Yes, no more flat tiled maps that have to progressively download! Everything is vector based and fast. The seamless accelerometer integration with map rotation is awesome. More information here about 3D Google Maps.
Looks like the rooted Nook Color with Android 2.2 (it’s not 2.2 yet, that requires a different hack) is the way to go. I mean where else can you get hardware equivalent to the Samsung Galaxy Tablet for $250 unlocked? Unlocked Galaxy is $802 on Amazon! Here’s the specs that excite me for this price.
Since it’s the Nook Color, it should have some fairly good continuing community support for future software upgrades. I’m going to pick one up tomorrow to play with, and Auto Nooter 2.12.15 here I go!
The limited custom Android 2.1 OS that the Nook Color came with is meant to keep you on their platform since they don’t look like they’re making much margin (if any) on the hardware. This is some really awesome hardware for the price considering the fact that half the hardware in a smartphone would cost twice as much these days. This is like four 3.5″ screens joined together and it’s small enough to go in a coat inside pocket.
UPDATE 12/17/2010 – So far so good. Got the unit last night, used it 4 hours and haven’t charged it overnight, and it still 59% of the battery remaining. I have to keep it at minimum brightness in a dim room and half brightness seems to be good in a normal lit room. Full brightness would probably be useful outdoors (excluding directly under sun) and room near bright window. Web browser seems to operate reasonably smooth. Have not rooted yet.
Acer has just announced a new Android Smartphone with a 4.8″ 1024×480 resolution super-wide, and it is one sexy beast of a phone. This form factor is as narrow as a normal smartphone can be while fitting inside a pocket. In fact, I suspect that it’s probably not much wider than an iPhone though it is likely an inch or so taller.
Some people are suggesting that this is too wide of a form factor since the 21×9 format doesn’t fit 16×9 video format, but movies are often 1.85 or 2.35 “CinemaScope” format and that fits this display’s aspect ratio perfectly. Furthermore, the super-wide or super-long format is perfect for reading webpages and it should reduce the need to pan and zoom. The 1024 wide resolution also allows you to terminal server into a server with most of the desktop visible, and just a little up/down panning would make the entire desktop visible. I’m hoping the device won’t be too expensive, but I think it’s the perfect largest pocket sized form factor a person can get.
Out of curiosity, I picked up a Cruz e-Reader from Fry’s for $160 this morning because it looked interesting with a 7″ 800×600 display running Android 2.0. This device is apparently tied in with Borders bookstore and it doubles as a cheap Android tablet device. After about 1 minute after I turned it on, I decided to seal it back up in the box so that it can be returned.
As a side note, the Black Friday sale at Fry’s Electronics stunk this year. Nothing good in the processor memory section with no combo deals.
So what’s wrong with the device? Well the chassis actually looked and felt nice with a rubbery non-slip surface in the back and it had an SDHC slot as well as decent speakers. But it was completely ruined by the unresponsive performance of the user interface. Tapping took forever to recognize and the scrolling was extremely choppy just about anywhere you went. Yes I realize it’s positioned as an e-Reader, but I expect a bit more from a color device. I didn’t even bother testing the video playback capability because the sluggish user interface was a nonstarter.
I’ve already got a 7″ Telechip 8902 based Android 2.1 tablet with 800×480 resolution being shipped to me and I expect a decent experience based on this video review (Telechips device form MP4nation.net was garbage, don’t bother). Yes I realize it’s not nearly as nice as a Samsung Galaxy 7″ Tablet with 1024×600 resolution (which feels good in the hands and has a very responsive user interface), but the generic Telechip tablet is $430 cheaper and doesn’t require a data plan. I’ve already got a MiFi for 5 Wi-Fi devices so I don’t want another data plan.
UPDATE 1/5/2011 - I ordered the Telechips based 7″ tablet from MP4nation.net and it took 6 weeks to get to me. Then it came with a European AC power adapter which means I’ll have to buy another EU to US connector to use it. The USB charging doesn’t work with any of the chargers I tried.
Biggest problem is that Android Market is broken on the device.
Device is far more sluggish than showed in the video and the resistive display requires a lot of pressure to make it work. Screen surface doesn’t feel good rubbing, and the front edge feels too sharp that it is uncomfortable to hold. It’s also a lot thicker than the Nook Color. The back feels like cheap plastic instead of the rubbery grip on the Nook Color.
I’m going to be updating this post as I find more things that are interesting.
For the people who depend on mail order, NewEgg has some good stuff (via bfads.net). Here’s a sampler.
The NewEgg Black Friday sale begins tomorrow (Wednesday – 11/24) at 1pm PST (4pm EST). A few high notes from the flyer:
Yes I know there are full blown 15.6″ laptops at Walmart for under $200, but you’ll likely have to camp out all night and risk getting trampled in the morning so I’m disinclined to recommend trying for those unless you’re a starving college student with more time than money. $70 2TB hard drive and a $90 20″ display just seems too good to pass up if you’re looking for those things.
Kinect modified to capture true 3D video
Oliver Kreylos has produced one of the most amazing demonstrations of true 3D video I’ve ever seen using an off-the-shelf Microsoft Kinect. This is not the cheesy stereoscopic tacky “3D” moniker being affixed to recent movie titles but actual video footage that you can rotate in three dimensional space.
Words can’t begin to express how impressed I am with this. Just imagine a football game captured like this. All live events should be captured like this even if it’s only one camera.
Online services security report card
Now that the problem of user account “sidejacking” can no longer be ignored, I’ve created an online services report card that highlights which websites protect your account and which don’t.
I think the video speaks for itself.
This is an interesting post raising the issue with having greater than 2TB hard drives. Normal MBR partitions (that you can boot 32 bit OSes and traditional BIOS) only support 2.19TB maximum. This is another good reason to use an SSD for your boot drive in addition to the insanely enhanced boot and OS performance. It also makes it simple to image your boot partition for rapid restore purposes.
For some reason, YouTube is crashing on Google Chrome version 6.0.472.62 but not Internet Explorer 8. It spits out the following error.
Sorry, something went wrong.
A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.