David Barber's Blog

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc

2011-11-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I've updated anything here, so let's get started again with a review of Sony Ericsson's Xperia Arc handset.

Overview

The Xperia Arc is Sony Ericsson's flagship high-end smartphone. Based off Android, Sony Ericsson has squeezed in it's own UI improvements, applications, additions, and more. It's marketing has been heavily backed by pushing it's Exmor R sensor, and as of late, Facebook Inside Xperia. More on that later.

Specs

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 2100 - LT15i
		HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 / 800 - LT15a
	Announced	2011, January
	Status	Available. Released 2011, March

SIZE	Dimensions	125 x 63 x 8.7 mm
SIZE	Weight	117 g

DISPLAY	Type	LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	480 x 854 pixels, 4.2 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)
		- Scratch-resistant surface - Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate - Multi-touch input method - Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Timescape UI

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Practically unlimited
	Internal	320 MB storage, 512 MB RAM
	Card slot	microSD, up to 32GB, 8 GB included

DATA	GPRS	Up to 86 kbps
	EDGE	Up to 237 kbps
	3G	HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.8 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, v2.0 microUSB

CAMERA	Primary	8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Touch focus, image stabilization, geo-tagging, face and smile detection
	Video	Yes, 720p@30fps, continuous autofocus, video light

Hardware Impressions

Combining Sony Ericsson's 'Human Curvature' with a chassis just 8.7mm thick, it's certainly one of the more sleek handsets out there today. If you're used to handling more bulky devices, it'll certainly take a little getting used to having a device this thin and light-weight in your hand. But, it's something you'll soon love and will never want to go back.

The Arc's hardware buttons are your usual Android keys. Back, home, menu, volume rocker and a camera shutter button. Only one minor set-back here; the shutter key is rather small and close to the bottom of the device. Presumably this is positioned as such due to the device being thinner in the centre. Although a little frustrating at first, it's something that you get used to relatively quickly.

SE's Arc - one of the thinnest smartphones around.

Screen and Display

Android devices today are known for being relatievly responsive, and the Arc is no exception. It's as fluid and quick to respond as we've come to expect from modern day smartphones.

The 'Bravia Engine' in Xperia handsets of late is designed to sharpen images and videos, enhance colours and remove noise. Whilst switching this feature on and off doesn't create any 'in-your-face' improvements, images and videos are vibrantly sharp and clear, and, still crisp and clear in direct sunlight.

UI and Interface

Vanilla Android is relatively simple, but doesn't stand out that much on it's own. Sony Ericsson have added their own UI, similar to that seen on the X10 mini and mini pro.

The main menu is sweeped through horizontally, with an icon in the bottom corner to sort icons by name, date, most frequent, or your own order. Both HTC and Samsung appeal to people differently in this respect. Samsung force you to use your own order, whilst HTC for you to have your menu's alphabetically. Whilst I prefer mine in alphabetical order, it's nice to see that Sony Ericsson let you set your device up the way you want it.

SE have also bundled their own showcase of home screen widgets, such as media shortcuts, media player, toggles for display, bluetooth, GPS and WiFi etc. All fit in well with SE's user interface.

SE's custom UI for Android

Sony Ericsson have also bundled their exclusive application with their Arc handset; Timescape. Timescape brings all your updates together, including missed calls, texts, Facebook posts, Twitter updates and several others. You can add extra functionality with addons from the Android Market, such as Foursquare and Linkedin.

You can also update your status to all your social networks at once via the app.

Timescape is not only functional, but aesthetically pleasing, too.

Timescape application

Facebook Inside Xperia + SE Apps

Facebook Inside Xperia brings a whole new experience to using Facebook on your handset. Your Facebook photos are integrated with the gallery application, just as if they were on your device. Like a song you're listening to? Hit the 'Like' button and share it instantly on Facebook.

More recently, the latest software update has brought a new 'Share' feature to the table. Hold down on any icon and drag it to the top of the scree and you'll be able to share it on Facebook - easy as that!

No SE phone would be complete without TrackID! For those unfamiliar with the concept, the app was available on Walkman phones of old. Hold your phone up to the music and get an instant response showing what you're listening to. There's also a home screen widget.

Facebook integration in gallery.

Keyboard

On-screen keyboards can make or break the whole experience of using a phone. The original keyboard on the X10 had mixed reviews, but was later resolved with an update.

Thankfully, it's a great experience straight out of the box with the Arc. The keyboard is quick, accurate and responsive. Later software updates have also included an alphanumeric keypad, and a swipe gesture option to rival samsung's 'Swype' tecnology.

Arc's keyboard and swipe text input.

Battery Life

Battery life is becoming shorter with the more powerful handsets of today. The Arc should get you through a day of standard usage without the need to be hunting for a charger. Nothing groundbreaking here, but better than some HTC handsets that have surfaced lately.

Camera

The Arc's best feature.

The 8.1 megapixel camera produces some amazing still images, with vibrant colours, realistic flesh tones and little noise.

The Arc has pinched some technology from Sony's Cybershot camera. Namely, the 'Exmor R' sensor. This technology produces some great shots in darker conditions. For the party-goers amongst you, this is a feature you're going to love.

HD video capture is crisp and clear with great audio recording capabilities. Whilst it isn't going to replace your £1000 cam-corder, it's one of the best I've seen on a phone so far.

Photo taken with the Arc

Overall Impressions

The Arc is a real rival to the iPhone 4. It's still photos provide better quality than other handsets in it's range, particularly in dark conditions.

It's also thinner and lighter than a lot of other phones out there, whilst still remaining just as powerful.

If you're after a performing device with great looks, look no further!

Linux Surround Sound in ET: Quake Wars

2009-07-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

I'd been having a lot of trouble getting surround sound working for Quake Wars in Linux, and I've managed to find a relatively simple solution.

For this to work correctly, I've used ALSA. You can use OSS, which requires less configuration. However, I've found that particular option to cause issues with choppy game play.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) Ensure Pulse Audio is configured for surround sound use.

nano /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

Search for:

; default-sample-channels = 2

Replace with:

default-sample-channels = 6

Note that the ; and the space after have also been removed.

Save the file and restart pulse:

/etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2) Create / edit .asoundrc

nano ~/.asoundrc

If it's empty, add the following. If not, add it at the bottom:

pcm.etqw {
type pulse
}

Save and restart ALSA:

/etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3) Enable surround sound in-game

Launch Quake Wars, and issue these commands in the console:

s_driver "ALSA"
s_alsa_pcm "etqw"
s_numberofspeakers "6"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Restart Quake Wars and you'll have surround sound working in Linux.

[App Review] BBC iPlayer for the HTC Touch Diamond

2009-04-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

The BBC iPlayer application is an excellent program allowing you to use the BBC's catchup service on your HTC Touch Diamond.

Buffering is a little slow, although that's mainly due to high quality videos on a low speed connection. Buffering can be manually adjusted and set as a percentage. By default, the program's buffer settings are set to auto.

I've had the program crash on me twice for unknown reasons, but that's a relatively low amount of crashes considering the use I've had and the fact the application is still relatively new.

The downside is that you really need to purchase Core Player to make use of the iPlayer application. Windows Media Player won't support the video files used, and the free players (TCMP) offer relatively low frame rates. Having said that, Core Player is relatively cheap and can be used with multiple video formats. It also offers better frame rates than Windows Media Player. Even if you're not going to use the iPlayer application, Core Player is still a great application to have installed.

Three distinct issues I noticed:

- Occasional crash when tapping the screen during buffering process.

- Slowish buffering speeds.

- Unless the video is fully downloaded, clicking 'cancel' will leave the video file on your device and needs to be manually removed.

Other than the above mentioned issues, it's one of the better applications out there for the Touch Diamond. Download it from the link above, and consider making a donation to the developer for this great program.

All details over at xda-developers by the application's creator: Click Me!

In action:

Youtube 'freezes' with Ubuntu

2009-04-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

There are numerous reports on the internet of users experiencing issues where YouTube video clips will stop after a set number of seconds, return to the beginning of the video, and cease buffering.

There seems to be little information on how to resolve the issue. However, I share the solution which resolved the problem for me in the hope that it can assist others.

The issue in my case was due to a lack of hard disk space on the / partition. After freeing up a fair amount of disk space, YouTube videos still refused to load. The solution, it turns out, was a very simple one:

a) Free up enough disk space to allow the video to load
b) Reboot the machine

Failure to reboot the machine will result in the video continuing to refuse to buffer.

Whilst the majority of computer users will most likely not suffer this issue due to the vast amount of storage available with modern hard disk drives, users such as myself who use small 'netbooks' with limited storage (4 GB / partition, 16 GB /home partition) may well find out they'll hit this problem at some point in time.

Blyk HTC Touch Diamond Settings

2009-04-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

After a fair bit of experimentation, here's a set of working settings for the HTC Touch Diamond (these should also work on the Touch Pro, although I haven't tested these settings with that handset).

Other compatible devices:

- HTC Touch Diamond

- O2 XDA Ignito

- T-Mobile MDA Conpact IV

Create a Blyk GPRS Profile

Start -> Settings -> Connections Tab -> Connections Icon.

Click the 'Advanced' tab, and click 'Select Networks'.

Under 'Programs that automatically connect to the Internet....', click 'New'.

Click the 'General' tab, and enter 'Blyk GPRS' as the name.

Click the 'Modem' tab, and click 'New'.

Set 'Connection name' to 'Blyk GPRS'. Set 'Select a modem' to 'Cellular Line (GPRS, 3G)'.

Click 'Next. Set 'Access point name' to 'internet.blyk'.

Leave everything on the next page blank. Click 'Finish'.

Your modem is now created:

Click the 'Proxy Settings' tab, and tick all the tick boxes. In the 'Proxy server' box, enter '172.17.14.104'. Then, click 'Advanced'.

Click the line labelled 'HTTP'. Change the port from '80' to '8080'. Leave everything else blank.

Click 'OK'. Click 'OK' again, then click 'OK' once more.

Create a Blyk MMS Profile

OK, this is just repeating what's been done above. However, all instances of 'Blyk GPRS' are being replaced with 'Blyk MMS'. Since the procedure is otherwise identical, I will not be including additional screen prints for this section.

Start -> Settings -> Connections Tab -> Connections Icon.

Click the 'Advanced' tab.

Click 'Select Networks'.

Under 'Programs that automatically connect to the Internet....', click 'New'.

Click the 'General' tab, and enter 'Blyk MMS' as the name.

Click the 'Modem' tab, and click 'New'. Set 'Connection name' to 'Blyk MMS'. Set 'Select a modem' to 'Cellular Line (GPRS, 3G)'.

Click 'Next. Set 'Access point name' to 'internet.blyk'.

Leave everything on the next page blank. Click 'Finish'.

Click the 'Proxy Settings' tab, and tick all the tick boxes. In the 'Proxy server' box, enter '172.17.14.104'.

Click 'Advanced'. Click the line labelled 'HTTP'. Change the port from '80' to '8080'. Leave everything else blank.

Click 'OK'. Click 'OK' again, then click 'OK' once more.

Set Blyk GPRS as the Default Access Point

Start -> Settings -> Connections Tab -> Connections Icon.

Click the 'Advanced' tab.

Click 'Select Networks'.

Ensure that 'Blyk GPRS' is in the top drop-down box when the settings page loads. If it is not, click the drop down icon, and change it to 'Blyk GPRS'.

Close everything.

Enable the Blyk MMS Profile

From the home screen, scroll to messages.

Click 'All Messages'.

Click 'Menu -> MMS Options', and select the 'Servers' tab.

Click 'New'. Enter the following settings:

Server name: 'Blyk MMS'. Gateway: '172.17.14.104'. Port number: '8080'. Server address: 'http://mms.blyk.co.uk:8002'. Connect via: 'Blyk MMS'. Send limit: '300K'. WAP Version: 'WAP 2.0'.

Click 'Done'.

The Blyk MMS profile will now appear in the list. Click and hold down on 'Blyk MMS' in the list, then click 'Set as Default'.

Receive the Welcome Message

Text 'Test' to 247 and receive the welcome message.

NOTE: After browsing the internet, the internet connection will NOT automatically disconnect. Tap the 'G' icon at the top of the screen, click the 'G' icon again at the menu that shows, then click 'Disconnect' from the balloon that opens. If you do not disconnect the internet connection, you may be charged for additional data communication.