Sony Xperia S quick review

While I was happy with my HTC Desire and the Android experience in general,  I was looking forward to a new cell phone for quite a while now.

The HTC Desire didn't have enough memory for all the new big apps and the camera quality didn't satisfy my needs.

When my wife bought a Sony Ericsson Arc I was very surprised by the device's overall performance and appearance - putting the brand into pole position for my next phone.

Went on to preorder the Xperia S at Digitec - for a low CHF 500.-

Box content (Switzerland): USB cable, loader, 2 NFC tags (check the video below), earphones, no hdmi cable.



PROS, now that I've used it for two weeks:
+ very good looking Android customization

+  very good FM Radio (screenshots below)
+  good camera (a bit grainy in low light situations)
+  decent panorama functionality 
+  ultra short start up time for camera, very useful
+  pleasing design
+  good build quality
+  screen quality
+  surprisingly good earphone sound quality!
+  very good hdmi out support, great usability, videos in 720p
+  front facing cam for Skype video calls just works
+  finally a good Sony full keyboard offered with the Update to 4.0.4

Medicore
0  4.3" screen size a bit to small for my liking
0  default keyboard is bad, I'm using "perfect keyboard" instead. Why they don't offer an international version of their POBox eludes me. see above

CONS
-  annoying! no support for USB mass storage mode (MTP only)
-  sometimes you hear fizzling sound during calls (bad shielding against own antenna)
-  battery performance medicore (14hours standby with all my syncing)
-  camera without HDR function
-  mail client doesn't offer a peak time off/on configuration

launcher and widgets look good (music app is Power Amp)

Conclusion:
Two things bother me: battery performance isn't good enough yet and the absence of USB mass storage mode > using the USB media transfer mode isn't as intuitive since it doesn't allow Windows to display thumbnails for the pictures stored on the phone.
Hey! Overall I'm very very happy with the Xperia S. I totally don't care about the nonsense quad-core and duo-core discussion. The phone never ever lacked performance. My fav game Robotek isn't a resource hog either.
Also that everybody is complaining about the absence of Ice Cream Sandwich means nothing to me. It's coming a bit later, so wut. Current Android 2.3.7 is a charm - all the apps are very nicely customized by Sony!

using FM radio everyday - pleased with functionality

[update to ICS made the FM radio unworkable. It has been fixed with the release release of firmware 6.1.A.2.45 on 27.08.2012]

default keyboard is waisting to much space
>> Keyboard has been updated with ICS 4.0.4 release!

finally - full keyboard with dark skin

BTW: Techies should head over to duosecurity.com for a very good read about Ice Cream Sandwich's poor ASLR implementation up to release 4.0.2. Quite a letdown.
Also make sure that you read Nick Kralevich's (Android Security Team) comments in the Wrap-Up Section. Good to know Sony will use at least ICS 4.0.4 from the start.

Xperia S panorama shot (original resolution 4912x1080
)

Blackmill Essential Mix Cover

Just heared this great Blackmill Essential Mix by DJ Resolute. Solid Melodic Dubstep [funny enough - I was listed as viewer 7'777 pffff].
So you saved the mix from youtube just as I did, now you're in need for a nice cover for your mp3? How about just grabbing mine:

 

[image source is unknown - no copyright infringement intended]

Gainward gtx 560 ti Phantom noise

I just bought a Nvidia gtx 560 ti to be able to turn details up in BF3 1920x1200. Decided for Gainward Phantom because of good reviews for their cooling concept.
Performance and general noise levels are fantastic to say the least. But hey wait! What's this weird sound coming out of my rig while having any 3d app launched?? check out the vid.

Man - considering the additional charge for the Phantom series - that's disappointing. Friend has the same problem with his identical product too. We're not returning the card, because we both usually use headphones while in games.

At least I'm perfectly happy that the card's inaudible while working with regular apps - that is 90% of the time I'm using this comp.

Logitech Ulitmate Ears 200vi and Android

After about a year of daily use on my bicycle ride to work the loose connection close to the jack began to really bother me. The jittering sound drove me nuts.
Eventually I decided to get a new pair of Ultimate Ears ... and they had to be cheap too [digitec.ch]



Ulitmate Ears 200vi - quick summary:
+  good overall build quality
+  soft and comfortable ear plugs
+  good price while providing mic
+  rigid cables,  means no cable tangle
+  button to pick and end calls (htc desire)
0  Sound quality is not splendid but acceptable, I miss some clearness.
0  Bass is unspectacular also.
-  cheap looking too (nooo really)
-  yup, I said so already: I'd love more bass

full specifications see Logitech site

>> I wanted cheap and got cheap, with acceptable sound quality. Solid, not more, not less
On 2nd thought I might opt for the 350vi instead.

The compatibility list on the ultimate ears website is completely useless. I'll test them for you on some Android devices and report here over time. (These headphones are wired in the CTIA standard.)

HTC Desire
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable > one click for play/pause and to pick and end a call, long press the middle button to fast forward to the next song.

Google Nexus S
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable

Google Nexus Galaxy
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable

Google Nexus 4 lg
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable


Sony Ericsson Arc 
completely not compatible with this phone, but that's bearable since Sony Ericsson offers a very good earphone collection themselves. Sony Ericsson Arc headphone jack is using the OMTP standard that isn't compatible to the CTIA wiring standard.

Sony Xperia S
hmmm - I first thought they are most likely to work since Sony promotes in their spec sheets that the new Sony phones will support CTIA wiring standard. Bought the phone, turns out that my ultimate ears totally don't work on Xperia S. No sound, no mic, no nothing.
Doesn't matter much because the earphones that came in the box have better sound quality.


HTC Wildfire S
(follows)

Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable

check out CompHelperKid's review vid for some more details

YouTube Original resolution HQ38

While searching for a special soundtrack I stumbled accross a youtube video promoting the use of the "original quality" - these vids are still rare but make sense if the audio source was excellent and you're into great sound quality.

The original setting features either a 2k or a 4k video feed and cristal clear audio. Here are some example stats of what the stream packs in for you:

Name: Original  also HQ38
aka: 4k  or  4096p  or  2k, 2048p

Container: MP4
Video Codec: H.264(mpeg4 part 10)
Resolution: 4k - 4096x2304 (~xxxx kbps)  or  2k - 2048x1152 (min. 1570 kbps)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Audio Codec: AAC 151+ kbps VBR, 44.1kHz stereo 

So far I only saw 2 channel audio feeds, what is actually fine with me, because I mainly feed the earphones only. The rest of the youtube codecs and how to record videos and extract audio is described here.

(interesting: transcoding with lame.exe delivers catastrophic results for the first 10s)

Winamp Green Color Tweaks

This is simply a repost of my old entry to test the visibility in the google index when it comes to searching for "Winamp Green" - last week I was surprised, that my pictures didn't show up in google's image index at all. (maybe because they're crap, but that's another story...)
Also tweaked some other SEO factors, like the image titles, the blog title, leaving out the deviantart sharing code and so forth. But most of all I think the difference will be whether the image is hosted at deviantart or at picasa (blogger's default).

[Update 23 January 2012: four months went by, exactly as expected both pictures are now in the top 10 when image-searching for Winamp Green. SEO is not so difficult after all - one just has to understand a few main principles. Number one to me?? ...post your content on sites that are owned by google like youtube, blogger, picasa. Keep your content clean and authentic.]

btw: Winamp Green Modern is still the color scheme I use all and every days :-)
Cheers.

 

head over to deviantart to learn, how to activate

the green color in your winamp

and the same for BigBento

Kanye West - Love Lockdown

totally off topic, totally old      ... I'm really wondering - how the heck can one not consider this video a real blast! I'm not asking - get out of here if you don't consider it a total blast hehe. Enjoy the performance.



Youtube is cool, you can't buy this song as is. Save the 720p video and extract the audio yourself. It's easy. Also check out these two cool remixes:

• xXMorshuXx's Love Lockdown (Dubstep Remix) - Crosby
• NicolasLettow's Love Lockdown dubstep remix

(while he doesn't behave weird during awards we might consider kanyewestfoundation.org - because just like him ... we all mature.)

rotten Amazon App Store

I often state that I don't like to read books, they are generally out dated and so forth. But I do read a lot - just everything that doesn't come in the form of books. Bro reads around 8 hours a day and makes a fortune from the gathered knowledge.

For real: this was today's best read, comes in two URLs - a company mainly developing for iOS, later also for Android and then checking on Amazon App Store. Well written and amazing: Amazon App Store Rotten To The Core. Then we have to read through this comment to get a more complete view.

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