Re: iPhone 4
 

Hehhe you beat me to that, gerbick.
Was going to say that :)

Re: iPhone 4
 

I'm not sure if that is out of interest for the phone but expansys USA say they have 22 in stock and deliver the same day
http://www.expansys-usa.com/d.aspx?i=198626
not sure if they will honor it but expansys are usually good for their word.

The ppi is rather trivial to calculate for the display. you have the size and you have the resolution.

Re: iPhone 4
 

I disagree on the pixel density being trivial. Until just recently, the N8x0 screens were absolutely destroying everything else out there due to pixel density and ability to show a certain amount of pixels - 800x480 w/ 225ppi - in a 4.13" screen.

The pixel density is rather important, to explain not only the resolution, but how accurately the picture will be in that display. Also, as a designer, ppi is useful to me for calibrating the monitor... but that's neither here nor there.

Pertaining Expansys, two different calls, two different answers. One said it's in stock, but in Europe. They'll fly it over, then ship it. Another said they had it in stock, but couldn't 100% confirm.

Pixel density lends itself well to clarity. And to be honest, that's what the iPhone 4 screen has... tons o' clarity.

Just too bad it's showing a clear picture of only the stuff that locks you down further to the closed iTunes ecosystem.

Re: iPhone 4
 

you misunderstood. I said to calculate ppi is trivial, so we don't need samsung to tell us. like I said expansys' site are usually good for their word, it is 22 in stock for the US. They have a "by country" stock count here

http://www.expansys-usa.com/meta-pro...ional_versions

not sure if this is all that important if you are not interested in the phone.
the other rep may be refering to the 16GB version.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Yeah. I think you misunderstood. I'm on the phone with them now... but to be honest...

as I had stated before, I want to walk into a brick and mortar store and see it, hold it, then make my decision/comparison. I absolutely hate buying blind off the internet. And I'm getting the same answer, and not about the 16gb version. But I'm interested in only comparing. Which, will end up going back to their stock.

I did however find a part for my OQO 01+ though.

Regardless... I get what you meant by the ppi, but at the same time, it's not indicative of perceived clarity.

Re: iPhone 4
 

What is the resolution of the Galaxy? Can't seem to find any mention of it in the article.

As far as nutty ppi goes, I've had a toshiba winmo device with 800x480 at 3.0". Of course the rendering engine and all around software was shite, so it's like having a super clear window to look at a dumpster.

Re: iPhone 4
 

what did I misundertand? if you're getting conflicting reports on the phone I'm just saying go with what's on the website becuase from experience it's usually right.

Re: iPhone 4
 

800x480 at 4" the ppi is'nt very high.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Yeah, I just did the calc and apparently I underestimated how high the iPhone 4's ppi is.

The toshiba's 800x480 at 3" was just annoying because the screen's super small, even with a pointy stylus.

Re: iPhone 4
 

iPhone 4 - 326ppi
iPhone 3GS - 163ppi
Nokia N900 - 267ppi
Nokia N810 - 225ppi
Google Nexus One - 252ppi
Samsung Galaxy S - ~202ppi

What I'm going for is that the ppi is lower than the N810 for the Samsung Galaxy S. It doesn't mean that it's not a pretty display, not at all. But I think by now, what's going around and around is the fact perceived clarity is up to the eye(s) of the beholder.

What was misunderstood is that I really don't want to buy any phone before touching it. I never have liked it and have done that only with my Nokia N810. Nothing before, nothing after.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Quick question about jailbreaking the Iphone 4. I remember apple people mentioning that Apple has taken precautions regarding jailbreaking the iphone 4, so that it will be (much) harder to do. Sorry I have no info here to back that up. But it seems that iOS 4 is already out of the bars, after reading some pages here. And it seems to me that jailbreaking is an action targeting the OS. So also updated 3g's for example should then be harder to jailbreak? Or is it just 4g? Or is Apple just full of crap? ;) no offence meant

Re: iPhone 4
 

gerbick I don't mean to be rude but this was a rather fruitless conversation (no pun intended again). it's not that I don't care you don't buy a phone before seeing it it's just that I don't see the relevance to the comment made about engadget. I already said I don't know whether you are interested in buying from expansys or not but you asked for a place you can buy it now to show that it's easy to get your hands on it and so that it's even easier for engadget. therefore we can get rid of the time/space excuse for engadgets subjectivity towards the iphone. The fact that it's not a bricks and mortar store may be important to you and that is perfectly understandable but my entire point was about engadgets comment to which you said something akin to "here and now only" since then I have been trying to prove that the samsung galaxy s IS here and now and its specs are fully known.

I don't think we disagree with anything here.

Re: iPhone 4
 

You're both right, and at the same time wrong. The important ingredient you're both omitting is the optics. You can have all the MP you want, but if you've got a crap lens, it won't matter, as ysss notes. Optics can only get so small and still be effective. You can help offset that with a larger capture area, but even that has limits. There's a reason you see monster lens systems on professional cameras. You need that space to bend the light properly, given the materials available.

If they've increased sensor size, and properly fitted a decent optical system over it, a 12MP sensor can in fact be a great improvement. But there are limits to what you can do and still compact it all into a phone-sized device. Once you've crossed a certain limit (and 12MP is a hair past that IMHO) then any MP gains are lost to fuzz.

Trust me on this. I work with camera sensors that are over 30MP and lenses in the X00mm plus range daily... If there's one thing I know, it's image quality, and the optics are a key part in any imaging device. ;) That was one of the reasons I liked the N900. Not that it's lens system is the end-all be-all, but they're at least attempting to use the sensor to it's fullest. If you have a fixed lens, don't bother going over 3MP.

Re: iPhone 4
 

To be fair the multi-tasking on the iPhone relies on apps to use APIs. So until apps do, they don't work well.

Granted I prefer the N900's multi-tasking since you don't sacrifice anything. But games should still pause when you navigate away. Since there's no point in having a game running at 100% when you can't control it. =P

But I can see the value in the way the iPhone does it. But I guess it's that whole what makes a mobile computer vs. smartphone divide again. Which of course is up to each user's interpretation.

Re: iPhone 4
 

The same multitasking infrastructure is available on 10.6, so that should further blur the lines between a "smartphone" and a regular "computer" and all demarcations inbetween.

Re: iPhone 4
 

uhoh, looks like big trouble

http://m.gizmodo.com/5571171/iphone-...e-antenna-band

i guess if they had their own gsm research and patents, the would have realized :)

Re: iPhone 4
 

I'm not sure what's 10.6 (I don't follow iPhone related news that closely). But I suspect as time progresses the line will be blurred. Especially as things move towards cloud storage and you can run something like a full office program. Basically what Google has planned.

Though that also means the connection needs to go everywhere.. or something like Google Gears needs to happen. >.>

Re: iPhone 4
 

I think N900's antennas are the two black stickers visible when the back cover is off.

Re: iPhone 4
 

OS X 10.6 aka Snow Leopard. They introduced Grand Central Dispatch, which allows software built using Cocoa and Objective-C to handle small lumps of code off to the daemon which decides where and when to run it. Unsurprisingly, it can also enforce restrictions on said thread and kill them if it steps outside of them.

This is how they can halt (or kill) the main thread of a process while keeping a background thread running.

Re: iPhone 4
 

I suspect that they have a clear lacquer (or other coating) over the antennae to prevent such shorting -- that problem's so obvious nobody could overlook it, right? But either some units have an inadequate coating, or the coating wears off in some people's pockets, and the problem shows up -- and that's the sort of problem that does get by...

Re: iPhone 4
 

Ah ok. Interesting, though that means apps of course have to be programmed to take advantage of it? Is that as simple as just marking this process is necessary?

I agree with Benson. This is something that they would've figured out on the first prototype device. Though maybe your suppose to hold it in a specific way? There's gotta be some manufacturing reason this is happening.

Re: iPhone 4
 

@woody: thanks for the professional confirmation ;)

My point (to maxplus) was simple: higher megapixel count does not always mean a better image quality. Just more pixels to represent that particular image (that could be bottlenecked by optics/sensor size).

Re: iPhone 4
 

yeah there are a lot of variables:

most field tests were in obfuscating or more rugged cases

different people have varying emfs

environmental conditions(humidity/static etc)

type of connection and frequency to cell tower in specific locations.




with all of the videos already out though, i tend to believe there is something going on. perhaps it is just an issue with software reading signal level(i hope so for apples and users sake)

Re: iPhone 4
 

Yes, currently it can only be done with Objective-C, though I'm sure higher level languages like Ruby and Python will shortly (if they don't already) add support.

Re: iPhone 4
 

I thought itunes store policy is now that no other languages are allowed?

Re: iPhone 4
 

I think what wmarone and I are talking about is for the Macs.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Well, GCD is available on Macs and the iPhone. You'll only be able to use Objective-C on the iPhone though.

Re: iPhone 4
 

oh sorry, i thought we were talking about iphone

Re: iPhone 4
 

The Samsung Galaxy S pixel density seems incorrectly calculated above. I get 233ppi for a 800x480 at 4''

No. The opposite. At the same pixel count, the device with the physically smaller screen is the one with the higher density.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Here is a ppi calculator:

http://thirdculture.com/joel/shumi/c...e/ppicalc.html

Btw, the toshiba g900 was quite close to iPhone 4's ppi at 310.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Lol, there's an app for everything, right? What if I ask who Pythagoras was, do I get a link to a wiki page?

*facepalm*

Re: iPhone 4
 

The old LG LU1400 still leads at 333ppi, but it never reached U.S. shores.

Re: iPhone 4
 

this ppi stuff is really kind silly.

i could have a ppi of 900, but it might be on a 1 inch screen, so that is not really a useful all in one metric if you ask me.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Aww, you're no fun. Let's go visit some big box stores and you can try to convince people 1080i isn't better than 720p on the 22" TV they're buying for the kitchen. It'll be a laugh.

Re: iPhone 4
 

when dealing with the general public, just use car analogies.

now to think of one to explain to them that their eyes cannot see the difference on their 22 tv....

but i guess if you are salesmen and see someone buying a 1080 22inch tv, you can probably sell him some gold plated monster cables too :)

Re: iPhone 4
 

That's insane.

They look like iphones on candybars :D

Re: iPhone 4
 

My take:

ppi: the device looked mediocre aka not bad at all before. The web pages sucked most while the low resolution kept really nice games running cool. Now web pages look great while games can still provide tons of polys at 1/2 resolution while looking decent.
See open TTD at 1/2 resolution on N900 - it hurts the eye really! while on full res it's too small to play.
Although the ppi is OUTRAGEOUS the fact that it's been doubled has this obvious advantage.

camera: nothing apple said is to be believed. But the fact that it's a decent 5 mp camera like on our own N900, that I believe. It won't win any prizes but it gets it's job done. Even comared wit professional camera-phones like N82 (mechanical shutter might I add) the result is not bad.

battery: I was sure it wasn't going to be able to keep up. But, it's 1440 mAh so maybe cycling it (just using it, LiPo should never be over discharged) should bring up the real potential in a few days.

antenna: I'm shocked! they didn't lie. They were actually stupid enough to use it as an antenna. I guess I might not be getting it after all :|

Re: iPhone 4
 

Ok, I'm finally awake - was in a 36 hour code and project proposal marathon and the iPhone 4 came and our convo came at the end of it.

We are agreeing on all aspects, and I appreciate the point to Expansys. Finally got a straight forward answer, might end up with one by the end of the week - convinced the office to spring for it with the request of "test our mobile environment".

But I don't consider Expansys a brick and mortar store either. I'm old fashioned. Hold it in my hand, I'm a happy customer.

Engadget has always leaned towards whatever is shiny, shiny and what will bring in the most readers. At the moment, their demographic is 18-35, US based readers... so that means they will lean towards that. Hit up Engadget China and the phones listed there are very different. They're not to blame for targeting their audience in a rather effective manner; expand your gadget blog options.

In fact, the above is one thing that truly offends my senses about folks. If you're from the UK, Spain, Portugal, France, China, Japan, wherever, there's no way in the world that you cannot find local offerings for gadget blogs that cater to your demographic and location. To sit back and blame ad nauseum that Engadget is "always on Apple's side"... find another damn blog to read. I would. I'd never go to some white supremacist (hyperbole example, btw) gadget site. I'm nowhere near their targeted audience.

Okay, that rant aside (not pointed at you Cue, btw at all) looking back. We were saying the same exact darn thing.

Again... I appreciate the antenna, Expansys and discussion. Take care.

And when I get that Galaxy (still convincing the office, I'll know in the morning) I'll report about that too.

Re: iPhone 4
 

But that's it. They went 150% over what the N900 got... at the same screen size.

The higher ppi for these 2.8" and smaller screens means it's a very sharp display, but you better have the eyes of a hawk... or a kid.

I'd kill for a 4.13" screen with that kind of ppi density. I'd consider that the comfortable spot for me, really. 3.5" is as small as I'd go for a mobile screen that I'd use for e-mails and web. 2.8", to hell with that. I'm getting old.

Re: iPhone 4
 

Did you find a way to overcome it?