Man, I remember the days when I was the only person I knew with an unlimited data plan, on DiGi. (Heck, even smashpOp did not have one!)

How long ago was it? Since the 10th of June 2006, at least.

Check the EXIF data on this picture for proof. Here’s an unbelieving Cheesie!

This was online streaming radio – SpodRadio. I loved Virgin’s rock channels – they introduced me to a lot of rock. I’d listen to it on the bus – DiGi’s EDGE was pretty consistent. Also seen in this picture is smashpOp’s Panasonic FZ-5 and Nokia 6680!

(And yes, it was hard to believe, but my Nokia N70 was exactly one generation newer than the resident mobile expert’s phone back then.)

Like every other well-aged, well-used and loved Nokia N70, it would scuff at the back in that exact same pattern. However the talking front piece only came about this year – this was the first time I’d have to change the housing!

I liked the green housing – perhaps this led to me liking the Google Android mascot. However when my LCD started getting dull pixels (I could rub them and they would move about, like the liquid crystals were dead or something) I knew it was time for a new phone.

Hence, the HTC Desire which I posted about in the previous post. How is it now? I am discovering new things about it everyday, like its ability to play Quake 3 (or rather, Kwaak 3) over WifiKeyboard, the very awesome Google Goggles (which does read business cards, but struggles with smaller text, and shows augmented reality locations of buildings when GPS works), and of course Live Wallpapers.

My favorite add-on, however, is Swype, which let me get 61 words per minute on myTextSpeed doing the “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.“!

Sure, there is ShapeWriter for the iPhone, but you can’t use it globally – you can only create emails and notes. You’d need to copy-and-paste to use it in messages!

I’ve had my trusty Nokia N70 for more than 4 years now – I knew it was time when its LCD display’s liquid started leaking out (I could tell by dark lines, which you could rub to move these ‘dead’ pixels about.) It spread quickly, and I replaced the screen, but I knew it was time to get into something faster than 384 kilobits per second (the original 3G specification.)

I’ve had an unlimited data plan with DiGi since like… forever – to be exact, sometime in 2006. I’ll post a picture from ages ago when I get to blog from home! And what a long wait it was for DiGi to get a 3G license (since DiGi isn’t exactly a Malaysian company) that 3.5G, HSDPA and the likes had already arrived. And there was nobody to do video calls with (besides Jenifur at that time)!

And so, I asked the resident phone expert, smashpOp, what phone to get. At that time, I felt touchscreen phones to be annoyingly slippery and prone to mis-touching, so I preferred a keyboard, and having an extensible operating system. I knew I’d keep it for a few years like I did my Nokia N70 so it had to last.

Some Nokias were suggested, as well as the Motorola Milestone (and as an add-on, the HTC Desire.) However, upon hearing the iffy future of Symbian (plus the really cool Nokias would not be launched when I needed to buy a new phone) I headed down to Low Yat Plaza to have a hands-on on both models.

The Motorola Milestone has the same impressive 800×480 screen as the HTC Desire, but with a slide-out keyboard – however, it loses the ability to have a landscape-oriented touchscreen keyboard for when I don’t want to slide out the keyboard and type discreetly. The HTC Desire allowed me to type sideways comfortably – so it was set! I was going to get the HTC Desire… whenever the heck it was out officially.

EDITED 3rd July 2010 2:02pm +0800 GMT: Thanks Jeffrey for the heads-up – the Motorola Milestone can indeed have an auto-rotating keyboard.

The HTC Desire, while relatively dated, still holds its fort – 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 3.7″ 800×480 pixel multi-touch AMOLED touchscreen, 576MB RAM. It has Android 2.1 (Eclair) as an operating system – which was the latest until Android 2.2 (Froyo) came out in June 2010.

Why not the Google Nexus One, which is also made by HTC, and is the twin of the HTC Desire? Because it wasn’t easily found, not officially sold in Malaysia, and it runs stock Android, while HTC installs HTC Sense, a prettier user interface which makes the phone significantly much more eye candy. Thanks smashpOp for this headsup, HTC Sense is much appreciated!

EDITED 3rd July 2010 2:02pm +0800 GMT: I was wrong about the HTC Sense – Android 2.1 introduced Live Wallpapers and it already has widgets – I found my friend’s Google Nexus One to have all that! (And I don’t like to use widgets on Windows.)

Blackberry? That is a workaholic’s phone. I don’t want to be buggered by emails.

iPhone? I don’t like Steve Jobs. He’s gone bad. Do you tell 7-15% of people to stop holding their phone that way? (That is how many percent of the population is left-handed.)

So the iPhone 4 can do video calls… but only when connected to a WiFi network!

Well then, iPhone 4 FaceTime users can leech off an Android 2.2 phone – Android 2.2 lets you turn your phone into a WiFi Hotspot!

Widgets

Honestly, I don’t have much use for the HTC Widgets other than FriendStream (which combines your Twitter/Facebook/Plurk/Flickr streams), Agenda (which shows your calendar), Clock/Weather (which shows animated clouds/rain/lightning if it sees you will have inclement weather in your GPS location), and Favorites (so you can make a speed dial list.)

The rest of my 7 home screens are filled with favorite games and apps. Google Goggles is one such app, though it is purely for show – I’ve only managed to get it to work on logos, and the business-card-scanning thing works better on larger print.) From the scanning process it seems to perform edge recognition (it submits the picture to Google to match against their Google Images, I presume.) When I tried Google Goggles on a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube, it returned “Birthday cake clip art” (but showed a similiar image which was an actual Rubik’s Cube.) Oddly, when I did it again on my 7x7x7 it returned “Rubik’s cube”!

Versions

Unfortunately, only Google Nexus One owners can legitimately update their phones to Android 2.2 – I could either do a complex hack to install Android 2.2 but lose HTC Sense, or wait for HTC to release their own firmware update with Android 2.2 and HTC Sense. I guess I’d rather wait.

Face detection and a 5 megapixel camera with flash! (Thanks Waifon for taking this picture.)

Next to my (now white) Nokia N70. I really like how the Android mascot features prominently in the user interface. This is the default caller profile image. I find it really cute.

And this is from a previous blog entry – my Nokia N70 had a green casing, a precursor to why I just find the Android mascot cute! Of course, the Android mascot is a deeper shade of green.

This was from a previous blog entry – HTC Sense allows you to set Live Wallpapers, which is quite like them Active Desktop things on Windows. (You can’t play with this particular Live Wallpaper.) You can set the difficulty of the game and Mario will encounter more enemies in more difficulty settings. Quite cool that although there are only 3 levels, when Mario reaches the same level again the enemies are randomized so you’ll see something different each time!

The other Live Wallpapers are cool, too – there’s Maps, which pretty much is Google Maps with your current location as a wallpaper! Shake Them All! lets you have little Androids in your background (and you can set the number of droids, whether it reacts to gravity, acceleration, touch, light, sound and how many percent for each!)

I really like the hard buttons of the HTC Desire – there’s Home, Menu, Back and Search. Home always brings you back, Menu and Back are context-sensitive (usually to the application), Search can be context-sensitive but usually brings up the Search Bar which lets you search your phone book or Twitter or Facebook or Google (I’m not sure what else, but it’s amazingly… integrated).

Having instant access to Search is amazing. You can be sitting with your friends, where three of them are talking about how that goal should have been an offside, and you quietly wonder, “what the heck is an offside?” and you can Google that, read it briefly, and rejoin the conversation, now able to sound like an expert. Smartphones help people look smart!

I love having Uncle Google in my pocket. Uncle G, as I call him, knows where to find everything! He’s married to Aunt W who is immensely knowledgeable.

The Android Market, where you can download free applications (Malaysians cannot access the paid applications yet) is certainly not as comprehensive as the iPhone AppStore – but there’s still a lot of similiar applications if you search for say “ruler” or “camera”. Some applications can look rather… demo-like, as there isn’t Steve Jobs dictating what can go on the Android Market or not.

Steve Jobs Reiterates: “Folks who want pr0n can buy an Android phone”

Why yes, I can have pr0n on my phone! 🙂

(And Adobe Flash too… and true multi-tasking…)

Speaking of multi-tasking – no app ever really dies. Android keeps them around but eventually flushes them from memory if you don’t use it. This makes it a lot faster to switch back and forth between apps… but it is embarrassing if you thought you closed your browser and it shows you what you were last surfing. Because you know, you can have pr0n on your phone.

Can’t Touch This

Honestly, 5 days into the phone, I still haven’t truly gotten 100% mastery of touch screens – I still end up mis-touching the edges of the screen and closing/opening stuff I did not intend to. SNesoid Lite, a SNES emulator, lets me play Super Mario World, but it’s really hard to run and jump at the same time. The nipple D-pad isn’t easy to roll, though it makes an easy click button.

Also, because the phone is a lot slimmer (very similiar to the iPhone 3G/3Gs in size – even the casings fit) it has become very hard to hold the phone with your shoulder alone! I have to say though, I really like that it uses a standard 2.5″ audio minijack for its handsfree kit (which doubles as a earphone jack).

This is so cool I just can’t not blog about it right away. I usually intend to blog with my proper watermark done in Photoshop (which my work laptop does not have, legitimately so) but I beared with Picasa’s watermark for this.

Ah yes, I do have some new acquisitions, whether I like it or not – a work laptop to kill my back with, a new camera (of which its identity will be revealed later in a full-on geeky post) and this – a worthy successor to a smartphone of its time, my trusty Nokia N70.

So yeah, this is the coolest Live Wallpaper ever. It animates, and you can set the difficulty (which affects the number of enemies Mario encounters). And it’s Super Mario World, my favorite Mario of all time! Now if only I had the time to get the ROM in SNesoid Lite…

(And yes, I had to wait for Maxis to release their lock on this phone, and I don’t like the locks that turtlenecker puts on his phone. Long live Adobe!)

Edit: Oh yes, get it here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=710647

Good morning Casswen! (Bokeh from the Vivitar 24mm F2.0 has been processed with my STF-like routine.)

Here’s one with the Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at F5.6…

…and one at F1.8.

This was one heck of a striking blue dress.

More with the Vivitar 24mm F2.0.

This set isn’t as high-key as the previous one; it’s a pain to get the right brightness for all those darned LCD monitors that are too bright out of the box. Go calibrate it so you don’t get really dark prints! (I process everything on my trusty CRT monitor which matches prints.)

Of course, I can’t be going around calibrating everybody’s damn overbright monitors so I’ll have to find somewhere in between. I’d have preferred to keep my skintones where they were, expressed as near highlights instead of obvious midtones…

EXIF is included in all shots.

Oh and yes, you can click on any of the images for a larger view.

This is a continuation from Part 1 here:
City Park Countryside

I managed to try the Sony Alpha NEX-3 and NEX-5 recently! Both are demo units but the functionality should be the same. Here we can see that the “Release without lens” option is back, so we can use unchipped lenses in Aperture Priority! YAY!

One step forward for Sony Alpha, this – the option was missing from the A200 onwards (including the A850/A900!)

Left to right: Sony E 16mm F2.8 pancake lens; Sony VCL-ECF1 fisheye converter; Sony E 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OSS lens; Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D), Minolta 50mm F1.4 Original.

This should give you an idea of the scale of the 18-55mm. Note that it has a metal mount, unlike the plastic mounts of the Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT or the Sony 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 DT SAM. One step forward.

The back of the Sony E 16mm F2.8 pancake lens. Also metal mount.

Sony E 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OSS (Optical SteadyShot). This makes for quiet stabilization in video – you really don’t hear it stabilizing, or focusing! However when you turn the zoom ring you can still hear it rather obviously, especially when you hit the ends. There is no sensor stabilization, which has been a strength of the Alpha series before this. I would have preferred to have sensor stabilization as well so we can use it for taking pictures (obviously, sensor stabilization can be heard while recording video, so it could be disabled then.) One step backward.

The lens hood is the ALC-SH112.

I can’t tell if it’s focus by wire – you can’t even see the focus elements moving if you look at it from the front for the 16mm and 18-55mm even at the 55mm end!There is a delay when turning on the NEX cameras, probably caused by priming the lens aperture – the NEX lenses have their apertures closed when not mounted, or when the camera is off. When you turn it on, it opens slowly, closes again, and then opens again animatedly. You can see the screen brightness animate when this happens. Why does this have to happen, and why do we have to wait for it? One step backward.

Please pardon this crop from the fisheye converter! The package does not include a body cap, but there is a new rear cap which is gray in color and feels just like the A-mount cap.

In front is the plastic case for the HVL-F7S flash. Yes, the flash has its own case!

Left to right: Sony Alpha NEX-3; Sony Alpha NEX-5. You open the top by pulling it up with a fingernail.

Top: The Sony Cybershot WX-1 on left; Sony Alpha NEX-3 on right with Sony E 16mm F2.8 pancake lens.
Bottom: Here the HVL-F7S sits on a Nokia N70 (if you had one, you can see the scale. The screen is the same size as a Compact Flash card.)
Every picture you have seen of this camera, makes it look a lot bigger than it really is! I can fit the 16mm and flash on camera, in a loose pocket (not a tight jeans pocket) but with the handle in first.

Another picture to show scale. Note the tripod mount adapter for the LA-EA1 A-to-E-mount lens adapter.

The external stereo mike has a switch to go between 90 degrees and 120 degrees coverage. Very sweet! I don’t know since I don’t have a professional mike, whether 90 degrees is tight enough.

There was also a mock Sony E 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 OSS (Active).Both the NEX-3 and NEX-5 feel surprisingly natural in hand, like the Samsung NX10, GF1 etc. Nothing at all like the A230/A330/A380. The magnesium alloy body of the NEX-5 feels a heck lot more solid than the non-magnesium alloy bodies, which creak when heavy lenses are mounted!

It is sized like an 85mm F1.4 but with the hulking look of the Zeiss 16-35mm/24-70mm/135mm.

Left: Sony Alpha NEX-5 with LA-EA1 lens adapter; obviously the A-mount is wider than the E-mount, as you can see the Sony E 16mm F2.8 (and VCL-ECF1 fisheye converter) on it.
Top-right: The underside of the VCL-ECF1 fisheye converter; it has a bayonet mount and clicks on snugly to the Sony E 16mm F2.8’s bayonet front. I forgot to try putting a 49mm filter on the 16mm to see if the VCL-ECF1 fisheye converter could still mount!
Bottom-right: The LA-EA1 lens adapter allows full aperture control but definitely no AF with screw-drive lenses. I did not fully mount it yet hence the rotation.

I tried the Sony 30mm F2.8 DT Macro SAM on it, but it jerked a bit and didn’t jerk or move again after pressing the lens release buttons. Then again this was a demo unit so the functionality could be changed, as there are other testimonials saying that SSM lenses did AF.

The Minolta 50mm F1.4 balances well. Then again, a Nikkor 50mm F1.8 E-series pancake will fit in pockets better.

MF with screw-drive lenses was not as hard as I thought – if you saw the video from the Zeiss 135mm F1.8 the first thing you’d notice is the wobbling (no SteadyShot!) You’d probably think that it supported AF in video, the way I was manually focusing. Anyone could beat the contrast-detect AF speed on say the Nikon D90 easily. Then again, I was pretty alright refocusing with the Nikon D90 albeit handicapped by the reverse focus ring.

Unfortunately, the rectangular baffle of the LA-EA1 lens adapter is APS-C sized; if there was a future full-frame NEX body, you’d have to buy a new lens adapter to fit full-frame lenses!

Sweep Panorama with the VCL-ECF1 fisheye adapter isn’t as clean as it is without – it also stops at a 180 degree turn. However it should still, in theory, give you more at the top and bottom. Will need a scientific test with and without for this.

Sweep Panorama fires the shutter away, making it a really noisy process – nothing at all like the silent sweeping espionage on my WX-1. One step backward.

The fisheye adapter has a permanent lens hood which will reach nearly the center of the image when flash is used. Sony, give us a bigger flash or the ability to trigger an external flash! One step backward.

There is no wireless flash option. I’m sure somebody will figure out the pinout protocol and make a standard hotshoe adapter (preferably using a flash bracket.)

At the very least, I would buy a Sony FA-CC1AM flash cable with the E-mount accessory port instead.

Interface

In some ways the interface is slower but not that slow, for example if I was in Aperture Priority:

To change aperture on the NEX-3/NEX-5:
1) roll the dial

To change EV on the NEX-3/NEX-5:
1) press Down on the D-pad (it is marked with the EV icon)
2) roll the dial

To change ISO on the NEX-3/NEX-5:
1) press Menu
2) select Camera icon
3) press center button
4) go through menu to ISO option
5) press center button
6) select the ISO (I don’t remember if the dial can be used for this)

Now let’s see how the A-mount Alphas do it:

To change ISO on an A-mount camera:
1) press ISO button
2) roll the dial

What about Sony Cybershot cameras?

To change ISO on a Sony Cybershot WX-1 camera:
1) press Menu button
2) press up or down to ISO option
3) press left or right to change ISO

If you just changed ISO, and want to change it again, it will remember that you were at the ISO option, so you skip step 2 and save time!

There is a lower button which is always set to Shooting Tips. I would love for this button to be customizable, to change ISO, for example.

I wish the Sony Cybershot team designed the menus instead! The idea of putting the workload in another team to get to a deadline is cool, but the results were not cool. I’ve always thought that the Cybershots had far better menu design. One very big step backward.

Heck, even changing the sweep direction is far more hidden, by these darn Sony Ericsson designers! Don’t get me wrong – I don’t expect the interface of a bigger-sized Alpha 900 with loads of buttons, but this is weaker than the Cybershot interface.

That said, if you are interested in the NEX series, or a tiny Mirrorless Interchangeable-Lens Format camera, and you are well aware of its shortcomings, when you see and touch one, you will not be disappointed! A slight desire for this will be amplified when you see it.

I have started a Mass Order here:
[MASS ORDER] Sony NEX-3/NEX-5

More reading:
Here’s What’s NEX

10 days ago, she waited there.

Hello Casswen! 😀

I went close with the Vivitar 24mm F2.0. You can go closer by clicking on any of the pictures for a bigger version!

This was with the chipped Opteka 85mm F1.4 (reporting a 50mm in EXIF.)

Everybody loves the fisheye, and she is a sport!

EXIF is included in all pictures except this one. What a sad fate for the fish in the lake, trapped in between rocks, waiting for the water to rise! 🙁

I put my Gear-Stripped Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 through a 2x teleconverter to see what shooting with a 800mm would be like. Well, it was very tight, even with full-frame…

More to come soon!