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Android Phones Can Substitute for Supercomputers

August 21st, 2010 |

There’s an app for almost everything. Now add one that can run calculations from a supercomputer on a Nexus One phone in real time and without the need for internet connectivity.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Texas Advanced Computing Center have created an Android app that can take simulations from the powerful Ranger supercomputer and solve them further on the mobile phone.

“The idea of using a phone is to show we can take a device with one chip and low power to compute a solution so it comes as close to the one solved on a supercomputer,” John Peterson, a research associate at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, told Wired.com.

Many researchers depend heavily on supercomputers capable of millions of calculations per second to simulate problems and advance their studies. Texas Computing Center’s Ranger supercomputer went live in 2008 with 62,976 CPU cores, 123 terabytes of memory, 1.73 petabytes of disk space and 579.4 teraflops of performance.

But massive machines such as the Ranger are not easily available. Researchers have to book time on them and they aren’t available for computations that need to be done quickly. Supercomputers also can’t be carried into field experiments. Having a device in hand that could help solve a problem quickly can be handy.

That’s where a technique called “certified reduced basis approximation” comes into play. The method lets researchers take a complex problem, define the values that are most relevant to the problem and set the upper and lower bounds. David Knezevic, a post-doctoral associate at MIT and Anthony Patera, a professor at the school, refined the technique to make it work on a smartphone. They did it by including strong error bounds that show how close they are to an actual supercomputer solution.

“It’s demonstrating that with a small processor, you can still get a meaningful answer to a big problem,” says Peterson.

The app is just one half of the solution, though. A supercomputer still has to create the reduced model that can be transferred to the phone as an app. When outside the office, researchers can enter values into the app to find answers quickly or visualize data.

For instance, for a problem in fluid dynamics, researchers will spend a day or two simulating a model using a supercomputer like Ranger. Of that computation, they will take a small amount of data and store it on a server as a reduced model.

This reduced model can be used to perform simulations on a cellphone, offering answers near instantaneously for use in real-world applications.

“The payoff for model reduction is large when you can go from an expensive supercomputer solution to a calculation that takes a couple of seconds on a smart phone,” Knezevic told a writer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. “That’s a speed up of orders of magnitude.”

There’s one disadvantage though. The smartphone app has to be customized for the problem it is solving, so it’s not universal.

“If a researcher came along with a problem, he would have to code up his own equation within the framework to represent it on the phone,” says Peterson. “What he would develop would be specific to the problem.”

For now, the researchers have made their app available through files on SourceForge.

Check out their video showing how the app works:

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Photo: Texas Advanced Computing Center

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Android Phones Can Substitute for Supercomputers

Amateurs Fling Their Gadgets to Edge of Space

August 12th, 2010 |

Author: Stefanie Jenkins

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Introduction

A ride to the stratosphere and back has now become a rite of passage for smartphones.

Space enthusiasts are attaching devices such as the Motorola Droid, G1, HTC Evo and Nexus One — not to mention an array of digital cameras — to weather balloons or rockets, then sending them high into the stratosphere and beyond.

With integrated GPS systems, cameras and fast processors, smartphones are computing devices available to all. That’s why space enthusiasts are turning to them to do things that would have otherwise required custom components or a number of specialized devices.

“What you are seeing is a grass-roots initiative to reach for the stars,” says Bobby Russell, founder of Quest for Stars, a nonprofit organization that works with high school students to promote science and technology.

Driving the interest of hobbyists are the latest crop of smartphones and even digital cameras because the devices are cheap and fairly rugged.

“Now, it’s all there off-the-shelf for the taking,” says Russell. “So why reinvent the wheel?”

Photo: A Google G1 phone gets ready to head into the atmosphere, surrounded by members of the Noisebridge hacker space. Photo courtesy: Mikolaj Horbyn, Andrew Gerrand, Christie Dudley.

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Have you tried to launch a gadget into space? Submit a link to a photo and website where we can learn more about it. If we get enough great submissions, we’ll publish a gallery of your submissions! Your photo needs to be on Flickr, Picasa or another website. Give us the URL of the image file (.jpg, .gif or .png), not the webpage containing it.

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Amateurs Fling Their Gadgets to Edge of Space

Android Froyo Update Breaks Gmail Sync on HTC Evo

August 10th, 2010 |

Author: Tech Blogger

Updated to include HTC comment

After Google’s Nexus One, HTC’s Evo 4G phone is the first device to get upgraded to the latest Android 2.2 Froyo version of the operating system. But some users are not happy about it.

The Froyo update has broken the syncing of multiple Gmail accounts on the device. The results is that only the primary Gmail account is updated automatically. Second and third Gmail accounts have to be manually refreshed to pull in new e-mails, say Evo users on forums such as Android Central and Google’s Android support board.

“My two Gmail accounts have always worked great on 2.1. Moving to 2.2 my primary Gmail pushes instantly. My secondary Gmail account doesn’t sync at all. I have to manually sync to get it to work,” says ‘tommy m‘, an Evo user who first posted about the issue on the Android Central forum.

The problem also means that users don’t see new e-mail notifications from secondary accounts.

A HTC spokesman told Wired.com the company is aware of the bug but does not see it as a widespread issue.

“The good news is that it has not affected a majority of users,” says Keith Nowak. “We are working to find a fix.”

HTC and Sprint, the exclusive carrier for the Evo, started pushing out Froyo to customers on August 3. The update offers features such as voice dialing over Bluetooth, the ability to store apps on the external memory card and browser improvements including a faster JavaScript engine and Flash support.

The problems with syncing of multiple Gmail accounts flared up right after the Evo moved to Android 2.2. Some Froyo users have been offering homebrewed solutions on message boards including deleting the accounts and adding them again with a change to the mail setting of ‘notify once.’ But the solution hasn’t worked reliably for all users.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Android Froyo Update Breaks Gmail Sync on HTC Evo

Cellphone ‘Death Grip’ Increases Radiation Exposure, One App Shows

August 10th, 2010 |

Author: Mark Jeffries

Not only does a “death grip” cut into your phone’s ability to connect, it also increases the amount of radio-frequency radiation it’s pumping out.

Now you can see exactly how much more radiation your head is absorbing, with an app that estimates the RF output of your smartphone in real time.

Israeli mobile software company Tawkon Monday released a video that shows its app measuring the impact a “death grip” can have on a mobile device’s radiation. Using the app, an iPhone 4, BlackBerry Bold, and Google Nexus One all show a significant increase in RF radiation when held tightly in the user’s palm.

That’s to be expected: Whenever a cellphone has difficulty connecting with a cell tower, it increases its RF output in order to maintain the connection. Anything that interferes with that connection — be it a death grip, stepping into an elevator, or locating yourself in a low-signal area — will increase any phone’s RF output.

So is Tawkon suggesting that the infamous “death grip” can actually be detrimental to the user’s health?

“Tawkon doesn’t advocate that the death grip is necessarily unsafe, because final answers on the health ramifications of mobile phone usage won’t be known for decades, until researchers have had that time to track long-term usage and impact,” Tawkon co-founder Amit Lubovsky told Wired. ”However, recent studies do indicate a health impact of mobile phone radiation on mobile phone users, especially on people whose usage is termed excessive and cumulative. Until the long-term studies are concluded (decades from now), Tawkon believes consumers should have the right and ability to minimize their exposure to mobile phone radiation.”

Most ongoing studies cannot yet draw a causal link between cell phone usage and physical disorders, and Tawkon should know, since the company follows many of these studies.

The World Health Organization’s Interphone study, 2009 study from the Environmental Working Group measured the radiation from more than 1,200 mobile phone models. While the EWG study could not draw any conclusions as to the risks of mobile phone use, it did provide the beginnings of the group’s database of mobile phones and their emissions.

Currently, the group ranks the Motorola Droid, iPhone 3GS, Google Nexus One, BlackBerry Bold 9700, and Samsung Instinct HD as the top five most radio-emissive phones. All of them, however, fall within the FCC’s acceptable SAR (specific absorption rate) limit of 1.6 watts per kilogram (1.6 W/kg).

The Tawkon application gets all its information about the phone’s radiation from the cellular protocol stack that manages the baseband modem.

“We use this information in the form of different RF parameters extracted from the device itself,” Lubovsky said. “We then take into consideration the proximity of the phone to the user –for example if the phone is held against the user’s ear or on the user’s lap– to help determine the actual exposure level at any given time.”

“As part of the production procedure we have, each device goes through a long calibration process in an RF lab prior to its release to make sure that our measurements meet the actual values,” he continued.

Tawkon is only available on the BlackBerry platform via App World, Mobihand, and Handango, but not on Android or iOS as shown in the video.

“It works on the iPhone but we’re waiting for Apple approval to make it publicly available,” Lubovsky said. “Android is expected to launch very soon.”

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Cellphone ‘Death Grip’ Increases Radiation Exposure, One App Shows

Google Offers Unlocked Nexus One to Developers

August 5th, 2010 |

Author: Heather Brown

Google stopped selling its Nexus One phone through its online store last month but the device is not dead yet.

Google is now offering the Nexus One as an unlocked phone to developers for $530 so they can use it on any wireless carrier. To order the phone, users need to have an Android developer account, in which case they can just click on the “Development Phones” link from the account, says a blog post on the Android developer’s blog.

The Nexus One will replace the T-Mobile HTC G1 as the official developer phone for Android. The Nexus One is certainly more expensive than the unlocked G1, which was priced at $400. But the Nexus One is also a device that despite its short life as a consumer product, still has among the best hardware in smartphones today.

Google launched the HTC-designed Nexus One in January on the T-Mobile network. But the phone was sold only online and not through T-Mobile retail locations.

Less than six months later, Google gave up on selling the device to consumers citing the poor response to the web store. Instead, it promised to bring the Nexus One into retail stores nationwide. So far, Google has yet to deliver on that. Google put the devices into retail stores of I wireless, a T-mobile affiliate, with about 250 stores mostly in the Midwest, but it hasn’t announced any retail partnerships beyond that.

For now, the Nexus One remains alive and continues to trickle out of the Googleplex. The device for developers will ship with Android 2.1 and upgrade to Android 2.2 Froyo on boot up.

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Photo: (Juliette Culver/Flickr)

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Google Offers Unlocked Nexus One to Developers

Europeans Realize Dream of a Single Charger for All Cellphones

August 4th, 2010 |

Author: Christen Arquette

Cellphone battery dead? No problem: Just borrow a charger from a friend. Oh, wait — you can’t, because your friend doesn’t have the same phone as you, and his charger won’t work with your phone.

That annoyance will end next year, for Europeans at least. Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, most cellphones sold in Europe will have a one-size-fits-all charger starting in 2011. So far, 10 major cellphone makers, including Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion, have signed on to the agreement.

American users will have to wait. Without a government agency setting a deadline, it is up to handset makers to make the switch to a single standard. All consumers can do is let their old chargers gather dust in a drawer somewhere, while hoping manufacturers will eventually converge on a standardized charger.

“For the FCC, this is probably number 5,000 on their list and it is legislative priority number 10,000 at this point,” says Joe Banos, chief operating officer for Wilson Electronics, which makes cellphone boosters and antennas. “We believe the U.S. will ultimately follow Europe here, but the question is when.”

Today each cellphone ships with its own charger. Different companies use different connectors — and often different models from the same company do too, making it difficult for users to borrow a charger. And when it’s time to toss the phone, the charger goes into the bin too.

A universal charger means consumers don’t have to get a new charger with every mobile phone. As a bonus, it will be easier to borrow a charger when in need.

And if all that isn’t enough, there’s the green aspect. One-size-fits-all means fewer chargers will wind up in landfill, less pressure on recycling of the electronic waste, and fewer resources consumed in manufacturing chargers.

In 2009, the European Commission said it reached a voluntary agreement with handset manufacturers to use the micro-USB connector for the charger. All phone models starting 2011 sold in Europe would then have compatible chargers. Now, that agreement is taking effect.

Changing the rules in the U.S.

Smartphone makers in the U.S. are moving towards something similar, but more slowly. Motorola and Samsung have said they will offer a standard charger here but haven’t committed to a deadline. It’s a complex game where each handset maker is optimizing for itself, but collectively those decisions might converge to the goal of having a universal charger, probably centered on micro-USB.

“For the most part it is already happening here with smartphones,” says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at the Altimeter Group. “An HTC Evo charger will charge a Nexus One or Incredible, as long as it has a micro-USB connector.”

The major holdouts in the U.S. are Apple and Research In Motion. Apple uses a proprietary 30-pin connector for its iPhone, while many BlackBerry chargers and devices are engineered so they will work only when paired together, says Banos.

But even among companies that use micro-USB, it is still not a standard.

“There’s the flat, wide mini-USB connector; the short, squat micro-USB; and different versions in between,” says Allen Nogee, an analyst at In-Stat research. “They are all still using different versions of the USB connector.”

But if you can get connector to fit into the phone, it doesn’t matter which model it is for or which company made it, because all USB-based chargers deliver the same voltage, say experts.

The push to change the situation in the U.S. could come from accessories makers for smartphones, says Nogee. Today, when you buy a new battery pack or a car charging kit, it comes with a little bag stuffed with connectors so users can pick the right ones for their phones.

“It is much more expensive for these companies to support different phones and connectors,” says Nogee. “But the problem is that so far, accessories makers haven’t had enough say in the phone manufacturing process.”

Ultimately, economics will force handset makers in the U.S. to change, say industry experts. As companies move to a universal charger in Europe, they will bring the same connectors to U.S. models.

It’s not clear how Apple will make the change, but it is certain that if the company moves to a micro USB-based connector for its new iPhone model in Europe, U.S. customers can expect the same.

“It makes so much sense that I believe the U.S. will follow,” says Banos. “It would be insane not to.”

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Europeans Realize Dream of a Single Charger for All Cellphones

HTC Evo to Get Android 2.2 Upgrade Next Week

July 30th, 2010 |

Author: Jenny Zhao

HTC’s Evo 4G phone will become the first device (after Google’s Nexus One) to get an upgrade to Android 2.2 Froyo, the latest version of the Android operating system.

Sprint will begin pushing out the upgrade to Evo users starting Tuesday, August 3. All Evo users will have Android 2.2 by the middle of the month, says the wireless carrier.

The upgrade will offer features such as voice dialing over Bluetooth, the ability to store apps on the external memory card and browser improvements including a faster JavaScript engine and Flash support.

Sprint launched the Evo in June with version 2.1 of the Android OS. The phone has become a best seller for Sprint and HTC.

Sprint’s move is also likely to put pressure on Motorola and Verizon to get the Droid upgraded to Android 2.2 as soon as possible. Earlier reports have suggested that the Droid’s 2.2 upgrade is expected in “late summer.”

For Evo users, the upgrade will be pushed over-the-air to the device and automatically installed. Those who can’t wait will have the option to manually download it. Customers can access the update through their phone under the Settings Menu > System Updates > HTC Software Update.

Sprint says the change to the firmware will not wipe personal data such as contacts, apps, settings and photos — but it’s always a good idea to back up your device before performing a firmware upgrade, just in case.

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Photo: (Mike Saechang/Flickr)

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HTC Evo to Get Android 2.2 Upgrade Next Week

Nexus One Phone Rides a Rocket Up 28,000 Feet

July 29th, 2010 |

Author: Trixi Anderson

Google’s Nexus One phone is going where few smartphones have gone before. A group strapped the Nexus One to the back of a rocket and launched it from the Nevada desert into the atmosphere to test the device’s performance up in the air.

The Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, a group of rocket enthusiasts, used an Intimidator-5 rocket to send the device 28,000 feet into the atmosphere.

“The purpose of flying the Nexus One is to find a low-cost satellite solution,” says Thomas Atchison, chairman of the Mavericks Foundation. “The radio, processing power, sensors and cameras in smartphones potentially have the same capability as those in satellites.”

The idea is to drive down satellite cost by using off-the-shelf products and components, says Atchison.

“Today’s satellites are the size of Greyhound buses,” he says. “But I believe they are going to get smaller and more frequently deployed. This is a first-step effort.”

The Nexus One piggybacked on a rocket that’s being used as part of a project called Clotho that’s trying to find out how far off the earth’s surface life exists.

The test flight with the Nexus One was to see how the device behaves under a high-G environment, says Atchison.

“If you put a Nexus One in orbit, how will it perform?” he says. “How does the device handle the thermal temperature and vibrations. We wanted to see the results.”

The resulting video from the Nexus One is below. As expected, the video is a lot of shaking, blue sky and blobs of light, but it is still fun to watch. An earlier test brought Nexus One back with a shattered screen but the device did well on its second flight.

James Dougherty, one of the participants in the project, shows the payload with a biosampling module and the Google phone.

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Photo: The shattered Nexus One post launch (jurvetson/Flickr)

[via Make and Droid Ninja]

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Nexus One Phone Rides a Rocket Up 28,000 Feet

Dell Streak Priced at $300 For AT&T

July 27th, 2010 |

Author: Brandon Zimmerman

After months of teasing, Dell’s 5-inch tablet-phone hybrid called the Streak finally has a price tag. The Streak will cost $300 with a two-year contract on AT&T. An unlocked version of the device will cost $550.

Dell is yet to announce exactly when the Streak will hit retail stores in the U.S. but it is accepting pre-sale orders from customers on its site. The device will initially be available in black with a red color variant introduced later this year, says Dell.

Dell launched the Streak in U.K. last month. The Streak is targeted at smartphone users who crave a larger display but still need a device that’s portable and could potentially replace their phone. The Streak has a 5-inch display, a 5-megapixel camera, phone, browser and access to Android apps. But it doesn’t exactly succeed in trying to be bigger than the phone but smaller than the iPad. (Read Wired.com’s review of the Dell Streak.)

A major drawback of the Streak is that it uses version 1.6 of the Android operating system, while most smartphones today run Android 2.1. Google has already released Android 2.2 Froyo and some devices such as the Nexus One have gotten the Froyo update.

The Streak seems woefully behind the times but Dell says a Froyo update is coming “later this year.”

In the U.S., AT&T haters won’t have a choice when it comes to choosing a wireless carrier for the device. Dell doesn’t plan to support T-Mobile’s 3G network or certify the Streak for operation on the T-Mobile network.

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Photo: Dell Streak (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

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Dell Streak Priced at $300 For AT&T

OLED Shortage Forces HTC To Switch Displays

July 26th, 2010 |

Author: Brittany Turner

Smartphone maker HTC is switching back to older LCD technology for some of its smartphones because of a shortage of active-matrix OLED displays.

The new crop of HTC phones coming this summer will include a technology called SLCD, or Super LCD, instead of the newer organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays used in several current-model smartphones, including the HTC Desire and the Google-designed, HTC-built Nexus One.

HTC says SLCD will give consumers a visual experience comparable to HTC’s current 3.7 inch OLED displays. SLCDs will also offer better battery performance, contrast and more natural balanced color than AMOLED displays, says the company.

“HTC is experiencing high-demand for many of our phones, specifically our phones with 3.7-inch displays,” Peter Chou, CEO of HTC said in a press release. “The new SLCD display technology enables us to ramp up our production capabilities quickly to meet the high demand.”

But just what exactly is Super LCD technology? Two analysts Wired.com spoke with say it may just be a marketing jargon for a variant of the traditional thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) that powers almost all mobile displays currently on the market.

“There’s Super AMOLED, Super IPS and now Super LCD,” says Raymond Soneira, president of research and consulting firm DisplayMate Technologies. “Its like eggs in a supermarket: You can’t buy a small egg anymore. They all start at medium.”

When Google launched its Nexus One phone, the device’s AMOLED screen made a splash because of its vivid colors. Unlike LCDs, AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens are not backlit, which means they were expected to consume less power than traditional LCDs.

But they have also been plagued by problems. AMOLED screens are more difficult to read in bright sunlight when compared to LCDs.

The screens are also more expensive and their supply is limited, says Jennifer Colegrove, director at DisplaySearch.

“AMOLED is about 20 to 50 percent more expensive than LCD,” she says, “and currently only three companies–Samsung, LG and CMEL–supply it.”

Meanwhile, Samsung has developed the Super-AMOLED display to reduce some of these flaws, make the OLED screens thinner and improve on their visibility in direct sunlight. But Super-AMOLED displays are proving to be an even scarcer component for handset makers.

HTC says the SLCD technology it is using as an substitute can meet its demand without significantly sacrificing quality. SLCD is an improvement over most other LCD panels because it provides approximately five times better power management and offers wider viewing angles, says HTC. But those claims have yet to be tested.

Details about the SLCD technology itself are scarce and further muddled by a joint venture that Samsung and Sony set up a few years ago that has the same name. In 2004, the two companies set up a joint manufacturing venture for LCD screens and called it S-LCD. The manufacturing facility initially produced LCD screens for TVs but later began focusing extensively on mobile devices. Until now, SLCD was used to refer to the name of the Samsung-Sony manufacturing plant, rather than a specific technology, says Soneira.

But if you are itching to see the difference among all the display technologies for yourself, Mobile Tech World has linked to a video comparison of Sony SLCD vs AMOLED and Super AMOLED.

In the video, an HTC Desire phone sporting the new SLCD panel is pitted against a Nexus One with the AMOLED display, a Motorola Droid with IPS (in-plane switching, a kind of LCD technology used by many TVs as well as Apple’s iPad), and a Samsung Wave with a Super-AMOLED display.

“I thought all the displays were really good, they all had decent color and respectable viewing angles,” says a user who did the comparison on Howard-Forums.

“The super AMOLED was noticeably less reflective than the others and was blacker with the best viewing angles. Super LCD had a superior horizontal viewing angle compared to a regular AMOLED display. The AMOLED had slightly better blacks and slightly better vertical viewing angles. Both Super LCD and AMOLED were very reflective.”

Check out the video:

Photo: (spieri_sf/Flickr)

Archive for the ‘Nexus One’ Category

Android Phones Can Substitute for Supercomputers

Related Posts:

Amateurs Fling Their Gadgets to Edge of Space

Show space gadgets that are: hot | new | top-rated or submit your photo

Submit a Spacefaring Gadget

Related Posts:

Android Froyo Update Breaks Gmail Sync on HTC Evo

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Cellphone ‘Death Grip’ Increases Radiation Exposure, One App Shows

Related Posts:

Google Offers Unlocked Nexus One to Developers

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Europeans Realize Dream of a Single Charger for All Cellphones

Changing the rules in the U.S.

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HTC Evo to Get Android 2.2 Upgrade Next Week

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Nexus One Phone Rides a Rocket Up 28,000 Feet

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Dell Streak Priced at $300 For AT&T

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OLED Shortage Forces HTC To Switch Displays

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