Gavin Duley's Weblog

Phone review: Samsung Galaxy i5700 (aka Samsung Spica)

Gavin Duley — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:05 +0000

I've been meaning to write up a brief review of my new phone for a little while, here is my first attempt ;-). I'll probably update this as I think of new points to add.

Introduction
I recently bought a new phone, to replace my Sony Ericsson K750i. Initially I bought a HTC Tattoo, but for some reason I ended up with a 2G version of this phone. I was able to replace it with a 3G Samsung i5700. Since I'm fairly familiar with these three phones, most of my comparisons will be with these phones.

Reasons for upgrading from the K750i
I wanted:

A larger screen and touch-screen based interface;
The Google Android operating system, which has a wide range of useful apps;
GPS, with the ability to run navigation software such as NavIt;
Mobile email and web access.
3G (now that 4G is on it's way, I thought I should finally upgrade to a 3G phone...)

Additionally, my Sony had a cracked screen...

One thing I did not get from the upgrade is a better camera. The camera on the Sony Ericsson K750i is very good, and even though the Samsung has a 3.2 megapixel camera, it isn't quite as good as the 2 megapixel camera on the Sony. Both are better than the HTC Tatto, which lacks autofocus.

The phone
As a phone, it works pretty well. Once or twice, I've had it bring up the keypad whilst I'm talking on the phone and start dialling numbers, but it locks the screen after I've been talking for a minute or so which normally stops this. The way that my address book and calender are synced with my Google account automatically and wirelessly is great, and very useful.

The web browser is pretty good too, though sometimes it misinterprets my attempts to scroll down a page as zooming. I'll probably get used to this with practice, though. Both email clients (GMail and non-GMail) are good, and the push email facility with the GMail client is very handy. Both share the handicap that both force you to use top posting, which I am not a fan of. I prefer interleaved replies.

I bought my phone off MobiCity, which means I got the phone unlocked, cheap and with a warranty. It's an overseas model, but that doesn't bother me

The Samsung i5700 next to the Sony Ericsson K750i, and the back of the Samsung i5700.

The camera
Is okay. It has autofocus, and manual control over ISO, white balance and a number of other things. Auto ISO seems to stay on ISO 100 most of the time, even when it's quite dark.

Both the HTC Tattoo and the Samsung i5700 have the ability to geotag photos (i.e., to tag photos with the GPS co-ordinates of where they were taken), though it never seemed to work for me with the HTC. It works and works well with the Samsung, though it does need to be given a few minutes to get a decent signal, or it ends up being as much as a few kilometres out.

The autofocus works well, and sometimes you can con it into taking close-up photos, though it is a bit unpredictable as to where it will decide to focus. Often, it will decide the background of a close-up photo is more interesting, and will focus on that. Again, the K750i was better here, this phone even had a dedicated close-up photography mode on the camera.

It has something claimed to be exposure compensation, but this does not seem to work as I would have expected. It appears to take the photograph, and then digitally make it darker or lighter afterwards rather than altering the exposure. Certainly, it does not work as well as the K750i. Here is a photograph where I attempted to use exposure compensation to stop the background burning out, instead, the whole photo has become somewhat grey. I guess there is a limit to what you can expect from a cameraphone.

Here is another sample photograph:

Click here for a full-sized file of the above image (note: it's 1.6 megabytes).

More photos:

Google Android
A really nice phone operating system, that seems to start to blur the line between phone and computer. Sometimes it does feel more like using a computer than a phone. Which is no coincidence, it is a computer -- but then, so was my Sony Ericsson. This is just a more flexible computer ;-).

Annoyingly, it is not easily possible for the user to upgrade the operating system unless the manufacturer releases an update. This phone was first designed for Cupcake (Android 1.5), but Samsung supplied an update to Eclair (Anroid 2.1) which came pre-installed on my phone. Now that FroYo (Android 2.2) has been released and seems to be a big improvement again on Eclair, I'd like to try it out. I can't, until Samsung releases an update, if they ever do.

There are unoffical firmwares floating around for most phones, but these normally seem to involve downloading a .zip file off some forum somewhere. Though mostly these are probably 100% safe, I tend to worry a little about malware, especially since there's no way of knowing anything about the person who put the firmware together. Chances are they're just another Anroid enthusiast, but... well, I'm always paranoid. Additionally, as these are unofficial and probably not very widely tested, there is always the possibility of voiding the warranty and killing the phone...

Grumbles aside, it's a very nice system, and I've come to really like the touchscreen interface. Most things just work as you'd expect, and it's all very nicely thought out. Not quite as elegant as the iPhone system, but it does have the advantage of being a more open system. I'm not sure I'd be willing to move back to another sipler proprietary mobile phone system such as that found on the K750i again, this just seems years ahead.

GPS navigation
The phone's GPS system seems to work, and work well. Using a program called 'GPS Status', I can easily get my co-ordinates, and use the phone's built-in compass.

As noted above, I've also installed an Android port of NavIt. This mostly works well, though sometimes it gives somewhat... eccentric directions. This seems normal for GPSes, though.

My only real annoyance with NavIt is that it does not seem to like quitting cleanly. Mostly, when you ask it to quit it simply hangs. Initially, with the HTC Tattoo, I resorted to removing the battery and putting it back in again to force the phone to reboot. At one point this annoyed NavIt to the point that it stopped working, midway through a daytrip (luckily, I had a printed map with me). I've since installed SystemPanel Lite, which enables me to kill NavIt when it won't play nice. I just hope that it doesn't decide to go on strike again.

Conclusions
So far, this has been a very nice phone to use, and has done everything I want and more. I'd appreciate a better camera, and to be able to easily get OS upgrades directly from Google, but other than that it's been very good. Battery life is not as good as the K750i (no surprise, given the screen size) but is enough for one and a bit to two and a bit days. It's better to just recharge it every evening though (if you remember!).

All in all, a very nice phone, and good value for money.

The End of the 2010 Vintage

Gavin Duley — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:37 +0000

For me, the vintage is effectively over now. Okay, it's not really -- others will be processing Touriga Nacional for a port-style wine later in the week, though sadly I won't be able to join in. All of the wines I've been involved in making our now in barrel, and the chardonnay juice is now in the freezer and waiting for another group later in the year to make it into wine.

I thought I'd share a few photos I've taken during the vintage period, and meant to post, though. Here is a very small Potter fermenter. We didn't end up using this, but I couldn't help wondering how long it takes a baby Potter fermenter to grow up to be big like the ones in the background:

Also, I liked this baby airbag press:

Well, I've not been all that great at blogging this vintage. I'll continue to post bits and pieces as they happen, though.

Pressing Adelaide Hills Chardonnay

Gavin Duley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:06 +0000

Almost a month without a weblog post. Not that there's been nothing to write about, rather there has been too much and hence no time. Oh well.

Today I helped press some Adelaide Hills Chardonnay. I'm not going to be making this into wine, other students will do that later in the year. I benefited from this myself late last year, when I was able to use juice pressed by earlier students to make some white wine with another group in second semester -- a useful introduction to winemaking.

My group was the first to press today, starting at 7 am. I don't often go for walks at 6 am, as I did this morning to get to the bus, but I always I enjoy it when I do. The sky was just lightening enough to differentiate from the still dark land, and dark clouds were breaking up to show patches of lighter sky. There is a poetry to this time of morning which is quite unique. Certainly, it was a beautiful walk, and I was just sad I had to hurry to catch the bus.

Two groups pressed at the same time. We wanted to whole bunch press, but the grapes had been machine harvested so few were still in bunches. We did not use the crusher destemmer, though, so we sort of whole berry pressed I guess you could say.

Grapes being poured into the press

We used an airbag press, which can be less oxidative if used in conjuction with sulfur dioxide. Our group processed our fruit oxidatively (no sulfur dioxide at press, though we added some afterwards to protect against spoilage), the other did theirs reductively. It was interesting to see the differences.

What else? Oh, yes, as the grapes were machine harvested there was a certain amount of "matter other than grapes" (MOG). I can predict that this wine would pair well with escargot:

Snail shell in with the grape marc

Well, the early start is really starting to have an effect on me. I think I'll be having an early night tonight. Anyone I've sent emails to tonight -- I've probably made some really stupid mistakes due to being half asleep! It's not a good idea to start emailing people when you're not really awake, I guess.

Picking the 2010 Waite Shiraz

Gavin Duley — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:00 +0000

I helped out with picking the Shiraz (aka Syrah) allocated to my group from the Coombe vineyard on the Waite Campus today. We started picking at about 6:30, and I carried on until 10:00 when I had a lecture I had to attend. Others carried on until all our three and a half rows were picked, and we had around a tonne of fruit.

The fun part of this for me getting up at 5 am. It's something I can do if I have to, but I certainly don't enjoy it. It was worth it, though, once I got out into the vineyard.

South Australia has experienced a really hot year this year -- again -- and this was particularly evident from seeing how some of the grapes were shrivelled on the vine. Here is the worst example I found:

... but that was the exception rather than the rule. More common were bunches where a percentage were burnt, and the rest were fine:

As the burnt grapes will be removed by the crusher-destemmer, we were told it was fine to include them with the picked grapes.

Also, we can haz tractor! Luckily for everybody, I wasn't allowed to drive it ;-)

Next week sometime, we'll pick the Mataró. I've got so many classes next week, I'm not certain I'll manage to do much towards that, which is a shame. I'm not the fastest picker by a long way, so I doubt it'll make much difference to how quickly the grapes are picked, but (in short stretches) it's an interesting thing to try.

Next challenge: actually making this into wine.

Waiting for Grapes

Gavin Duley — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:23 +0000

The first exciting installment of the semester. We've all gone down to the university's vineyards, and seen the grapes available. My group has three rows of Syrah and half a row of Mourvèdre.

It's been pretty hot in Adelaide this summer, so they're already ready in terms of pH, titratable acidity and brix/baumé (sugar levels). Sadly, they're not yet ready in terms of taste, they still taste green.

It's becoming an increasing problem in Australia with the hot weather, and the only solution seems to be to wait until they achieve full physiological ripeness and then acidifying to make up for any lack of acid.

In any case, we'll have to pick soon, as the weather starts to get hot from Friday, with Friday, Saturday and Sunday predicted to be 37°C, and Monday 38°C. Pre-cooked grapes is not what we want.

Blogging winemaking

Gavin Duley — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:08 +0000

At the moment, I'm part of the way through a Graduate Diploma in Oenology at the University of Adelaide. I haven't written much about it here, but one of my plans for this year is to start blogging about it. This next semester is my second and final semester, and I'll be making red wine as part of one of my courses. I'll try and blog about that, and anything else of interest, here.

Should make a change from the sound of crickets chirping here. And it'll give me an excuse to get some more practice at writing...

New Address for this blog!

Gavin Duley — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:58 +0000

I haven't been updating this blog at all recently, partly due to time, partly due to problems getting the plugin 'moreentries' to work. I've given up on moreentries, and am using flatarchives and categorylist instead (see side menubar).

In other news, this weblog is now hosted on my own server at http://blog.wodewose.org. But, given that you're reading this, I presume you've noticed already...

Ray Bonneville - "The Big Easy"

Gavin Duley — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:17 +0000

One of the things I intended to do when I fist set up this weblog was from time to time post YouTube videos I'd come across and particularly liked. I'd been meaning to link to one or two songs by Ray Bonneville, a Cajun/Blues musician who I stumbled across thanks to the power of YouTube(tm).

One of my favourite songs at the moment is his song "The Big Easy", which is about New Orleans -- in particular about the recovery after the disastrous floods there. Here are two different versions. The one I first saw:

And a more recent version:

I now have a copy of his CD Goin' by Feel, and sometimes have to stop myself from singing along... It's a great CD.

These videos from YouTube are not copyright to me, and are used with thanks.

Odd hostname problems

Gavin Duley — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:54 +0000

Just for the past few months, my MacBook had been assigning itself a hostname from the network. Only odd thing is, the network is is on is my home network, and wasn't set up to hand it a hostname from DHCP.

A quick search on google found that Mac OS X goes through a number of steps to automatically determine its network hostname:

The name provided by the DHCP or BootP server for the primary IP address
The first name returned by a reverse DNS (address-to-name) query for the primary IP address
The local hostname (set in the Sharing pane of System Preferences)
The name localhost

-- Mac OS X hostname determination

Only thing is, it must have been asking my ISP's DNS servers, and ended up getting an odd amalgam of the local internal IP address and my ISP's domain, eg: 192-168-1-5.tpgi.com.au

This was a similar format to the external hostname given to my router by the ISP, which is in the form of 123-456-78-90.tpgi.com.au (where 123-456-78-90 represents an imaginary IP address 123.456.78.90).

Here's what /var/log/system/log showed:

Feb 24 05:03:42 192-168-1-5 kernel[0]: sleep
Feb 24 05:03:42 pippin kernel[0]: Wake reason = USB1
Feb 24 05:03:42 pippin kernel[0]: System Wake
Feb 24 05:03:43 pippin kernel[0]: USB (UHCI):Port 2 on bus 0x1d has remote wakeup from some device
Feb 24 05:03:42 pippin configd[34]: setting hostname to "pippin.local"
Feb 24 05:03:45 pippin kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Up on en1
Feb 24 05:03:47 192-168-1-5 configd[34]: setting hostname to "192-168-1-5.tpgi.com.au"
Feb 24 05:03:47 192-168-1-5 mDNSResponder[22]: NOTE: Wide-Area Service Discovery \
                disabled to avoid crashing defective DNS relay 192.168.1.1:53
Feb 24 05:03:49 192-168-1-5 mDNSResponder[22]: Note: Frequent transitions for  \
                interface en1 (192.168.1.5); network traffic reduction measures in effect
Feb 24 05:03:51 192-168-1-5 Mail[215]: Type selection took over 1.000 seconds. Stopping early....

(some line-wrapping added by me)

Obviously, as far as problems go, this was a very minor one. But odd, too -- it really shouldn't have been trying to get a hostname off my ISP, given that the network is behind a NAT firewalled router/"modem". Also, this address was a figment of the computer's imagination: attempting to ping it from within the network failed.

There were a number of suggestions as to how you could force Mac OS X to use a static hostname, but most of these seem to come with a warning as to why you shouldn't do that. In the end, since I am, err, "network administrator" of my home network I just gave myself a static IP address on the router, and told it to give that IP address the hostname I wanted.

This seemed to work:

Feb 25 00:04:04 192-168-1-5 kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Down on en1
Feb 25 00:04:07 pippin configd[34]: setting hostname to "pippin.local"
Feb 25 00:04:21 pippin airportd[3594]: Error: Power unexpectedly off, bailing  - Apple80211GetPower() = off (0)
Feb 25 00:04:21 pippin airportd[3594]: Could not find any preferred networks; trying broadcast requests..
Feb 25 00:04:21 pippin airportd[3594]: Error: Apple80211Scan() error 82
Feb 25 00:04:21 pippin airportd[3594]: Error: __performScan() failed (82)
Feb 25 00:04:22 pippin airportd[3594]: Error: Power unexpectedly off, bailing  - Apple80211GetPower() = off (0)
Feb 25 00:04:27 pippin login[3573]: DEAD_PROCESS: 3573 ttys001
Feb 25 00:04:41 pippin PubSubAgent[3593]: AgentTask: Daily Tasks took 6756 msec
Feb 25 00:05:07 pippin ntpd[14]: sendto(17.72.255.11) (fd=23): No route to host
Feb 25 00:05:18 pippin login[3603]: USER_PROCESS: 3603 ttys001
Feb 25 00:06:00 pippin kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Up on en1
Feb 25 00:06:07 pippin configd[34]: setting hostname to "pippin.home"
Feb 25 00:06:08 pippin mDNSResponder[22]: NOTE: Wide-Area Service Discovery disabled to avoid crashing \
                defective DNS relay 192.168.1.1:53
Feb 25 00:06:12 pippin ntpd[14]: sendto(17.72.255.11) (fd=23): Network is unreachable
Feb 25 00:06:42 pippin login[3623]: USER_PROCESS: 3623 ttys002

I just wonder what exactly it is that it is complaining about with "Wide-Area Service Discovery disabled to avoid crashing defective DNS relay 192.168.1.1:53"...

Twitter!

Gavin Duley — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:34 +0000

I finally gave in and made an account on Twitter. Its http://twitter.com/penguinoid. So far, I'm just using it to follow other twittererererers that I find interesting for one reason or another. I'll probably end up posting inanities myself too, though. A horrifying thought...