Fortunately, there is a community of developers that care about this mobile OS , for one reason it’s open source and it gives manufacturers and developers the flexibility to modify the OS as you like. So these generous folks (yes, I’m referring to XDA developers) would tear open the OS and find the pain points, tweak them and release them as a custom build or in technical terms these are called custom ROM’s.

I bought a HTC Desire HD (DHD) last year. Excellent piece of hardware and it felt just right in my hand, had a big screen, very convenient for reading emails or browsing web. However, it had its pain points. It was great for the first 2 weeks when I had little or a few apps installed but as time went by, as usage increased, I experienced lags and automatic reboots (no! this is not a feature) and not to mention the battery was a huge drain. After another week to me it looked like a power hungry robot constantly looking for power outlets to feed upon.

When things go wrong, like everyone else, I googled. I then came across this custom ROM from Lee Droid, who, fortunately likes the hardware equally as I do and he was generous enough to release this custom ROM for HTC DHD called Lee Droid ROM. I hit the jackpot! it was just perfect! after flashing (i.e. english for reinstalling) my DHD with this ROM I could experience performance gains and the battery was holding on for much long time! It now lasted almost 36hrs on a single charge (compared to 10 earlier) with regular usage – calls, emails, browsing, some games and music. This certainly did fix my problem, but, there is a catch (there is always a catch) to it! – There are risks involved in flashing your phone with a custom ROM

1. You need to ROOT your phone. That is you need to unlock your phone in order to grant access to this custom program you are about you install. There is a tutorial here
2. If not done correctly according to instructions you might turn your phone into a brick! yes, totally unusable.
3. by flashing the phone you’ll be devoid of your warranty, guarantee if any
4. Since these are custom ROM’s there will be bugs hence there will be constant updates that you might have to apply. As these custom ROM’s are built in developers kitchen the quality testing will not be of the same scale as a commercial ROM (the one that comes with the phone)

There are many ROM’s that are cooked in many developers kitchens on a daily basis and some of these ROMs take their job very seriously, they even have nightly builds and stable releases

Some of the well-known ROMs are

• CynogenMod
• MIUI
• You can find a list of ROMS here by manufacturer and model

Later next year I got the “Google Phone” – Samsung Nexus S 3G running Gingerbread (also called Crespo) – Hoping that as the ROM is now built by El Goog itself it should be more stable and performing. Well, to be honest it was! rarely it would lag, automatic reboots became a thing of the past. However, the price for all the above was a plain vanilla phone, that looked similar to iOS and performed OK overall. Keyboard still sucked and the ergonomics were not that great – eventually it felt I paid too much for a piece of plastic (yes Samsung’s phones are all plastic) running an open source OS.

I revisited XDA again and I saw some decent improvements in the ROM sections someone even ported the latest version of Android 4.0 a.k.a Ice cream Sandwich here and there are a few promising ones here!

There are a few cool things that iOS 5 brings to the table – as you all know the most sought out feature is iMessage – it is truly remarkable – not because its revolutionary or new but only because it’s just there now for iOS devices.
BBM is to Blackberry whereas iMessage is to iPhone/iOS Devices. The beauty of this app is it serves as a communication channel across any iOS device with iOS 5 on it for free! (well it uses your data on your wireless or wi-fi).

This is how simple it is – open contacts and keyed in a contact with their cell # and email address and voila I’m good to go – I open iMessage, select the contact and start texting like crazy – OMG, ROFL or TMI no limits baby! here’s the icing – you can even send pics from iPhoto or snap a fresh one from the camera – you can send videos across too!. Remember that the “send read receipt” (in Settings) if turned on will let the other party know when you have read the message – could get you in trouble sometimes

The other cool feature I like in this upgrade is the split keyboard. The keyboard can now be docked and split as you please both in landscape and the portrait mode. Super easy to type if you don’t have the plausible thumbs

Calendar is pretty much the same with minor UI changes. Reminders is OK too nothing out of the ordinary.

Notification center is a nice feature but I think it would be even cooler if they would have made the notifications and the drag down pane a little bigger on iPad (considering the screen real estate) – It looks and feels smaller on an iPad

Safari now has tabs that can be dragged one over the other – reader removes the clutter and there is a tweet button in the options next to the address bar.

Hmm.. so overall to me iMessage, split keyboard are the only notable features on iOS 5 for iPad/2
Wireless synching is only cool if you have multiple iOS devices. iCloud is convenient but am not sure how safe my data is (not referring to security here and also am sure they operate in very high resilient and high availability environments) – all I’m saying is before today I could still have my contacts and photos scattered across backups and HDDs – only drawback with this approach is data access could get cumbersome but my data is under my control – moving to the cloud saves me this hassle of sync but what else does it offer – privacy? – cloud computing is cost effective, ok I admit, very cost effective, for service providers but what does that mean to you as a consumer – especially when you are handing over the responsibility of safe keeping your data to the cloud owners – Paranoid am I? I heard from somewhere of news where a bunch of people made a list of “houses that can be robbed” just by collating data from Facebook public profiles – all they did was capture home addresses and mapped people who are not at their homes – remember when you use the check-in feature in FB based in your location – think about it

[Update]

Major features include

1. iCloud
2. Notification Center
3. Reminders app with Location sense
4. Twitter integration
5. Wireless Synching
6. iMessage (free messaging to any iOS device with iOS5)
7. Split keyboard on iPad

iTunes 10.5 is needed to get this update (approx 60.9 MB) so if you haven’t got one then it’s time to get one

May his soul rest in peace!

Not because I know something and you don’t but mostly because I think if you note some facts and observe some patterns you can get a fair understanding of why – Here’s my take

a. History – do you recall the cycle iPhone 3G -> 3Gs ->iPad-> iPhone 4 ->iPad2 -> 4s -> NewProduct/iPad3??-> iPhone5? so It’s naturally gotta be 4s before the 5 – so no surprises here

b. Makes business sense – When you are putting your money on building a super fast uber-cool processor and if you plan to get back your ROI and step into the profit zone you need to have it run for atleast a few years – In Apple’s case it’s two years. During this gestation period Apple would inject their new hardware into all their device line ups for as long and as fast as they could – iPod, iPhone and iPad – AppleTv? – Assuming that Apple had a mass production of A5 chips early this year and thanks to iPad2 they already have a stock pile of A5′s ready to get injected into the existing line up. So it’s only natural that they leverage this and upgrade the iPhone 4 to a 4s rather than a 5. iPhone 5 should be revolutionary – by that I mean it has to be a new design and upgraded both on the inside and the outside – mostly fall 2012? so in Feb 2012 may be we’ll see iPad2 refresh or an iPad3? from the looks of it iPad seems to have a life cycle of only a year before it gets a refresh

c. This is the time (of the year) for a major Software release and not a hardware release (look at history – infographic here ) one hardware release followed by a major software release – Smart approach – keep customers wanting for more, dangle the carrot, keep shareholders happy. This event was more for the attention of iOS 5 and iCloud and Siri (I have to include this as I already love it – Apple bought Siri for over $200 million)

d. No matter how Genius of a company you are it’s almost next to impossible to release something revolutionary every 12 months and still make profits like these blokes! unless, you can churn out both new hardware and software within a year – Even tougher for Apple in particular as they are both into hardware and software unlike other contenders that run on borrowed hardware (Android clones) – and Apple products are far superior (in terms of UX wise atleast) because the software naturally will work like a song on their own hardware. Code writers, Software engineers know exactly what they are dealing with and conversely hardware engineers know what they are building for because they have a software road map ahead.

They have it all figured out!! .. Now that I have figured this out let’s see how long can they keep me interested

The field of view (also field of vision, abbreviated FOV) is the (angular or linear or areal) extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment.

Let’s consider the prime 50mm lens:
The field of view through a lens when mounted on a 35mm film camera versus a Digital SLR differ noticeably and this is because of the “Digital Crop Factor”

Traditionally, the medium to capture images on a camera was film (which was 1.4in or 35mm wide) and lenses were built for 35mm medium but when Digital SLR’s came into existence the sensors in DSLRs were not 35mm – it’s not because they couldn’t but making a sensor of 35mm increased the production costs and hence the cost of the camera – thus manufacturers came up with an optimal sensor size that would be cost affective and thus appeal to the customers and DSLRs were born. However, a DSLR has to be backward compatible too i.e. they had to mount traditional lenses – that was not a problem however, the field of view would drop because the capturing sensor is not of the same size

By how much would it drop? let’s see a few examples

For Canon EOS 350D the sensor size is 22.2 x 14.8 mm
For Nikon D70S the sensor size is 23.7 x 15.6 mm

The formula to calculate the crop factor is just divided the sensor size by 35 (because 35mm should be the designated sensor size)

For CANON EOS 350D DSLR the crop factor calculates to 35/22.2 = 1.6

so now the field of view, for a 50mm lens, on a D-SLR translates to:
field of view = focal length of the lens X crop factor
i.e. field of view fov = 50 x 1.6 = 80mm (i.e f.o.v is equivalent to a 80mm lens)

wow!! it’s almost become a tele photo lens? – not exactly
Note that the focal length remains the same but the field of view of this lens now becomes the equivalent field of view of a 80mm lens.

If you are a DSLR (serious amateur level) user and if you are going to buy a lens then don’t forget the crop factor otherwise you end up picking a high quality expensive lens expecting to have a f.o.v equivalent to the focal length but you’ll end up with much lesser. So plan your buy keeping the full frame sensor in your mind.

Invest in expensive lenses only if you are going to switch to a full frame sensor in the future.

For Nikon and Fuji D-SLR users the crop factor is approx: 1.5
For Canon D-SLR users the crop factor is approx: 1.6

The question that we should ask ourselves is – Well I’m buying this camera, now how do I see myself viewing the pictures from this camera? – on a computer? by print? or view on the camera?

Well if your answer is “on a computer” then you would pick up a camera that has enough resolution to display clear crisp images on your screen

If your answer is “by print” then you have to ask again how big prints do I usually take?

So how do I determine the resolution of the camera that would allow me to print a decent quality image?

It’s very simple first get the resolution in pixels of your megapixel camera for e.g. if you plan to pick up a 4.0MP camera (MP stands for Mega Pixels) then your pixel resolution typically will be : 2464 x 1632. Don’t worry about the pixels and numbers for the moment here just follow me and we’ll get there

So to determine how big a print can a 4.0MP camera can print just do the following
Divide the resolution (height and width) by 300 (300 is the pixel per inch or ppi resolution required for photo quality – prints, magazines and books).
Print size for 4.0MP is
2464 / 300 = 8.21 (width)
1632 / 300 = 5.44 (height)

So you can print a good 8“ x 5“ with your 4.0MP camera.
There you go if you know your pixel resolution then you can calculate your print sizes.
Does a higher megapixel camera offer better resolution pictures? The answer is obviously “Yes” but by how much better? If you purchase a 8.0MP camera against a 4.0MP camera does the quality of your images double too!? can you get photo quality prints of double the print size of a 4.0MP camera? The answer is “No”

Why?
It’s plain and simple: to double the resolution of your print size you need to double the pixel dimensions on both the horizontal and vertical side thus multiplying the existing resolution by a factor of 4 rather than 2.
So if your 4.0MP camera can print pictures of max size of 8 x 5 then to print 16 x 10 size you need a 16.0MP camera and NOT a 8.0MP camera.

More megapixels means there is more detail recorded into the picture – so does that mean it increases the quality of the picture? not necessarily – because after a certain point human eye cannot recognize the difference in quality so a picture from an 8.0MP camera would look more or less similar to the one that is taken from a 14.0MP camera – beware that a good picture is a result of good lighting, composition and of course the quality of the lens in front of the camera and not because of the megapixels.

If you look at specs for the best and the most expensive camera, Leica their digital camera are not of that high resolutions until recently, yet pictures taken from those cameras are simply stunning and it’s because of the high quality lenses. Leica’s know for their precision engineering of their hand made lenses

So take note and be aware – let not the salesman trick you into buying something that you don’t need be clear of this “Megapixel Multiplier rule” when buying digital cameras.

So here is what happened on that fateful day – like everyday I woke up and started working on my beloved mac with a strong cup of black – surfed through some job sites, some tech and gizmo news and a bit of reading – sometimes I can get a bit over organized so I do have a couple mail accounts with gmail and yahoo – I like to keep my serious emails and fun emails separate; For some reason I was a bit annoyed shifting through my endless list of tabs in Firefox and to refresh my inbox pages every 10mins to see if the jobs I applied for have actually got me registered, so I decided to use the in-built Mail app that comes with Mac OS X. So I configure my POP3 gmail access and start to synchronize – oh blimey! I have been having this account since 2004 so that’s a lot of email – patient I was and started to download all the messages – whilst this is happening I received a pop on my Nexus S of new email – now this was some email I was eagerly awaiting for – didn’t want to disturb the messages being downloaded to Mail app so I decided to refresh the web page which was still open – The page starts with “Loading…” and goes to “Still working…” after a few seconds and bam goes my account into maintenance mode – I get the following error –

We are currently working on your account because an error occurred with your mail storage. Your account data and messages are safe. However, you won’t be able to log in until our team is finished.

We can’t predict exactly how long this will take, but if you are still unable to access your account in 48 hours, please contact us with your username at gmail-maintenance@google.com . We apologize for the disruption.

Seeing this message got me worried but I calmed down soon because it was already noon on a Friday and 48hrs wouldn’t harm me as I should have my account back positively by noon Sunday – I would have panicked if it said 48 business hours – but it didn’t so I was OK. Just to be safe I wrote to gmail maintenance team above and explained my problem. Now you see at this point I still trust Google cause it’s been serving us with this fast and free email service for more than a decade – right??

Time is 2300hrs on a Monday and I still don’t have access to my email – Ironically, I googled for some solutions – I ended up in a Google forum where another disappointed user is screaming his brains out – apparently his primary email used for his business is going through same problems – and he is a paying user for this service – I piled on that forum desperately hoping that some Google employee (gmail dev if we are lucky) would notice that – some gentleman who has access to some Google private forums agreed to help us by posting the problem there – still no luck

When I woke up Tuesday morning to find out nothing progressed I went to work – I listed out my immediate and important tasks at hand and started working from my new gmail account but I still need access to those emails – 6 years of conversations and contacts!!!

Adding to this – a month ago I decided that it was time to put some trust into the “Cloud” – somehow I convinced myself that it is safe and secure to store your contacts, photos, messages in the cloud – especially the Google cloud – so I bought myself a Google phone – Nexus S. I was impressed when all my contacts were synced in a jiffy when I setup my gmail account – armed with android 2.3.4 I even had gtalk with video and I was happily chatting away with friends and family. Little did I know that like all happy things that must come to an end this will too! well it came a bit too early

It’s day 7 and I still don’t have access – my phone keeps annoying me with messages that it cannot authenticate my account – am frustrated and angry at myself for trusting this behemoth internet company that can’t even fix a simple mail problem – 6 years of contacts, messages and attachments all at the pity of Google. Shame on me!!

The question is what if this happens to other “trusted” Google services? Google Voice, Google Storage, Picasa, YouTube? – can we afford it? Google just announced Google Wallet, Google Music and Google Offers – can we rely on those services? they all run on the same Google backbone right? – I don’t see any of these services going down entirely (that’s my hope) but I can foresee an immediate nightmare if it happens to your account; it happened to me so you could be a victim too! – cause from the looks of it and my first hand experience, if this ever happens then there is no support from Google whatsoever – let me emphasize – no support – sans support – nada – ziltch

So peeps this could happen to you – backup your emails and contacts as often as possible and save yourself a “gEmbarrasment” or a “gNightmare”