Anyway, after trotting over to the T-Mobile store and connecting to my Mifi to the display Satio, I had a good play. The camera is, as I have already discovered, very very impressive. The ‘best pic’ function is good too. Web browsing seemed average and I was a bit disapointed with the speaker but overall, the feature set is very very impressive.

I didn’t buy one though.

The big problem is that it feels like it fell out of a Christmas cracker. The plastic is cheap and it looks like the ’silver’ will rub off within weeks. I literally couldn’t handle it any more and walked out of the shop knowing that the Satio is NOT for me.

Sometimes I feel I’m a little bit too careful when choosing a phone but when it’s the most used peice of electronics i’m likely to buy for the next year or two, I don’t mind being a bit picky.

It looks like I’ve exhausted all phones from my ‘toplist’ now so there’s only one thing to do…wait.

• Support for WVGA video recording – The already great video recording will be enhanced to fit the wide screen format and hence resolution is also slightly increased to 864 * 480 pixles. (the preset size will still be VGA, user has to change to get WVGA)
• Upload of pictures to Facebook – It will be possible to upload pictures directly from the picture menu you have on the home screen or from the Media UI.
• Youtube video uploading – It will be possible to upload videos to Youtube directly from the Media UI.
• Conversational messaging – “Conversations” will be nicely integrated in the messaging menu in order to easily find and inspire to more conversations with your friends.
• DLNA support – The new software will support DLNA media server for easy transfer of audio and still pictures. (Note that video is not supported)
• UI improvements – On top of above, several minor UI improvements have been done in order to optimize the user experience.
• The Facebook application that is now available on PlayNow for free download will be included in the sw.

Owners are reporting that the device is now faster and smoother too.

The best news, and the news that has put the Satio back on top of the list though comes from Satio owner ‘tpagpuss‘ who has Gravity, Ovi Maps and Opera Mobile 10.5 running on it after modifying the phone to accept Nokia software.  He also linked me to some great low-light pics taken with the flash proving that it’s at least as good as the N82. It actually looks better than my two-year old N82 to me. Finally, I found this blog from another Satio owner who says “Shooting Pictures on the Go hasn’t been this much Fun since i got my beloved N82 some Years ago ” He’s posted a nice gallery of pics taken with the Satio here.

There’s a universal feeling that battery life isn’t that good but i’m betting that it’s going to beat my N82 which needs charging every 5 hours under my usage conditions. Two batteries is normal for me.

• Priority for me: Top-quality camera – Check
• Opera Mobile 10.5 – Check
• Ovi Maps – Check
• Google Maps – Check
• Gravity – Check
• Faster, better screen than my N82 – Check
• One or Two-handed operation – Check

The only thing I’m missing on my list is Ovi Store.

The risk remains that Nokia will come out with a Satio-beater next week but in this day and age that risk is always there. I have no doubt that the Satio will be an old phone in just a month or two. This afternoon I will wander down to the O2 store to see what they can do. I’m a new customer with them since last week and haven’t taken a data or voice plan yet so I’m expecting some flexibility on the price. I’m hoping for flat data over two sim cards and the phone for under 50 Euros per month.

Check back later or follow my tweets to see how I get on.

This is a test. Video to come soon.

UMID BZ UMPC

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

The UMID is going to form an important part of my kit at MWC next week. It will be the hub for my photos in so far as I will be transfering images from my N82 via Bluetooth to the device and then uploading them to Flickr. From there I will be using the ‘blog this’ feature to push it out to my website. The blog process includes adding the article and links. E.G. this one

Videos will require an different process but its also possible to process and push basic videos from Movie Maker on the UMID.

This test, done as explained, took about 5 mins.

Possible issues:
Battery life on UMID and Mifi.

It turns out that the Satio doesn’t run OVI maps (out of the box,) isn’t as fast as the Cortex A8 CPU might have you believe and with a waiting line of Sony Ericsson phones expected, I really don’t see it getting the long term attention it needs from it’s creators.

All that remains now is to wait for Mobile World Congress and if I don’t see anything there, the N82 will likely be my phone for the next year. It’s been good from day 1 and with Gravity, Opera Mobile and Ovi Maps to make it even better, why shouldn’t it be the perfect buddy for another 12 months?

Supplementing the N82 with a MID like the UMID BZ is working out pretty well and we’ve got the Viliv N5 and Dell Mini 5 to look forward to too!

I took a brief look at the Sony Ericsson Satio a while back but it didn’t really register in my ‘want’ list because I didnt know about the CPU. When I found out that it’s got the same CPU in as the iPhone 3GS (AAS Review) I started to get interested again. Today I checked it out in the T-Mobile shop here in Bonn and sure enough, it’s got a lot of potential. The touchscreen is resistive but, like the Nokia N900, gives good haptic-assisted response. The slider-protected (essential) camera is 12MP and the pre-focus is quick and accurate. The only thing I found missing on the camera side (in my 10 minute test) was the ability to force the flash on (for fill-in.)

A quick test with the browser (on the 360×640, 3.5” screen) showed it to be accurate although over EDGE, I couldn’t really test the speed out. WIth the OMAP 3430 platform at heart, it’s going to be reasonable although with multitasking capability, probably not as fast as the single-tasking iPhone 3GS.

Must-have GPS and MicroSD are also included although the lack of 3.5mm headphone jack is hard to accept. Included headphones look good and included adaptor helps.

Two questions remain though:

• Am I happy with Series 60?
• Will Nokia bring out a new high-end cameraphone at MWC (on Symbian^2)

Series 60 is something that a lot of people moan about. It’s NOT intuitive and there’s a tough learning curve BUT, once you’re over that (I’ve been using S60 for 2 years) there’s a lot to like about it. Being able to choose per-application internet connections, good memory and process management, stable operation and a level of software support that is up there with Apple’s iPhone. I’m also a big fan of Ovi Maps. The application is quick, smooth, allows me to buy daily walk/drive licenses via my carrier’s bill and it syncs well with the online Ovi service. Exchange support works well with Google, the Gravity twitter app is one of the best out there and Opera Mobile 10 beta for S60 is a fantastic browser. SIP is integrated, Do I need any more than that? The Ovi store isn’t that exciting but it’s coming along. Android would be better for me but Symbian S60 comes in at #2 above iPhone and WM6.5. (Maemo 5 needs work to become a 24/7 phone.)

Many of you know that I’m a two-mobile-device man. I don’t believe that convergence can bring me the quality I require from a fully onverged web, pmp, navi, phone, pim, microblogging, camera device (a-la N900) so the phone doesn’t have to have the fastest and best web experience in the world because I’ve got another device for that. My priority is that camera. Capturing life around me and sending it to the internet, keeping up with news and email, twitter, mp3,  organising my agenda and making phone calls and SMS are the most important features I need in a phone.

480 Euro’s is a lot to pay for a phone but it’s only 30 Euro more than I paid for the N82 and 02 are doing some good internet-focused tariffs. (50 Euro per month for 24 months should see me covered for the phone, 5GB Internet usage including tethering/laptop use along with my low-end voice and SMS use. Initial payment – 29.95Euro. TCO, phone and costs – 1200 Euros)

So why didn’t I buy one then? Simple. At my second visit to the 02 shop today the staff refused to let me try a working model despite having one in stock. T-Mobile had a working model on display but their tariffs are focused on a flat and equal mix of voice, SMS and internet. My final option is to buy one from the O2 online shop. The ‘remote purchase’ law in Germany at least allows me 14 days to return it. 

But then again, Mobile World Congress is coming in just over a week!

Sample 12mp Satio image below (click for full size and see how much you can zoom in. its stunning!)

Note the widescreen form-factor of the image. Gives it a modern feel.

Any other N82 owners out there laboring over the same choice?

The great thing about getting hit with a Slashdot article is that it stresses your server with REAL traffic. Clearly my server wasn’t doing too well. With a Dual-Core 3Ghz CPU it was hitting CPU limits and with 100 concurrent Apache instances, out of memory and into swap space. Swap space is not something you want to be hitting on a web server.

After measuring network load, watching mod-status and top for a while I decided that I needed to reduce the number of Apache sessions to 80 which did a good job at keeping the swap partition unused. I then played around with some Wordpress cache software. None of it really worked well.

After some research and a handy tip from Hanno, I checked out some PHP cache software. This is something I’ve been thinking about for at least 12 months as my product database is written with ‘Chippy code.’ That means it’s super inefficient and generates the page dynamically from the database for every view. For pages that don’t change from month to month, that’s a poor architecture!

I settled on a very simple, a surprisingly simple, Xcache install via apt-get on my server. The install was quick and smooth and almost immediately I was seeing a drop in CPU load.

For the rest of the day I watched the traffic flow and everything has been working really well. At least I think it is.

I though it might be a good idea to share the stats I’ve seen today. It could help someone to scale or measure their own server. Feedback on this will also help me too so here goes.

Server: Dedicated, E8300 (dual core, 3.0Ghz) processor, 2GB RAM.

Server Software: Mysql, PHP5, Apache 2.

Applications: Wordpress (about 15 instances including Wordpress Mu and Buddypress), OPenX, Gallery2 and a hand-written PHP product website. Small amount of FTP and Email.

Normal load: about 20-25K pages per day. Most including some PHP/Mysql.

Current stats (Today, since Slashdot impact)

Server uptime: 9 hours 11 minutes 42 seconds
Total accesses: 1255349 – Total Traffic: 16.1 GB
37.9 requests/sec – 510.1 kB/second – 13.5 kB/request

CPU load has been between 40 and 60% average.

Apache2.conf prefork MPM config:

StartServers         2
MinSpareServers      2
MaxSpareServers      5
MaxClients          120
ServerLimit     120
MaxRequestsPerChild  4000

Each Apache process instance grows up to 30MB. Average about 15-20MB over the 120 processes.

(I’ve tuned the above to fit within the 2GB of Memory that I have. Swap kills! CPU levels are OK)

The plan is:

Upgrade memory to 4GB and increase MaxClients to 200. I’m hoping that the server can handle up to 100 requests/second of PHP from my code, from Wordpress, from OPenX (a significant part of my setup) and from various other LAMP components. I will also take a CPU upgrade though. Serving sessions and closing them off quickly is going to save memory. With an upgrade to a quad-core I’m hoping I can reach 150-200 requests per second on the single server.

I’m quite happy with the performance and the cost of the server which is about $160 per month from the very responsive and helpful Future Hosting service I’ve been using for about 2 years now but the question is, which part of my website is taking the most CPU and Memory. Is there 20% that is responsible for 80% of the load? If I knew how to find it, I’d probably be able optimise and double the capacity.

As I said, I’d be happy to have your feedback. How much traffic do you serve and what environment do you have?

Marketing – Does anyone think that marketing teams will let this happen? What are the chances of the marketing team saying this to the board: “We have an idea. Lets stop separate MP3 and digicam sales and just focus on selling the converged device. It’s cheaper for the consumer.”

Buying cycle – The chances are that you’ve just bought one of the devices that your converged device includes. 1) Buying something you’ve already got doesn’t feel good. 2) The chances are that the dedicated device is better.

Pricing – The price of the separate items will drop to the point where you can afford to buy a PMP, MP3, EReader. In many cases the price drops to the point where they can be given as gifts.

Physics – There are physical reasons why everything won’t converge onto a smartphone. It doesn’t take much thought to see that.

Advancing Tech – Developing a converged device requires expertise, industry partners and speed. If you don’t get that converged device to market before the next wave of technology comes along then you’re already behind the curve on launch day.  Developers of dedicated devices will always be ahead of the curve because they have a more efficient focus.

A slim opportunity

There is an opportunity for a large, dynamic, dedicated smartphone manufacturer to create a single device that 1) does not cut across products that exist in their portfolio 2)  is more usable than dedicated devices at the leading edge of technology 3) to reach a big enough scale that the prices can be brought down to ‘no-brainer’ levels.

There aren’t many companies out there that could do this but Nokia is one example. Apple, Samsung, Sony and similar multi-product companies would have problems with this strategy.

N900 and B7610

There’s some nice chit-chat going on about the camera on the N900 right now. Ari Jaaksi highlighted the rather stunning set of photos appearing on Flickr which has prompted a lot of people to go ‘wow!’

I’m holding back on recommending the N900 as a good cameraphone choice based on issues I’m seeing outside the realm of pure image quality.

A smartphone is, for most people, a snapshot camera. It’s there to take photos of events as they happen. Family, friends etc. The most important thing is that it produces the best snapshots which means being able to do more than just get a technically correct white balance or depth of field.

I tested the N82 camera against the Omnia Pro recently and here are the criteria I used to asses it. If you’re looking for a cameraphone or reviewing a cameraphone, think about the following:

• General image quality (lens quality and sensor quality more important than megapixels)
• Low-light photography (without flash) A sensitive sensor means not having to use flash. A natural lighting wash is often better than a pinpoint flash. It also means that the camera can choose higher shutter speeds and therefore produce sharper images.
• Flash. For very low light images, flash is required. Xenon flash make a great choice not just for its power but for it’s short duration that can ‘freeze’ images. A long duration LED flash can result in blurry images if the subject is moving.
• Preview screen (both indoor and outdoor) I make a lot o mistakes on my N82 purely because I can’t see what is in focus and what isn’t. A big, high-brightness screen is a superb way to secure a better ‘hit’ rate.
• Access to controls. Touchscreen devices can make accessing camera options easy. CHeck out how many presses you need to make to turn the flash from ‘auto’ to ‘red eye.’ for example.
• Type of controls.  If you want to get creative you’ll need access to focus controls, iso, apperture, shutter speed and white balance but there are some other features that are good. How about automatically taking 6 shots at a time? Or being able to detect movemement. Some of these features are gimmicks, some are useful.
• Pre-focus. Make sure that the camera is able to pre-focus by pushing the shutter release button down half-way. If you’re able to prepare for a shot like this, the duration between pressing the shutter release button and the camera taking the image can drop dramatically. A near instantaneous press/capture is obviously ideal.
• Speed to remove device from pocket and start camera. THere’s nothing worse than waiting for a device to come out of standby and waiting for the camera application to start. Having a shutter cover rather than a case saves time. Having a quick unlock feature saves time. Fast software saves time.
• Quick review. Being able to see the photo you’ve taken is critical. Often the shutter sound does not correspond exactly to the time the image was taken. If the preview takes 2 or 3 seconds to appear it’s annoying for both you and your subject.
• Transfer of photos (online, usb bluetooth, tv) Think about where you need to send your photos. Do you use flickr. If so, think about a phone that uses 3G with a fast upload speed (HSUPA or HSPA for example.) Make sure the transfer process can be run in the background. Also think about USB transfer speed.
• Lens cover.  The value of a lens cover can not be understated. A greasy, scratched, dusty lens is the last thing you want.
• Geotagging. Geotagging isnt just for fun, it helps you to organise your photos based on places. A fast GPS lock or use of network location services can help.
• Overall size of device. If it’s too big you might put it in your bag.
• Price. Clearly price is a major consideration.
• Apps. Think about third party software. The iPhone has a number of good camera applications that can be used for different scenarios.
• Future. Phones can often get better over time. Firmware gets improved and a phone that may have been slow on first release might get upgraded. A phone older than 18 months is not likely to get regular firmware updates.
• Build quality. A cameraphone WILL take a beating. Think about moving parts, exposed ports and moving parts.

My experience with the N900 so far is that the lens and sensor quality is superb. The device has a lens cover and is relatively small. The problem right now is the firmware because it’s way too slow. Fortunately, the N900 will get firmware updates so if the camera is critical for you,  it would make sense to wait until the first firmware update until you make a decision on it.

You’ll fnd some more thoughts and some sample images in this comparision between the N900 and the Omnia Pro B7610

What I did discover is the following (that will only be of interest to Germans, that can read English. (note-to-self: Maybe widening your niche area might result in more visitors!)

As I went from shop to shop I tweeted my findings:

Vodafone and 02 have confirmation that the Droid / Milestone is coming. I’m a Vodafone customer who’s contract finishes in Feb so this is interesting to me but there’s something even more interesting.

O2 have an interesting ‘transparent’ system where they’ve separated the phones and contracts into different products. A phone is free and costs 5,10,15 or 20 per month over 2 years. It allows them to sell voice and data services on a month-by-month basis. You can combine multiple products in different ways which benefits someone like me who rarely makes a voice call but is connected to the data channel for most of the day. I’ve been offered a Motorola Milestone/Droid for 20 Euro per month / 24 months (480 Euros) I can then add a 0 Euro per month voice contract. (0,15 Euros per call/sms) and then (and this is the cool part) add a 300MB or 5GB HSPA (in Bonn) contract on for 10 or 25 Euro per month. (Actually they are both flat rate data but throttle down to GPRS after the limit is reached.) For 45 Euro per month I get a Droid and 5GB of lovely 7.2mbps data. Vodafone, you’ve got about 5 days to offer me something else because apparently the Milestone/Droid will be here next week.

Other updates: Amazon have one weeks exclusivity on the Nkia N900 in Germany. Nokia shop gets it one week later. (Should be under 2 weeks)

I didn’t get a chance to talk to the T-Mobile people about the HTC HD2. It’s coming soon and it looks like it will be exclusive to T-Mobile for a while as no-one else knew anything about it. The T-Mobile shop was rammed full so I left. Maybe I’ll check them out again later.

I spotted the Omnia Pro B7610 in a few shops and spoke to one person about why it took too long to reach the shelves in Germany. ‘Germany is a different place’ he said. ‘Everyone else is casual about faults but it’s different in Germany.’ I had to laugh out loud because it’s so true. The Germans are the best quality control testers in the world!

It’s funny how a walk around the shops results in a different conclusion to browsing the web. There’s an extra special element of excitement that can catch you unaware. Right now I’m seriously thinking about the Milestone for next week. If I get it I’ll start a sub-blog droid-milestone.carrypad.com My only worry is that I will end up with a QWERTZ keyboard.