Xiaomi Redmi Note - Part 2

Despite my fondness of my new Xiaomi Redmi Note phone, there are still some deficiencies which I will highlight in this second post.

Slow Order Processing

I made my order for the phone on 2014-08-05 (Tuesday). The phone was delivered on 2014-08-14 (Thursday), a whopping 9 days later! This is just too slow!

In most of my internet purchases, goods that are shipped via air are typically delivered within 1 week. As Xiaomi does not have brick and mortar stores, they really need to invest more in their logistics operation. They should take a leaf from Amazon operations, which can typically ship goods much faster than Xiaomi, despite the fact that Amazon ships from USA, while Xiaomi is shipping from Hong Kong.

Flip Case Was Not What I Expected

When I made my order for the Redmi Note, I also ordered both a soft case as well as a flip case. While the soft case meets my expectation, I was extremely disappointed with the flip case.

The main problem with the flip case is that unlike other flip cases that I have bought for my first Samsung Galaxy S and my Shanzhai phone, the Redmi Note flip case uses ADHESIVE to adhere the phone to the case!

The problem is that if you want to change the battery, or insert a different microSD card, you must then peel the phone from the flip case adhesive! According to the pamphlet that came with the flip case packaging, the ADHESIVE can be re-used 300 times. But I don't buy this bullshit. Almost every kind of glue hardens and lose their stickiness after a while, particularly in the hot and humid weather we have in Singapore. Also, the main idea with having interchangeable cases is to change them. Suppose I want to switch from my flip case back to my soft case. Once I peel my phone from the flip case, the flip case adhesive will be unprotected and exposed to the air. Exposure to air will cause the adhesive to lose its stickiness even faster. This adhesive design makes the flip case unsuitable for interchangeable use.

Unfortunately, because all the flip cases I have used previously do not use adhesive, I was under the impression that the Redmi Note flip case would be the same. So I was very disappointed on receiving the package to learn that Xiaomi has decided to cut corners and use this kind of sub-standard design for their flip case.

I subsequently went to the Xiaomi web site, and saw that although they made no mention that the Redmi Note flip case uses this cheap and lousy adhesive bonding, the flip case for the Mi 3 uses the same cheap and lousy adhesive bonding, and which is documented in the Xiaomi web site.

http://store.mi.com/sg/item/3141000008

If you are considering buying the Redmi Note, take my advice and just buy the soft case. Don't waste your money on the flip case. It is a very disappointing piece of accessory from Xiaomi.

Non-Standard Micro USB Connector

I wasn't aware of it at first, because my existing micro USB cables which I was using for charging my Samsung Galaxy S phone, Samsung Galaxy Note tablet, and the Shanzhai phone, could also be used to charge the Redmi Note. Until one day when I realised that although the cable was "connected", it was not charging the Redmi Note. Apparently, I had touched the cable just a smidgen, and that effectively dislodge the seating of the micro USB connector.

I then became aware that the micro-USB connector always appear to be "loose" when plugged into the Redmi Note, unlike the very snug fit with all my other Android devices. When I examined the Redmi Note phone, I realised that the socket is actually a rectangle instead of trapezium shape as on all my other smart phones.

It turns out that whereas almost every Android phone uses the Micro B USB connector, the Redmi Note actually houses a USB socket that supports both the Micro B USB as well as the Micro A USB connector.

The Micro B USB connector used by almost every Android phone manufacturer.

The Micro A USB connector, which can also used for the Redmi Note.

Because the Redmi Note socket has to accommodate both types of connectors, the side effect is that it actually makes using the Micro B USB cable a looser fit! Unfortunately, the cable that Xiaomi provides is also an industry standard Micro B USB cable. This makes me wonder why in the world did Xiaomi decide to use a Micro A+B USB socket on the phone in the first place?

Bug

Although the MIUI is at version 5 (the phone is currently running version MIUI-JHDMIBF29.0), I have encountered a bug that require the phone to be shutdown and restarted.

I have a 2G SIM card which I used for making voice calls, and a 3G SIM card which I use for mobile data. The 3G SIM card is provided with a monthly allotment of 1 GB of free mobile data, so I only wish to use it for internet surfing. However, the 3G card can also make voice calls and send SMS, but these are not free. Unfortunately, if I leave the 3G card in standby mode, I keep receiving spam SMSes, and also spam voice calls, which are chargeable. Thus, to avoid paying for these spam voice calls on the 3G SIM card, I always disable the 3G SIM card if I do not need to use the 3G card to access the internet.

Thus, if I need to use the 3G  SIM card to access the internet, I will first enable the 3G SIM card, then enable mobile data. When I have finished surfing the internet, I will disable mobile data, and then disable the 3G SIM card.

However, many a time, when I disable the 3G SIM card, I will also effectively cut out the 2G signal, as if I had also disabled the 2G SIM card. The phone will then not be able to receive SMSes and voice calls on the 2G SIM card. I tried to "re-enable" the 2G SIM card, but the phone will show that the 2G SIM card has not been disabled. But there is nothing I can do to re-enable the 2G network through the Settings app. The only way to restore the 2G signal is to reboot the phone.

Because I normally use wi-fi to access the internet, this is not so problematic. But the 3 times I had to enable the 3G SIM card to access the internet using mobile data, I ended up having to reboot the phone so that I can restore the 2G voice service after I disabled just the 3G SIM card.

I don't have this problem with the Shanzhai phone, where I can always disable the 3G SIM card without affecting the voice network on the 2G SIM card. This problem only occurs with the Redmi Note.

Perhaps the new MIUI version 6 will resolve this problem. However, I don't know whether the Redmi Note will be getting MIUI 6, although by all indications, it will be available. This is one good thing about Xiaomi. Customers are constantly receiving new versions of the MIUI software. This is unlike Asus or Samsung, who do not provide firmware updates even to relatively new devices.

Xiaomi Redmi Note

I recently bought the Xiaomi Redmi Note smartphone from the Xiaomi Singapore site (http://www.mi.com/sg/note/). Although at S$199, the phone is considered a "budget" (read cheap) phone, I don't have many complaints with it. I mean, it's S$199, man! What premium features do you want! Anyone who harbours deep-seated grievances about missing features or features they consider inferior to those on competing phones should just go and buy the competitors' phone and be done with it. My personal opinion is that despite some minor issues, the Redmi Note is absolute value for money. If you are not too picky, you won't regret it. At S$199, the Redmi Note is very good! Period.

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Super difficult to buy the phone from Xiaomi's website

Of course, nothing in this world is perfect. Although the pictures of Xiaomi's phones usually display the caption "Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen", it is terribly ironic that you will not get this feeling while trying to buy the phone from their website.

At incredible bargain prices, Xiaomi's phones are always sold out within minutes when they are put up for sale at the Xiaomi's website. When the Redmi Note was introduced to Singapore 6 weeks ago (8 July 2014), they sold out a batch of 5000 Redmi Notes within 42 seconds when sales were opened at 12 noon (link). This was to be repeated over the next few weeks, as Xiaomi appeared to be bringing in 5000 Redmi Notes every Tuesday. I know because I was trying to get one, and failed the first 4 times. I was lucky that on my 5th try on 5 August 2014, I finally beat the internet hordes and managed to ensnare a Redmi Note.

For the moment, this is a great marketing tactic for the company. There is a huge demand for cheap and good smartphones. By restricting supply to 5000 units every week, the 5000 units are guaranteed to be sold out each and every time. Supposing that Xiaomi continue doing this for 52 weeks, Xiaomi will be able to sell 52 x 5000 = 260,000 units in 1 year. Is this level of demand realistic? Perhaps. I don't know. It may be much higher. 

However, I do know that if users keep failing to buy the phone from Xiaomi's website, the users may feel jaded, and finally give up on acquiring a Xiaomi phone, and simply buy a competitor's phone instead. I think this is bound to happen. Already, phone makers like Asus and ZTE are starting to sell budget phones in the same market segment that the Redmi Note currently occupies. At the moment, Asus and ZTE budget phones cannot match the price/value ratio of Xiaomi's phones. But a new competitor might be able to do so. When that happens, this will be an interesting area to watch. 

Xiaomi can sell phones at incredibly low prices because they have very low overheads. You seldom see them advertise their phone in the newspapers or traditional media. They get their advertising for free because editorial blogs/websites and news organisations are giving them free publicity by telling the world how affordable their phones are for the hardware specs they are providing. And Xiaomi have earned very good word of mouth from their customers. With low prices and high end specs, the phones generate a very good feeling among the extremely satisfied customers, who then go on to spread the gospel to the rest of the public. It is really the Apple iPhone phenomenon all over again.

However, this playbook can be copied by a new player. And I hope someone does. Personally, I think phones selling at S$998 (Samsung Galaxy S5) is ridiculous. That is just too expensive. I think S$500 to S$600 is about right for a high-end phone. For S$1000, a premium phone ought to be made of diamond or some rare element.

However, when a single company have tremendous success selling a budget phone like the Redmi Note, the competitors get skewed into thinking that the hardware features on the Redmi Note is the standard, and their own budget phones ought to match the exact same standards. This is flawed, but because of the incredible market success of Xiaomi, the competitors become blindsided into doing exactly the same thing that Xiaomi is doing, instead of offering even more competitive budget phones!

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Hardware

Let's Talk Specs

If you are making/selling a smartphone, what areas should you focus on?

• Should you concentrate on fast CPU processing? Which is more important: a higher GHz but lesser CPU cores, or slower GHz but more CPU cores?

• Should you concentrate on long battery life? Is a 2000 mAH battery sufficient, or a 3100 mAH battery?

• Is the display important? What constitutes a good display? A large screen? A high resolution?

• How much focus should you spent on camera technology? Is 8 mega-pixel adequate? Or should you go the whole hog for 13 mega-pixel shooters?

• How much storage should the phone provide?

• How much RAM should the phone have?

• What other components should make up the phone?

CPU

The Redmi Note comes with a 1.7 GHz Eight-Core Mediatek MT6592 CPU. 

If you are making a budget phone, I think this is a good enough CPU. I think that buyers of budget phones primarily needs a device that is more phone than computer. Thus, high GHz speed or high number of CPU cores might be overkill. However, the CPU must provide a good UI response when doing swiping motions - a bugbear of Android which still "stutters" despite the Project Butter enhancements made to Android 4.1. A slower CPU mars the UI experience.

I have found the Redmi Note to be quite responsive using Google Now voice search, Google Maps, internet browsing, and general swiping. But I notice the phone tends to get warm when using Google Maps with GPS and Navigation. My Shanzhai phone with a single core 1.2 GHz CPU doesn't generate as much warmness, but it isn't as responsive the the Redmi Note.

Competitors of budget phones should offer similar performance as the Redmi Note. But I don't think most users can discern slight differences in CPU performance. In real life, most Android apps require internet access, so internet speed is actually more critical than a minor speed improvement in the CPU.  

Battery Life

The 3100 mAH battery in the Redmi Note is awesome. In standby mode with just one SIM card activated (for 2G voice calls) and wifi enabled, I notice a 1% drop in battery level after every 2 hours. This is quite good.

I love removable batteries. I like the fact that users can self replace a dead battery with a new one, without having to send the phone to a servicing centre to have the dead battery replaced. 

However, I wish that all manufacturers making phones with user replaceable batteries would standardise on the battery form factor. It is already the year 2014. Why can't manufacturers just standardise on the smartphone battery form factor, just like the standards we have in AA and AAA batteries? Then, a battery pack can be interchangeable between Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, and the myriad of Android shanzhai brands out in the market. Proprietary battery packs are bad simply because they are proprietary.

Many years ago, phone chargers came in all shapes and sizes. The EU got together, and force the different phone manufacturers to standardise on the micro-USB interface for charging the phone. Now, you can use the same micro-USB cable to charge almost every modern Android smartphone, which is a boon to everyone, as well as the environment.

Likewise, someone should do something about standardising smartphone batteries. If Google and the major phone manufacturers can do something about it, they could agree to a common standard on the form factors of batteries. For example, there will be fix form factors for batteries for phones, tablets, notebooks. Batteries will be interchangeable between different manufacturers phones, tablets, and notebooks. Innovation is allowed where the same phone battery form factor can be used to pack different mAH capacities. Thus, the same phone battery form factor may come in capacities of 1000 mAH, 2000 mAH, or 3100 mAH (the capacity of the Redmi Note battery). 

LCD Display

If you are making a budget phone, I think a high-resolution LCD display is superfluous. I think a cheap display with 160 dpi resolution density is adequate. If you think 160 dpi is too low resolution, go up to 300 dpi. Anything higher is really overkill for budget phones.

Screens with higher resolutions are more expensive to make. If a display has more pixels, it draws more power, runs hotter, and also reduces battery life. Besides, can the human eye really discern images at 300 dpi? 

Competitors should not compete on pixel resolution, but on display attributes like large viewing angles, good brightness control to allow easy readability under direct sunlight, good colour reproduction. 

The Redmi Note's 1280 x 720 resolution, 5.5" IPS screen (267 dpi), is a good compromise. My Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) tablet with its ridiculously high 2560 x 1600 resolution, 10.1" screen (299 dpi) is drawing too much battery, making the tablet runs shorter per battery charge than it need to. It can only run about 8 hours per full charge. For comparison, the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 with its 1900 x 1200 resolution, 10.1" screen (224 dpi) can last an astounding 18 hours. Just simply because the Lenovo Yoga doesn't need to waste so much battery on the power draining LCD screen.

Camera

One of the things that drew me to the Redmi Note is its 13 mega-pixel rear camera. 

However, the few photos that I have taken with this camera is not impressive. Even photos taken under good sunlight looks grainy. I have photos taken with a 4.5 mega-pixel Fuji digital camera that looks better than the 13 mega-pixel shooter of the Redmi Note.

Just because the camera has 13 million pixels doesn't mean pictures taken will be good. In actual fact, the size of each of this pixels might be more important than the total number of pixels. If the pixels are larger, then more light can be collected by the pixel, which may result in a better photo overall. If the pixels are smaller, less light falls on the pixel, which results in poorer photographs.

I am not impressed by the photos taken by the 13 mega-pixel rear camera, or the 5 mega-pixel front camera. Perhaps this deficiency in the Redmi Note can be addressed by a software update of the camera app. I understand that Google Nexus phones/tablets also suffer from poor photos initially, which were subsequently fixed by a software update. I am not sure if Xiaomi has the capability to improve on the graininess through a firmware update. I doubt it.

Unfortunately, there is a flaw in the default Camera app that comes with the Redmi Note. Photos are saved in the Phone Storage area, which is ridiculous. After installing many of the Android apps, I only have about 2 GB free in the internal Phone Storage area. However, I have large swathes of free storage on my 32GB SD card. But the Camera app cannot be configured to change the default save location from the Phone Storage to the SD Card!

Luckily, I have previously purchased the Camera Zoom FX Premium app from the Google Play Store, and this 3rd party camera app allows me to configure the default save location.

My friend owns a Redmi 1 phone (the first version, not the Redmi 1S). I checked her Redmi 1 contents, and was surprised to see that on her Redmi 1, the Camera app saves the photos on her SD Card! 

I don't know why the default Camera app doesn't allow users to change the default save location to the more sensible 32 GB SD card. I suspect that Xiaomi is just using the default stock Android Camera app written by Google, and we all know that Google just doesn't like users to access cheap SD cards storage (all Google's Nexus devices do not provide external SD card slots). I hope that in future, Xiaomi would provide their own camera app that users can configure the default save location. But if they don't, it is still possible to overcome this problem through 3rd party apps like Camera Zoom FX or special MIUI patches (link).

Storage

The Redmi Note comes with 8 GB of internal storage. 

Personally, I think that even for budget phones, 8 GB is insufficient. I think that 32 GB should be the minimum storage.

I do not understand why in this day and age, phones still come with so little internal storage. Is there a gouging exercise going on? 

The cost of a Class-10 32 GB SD card is a mere S$20. Class-10 cards presumes a write-speed of 10 MBps (megabytes per second). The same capacity 32GB card with a faster write speed of 90 MBps sells for S$70, while a 32GB card with a write speed of 280 MBps sells for S$160. I presume that for internal storage, manufacturers must be using flash memory at the highest speeds, and may be using the type with 280 MBps write speed. Since this is very expensive, they resort to giving the minimal internal storage, which is why only 8 GB internal storage is provided.

I would think that with the volume of smartphones being sold, the price of such fast flash memory should have dropped significantly by now. But it didn't. So phones and tablets still come with low internal storage space.

This is why the microSD card slot is a godsend, and a requisite for every budget phone. 

Unfortunately, to keep the price down, the microSD card slot in the Redmi Note can only support SD cards up to 32 GB capacity. It would be nice if the slot supported SD cards up to 64 GB or even 128 GB capacities.

Despite Google's insistence on not having SD card slots, and they always recommend users to save their data in the cloud, the reality is that mobile internet charges is extremely expensive. In Singapore, a phone plan with 2 GB of mobile data costs S$40 per month. Excess data is charged at S$10 per GB, making it very expensive to use cloud storage. If a phone has only 8 GB of internal storage and no SD card slot, just retrieving 2 GB of files from the cloud via mobile internet will bust the bundled mobile data capacity for the month. With an SD card slot, you can always buy a cheap Class-4 SD card and carry around all the files you will need in the SD card. Since budget phones are typically targeted at consumers who are not as well off, cheap SD cards make absolute sense as compared to paying for expensive mobile data.

Besides, many new Android apps are very storage hungry. Some games have asset files as large as 2 GB. Most videos - especially movie length films in high-definition - are about 1 to 2 GB. Thus, the hunger for more storage space is never satiated. Buyers of budget phones are often taking public transport, and during long commutes to and from work, they will use the commuting time to watch videos. The SD card slot allows the phone owner to store more videos on the phone itself, and not have to juggle with the limited internal storage space on most phones by deleting old files to make room for new ones constantly.

All budget phones must come with SD card slots because of the above reasons. The Redmi Note only supports 32 GB SD cards. Competitors should come up with budget phones that support higher SD card capacities.

RAM

I am very surprised that the Redmi Note came with 2 GB of RAM. I am not complaining of course. More RAM allows more apps to stay resident, and makes the Android OS run more fluidly.

Thus, budget phones from competitors that only come with 1 GB of RAM will be threatened by the new standard that Xiaomi has set. 

I think it is not necessary to increase the RAM to 3GB or even 4 GB for phones, particularly budget phones which probably could have run pretty decently even with 1 GB RAM. But I have no issues with Xiaomi delighting it users with such a generous amount of RAM on this budget phone. There is really no downside to having 2GB of RAM on the Redmi Note.

Miscellaneous Hardware

I think miscellaneous stuff like GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, compass, proximity sensors, bluetooth, wifi hotspot tethering, USB slot with USB On-The-Go, should be standard on all phones, whether budget or premium. These should be pre-requisites.

However, I was pleasantly surprised that the Redmi Note came with FM Radio. But for a budget phone targeted at less well off consumers, FM radio makes sense. Although I seldom listen to radio nowadays, I am still happy that the choice is available should I need to.

Now, one of the reasons I bought a Redmi Note instead of the more premium Mi3 phone is because the Redmi Note comes with dual SIM slots, whereas the Mi3 has just a single SIM slot. I wanted a dual SIM phone because when I subscribed to my fibre-broadband plan, I was given a free mobile broadband SIM card with 1 GB of mobile data. By using this free mobile broadband SIM card for my mobile internet access, I can subscribe to a cheaper voice-only 2G mobile plan.

Thus, on my Redmi Note, I put my 2G voice-only SIM card in the SIM2 slot, and the 3G data-only SIM card in the SIM1 slot. As my voice plan costs me S$20 per month, with the free 1 GB of mobile broadband, I can lower my monthly telecommunication costs significantly as I don't need to subscribe to a voice+data plan - where the lowest such plans starts at S$40 per month. 

Should budget phones always be dual-SIM ones? I don't think so. But I am glad the Redmi Note has dual slots. 

Recently, Asus introduced their budget phones - the ZenPhone 4, ZenPhone 5 and the ZenPhone 6. They too are dual-SIM phones, which seem to reinstate the market sentiment that budget phones should be dual-SIM phones. 

Interestingly, the Asus ZenPhone uses micro-SIM slots, whereas the Xiaomi phones (the Redmi 1, Redmi 1S, and the Redmi Note) uses mini-SIM slots. 

I think Xiaomi is correct and Asus is wrong. If you are making a budget phone, then your target market is primarily the ones in lesser-developed economies such as India, Africa, Asia, where most people are still using the old feature phones with SIM cards that are primarily of mini-SIM form factor. 

A budget smartphone with a mini-SIM slot can thus accommodate the mini-SIM cards from the feature phones without any problems. If the customer has a micro-SIM card, the micro-SIM card can be easily fitted into a mini-SIM adapter which is then inserted into the mini-SIM slot.

For the Asus ZenPhone budget phones, because they are using mini-SIM slots, customers migrating from feature phones to the Asus phones will need to either CUT their existing mini-SIM cards to micro-SIM dimensions, or have their telco transfer their existing mini-SIM card to a micro-SIM module.

Also, in less developed countries, most mobile customers are on prepaid cards (as opposed to postpaid plans). However, most prepaid cards uses mini-SIM cards, which are again more suited to Xiaomi's budget phones than Asus's.

Personally, both my 2G voice-only SIM card and my 3G data-only SIM card are of the mini-SIM form factor. If I were to buy the Asus budget phones, I will have to either cut my existing SIM cards to the smaller dimension (a task that I do not relish), or pay S$35 per card to migrate them to micro-SIM modules. With Xiaomi's budget phones, I do not have to make any such anguishing decisions. This is one of the reasons why I did not consider getting the Asus phones at all.

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Software

MIUI Interface

The similarity of Xiaomi MIUI interface with the iPhone iOS is uncanny. I am sure if Apple had their way, they will sue Xiaomi for the look and feel. So many icons look iOS-rish.

Another thing that I do not like about MIUI is its lack of the Android App Drawer. There are several disadvantages without the App Drawer:

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Disadvantage 1

I cannot see a complete listing of all the apps and widgets that I have downloaded, and then open the app from that list.

It can be argued that if you run the Play Store app, the app will show a list of all the apps you have downloaded, and there is an [Open] button to execute the app from there. However, I discovered that the Play Store app doesn't work without an internet connection!

I then thought of the Settings > Apps option, which also list all the apps on the phone. However, Settings > Apps  doesn't allow the execution of a selected app. You can only terminate/stop its execution, or uninstall it.

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Disadvantage 2

Without the App Drawer, every application that you install will have its icon thrown in the Home Screen automatically. The problem is that only 1 icon is allowed per app. This was problematic for me because of the way I have been using Android phones.

In all my other Android devices, I need to create multiple shortcuts for the same app in many different folders.

For example, I have an app called SG Buses that provides me information about public bus routes and services.

I created a shortcut to this app in a folder called "Transport",  which also groups other shortcuts like Google Maps , Singapore Map (previously called Singapore Street Directory), and MyTransport Singapore .

However, I also created a second shortcut to the SG Buses app in a folder called "Singapore", which also groups shortcuts to all apps that are Singapore related (e.g. AsiaOne News, Channel News Asia etc). With most Android launchers that uses an App Drawer, multiple shortcuts to the same app can be created, and this suits me to a tee.

Also, some auxiliary apps that is very seldom used can be left out of the home screen completely. Should I need to execute these apps, I can just open the App Drawer and then execute it from there. I can thus maintain a very organised and clean Home Screen.

Without an App Drawer, the MIUI causes a problem because I can only put the icon in one folder. Then the categorisation problem starts. Should I put the Google Maps icon in the "Google" folder, or should I put it in the "Transport" folder? I can't have both like I use to.

I find this very irritating and am not used to it.

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Luckily, Android allows you to use different launchers if you are not satisfy with the default launcher. I am currently still using the MIUI launcher with the Redmi Note. However, I may switch to an alternate launcher that includes a proper App Drawer in the future.

Someone published an AppDrawer app for MIUI. Although this app displays a list of all installed apps which can then be executed, AppDrawer is unable to create multiple shortcuts. Thus, it is still not a panacea for the missing App Drawer in MIUI.

Lock Widget / Power Off Widget

The power button on my old Shanzhai phone became flaky, and it sometimes became very tricky to turn on or turn off the phone (you must depress the power button in the right way...). It was also difficult to turn off the screen by quickly depressing the power button.

I found a Lock Screen widget that allows me to click on a widget icon to turn off the screen. However, I couldn't find a Power Off widget or app that allows me to click on a icon to shutdown the phone. There were some in the Google Play Store, but every single one of them requires rooting the Shanzhai phone. And one of the problems that I had with the Shanzhai phone is that I cannot find any information about rooting that no-name Android phone, so all these apps or widgets that require root access are out.

Interestingly, the  Redmi Note has built-in Lock and Power Off toggles that can be activated either from the Toggle Notification Shade, or placed as shortcuts on the Home Screens. 

Thus, MIUI allows me to simply tap on an icon to quickly lock the phone, or to shut it down completely, all without requiring rooting the phone, or downloading a 3rd party app from the Play Store. And something that I just couldn't do (power off via an icon) on all my other Android devices is a built-in function on my Xiaomi phone.

Alarm will ring even if phone is shut down

I read about this from the internet, and verified this to be true. If the Redmi Note is shutdown, it will automatically power on and then play the alarm sound at the preset time.

Neat!

Amusing/Amazing Tools

The "Tools" folder contains a number of useful apps. The interesting thing about many of the tools is the skeuomorphic designs of some of them that make them look like iPhone apps. 

The "FM Radio" app looks like a white iPod.

The "Recorder" app has this very nifty animation of a cassette tape being wound when recording or playback takes places.

However, all the tools are useful. 

The "Explorer" app has a built-in [FTP] button. If you click this [FTP] button, an FTP URL address will be displayed on the phone. You can copy this address into an FTP program running on your PC to allow you to use a PC FTP client program to copy files to or from the PC to the phone. 

The "Torch" app can actually be invoked from the lock screen by simply holding the Home button.

The "Calculator" app looks like an iPhone calculator. It has a "Basic" mode, which is adequate. However, you can switch it to this weird "Scientific" mode, that is not quite there. For example:

• there is [sin], [cos] and [tan] buttons, but no [arcsin], [arccos] and [arctan] buttons
• the [sin], [cos] and [tan] buttons only allow you to specify radians. You cannot specify angles in degrees/minutes/seconds
• there are no [hyp] buttons
• there are [ln] and [log] buttons, but only [e] and no [10^x] buttons.
• there is no [M], [MR] or [MC] buttons. You can't save any intermediate results into "memory".
• there is no [+/-] button to change the sign of a number. If you try to key in a negative number like -123, the screen always show "0-123".

I really don't know why they bother with a deficient "Scientific" mode when there are plenty of good calculator apps in the Google Play Store (for example, Real Calc). Perhaps this is a stopgap for their China market, because in China, users are blocked by the government from accessing the Google Play Store. However, the "Scientific" mode is really useless with the lack of memory functions to store intermediate results. Most people who need to use a scientific calculator will simply not find this useful at all. I don't understand why the scientific calculator has not been improved.

Software Support

However, the MIUI launcher is actually a very nice piece of work. And I think Xiaomi is learning the Apple lesson extremely well, and is thus becoming just as successful as Apple.

One of the major problems with vendors like Asus and Samsung is their lack of software support. For Asus, I was very disappointed when they stopped providing updates for the Asus TF300 tablet. Hence, although Asus is a company that worked hand in hand with Google to make the Nexus 7 tablet, they simply stopped updating their older Asus lines at Android 4.2. There is no news about the important Android 4.3 update, which fixes a fundamental flaw in Android 4.2 and earlier (the missing TRIM support for SD cards. Because Android 4.2 and earlier does not implement TRIM, data that is supposedly erased from an SD card is actually still extant in the SD card, and will continue to occupy space despite reporting to the system that the so called "erased" space is freed. Ultimately, the operating system will crash because the SD card cannot be physically written to, even though the OS sees the SD card space as available. Only reformatting the SD card will actually perform a true "erase" and reclaim the storage.

Samsung is just as bad in terms of software support. I have a pretty high end Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) Edition tablet, but it only runs Android 4.3 instead of the much faster and more optimised Android 4.4 (KitKat). There is practically no news about a firmware update for the tablet to update it to Android 4.4, so I guess there won't be any, just like for Asus. 

In both cases, new devices from Asus and Samsung comes with Android 4.4. Asus and Samsung will just not update their older devices from Android 4.2 to the latest version of Android. I guess they want their customers to buy a new device with the latest Android version. Well, I guess the customers will have to buy new devices then. But for me, I will not be buying products from Asus or Samsung anymore seeing that they do not provide any software upgrades for their hardware.

I am cautiously optimistic that Xiaomi is not as bad as Asus and Samsung in software support. Firstly, I like many of the facilities provided by Xiaomi on their Redmi Note phone. Things like FTP support in the "Explorer" app, Lock and Power Off widgets, a highly customisable launcher, alarms that work even when the phone has been shut down. These really appeal to geeky users like me. 

The MIUI launcher is now at version 6 (currently under beta testing for official release in September), and can  be installed on many older Xiaomi devices. Xiaomi really takes care of their early customers with their first generation devices - ensuring that new firmware updates can still be applied to such old devices. This is completely unlike Asus or Samsung which have basically abandon providing firmware updates to devices that are merely 1 or 2 years old, even when the 1 or 2 year old devices have the hardware resources to support a firmware update. 

Both Asus and Samsung makes lots and lots of device variants, and therefore cannot dedicate much time to a single variant. Xiaomi, like Apple, makes only a few device variants, and therefore can spend more time testing their firmware for the few devices they make. Apple do this because they sell their iPhones at very high mark ups and profits, and people who pay top dollar for the iPhone will want a top dollar experience. Xiaomi makes much lower profit as they don't make ridiculously high mark ups like Apple, but still aim to deliver good experiences for their customers despite their customers buying lower end (non-premium) phones like the Redmi Note. And software support such as frequent firmware updates is a great marketing tools for ensuring customer loyalty and repeat sales.

Galaxy Note Tablet - Update

After using my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) tablet for 2 months, I've put together a list of issues with this tablet that mars its otherwise outstanding design.

1. Takes too long to charge

It takes slightly more than 8 hours to charge the device. 

When the battery level reaches 15%, the device will typically shutdown to prevent damage to the lithium-ion battery (li-on batteries can be permanently damaged if their battery level is allow to drop to 0%).  I have charged the battery from 15% to 100% many times, and in almost all cases, it takes slightly more than 8 hours to reach 100%. 

Now, this is ridiculous because the tablet itself typically offers about 8 hours of usage. In other words, it takes just as long to charge it as it takes to discharge it. This is absolutely not okay for a tablet.

With my previous Asus tablet, it only takes 1 hour to charge from 15% to 100%. I can then use my tablet on wi-fi for close to 9 hours. Unfortunately, the Asus tablet uses a proprietary power charger connector, and Asus sells the charger for $69 (price gouging - as typical of Asus).  

With the Galaxy Note, Samsung uses a micro-USB connector for charging, which is better than the proprietary connector. Unfortunately, Samsung provided a USB 2.0 interface instead of a USB 3.0 interface, and this is the problem.

Because of the outstanding hardware on the Galaxy Note (3 GB RAM, outrageous 2560x1440 screen, Exynos 8-core CPU etc), the Galaxy Note comes with a massive 8200 mAH battery to satisfy all this power draining components. Unfortunately, the USB 2.0 interface restricts the current to just 1A, or 1000mA. If the charger can only at charge 1000mA, it will take slightly more than 8 hours to fully charge a 8200 mAH battery. 

If Samsung has adopted a USB 3.0 interface, the interface will allow the charging current to be increased to 1.5A (ie. 1500 mA). Theoretically, this should reduce the charging time to 5 hours, which is admittedly not a lot in terms of time saved, but which is still better than the 8 hours to fully charge the tablet, which is the case now. 

Unfortunately, there is no company in the world right now that offers a design that incorporates USB charging connectors (versus proprietary connector) with fast charging. Just imagine - if the charging current can be increased to 5A (or 5000mA) - then the 8200mAH battery can be fully charged in just 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, despite the massive hardware engineering department that Samsung possesses, it is not able to provide this kind of engineering. Instead, Samsung focuses their hardware engineering on things like more pixels on LCDs, more pixels on camera lenses, bendable LCD screens, more cores on their Exynos CPUs etc. It is a crying shame they have not improve on the battery power technology.

In the future, when consumer electronics become even more commoditised, I think the differentiating marker between different manufacturers of such commodity stuff like tablets or phones will be the battery technology. If you can perform a full charge from 15% to 100% in one hour, and then use the tablet for up to 20 hours, that would be amazing. 

Charging cable is too short

On a side note, the included charging cable is only 1 metre long. Trust me, 1 metre is too short.

Ideally, the charging cable should be at least 2 metres. Samsung used to offer chargers with 2 metre long cables (I have such a charger which came with my Samsung Galaxy S-LCD phone). However, the Galaxy Note tablet comes with a truncated 1 metre cable, probably in the name of costs savings. It is unfortunate because I ended up paying $10 to buy a 2-metre micro-USB cable so that I can charge the tablet in a more convenient environment.

2. Unresponsive User Interface

Although the Samsung tablet comes with a massive 3 GB of RAM, a fast Exynos octa-core CPU, and Android 4.3, the user interface still "stutters" and lags.

Obviously, this is down to the customisations in Samsung's Touchwiz interface that has been much derided in the IT world. Samsung wants to hide the Android interface completely (there is no other explanation for why they offer exact duplicates of what Android is already offering - what with extraneous functions like S-Voice, S-Finder that replicates Google Now, a Samsung App Hub that replicates Google Play etc), and Touchwiz was their solution. Unfortunately, Touchwiz is not well written, and slows down the performance of the tablet itself. If Touchwiz is not such a resource hog, and does not impact performance on such a high-spec machine, people would not complain. But it isn't, and hence the derision.

Actually, there are many interesting stuff in Touchwiz. I especially like the multi-tasking view which allows running 2 apps side by side. It is most unfortunate that all this features cannot be optimised to provide a "fast and fluid" interface that the Android Jelly Bean update was all about.

3. Lousy Clock Chip

I discovered that the Samsung tablet has a very lousy clock chip. I have only been using the tablet for just 2 months, and already, the internal clock has slowed down by a massive 5 minutes. On my Asus tablet, the clock was off by only 1 minute after years of use.

Some people claim that if the internal clock is wrong, it affects the reading of the GPS. Not sure if this is true, but I seldom use GPS on the tablet, so GPS is not a concern. However, in this day and age, I do not expect clocks to keep such lousy time. Samsung prides itself on things like smartphones and smartwatches. Yet the clock on this tablet loses 5 minutes after just 2 months?

On my Windows notebook, Microsoft has a function that automatically sets the computer time to that from an atomic clock on the internet. This is very useful on many older PCs/notebooks whose internal clock battery have been completely depleted. Although the computer will start up with the clock set to 1 January 1980, I only need to configure the PC to run an atomic clock synchronisation command during startup to automatically synchronise the PC's internal clock, and everything will be right as rain. 

When I look at the Android settings on the Samsung tablet, there is no function to synchronise the internal clock with an atomic clock over the internet. The only way to change the clock is to do so manually.

I decided to download an app to synchronise the internal clock with an "NTP server" (Network Time Protocol server). I installed one called Smart Time Sync from Masterco. However, when I tried to run the app's function to synchronise the internal clock, an error message popped up saying that because "root access" is not available, I need to change the internal clock's time manually.

This is rather stupid, don't you think? Even with Windows, I will be able to synchronise the internal clock with the NTP server using an app despite not running as Administrator. Yet with Android, I need "root" to allow a clock app to synchronise the time.

Unfortunately, because Samsung does not provide the capability to synchronise the clock with an external time server, this has become another minus. 

But why "root" access?

But why should installing "root" access void the warranty? This isn't the case with Windows PC, where owners have the right to run as "Administrator" to install any software they like on the PC. Why should a tablet be any different?

Indeed, I think power users should be allowed to install "root" access to make the tablet more like a PC. Having "root" shouldn't void any hardware warranties on the tablet. Although this is not the case with Samsung, perhaps in the future, other manufacturers may make this a "feature" and selling point on their tablets. Why buy a "restricted" tablet from Samsung when a competitor is selling a less restrictive one?

My Shanzhai (山寨) Android Phone

I was  at the Singapore Expo for the last day of the Sitex Show last Sunday (25 Nov 2012). I was shopping for a new Windows 8 notebook to replace my existing Windows 7 Asus notebook. However, all Windows 8 notebooks with touchscreens at the show (whether from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, or HP) were ultrabooks with a miserly 128 GB SSD. I was surprised that not a single manufacturer offered a magnetic disk storage option! If I were to buy a new notebook, it must have  at least 1 TB storage space, and the small capacity SSDs simply won't cut it.

Also, none of the touchscreens were larger than 13". If I am upgrading from my existing Windows 7 notebook, I will need a new notebook that has at least a 15.6"  touchscreen (my Asus notebook has a 16" screen). None of the notebooks met this criteria either.

After trying out all the different models at the show, I have decided that the only screen mechanism that is acceptable to me is the one used by the XPS 12 from Dell. As I already own an Asus Transformer TF300 tablet, I know that it is actually very awkward to use the touchscreen in a vertical position. When I use a Windows 8 notebook as a tablet, I want the screen to lie flat horizontally. Only the Dell XPS 12 with its rotatable screen will allow the notebook to be used as a slate (with the screen lying flat over the keyboard). Both Acer and Asus uses the Transformer Pad mechanism (screen is detached from the keyboard dock when used as a tablet), which is not what I want because I will have to carry the keyboard dock separately. The Lenovo's Yoga mechanism allows the screen to be folded 360 degrees all the way round towards the back of the keyboard when transformed to a slate. But when you carry the slate, you will be touching the keys on the keyboard, which feels rather awkward. In my opinion, only Dell's convertible screen makes sense for using the notebook as a slate.

As none of the Windows 8 notebooks meet my requirements currently, there was no point in getting a Windows 8 notebook this year. Perhaps there will be more choices next year.

The Shanzhai Phone

One of the stalls were selling an imitation Android phone that looked like a Samsung Galaxy Note. It caught my fancy because it was a dual-SIM phone, and it was dirt cheap. So instead of a Windows 8 notebook, I bought a pretty good looking shanzhai phone for just S$250. The package included:

• Dual-SIM Phone
• 5" AMOLED screen 480 x 800 resolution (with 5 point multi-touch)
• 1 GHz Cortex A7 single core CPU
• Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS - includes the Google Play store
• Front and Rear cameras including Rear LED flash
• GPS
• FM Radio - doesn't require using earpiece as antenna
• 2GB internal storage and 32GB micro-SD slot
• 512 MB RAM
• Removable battery - two Li-ion batteries (3200 mAH) included in the package
• Free hands free kit
• Free screen protector
• Free phone casing (diary type)
• Free stylus
• Samsung Galaxy Note lookalike packaging

Notice that the phone is literally called the "Android Note".

This is the front.

This is the back. Notice the "Android" brand.

The phone chassis resembles the Samsung Galaxy Note 1.

Recently, one of my friends was inquiring about the Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos - a dual SIM phone. I found that the shops were selling this phone for S$270 (without contract). However, the Galaxy Ace Duos is only running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), and the price did not include the freebies like the extra battery, free screen protector, free phone case and free stylus.

As the phone is dual-SIM, I can put my voice SIM card in slot 1, and my data SIM card in slot 2:

Note that only slot 2 supports a GSM/3G SIM card. Slot 1 supports a plain GSM SIM card only.

Apparently, you can enable both SIM cards to be active concurrently.
However, you can configure one SIM as the default for making Voice Calls (calling out).
Likewise, although both SIMs can receive SMS messages concurrently, you can configure one SIM as the default for sending them (Messaging).

General Impression

For such a low price, I was quite impressed with the package. I was okay with the low resolution screen, the low-spec CPU and low RAM  as my main intention is to use this phone primarily for voice calls, and for it to provide an internet hotspot for my Asus 10.1" tablet. I don't intend to run resource intensive programs on this phone, so the performance of the phone was quite acceptable. However, it is definitely much slower than my Asus tablet, which sports a Tegra 3 quad-core CPU at 1.4 GHz and has 1 GB of RAM.

However, there are some noticeable defects/limitations, but which I have accepted and will live with.

"Buzzing" Noise coming from the speaker

The built-in speaker has a slight defect. Whenever a sound file is played, the speaker will always output some unwanted buzzing noise. I turned off touch tones and keyboard audio feedback because I didn't like this buzzing noise. I don't know if this is a hardware problem.

No Firmware Upgradeability

There is no menu option to update the firmware from Android 4.0.3, because there is no software support. The manufacturer is unidentified, and there isn't any support web site. This phone is truly a "what you see is what you get" deal. Luckily, Android 4.0.3 is quite mature, and is way better than the Android 2.3 on my Samsung Galaxy S phone.

If I really want to update the firmware, I will probably have to install it myself using say a CynogenMod. However, I probably won't bother.

Although there is no signs anywhere on who was the manufacturer, I learnt of a useful Android app called the Android System Info by ElectricSheep that displays some useful information about the CPU. According to the Android System Info app, the manufacturer of this phone is indicated as "Alps". I think "Alps" is referring to the company Alps Electric, which appears to be some Japanese company specialising in the manufacture of all kinds of electrical and electronic components, including components for mobile phones.

No Chinese Handwriting Keyboard 

Although this phone is made in China, it doesn't come with a free Chinese handwriting keyboard app. Both my Samsung Galaxy S phone and my Asus Transformer TF300 tablet came with free Chinese handwriting software.

Can only switch between 3 Keyboards

Although I downloaded a few alternative keyboards, when I want to switch to another keyboard, the system will only show me 3 keyboards to choose from. Since the Android stock keyboard and the Android Chinese Pin Yin keyboard is always available, I have to deactivate SwiftKey 3 to enable the Swype keyboard as the 3rd and last choice.

I prefer Swype over Swiftkey 3.

Gallery app doesn't see newly added image files

On my Asus tablet (running Android 4.1.2), the Gallery app is quite responsive, and always show newly added JPG files. On the shanzhai phone, this doesn't happen. I have to unmount the SD card, and then remount the SD card, to force the phone to reindex image files on the device (including the newly added ones) so that they can be seen in the Gallery app.

I am not sure if this is due to bugs in Android 4.0.3.

Phone however can run Flipboard!

For some reason, the Flipboard app is not compatible with my Samsung Galaxy S nor my Asus Transformer TF300. As such, I have never seen how the Flipboard app is like. However, Flipboard has no compatibility issues with this shanzhai phone, and I can finally run the Flipboard app and see what this app all about.

My Shanzhai phone running a Windows Phone 7 launcher (Launcher 7).
I find it very amusing to have an imitation Samsung Galaxy Note
running an imitation Microsoft Windows Phone user interface.

My Opinion of Alternative Markets for Android Apps

Have you tried alternative market places such as slideme.org? It would be interesting to hear opinions about them. - Mikko Pelkkala

Thanks Mikko for telling me about slideme.org. I was not aware of this alternative Android app market.

I am actually not a stranger to these alternative markets. My first Android tablet, the Archos 101, did not come with Google's Android Market pre-installed. Instead, the Archos tablet houses AppsLib instead. AppsLib specialises in Android apps that have been tested to work on tablets.

Ironically, I downloaded the Google Android Market APK from AppsLib which I installed on my Archos so that I could access the Android Market - later Google Play -  from my Archos tablet.

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The presence of alternative markets for Android apps is actually a strength of the Android eco-system, as compared to the lockdown nature of Apple's App Store or Microsoft's Marketplace. Apple's and Microsoft's app stores are like communism, where a central authority decides what's halal or haram for you, while Google practises true laissez-faire capitalism, where everything is left up to the individual. As I don't subscribe to communism, I prefer Google's freer capitalistic eco-system despite the fact that it is messier and less secure.

However, due to the nature of things, I am not optimistic that the alternative Android markets will be as successful as Google Play.

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If there are more Android users, more developers will be attracted to develop apps for Android than for the competition. And the more apps there are for Android, the more appealing the Android system will be for potential customers. This is the typical network effect in modern marketing. And in network effect markets, everything is a numbers game.

Because Apple has more apps for its iOS devices than Google has for Android, Google needs to grow the number of available apps in the Google Play Store to compete effectively against Apple.

But for the size of the apps library in the Google Play Store to grow as huge as possible, Android developers must sell their apps through the Google Play Store to swell the store size.


However, growing the size of the Google Play store is a detriment to the alternative Android stores!


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The more comprehensive the Google Play Store becomes, the less relevant all other alternative stores will become compared to Google Play. If every Android app can be downloaded or purchased from the Google Play Store, then customers will find little incentive to download or purchase the same apps from other store fronts.

From my perspective, alternative stores will never be as successful as Google Play or Amazon Appstore simply because of the size of the 2 behemoths. Whatever the smaller stores attempt to do, Google can always do the same, and thus always besting the efforts of the alternative stores.

• If a store offers a curated experience for customers, there is nothing to stop Google from doing the same thing.

• If a store offers a cheaper price for its apps, Google can match the price.

Unfortunately, we see similar situations cropping up in other areas like e-books, digital music, movie downloads etc. Currently, these areas are also dominated by single players (Amazon, iTunes). If the giants maintain a certain level of user friendliness in their stores, whether through easy site navigation, comprehensive selection, easy purchasing processes, it will be very hard to convince users to switch from the giant stores to the alternative stores.

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Of course, it is possible to dislodge incumbents. Google was able to defeat all other search engines (Alta Vista, Yahoo, MSN etc) to become the predominant search engine today - despite being very late to the search market game. Apple was not the first to make an MP3 player or a mobile phone, but once it did, it swept the floor off the previous incumbents.

To beat the Google store, an alternative store must provide a user experience far superior to what Google is offering. I think this is very tough to do at the moment. Google is really at the top of its game, and whatever the small stores can do, Google will be able to replicate the function, and even beat them to it.

However, because running such app stores are not expensive (after all, we are just dealing with electronic bits), I think that these alternative markets will still thrive, although they will not be wildly profitable. Smaller stores may have to serve niched markets, rather than become general app stores like the Google Play Store.  Trying to become another Google Play Store will not be a successful strategy. However, most of the alternative stores appear to be doing exactly this. I don't think they will succeed.

Blocked APKs from Google Play Store

In my previous post, I mentioned that I could not install several Android applications on my Transformer Pad through the Google Play Store. I was puzzled because Asus is a close partner of Google - in fact, Asus is manufacturing the new Nexus 7 tablet for Google. As such, I could not understand why apps like Google Blogger could not be shown inside the Google Play app on my Transformer Pad.

However, the Google Play Store can be actually be accessed from a web browser on a PC. To do so, just visit the following URL:

https://play.google.com/store

and login to your Google account. The web site provides an alternate method for downloading apps into your Android device.

I found that although I cannot see Google Blogger  from my Transformer Pad's Google Play app, Google Blogger can be listed on the web site. I thus tried to use the web site to download Google Blogger to my Transformer Pad. However, I found that this was blocked for the following reason:

This item cannot be installed in your device's country.

 Google Earth could not be transferred to my Transformer Pad for the same reason:

However, for the Jenga app that I had previously downloaded on my Archos tablet, a different explanation was given:

This item is not compatible with your device.

This item cannot be installed in your device's country

I do not know why the Google Play Store will not allow apps like Google Blogger or Google Earth to be installed on the Transformer Pad because of "country" issues. What's wrong with the country "Singapore"? Is Singapore a rogue third-world country? If so, why did Google sited a new data centre in Singapore?

Besides, the desktop versions of Google Blogger and Google Earth can be installed and executed without any problems from my notebook. Why is the Android version not permitted to be installed on my Android tablet?

Because this 2 apps from Google cannot be installed via the Google Play Store, I did a search for their respective APK files, downloaded them into the tablet, and performed a "sideload" installation. The sideloaded apps installed without a hitch. They also worked great (I am especially impressed with Google Earth).

This item is not compatible with your device

The Jenga app is supposedly "not compatible" with the Transformer Pad. I sideloaded the APK, and to my surprise, found that the app runs perfectly okay on the Transformer Pad!

However, I tried the same "sideloading" method with a game app that is also listed as "not compatible", and this app forced-closed when I tried to run it. I am okay with such "true positives" (app listed as not compatible is really not compatible). I am however annoyed with the "false positive" (app listed as not compatible but actually runs fine) for the Jenga app.

I read from some Android forums that "false positives" are usually due to be errors by the app developer when they published the APK file on the Google Play Store. If the developer did not explicitly specify that an app will run on Android version 4.0, or if the hardware required is specified incorrectly, the "not compatible with your device" message will be shown by the Google Play Store and downloading will be disabled. Unfortunately, because of the Android fragmentation problem, it is very hard for developers to verify and test the compatibility of their apps with every Android device model out in the market. Hence the "false positives" problem.

Obviously, device incompatibility problems cannot be avoided in the Android eco-system due to the nature of Android and its "open" nature. Unfortunately, the Google Play Store has this strange policy of allowing refunds to be made only within 15 minutes of purchase. Sometimes, a big game app requires the downloading of huge asset files, some of which could not be finished downloading within 15 minutes. For example, the free game Dark Meadow: The Pact  required the downloading of a huge 540 MB resource file, which already took more than 15 minutes - and would have exceeded the refund window if the game was not free and it didn't work on your device.

I don't think Google should curate the Play Store (which is what Apple does with its Apple App Store). However, Google definitely needs to improve on its refund policy. Extending the refund period window to an hour would be a good start.

Rooting my Archos 101 with Urukdroid 1.5

"Storage Space is critically low"
A strange problem manifested itself in November. For some strange reason, the free System Storage Space on my Archos 101 tablet kept going down and down and down. For several months, I had it hovering around the 30 MB threshold (the moment free System Storage Space drops below 30 MB, the Archos will display an annoying message in the notification bar that "storage space is critically low" - one that irks me to no end). Previously, I had danced around this problem by deleting web browser caches, clearing cache data, and even uninstalling apps. But this time, all this tricks were to no avail. Even when I had uninstalled practically all miscellaneous apps, leaving only the absolutely critical ones that I needed on my tablet to serve as an e-reader, the free System Storage Space just kept dropping and dropping and dropping...

And then on 25 November, the free System Storage Space dropped to 0 MB. No program could be launched in this state. I had to reboot the device to free up some System Storage Space so that I could use the device.

I knew then that I had no choice. I would have to reformat my Archos, or alternatively, "root" it.


Rooting
If I were to reformat the tablet with the original Archos firmware, I knew that I would encounter the low System Storage Space problem sooner or later. Due to a poor design decision on Archos part, they have actually partitioned the Archos 101 with a meagre 300 MB of space for System Storage out of the 8 GB of storage available. A more rational design would have been to allocate at least 1 GB or more for the System Storage partition. Thus, reformatting the device with Archos firmware was not on my radar. I needed to go with the more dangerous fix of "rooting" my Archos tablet.

I am not a fan of "rooting". I think consumers should not have to do such technical gymnastics on an appliance - which is what I consider the Archos tablet to be - for the appliance to perform satisfactorily and to work reasonably. I am adept enough to follow technical instructions carefully to carry out this operation on the tablet. I am sure most common folks, who are even less technically knowledgeable than me, may not even attempt "rooting". They are more likely to just junk the device, and buy something more friendly like the iPad. Besides, every one knows that Android is much harder to use than the consumer-friendly iPad. It has often been remarked that Android tablets (and Linux systems) often require rocket-science expertise to use the damn things properly.

On the Archos forums, Urukdroid 1.5 is very favorably reviewed as the best package for rooting the Archos 101. After reading all the materials I could lay my hands on about installing Urukdroid, I took the plunge on the night of 25 November (a Friday) and proceeded to root my Archos.

I was very pleased that I was outright successful on my very first attempt. When I checked on the Settings > Storage page, my jaw dropped on seeing that Urukdroid provided a massive 700 MB of free System Storage Space!

Even today, two weeks later, I still have
554 MB of free System Storage Space
after installing a whole bunch of apps
and live wall papers into my "rooted" Archos.

Gotchas
However, I suddenly realised that the multimedia content on my 16GB MicroSD card had been entirely erased (I had backup my SD card, so it was alright). For some reason, Urukdroid was installed on my MicroSD card, and not on the internal 8 GB storage space of the Archos.

I thought I had made a mistake. I didn't want to install Urukdroid on the external MicroSD card. I wanted to install Urukdroid on the internal 8 GB space, so that I have the flexibility of swapping out different SD cards.

I removed the external MicroSD card from the tablet, and repeated the Urukdroid installation. Unfortunately, I was not mistaken. The Urukdroid installation process - I chose the "Easy Installation" mode - insisted on my inserting a MicroSD card into the MicroSD card slot. Urukdroid 1.5 - if you choose "Easy Installation" - can only be installed on the external MicroSD card.

I believe it should be possible to install the operating system on the internal storage space if I had chosen to go with "manual/advanced installation". However, I am no Linux expert, and I wasn't brave enough to venture down that route. I rationalised to myself: "Hey, I didn't brick the tablet. It is working fine, and I now have a whopping 700 MB of free System Storage Space to install apps. Don't press your luck!!!!"

And that's the extent of my experience with "rooting" my Archos.


Freedom
With so much free System Storage Space, I need no longer restrict myself with installing just the critical apps that I had been putting myself up with over the past few weeks. I installed lots and lots and lots of apps - far more than I could with the original Archos firmware. Without having to worry about the nagging "Storage space is critically low" message, the apps-loaded tablet felt all anew - as if it was a brand new purchase and not one-year old equipment! The happiness I felt was exhilarating.

Now that I could afford to, I also re-downloaded lots and lots of Live Wallpapers. I am currently using the one called "Sun Rise Free Live Wallpaper" as my default wallpaper.

Adobe Flash 11.1 can finally be installed.

I can now install Google+ and Facebook and Skype without issues.

I also realised that with so much System Storage Space, there was no longer any need for me to move apps from "System Storage" to "Internal Memory". I had to do this previously under the Archos firmware because of its limitations, and I was peeved that apps like Adobe Flash or the Google Pinyin IME could only be installed in "System Storage" and could not be moved to "Internal Memory". These issues are now non-events. Also, because I now left the apps in "System Storage", I could also install widgets that invoke these apps (like the Go Weather widget and the News Republic widget). Widgets can only be added to the home screen if the associated app is installed on "System Storage". This was a no-no previously. What was once impossible has now become practicable.


Limitations
However, despite the great increase of System Storage Space and the new freedom this afforded with regard to the number of apps that I can now install without impunity, the Archos 101 is still saddled by its scrawny 256 MB of RAM.

Whenever the system runs low on memory, the resource-heavy Sun Rise Live Wallpaper will suddenly disappear and be replaced by the less resource hungry Grass Live Wallpaper.

Pulse Reader will suddenly restart itself whenever it encounters a low memory condition.

And low memory causes Live Wallpapers to behave sluggishly. The User Interface is non responsive to finger swipes if the Live Wallpaper is busily animating lots of movement.

Yes, "rooting" has resolved my big bug-bear problem of low System Storage Space. However, it doesn't resolve the other hardware limitation of too little RAM. 256 MB of RAM is really not sufficient for a tablet.

(I think 1 GB of RAM would have been ideal.)

But that can wait till the purchase of a new tablet with the hardware firepower to run Android 4.0 smoothly. For the moment, I am very glad that I got my Archos tablet working again, souped up tremendously no less, thanks to Urukdroid 1.5.


Urukdroid Installation Links
1. To install Urukdroid, it is first necessary to install the Special Developer Edition firmware from Archos. See this post.

2. Instructions for installing Urukdroid. Although the documentation is for Urukdroid 0.7, the EasyInstall instructions are still applicable to Urukdroid 1.5. Link

3. Description of Urukdroid 1.5. Link

Archos 101 Update : Design Flaws

I recently showed a friend my Archos 101 (pretty outdated now, what with all the new Android 3 tablets that have been introduced into the market), and so the conversation naturally flowed to whether I would buy a new tablet with Honeycomb, and whether I would get the next generation of the Archos tablet that is to be released sometime this month: the Archos 101 G9.

Although I love gadgets, most of the gadgets I buy have to serve some kind of purpose. For me, I bought the Archos 101 primarily as an e-reader, and for that, the Archos 101 has fulfilled its purpose most admirably. In fact, I love browsing the internet on the tablet, so much in fact that I actually spent more time with the Dolphin browser application than the ezPDF application.

However, no matter how I love reading on the tablet, the tablet is still not a very good appliance for writing. As some internet pundit remarked, the tablet is a "consumption" device, and not a "production" device. The tablet on-screen keyboard is not good for writing anything, including this blog post (which I am doing from my notebook by the way). Thus, if you are on a tight budget, and am undecided between choosing a notebook or a tablet, I will always recommend buying a notebook if you intend to use the computer mainly for producing stuff. Tablets are not very ergonomic for writing articles, emails, spreadsheets. Notebooks are much more versatile.

That is why I will not be buying a new tablet anytime soon, as my current Archos 101 is working just fine. In fact, I am more likely to buy another notebook computer (despite the fact that I already own a Core i7 notebook already) than to buy another tablet. As a producer, a notebook is a more useful purchase to me than another tablet.

Archos Tablet Design Problems
Also, there are several "flaws" in the Archos tablet pertaining to its hardware, and to the Android operating system that drives it. I can live with these flaws as I wasn't expecting much from my budget purchase when I acquired my Archos 101 back in December. These may or may not be fixed by new models of Android tablets (whether from Archos or other manufacturers), but I have decided to list them down just for the record.

1. Glossy Screen and not Matte Screen

If you are using a computer - be it a notebook, netbook, or a tablet - primarily for reading, a matte screen is a must. Glossy screens - being highly reflective - creates a "glare" problem, which greatly diminishes the reading experience.

Unfortunately, the public at large love "shiny" things, and for this reason, the majority of consumers prefer to buy computers with glossy screens. When you are at the shop, the movies that are being demo-ed on the computer will look much better on a glossy screen than on a matte screen. Because of that, consumers are tricked into thinking that glossy screens are "superior" to matte screens. And unfortunately, this creates an artificial demand spike for glossy screens. To satisfy this majority demand, manufacturers produced more computers with glossy screens, and this results in a lower manufacturing cost for producing glossy screens versus matte screens. And at the end of the day, everything in manufacturing is about bring costs down. As such, almost all computers in the market now comes only with glossy screens.

Even the Apple iPad comes with a glossy screen. Steve Jobs may be a god in aesthetics, but all too often, he has let his vision of beauty override pragmatics. I believe that the "glare" from glossy screens are spoiling the eyesight of users, and this is particularly so for young users. But why should Steve Jobs care about saving the eyesight of young children when glossy screens look so much prettier? If Steve Jobs had chosen matte screens to protect the vision of his users, the cost price of matte screens would have fallen instead, and all other manufacturers would have followed.

Since manufacturers of Android tablets are particularly sensitive about cost, they will go with glossy screens as these are cheaper than matte screens. I don't expect tablets to come with matte screens any time soon.


2. Archos 101 Screen has a Small Viewing Angle

Because the Archos 101 is a budget device, its LCD screen has a very small viewing angle. The screen is usually viewable by only one person, who is facing it directly at a 90° angle. If there are several persons trying to watch the same screen on the Archos, the people who are seeing the screen at an angle side will see a darkened screen and not see the image clearly.

I have seen noticed that other tablets like the ones from Apple or Samsung do not have this problem. Those tablets come with more expensive LCD screens that sport a wide viewing angle (almost 170° ) which allow several people to crowd around the same screen and still be able to all watch the action on the screen.

The small viewing angle is not a problem for me because the tablet is only used by one person - me - most of the time. However, when I want to play a YouTube video or to show some photos for friends, the small viewing angle is very annoying.


3. Landscape instead of Portrait orientation

Apple got it right when they designed their tablet with a Portrait orientation. Google chose to go for Landscape orientation for the Android tablet, which might have been done to avoid being labelled as "copying" Apple's design. But I think it is a wrong decision.

The reason is ergonomics. If I hold the tablet with my left hand, and use the fingers on my right hand to do the swiping and clicking, it is much easier to hold the tablet in a portrait orientation than in a landscape orientation.

The only time I would want to use landscape orientation is when I am watching a movie on the tablet. But hey, a movie is typically 90 minutes long, and I don't think I want to hold the tablet (with either one or with both hands) for one and a half hours. I would lay the tablet on the table, probably standing it at an angle facing me, and watched it without making my arms tired.

(This is why the Archos 101 built-in stand is marvellous for watching videos on the Archos tablet).

In typical usage (browsing, reading, replying short emails), I contend that the tablet will be easier to use, and less tiring to hold, in portrait orientation than in landscape orientation.

Perhaps Google's engineers decided that as most notebooks screens are landscape orientation, making the tablet screen landscape is more natural. I think this is not a valid comparison because we don't use notebooks and tablets in the same way. A notebook uses a keyboard and a mouse, whereas a tablet doesn't. A tablet is like a sheet of A4 paper. We normally generate documents on A4 paper in portrait mode. The tablet default orientation should have been portrait too. 


4. Landscape / Portrait - Android Auto Rotation Switch Flaw

I use the Archos tablet in portrait mode almost 99% of the time. As such, I like to lock the display to Portrait orientation - instead of enabling Auto-Rotation and allowing the tablet to switch between Portrait and Landscape. I don't like Auto-Rotation because I like to read in  bed, and it is very annoying if the text on the screen keeps flipping its orientation when I turn from my right side to my left side, or vice versa.

However, the Android operating system  has a flaw of omission. In the Settings > Display > Auto Rotate Screen option, I can choose to enable or disable Auto Rotation. However, there is no setting to lock the display permanently to Portrait mode!

When Auto Rotate Screen is enabled, the tablet can switch between Portrait and Landscape modes. However, when Auto Rotate Screen is disabled, the tablet is simply set to Landscape mode. There is no way for me to disable Auto Rotate Screen and to set the tablet to Portrait mode, my preferred orientation!

Luckily, the ezPDF, Dolphin browser, and FBReader apps have internal settings that allow the app to lock to Portrait or Landscape orientation. However, there are many other apps like Wikidroid, Pulse, News and Weather etc that don't have these internal app setting, and thus rely on the Android system setting, which only allows either the Landscape orientation or an Auto-Rotate orientation. Thus, when I am lying on my side on the bed holding the tablet in Portrait orientation, I cannot use these other apps properly!
This is an Android 2 flaw (the Archos 101 currently runs Android 2.2). It would be sad if Android 3.x carries over this same flaw.


5. 300 MB System Storage Partition - Archos Flaw

My Archos 101 has 8GB (or 8000MB) storage. However, Archos has decided to partition it such that 300MB is used for System Storage, while the remaining 7700 MB is partitioned as Internal Storage.

This is really a foolish design!

Although programs can be installed in either the System Storage partition or the Internal Storage partition, the fact is that for every program installed, a little bit of space must be allocated in the System Storage partition for the program, even if the program is installed in Internal Storage.

There are thousands of Android Apps in the Android Market, and most of these apps are less than 10MB. With 7700 MB in the Internal Storage partition, and assuming 10 MB average sized apps, I should be able to install at least 770 apps in the Internal Storage partition..

But I can't because of the stupid 300 MB System Storage limit imposed by Archos!

First of all, many system programs cannot be stored in the Internal Storage partition. For example, Google Docs, or Adobe Flash 10.3, must be installed in the System Storage partion. After installing some crucial stuff, the amount of System Storage space is typically reduced from 300MB to a mere 90 MB!

Also, every app that is installed on the Internal Storage partition also requires some space in the System Storage partition.  After downloading and installing 20 or 30 apps in Internal Storage, the Archos complains that the free space in System Storage partition has dropped to less than 30 MB, and displays a "Storage Space Low" notification. When this happens, activities such a app updates will be suspended, which prevents me from installing new apps. The browser will also take a performance hit (I think some cache files are saved in the System Storage).

I have no idea why Archos used such a small 300 MB partition for such a critical System Storage partition. Wouldn't it be better to just use the entire 8 GB as System Storage? Or why not partition  4GB as System Storage and 4 GB as Internal Storage? Heck, even if they use 1 GB for System Storage, it is still better than the ridiculous 300MB System Storage that they have provided.

Because of the silly 300 MB System Storage limit, there is no way for me to install lots and lots of apps, even when I have plenty of free storage space left. I think that with the 300MB System Storage limit, the Archos 101 can at most install  30 apps into the Internal Storage when the tablet will run out of System Storage space. I have to uninstall a lot of dormant programs so that I can download and try new ones.


6. 256 MB RAM Only - Archos Flaw

This is another cost-cutting design decision from Archos which hampers the Archos 101.

Tablet programs are on the ascendancy, and because of the large 10.1" screen size, tablet apps can be more complex than their smartphone cousins, and are bigger than the smartphone apps.

It is also more natural to multi-task programs on tablets than phones with a smallish 3.5" or 4" screen. 

But because the Archos has only 256 MB RAM,  multi-tasking is not really effective. Even when using the Dolphin browser, which permits the opening of many tabs simultaneously, a browser with many tabs consumes more RAM, and thus the tiny 256 MB RAM  has a crippling effect on the browser's performance.

It has been argued that a tablet with more RAM memory consumes more electricity. Currently, Archos is able to boast of a 10-hour usage on a single charge. If the RAM is not a small 256 MB, but 1024MB instead, a single battery charge may only provide 7 to 8 hours of usage, and not the 10-hours usage with the 256 MB RAM..

256 MB RAM is simply not adequate for tablets. Even my Samsung Galaxy SL phone has 512 MB RAM. Personally, I think tablets should have at least 1024 MB RAM. This low RAM specs of the Archos 101 is a real downer.

The tiny 256 MB RAM means that the Archos 101 cannot effectively run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Although Android 3.0 can run on a device with only 256 MB RAM, the lack of RAM will throttle the performance tremendously, and rendering it pointless to update the operating system. If Archos had only been far-sighted enough to put in 1024 MB of RAM initially, the Archos 101 would not have any problems being updated to Android 3 today, and perhaps even Android 4 next year. The low RAM means the Archos 101 is not future-proof, and is permanently relegated to the Android 2.2 operating system.

I am afraid Archos is repeating the same cost-cutting measure in their new Archos 101 G9 model. If you examine the technical specifications published by Archos for their new Archos 101 G9 tablet, you will see that once again, Archos did not list the RAM size (Archos only lists the Storage size - 8GB/16GB Flash memory, or 250GB hard disk). However, other manufactures such as Samsung, Motorola etc have no such qualms, and publicly list the RAM specifications for their Android 3 tablets. The fact that Archos needs to suppress this information speaks volumes about their cost cutting intents.


7. Tablet cannot be charged via USB - requires proprietary power supply

The Archos101  must be charged via its proprietary power supply / connector. It cannot be charged through USB unlike my Samsung Galaxy SL phone.

This is probably because of the batteries used by the tablet. USB charging is a kind of trickle charge, and this may not be optimal for charging the tablet's high capacity batteries.

I think Google should have created a standard power connector for tablets, so that the same power supply / connector can be used by every Android tablet. Now, we are stuck with the manufacturer's proprietary power supply / connector for each device from different manufacturers. This is the same problem faced by phones previously, until the handset association got together and standardised on using the Micro-USB cable for charging. I wish the same had been done for Android tablets.