This is just awesome!!! I can now blog straight from my Droid X!! Hopefully I will blog more from now on.
Motorola Droid X: Review
My old HTC Touch (in Verizon, it’s called XV6900) has been acting up and battery doesn’t hold charge anymore and the Internet is intermittent at best. So when I heard that the new Motorola Droid X was coming out on July 15th, I started to wait. My 2-year contract ended back in June so at midnight of the 15th, I pulled the trigger and got i on Friday!
Others seem to be not as lucky as now, it won’t ship till the 25th. 😀
Here are the box shots and Droid X shots… The camera is an old Sony that doesn’t seem to take good shots so please do excuse me.
Now the shot out of the box…
The battery came fully charged! And since I output all my contacts into CSV file and then imported it into Gmail account, syncing and updating my contacts was a breeze! Not to mention that once you set up all your social networking accounts, Android 2.1 updates all the Facebook friends as well! It was even sweeter once I learned that from the contacts list, you can see all the social networking friends’ updates!
Here are some of the generic shots…
There are 7 windows where you can swipe through for different types of “setups”. One for weather, one for social networking widgets, one for media etc. I like that. I also enjoyed the screen. 4.3″ screen is quite an ample size. And yes, it has 512 MB of ROM memory, 8 GB internal & 16 GB SD card storage, along with 1 GHz processor! On top of that, Verizon’s 3G network was a champ! Android Marketplace worked just fine and all the apps installed quickly and w/o any hassle.
Default browser wasn’t very attractive. So I installed Opera Mini from the Market and I was happier then! 🙂 Also it did play DivX file just fine but I wanted better support so I searched for MKV in the Market and found a player called Rock Player. Almost no hiccups at all, even in playing large MKV 720p files. I am loving this!
The screen is beautiful. Pictures don’t do justice. aGPS works well and with Google Maps, it went well! MP3 works well. And since I have unlimited 3G, I gave Slackware a try. Just search for it on Android Market! 😉 The music will download and play seamlessly. The overall experience was great. However, there are two things that I didn’t like…
First is the heat. When in use, it gets hot! Especially where you are holding it. Dang it. Second is the battery. It doesn’t last very long. Yeah, they say you can talk for very long and such… but I gave it a moderately heavy usage and after 7 hours, battery color changed from healthy green to uh-oh orange and then to flashing green top bar and it was unresponsive from there. I will probably carry the USB cable with car adapter and charge it in the car and at work. So I suppose it won’t be terribly bad but still…
So my final score? 8.5 / 10
This thing delivers! Here is the summary…
The Good: Everthing. 3G, widgets and apps, Android Market, seamless integration, smooth multimedia playback.
The Bad: It gets hot! And battery drains fairly fast.
MIT Researchers Find New Electricity Production Means
Even more awesome news! I hope such innovative technologies gain momentum and acceptance in building better ways to save energy and, in this case, store energy!
Super-critical Fuel Injection!!
Now we are talking!! Innovative and (relatively) inexpensive way to increase fuel efficiency and cut CO2 emissions?! Sign me up!!
According to this startup company called Transonic Combustion, they created a way to make conventional engines at least 50% more fuel efficient!! Sign me up!!
A Very Funny Rendition of “The Final Countdown”
This video is simply just too funny! If you know the original pop song of the same name from the ’80s, you MUST listen to it!
Broadcom’s Crystal HD mini-PCI-E Decoder Review
Anyone that follows computer and tech industry should’ve heard about Broadcom’s mini-PCI-E based HD decoder called Crystal HD last year. I decided to try it out. I mean, how can you say no to HD hardware-decoding for $20?! My Acer Aspire One netbook has been great except in that department. If I threw anything 720p or higher, it played like a slow slideshow! Currently, only HP offers this Crystal HD decoder as an option in a netbook, HP Mini 110 as a $35 option.
So I got one off eBay for $24 or so and decided to find out for myself if this really does wonders! Before you proceed, since you won’t have Internet for a bit, download latest Crystal HD drivers (ver. 3.1.0 as of this writing) and drivers for your WLAN USB adapter (for Airlink AWLL607, get it from here)
1. First thing first, I had to take the netbook apart. Youtube is awesome for that.
This Youtube video above shows you how to take apart the Acer Aspire One to upgrade memory. You don’t have to go through all the way to the end, but just to get to the WLAN mini-PCIE adapter.
2. Remove power connectors to WLAN adapter and replace it with the Broadcom’s Crystal HD decoder. This means that you won’t have WLAN. I got a mini-WLAN USB adapter for $16 (Airlink101 Wireless 11N) from Meritline. Close it up.
3. Upon closing it up and booting, once you are in Windows (I have XP Home on the netbook), it will ask to install drivers for the Crystal HD. Click Cancel! Install the drivers via the setup msi file.
4. (Optional) Install WLAN USB adapter like I did with Airlink 101.
5. I have been using CCCP codec pack so it uses Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition and Crystal HD supports that! Also GOM player, KM Player, Windows Media Player 12, Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre, Cyberlink PowerDVD, and Adobe Flash 10.1 are supported! Also, on that Broacom’s driver page, Linux drivers are listed and supported.
Performance
Did it work?!! Heck yeah! For 95+% of the time, it played things just fine. That 5% of slight delay/skip may be due to the fact that I was playing the HD files off another PC on my network (and not on the netbook itself). Airlink101 did drop signals couple of times over the past two days so you get what you paid for but I am happy with it overall. I didn’t have any 1080p source files to play but all my 720p videos played just fine. Just don’t forget that you do have to configure your softwares to use hardware-decoding.
Summary
For any video watcher out there that wants portability at its best, this is a no brainer! Sure you may lose your PCI-E WLAN card (some like Samsung has second available mini PCI-E slot), but for video enthusiasts like myself, it’s all worth it! Note however, that the palm rest area on the right side (where the Crystal HD lies underneath) gets really hot when it is working… but I won’t be typing when I am watching HD video so I don’t see this as an issue…
EDIT: It seems that newer Media Player has to be installed and/or re-configure it as instructed here.
Full-length Movie on Youtube – Born of Hope
It’s rare to see anything longer than 5 minutes on Youtube but here’s a good exception! A full 70-minute movie inspired by the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, “The Lord of the Rings” Though it may not be an award-winning title, this should be the direction of future movie releases…