Samsung HM3700 Stereo Bluetooth Wireless Headset Brief Review

 

So I got the Samsung HM3700 Stereo Bluetooth Wireless Headset for the Christmas. It’s a versatile bluetooth headset that sets it apart from traditional mono Bluetooth headset. Here is my brief review:

The headset kit comes with a regular mono Bluetooth headset (microUSB), a stereo headset with microUSB connector, a microUSB to 3.5mm convertor for use with ANY headphone, several ear clips / one T-shirt clip, and a microUSB charger.

The headset also comes with voice guide and multi-point support (upto 2 devices), and you can download Android app to use with the smartphone.

I’m paring it with my BlackBerry PlayBook. It works pretty nice. The only function it’s missing is the Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) controls, aka the previous/next song switching button. Otherwise it fits my needs exactly. The audio quality is pretty decent although BT uses lossy codec.

How to fix The "Couldn't Install On USB Storage Or SD Card" Problem On Android

 

My phone recently couldn’t upgrade any apps that’s on SD card. So I tried to search online for a solution, turns out it to be an Android bug. And HERE is the solution:

“Go and delete smdl2tmp1.asec yourself. From what I can tell, it could reside in 2 locations:

1. /sdcard/.android_secure - this is an invisible folder on your SD card, which you can access with any file manager, like ASTRO
2. /mnt/secure/asec/ - access to this folder requires root and a program like Root Explorer

Look for smdl2tmp1.asec in these folders and delete any ones you see. Deleting it seems to be a safe enough operation - it's just a temporary file after all. Once you've done that, all the update problems should go away.”

RIM BlackBerry PlayBook (QNX OS) Review

 

Well, as of this writing, RIM has released a new 2.0 Beta build – 6149. You can register your device here and receive the update. There’s no change log. Few things to note:
1. No need to do a clean wipe to make Android apps work.
2. Dingleberry root appears to stay intact AFTER the update.
3. Adds BT A2DP support.

So for my ongoing review, I’ll try to insert whatever I’ve found in this new build.

I’ve got the chance to get a PlayBook for cheap this thanksgiving thanks to Bestbuy. Actually I’m lucky enough to get two HP Touchpads and one PlayBook on sale this year. And here is the review and sort of comparison between the two ill-fated devices.

Quick spec first:

Height 5.1" / 130mm
Width 7.6" / 194mm
Depth 0.4" / 10mm
Weight 0.9 lbs / 425g

7" LCD display, 1024 x 600 screen resolution
Multi-touch capacitive screen

1 GHz TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor (Dual Core Cortex-A9 CPU clocked at 1Ghz + a PowerVR SGX540 GPU)
1 GB RAM
Symmetric multi-processing

Dual HD Cameras (3MP and 5MP in the front and back, respectively), dual microphones for stereo recording

1080p HD video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV HDMI video output
Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports

Full Adobe® Flash® 10.1 enabled
Built-in support for HTML 5

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR (although the radio seems to support 3.0?)
GPS

NO SD card expansion slot.

The build quality is very decent, it’s not thin, but the entire device feels very solid in hand. The 7in 16:9 screen is pretty narrow after coming from a Touchpad which has a 4:3 aspect ratio. (well, technically it’s not a perfect 16:9) The weight feels just about right, which I think the Touchpad is a bit heavy. So for the form factor I think a 1024x640 16:10 aspect ratio would be best, this way it wouldn’t feel so narrow on the portrait mode, but that would probably make it 7.5in... The drawback of a narrow portrait mode is that I seem to have extremely limited use of it except reading manga or books. Actually the way RIM build it (the hardware keys and connectors’ placement, even down to the software), all strongly emphasis on Landscape usage only. Some people have been praising for the 7in form factor. I think I’m neutral on this aspect. I don’t think 7in is super portable, it barely could fit into the pocket unless you are a big guy. I would prefer 5in and under if I have to go totally portable. That being said, I have brought this device to work, but only in a laptop bag.

For the screen, it has the same horizontal resolution 1024 as ipad or Touchpad, thus being more dense than the two per pixel. The screen is better than Touchpad in terms of color reproduction. Black levels are a bit better than Touchpad as well. Viewing angle is OK as well. But direct sun viewing isn’t very good, with its reflective glossy screen.

Now for the physical buttons, the most significant difference is that it doesn’t have a HOME button. It uses its unique gesture to control the operations. The gestures are well executed, combined with “card system” multitask control, it provides easy switching between apps, preventing accidental closing which happens a lot of time in Android. Being a narrow device in it’s portrait mode, the hardware buttons are placed in landscape mode, which is different from ipad or Touchpad. On top of the bezel, you have power, volume down, play/pause, and volume up buttons. The power button is very hard to press, you don’t know if you have pressed it or not until you see something is going on the screen… The three multimedia buttons are the normal buttons thankfully. But I don’t think the placement are easy to access. I don’t appreciate the extra play/pause button. It’s very easy to accidently press this key when you didn’t close the music app. Also sometimes I use the volume rocker to read books, the gap between volume down and up makes it very hard to flip pages. One trick on the volume keys is that in music app, you can long press them to skip to previous or next song, this way if your screen is locked, you don’t have to activate the system.

Besides the front camera and two mics on the top of the bezel, on the very right side of the bezel, there’s a 3.5mm earphone plug. The internal DAC is powered by Wolfson Micro WM8994E. The sound quality is inferior to the Touchpad (without beats equalizer). Speaking of the audio, the speakers are located right on the LCD side, this makes the audio distribute evenly in any direction unlike the Touchpad which have the speakers mounted at the bottom of one side. I prefer the placement of the speakers. But in terms of the sound quality of these speaker, again they are inferior than the Touchpad. Overall I’m not super satisfied with the audio quality with PlayBook. If you want better audio, I would choose Touchpad easily. I’ll be looking into how to improve the audio quality on PlayBook via headphone amp, preferably through the USB connection to bypass the internal DAC altogether, but it maybe too much to ask for.

Another important NOTE is that the volume management for speakers and headphone volume are completely DIFFERENT! This means the system remembers your last volume setting for speakers and headphones separately. You should be careful with this especially don’t activate the volume booster in settings, that could be extremely loud and damage your hearing! IMO RIM should always lower the volume for headphone output to prevent such things happening, like those volume limiter feature on receivers!

On the bottom of the bezel, it has micro-HDMI, micro-USB, and the BlackBerry charging connectors. I haven’t tried the HDMI output yet, but it supports 1080p output. The problem is that micro-HDMI cables are usually pretty short, I’m not sure how good it is an experience by controlling PlayBook on a big screen using such short cable. I think the tablets are probably the ones that need some Intel WiDi-ish technology to link TV wirelessly, provided that battery drain is at an acceptable level. Another option would be to connect Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to the PlayBook and operate at a decent range. Yes, QNX does support Buetooth mouse which I have tried it, not as good as touch control, but works… The micro-USB, I really appreciate it uses the standard connectors. It requires a higher amp for charging, which means your typical USB chargers won’t be able to provide adequate power. Charging by USB from PC works as long as the machine is in stand-by, otherwise it’s gonna be hard to even maintain at the level. Recharging time seems to be acceptable, definitely much faster than Touchpad. IMO the micro-USB and HDMI ports should really be put on the sides of the machine. If you are using the OEM or third party case to make a stand, it will block accessing to these ports. Or maybe RIM is thinking of providing a docking solution to connect the ports, but we have yet to see any except the quick charging dock…

Accessories: out of the box, you get a quick charger (5V, 1.8A), a screen cloth, and a neoprene case (which is rare). You also get a screen protector with the gesture instruction on it, just like Touchpad.

Add-on accessories: I bought the Acase clear screen protector and the leather stand/cover. The screen protector is OK although the first one I applied had some scratches already in the middle of sheet. But the second one works. The leather stand/cover, it’s a different design concept than the official HP rubber case for Touchpad. The Touchpad one has a bendable front cover with two adjustable slots, they swing to the back, and providing enough force to support the Touchpad. It requires very little space for the stand. While this Acase design has a uniform front cover which acts as the base of the stand, there are two slots on the inside of the cover to provide support for the PlayBook with two angles obviously. It requires a large base area. There are a few maunfacturers with the same design, but overall this Acase one looks the best on pictures. So I decided to go with this one.

Also the design uses very little material, it cuts away too much material. I do appreciate Acase don’t put anything on the bezel so that you can still use the frame gesture controls, but there could be more protection on the sides. (Actually the design is completely symmetrical, probably it’s easy to design and manufacture) Another problem is the headphone slot, if you have large connector from those audiophile/professional grade headphones, there’s not enough clearance to fit. While this is not entirely Acase’s fault, I think it can be designed better, or an extension cable can solve the problem. One deal breaker is that if you swing the front cover all the way back, it blocks the back camera! The back of the case does have a cutout for the camera, but the front cover needs one too if you need to fold the front cover like a magazine! This could be an absolutely deal breaker for some people, too bad I found it out too late. I’m thinking of drilling a hole myself, but haven’t decided yet. Also it does leave have openings for the mini-HDMI, micro-USB, and charging connections. You can still use PlayBook with this case on while charging via the micro-USB port. I’m not sure about the charging connectors for the dock though. Overall it’s a sleek looking leather case. It looks pretty attractive when it’s completely closed. If the back camera is not completely covered, I could recommend this case wholeheartedly. This could be the best looking leather case on the market, aside from the OEM RIM case.

 

The QNX OS:
I’ve only been on the 1.0.7 for about one hour, then immediately updated to latest 2.0 beta for the Android player, so majority of my review will be based on 2.0 beta 4869 build (any coincidence with Detective Conan?). There are two main programs I noticed that are missing for the 2.0 beta 4869 build from upgrading:
1. Video chat is removed, although this is one of the highlight features that’s advertised on the original product brochure. I hope RIM could bring it back. Although it’s only limited to video chatting within PlayBook users. (Why no Skype support is beyond understanding as well)
2. Document to go is originally three separate apps (word, excel, and powerpoint), but now you get one app with word and excel. For powerpoint, you can view and edit, but you can’t create a new one for some reason…

Yes the QNX OS is very similar to webOS 3.0 in terms of the overall UI and multitasking operation. But the performance is a huge leap beyond the snail speed webOS. Memory management isn’t that good though, system consumes 500MB by just turning on the device, each additional app consumes memory by 100MB or more. Therefore you can’t really open a lot of apps. In the case if you are running out of memory, the OS kills the very first opened app. But sometimes apps would just simply disappear. If this is really how much RIM can optimize this system, I think 2GB memory is a must to power it. Another great improvement is the frame gestures. Pretty much each side and corner have it’s special use. Even in the Android player, it has a gesture for “back” function. Two unique features from webOS not present in QNX are: 1. stacking and swapping the cards, not really useful to have. 2. Sliding panel, this design is consistent throughout the apps for webOS, it’s very nice, but I have yet to see any Android or QNX apps to have this feature.

Compare to webOS, the keyboard on QNX OS is not as good. Actually webOS keyboard is the best keyboard I’ve used so far for tablets. I especially like the number rows on top of the keyboard. Also the auto correction feature is pretty decent, could be a little annoying occasionally, but generally I like it a lot. The only keyboard can top it is maybe swiftkey x. But sadly neither webOS nor QNX allows third party keyboards at the moment. As of 6149 build, there are still no eastern Asian language input support. But I’ve seen native Baidu input for Chinese Pinyin on some Chinese PlayBook forum, but the app won’t be able to run.

One killer feature is the integrated wifi sharing. The device is recognized as a network device so that you can manage your files using windows file manager. The root folders are not changeable, nor adding/removing folders under root are allowed. You can also sideloading apps via wifi using DDPB Installer. I found myself rarely have the need to establish a physical connection to the PC unless for really large files. With physical USB connection, you’re looking at around 10MB/s of writing speed, with wifi, it’s about 2-4MB/s. The only missing feature is a file manager that can read samba windows share directly on PlayBook, and subsequently open files using the native apps. Well, as always, the OS doesn’t come with any file manager, and the native ones plain suck. The only app that could read samba windows share is ES File Explorer, but it’s a converted Android app which doesn’t interact with native apps…

One huge missing feature compared to webOS is integrated printing. Well, there is a folder called “print” in PlayBook’s file structure, so I hope RIM could provide a way to print documents, pictures, and maybe webpages. This is about the only missing feature to make this little device completely PC free. I’ve tried some Android printing solution such as PrinterShare Premium, but the app crashed after trying to add a wifi printer. Another solution would be Google Cloud Print, but it requires you to print from your email inside the web browser. The process isn’t very convenient.

Bluetooth feature:

The QNX OS supports Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I’ve tried the mouse function, it’s not as good as the touch experience. But it would be essential for control when output the device to large HDTV via HDMI cable. In latest 6149 build, it adds support for A2DP, which I was lucky enough to grab a Samsung HM3700 stereo BT adaptor to try this feature.

But too bad the Samsung HM3700 doesn’t support AVRCP profile, otherwise it would be really cool to be able to switch song tracks remotely (assuming the A2DP support also with AVRCP)…

GPS feature:

Yes, PlayBook does include GPS, but it’s not the conventional a-GPS like in cellphones. Signal locking is a bit hit or miss for me. Sometimes even if I’m inside a building, it’s able to lock the signal within minute; sometimes even if I’m driving outside, it won’t sync the signal until well past ten minutes! The software implementation for GPS is a huge problem, first off you cannot toggle GPS feature on and off like wifi or Bluetooth. Then there are pretty much none native apps except some POS map packages posted by the same company charging you $10 for each region. Oh well, Poynt and Magellan Compass are two apps that worked relatively well. And yes the GPS can be used in Android unlike camera and GPU acceleration, some Android apps such as GPS test and OsmAnd work. Other big name ones with voice guidance such as Sygic, CoPilot, Navigon don’t run at all.

For current beta builds, the battery drain is also a huge problem. With the latest 6149 build, I found the battery is dropping at 1% per hour, so even if you don’t do anything, after less than three days, you’ll be getting a dead dead device. On previous 4869 build, it had bugs where the device won’t enter standby mode probably, and drained the battery without shutting the device, leaving the battery completely discharged. Thankfully I only had this problem once. I found that if you enter the standby mode manually, PlayBook usually do follow the command.

Overall I think the QNX OS is a very modern OS. But there are four features I think it’s missing or needs improvements:

1. Direct volume control inside the top status bar. Right now if you need to control the volume, you can use the hardware button or launching the app and adjusting there. Well, one way to get around is to go into settings and adjusting in Sounds & Notifications. I think it would be more intuitive to control volume like the rotation lock, system boot.

2. If a password is set, you can only control system shutdown, reboot AFTER logging into the system. I think it’s better to control it without the need to logging in. Windows has this feature ever since win95 I believe.

3. Put music notification in the left of the top status bar. In the portrait mode, you can only have 5 icons on the status bar. So when music is playing, the icon won’t show up! This complicates music control.

 

Now move on to it’s individual apps, overall the included apps are pretty good, but with some issues here and there:

Web browser:

The web browser has supports for multi-tab, flash, and HTML 5, and it’s working relatively fast. It has the best rendering I’ve seen with large font size enabled. Also it renders youtube even the 1080p ones absolutely beautiful! But there are some issues: 1. multi-tab switching is not very easy, it requires swiping down then clicking the window. I would prefer opera mini’s style or Dolphin style (with the tabs PINNED!) 2. due to the poor memory management of the OS (or lack of memory), you can only pretty much open four tabs at most, any more tabs will make the browser unstable and tend to quick. Also it tends to refresh the page if you leave it on background for a short period of time. And there’s no background loading available, it always open the front most content. 3. Pinch and zoom seems work slow. 4. No ad blocker which is a big issue since it supports flash, there are loads of flash based ads on the net… 5. Small close button makes the tab very hard to close. 6. No hulu support. It can detect the user agent and block you. Last small issue is that when playing Crakle, the video jumps around so that I can never finish a movie, pretty weird. Lol, there are lots of issues, but I’m satisfied with the overall performance, at least it’s better than that awful webOS browser!

Alternative browsers:

For native apps, there’s this desktop browser. It’s a very basic browser, but it allows you to change user agent from a very broad selection. There’s no multi-tab, no history, no cache, no history, but it does support flash. Crakle works fine, so it’s my exclusive browser just for that site.

Some people on crackberry are recommending simplebrowser in the app world, I’ve never tried that. It looks very similar to desktop browser.

For Android converted app, Dolphin browser has been working great, Opera Mobile doesn’t work (not bothered to try mini). Only issues is that there’s no flash and streaming video support in Android player.

Music App:

It’s a traditional music player without the “cloud” function. For the format it supports, you can check this document. It doesn’t support the popular lossless flac format. It supports playing by artists, by albums, or by Genres, which all are strictly based on ID3 tags. It doesn’t support playing by folders, so if your ID3 tags are a mess, you can’t play what you want… There is no equalizer. Sound quality as I have mentioned earlier, isn’t very optimal. Also it only supports ONE AND ONLY ONE on-the-fly playlist, all other playlists must be made with software on PC. The music player doesn’t have trouble recognizing song files names with Asian characters, but the playlists don’t support song files names with Asian characters (well, at least not Japanese and Chinese). So it would be best to have English files names, and put the real name with Asian characters as ID3 tag, this way you get your songs in correct names and playlist also works fully. Also another annoyance is that it doesn’t read cover (art work) with aspect ratio corrected, it always stretches the pictures to fit its squares… It does come with the feature where you unplug the headphone, music stops playing, but has no resume feature when you plug it back. Also with that extra hardware play/pause button, you might accidently hit it and the music starts playing again without any notice! And the music notification won’t appear in the portrait mode! The long pressing volume down and up trick to change the tracks is a welcome though. I’ve always wanted a music player with shaking to change song by utilizing the gyro scope, but I haven’t seen this feature implemented on any of the official apps from OS. I’ve seen some third party apps support this, that’s where I get the idea from. Another small complaint is how the loop and shuffle buttons are soooo SMALL, I can’t imagine a person with fat fingers can hit these buttons without second try. Well, these design issues happen a lot for the QNX system, remember that small close button in the browser I just talked about? Last note is that since 6149 build it now supports deleting music right inside the app.

Video app:

For a native video app, I’m very impressed with its “massive” codec support, see the spec sheet in music app section for reference. Most importantly, the app plays video in correct aspect ratio. Note that the resolution for PlayBook isn’t a perfect 16:9, therefore when you play 16:9 video, it does scale to 1024*576 and leaves two tiny black bars on top and bottom. The playback is pretty much on par with PS3’s capability! Well, minus the ability to playback mpeg1, mpeg2, m2ts, and ts. The wmv support is absolutely fantastic, it even plays some weird wmv that kmplayer, MPC failed to render (WMP plays fine) on PC. It supports wmv HD playback, only issue is that it won’t honor 16:9 tag on 1440*1080 videos, which means your videos are not stretched to the correct aspect ratio. Those that packing wmv video in avi (120fps) cannot be played though. It handles divx and xvid with no problem, even the 720P ones. And of course it handles mp4 with h.264/x.264, even the high profile ones (I’ve seen someone on crackberry posting high profile 5.1 plays). So there is a good chance that the video you get online can be played, you just have to convert the ac3, DTS audio to AAC, and you are good to go. In 2.0 beta, it can also play mkv files, but only first audio can be played (provided it’s in AAC format), and there’s no subtitle support. The video control is pretty basic, there’s no resume or continuous play features. But overall I’m very satisfied with the performance, any video you throw at it, as long as it being recognized and played, it’s silk smooth. And there’s no stupid 2GB file limit like webOS, I’ve watched several BDrips with size varying from 2GB to 7GB, all without any issues. My only wish is that RIM can provide ac3 and DTS decoding so that I don’t have to take time to convert to aac. Last note is that for anime lovers, naturally the recent popular hi10p profile is NOT supported (Rant: I don’t understand why this get popular all of a sudden, all source material we are getting from TV captures to DVD/BDs are encoded 4:2:0 8 bit, why bother even upscaling them to 10 bit, plus I don’t see any size reduction on the distributed files supposedly one of the advantage of hi10p).

Picture app:

The picture app is really lacking in features. It doesn’t support any online photo sharing site like the synerge system in webOS. It does support pinch and zoom. The slideshow has one and only one transition style, and you can not set any intervals between pictures.

Camera app:

The camera app is really basic. In picture mode, you have a choice of shooting in 4:3 or 16:9, and background mode. You do get stabilization assistant. But the app doesn’t have any face detection. Also there’s not even any digital zoom in or zoom out, or any macro mode.

In video mode, you can shoot in 480p, 720p, and 1080p! Recent 6149 build seems to take out the zoom capability though. In 4869 build, if memory serves correct, you can zoom out to quite some distance.

In either mode, you can easily switch between the front and back cameras. The image quality is quite noisy in dark light condition due to the sensors. But the overall video quality is passable.

Clock app:

The app provides clock, stopwatch, and timer mode. You can have more than one clock to show different time in different time zone. Also each clock only supports one alarm time, so in order to have more that one alarm, you need to keep on adding clocks… which is pretty unintuitive. You can’t adjust the orders of the clocks either, any newly added clock will be appended next to the last one. Also the volume of the alarm clocks are very inadequate, it can only tie to your system volume rather than adjusting to max. I definitely wouldn’t use the alarm clock. It could also to have an exhibit mode that can benefit to the size of the device.

Calculator app:

The app is really nice, you can choose between basic, scientific, unit converter, and even tip! The app doesn’t support portrait mode though. Also the unit converter lacks currency conversion which is probably one of the more important unit one need to use daily, especially if it’s designed for business..

These are the major native apps that I use daily. Other included apps are youtube, doesn’t support channels, you are better off using browser, which in 6149 build, is working very snappy. Podcasts app has some interesting video and audio podcasts. Audio Notes allows you to record audio, really simple app. Now for the third party apps, you can get them in the app world. Up till November, all the apps were written by Adobe Air, which they have really poor performance, operations are usually sluggish. But now since RIM has released the QNX NDK, we are expecting to see some apps written using the native developing tool, thus have better performance. Apparently there’s no issues with games though, most of the games I’ve tried have pretty decent performance, but quite large amounts are from EA and gameloft.

About the lacking of native apps for mail, contacts, and calendar, my solution is to use the Android ones or web interface. I’ve been using Kaiten mail which works very well up till 4869 build.

The latest 6149 build always combines mails in the notification area, thus you can’t read each mail just through the notifications, but have to open the mail client to check exactly what’s the mails are about. What a step backwards! Also from the looks of these screenshots, even the native mail client will have this behavior!

For Android player, the success rate of converted apps being able to run fully is about 50 to 50 from my own experience. Some apps have been running extremely well. In latest 6149 build, the performance of the apps have been improved for sure, but there is a side effect: once all the Android apps are closed, the Android player has to restart which takes too long. In 4869 build, I think the Android player is always running until the next time the OS reboots. Also another problem is rotations in Android player not working properly, this is extremely frustrating in the new 6149 build. Apps would just get stuck in one direction until you close it and reopen. Access to SDCard mounting has been opened in QNX OS so that the native apps can search inside the SDCard folder, but upgrading from 4869 wipes out entire SDCard though. Cameras, in 4869 build, you can’t access cameras at all, now in 6149 build, it will access the native camera app, take a picture, go back to Android app, which is a step forward. GPU acceleration, not sure if it’s been opened in 6149 build, but there are a few apps previously don’t run in 4869 but runs in 6149 now. If you launch more than two Android apps, a selection of the most recent apps will show up on the navigation bar at the bottom. But this doesn’t always work, even in the current 6149 build. I hope RIM could provide some better launcher experience, maybe a more consistent interface with the QNX OS. Some people have been using third party Android launcher with success tough.

So to sum it up, I like the PlayBook a LOT! Of course there are many rough edges that needed to be polished. But overall it’s a very useful device that actually not sitting there collecting dust (HP Touchpad). But what I ultimately want is really a powerful PC in a tablet form with optimized touchscreen user experience. So that you can easily manage files with a file browser, upgrade whatever codecs or new profiles for video and audio, mount iso images, stream DVD/BDs over wifi, and support USB OTG or full size USB etc. And more powerful LAN sharing feature, which can access on both sides, not just from PC only. These ARM CPUs really aren’t cutting it, be it dual core or quad cores. Maybe when windows 8 finally comes out with Intel chips, my dream will be fulfilled, hopefully the battery doesn’t suck. PlayBook is good temporary solution to fill the gap though.

Converting apk to bar for Blackberry Playbook Android Player

Got a Blackberry Playbook for this thanksgiving. I had a great time with this little device so far. Since the lacking of apps from app world, I’ve been signing up for the 2.0 beta almost immediately I got the tablet. I’ve been trying to convert Android apk files to playbook compatible bar files using the wonderful apk2bar from crackberry. Here I want to expand the instruction on software preparation a little as the one on crackberry is lacking details. It took me a whole day to figure everything out.

Basicly you need to use two programs from the apk2bar. apk2bar-HaTaX.bat for converting apk to bar. And signbar-HaTaX.bat to sign the converted bar. Here is the original instruction:

“I've made a few batch files before to make things easier, and here
is the latest installment to simplify the two step process to porting
Android APKs over to the Android Player on the BlackBerry Playbook.

apk2bar-HaTaX.bat -

    This batch file processes the APK and converts it to a loadable BAR file.
    It will place the BAR file in the same directory the APK file was in.

    First things first, go get your Android SDK downloaded from here:

        http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

        When running the installer, remember where you installed the SDK!
        You're going to need that path in a future step, I installed to
        "C:\android-sdk" to keep things simple and clean.”

“Second, get that SDK installed and download the "SDK Platform" from the
        "Android 2.3.3 (API10)" list in the Android SDK Manager tree.

    Third,  setup the apk2bar-HaTaX.bat file by opening it up in notepad and make
        sure the "ANDROIDSDK=" line has the correct path to the installed SDK.

    You're set at this point!  Just drag an APK onto the batch file in windows
        explorer and it should start working it's magic.  If the file isn't
        compatible you'll see that listed in the output at the end.”

This process is pretty straightforward. The Android Player supports upto Android 2.3 apps only,
the 3.0 tablet apps definitely won’t work. For windows 7 users, you need to

put the *.apk files under the same apk2bar folder, drag and drop onto the apk2bar-HaTaX.bat,
otherwise it’s not gonna work.

signbar-HaTaX.bat -

    This batch file signs the BAR file created by apk2bar-HaTaX.bat.

This second process is way too simple. So instead of using the instruction, I’ll be writing mine here (actually partially translated from a Chinese site). You need to install a bunch of software here.

1. Apply for code signing key HERE. After a while, you will get two *.csj files in two separate emails, and they are different. One starts with client-RDK, one starts with client-PBDK.

2. Install Java JDK HERE.

3. Install BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for AIR HERE.

4. Install Adobe Flash Builder 4.5.

5. Generating p12 certificate using Flash Builder.

In preference, expand Flash Builder until Signing. You should see the Register button (I’ve already registered).

Here you specify the path for your two *.csj files you received in the emails. The CSJ Pin is the “Signing Key” when you apply for the keys. Give a new password to CSK password and remember it. After all done, you should see Signing as registered just as pictured on previous screenshot.

Then you click Create Certificate to generate your unique p12 certification.

Here you assign your certificate path, author is your name, keystore password is the CSK passwork you created from the previous step. Now you are all set. The last step is to follow the original instruction:

"Third, setup the signbar-HaTaX.bat file by opening it up in notepad and
make sure the 3 lines are properly filled out. You should know where
your .p12 file is, and the passwords for both the .p12 and the CSK password.

You're set again! Just drag a BAR file made with apk2bar-HaTaX.bat 
onto the batch file in windows explorer and you will get a signed BAR file
ready to be loaded on any Playbook running OS 2.0 with developer mode on.”

You can also check the crackberry forum or this site for a list of compatible apps. 
I have some success but it’s really a hit or miss.

CIFS mounting – webOS vs. Android

 

So I’ve been experimenting CIFS mounting on both webOS and Android lately. The CIFS mounting mounts a windows SAMBA network and displays as a folder in webOS or Android system, so that you can access your network share files as if they are local files. It’s a cool way to share music and video files, the ones that are typically large in size and cannot be conveniently copied or limited by the size of internal storage of Touchpad (32GB is still small). For my personal interest, I’m particularly interested in playing large video files (mkv) on Touchpad without transcoding. So let’s see how it plays out on Touchpad.

So on the webOS side, we have Network Drives, a homebrew CIFS mounting program. It was relatively easy to use. It supports unicode. Other programs including Kalemsoft media player and Internalz pro (need to enable hidden files) can access the shared files. The only issue I have with this program is sometimes I’m unable to unmount it unless I reboot. But otherwise it’s been pretty solid. Now the video playback part, on webOS, we only have two choices aside from the official player: Touchplayer (a port of mplayer) and Kalemsoft media player. Touchplayer only does soft decoding, and for me it’s not working at all. Kalemsoft media player, $5.99 is probably the only and the best choice for webOS platform. It does play majority of the video formats. It plays mkv to some degree since there are so many codecs supported by the format, it’s not easy to play everything. As for the mounting part, since it’s using wifi, anything HD or high bitrate will have trouble play smoothly.

For Kalemsoft media player, the 0.4 update is quite significant. It can read unicode pretty well. It has a really well thought interface that includes a preview window with stream selector. BTW, it has really good performance with wmv. The wmv files shared from Japanese P2P somehow are packed differently with the audio, so that my PS3 always have problem picking up the audio, same thing happened on Android platform, but Kalemsoft plays them without any issue.

It even detects the secondary video stream from some Japanese ts streams. But unfortunately as the stream is HD, it’s unable to stream it smoothly. It’s more like playing powerpoint…

The 0.4 beta now supports srt, ssa, and ass subtitles. But unfortunately you don’t have much control over how to display them. First off, there’s no border on the subtitles, well you can choose to show the backgrounds like the hearing aid type, but for normal subtitles, there’s just no border which means if you were playing any 4:3 content, the subtitles will go blend into the background. You do get the choice to set a few, mostly primary/secondary colors, but white is always my preference. You can’t control the subtitle position, which means for 16:9 content, the subtitles will show up in the black bar, a good way to solve the color blending problem… Also the default font size, even with the largest, it’s still on the small side as seen in the screen cap. For mkv, I tried some 720P anime fansubs, which played pretty well. But for high bitrate HD video, especially the ones with DTS, it still choked. But still, these are the best result you’ll ever seen on touchpad without transcoding.

 

On the Android side, we have CifsManager. It is not very intuitive as it requires rooting and the matching kernel module (cifs.ko) file in order to display files in unicode, otherwise you get a bunch of squares. Or another choice is ES file explorer, which supports SMB share directory, not in the same sense as real mounting, but it’s just far more straightforward.

And for the players, we have tons of choices, but the results are quite similar – they don’t work as good as Kalemsoft media player for webOS. It maybe a problem with current CM mod not fully enable hardware acceleration or software decoding, or video players for Android just plain suck.

Thoughts about webOS

 

 

Update:

HP has just released webOS 3.0.4, it makes the touchpad almost twice as fast (well, after the corresponding Govnah and UberKernal update which means still have to overclock to 1.5Ghz)

Well, just some random thoughts after installing CM7 for my HP touchpad. This maybe a rough comparison between webOS 3.0.2 vs. Android 2.3. This could be just some random rants as well… It is more expanded than the initial impression post I posted a few days ago.

Some good features about webOS 3.0.2:

1. Fairly good looking tablet interface. Dual/Triple pane, consistent design throughout the apps. Big plus for landscape mode.
2. Card system for multitasking. So that you always know what apps are running.
3. Synerge for managing multiple accounts, including many popular services.
4. Rotation lock/unlock in the notification area.
5. Good keyboard, especially with the numbers on top. Long pressing the numbers give you more features. Sometimes the keyboard layout isn’t consistent though.
6. Printer, although it only supports certain HP brand printers, it gives you easy access to print from almost every app. To bypass the limited printer support, you can install Touch2Pc Printer on your computer (this computer has to be always ON if you want to print something though)

The ugly about webOS 3.0.2:

1. Slowwww, almost everything is running slow, even after overclocking to 1.5Ghz, the apps are still running very inefficiently. Average app launching time is 5s-15s. This along with the language localization are the two real deal breaker for me to support webOS.
2. Very bad browser. The loading is extremely slow. The browser doesn’t have tabs. External links from certain sites almost never works (maybe killed by ad blocker?) And there’s no third party browser aside from advanced browser!
3. Card system takes way too much memory, you run out of memory fairly quickly. It might also be a problem trying to find the card you need.
4. Almost all the included apps didn’t have enough function. The email app doesn’t support search, nor finding labels for gmail. The calendar app won’t sync with google calendar automatically. The photo app lacks sorting, also only displays very low resolution. The video app supports practically mp4 with h.264 ONLY. The music app sometimes can’t handle unicode, can’t play music smoothly in the background.
5. Apps in HP catalog (app store) are mostly junk. What’s worst is that not a lot “HD” versions are available. I’m still puzzled why it’s so hard for developers to program some good apps. Also the apps are NOT cheap, the average is around $5-$10, many of them lack trial mode. You could end up spending a lot for crappy useless apps. The HP catalog doesn’t allow refunding.
6. Poor language localization. Well, it’s almost non-existent. With 3.0.4, it’ll add Chinese localization, but that’s about it. Poor unicode support. Both iOS and Android system support all almost all the major languages out of the box.

Now on the Android 2.3 side, the system is obviously NOT made for tablets. Even for the tablet optimized 3.0, things are not looking good either. The percentage of the “HD” versions on Android market are sparse just as HP catalog probably due to 3.0 is closed source and not too many real tablets are out there. Hopefully with the release of 4.0 ICS, things will change. The system also lacks a rotation lock/unlock function as seen in webOS. Majority of the apps are obviously designed for the cellphones, which use portrait mode most often. Or even if they do support landscape, they require manually readjust, or only rotate in certain angles, or in landscape mode, you lose access to certain function. It doesn’t have as elegant printing solution as webOS, either.

Some specific apps for directly comparison, these are the apps I use most often:

File Management:

Internalz for webOS: it’s not a native app for webOS 3.0, therefore it only supports portrait mode, but the graphics work fine. Coupled with file manager from preware, it’s a decent file manager and ipk installer for webOS.

Gemini File Manager for webOS: one of a few other options from HP catalog, $2.99. It’s a dual pane manager, supports windows SMB local network.

ES File Explorer for Android: Very versatile file manger. Supports almost every function (local, SMB, FTP) you could think of. It even has a music and video player built-in.

WiFi File Explorer for Android: manage your files via wifi. It’s a good compliment to ES File Explorer.

 

Chinese IME input:

Baidu IME for webOS: The design mimicks the native keyboard, even down to those number keys. The only problem is that it won’t remember the last input (English or Chinese), every time it seems to enforce Chinese. Also there seems to be no way to change input method like in Android, once you install this input, it will be your default keyboard.

Sogou IME for pad for Android: It is the only Chinese IME input that has a pad version. The design also resembles the webOS IME, but the number keys are not turned on by default. This is the only one that’s optimized for pad use, what can you do… Generally, I like Baidu better, if it ever gets a pad version, I would switch to it immediately.

 

Book reader:

Amazon Kindle: The webOS version has a double page design (like a real book) in landscape mode which the android version lacks. But the android version has a dictionary which can be handy for people like me who’s not a native English speaker. The webOS version also has a slightly more intuitive, clearly labeled interface.

pReader (epub) for webOS: The native alpha version is the “HD” version. It’s extremely buggy. Lots of functions such as bookmark, jumping to specific chapter don’t work. The unicode support is spotty.

FBReader (epub) for Android: It’s very light weight. It has full support for epub format. It uses ColorDict. The only function it lacks is a bookshelf function. Otherwise this would be perfect.

There are a few other good ones for Android: ireader, moon reader, Aldiko, etc. But I prefer FBReader for its performance.

Adobe reader (pdf) for webOS: It’s only pdf reader I’ve tried. It lacks a lot of important function such as bookmark, quick access to chapter. People on precentral has been spending some effort to add these missing features. But I don’t have much use on reading pdf docs anyways. It also has some problem with unicode support.

Thinkfree Office (pdf) for Android: I didn’t try it enough to conclude anything. But it does open pdf…

 

Dictionary:

Hoshidict for webOS: Has tons of dictionaries to download, and they appear to be pretty accurate. The only thing it’s lacking is online function, it doesn’t support searching for google translation or wikipedia. So it’s a very decent offline dictionary ONLY. It doesn’t support pronunciation either.

For Android: Well, there are quite a few dictionaries here. Aedict is for Japanese, ColorDict is for multi-language. For online dictionaries, you also got google translation, WWWJDIC, etc.

 

Office:

Quickoffice (doc, xls) for webOS: It gives you basic function to edit doc, docx, xls, xlsx, but you can’t insert photos, nor draw your own pictures. It has integration with dropbox.

Thinkfree office (doc, xls) for Android: Aside from the basic function, you CAN insert photos, draw your own pictures. The “free” version that comes with my LG cellphone does not have integration with google doc, but the full version supposed to have it.

 

Note taking:

Tapnote for webOS: It is keyboard based. It has integration with dropbox. But the app is not cheap, costs $5… You are better off just using Quickoffice. I got it for free from the HP weekly giveaway, thankfully…

FreeNote for Android: It has a unique keyboard, handwriting mix mode. It also combines with calendar, to-do list. The interface is a little bit messy. But overall it has probably the most flexible features among all the note taking apps. The only feature it’s missing is export formats other than the only jpg, png or pdf are much preferred, or even better doc/docx.

Picture Viewer:

Synergy (native app) for webOS: It syncs to a lot of popular online photo services aside from manage your local photos. Only problem is that it doesn’t have sort function so that your photos are all over the place. Another problem is it indexes the online photo to local device with lower resolution.

JustPictures! for Android: It syncs to a lot of popular online photo services as well. It has sort function. Account management is not intuitive, but it does work. Wish it has a double pane design as webOS.

Comic/Manga Viewer:

One of the primary reason I bought for the Touchpad is to read manga.

ComicShelf HD for webOS: This is the only comic/manga reading app available for webOS, sadly… Well, if the native photo app supports sorting by names, I wouldn’t even need this app! That is to say I’m not satisfied with ComicShelf HD at all, it has way too many limitations and it runs slow as hell. It can only read *.rar, *.zip, *.cbr, and *.cbz files, and they all have to be placed in only “comic” folder. The way it reads pictures is that it first have to unzip, unrar all pictures, therefore it could take a longgggggggg time if the zipped files are too big. Sadly it couldn’t read uncompressed images… And the moment you close the card, you lose your unpacked files. It has very poor support for unicode, your file name cannot include any foreign characters, otherwise they won’t be recognized. It doesn’t have a right to left mode. It doesn’t have a single page mode to split pictures if they are scanned in per page. Well, for $1.99, I didn’t lose much.

Manga Reader for webOS: This is the only comic/manga reading app available for webOS to read fan translated manga. It downloads manga from certain server, and display it. It can not read your own manga unlike ComicShelf HD. The quality on the downloaded manga (English fan translated ONLY) is very poor, texts are often heavily dithered, and the fan translated manga has way too many watermarks on them, between chapters could be from different groups. Occasionally there is also server problem? so that the manga cannot be downloaded completely. The functionality however is more polished than ComicShelf HD. For $2.99, you get to enjoy some fan translated work as much as you can.

Perfect Viewer for Android: Like the name suggests, it’s really perfect. It has ten times more features than ComicShelf HD, it runs ten times faster as well. It opens compressed *.rar, *.zip, *.cbr, and *.cbz files within seconds. It doesn’t care where your manga are placed, it recognizes unicode extremely well, even for those wrongly coded character downloading from Share/Winny.

ComicBricks for Android: It has pretty much the same function as Manga Reader for webOS, but it only downloads from Chinese website (which means majority of them are Chinese translated). Image quality is far better, but it also means files are larger. It can be used as standalone manga reading app as well, but I would rather use Perfect Viewer. ComicBricks for finding the manga, Perfect Viewer to view is the perfect combo for Android!

Printing:

As I said earlier, webOS features a very convenient printing system, it’s accessible from almost all apps. For Android, cloud printing is worth trying, as long as you have an HP eprinter or any computer that uses google Chrome on. The most annoying part is that it’s not integrated into the system, so you have to print it inside this app. Another one I’ve tried is printershare, which costs $12.99, but thankfully I got it from Amazon daily app… It works similarly as cloud printing as a standalone app. Only difference is that you don’t need google cloud service, thus no computer is required to print.

Video Player:

KalemSoft meida player for webOS: it supports a lot of more media file types than the native ones, avi, mkv, wmv just to name a few. Subtitle support is non-existent. Mkv works ok, but don’t expect to work on all of them. If everything fails, there’s always the streamer to do real-time transcoding from PC to touchpad.

Moboplayer for Android: it supports a few media file types (everything is done by soft decoding here, otherwise none will play, at least on current CM7 mod). But still it lacks good support for mpeg2 HD (ts, tp), wmv etc. The mkv appears to work, 720p appears to play a bit laggy, can’t seem to switch audio track if more than one track is included. Video doesn’t always have the correct aspect ratio. It does support subtitle for mkv, externally or internally. Some other considerations: MX video player, Diceplayer, Vital player etc.

For online video, there is no dedicated youtube app for webOS, instead you use the web browser. Crackle works pretty decent, even better ad block seems to do a good job at blocking any ads. Hulu, you have to install the patch from preware to work, and it works intermittently.

For CM7 mod, currently the youtube app sort of work, but sometimes the aspect ratio is not correct, sound cracks, lots of stuttering, buffering etc. Crakle app does not work, website access is spotty not to mention the quality is so poor…

 

Screenshot Taking:

WebOS support screenshot taking natively by holding “Power”+"Home” keys together. It even works in games. (Also by holding “Power”+"Home” keys longer than 30s, you can reboot the device, I only have to do it once for an app causing the system freezing up… But after I added CM7, I have to do this more often since the alpha release has some sleeping issue, as well as rebooting issue)

For Android, the CM7 mod has native screenshot by holding “Power” button (my LG phone doesn’t have this option). The quality is much better than webOS. Or alternatively, you can try shootme (root required, no longer available on market). It runs on background, you shake your phone and it takes pictures.

 

Twitter:

Spaz HD for webOS: you don’t have much choice here. Spaz HD is free, and it’s pretty much the only twitter client that’s optimized for tablet. You get all the standard functions here, including photo attachment, url shortening. I wish it can let you choose the width of column since I really only need two columns, but it enforces you to use three columns…

Glimpse for webOS: For $5, you get tons of tools in one card. And twitter is one of the many available tools. The interface closely resembles the official twitter webpage. All the major functions are there.

RSS Reader:

NomNomNom for webOS: My favorite webOS app. It revolutionizes the way I read RSS feeds. The card system works extremely well for pulling feeds with pictures and texts. I can get way more contents than the google reader way, but I also get lots more junk information… The only thing it’s missing is an integrated web browser to take you to the original site by directly clicking on the feed. It’s pointless to blow up the feed if it’s the same content, the “Get More Content” is not functioning well.

Google Reader for Android: Nothing to comment here, just wish that they could bring two panes back when they have a tablet version. With this I spent far less time reading than NomNomNom since I’m more selective by just reading the title.

Taptu for Android: OK, I’ve finally found the alternative to NomNomNom on Android platform. Taptu works similar. The difference is that NomNomNom shows three cards at a time, but taptu here shows a lot more. I still prefer NomNomNom though as you can read the entire feed.