Coherent Blahs

So, officially, the iPhone 4G is released, and according to Jobs, “it’s the biggest leap since the original iPhone”. But, where’s the beef?

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)

Not all Emails are made equal. And some have the priority that they cannot wait.  Given that, I was looking for a way to filter out mails, and get a quick notification on some high priority Emails.
Since I have an Android phone, the best way for me to get notified is either through SMS, or through Google Talk. SMS costs money. So, I wanted the notification to come over GTalk.
My work Email resides on an Exchange server, and it has no way to filter an Email and generate a GTalk notification from it. So, I had to look for some client side solution.
Looking around the web, I found GTalk uses jabber as the underlying protocol, and I can use xmpp libraries to communicate with it.
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I installed the wpTogo app on my phone, and now mobile blogging is a reality. This is my first post from Android!!!
So far, I’m loving the phone. It’s really really convenient to be connected all the time. Exchange sync with pushmail worked flawlessly. I’m getting the hang of the onscreen keyboard too.
T-Mobile dropped the donut update, and the performance is even better now.

Apparently, T-Mobile is going to announce their next Android based Google phone early next week. I was at my local Costco today, and asked the cell-phone kiosk guy off-hand about the availability of the phone at Costco warehouse. He said it will be available for purchase in August, and went ahead to mention that the whole lineup of handsets at Costco will be refreshed around the same time.

  With pretty much all smart phones these days coming with a GPS and Location based services, a cool thing will be to have adaptive Event Reminders based on location. When we add an event to a calendar, normally we specify a time before the event when the reminder will fire. It’s not really useful if you are mobile. For example, I have a meeting at my office, and I have set a reminder at 5 minutes before the meeting. However, I went to a Starbucks to grab a latte, and the starbucks is, say, 10 mins from my office. A 5 minute reminder is not going to do me any good, right (unless I have a jetpack).
  However, the phone I have reminder in knows exactly where I am, and has the ability to calculate the distance and time to reach my office (assuming the event location is also geotagged). So, it should add that time to the reminder and fire it based on that. This will be a cool addition for the Android/I-Phone.