Category Archives: Technology

Flash, bang, what a picture.

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On Friday afternoon an old friend posted on my Facebook wall a link to an article about a new supernova discovered on Thursday in one of the arms of the Whirlpool galaxy (M51) and wondered if I’d seen it.

Fortuitously, Friday evening was practically the clearest sky I’ve seen in Oxford so after Saturn became eclipsed by the house roof (which now happens annoyingly early) I decided to have a go at imaging it.

After I having to re-aligned the telescope, as the LX90 mount doesn’t seem to take care of accumulated pointing errors very well and was hence pointing in the wrong part of the sky, I managed to get on target. I swapped the eye-piece for the camera, found a nearby bright star to get focus and then moved back onto the subject.

I tried a couple of exposures, all taken using an infra-red remote control so as not to cause the ‘scope to bounce around, but only one of these was usable. The trouble is that the LX90’s mount isn’t that good at tracking the sky either, even with an equatorial wedge. It seems to jerk forward randomly every minute or so making exposures longer than about a minute practically pointless. Still, with the level of light pollution, even a minute’s exposure creates a mostly orange image.

Anyway, I had one usable image…

DSC 0095
Original image.

As can be seen, the galaxy itself is quite a subtle feature, mostly obscured by the reflected glow of the Oxford light pollution. So, the next task was to try to filter this out and enhance the galaxy within the image. I did this by adjusting the colour curves for each of the three colours and then adjusting the overall curve.

M51 full scene 2
M51 full scene 2

As you can now see, the light pollution has been greatly subdued and the galaxy stands out far greater. You can still see an artefact caused by the optics of the telescope, the subtle ring of orange with a bright dot in the centre, but this can’t easily be removed.

All that needs to be done now so as to make it an instructive image is to crop, flip (so as to remove the inverting of the image caused by the optics) and annotate…

M51 annotated cropped
M51 annotated cropped

And there it is!

Not quite as good as you’d get from a professional set up but adequate to show the supernova.

The making of an observatory

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Quite soon after the purchase of my telescope last August I determined that the time and effort it took to deploy the ‘scope and set it up meant that most clear evenings weren’t going to be able to be utilised. Almost as soon as I’d got it all ready it was time to pack things away again, or the clouds had rolled in. I needed a fixed observatory which would allow me to start observing quickly.

After doing research on the ‘net, in early October I finally plumped for a 6ft x 6ft rolling roof shed from Alexander’s Observatories and sent an e-mail asking for a quotation. At the same time I did the same for the patio base foundation from a local landscape gardening firm, N.V.Firmin. Little did I know how long both of these stages of the project would take. In fact, I imagined that there could be a possibility of having it functional by Christmas.

Well, at least the landscape gardening firm got back to me quickly. However, after getting the quote I was a little disappointed to learn that the start date for the works would be after Christmas sometime. Still, having not heard anything from the observatory company I wasn’t too worried about the delay.

Time ticked ever onward and October became November and November became December. Finally, over two months after my initial contact, I got a reply from the observatory company. To be honest I was expecting never to hear anything at all at this point and was starting to look at alternatives. Still, the quote was good so I gave the go-ahead and sent the deposit, which was cashed on Christmas Eve.

Everything went quiet for a few weeks and it wasn’t until the end of January that I heard from the landscape gardening company. Typically they wanted to install my patio and fencing the weekend I was away down in Cornwall for my and my Dad’s birthday. (Don’t you love the way life works that way?). Anyway, they started work the day before I left so I was able to survey their markings on the lawn after I got home (in the dark) and made amendments. For good measure I drew a sketch plan and taped it to the inside of my patio doors. I was very glad to discover after my return that everything was in order and a very nice job had been made.

patio1
Early February: The patio is almost complete. (The hole is for the pedestal foundation.)

At this point I had assumed that the observatory company’s quote of 8 to 12 weeks for delivery was still on track and that soon I’d get the template for the pedestal base foundation. However, I’d not heard anything since before Christmas, so I sent an e-mail informing the company that the base was ready and could I please have the template…

Another month passed and I was about to send another e-mail when out of the blue the template appeared. It was now 10 weeks after I’d paid my deposit and was getting a little concerned that I hadn’t heard anything more.

A couple of weeks later I sent off another e-mail and was surprised to get a reply back within three days informing me that work on my build would be starting in a couple of weeks and the delay was caused by a number of large observatories in the queue before mine. This, I assumed, meant that the timer for the delivery of my unit would then start, i.e. it would be 8-12 weeks from that point. I was not that happy.

You an imagine then the pleasant surprise I got when just a couple of weeks later I received a text message asking if it was OK to deliver the shed the following Thursday. Of course I said yes!

So, after months the day of the observatory arrived… 7th April, 2011.

Nick duly arrived at 8:30am, not long after his ETA and surprising seeing as he had driven directly from Norfolk, and he started right away… with the help of the first coffee of the day.

1stbase
8:35am: The base goes down. (Note the first coffee of the day.)

Due the relatively small size of the observatory Nick was able to prefabricate most of the parts and carry them all complete in his van, so in came the base and quickly the chipboard floor panels went down, cutting a hole for the pedestal.

cuttinghole2
8:47am: Base complete, pedestal hole cut.

It didn’t then take very long until the walls came in one at a time, they were lined with single ply and the observatory started to take shape.

wallsup
9:48am: The walls are up.

Nick at this point was on his third mug of coffee, along with biscuits. It’s thirsty work, especially when it’s the hottest day of the year so far and the area’s a bit of a Sun trap.

The next part of the build was to install the supports for the roof rails and the rails themselves. Basically, the supports are just 75mm fence posts. The horizontals slot into recesses in the walls and are supported by other posts at the most distal end from the shed.

railsupport2
11:18am: The roof rail supports are being fitted.

Once these were complete and the aluminium tracks installed it was time to install the roof. The main wood lattice structure was delivered as a single unit. Onto this was screwed the part of the southern side of the shed which slides with it before, finally, the wheels were installed. The whole thing was then lifted by the both of us onto the shed.

onwiththeroof
12:15pm: The roof structure is on.

The roof was now fitted with chipboard sheets which were then covered with roofing felt before more shuttering was installed at the gable ends. The project was starting to look almost complete. More coffee helped… And most importantly, the roof rolled.

theresherolls
2:05pm: The roof rolls for the first time.

From this point on things slowed down a little as it was all about installing the final details such as the door, the roof locks. Once these were done it was time to bolt down the pedestal.

pedestal
3:10pm: The pedestal is installed. Build complete.

And so, by half-past three the installation job was complete and Nick was on his way back to Norfolk.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening setting up my telescope for the first time in its new home. I had to rotate the pedestal by one bolt hole so that it was closer to being aligned north-south and then level its top.

Although the basic structure was now complete there was still no power in there and most importantly the strut which joined the two rail supports together was rather inconveniently at nose height. This would be rather tricky to navigate in the dark so I needed to raise it above head height. Also, I wasn’t happy with having the chipboard floor exposed to the weather and so I decided to clad the base with some wood cladding. Another inconvenient problem was that the eastern folding panel was too close to the ‘scope and hence couldn’t be folded down.

All these problems were fixed the following weekend. I used a sledgehammer and a block of wood to ease the whole observatory 5cm away from the house, relieving the folding panel problem before re-engineering the strut and bolting the legs down.

finished
The Weekend: The finished product, well almost.

And so it’s finished… well almost. I’ve still got to paint the inside and then there’s the proper final alignment of the ‘scope mount but it’s mostly there. I certainly didn’t expect last October that the whole project would take six months to complete.

But does it meet my requirements? It would be a bit sad if it didn’t. Well, let’s say that I can now go from deciding to go out to do observation to getting the first object in the eye piece in a little over four minutes and it takes a similar amount of time to close things down again. So, yes. A definite improvement on the 40 minutes it took previously.

Enthusing teen minds: Why today’s computers won’t create tomorrow’s programmers.

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The recent 30th anniversary of the launch of the Sinclair ZX81 and the subsequent post on his blog by Jim Finnis brought back to me a recurring thought that today’s computer technology is the antithesis of that required to enthuse a teenager to want to discover and play.

The computers of the early 80s were a blank canvas. You plugged them in, switched them on and (hopefully) the input cursor blinked at you. There was no decoration, no clutter and it was something waiting for YOU to do something to it.

Not only this but with the manual which came with it a 13 year old could within 5 minutes print their name on the screen. Within 10 minutes, at least with the second generation, make a funny noise. And within half an hour he or she could have his or her name scrolling up the screen in different colours whilst making unmusical noises and annoying their parents… they were hooked!

Now, let’s look at today’s technology…

The desktop or laptop computer takes an age to start up (i.e. more than 5 seconds) and totally insulates the user from what it is.

Smartphones are usually on all the time so don’t have this problem. Similarly tablets.

They’re immediately brimming full of functionality all vying for your attention, but it’s also incredibly locked down. You can do absolutely anything… ANYTHING as long as it’s what the visionary who steered the programming teams thinks that you should want to do. Woe betide you if you want to do anything different. It’ll either ignore you or give you an unhelpful suggestion in a dialog box. You can be creative, but only in the ways you’re told you can be.

So, what about the art of programming?

Well, on tablets and smartphones forget any native fun. Apparently this is too subversive. On the desktop it’s only slightly better (and I’m not singling out any desktop OS here). What are your options?

Well, on MacOS and Linux you can open a shell window and all sorts of interpreters and compilers are available and all sorts of graphics libraries to use with them too. You would think that this would be the ideal playing ground. Sorry to burst that bubble. It’s a great playing ground if you’re already a programming expert. It’s like taking a 5 year old into an engineering workshop, sitting him down and then complaining when he doesn’t build a car as he had all the tools available to him to do it and hence it must be his fault.

No, these environments are hopeless to teach and enthuse. There’s so large an energy barrier that it’s too daunting to even try. Also, how many lines of code in one of these modern development environments would it take to do the equivalent of the following?: 

10 FOR x=1 TO 100
20 FOR y=0 TO 7
30 INK y : PAPER 7 - y
40 BEEP 1,y
50 PRINT "Noisey coloured text"
60 NEXT y
70 NEXT x

I bet you’ll find that it’s quite a large number of line of code using all sorts of weird and wonderful libraries, possibly some non-standard ones to do the sound and a whole lot of code to manage the framework to create a window with the correct attributes and define the font etc. Hopeless!

Oh, and when it comes to drawing lines and circles etc. Oh dear.

Of course a great many people think that a computer with similar functionality to the old BBC Micro or ZX Spectrum would never be able to compete in the mind of a teen when they have all that touch-screen goodness and Angry Birds to play with. I beg to differ. It was most delightfully illustrated that this is profoundly not the case in the second episode of the BBC’s “Electric Dreams” series (unfortunately not available to watch on-line) where the family was given a BBC Micro to play with. The teenage son brought his best friend home from school to play with it and they thought it was awesome. They liked that it was a blank sheet that they could make do what they wanted and not be told what they should want to do by the device. And, of course, what they wanted it to do was make silly noises and write their names on the screen in different colours. It sparked enthusiasm!

So, what can be done?

First of all we need to ignore the idealists who think everyone should start their programming life learning something worthy and object orientated. Once the kids are hooked they can learn that later. Also, that’s not how peoples’ minds work. You don’t see object orientated recipe books for a reason. Also, however annoying to the seasoned programmer, line numbers help understand the sequential way that programs work. In other words, the early 80s micro BASICs got it mostly right. BASIC does stand for “Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code” after all.

Firstly, any system which is going to enthuse also HAS to have as its core functionality the “5, 10, 30 minute” teen grabbing fun element outlined near the beginning of this post. Without it the whole thing’s lost. Any system would also have to allow growth. Just as BBC BASIC allowed the nascent programmer to grow into using procedures so should any new project, and possibly more, such as variable typing, scoping etc. Line number could be made optional in an advanced mode.

Secondly, the freedom of the code itself is far less important than the freedom to discover, so any project should not use a viral license such as the GNU Public License (GPL) but instead use something such as the BSD license.

Thirdly, and helped by the above, the core should be written in a platform neutral way with the platform specific interface on top. In this case, probably the best platform to use would be the GNU compilers and specifically that implementation of Objective C with the QT libraries to interface with most operating systems (except, notably, Apple systems, especially the iPhone/iPod/iPad).

The biggest fly in the ointment with this whole pipe dream is that I just don’t have the skills to develop such a system. (Another would be getting people such as Apple to allow the system to be made available via their App Store type portals.)

So, anyone interested in starting a project? 😉

The horror! Scientific code and how not to read your arguments…

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Over the years I have seen many, many examples of poor programming practise, usually kludges and quick fixes but today I saw the most horrible code for reading in command-line arguments in a C program ever. I just had to share the horror…

   if ( (argc-1) < 5 ) {
	.
	.
	.
	[ Usage error response code removed]
	.
	.
	.
   }

   /* read in command-line arguments */
           
   numFiles = (argc-1) - 6;
   sscanf( argv[ numFiles+1 ], "%s", insFileName );
   sscanf( argv[ numFiles+2 ], "%s", outFileName );
   sscanf( argv[ numFiles+3 ], "%d", &outType );
   sscanf( argv[ numFiles+4 ], "%hd", &windowStartTimeCodeword0 );
   sscanf( argv[ numFiles+5 ], "%d", &newStartLine );
   sscanf( argv[ numFiles+6 ], "%d", &newEndLine);

Now, where can I start with this? Erm, I’m a bit dumbfounded actually.

Not only does the test for the incorrect number of arguments test for the wrong number but then it uses an index from the last value to reference the other values! Of course, this means that if the wrong numbers of arguments are given then the values are put into the wrong variables. Worse, that could be read from memory the process doesn’t own.

And there’s more.. it blindly sscanf()s them into variables.

Now, you may have seen that if one argument is left off the command line the input file now becomes the executable itself and the output file is actually the input data file. This is how this came to my attention. Trying to debug the program for a student it was found that it wasn’t reading the data correctly… and the data file was mysteriously emptied of its hundreds of megabytes of data each time the program was run. Oops!

So, dear readers, have any of you ever seen a worse command line parsing code segment?

IPv4 addresses almost gone, IPv6 not finished yet. Oops!

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As has been noted very widely the last couple of large blocks of Internet Protocol version 4 addresses have been assigned to the local distributors and rightly there have been a large number of people stating that we need to get ready for the transition for IP version 6.

However, there are a few niggly little problems due partly to do with IPv6’s design and partly by tardy implementation, neither of which impact upon the general public and their edge networks but will impact upon the security and management of more corporate networks.

So, what are these two problems? Well, they’re both to do with network address assignment, one of which is a foolish design decision in the protocol itself which has a whole host of unintended consequences related to it.

The feature I’m talking about here is the stateless address assignment where a client machine will self-assign its address and self-discover the route out to the wider Internet. On the face of it it seems like a brilliant idea which will liberate the normal user from worrying about setting up IP addresses and all that tedious and confusing networking stuff, it all “just works”. Brilliant! And, in a perfect world, where everyone is smiley, helpful and trustworthy it would be. It’s a pity that the real world isn’t like that. Having said that, this doesn’t really affect personal networking within peoples’ homes but it does greatly affect the security and policing of corporate networks.

At this point it’s probably best to describe how security and policy are implemented, with regards to network addresses and packet routing in IPv4 networks so as to allow you to contrast the differences and the problems inherent in the self-assigned address world of IPv6. Currently a computer can either be manually assigned an address and network route which then has to be configured directly on the computer in question or it can be assigned automatically from a centrally managed Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server. In the latter case it’s not only the network address and route information which can be given to the computer but other information such as its host name and various other items which it can use to interact correctly with the rest of the network. The centrally managed DHCP server can also tell any computer it doesn’t know (or the administrators don’t want to have network access) to bog off and hence not get network access. Using this very useful system administrators can assign different outgoing network routes for different sets of client machines which can help with load balancing and various other advantageous policies that only humans with an overview of the whole network can see.

As you can see, IPv6’s self-assignment of addresses and self-discovery of network routes by-passes all this control. If you add to this certain client operating systems being “helpful” and offering network tunnels out of the current network for IPv6 clients to the outside world and offering their services as routers it becomes a security nightmare as local outgoing firewall policies and protections are subverted.

Now, this problem has been foreseen, if belatedly, by a group who have, against the uproar of the IPv6 purists, defined an IPv6 version of DHCP. (Note: the purists hate it because it breaks their ideological tenet that all network peers should be equal and free to do as they wish.)

So, surely this means that IPv6 is ready? Erm, no. You see DHCPv6 is only currently a paper exercise. The technical details have been hammered out and the specification documents (RFCs) have been posted but there are no implementations out there. Ooops!

So, what does this mean for the whole IPv4 to IPv6 transition? Well, it means that internal corporate networks will not be able to change to the new protocol and will be forced to live behind an IPv4 to IPv6 network address translation (NAT) gateway. (Note 2: IPv6 purists cringe even more about this technology, they see NAT as the spawn of the devil as it stops all peers being equal and being able to talk directly with every other.)

I can foresee the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 being a long one with to start with only those machines which live in the no-mans-land where external services live and the core Internet changing over to IPv6 and everything else being behind huge NAT gateways. Internet Service Providers (ISPs), whose customers don’t generally have fixed network addresses anyway, will sit all their customers in IPv4 bubbles and this state of affairs will ossify. All web sites will be forced to use IPv4 compatible addresses.

Eventually, after many years, all the tools and security issues with IPv6 will be sorted out and slowly, very slowly, the corporate world will change their networks one by one, but there will always be “legacy” IPv4 networks in there, well at least for 20 years or so. For ISPs the transition will be quicker. They’ll probably have to begin with a separate product for IPv6 users or merely provide IPv6 gateway routers to new customers (quite probably to begin with using an IPv4 NAT bubble for the home network as quite a bit of embedded A/V equipment will not be IPv6 capable). I can foresee that even this transition will take a good decade. During this time all web servers will have to be on IPv4 mappable addresses.

It’s going to be a very long haul and expect things to break horribly.

Astrophotography, the beginning.

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As mentioned in a previous post, I’m recently bought a new telescope with the thought of using it for astrophotography.

Now, seeing as the last part of the order turned up a little over a week ago, the equatorial wedge, I’m finally in a position to start on the project in earnest. To this end I went out shopping on Saturday for a camera and a machine to drive the camera and the ‘scope.

Having read quite a great deal and seen images which other people have managed to take, I opted for the Nikon D90 as the camera body to obtain. Currently, it’s probably the best time to get one of these cameras as it is about to be replaced by the D7000 and hence the street price is at its lowest. Waiting for the D7000 to appear would be counter productive as it will not only be at a premium price which is almost double that of the D90 but also doesn’t have anything really to help with the task at hand. (The main improvements over the D90 are in the realms of auto-focus and a more robust, and heavier, body.)

Unfortunately, because it is about to be replaced it is becoming scarcer, which meant that I could only find it as part of a kit with a lens I don’t actually need. Oh well.

On the control machine front, I picked up a netbook. The twin-core, 1.6GHz Atom processor powered Acer Aspire-One 533 should be ample for the task. There’s not a great deal of processing power required to control the camera, acquire the images or run Stellarium or similar to drive the ‘scope. I just need to get a serial cable now.

Anyway, Saturday evening was a beautiful evening with crystal clear skies, which gave me a good opportunity to have a first experiment.

The results? Well, OK for a first attempt. It’s very difficult to get a good focus when looking though the viewfinder. My first target was the Moon:

moon1

Not too bad for a first attempt…. Then over to the Dumbell Nebula:

dumbell1

As you can see, this 60 second exposure really shows up the problem with light pollution in the area I live. I’m going to have to look into getting a light pollution filter.

Finally, I spent a little while trying to image Jupiter. The best I managed was this:

jupiter1

I’m definitely going to have to look into ways of getting a sharper focus. Not all of the fuzziness is caused by atmospheric disturbance.

Anyway, following on from my photographic exploits I noticed one of the Jovian moons, Io, coming out from behind the planet. It’s amazing but you can actually see it move relative to the planet with the gap visibly changing in only seconds. It must be moving at quite a speed.

Still, I’m not likely to get another chance to play in the near future, looking at the weather forecast. The next items on the shopping list: landscaping with paving and a rolling roof observatory such as this:

observatory
observatory

A tale of two telescopes.

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I’ve just taken delivery of a new Meade 8″ LX90-SC telescope and tonight had the first chance to take it for a spin, as it were. This is despite the British weather trying its best to get in the way. Still, the breaks in the cloud were big enough for me to align the ‘scope.

I have been surprised by the contrast between this ‘scope and the one I bought for my Dad the Christmas before last, however. That ‘scope seemed to be a Friday afternoon job. It arrived with the wrong type of Autostar controller and the battery boxes weren’t (and still aren’t) connected properly. Also, it was far harder to get it to align properly and never seemed to do so accurately enough. His ‘scope is a 10″ Meade LX90-ACF (i.e. has the more expensive optics).

My new ‘scope, on the other hand, seems far better put together. Other than a slightly bent bolt on the tripod, which is used to hold the ‘scope on the tripod, everything is in good working order. Not only this but the alignment process actually works and works well. I think this is partly helped by the replacement of a electronic compass and level (which never seemed to work) with a good, old-fashioned compass with a bubble.

Just to show how good the alignment and calibration was, I set the ‘scope to point at Jupiter about 10 minutes before it rose above the roof of a near-by house. (It also happened to be in cloud as well, but that’s beside the point.) When it did appear it was right in the centre of the field of view. I didn’t need to tweak it at all. This never was possible with my Dad’s ‘scope.

Also, the image was a great deal better than with my Dad’s ‘scope, and the magnification seemed higher (with the same type of eye-piece), even though they’re supposed to have the same focal length. This was very unexpected as the ‘scope is smaller and has the cheaper optics.

Am I happy? Yes. Other than the minor problem with the bolt, which makes it slightly more difficult to set the kit up and dismantle it again, it’s actually better than I expected.

 

The iPhone 4 and Bluetooth keyboard… It works!

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Well, I’ve been testing out the usability of a ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard which I bought originally to go with my Nokia N800 with the Apple iPhone 4.

Well, as you can see, it does actually work and works well.

If you add a proper keyboard to the high resolution of the iPhone 4’s display then it actually makes for a decent “on the go” blog updating device.

Well, it would if the WYSIWYG editor plug-in for WordPress would actually work within Safari, which it doesn’t. This means that you are forced to revert to the WordPress application and its insistence on the document being prepared in plain HTML. Not (non-technical) user friendly at all. (And a bit of a pain even if you are technically minded.)

By the way, to prove that it’s possible to do it, this article has been written entirely on the iPhone 4 + ThinkOutside keyboard combination.

Oh, and one very useful thing is that the “web application” key on the keyboard emulates the big button at the bottom of the iPhone.

Living with the iPhone 4

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So, it’s been almost a week since the arrival of the iPhone 4 on the doorstep and with all the hoo-hah in the forums and the press I thought I’d give my opinion on the device an actual use. It should be noted that my previous smartphones have been the Handspring Treo 600, Palm Treo 680 and iPhone 3G so I do have quite a background in the use of the things from really their first iteration.

Well, lets first get down to the big issue of the moment, the reception problems. Yes, there is a problem but it’s nowhere near as bad as made out by fanbois and Apple-haters. I often hold the phone in my left hand and if I merely make sure I hold it very slightly higher than I usually would (by about 1cm) my palm misses the area of the insulating gap, problem solved. My advice to those who are complaining is to grow up, get a life and move on. All technology has flaws, it’s inherent in the structure of the Universe that it’s a compromise, tough, live with it. If you’re REALLY bothered with it then put a 1cm strip of sticky tape over the area of the gap. Even if you then bridge that gap then the resistance of your skin will be enough to attenuate the problem to a tiny value.

Having said that, there is a bug in the radio part of the software which I’ve discovered. Here’s how to reproduce it:

  1. Go to an area with no of highly marginal signal strength.
  2. Go into the Carrier control panel and select the service provider manually if one appears.
  3. Wait until the phone complains about loss of service.
  4. Select Automatic from the list of service providers and close the control panel.
  5. Reboot the phone.

You will now find that even when you go into an area with strong signal the phone won’t be able to pick it up. To fix this you will need to turn Airplane Mode on and then off again to resume normal operation.

Other than these two problems I’ve not had any others and the device has been fast and rock solid.

In general use the whole thing is a pleasure to use. The screen is beautiful and has a very wide viewing angle. iOS4 is merely an evolution of the iPhone OS so that works practically the same as previous versions, i.e. slick. The web browser, Safari, is actually fast enough to use now on sites with complex CSS. On the iP3G some sites would take almost a minute to render with a fast WiFi connection but on the iP4 they take less than 5 seconds.

The camera system works and produces pretty good images. Not quite up to dedicated camera standards but not far off. The only criticism I have with it is that the colour balance tends to over emphasise reds or give a red hue to the whole image. The videos produced are pretty good as well, better than my FujiFilm FinePix F31fd compact camera can produce. I’m not saying that it’s dedicated cam-corder quality but definitely usable and the microphone hardly ever picks up wind noise.

As for the battery life. Well, the iPhone 3G in the area I have been this week would last just about 24 hours on a charge or, if I’m playing Bejewelled 2 a great deal, about 5-6 hours. In comparison the iPhone 4 generally drops 1%-3% per hour (I can’t give a percentage for the iP3G as it doesn’t have a percentage measure) which would put the battery life in the region of 30-90 hours. When playing Bejewelled 2 the battery is depleted by about 10% per hour, so that’s about double the life of the iP3G. Therefore, it’s not quite in the same league as the Handspring Treo 600, which lasts about 10 days on a charge in normal use, but it’s certainly getting close to the life of most non-smartphones. (It’s also infinitely better than the Palm Treo 680 which would struggle to last 8 hours on a charge.)

So, there you have it. The iPhone 4 works and (other than one flaw which is easily worked around) works well and is a definite jump in usability over the iP3G, especially in terms of speed, screen and battery life.

Many will quibble about the unsubsidised, unlocked version of the iP4 at about £600 but they forget that the unsubsidised price of most smartphones is about the same. For me the price of the tool is worth it, your mileage may vary.

iPhone 4: Is it worth it?

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IMG 0061
iPhone 4

Well, my pre-ordered iPhone 4 arrived this morning and after cutting up my T-Mobile SIM (and trimming it to get the contacts to be in the correct place) got it registered and synced up.

So, was it actually worth upgrading from the 3G to the 4?

Well, iOS4 on the 3G is a bit sluggish at times, probably due to having to page so much in and out of its tiny 128MB of RAM (as opposed to the 512MB in the 4). The screen on the 4 is very much better to view, but the 3G was usable. Oh, and I could reliably crash the 3G by downloading the iOS4 manual PDF in Safari and then trying to transfer it to iBook. After about 30 seconds the phone resets.

Also, the iBook app is a little flaky, as quite often it will say that a resource isn’t available when trying to open a book and close the book again. It can take several attempts to open it.

Of all the other stuff in the 3, the sensors are the biggest addition (as well as the uprated camera system, but this isn’t much of a draw for me). It allows me to use Pocket Universe the way it’s meant to be. Also, the GPS location system is far more rapid. Instead of about a minute or more to find the location, it’s now almost instantaneous.

The device is very fast (at least for now).

So, are there any bugs or ‘features” on the 4?

Yes, the biggest “feature” is that if you hold the left-hand side of the phone the mobile signal decreases markedly. This does not happen if you hold your hand around the case, only if you touch it. So, I think my first purchase will be a “bumper” case. Nothing else comes to mind so far.

[Update 25th June]

I can say without dubt that the new iPhone 4 has a far better battery life than the 3G. So far, with WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G enabled and with e-mail polling every 15 minutes only 3% of the battery charge is being used an hour. That means that even with this load the phone can survive for ~30 hours on a charge. With just GPRS, no polling and the other wireless services turned off I can believe the claim of 10 days stand-by time claimed, equalling the Handspring Treo 600. Well done Apple, a decent battery life at last.