Nokia's new Windows Phones

October 2011 was when Microsoft announced they're working with Nokia to develop a series of Windows mobile based smart phones. These days it's all over the tech scene news, with leaked news, specs, photos, etc., which promises the phone is about to hit the market.

The question I'm asking now is: will Microsoft-Nokia's phone survive the smart phone war and have a piece o of the Plus pie?

I'll look the Arabic/ middle east market. Here, people who but Nokia phones can be divided into two main categories: the ones buying cheap feature phones, and those who are buying Nokia because they feel they're more familiar with the phone's GUI. Despite the fact that most modern phones have GUI's that don't resemble the old ones.

Both of these categories don't actually care about the "smartness" of the phone, they want to either buy cheap phones that does voice calls, or buy modern phones, despite the price, that would have a familiar interface to what they're used to. I have personally had many discussions with Nokia phones owners about switching to iPhone or android-based and their answer was that they don't need all the features nor do they ready to try new things.

Hence, Nokia shall face a great challenge in marketing their Windows phones. They're not cheap low end phones, nor have the same "familiar" software. If Nokia fails promoting for their new devices, they will be in a bad situation that might bring down three whole company!

On the other hand, back in the days before iPhones and android phones, Windows phones were not so popular. Blackberry's were the mark for smart phones. Windows phones were something that geeks would buy just to check out or experiment with. Something like showing off to your friends today by having an 8.5" diskette. This doesn't contribute well to marketing the phone.

Facebook's FlashCache: a Linux ExpressCache?

In a previous post I was trying to get the best of my Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, with Linux. One of the points that I intended to research is how to implement the ExpressCache in a Linux environment.

ExpressCache, in Condusiv's own words, is an innovative technology developed by Condusiv Technologies to improve system speeds by incorporating SSD technology advances into Windows 7 systems.

In plain English, ExpressCache is a way to utilize the SSD storage as a caching layer to speed up reads and writes during applications runtime, among other things.

Now, in my search for how to implement such technology in a Linux environment, I came upon what I might call a shocking discovery, namely FlashCache. FlashCache is a, shockingly, facebook open source project that introduces the same concept and which was released on April 27, 2010. It seems that facebook, in sake of speeding up their data extraction, for obvious reasons, have developed this technique. It is open source, and it works greatly with Linux (actually, I believe it was developed for Unix/Linux).

Now, Implementing the flashcache is not hard. There are a couple of tutorials online, some of them are specifically for Ubuntu, and a nice Wiki on the Arch Linux Wiki page, but since I crave learning I'm planning on understanding the Block Cache on Linux, first, then implement that on my installation. I'll be fully documenting and blogging about it at a later time.

eType for Android -- First Impression

I'm working, or trying to start working, on a full "PC Suite"-like application to deal with Android phones. One of my intentions is to have a feature that allows the user of the application to type on his/her PC physical keyboard and see the output on their phone, whether the phone is connected via USB cable, Bluetooth, or WiFi; a feature I used to intensely use with MyPhoneExplorer for Sony Ericsson phones.

This led me to do a quick search about the subject, and I stumbled upon an app in the Play store called eType, from DoMobile. So, I downloaded the free version to my phone, and started playing around for a few minutes.

Here's what I found.

The app's idea is actually impressive, on the creativity side, that is. It ba sically sets a web server on the phone, that you open via your browser and type. Whatever you type in your web browser, on your PC, is then transferred to a med-app in form of keyboard, or input method, that is identified by the phone's OS.

Unfortunately, it works only via WiFi, meaning that there should always a WiFi network that both the PC and the phone are connected to, in order to utilize this app.

Now, if the idea was really creative, the implementation was very poor, in my opinion. Yes, the app works, and the text does appear on the phone's text container, but I couldn't not notice that the app doesn't actually work in real-time; instead it refreshes the text container every half a second, according to my estimation. And when I said "refreshes" I really mean that the app deletes and retypes all the text in the text container each time, about twice a second. This causes two annoyances: first, if you type fast on the computer's keyboard, you'll really feel the lag of the text appearing on the phone. This would even be worse if you decided to look into the phone's screen and type, instead of looking into your PC's monitor. Second, refreshing the whole amount of text in a relatively large document, I'm talking two paragraphs, for instance, results in blinking. With the refresh rate being about twice a second, one feels the phone really flickering.

I still insist on that the idea is nice, probably DoMobile would work more on it to overcome the negative sides.

Recovering the ExpressCache on Windows

OK. I did the thing that I'm best at. Formatted my new Samsung Series 5 14" notebook (or ultrabook, though I'm totally convinced). I'm not talking about a normal system partition format, I'm actually talking about a full hard drive and solid disk drive format. To be frank, I thought I was covered, having the Recovery DVD at hand. It turned out that the Recovery DVD is merely a copy of Windows 7 Home Edition, and it didn't even recognize my network card driver!

Unfortunately, I destroyed the Recovery Partition in the process, and hence the recovery option [F4 on booting] wouldn't work, anymore.

Well, it was surprising to me that the Recovery DVD didn't have the drivers embedded, or slip-streamed, into the Windows installation, and I found myself in a very disappointing situation: no drivers and no way to connect to the internet. I tried plugging in my USB modem, but it was like dead. I looked around, and knew that the drivers for the USB 3 ports were also missing. (Later, I realized that the port on the right side of the device is a USB 2).

But to tell the truth, the Samsung web site had all the drivers and utilities needed, although in very large file sizes, which enabled me to download them and install them one by one. As tedious as it was, and feeling those bad feeling of someone working with Windows after being on Linux for quit sometime, I could revive the system to a state very similar to that it was on.

The only thing that was missing now was the instant on feature, or as I knew later, the ExpressCache. I know that this relates to the SSD installed, but I couldn't get it to work. I installed all the drivers, including the intel ExpressCache driver, and the intel ExpressCache application, among the Easy Settings and the Easy Software Manager, but nothing changed. I still don't have that feature.

The feature I'm talking about is the ability to "SLEEP" Windows, with the device going almost on no power. The normal Sleep will keep the power led blinking slowly, but with the express cache thing, it was like an instant hibernate. With setting it to turn on with the lid opening, I also had an instant-on, sort of thing.

I googled around a little, and found this article on NoteBook Review, which pointed to something I found very weird, to say the least. It turned out that for the Intel ExpressCache to work, the SSD must be in Mac Disk format!

I did just that and had the ExpressCache back on.

My next thing to do is try to simulate the same behavior on Ubuntu!

Samsung Series 5 14 inch Ultrabook -- First Impressions

Just got a Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, the 14 inch, one. The device comes configured with a 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM (DDR3), a Core i5 processor and a Radeon display card.

These are my first impressions on the device, but before I start this, I must say that I was actually trying to get the 13.3”, with an SSD instead of the HDD. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere in the Egyptian market, and all my trials to contact Samsung Egypt were unsucessful.

The first thing I liked about it was it's keyboard. I like the US layout over the British layout (the one with the big “ENTER” key). It's been a while since I had a keyboard to my liking which is nice.

The big touchpad is also a plus, and it feels really nice and smooth with nice “click” to its buttons.

The full VGA and HDMI ports (vs. mini and micro VGA and HDMI ports) are another plus, since the device is thick enough to accommodate them with ease. This spares me the trouble of carrying converting cables all the time, as I do lots of presentations.

Another thing I liked, although might be considered unorthodox in these devices is that it has both the mic and phones jack combined together in one. To be frank, I haven't tested it, yet, but my guess is that a headset compatible with Android phones would be recognized by the device. Another save on the cables side!

Now to the things I didn't like.

The things that I hate the most is the heat! The device does get over-heated and high on temperature to an annoying level. In fact, I couldn't keep it on my legs for more than 20 minutes, and it was starting to feel real hot.

The second annoyance is the monitor. The vertical viewing angle is very small, leading to a distorted display whenever I raise or lower my body. I had to re-adjust the monitor angle every time I shifted in my seating position.

The third thing, which I consider a disappointment, is the battery life. Fully charged, the battery lasted around 3hrs 20minutes, with the brightness set to about 70% and no USB devices connected neither a CD-ROM used. Moreover, I was connected via an Ethernet cable and disabling the WiFi!! To be frank, I don't know if this is the normal trend of the battery, or is it just my unit, but I recall reading somewhere online that this device's battery lasts for 6+hrs. (Might do a recheck that). (UPDATE: [2012-07-31]: I was able to get a battery life a little over 5 hours, today. It is probably because I installed all the drivers and used the Easy Settings Application to Optimize the Power Usage. The problem is: all this is done under Windows. Under Linux, things can't get that good, unfortunately)

The device utilized a 16GB SSD for hibernating and fast booting, which is a plus, in my opinion.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 was a breeze, and it detected everything correctly. Now I'm planning to re-install it with partition setup that would allow for fast booting and hibernate/wakeup, utilizing the 16GB SSD as boot and root partitions, but that will be the talk of another day!

Windows Azure -- Thoughts

Reading about Microsoft creating a Linux client for its web platform Windows Azure produced mixed feelings inside my brain. For once, Microsoft is actually writing software for Linux, which is a confession of the existence and popularity of such marvelous operating system. On the other hand, though, I wondered if this is an attempt from Microsoft to invade the Linux community? You see, when Gates published his book "The Road Ahead", back in the mid-90's, he had this vision that in "the future" all well have on our desks is a terminal, a minimal computing unit that is capable of only connecting to the internet, where all our files are stored and where we can rent times on the software applications we use.

Windows Azure is actually, IMHO, the realization of this idea or vision. Thinking in Microsoft's shoes, I would say that the best strategy for controlling the emerging market of the cloud would simply be by providing access to such service from all possible terminals. This will bring customers from allover, and in the same time turn all computers around, including those running rival operating systems into merely access points for my services.

I might be over-thinking this, but knowing the history of Microsoft, I can't stop myself thinking this way.

On a third hand, I recalled Linus Torvalds' famous words: If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux, it means I've won.

Windows RT Closed for Third Party Browsers

Microsoft, announcing the new Windows RT, or Windows on ARM, as it was known during the development phase, is repeating the 90's browser mistake once again.

The new Windows RT, reportedly is not going to allow any third party browsers, other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. Will it be history repeating itself?

Mozilla, the makers of the open source browser FireFox, have expressed their concerns regarding this issue, highlighting their vision of the ARM processors as the future.

It is worth mentioning here that Microsoft is a very minor player in the market of the ARM-driven devices, such as smart mobile phones and tablets, but as the market share of these devices is increasing, their seeking a bigger share.

Personally, I know I wouldn't by a tablet with Windows on it, not with all the Android and potentially other linux-based OS's, like Ubuntu making their way into that market.