The Galaxy Note is the more interesting of the two introductions. With it’s large 5.3″ Super AMOLED plus HD screen with 1280×800, Samsung is positioning it as a device that blurs the line between smart phone and tablet. The included stylus suggest use as a note taking device and drawing. Being an owner of the Galaxy S1 and fan of 4″+ light smart phones, I think weight and thinness will determine success of such a device. At 178 g and 9.65 mm thickness it is heavier than the Droid X2 from Motorola which I found clunky for a 4.3″ device. AT&T’s Infuse which felt great for a 4.5″ phone clocks in at 130 g and 9.4 mm. Hopefully Samsung has done enough research to see if the Note will still fit in a pants pocket or even better in a shirt pocket.

Here is the official YouTube video for the Note and comparison of weight and size against some current and announced phones.

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 news is a bit less exciting than the introduction of a new class of tab-phones , but still very interesting since this “Tab” is what the 10.1  should have been. It finally introduces the Super AMOLED Plus screen technology to tablets and now includes the microSD slot that was surprisingly missing for Samsung’s line of Tablets when compared to the competition. Still no sign if an HDMI port will be included. I actually owned a 10.1 inch Tab and while I found it lighter than an iPad2 and all the other current Android Tabs I wished it were still lighter. The weight is easy to handle for 2 handed usage and if you hold it on the short side with one hand. You’ll sprain your wrist if you try to hold it single handed on the long side for more than brief periods. The Tab 7.7′s smaller formfactor allows Samsung to reduce it’s weight to 335 grams which is almost half of the Tab 10.1 weight. It keeps the slim design introduced by the Tab 10.1 at  7.89 millimeters thin. As seen with the recent HP Touchpad $99 frenzy price will still be a key factor, especially with the rumored low price Amazon tablets and the iPad3 waiting in the wings.

These 2 recent developments highlight for me the ongoing value of competition in the Smartphone/Tablet space. Apple has done a great job establishing 2 new markets, but it is the competition from Samsung, Google and other phone vendors that is really driving new form factors, designs, use models, display and CPU technology while relentlessly pushing the price down to a level where these devices are affordable to the masses. Then the true mobile computing revolution will happen. (Think Personal Computers, where they came from and  where it is heading .

There are even attempts to port Android to the TouchPad as seen here. Given the bargain basement price of $99 the number of Android developers looking to do a port will guarantee some traction. The similarity to an HTC Sensation Android phone with a dual-core Qualcomm processor give hope that drivers will be able to be ported over given enough time and effort. Having experienced first hand the porting of Android to a device with minimal manufacturer support (Tmobile Vibrant) I wouldn’t hold my breath on progress. Either this will go fast if the drivers can be copied from existing sources or it will be a partial to spotty port for a long time to come.

Given that the HP pricing is a bit of an anomally, what can we expect for the future of tablets. I clearly see analogies between the early PC market and today’s mobile/tablet space, with the primary difference that we are talking companion devices since PCs are still well entrenced in the home and office space as content creation and consumption devices. Apple will continue to lead as an early pioneer and though leader. It remains to be seen if they can continue to dominate against an industry focused on a PC like model where hardware becomes a commodity and people’s investment in a particular OS and applications becomes the driving force for selection of what to buy. Here are a couple of interesting trends to monitor going forward:

1. Low-cost tablets from China and India. The article Indian tablet market abuzz with low-priced entrants starting at $99 shows a strong push from India to out bid China’s dominance in low-cost hardware. It also highlights the need for solutions in developing countries that are not just hand-me-down technology designs. On the flip side you only need to look at eBay for Android tablets starting as low as $60. Also keep an eye on China’s custom ROM MIUI which started as a custom ROM and now is becoming integrated in China retail phones. Are these comparible to an iPad 2, of course not but it does show that there is a market for these devices especially for people who can’t afford an iPad. This is where Google’s Android is showing its strength by gaining more users and building an infrastructure in developing nations. A market where Apple can at best compete by giving away tablets to educational instututions are catering to the world elite with a well marketed high-end tablet. While US companies will struggle to make a buck in the above space, it is a big boost for the Android ecosystem.
2. Amazon tablet in October? Will Amazon be able to take a piece of Apple’s tablet pie by discounting hardware to make the money back in the long run on content sales? While the article clearly points out the difficulties of manufacturing a cheaper tablet than Apple and make money on it, Amazon has demonstrated with their Amazon App Store that they are agressively pursuing a longer term strategy to position themselves against both Apple and Google. Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color at $250 is another example demand for a low-cost Tablet for specific uses, e.g. eBook reader and being able to generate sales by leveraging existing book and media channels. It also helps that the device can be converted to run full Android by copying a boot image to a microSD card.
3. Let’s not forget Asus, Acer, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, LG and who will continue to drive cost and high-end features for the Android ecosystem.

The new Momentus XT line tries to walk the fine line between the performance benefits of a Solid State Drive and the cost of a regular hard disk. The hybrid drives support capacities from 250 to 500GB in a 2.5″ formfactor with a SATA II (3Gbps) interface and 7200 rpm. The solid state cache consists a fairly large 32MB DRAM cache and a some what small single 4GB SLC NAND chip. The use of SLC NAND could pay off in faster performance and longer endurance, but with a NAND to HDD cache ratio as high as 1:125 it remain to be see how effective this cache and Seagates caching algorythms will work in real life. Another gripe is the fact that the NAND cache is only used as a read cache, so writes are will always happen at magnetic media speeds and it is unclear how well the cache updates can be hidden in the background. Being such a new product we won’t know if it will be plagued by similar birthing pains as with SSD’s like slowdowns if not TRIMed or long latency writes when the cache is updated. Finally power consumption is still significantly higher than a SSD. Seagate’s marketing states a 80% better performance than a comparable 7200rpm drive, but the more interesting comparison to an SSD is missing. The pricing structure looks much more positive, the Momentus XT drives carry an MSRP of $113 for the 250 GB device, $132 for the 320 GB version, and $156 for the 500 GB one. A quick check on Newegg shows non-hybrid 7200 drives selling for $85 which is almost a 50% premium. Given the additional components I’m guessing Seagate has some flexibility here.

Seagate’s new hybrid drives definitely will find its supporters in a portion of the portable computing segment where larger drive capacities are a must and where the price/capacity trade-offs of a $80-100 40GB entry level SSD or a $150 64GB mid range solution just won’t meet their needs. If Seagate can get the premium compared to a 7200rpm close to zero then there would be no need to buy non-hybrid drives at all, this might happen anyway just to remain competitive if SSDs start displacing HDDs at the consumer level.

Personally I’m looking forward to Intel’s introduction of their next generation SSDs using 25nm NAND. Intel recently announced that they were on track and sampling parts to customers. If this new technology has a similar impact as when they introduced their 34nm parts we might see a 60% reduction of SSD ASPs. This would put fast 80GB SSDs in the sub $100 range. Then I think we are looking at a scenario similar as with the iPod Touch vs Classic, most people can fit their music collection in less than 32GB storage, only folks who use a lot of video still opt for the larger capacity classic. 80GB is sufficient for most business applications today (128GB will be the killer) and the performance/power consumption/reliability/portability benefits of an SSD will outway getting a rotating disk.

In closing the technology looks much more promising now that the Vista requirement has been removed. If Seagate can reduce the premium to close to parity with similar hard drives then the story becomes much more compelling. Otherwise consumers will need to wait for real world and third party benchmarks to see how well the small 4GB cache and Seagate’s read caching algorythms will work.

Links:

• Seagate press release
• Momentus XT product page (Online Launch event on 5/26/2010)
• Anandtech review: Seagate’s Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD

Anandtech has an article up on the new drives. Pricing is inline with competing products $279 for 64GB, $529 for 128GB and $999 for 256GB. That’s list pricing so retail pricing will hopefully be lower. Due to the similar design as the Kingston SSD Now series Anand thinks it street pricing might reach the $2.20/GB level. Performance is inline with what we expect of a newer SSD, but still slower than Indilinx barefoot drives. Thus expect performance on the lower end of the scale when compared to other manufacturers. So with lacking speed and price innovation what does the SiliconEdge Blue bring to the table? WD is touting higher levels of compatibility and reliability testing which has gone into their exclusive firmware version for the SiliconEdge Blue.

Given the pricing, performance and an unproven controller design I’m tending to stick with Indilinx Barefoot SSDs which already have sub $2.20/Gb pricing on sale. Make sure to check out the Anandtech article for more details. I’ll be collecting more information on the recent Jmicron based drives and writing a follow-up post next.

Links:

• 03/03/10: Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD press release
• 03/03/10: Anandtech: “Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue Review: WD Enters the Consumer SSD Market”

• 02/20/10: Legitreviews: OCZ Vertex LE (Limited Edition) 100GB SSD Review
• 02/19/10: Anandtech: OCZ’s Vertex Limited Edition Review & SSD State of the Union
• 02/19/10: PC Perspective: “OCZ Vertex LE (Limited Edition) 100GB SSD Review – Sandforce Goes Retail”

The Anandtech article is a must read as usual. It doesn’t go into as much detail as the other reviews but includes information about the “SSD state of the union”.  One interesting tidbit to note is a maximum latency problem of the C300 which is in the 1.27s range. That is really bad, but the average latency seems to indicate that this case hardly ever comes up. I remember noting that the Micron AS benchmarks for latency were quite a bit higher than the competition. I’m hoping Micron can address this with a firmware update.

Right on time with the announced Feb 22nd availability date, Micron’s RealSSD C300 is also available from Crucial.com. Pricing is $499 and $799 for the 128/256GB models.

Pricing is pretty much in line with current 128GB and 256GB offerings though the Vertex LE is a bit pricier at almost $1k. Too bad that the C300 128GB didn’t end up at the $399 price point. That would have made it a killer.

While spending 400+ on an SSD is a bit out of the range for average consumers, I’m guessing the enthusiasts looking for bragging rights will be snapping up the RealSSD C300 like hotcakes. Pick-em up while you can.

The most obvious change was to the blog template. I’m now using “The Azure Hut – Two Column Widget Ready” template by P. Andrew. I like it’s simple design, the previous “Notepad Chaos” one was just a bit too busy. I’ve been tweaking the files a bit to add a logo and other small tweaks. I also need to fix some bugs like the text wrapping around images. Behind the scenes I made the blog mobile readable and migrate it to the new scottfiller.com domain. The former was accomplished by installing a mobile website plug-in that recognizes a mobile browser and uses a mobile formatted template. This happens automatically for mobile clients and you have the option to switch to the normal site if you wish. So try it out on your mobile phone and let me know what you think. The domain migration was semi-familiar have done this for joomla based sites in the past. You learn this when you have to migrate your site to a new server or do development on multiple servers. The new part was not having done this for a WordPress application, but the mechanics were identical (back-up files + DB, install WP on new domain which creates the framework for files + DB, copy files + DB, modify configuration files and content to fix any hard linkages). As you can see it is up and running and I’m forwarding traffic from scott.thefillers.net to here.

On the hardware side I completed a new HTPC build for my cousin’s husband. This was my first Intel i5 build (my trusty Q6600 OC’ed to 3GHz is still chugging along nicely thank you!). The build went super smooth and I’ll post more details later.

The bigger headache was a freezing problem on my main file server (an old Intel E6300 running @ 3GHz with 7 drives with capacities between 300GB to 1.5TB). The PC would run smoothly after a reboot, but after a couple of hours it would get stuck in a loop where the whole machine would freeze for more than a minute then unlock for a few seconds. This made initial troubleshooting really difficult since I had to sit there for several minute waiting for the small window where the machine would respond to input. My initial guess was high CPU load due to a faulty program or a virus, but the task manager showed no memory or cpu loading problems. Before swapping hardware I tried installing a new OS to rule out a trojan, OS or application problems. Since I have multiple drives on the PC I just install the new OS to different drive with enough free space. After the first boot the locking loop problem went away and I also found a defective HDD which was slowing the boot process. But on the flip side the PC started crashing with BSODs. I started throttling the CPU overclock back to default but the system would still crash under load. Since I couldn’t narrow it down further I bit the bullet and bought some parts from my local PC retail store. After swapping out every component except the motherboard I was still seeing instability. So the last experiment was to assembling a new motherboard, GPU and memory outside of the case connected to the old drives and PSU which worked! So the problem was the motherboard. Upon closer examination a heat sink that covered the FET between the CPU socket and the IO ports had come loose. I removed the old thermal pad and put thermal paste directly on the FETs and reinstalled the heat sink and voila everything was stable again. Sigh!!!

The good news is that I can return the $500+ parts I had bought and use the old system as is. I was debating upgrading to an i5 system as well, but now I’ll put that off for a couple more months. The only really bad news is that I lost 500GB of data. I think it was old tv episodes that I had been archiving. Given this day and age it is cheaper to back-up data to HDD, but this crash will force me to rethink my archiving and redundancy strategy. It does make me think about folks worrying about the “life span” of SSD. I don’t think HDDs really live up to their MTBF specs and I sure as heck don’t think they are being tested as much with HDD prices being 10c per Gigabyte.

Anand the founder of Anandtech has recognized this problem and has created the SSD Storage Bench for real world performance testing which he introduced back in November 2009. Futuremark’s PCMark Vantage benchmark is a similar older benchmark but its harder to isolate the storage system’s contribution and is geared more towards HDDs. What I like Anandtech’s benchmark is that it takes the approach of testing the SSDs against three usage profiles: Light, Heavy and Gaming. Each profile is supposed to mimic real world usage taking things like checking emails, opening attachments, manipulating office documents, watching movies. editing pictures, compressing files, browsing and downloading files and gaming. Each task takes advantage of the different performance aspects of the new SSDs leading to some interesting results.

• Intel’s X-25M G2 160GB with superior IOps and good sequential R/W takes the lead as expected in the light usage profile.
• On the other hand the OCZ Vertex with inferior IOps and random Writes when compared to the Intel drive takes a whopping 30% lead to win the heavy benchmarks due to their higher sequential Read and Write speeds. What this shows to me is that IOps and Random Writes beyond a certain level (e.g.  6MB/s random writes but faster than the 1-3MB/s for a 7200rpm HDD) is less noticeable for an average consumer workload.
• If you are running a database which requires a lot of random R/W access you’ll be better off getting an Intel drive.
• For gaming sequential R/W performance is more important.
• It is great to see the comparison with a Raptor and 5400 rpm HDD and how much faster SSDs are. Even when compared to a slower/cheaper product.
• The comparison with the cheaper 40GB drives really shows the trade-offs you will face when using an Intel design with half the channels that it was originally designed for.

Real world performance testing as offered by Anandtech’s SSD Storage Bench is a step in the right direction especially with the release of next generation SSDs like the RealSSD C300 from Micron and Sandforce based drives where it becomes harder to judge cost vs. performance vs. capacity using synthetic benchmarks. My only critiques are that Anandtech’s Storage Bench is not publicly available for download so that the user community can’t run independent tests and cover drives not tested by Anandtech and that some form of value vs. performance rating would be helpful given the current high cost of SSD drives.

In closing I recommend checking out these non-official benchmark comparison between a C300 and X-25M G2 that a hardforum member found.

Rooting the G1

Between Maximum PC: How to hack your G1, Androidandme: Beginners guide to rooting your Android G1 and the CynogenMod Wiki I was able to gather enough information to successfully root my G1. Here a quick overview of the key steps:

1. Back-up your data and buy a new class 6 Transcend 8GB micro SDHC (fast and largest supported by G1)
2. Downgrade to RC29 and Root your G1 by installing CyanongenMod’s Recovery Image
3. Update Radio and Second Program Loader (SPL) – make sure you understand the risks/benefits when choosing Haykuro/Death SPL!
4. Download a ROM (CyanogenMod, FastTest or a 2.1 Eclair ROM), wipe data and install ROM
5. Partition your micro SD card to run larger ROMs and run Apps from the card

I ended up using CyanogenMod which is a widely used 1.6 “Donut” build which supports wired tethering and overclocking to 528MHz out of the box. I also tried the KiNgxKxlick Espresso2G1 v1.3 which is 2.1 “Eclair” based which supports the Nexus One style live wallpapers and should eventually have Flash 10.1.

Wired Tethering & Tmobile 3G

Having made some experiences with tethering using the Android central PDANet app I was expecting this to be as easy as hooking up the G1 via USB and clicking on the built in Wired Tether app. Well if I had been using Win7 this would have gone smoother, but Windows XP doesn’t come with the needed Remote NDIS drivers. So I had to download the drivers from here and after installation (Windows ask for the drivers when you plug in the G1) I was good to go. I did a quick test on my Compaq 2510p notebook and was pleasantly surprised with the 3G speeds (1009/752 kbps). The download  is a bit slower than DSL but the upload is 2x faster. So much for my cousin saying that Tmobile 3G is worse than AT&T. This was measured down in Cupertino,CA and being a wireless technology YMV.

A lot of new information has surfaced at the start of the year primarily around CES that indicates OEM products releasing in Q1’2010 (click here to see OCZ SSD roadmap). We are also seeing early reviews and benchmarks poping up. Performance looks good but it remains to be see if Sandforce will be able to help establish new performance and price points similar to when Korea based Indilinx launched its Barefoot controller.

Benchmark Comparison (Sandforce SF-1500 MLC, Indilinx Barefoot, Marvel/Micron used in C300)

Initial excitement over the SF-1500 MLC designs performance being faster than current industry performance leader Intel X-25 G2 Series products seems to have been overshadowed by the news of the Marvel/Micron based RealSSD C300. Sandforce can still make a name for itself if it can achieve price points similar to Indilinx drives.

Update Feb 4, 2010: Hothardware reports pricing for the 100GB Vertex 2 of $450-500. Not a good sign, lets hope that street pricing will be lower and OCZ can still make a profit. From Xtremesystems poster F.E.A.R. comes some benchmarks of a SLC based SF-1500 drive from Solidata. The purchased the Solidata SC-64 for 549€ or US-$ 815.

Sandforce Links and Reviews

• Company website
• 02/01/10: Hothardware: OCZ Vertex 2 Pro, Sandforce Powered SSD Preview
• 01/21/10: Super Talent Announces Enterprise Class TeraDrive™ SSDs based on SandForce™ SSD Processor
• 01/19/10: BenchmarkReviews: “SandForce SF1500 Enterprise SSD Processor”
• 01/07/10: Tweaktown preview of the SF-1500/MLC based Runcore Pro V 100GB
• 12/31/09: Anandtech: “OCZ’s Vertex 2 Pro Preview: The Fastest MLC SSD We’ve Ever Tested”
• 12/17/09: A-DATA and Sandforce press release
• 11/10/09: OCZ and Sandforce press release
• 11/04/09: F.E.A.R. on Xtremesystems review of Solidata SC-64 SF-1500 (SLC)
• 11/02/09: Unigen and Sandforce press release
• 09/22/09: Smart Modular and Sandforce press release