Updating iPhone 3GS

I just updated my iPhone 3GS yesterday. Updating iPhone is a no-brainer task. Goto Settings>General>Software update to update iPhone. The process is pretty long. It took me 3 hours to update my iPhone 3GS, time included for downloading the new OS. The downloading part was especially long. It maybe due my my internet slow connection but I suspect it might also due to the fact that many idevices were also updating their OS. 

Frankly speaking, I was quite surprise that Apple decided to make IOS 6 available for iPhone 3GS. The phone is over 3 years old and the fact that I am still getting update for the phone make me appreciate Apple's hardware. Ever since I started using smartphone I have never seen a manufacturer gives update to a 3 year old phone until now. Although many features are not available on iPhone 3GS but at least my phone is not totally forgotten by Apple and I get the update together with other idevices. Google, HTC, Motorola, Samsung and many others, please learn from Apple. Do not come up with phones and abandon them in a year time. I love my iPhone 3GS. It is the only phone that serve me for more than 2 1/2 years. 

Phototokina fair is being held this week. As expected, many camera manufacturers release their new camera models before the fair start. I am excited about the new models and is considering whether to jump into the mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera(MILC) wagon. I used to own Canon DSLR but sold it off as I wanted a lighter camera for travelling. I am looking into high-end compact camera or MILC. For MILC, the more established setup are from Panasonic and Olympus. They are the companies using M4/3 standard. For other MILC manufacturers, they are all using their proprietary mounting just as their DSLR. The different mounting is irrelevant but the sensor sensor size is. The bigger the sensor size, the better picture quality you will get. Sony, Samsung, Fujifilm, Canon and Pentax, except for Nikon which uses 1"sensor, use APS-C sensor which is larger than the M4/3 but these companies are new into mirrorless market. Panasonic and Olympus are the pioneers in mirrorless market and they have a good collect of M4/3 lens. I would prefer a larger sensor but I do not want to limit my selection of lens and that make my choice very difficult. Maybe I should just get myself a proven LX series and wait out until Sony, Samsung, Fujifilm, Canon and Pentax come out with more mirrorless lens. 

Connect Xoom 2 to PC after ICS encryption

After I encrypt my Xoom 2, I can only see 2 folder under Internal Storage. The 2 folders are DCIM and Pictures. To see more folders, touch on the notification box for more USB options and toggle between PTP and MTP once. Select camera(PTP) eventually and now you will be able to see all the folders once again on your Xoom 2.

Encrypt tablet on ICS

I finally decided to encrypt my tablet. One of my main purpose of buying this tablet is to check my corporate exchange email. Anyway it is not a phone so the impact of anything wrong happening on my tablet should be minimum, as I am using the tablet as a secondary device beside my laptop. Worst case scenario if anything bad would to  happen, I can reset my tablet to factory default.

Before encrypting your tablet there are some things  you must ensure before proceeding:

1. Set a lock screen PIN or password.
2. Charge the battery.
3. Plug in your tablet to a power source
4. Schedule an hour and a half for the encryption process: you must not interrupt it or you will lose some or all of your data.

When you're ready to turn on encryption:

1. From a Home or All Apps screen, touch the Settings icon .
2. Touch Personal > Security > Encryption > Encrypt tablet.
3. Read the information about encryption carefully. 
   The Encrypt tablet button is dimmed if your battery's not charged or your tablet's not plugged in. If you 
   change your mind about encrypting your tablet, touch the Back button.
4. Touch Encrypt tablet. 
5. Enter your lock screen PIN or password and touch Continue. 
6. Touch Encrypt tablet again.

The encryption process starts and displays its progress. Encryption take an hour and a half, during which time your tablet may restart several times.

When encryption is complete, you’re prompted to enter your PIN or password twice to boot the home screen.

Subsequently, you must enter your PIN or password each time you power on your tablet, to decrypt it.

Somehow or rather, I feel that since iPad have encryption out of the box, encrypting my tablet makes me feel at least on par with it. I should not have any problem connecting to my corporate exchange email now since my tablet has fulfilled the basic security requirement (ENCRYPTION).

Encryption woes for checking corporate email

I had problem connecting to my corporate exchange email with Honeycomb. Honeycomb did not have the necessary security features to support my company's security policies. After upgrading to ICS, I found that I am able to setup my corporate exchange email but I have to enable encryption, which takes about 1 hour or more to setup on my tablet and this is irreversible. After encryption, I will have to key in pin to unlock and also to boot up my tablet. If in the future, I want to remove my corporate exchange email I still need to live with the encryption restriction unless I factory reset my tablet. This is a major turn off. I did not have this issue with iPad/iPhone. I can setup my corporate exchange email address on my iphone with ease and I don't have to live with the added security once I remove corporate exchange email.

After some research, I found that Apple's devices after the release of IOS 4 have hardware encryption out of the box. That is why iPhone and iPad are widely support by corporates. Android like IOS support encryption after version 4 but as Apple implement the encryption better than Android with hardware encryption. Maybe that is why my 3GS is rather laggy when I upgraded it to version 4. 3GS might not have the hardware encryption since it was release before IOS 4.

For me, I am rather hesitant to enable encryption. The reasons are;

1. Performance issue. Since it is not a hardware encryption, it might affect the performance of my tablet. Motorola says Xoom 2 support data encryption but did not mention if there is hardware encryption on the tablet. 
2. Battery life. I have researched on the net. Most people say the encryption does not affect performance. 
3. It is irreversible. If I remove my corporate exchange email, I still have to live with keying in of pins to use my tablet. 
4. Encryption on Android devices seems to be in the infant stage. There might unforeseen issues with encryption. There are cases whereby the phone which was encrypted reboot in the middle of the night and the user could not receive call and alarm could not work, as the phone need a pin to boot up. 

Source:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/258974/tablet_encryption_101.html

http://support.google.com/android/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663755

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/116635-how-to-properly-secure-your-iphone-or-android-device/2

http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-galaxy-nexus/159020-using-ics-native-encryption.html

http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2012/06/29/some-thoughts-about-androids-full-disk-encryption/

http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-nexus/467694-encryption.html

Screen Capture for Xoom 2

After ICS update, you can do a screen capture just by pressing the power and volume(-) buttons at the same time for 1 sec. It is kind of tricky pressing the buttons together. Sometime you will accidentally power off your screen or you will lower the volume but at least you can do screen capture now. You can view the screen capture JPG files on your tablet by going to the Gallery. To copy the pictures out, connect your tablet to the PC and on your PC goto My Computer> Xoom 2> Internal Storage>Pictures> screenshots to copy them to your desktop.

Connect Xoom 2 to PC after ICS update.

After I update my Xoom 2 to ICS, once I connect Xoom 2 to PC there is a notification on the bottom right screen. It shows me connecting to the PC as a camera. 

Touch on the notification box for more USB options. To view the tablet as a drive, select camera(PTP). Now you will be able to see your Xoom 2 icon in "My Computer". You can copy files in and out like a normal drive. If you have SD card installed, you will be able to do the same for your SD card too.

Xoom 2 ICS update

On 3rd Sept, Motorola Australia announced ICS update for Xoom 2. It took 8 days for Singapore to receive the update. Singapore and neighbouring countries should be checking Motorola SEA(South East Asia) for updates but for a while Motorola SEA facebook has not been updated with any news. I wonder if it is because of the shutting down of operations in Asia Pacific region (except Australia and Korea). Only service centers remain in Asia Pacific. For people in Asia, we can get updates about Motorola devices from Motorola Australia facebook.

Updating to ICS is simple. Goto Settings>About tablet>System updates. It will prompt you to download the ICS package. For me, the package took an hour plus to finish downloading. Once the download is finish, it will prompt you to install the package. Click "Install now" and the tablet will shutdown immediately and prepare for update. It will boot up again to show an Android icon with progress bar below. Once the progress completes, the tablet will reboot and it is down. The whole update took about 15min. Below is the screen capture from my Xoom 2. After ICS update, the look and feel is almost the same on the home screen, except for the addition icons on the bottom right of the screen. Now there are icons for availability of SIM card and WIFI. 

Amazon launch their new Kindle yesterday. Details specs can be found on their website. I do not want to do into details but generally for the Kindle Fire series they are having better display, better sound, better connectivity and a faster processor. Now they also have bigger tablets to choose from. At 8.9" the tablet is still smaller than the iPad but bigger screen is better for surfing net and PDF files than the 7" Kindle Fire. The price of the 8.9" tablet cost roughly about SGD $420 for the WIFI only model and SGD$700 for the WIFI +4G model. All the new Kindle Fire series will be running on ICS under the hood. I would definitely would like to get myself one if not for the restrictions of using a Kindle in Singapore. Until now we in Singapore are still unable to purchase ebooks from Amazon and Apple online store. Singapore needs to get rid of the red tapes which are preventing us from enjoying rich media experience of what our gadgets can offer us. If our blockage to online content is due to protectionism, perhaps our local companies should really wake up and play catch up rather than waiting for their slow death. There are still ways we can access online content from Amazon and Apple!


Source :
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/06/amazon-confirms-kindle-fire-hd-models-use-android-4-0/

Typing Chinese on Android Honeycomb

I wanted to do a search using chinese characters and realized that I did not have a chinese input keyboard. I had trying searching in Settings> Language & input but there was nothing there that would allow me to add a chinese input keyboard. I did a search on the web and found that I need to install the Google Pinyin from Google Play, unlike Apple which supports many other language keyboards out of the box. I went to Google Play Store and downloaded the Google Pinyin and added the Google Pinyin in  Settings> Language & input> Configure input methods. To use Google Pinyin, just tab on the small keyboard icon to select Google Pinyin when you need to input Chinese Character. 

Finally the wait is over! Just as I had hoped for, ICS update is available for Singapore soon after Motorola Australia release news of ICS for Xoom 2. Some SG users got their update last night and post the news on Hardwarezone. Funny I was trying to update last night before I sleep. but it was not available. Anyway, I could not be happier even if it was just 2 weeks wait after  I got my Xoom 2. Hopefully this update will solve my battery and email problem. I will be sure to update my Xoom 2 after work today.

Connecting Xoom 2 to PC

Connecting Xoom 2 is similiar to connecting iPad to PC. For iPad you need to download iTune from Apple website. For Xoom 2 the Motocast software is in the tablet. The steps are as follows,

1) Power on Xoom 2 and unlock the screen.

2) Connect your Xoom 2 to your PC. On your PC, you will able to see the tablet connect like a CD ROM drive. 

3) Double click on the Motocast application to install it. The installation will take sometime.
After you install the application, you will be able to sync Music, Photos, Videos and Podcasts between your tablet and PC. As I do not have internet connection when I installed Motocast, I was unable to setup Motocast wireless. Below is my image of the installed Motocast.

After Motocast is installed, I am able to use my computer to browse files and directories on my Xoom 2. I can also copy files into my Xoom 2. I was able to copy videos file on to my SD card installed on Xoom 2 and use MX player to playback the videos. Below is the list of files and directories on my Xoom 2 as of  now.

Xoom 2 is giving me surprises everyday. Just 8 days after I bought Xoom 2 running on Honeycomb, I am experiencing a lot of disappointments. My Xoom 2 battery now cannot charge beyond 90%. I did some research and found that many users had their battery replace when they have this problem. Some users uses a battery calibration app to solve their problem. According to the gurus, Android uses a file for the battery status updates. The file could be corrupted or not updated after reset. As I just did a reset a few days ago, that might the problem. Any way I am not going to reset it again. I would be waiting for the ICS update and see if the problem goes away. If it still does not work, I will have to make a trip to Motorola service center.

I found a Motorola Android logo on Motorola Australia facebook which I like to share with everyone. 

Like I mentioned before, waiting for updates on android can be a pain. Apple did a good job as they have their own ecosystem of software and hardware. Google' Android is a pain to update. Updates are mainly dependent on hardware vendors. Even Motorola whom Google bought over does not provide promptly updates.

While many people would compare between Apple IOS and Google, Amazon's kindle is also a real competitor to Google. In fact, there is a report saying there Google main rival could be Amazon and not Apple. There is truth to it. Amazon has an arsenal of products on their website to search. If anyone would like to buy something, he/she could be searching on amazon first. The key word here is "buy". Amazon is not a search engine but for product searching, Amazon is the one of the popular website. With Amazon' ecosystem of ebooks, apps store and ereaders, Amazon is looking attractive for consumers to stay on their website. Amazon will be launching their 2nd gen of Kindle Fire soon. The focus is on the hardware and not really on the OS. I know Kindle uses a modified version of android. I am not sure if Amazon is going to "update" it to ICS. Frankly speaking, does it matters? Any new features or updates will more likely to be push down seamless just as Apple devices, as Amazon has control their own hardware. Although Kindle does not have the OS hype, I would personally want to get one for my daily web surfing, email and ebooks simply because, it serves my basic purpose well enough for it's price. For others functions like GPS and others, I can do it on my phone. 

Over the weekend, I mada a search on the web for ICS update on Xoom 2. I am quite desperate for ICS update as the honeycomb just not up to mark. I found a website saying that Telstra will be launch ICS update for Xoom on 3 Sept. Although the news is for Australia but Australia is in Asia Pacific region. Hopefully, Singapore Xoom 2 users will get ICS update soon after them. 

Source:
http://ausdroid.net/2012/08/24/telstra-approves-ics-update-for-xoom-2-hopes-to-roll-it-out-september-3rd/