Let’s see what iphone 4G brings us EXTRA:

1. Front facing Camera and videoconferencing: Well, it’s a neat feature, but not new. Android based Evo 4G already has a front facing camera, and Android has been supporting video chat for quite some time anyway.

2. External buttons, volume up and down, mute, front facing camera: Finally, FINALLY Apple realizes that that ALL soft buttons is not the best idea after all.

3.  Two mics for active noise cancellation: Heck, HTC had it for a long time. Even almost-obsolete Nexus 1 has this.

4. Gyroscope: Yes, this is definitely a new addition, and will be welcome by the gaming world. However, given it’s based on third party hardware, it’ll probably be on other phones within weeks. This is also an incremental addition, not really a “leap” I’d say.

5:  Retina Display: This, I think, is iPhone 4G’s biggest addition. But again, being third party, and hardware based, it’ll probably show up on other phones within weeks. This is also just an incremental addition.

On the software front, most of the stuff was declared with the iOS release, and Google had already upped the ante. Multitasking, Wallpapers were already there in Android.

So, let me ask again, where’s the beef… ahem… the leap?

Personally, I had expected WWDC to give us something better. Seems like Apple is now playing the catchup game, trying to sell front facing camera, multitasking etc. which have been on Android phones for some time now.

There are no MiFi mobile hotspots or free GPS navigation,  features already present in Android. Heck, with Froyo being deployed, Android users can now play all the games at Kongregate, watch all the videos (and not just the 75% of videos that Jobs wants iPhone users to watch), and do what THEY want, not what Jobs wants for them.

Related articles:

Showdown: iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo 4G (wired.com)

Although the driver allowed me, with a bit of tweaking, both printing and scanning over wired and wireless connections, the print dialogs didn’t have all the necessary config knobs. This is due to missing functionality in the PPD file for the printer that has been distributed with the driver.

Google to the rescue. I found this discussion with the solution:

FYI, add this to /etc/cups/ppd/Canon-MX860.ppd 

and You can set resolution, quality and greyscale 

snip ------- 




*OpenUI *Resolution/Output Resolution: PickOne 

*DefaultResolution: 600dpi 

*Resolution 600dpi/600 dpi: "<</HWResolution[600 600]>>setpagedevice" 

*Resolution 1200dpi/1200 dpi: "<</HWResolution[1200 1200]>>setpagedevice" 

*Resolution 2400dpi/2400 dpi: "<</HWResolution[2400 2400]>>setpagedevice" 

*CloseUI: *Resolution 




*OpenUI *CNQuality/Quality: PickOne 

*DefaultCNQuality: 3 

*CNQuality 2/High: "2" 

*CNQuality 3/Normal: "3" 

*CNQuality 4/Standard: "4" 

*CNQuality 5/Economy: "5" 

*CloseUI: *CNQuality 




*OpenUI *CNGrayscale/Grayscale: PickOne 

*DefaultCNGrayscale: false 

*CNGrayscale false/Off: "false" 

*CNGrayscale true/On: "true" 

*CloseUI: *CNGrayscale 




snip ----- 

I did face one problem though. On my Ubuntu 8.04 LTS laptop, it didn’t support Java out of the box. Flash worked fine, but no Java.

However, found the fix pretty easily on the web. You need to do the following if you are facing this problem:

sudo mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins

cd /opt/google/chrome/plugins

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

 #!/usr/bin/perl
 use Net::XMPP;


 my $username = 'uuuuuuuu';
 my $password = 'pppppppp';


 my $resource = 'MailToTalk';
 my $hostname = 'talk.google.com';

 my $port = 5222;
 my $componentname = 'gmail.com';

 my $connectiontype = 'tcpip';
 my $tls = 1;
 my $msg = $ARGV[0];


 # Connect to Google Talk
 my $Client = new Net::XMPP::Client();

 $Client->Connect(   hostname => $hostname,
                     port => $port,

                     componentname => $componentname,
                     connectiontype => $connectiontype,
                     tls => $tls );

 my $sid = $Client->{SESSION}{id};
 $Client->{STREAM}->{SIDS}->{$sid}->{hostname} = $componentname;

 $Client->AuthSend(  username => $username,
                     password => $password,

                     resource => $resource );

 print "Sending $msg";

 my $ret = $Client->MessageSend(
                         to =>"$username\@gmail.com", body=> $msg,

                         resource => $resource);
 $Client->Disconnect();
 exit();

Replace uuuuuuuu with your Google username and pppppppp with your Google password. The Perl script takes a string as input, and sends it to the user’s Google Talk account as an instant message. You must have Perl Net-XMPP installed in your system.

Once you have tested the script, it can be hooked up to a Mail client filter. The key here is, your mail client should be able to execute a native program as part of the filtering action.

I use KMail as my primary mail client, and it does have a way to do this:

KMail Filter Configuration

I’ve used this feature on Evolution Mail, but haven’t seen it on Mozilla Thunderbird.

With these two hooked up, it’s possible to get a Google Talk notification whenever that important Email arrives.

YES!! I finally took the plunge and got the TMobile Mytouch (HTC Magic) handset running Android. So far am quite impressed by the handset, not so much with the T-Mobile service.

I still have my AT&T set, and at home, T-Mobile call quality is much better than AT&T. However, at my work at Juniper Networks, T-Mobile coverage is pretty bad. Inside the building, the data coverage always falls back to EDGE instead of 3G.

The silver lining is… TMo is setting up a tower very near the work building. So, hopefully this problem will go away.

Coming back to the handset, I like the feel of it in hand over Iphone (which feels much larger and difficult to operate using one hand).  The keyboard is a little sluggish, but hopefully that will be fixed with the Donut release come tomorrow. The phone looks super cool. I’m still getting used to all the features.

Apps that I added so far are:

Will cover some of them in later posts.

Look at the Sponsored Link section. Bing is putting Ads on Google!!! Huh!!!

Here is the ad from Costco Magazine:

Mytouch at costco