[Article] Say hi to the new iPhone 5S

Yesterday (10th of September) Apple had their new high-end iPhone unveiling - the iPhone 5S. We all knew what it would look like - simply like the iPhone 5. But there are a couple of difference that makes it shine apart from the iPhone 5. They also had the iPhone 5C unveiling, but I don't give a damn about that cheap phone.

There are three different colors to choose from - Gold, Silver and Space Grey. Then, there is a dual LED flash, but contrary to what others use dual LEDs for (i.e. increased intensity), these are used to generate different flash colors to match the scene. Maybe intensity is also increased, but they are two different colors. The other notable difference is the  ring surrounding the traditional home button. There is finger print detection technology built into iPhone 5S and that ring is to detect that you've placed the finger on the sensor. The sensor is underneath the home button. 

That's all the external differences but there are a couple of speed enhancements too. The new A7 SOC is much faster than the A6 chip in the iPhone 5S. CPU supports 64bit. Graphics is two times faster. Now there is a co-processor to process all the signals from the sensors. That saves the CPU cycles for much more useful work. I was hoping to see the amount of RAM increased too, but looks like that is not there. It's alright. 1GB is still double the amount of RAM I have in this iPhone 4S. 

So what do I think about it? It's a sweet upgrade. I really wanna see how well the finger print reader works. I hate typing passwords on my phone. And I'm a speedaholic. I would be in heaven with the A7 chip. But usually once I get used to the speed, I feel the need for more speed. That's what happened with the 4S. I am not much of a photographer, but if this gets me one step closer to not needing to carry my rather light point and shoot Canon S95, I'm happy with that.

You can watch yesterday's Apple Event from this link.

Apple Special Event - September 10, 2013

I'm thinking about going for the Silver for myself and Gold for my wife. He upgrade is due in February. Unless there is an offer that we cannot say no to, she'll be upgrading to the iPhone 5S too. 

Now the question is, will I be able to get one for me on launch? My contract is only coming to a conclusion in December I think. We have to keep it for 26 months contrary to the popular period of 24 months. When I upgraded to the iPhone 4S, they simply allowed me to upgrade from 3GS without paying any additional charges. I'm hoping that they do the same this time around as well.

iPhone 5S is coming to Docomo as well, so it increases competition. Docomo is Japan's largest carrier and I am expecting to see a lot of people switching from SoftBank to Docomo using MNP (Mobile Number Portability). SoftBank better come up with some amazing campaigns to keep their subscribers in their pocket. Previously, they wanted to make new customers. Now they have to do a lot more to keep them from switching. Good times for us, I hope.

September 20th is the day that we can all buy the iPhone 5S. Looking forward to that day. Weeee!

[Review] Dell Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet user review–part 3: the performance, the camera and battery life

This is the part 3 of the Dell Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet user review. This one is about the performance, the camera and battery life.

Note: If you missed the part 1 and 2, click on the following links to read them.

Part 1: Ease of holding the tablet and look & feel

Part 2: Usability

OK, let’s get on with this section then.

Performance

If you want to find out how measurably fast the tablet is, read this review. I will not go into those tests. I will only talk about how I feel, together with Windows 8.

1) CPU

I am a guy that loves fast computers. This tablet definitely isn't fast. That’s mostly due to the Atom Clovertrail 1.8GHz dual core/hyper threaded CPU in there. The specs wise, it doesn’t seem slow, but Clovertrail is an in-order executed CPU, which makes it slow compared to Core series CPUs.  But I knew that before I bought it.

There was no choice, to be honest. ARM doesn't support full version of Windows 8 and Intel Core series CPUs have terrible battery life, need active cooling and all that adds weight. So we all have to put up with the slowness of the Atom chips. Hopefully Baytrail will fix it.

2) Storage

Anyways, the CPU doesn't seem to be the only thing that is slow in this tablet. The storage medium is eMMC which is solid state alright, but doesn't have the raw speed of an SSD. It's pretty slow, just like a USB flash drive.

3) The OS itself

But Windows 8 modern apps are slow to launch anyways. The video app for example takes about 5 seconds to load a video for the first time. The Windows Store is terrible. It is slow and needs a lot of user interactions to get the smallest thing done.

4) Wi-Fi

Downloads are not so fast. Wi-Fi browsing performance is comparable to my iPhone 4S, sometimes even slower. I was expecting more. The current generation devices have better Wi-Fi performance than iPhone 4S.

The Camera

The camera on a tablet doesn’t make much sense and people taking photos with a tablet look like idiots. But nevertheless, some people would like to see how the camera performs. I captured a video and took some photos with it.

Photos:

		Photos from Dell Latitude 10 Essentials tablet VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Video:

Battery life

I haven't measure the battery life accurately but according to the proper reviews, the battery seems to hold for about 8-10hrs. That's good and you should not expect nothing less from a CPU this slow. In other words, you won't have to worry about the battery life.

Next: bundled bloat ware, Windows 8.1 compatibility, recovery and firmware updates

Canon S95: Just what the doctor prescribed

Sold my Canon SX1 IS. I didn’t really take much use of it, mostly because the auto mode didn’t give me good quality photos and it was very heavy. It was as heavy as a DSLR. Only positive things about it was, one: not requiring lenses to be changed, two: not 20x zoom.

Zoom is so over-rated. While some times you need it, most of the times it is not needed. But big zoom means, you need a tripod to get a clean photo. That is another burden.

After looking at few ultra compact cameras, I decided to go with Canon S95. It is pretty expensive for a Point and Shoot. I didn’t want to go very cheap on the camera. Heck, there are only a few things I need, so why go cheap? (What few things? Am I not spending too much money on gadgets??? Well, what I need is really a great PC, great Camera, great Phone, and maybe…a (great?) laptop.) I have a great PC and now a great camera. I cannot just change the phone when I want. I have to wait for the right time for that. The laptop…well, it only it being used when I sleep at night…to watch streaming TV from the bed, so doesn’t really need anything more powerful that what I have.) So basically everything is covered? We shall see. I love gadgets, and I don’t have to explain myself about my purchases to anyone. Everyone has to have a hobby, right?