If you measure the power used by a netbook PC when it’s in standby, a frozen unusable state, it uses around 500mW of power.  Leaving a netbook on with WiFi connected in an idle state with the screen blanked, maybe with an email program polling occasionally, you’ll see about 10 times the power usage. In PC terms, 5W is impressive but if you go to the smartphone world and take a look at the figures there, there’s a huge huge gap that needs to be tackled. As smartphones become tablets, become smartbooks, there’s a threat that ‘always-on’ becomes ‘must-have’ and that X86-based devices will struggle to compete in casual computing scenarios.

Smartphones are designed from the ground-up around the concept of ‘always-on. From the moment a smartphone is conceived, every element of the design has to be checked for power consumption which is why a smartphone can sit connected to the GSM telephone network drawing power consumption levels lower than 50mw. That’s 1/10th of the power consumption taken by a good netbook when it’s in a frozen state. Impressive.

But what happens when you connect a smartphone to the internet ? You can use cellular data services to achieve a good rate of connectivity by switching on UMTS for example. Switching to WiFi on a typical smartphone brings faster connectivity and, in a lot of cases, lower power that can be done on cellular networks. A smartphone can run a multitasking operating system and remain connected to internet and voice networks in well under 500mw of power, the same as it takes a netbook to sleep.  In fact, the best smartphones are running in this configuration for over 24hrs on a 5Wh battery which is an amazing 100mw of power usage. Turn on some background internet activities and it will jump to an average 200mw!

What happens if you take an ARM platform that’s in the same processing power category as a low-end netbook. Put it in a 10 inch screen form factor and do the same test? Actually, it’s the same as a smartphone. The only difference between a high-end smartphone and a smartbook with a 10 inch screenand a huge battery is the screen itself and when that is off, there’s practically no difference at all.

To prove this, I took one of the most powerful mobile computing platforms in a large 10 inch form factor device with 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and integrated WiFi. The device has a 23wh battery (about half that of ‘6-cell’ netbooks. The device is the Acer Iconia Tab A500 Android tablet which runs honeycomb. I connected to the Wifi (at 54mbps) and left the device connected with the screen off while it did it’s stuff in the background. Marketplace checks, email checks, Twitter checks and even some GPS usage by Google Maps. A weather service was running, the volume was set to silent and Bluetooth was turned off.

Over a 48  hour period with a few screen-on moments for checking progress (and a 10 minute in-use period as my daughter grabbed it to use a paint program)  I measured 46% fall in battery usage of which 5% was due to screen-on time. Take away the screen-on figure and you have 209mw of power usage.  The Acer Iconia Tab is nothing more than a smartphone inside!

‘Always-on, Always Connected’ will be a ‘Must-have.’

Always-on tests are interesting because it’s a hands-off test that people think only applies to idle smartphones.  In fact, it applies to many computing scenarios. With location, polling, sync, presence, alarms, push updates and of course, cellular voice and messaging becoming the norm in the hand, they will also have appeal on the desk. Not having to wait 5 seconds for a machine to start-up, another 5 seconds for a Wi-Fi connection and another 10 seconds for tweets, emails and other features to catch up is annoying.  There’s also a bunch of other screen-off, connected activities that are interesting. Servers for example. By that, I mean computers and gadgets that serve information to the Internet. This doesn’t just cover web servers. Think about internet-connected weather stations and web cameras, in-car data storage and notification systems. Then there are the devices that just don’t need big screens; Connected musical instruments. Digital cameras with 3G. Internet Radios. Low-power internet connectivity is important for these devices.

Related: Social Netbooks and ARM’s Lock-In Netbook Opportunity.

Summary

The point here is not to highlight that ARM is better than X86, it’s to highlight the gap. This gap is currently a huge advantage for ARM-based platform designers.

• The first point is, if manufacturers using X86/PC architecture don’t get products to market with active standby soon, with the help of Intel (the only X86 player trying to tackle this problem) customers will have a chance to experience, and may not turn back from, ARM-based always-on products.
• The second point is that this is a screen-off gap. Current screen technology is killing ARMs advantage in the ‘in-use’ scenario where screens are larger than 7 inch. It reduces the ARM advantage from 20x in idle to about 4x with a 10 inch screen being backlit. When the devices CPU is being actively used, the advantage drops even lower to around 2x. [Acer Iconia Tab 4W. Samsung NC210 8W)
• Finally, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is a good example of low-power internet connectivity. It’s likely that other devices in this ARM tablet segment hit the same figures.

Keep an eye on high-end ARM-based platforms over the next year or two. Honeycomb and iOS are leading the way into the professional space with their software and application ecoystems and you might find that this always-on advantage starts to lock people in soon.

Android is a wonderful phone OS, but Google’s choice to leave the pushing of updates in the hands of OEMs or carriers is a real sour-point for the otherwise praised mobile OS. Hopefully, that’s about to change.

Time and time again we’ve heard stories of devices that have been waiting to get major Android updates for months after Google officially releases the update. In many cases, promises are made by carriers or OEMs and then broken, leaving users clueless as to when (or if) they’ll be seeing the latest Android version on their device.

At Google I/O 2011, Google has announced that it is now working with a group of partners to “create new guidelines for how quickly devices will get updated after new Android platform releases.” Google also says that they’ll be agreeing on, not only how quickly devices get updated, but also for how long they’ll be guaranteed to see Android updates. At the present, Google and the partners are announcing that devices will receive Android updates for 18 months after launch. This is great news with one caveat: Google mentions that the 18 month update-guarantee only holds water “if the hardware allows.” It’s unclear exactly who will determine whether or not the hardware will “allow” the update. Surely there will be situations where you might not want a particular build of Android to be pushed through to a certain piece of hardware for performance considerations. But it its up to carriers and OEMs, they may pull the “we aren’t updating this device because performance is not optimal” card, even when it might perform well enough for those who want it.

It sounds as though the group has yet to agree on how long they’ll be expected to push the latest Android version after it is released, and Google is asking us to “stay tuned” for more information about.

The partner-list is impressive so far and hopefully we’ll see more companies getting onboard. Here are the founding members:

• Verizon
• HTC
• Samsung
• Sprint
• Sony Ericsson
• LG
• T-Mobile
• Vodaphone
• Motorola
• AT&T
• (and of course) Google

This is great news for users and developers. Presently the most popular Android version is Android 2.2 with 65.9% of devices accessing the Android Market over a 14-day period. Version 2.1 still holds a strong portion of the version market with 24.5%, with the remaining 9.6% of devices being spread across five other versions of Android.

For a developer, this is a nightmare. Optimally you’d like to have every device using the same firmware so that you know that every device has the same capabilities on the software level. You’d also like to have all of the devices on the latest version of any given software, but it turns out that only 4.3% of Android devices are running 2.3+.

For the user, guaranteed update speed and longevity is an obvious bonus because it means that you won’t get left in the update-dust after six months of owning a new device. You also won’t be left waiting months to get the latest speed enhancements and innovations that other devices enjoy from the day that a new version is released.

I hope Google is smart enough to come up with a nifty name for the group that’s agreeing to these guidelines, and a shiny logo that they can slap on the box of participating devices so that customers can easily identify which devices are guaranteed to get this special update treatment.

Here’s to hoping that this greatly changes the Android update-landscape as we know it today.

Android is a wonderful phone OS, but Google’s choice to leave the pushing of updates in the hands of OEMs or carriers is a real sour-point for the otherwise praised mobile OS. Hopefully, that’s about to change.

Time and time again we’ve heard stories of devices that have been waiting to get major Android updates for months after Google officially releases the update. In many cases, promises are made by carriers or OEMs and then broken, leaving users clueless as to when (or if) they’ll be seeing the latest Android version on their device.

At Google I/O 2011, Google has announced that it is now working with a group of partners to “create new guidelines for how quickly devices will get updated after new Android platform releases.” Google also says that they’ll be agreeing on, not only how quickly devices get updated, but also for how long they’ll be guaranteed to see Android updates. At the present, Google and the partners are announcing that devices will receive Android updates for 18 months after launch. This is great news with one caveat: Google mentions that the 18 month update-guarantee only holds water “if the hardware allows. inch It’s unclear exactly who will determine whether or not the hardware will “allow inch the update. Surely there will be situations where you might not want a particular build of Android to be pushed through to a certain piece of hardware for performance considerations. But it its up to carriers and OEMs, they may pull the “we aren’t updating this device because performance is not optimal inch card, even when it might perform well enough for those who want it.

It sounds as though the group has yet to agree on how long they’ll be expected to push the latest Android version after it is released, and Google is asking us to “stay tuned inch for more information about.

The partner-list is impressive so far and hopefully we’ll see more companies getting onboard. Here are the founding members:

• Verizon
• HTC
• Samsung
• Sprint
• Sony Ericsson
• LG
• T-Mobile
• Vodaphone
• Motorola
• AT&T
• (and of course) Google

This is great news for users and developers. Presently the most popular Android version is Android 2.2 with 65.9% of devices accessing the Android Market over a 14-day period. Version 2.1 still holds a strong portion of the version market with 24.5%, with the remaining 9.6% of devices being spread across five other versions of Android.

For a developer, this is a nightmare. Optimally you’d like to have every device using the same firmware so that you know that every device has the same capabilities on the software level. You’d also like to have all of the devices on the latest version of any given software, but it turns out that only 4.3% of Android devices are running 2.3+.

For the user, guaranteed update speed and longevity is an obvious bonus because it means that you won’t get left in the update-dust after six months of owning a new device. You also won’t be left waiting months to get the latest speed enhancements and innovations that other devices enjoy from the day that a new version is released.

I hope Google is smart enough to come up with a nifty name for the group that’s agreeing to these guidelines, and a shiny logo that they can slap on the box of participating devices so that customers can easily identify which devices are guaranteed to get this special update treatment.

Here’s to hoping that this greatly changes the Android update-landscape as we know it today.

The oft rumored service from Google has finally been announced at Google I/O and is currently operating as a free invitation-only beta service that only works in the US. No word as to whether or not it’ll find its way to other countries, but knowing how resistant the music labels are to these kinds of services, it likely won’t be an easy task to make it happen overseas.

The concept isn’t too far fetched… with Google Music you can upload all of your music to the web, then stream it to a number of devices such as smartphones, tablets, and any computer with a modern browser. Google has created a video which briefly illustrates how the service will work:

Google has made this service much more appealing to me than the similar Amazon Cloud Player thanks to Music Manager, a multi-platform program that will help you import your music from Windows Media Player and iTunes.

I’ve spent a long time rating songs and organizing my library; thankfully the Music Manager program, compatible with OSX and Windows, will import not only all of your music but playlists and ratings as well. This is a huge point for me, and one of the reasons that I still haven’t given Amazon’s Cloud Player service a try.

Google says that Music Beta currently supports up to 20,000 songs which will playback at 320 Kbps, according to Information Week. Quality will also change dynamically based on network conditions.

The service is free in the beta phase, but it sounds like Google will be charging for it once it’s officially launched.

As Jared Newman of Time Techland points out, Google Music sounds great, but Google isn’t actually selling any music at this point. You’ll have to upload music that you download from other services.

Music App Updates

Along with this announcement come updates to the Music app for Android devices running Honeycomb (3.0+) or Froyo and beyond (2.2+). Honeycomb devices should already have access to the update while Android 2.2+ devices will begin to see the update in the next few weeks, according to Google.

The updated app enables support for Google’s Music Beta service which will allow users to play their entire cloud-stored library on their device. For offline access, Music will cache a number of recently played songs, and you’ll also be able to manually mark which songs/artists/albums/playlists that you want to always have available on a given device for offline playback.

Instant Mix

Google has also announced a neat feature called Instant Mix. Much like Apple’s ‘Genius’, the feature aims to create a playlist from your library based on a single song that you select. Unlike Genius, Instant Mix actually analyzes your music by listening to it, then suggests similar songs based on the waveform of each individual song. Pretty neat.

Request an Invite

If you want to give Google Music Beta a try, just head over to music.google.com and find the “Request an Invitation” button at the top right of the page. There’s no word yet on how exactly Google is handing out invitations, but knowing Google, they’ll probably be rolling them out in waves.

Even if you don’t have an invitation to the service, you’ll still have access to the updated versions of the Music app for use with locally stored music.

The oft rumored service from Google has finally been announced at Google I/O and is currently operating as a free invitation-only beta service that only works in the US. No word as to whether or not it’ll find its way to other countries, but knowing how resistant the music labels are to these kinds of services, it likely won’t be an easy task to make it happen overseas.

The concept isn’t too far fetched… with Google Music you can upload all of your music to the web, then stream it to a number of devices such as smartphones, tablets, and any computer with a modern browser. Google has created a video which briefly illustrates how the service will work:

Google has made this service much more appealing to me than the similar Amazon Cloud Player thanks to Music Manager, a multi-platform program that will help you import your music from Windows Media Player and iTunes.

I’ve spent a long time rating songs and organizing my library; thankfully the Music Manager program, compatible with OSX and Windows, will import not only all of your music but playlists and ratings as well. This is a huge point for me, and one of the reasons that I still haven’t given Amazon’s Cloud Player service a try.

Google says that Music Beta currently supports up to 20,000 songs which will playback at 320 Kbps, according to Information Week. Quality will also change dynamically based on network conditions.

The service is free in the beta phase, but it sounds like Google will be charging for it once it’s officially launched.

As Jared Newman of Time Techland points out, Google Music sounds great, but Google isn’t actually selling any music at this point. You’ll have to upload music that you download from other services.

Music App Updates

Along with this announcement come updates to the Music app for Android devices running Honeycomb (3.0+) or Froyo and beyond (2.2+). Honeycomb devices should already have access to the update while Android 2.2+ devices will begin to see the update in the next few weeks, according to Google.

The updated app enables support for Google’s Music Beta service which will allow users to play their entire cloud-stored library on their device. For offline access, Music will cache a number of recently played songs, and you’ll also be able to manually mark which songs/artists/albums/playlists that you want to always have available on a given device for offline playback.

Instant Mix

Google has also announced a neat feature called Instant Mix. Much like Apple’s ‘Genius’, the feature aims to create a playlist from your library based on a single song that you select. Unlike Genius, Instant Mix actually analyzes your music by listening to it, then suggests similar songs based on the waveform of each individual song. Pretty neat.

Request an Invite

If you want to give Google Music Beta a try, just head over to music.google.com and find the “Request an Invitation inch button at the top right of the page. There’s no word yet on how exactly Google is handing out invitations, but knowing Google, they’ll probably be rolling them out in waves.

Even if you don’t have an invitation to the service, you’ll still have access to the updated versions of the Music app for use with locally stored music.

The Notion Ink Adam [tracking page] may have wow-ed most at the CES 2011 but the proof is always in the pudding once the tablet is truly unleashed for general consumption in the consumer market.

It took a little while, but Engadget’s Sean Hollister managed to get his hands on a unit and wrote a good review on the Adam. From the review feedback, the Adam may not have lived up to expectations as being a perfect technology marriage of form and functionality.

Let’s explore the Adam, shall we?

The Adam has a unique form factor which differentiates it from most uniformly slim-line tablets it has a rather rounded bulky rear (pictured below).

Some may find this rather unsightly but from an ergonomic’s perspective, I think this is a good design as it may allow a good one handed grip when using the Adam in a portrait mode. This is especially important as the Adam weighs in at rather hefty 1.6 pounds and therefore having a good grip whilst single-handedly using it is a must.  Sean mentions the cylindrical rear holding a pair of stereo speakers as well as three-cell battery which makes me wonder if the unit may be possibly top heavy (or bottom depending on which direction you hold it!) when held in a landscape position.

The reviewer wasn’t impressed with the four capacitive touch buttons (pictured above) which are neither backlit or possess haptic feedback.

One thing the Adam has going for it is the plethora of ports, from two full-sized USB ports as well as a HDMI slot that is capable of 1080p display mirroring.  I feel that this is a key feature that distinguishes the Adam as a tablet meant as a serious productivity workhorse or mobile home-theater from a tablet meant soley as a sofa surfing device. I cannot tell you how many times I have been frustrated when someone at work hands me a USB thumb drive and I am unable to transfer files via USB to my Dell Streak 5 inch nor my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch!

Another feature which had us all eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Adam is the famed Pixel Qi display.  Unfortunately, the reviewer found that the Adam’s 1024×600 resolution Pixel Qi display was not good, describing the display’s viewing angles as “terrible inch with the colors being “a bit washed out inch. A saving grace is that the reviewer found the Adam’s Pixel Qi’s reflective mode working well and once the screen backlit is switched off, the screen is viewable even outdoors and conserved hours of battery life.

The reviewer also found the 3.2MP camera’s picture taking capabilities to be unimpressive, describing issues with the autofocus as well as over exposed pictures. Note that the camera is able to swivel front to rear, vice versa.

Under the hood, the Adam sports a dual-core 1Ghz Tegra 250 and the reviewer has found no issues with general performance of the device.

From an operating system perspective, the Adam runs Android 2.2 aka “Froyo inch but Notion Ink designed its own user interface known as the Eden UI that provides an innovative-looking PanelView (pictured above) that allows the multiple applications to be open and active on the same homescreen.

Though the hardware issues can’t be fixed through a software update, Notion Ink will be releasing a significant update to the Adam’s software. The update will contain the following:

• a new e-book client
• a new Browser (the name of the book client and browser will be released in a separate blog next week)
• updated Kernel
• optimally over-clocked Tegra
• Gingerbread 2.3
• lots of usability Issues resolved
• new multi-tasking environment (easier way to manage all tabs and applications)
• Chords Music Library and Player (Simple and straight Music Player)
• Video Library and Player
• DSP support, so now equalizer will work in better way. Soon we are adding more bass boost in the speakers as well (not a part of this update).
• Flash pre-installed
• and more

Readers may wonder why the update to Android Gingerbread 2.3 instead of Honeycomb 3.0, the reason being that Google only releases the Honeycomb source code to a selected few partners at this point and Notion Ink isn’t one of them.

The release date of the update is still unannounced at this stage.

Notion has certainly challenged the tablet manufacturer’s norm by designing a tablet that has the capability of replacing a desktop thanks to USB peripheral support. I certainly hope that it is able to rectify the hardware quality issues and deliver the software update in a timely manner.

Here’s Notion Ink Adam Picture Gallery thanks to Engadget!

At the BlackBerry World 2011 conference, RIM demonstrated its upcoming Android Player application which will allow PlayBook [product page] users to run Android applications. This could be the gambit that RIM needs to get up to speed in the app sector while seamlessly enhancing the user-experience.

What impresses me is that the device doesn’t have access to the source-code of the Android applications that are running. It’s actually able to run the application straight from the binary package that would be distributed to any Android device. Have a look at this in action:

The integration here looks rather seamless. I was assuming that things would get confusing for consumers because of the difference in controls between native PlayBook apps and Android apps, but according to these fellows, the gestures (menu and home button) are mapped identically between the two types of applications. This means that users will be able to use without having to think about whether they are native PlayBook apps or those that were originally intended for Android. This also means that Android developers can create a single application then distribute it to the PlayBook and Android devices; a win-win-win for consumers-developers-RIM.

Android applications on the PlayBook won’t be restricted to those who know how to sideload applications. RIM says that Android apps will be distributed right from their very own BlackBerry App World application store, providing ease of use for the consumer from instillation to operation.

Sadly, RIM’s PlayBook launched before this functionality (and arguably even core features) was ready for prime-time. The Android Player is slated for release some time this summer. The sooner the better, I say.

As I was researching new ways to manage documents on my Galaxy Tab yesterday I stumbled across a Google Docs application which I hadn’t seen before. It turns out it was released yesterday!

As someone who uses Google applications heavily, both on the desktop and on my mobile devices, I was of course interested to see how far it extends into the realms of true productivity. It turns out that it is no match for the real deal in a real browser with a real mouse and keyboard but it does offer a couple of very useful features.

The Google Docs application shouldn’t be considered anything more than a text and number editing application. The lack of ability to edit spreadsheet equations or presentation documents had me reaching for Thinkfree this morning when I attempted to update my family cashflow  spreadsheet on the Galaxy Tab. What it does do is provide an efficient way to access documents in Google Docs (when you have an internet connection) and to create a new document or upload documents from your device via the Android sharing subsystem.

You can print via Google Cloud Print too which is a nice feature although it’s annoying that you can’t download a copy of a document through the application. Sharing and renaming is possible but it’s not possible to delete files. The application supports multiple Google accounts.

Pinch to zoom worked smoothly on the Galaxy Tab and I was able to input notes easily. What a shame you can’t publish to a blog from the application. Some tie-in with Blogger would have been useful for some.

I tried uploading an mp3 file but it wasn’t permitted. PDF files work and I was able to upload an 8MB file so file sizes are generous. Displaying that 8MB PDF was a basic experience. With no ‘go-to’ page feature and a slow page change time its impossible to view sections of a large PDF.

Finally, there’s a potentially useful OCR feature in the ability to take a picture of a document and upload it for word recognition.

Uploading a jpg file from the gallery resulted in automatic conversion to a document. There appears to be a setting that allows this conversion process to be turned off but on my Google account this option was greyed out. This feature can be useful for preparing an image for OCR before sending by using cropping and contrast settings. A magazine article I took an image of was not recognised properly due to it having two columns. By cropping the article around the columns I was able to get a readable version of the image in seconds after the file was uploaded. Good light levels and a steady hand will help!

In effect, Google Docs for Android is a one-way file upload, edit and viewing channel that requires an internet connection at all times. That’s not too flexible in my opinion, but better than nothing. The OCR function is going to be very useful to some people.

Core Tablet Issues

Trying to edit a document on a touchscreen highlights a major shortfall with tablets – roll-over detection. On Windows, there’s the concept of hover. Its either implemented through the mouse stopping over an element or via a digistiser that detects a pen physically hovering above, but not touching, an element. It’s something we’re all so used to seeing and using to activate help text or menus that when it is not there, it becomes a real issue. Designing applications that don’t use mouse-over is one way round the problem but when you consider right-click, lassooing sections of text, drag and drop and other features that are used in document creation, it becomes difficult to see how any tablet without hover or mouse-over detection could become truly productive, especially when you consider the amount of online, web-based applications that use mouse-over to trigger menus. That includes Googles own online applications.

One of the most efficient handheld tablets I ever had for creation was the Wibrain b1. I still have it. Not only does it run a full OS with a full browser, it has a huge mouse pad under one thumb and mouse buttons under the other. It also implements a split physical keyboard. It’s close to being the ugliest mobile device ever but it works like a charm.

My point is that if tablets want to be serious all-round become productive devices they need to consider more input methods. In fact, they need to become clamshells or sliders again. It is possible to make a 5 or 7″ slider with a keyboard, mouse control and full operating system but fashion and price is getting in the way. Just give me a little optical mouse with virtual mouse buttons. That would be a good start.

For the time being, document editing, true document editing including spreadsheets and presentations, on-the-go is really only something you can do efficiently with a UMPC. Windows, mouse, keyboard. Tablets just don’t cut it, unless all you’re doing is entering alphanumerics. . .

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