desirable.

It's not sleek like the iPhone, and the QWERTY keypad looks awful to press, but the software is the ticket. If Palm's new WebOS- the upgrade Palm fans have been waiting for- performs as admirably as the iPhone's, I may just jump ship and save for one. It also supports multi-touch gestures like the iPhone, but it will also give you a way to switch between open applications in a manner similar to the way you switch through 'tabs' in iPhone Safari.

OK, so perhaps I'm associating this one way too much with the iPhone. I apologize, but the iPhone is simply the de-facto standard for touch-screen phones for now. I'll try not to associate in the succeeding paragraphs.

Anyway, you may ask: It has a keypad, but where's the directional pad?! Well, you can actually use the area just below the screen to navigate your phone. 

Additionally, charging isn't a mess either- You can charge the Pre wirelessly in the literal sense through a hockey puck.

No AC adaptors.

What do you do with the hockey puck? Well you place the device on top of it, and voila! Charging.

While it's not clear whether you have to charge the hockey puck on the wall, but if you could, it would be awesome and you could charge on the road if you ran out of juice.

If you want to see it in action, watch the video below.

I'm crossing my fingers that this will be the phone for me. Seriously.

Will Google pwn iPhone?

There has been plenty of news today about the much-touted iPhone OS killer Google Android being in T-Mobile's G1 phone. The phone was made by Taiwanese cellphone company HTC (and TBH, their phones are not so bad themselves) and is the only Google Android powered phone being launched to date. It was formerly supposed to be named the HTC Dream actually.
The phone is not much of a looker, but the OS sure is looking really swell- superior even. There's no telling if the software will be as user-friendly as various tech sites tout it to be, but one thing's for sure: this one's gonna be a huge beast of a competitor once developers start exploiting its open-source-ness. For the uninitiated, open-source means that the code written to empower some kind of program is open to anyone for modification so that updates will be regular and bugs are fixed faster. Heck, a few companies could even make enhancements and modifications to the program if they wanted to, and it would be a rather exciting prospect to gauge how creative companies are going to be with this new OS!

Like the iPhone, it has a touch screen, but it also has real, solid keys that reveal themselves if you slide the screen up like the popular Sidekick. And like the iPhone, it has a built-in music store that you can use to buy music anywhere, but it's the Amazon MP3 Store that's on the offering, and it's better because you won't have to worry about those pesky Digital Rights Management bull.

Plus, the third-party apps that are gonna be on this phone won't have to meet Google's approval if they want to post it unlike in Apple's App Store where updates roll out slowly because they have to go through Apple's inspection process. The Software Development Kit is also open-source, so many, many, many people will be able to make third-party apps for the OS- more than the App Store could ever potentially have.

Maybe this is more dependent from phone to phone, but the Android powered-G1 will have stuff the iPhone bafflingly doesn't like copy and paste, voice dialing, a removable battery, a Street View for Google Maps, a 3.2 megapixel camera and MMS. What it doesn't have however is a regular 3.5" headset jack and video recording, but the first (and for the latter's case, the current) iPhone didn't have that either.

Based on the many videos I've watched on this promising phone however, the OS will probably spark a series of chained events and Apple will be making a run for their touch screen money. This thing will rock the industry when the right phone comes along, but for now, the G1 won't be turning any heads anytime soon. The interface looks extremely easy to use, and sometimes even reminiscent to that of the iPhone and a desktop computer. I can't wait to try a Google Android phone out myself, but maybe I won't be betting on the G1nor Google Android to be the prophesied "iPhone killer"...

...for now.

iPhone 3G Hands-on

Basically both expected and unexpected in terms of features. For one thing, typing is at least made less of a pain because of the extremely intelligent auto-correct system, the camera is pretty good for 2 megapixel (my dad is actually wanting to downgrade from 3 megapixel to 2) but surprisingly, there's no zoom! Still, I'm actually glad to see that there are sane buttons for volume and sleeping (also the equivalent for Lock). The unit overall is actually really sexy up close and personal, and to be honest, I liked the wobbly curved black back. At least there's a phone  
that's not anorexic nor boxy!

Multi-touch gestures are greatly implemented here and although it isn't always responsive, the fact that the unit can tell whether you're holding it sidewards or normally is pretty cool, and it makes browsing music or the web via 3G extremely easy.

Of course, I didn't exactly test everything. And that's because it's merely a demo model from Globe Telecom. However, based from the video that was being shown outside makes it apparent that SMS will be G-Mail like, and again, there's no MMS, but getting extremely user-friendly E-mail options that contains Yahoo! Mail which is surprisingly free even for those not using Yahoo! Mail Plus verily much makes up for it.

The music side of the iTunes store is still not available here, so advertising it will not do any good, but the App Store works... And as I said in the past few posts, there are bad ones and good ones.

It's not as feature stripped as I thought, but it's still not worth the money.

Long-Term Review of the Sony Ericsson W800i, and Nintendo DS (originally posted March 16, 2007)

Before I start this review, let me say that you shouldn't be reading my blog anymore. 'Coz it's just gonna start getting boring and boring-er. In time, it will get corrupted by technology related posts and you'll get I dunno... nauseous? This warning doesn't sound threatening but I'm sure as hell that you're gonna close the tab anyway (or press back). But for those wanting to see how a person lives with a cellphone like the W800i or a handheld like the DS, you can read on I guess...

the sony ericsson w800i long term review
1 year after purchase

When I purchased it, it was one of my most dear possessions. After a year, it has experienced 1 memory card replacement (it was probably my fault), 9 accidental (but minor) falls, a few scratches and a wiped out joystick (which i guess, what all W800i units succumb to... it's still manageable though). But I still have lots of fun with this phone especially because of it's (still) long battery life (but it has slightly reduced from charging), great file support (I use the m4a format or AAC as iTunes calls it), clear LCD, good Internet (due to my downloading of Opera Mini) and well, my 2GB memory stick upgrade (the phone supports up to 4GB memory sticks). No, it doesn't have 3G but it (still) works. Due to my excessive strap playing, it (the strap) snapped and I have yet to try putting a Bluetooth headset on it (though many say it doesn't work on the BlueTooth enabled phone).
I still plan to use it for years... or maybe until the joystick gets totally broken. (I will never buy a phone with a joystick again)
If you just bought a W800i, be warned not just about the joystick, but also the music transfer software. It doesn't work at all. Buy a USB Bluetooth instead because the USB manual file transfer isn't effective either.

Nintendo DS long term review

1 year 3 months after purchase

It all actually depends upon the game whether the life span of your DS will be long or short but this isn't really the case here. It is advisable to buy a DS lite instead of a first generation DS since, for starters, the DS lite is lite-r than the original DS. Anyway, my first-generation DS is still working and its battery life's shortening wasn't really noticeable even with many charges, it has endured several falls, mostly minor, one time it almost got run over by a Honda Civic near Starbucks. Anecdotes aside, the first-generation DS is actually quite more durable than the lite version, so if you opt for a brighter screen and a better grip on your stylus (among other DS design improvements on the lite version), go with DS lite. If you want durability, you'll have to pay the price of having a handheld that doesn't really fit in your pocket because the first-generational DS is quite bulky, but still there are those benefits in the long run...

(NOTE: This post has been proofread from the original post found in my Friendster blog.)