Pixel size has a huge impact on the sensitivity of a pixel. The level you get out of that sensor is based on the number of photos that hit that sensor in any sampling period. If my sensor is 4x the area, on the average I'll have 4x as many pixels hitting the sensor -- thus, 4x the output level, all things being equal. Thus, to match that output, the smaller sensor will need 4x the amplification.
Now, in bright light, you'll never know the difference. But as it gets darker, that smaller sensor's going to be pushing noise up into visible levels 2 full stops before the larger sensor needs that level of amplification.
This is why single sensor DSLRs are producing dramatically better low light video than professional 2/3" video gear 10x-20x the price.
An LNA adds noise... all amplifiers do. Think about it -- you're amplifying both signal and noise by the same amount. A perfectly noiseless amplifier would do nothing to the S/N. But such critters don't exist.
In an RF system (I design these), you do calculations based on noise factor, which is a device's ability to add noise to the system. Some of this isn't obvious... for example, an attenuator can also add noise to a system.. push the signal down into the noise floor, and you've added noise just as effectively as any amplifier.
The idea behind the LNA is that you're going to boost up a weak signal as quietly as possible, so that noise factors further down the cascade won't have as much of an effect on the signal. In any system, the noise factor of the first amplifier dominates.
Of course, in a CMOS chip, you have an amplifier and an ADC very close to any given sensor. You need that amplifier to boost the signal to the point it can be digitized. In strong light, you're sampling well above the noise floor, so there's no problem. In weaker light, you may very well have to boost the sensor output enough that the noise floor becomes visible. There isn't likely to be a system of amplifiers, probably just the sensor amp itself plus the PGA that sits before the ADC. And once you're digitized, of course, noise is no longer being added. Well, at least until you do image processing or make a JPEG:-)
I get a pixel size of 2.2um x 2.2um maximum... that's about what you'll get on an 8Mpixel, 1/3.2" sensor. So yeah, the low-light performance at 120Mpixel is going to be about that of a typical compact P&S or mid-range consumer camcorder.
The one saving grace there... the noise pattern is going to be vanishingly small compared to a camcorder or 8Mpixel camera. So you'll have the same level of noise, but as long as it's random noise, it won't be nearly as visible. This is the same reason as video resolutions increase, we can get away with higher compression levels. For example, ATSC television is 6x the spatial resolution of DVD, but only about 2.5x the bitrate of DVD (DVD is, of course, variable bitrate). Compression artifacts can still be there, but they're much less noticeable.
The real question I have is entirely different... where in the universe is anyone going to find a lens worthy of such a sensor. When you translate to usual resolution numbers, this sensor is 230lp/mm. A very, very good lens for a 35mm camera will have a "Lens MTF" of 60lp/mm-80lp/mm. This is the resolution at which point the lens, at its best setting, produces a 50% MTF rating (eg, the contrast of the line pair is reduced to 50% of ideal). So in order to actually get any real value out of this in a DSLR, they're going to need a lens 3x-4x sharper than the typical $2,000+ Canon L-Series lenses of today. Good luck with that....
Most single-sensor video cameras are already using pixel binning these days. You'll find 6-12 Mpixel sensors in most of these, but the target is, of course, a 2Mpixel image. It actually makes sense with a video camera... with a single sensor and large pixels, you have Bayer color distortion problems... you're interpolating two out of three colors for each pixel site. Go to an 8Mpixel sensor, and you can bin four sensors per video pixel, no interpolation needed.
They're going to have to do very much the same thing to get usable video out of this thing.... they could presumably bin 8x8 pixel chunks for an HD output.
If you have truly random noise, though, you don't get four (or 64) times the noise. Random noise is just as likely to lower as raise a pixel value, so adding them together sums both positive and negative noise contributions. Pattern noise (predictable sensor noise) is already dealt with very well in modern sensors.
Most DSLRs can capture in RAW mode, which gives them the expected 14-bits out of the ADC. If there's more range to be had from the sensors themselves, you could certainly add a second ADC (well, in theory... CMOS chips already have tons of ADCs, rather than the single unit of the CCDs) with a different gain. But then again, you could just add more resolution to the one you've got.
Though there's a Tascam field recording doing this with audio... one full sensitivity ADC, one with an attenuator in front of it. If you're clipping on the first one, you'll have a usable recording on the second. In short, it's extended the dynamic range beyond the 24(-ish) bits of the ADCs involved.
The idea already done by Fujifilm is to build a sensor with two different sensor site sizes, so one's inherently more sensitive than the other. That would seem a more valuable use of the technology than making all of these tiny, tiny sensors.
My DROID cost me $100, and the extra cost versus the dumb phone it replaced was $30/month. So that's $720 for two years... about $600 more than the iPod-only solution for those same too years. But it's way, way better than an iPod, so there's that, too. And I don't also have to carry a phone. I get my email, both personal and business. Also replaces my GPS and a dozen other pocket electronic devices.
If I didn't want the network, I'd consider it expensive. But I want the network. Internet radio without glitches up and down the East Coast, so I'm avoid the need for a Sirius/XM subscription, too. There's a ton of value in an ever-present network connection.
Jobs doesn't really want to drive the competitor out of HIS marketplace... he has absolute control there. If he say "no Flash", there's no Flash.
The problem, of course, is consumer demand -- if Steve says "no HTML", there would be no HTML, but it would be a problem. People need HTML.
So his goal was to marginalize Flash... make people, or at least iPhonies, believe they don't need or, for that matter want Flash. Part of this was very easy -- Apple didn't both to open up the video acceleration APIs on the iPhone, so only Apple could do high performance video using video acceleration. Problem solved -- Flash, or for that matter, any other video not using Apple's high-level APIs, would simply suck. This was even true of the MacOS until earlier this year.
And they might just have got away with it...because Flash kind of sucked on the Mac (due as much to Apple as Adobe...both somewhat at fault), and Apple was becoming successful in spreading the "Flash Don't Work on Smartphones" meme, Ok, well, there were a few of these Nokia phones that did Flash just dandy, but we in the US ignore them anyway.
Only now, there's Flash on Android, it's pretty good... and Android has outsold iPhone for the last two quarters... quite nicely, if you look at the Global market. Most Android phones will have Flash bundled in by late 2010 or early 2011. Fact is, most new smart phones are substantially faster than PCs were when Flash was young. The main concern is battery life, but with most Flash video in H.264, Flash video isn't going to eat more battery than any other H.264 video.
Apple, of course, wants to kill Flash so they control the purse strings. Free video is fine, do it in HTML5. Want to DRM or charge for something? Your only choice is iTunes downloads. Apple gets ALL the money for things you pay into on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod.
The major music labels (as represented by the RIAA) and the major radio stations have had a sweet deal for ages. They control the music that most of the public buys, by simply controlling the one major outlet for music.
They have pulled every trick in the book to ensure this continues. They've screwed with laws, to limit the power of college radio stations. They screwed with the proposed low power radio initiative some years back. It's a prime example of the Golden Rule (eg, he with the Gold makes the Rules), despite public demand for alternatives.
It was inevitable that this model fail, once the internet came along. Sure, they've been fighting in internet radio tooth and nail, trying to make it too expensive to launch internet "radio" channels.... largely driven by the fact that commercial broadcast radio in the USA is getting to live by a completely different set of rules. And yet, they've failed miserably at this.
Earlier this year, I drove to a friend's house... a six hour ride from South Jersey to Boston. Rather than use radio, I had my Droid smartphone playing off the net via the Pandora application. This went flawless, never a glitch the entire trip. Ok, this is on Verizon... iPhone users might get a dropout or two along the way. But still... that's pretty much the last place broadcast radio is at all useful. This pretty much confirms that the radio model as we know it is obsolete.
Sure, there's no reason to reject the option of radio. In fact, if broadcast radio actually has to compete with online and PMP options, it's at least possible it'll get better. But a mandate for this? That's just crazy... no one needs radio anymore. What's next -- a mandate to make all PMPs compatible with CDs and LPs? A mandate for at least one vacuum tube in every TV? Get off my lawn, RIAA!
I'm not worried.. other companies have been reasonably good at delivering new Android releases to existing phones. Motorola in particular. You might be asking for trouble if you buy a phone with an alternate GUI... that means more work for the vendor, so they're more likely to drop support sooner rather than later.
The real probably here, though, is absolutely this: we're dependent on the hardware vendors for software updates. Unfortunately, that's the way Android is currently architected. If you're lucky, your vendor does the upgrades... if you're unlucky (like those few 1.5 and 1.6 users still being counted, on devices that can't or won't be upgrades) you are currently very much on your own.
What Google really needs to do is separate the manufacturer supplied hardware layer from Android proper. Create a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that lives permanently on the Android device (optionally upgradeable by the manufacturer) and then Android OS proper, which can be updated to any old phone via the Marketplace, or other alternate installers. That done correctly doesn't eliminate the ability of a vendor like Motorola to push the new OS to all devices, but it also means, if they lose interest in your particular model, you have an easy and supported way of upgrading.
It doesn't really matter that this isn't in-place now... unlike PCs, there's a high rate of turnover on these devices. Put this in Android 3.0 at year's end, and before long, most Android devices will support the new upgrade model. Those that don't probably can be loaded with custom ROMs to deliver that functionality, and need only the one custom flashing, tapping into the standard upgrade going forward.
Most phone vendors have long offered the sales model that Google ultimately offered. Motorola's store is here: http://www.store.motorola.com./ You can order a number of Motorola smart phones there, and, as with the Nexus One, pay the full MSRP for an unlocked phone.
Of course, good luck getting a discount from your network carrier unless it's T-Mobile. And while they don't promote it, the model is the same.
The problem is, that's not the model Google originally spoke of. They were going to release the phone unbundled, period. If they had actually done that, they could have sold it for $250-$300... supposedly they cost $170-$180 to make, based on the usual folks doing a dissection and price estimate. But Google really just pretended at this -- they kept the price as artificially high as any other cellphone, so they had the option of selling though T-Mobile as well. That's not the real experiment they spoke of, but that is the one they actually conducted.
The Motorola Droid actually started that trend, well before the Nexus One was officially announced. Maybe Google got things going at HTC, but they were hardly ignoring the issue. Some of the recent HTC phones are based on the same platform as the N1, other new models are not.
Regardless, it's pretty clear the Nexus One failed in the market, only because Google didn't actually make the market changes they spoke of.
But publicity wise, maybe it was a success. It sure had the rumor mills and press going for far long than even a new iPhone announcement (well, at least one without a slew of problems), and it brought attention to Android, maybe in ways that some of the others could not. Though it's hard to say... Verizon had been running Droid ads on network primetime TV, billboards, magazines, etc. for a few months before the N1 was even leaked. I'm sure some folks were confused, but if you were in the smartphone market, you got the message.
So maybe the N1 helped, or maybe it wasn't even necessary. It's clearly not necessary anymore... Android has been growing like crazy, even as the Nexus One itself faltered.
They were afraid, though. They talked big about changing the model, but they didn't change the model. Yes, they sold the phones directly. So do most other cellphone vendors... here's Motorola's direct-buy store: http://www.store.motorola.com./
Yes, they're expensive... so was the Nexus One. That was Google's first point of failure. The reason the MSRP on a cellphone is so high, dramatically higher than any other piece of consumer gear, is that these are made to be sold en mass to the telcos. Verizon doesn't pay full MSRP for a Droid, but they pay as a percentage of the MSRP. That's the hack the telcos came up with long ago, to help prevent the rise of unbundled phones. If you want to get into a major carrier's store, you have to price your phone like crazy, or lose a bundle on each unit you sell to them.
Google said they wanted the direct sales model, but they didn't only want that... they still had to be able to go into the T-Mobile stores. And so they released the Nexus One with a ridiculous price... about $30 less than the Droid you could always buy directly from Motorola.
Second big failure is network support... a smartphone is pointless without 3G support. The Nexus One supports 3G on T-Mobile's frequencies (1700MHz and 2100MHz), but not on AT&T's frequencies (850MHz and 1900MHz). And there's not even a good reason for that... they still have to support 850MHz and 1900MHz for 2G with roaming. The bad reason, of course, is that the telcos have opposed phone portability, so it would take extra hardware, most likely, to be able to support multiple GSM carries in the USA. Regardless of the reasons, Google failed here too... the Nexus One was not really transportable to other GSM systems, it was fully functional only on T-Mobile.
Actually, most of the "closed" phones are not preventing either rooting or side-loading apps. The are a few with encrypted ROMs, which only prevent user-modded/non-OEM versions of the OS from being loaded... at least until developers figure a work-around.
Loading apps from outside the Android Marketplace is a standard function in Android. It's up to the carrier to remove this functionality. To date, only AT&T has show any interest in invoking that option. The other carriers have absolutely no problem with apps from other sources. In fact, Verizon's been selling the Droid series based on their being more open than AT&T and Apple, and doing quite well as a result.
This is also, ultimately, an important move, looking toward business use. Large enterprises don't for a minute want to require users to buy individual apps from the iTunes store or even the Android Marketplace. They develop apps internally, or license on a corporate level, and expect their IT people to be able to install these as they see fit. Android supports this, iPhone doesn't... and as these two platforms continue to grow, there will be interest in them in the Enterprise. Android wins, iPhone fails. Today, sure, this is RIM's strength, but ultimately, that comes down to a bit of extra software for any other smart phone platform.
A good portion of those incompatibilities are easy to address.
CDMA2000 is CDMA2000... the problem is that the laws for unbundling phones didn't match the technology. Your carrier is required to unlock your phone if you request it (with some limits), and they're required to allow any old SIM card on their network, for GSM networks. The legislators dropped the ball on CDMA2000, though, by not requiring the carriers to accept any old phone. On GSM, the network is always locked at the device, and legislation makes it illegal to lock that out. But on CDMA2000, the way it's run, the devices are locked out at the network. No reason that has to be so, it's just policy, and no one's telling Verizon or Sprint they can't do this.
For GSM, the big problem is 3G compatibility... but that's really no more of a problem than any other GSM issues. There used to be phones just for Europe and phones just for the USA on GSM, but these days, nearly every phone is a 3-Band phone if not a 4-Band phone (you need 2 bands for either country, though technically, T-Mobile doesn't own much if any 850MHz in the USA, like Sprint they're all at 1900MHz). There's no reason you couldn't have support on a phone for 3G at 850MHz, 1700MHz, 1900MHz, and 2100MHz, to easily support AT&T or T-Mobile. The telcos don't demand this... in fact, they probably don't want it, since that makes it easier to jump over to the other guy. But there's no big technical challenge here.
And yeah, that was one of the big problems with the Nexus One -- it was fully functional only on T-Mobile.
If Google had conducted the experiment they really spoke of, things might have ended differently. But that's not what the Nexus One was.
First problem: price. Telecoms negotiate for their paid price on a cellphone as a percentage of the MSRP. They do this specifically to discourage unbundled sales of cellphones. Just do the math... an iPhone has roughly $35-$40 additional cost over an iPod Touch: cellular modem, microphone, camera, that's about it. MSRP on an iPhone runs $499-$699 depending on model (eg, how much memory)... over twice that of the comparable iPod Touch.
Why? Because Apple's customer isn't you or I, it's AT&T, and they still want to get a reasonable price from AT&T. So they have to jack up the MSRP of the phone model of their PDA/PMP to unreasonable levels. And that's why few people try to buy them unbundled, even where possible.
Google's experiment needed to fix this: sell the device at a reasonable price, based on comparisons to any other piece of CE gear. They didn't do that. The Nexus One was a follow-up to the Motorola Droid, and they priced it $30 below the Droid MSRP. Why in the world would they do that, one would ask (as I did, right after the N1 was released)... no obvious reason. Well, for a minute or two -- then we find out that T-Mobile will be carrying the N1 too. Thus, the same old, same old pricing structure. In short, while they were advocating direct unbundled sales, they didn't do anything to change the functional cellular model -- you can buy any number of unlocked phones directly from the vendors.
Then there's the second issue: network support. To handle GSM 2G worldwide, you need to support 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz cellular bands. Many phones manage that. But this is a smartphone, it needs 3G support. Which means supporting HSPA on 850MHz, 1700MHz, 1900MHz, and 2100MHz... just to handle AT&T and T-Mobile in the USA. The Nexus One was T-Mobile-only... no AT&T 3G. So this device didn't even properly function as an unbundled phone for US use.
The idea was sound. The implementation is why the Nexus One failed.
No... the shock is only when you think non-Apple approved thoughts. Don't worry, though, you'll be "thinking correct" Real Soon Now... the iMindControl app is extremely effective.
Well... Job apologized for users being unhappy. Never once did he actually cop to the iPhone 4 issue being an unusual problem.. in fact, they spent more time and energy finding other phones to blame than actually dealing with the problem.
Well, that's your own damn fault if you use the iPhone that way. Actual R/C radio controllers have to pass a number of certifications to be legal for sale in the USA (I designed a number of ground-based R/C controllers for Nomadio, Inc.... I know the industry). Anyone using a toy like the iPhone to control a plane is just asking for a disaster. The only question is when it'll fail, not if it will.
But you have to love the irony of their fix... they made a bad-performing phone even worse in their endless quest to make the world's thinnest smartphone (damn that Google!). They chose form over function as they did every since the original iPhone. And so to fix it... you put on a case. Which now makes it a fairly fat smartphone, compared to most modern models that work just dandy without a case. Hell, my Droid even squeezes a keyboard into that extra 1mm it has over the 3GS.
But really, did ANYONE think Apple would actually apologize? This is the most ego-driven company on the planet... even Bill Gates in his prime wasn't this good at it. Apple's first response is how they really felt -- if the iPhone isn't working right, there's something wrong with YOU, not it. So now there's also something wrong with the cellular industry. Though you'll notice Jobs didn't chose any of the better cellphones to compare... he had his people find a few phones that could, under very controlled hand-holding, also behave badly. But here's the thing... did any one of them drop to 1 bar with just a single finger on it, as the iPhone 4 can? I thought not...
Well, in fairness, Apple has spend years training their users to accept horrible cell phone performance. So of course they only had a few complaints. Most of the huge volume of iPhone 4 sales were to existing Apple iPhone customers. And in particular, the most iPhonie of them all... many of these people are paying extra to upgrade early. They are in the reality distortion field, they drink the Kool-Aid, and when Apple says "2-bars are the new 5-bars", they accept this without question.
Every iPhone has had reception problems, call dropping problems, etc. The simple fact that, given that history, this had become such a big issue that Apple had to hold today's conference is evidence that they really outdid their crappy reception, this time around. Just regular poor reception on an iPhone is hardly news... I've lent my Droid to numerous iPhone users who, from time to time, actually had to make calls and just couldn't get a signal (yes, AT&T is also sharing the blame, and at least in my area, they're a strong #2 in coverage quality... the BlackBerry people don't seen to have any issues).
Right.. being able to actually touch the antenna is the first problem.. you fingers in direct contact change the impedance of the antenna... same mechanism used to work the capacitive touchscreen. Antennas aren't made randomly, they're designed with a very specific impedance, usually 50 ohms in modern RF devices. Changing the impedance of the antenna causes an impedance mismatch between the radio chip and the antenna, causing more of the RF energy to reflect back to the radio chip (or power amplifier) on transmit. This doesn't just screw up your signal, it causes more of that energy to remain in the phone.
Second problem was locating these external antennas so close to one another that one finger can bridge them. Really dumb idea there, and easily avoided... if only they weren't going for this particular "form over function" design decision.
And finally, diversity or MIMO antennas. Very modern RF devices have multiple receivers which operate in parallel from multiple antennas. Block one, and the other one is very likely still clear. Older technologies support diversity antennas... any RF engineer can add diversity to a system, it's not a necessary feature of the radio chip. All you need is an RSSI sensor (eg, you can read signal strength), an RF switch and two antennas. Software switches between antennas, selecting the stronger of the two for regular use. Better smartphones have this kind of design, but apparently, with Apple's obsession with being thin, they had to leave this out.
That's why with better phones, you actually have to cup the phone in your hand to kill the reception. Just holding it doesn't hurt anything, even with an unlikely grip, because you're only going to block one antenna at a time.
Check out Apple's own demonstrations of these. You can clobber the iPhone's reception with a single fingertip. On some of their "see, the competition has this problem too" examples, they're close to covering the phone with the hand. And these were hand-picked examples... the worst of the competition.
Yes... Apple certainly brought in as many other manufacturer's phones as they could get their hands on, and found a couple that, when held just so, perform poorly too. Don't think for a nanosecond that the phone they're using as counterexamples are typical, randomly selected models. They found others with problems.... and far as I can tell, much more difficult to demonstrate problems.
Who on their right mind would make a phone designed with an antenna that you're going to directly touch in normal use? Yes, the answer is "no one". Most decent cellphones, like my Motorola Droid, employ diversity antennas... two independent antennas in different parts of the phone, just like the dual antennas on many 802.11g routers and laptops. The device selects the antenna that's delivering the best signal, and in a phone, keeps a strong signal even if some fingers cover one of the antennas.
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Er... that's "photons", not "photos" or "pixels"... my editor has the day off.
Pixel size has a huge impact on the sensitivity of a pixel. The level you get out of that sensor is based on the number of photos that hit that sensor in any sampling period. If my sensor is 4x the area, on the average I'll have 4x as many pixels hitting the sensor -- thus, 4x the output level, all things being equal. Thus, to match that output, the smaller sensor will need 4x the amplification.
Now, in bright light, you'll never know the difference. But as it gets darker, that smaller sensor's going to be pushing noise up into visible levels 2 full stops before the larger sensor needs that level of amplification.
This is why single sensor DSLRs are producing dramatically better low light video than professional 2/3" video gear 10x-20x the price.
An LNA adds noise... all amplifiers do. Think about it -- you're amplifying both signal and noise by the same amount. A perfectly noiseless amplifier would do nothing to the S/N. But such critters don't exist.
In an RF system (I design these), you do calculations based on noise factor, which is a device's ability to add noise to the system. Some of this isn't obvious... for example, an attenuator can also add noise to a system.. push the signal down into the noise floor, and you've added noise just as effectively as any amplifier.
The idea behind the LNA is that you're going to boost up a weak signal as quietly as possible, so that noise factors further down the cascade won't have as much of an effect on the signal. In any system, the noise factor of the first amplifier dominates.
Of course, in a CMOS chip, you have an amplifier and an ADC very close to any given sensor. You need that amplifier to boost the signal to the point it can be digitized. In strong light, you're sampling well above the noise floor, so there's no problem. In weaker light, you may very well have to boost the sensor output enough that the noise floor becomes visible. There isn't likely to be a system of amplifiers, probably just the sensor amp itself plus the PGA that sits before the ADC. And once you're digitized, of course, noise is no longer being added. Well, at least until you do image processing or make a JPEG :-)
I get a pixel size of 2.2um x 2.2um maximum... that's about what you'll get on an 8Mpixel, 1/3.2" sensor. So yeah, the low-light performance at 120Mpixel is going to be about that of a typical compact P&S or mid-range consumer camcorder.
The one saving grace there... the noise pattern is going to be vanishingly small compared to a camcorder or 8Mpixel camera. So you'll have the same level of noise, but as long as it's random noise, it won't be nearly as visible. This is the same reason as video resolutions increase, we can get away with higher compression levels. For example, ATSC television is 6x the spatial resolution of DVD, but only about 2.5x the bitrate of DVD (DVD is, of course, variable bitrate). Compression artifacts can still be there, but they're much less noticeable.
The real question I have is entirely different... where in the universe is anyone going to find a lens worthy of such a sensor. When you translate to usual resolution numbers, this sensor is 230lp/mm. A very, very good lens for a 35mm camera will have a "Lens MTF" of 60lp/mm-80lp/mm. This is the resolution at which point the lens, at its best setting, produces a 50% MTF rating (eg, the contrast of the line pair is reduced to 50% of ideal). So in order to actually get any real value out of this in a DSLR, they're going to need a lens 3x-4x sharper than the typical $2,000+ Canon L-Series lenses of today. Good luck with that....
Most single-sensor video cameras are already using pixel binning these days. You'll find 6-12 Mpixel sensors in most of these, but the target is, of course, a 2Mpixel image. It actually makes sense with a video camera... with a single sensor and large pixels, you have Bayer color distortion problems... you're interpolating two out of three colors for each pixel site. Go to an 8Mpixel sensor, and you can bin four sensors per video pixel, no interpolation needed.
They're going to have to do very much the same thing to get usable video out of this thing.... they could presumably bin 8x8 pixel chunks for an HD output.
If you have truly random noise, though, you don't get four (or 64) times the noise. Random noise is just as likely to lower as raise a pixel value, so adding them together sums both positive and negative noise contributions. Pattern noise (predictable sensor noise) is already dealt with very well in modern sensors.
Most DSLRs can capture in RAW mode, which gives them the expected 14-bits out of the ADC. If there's more range to be had from the sensors themselves, you could certainly add a second ADC (well, in theory... CMOS chips already have tons of ADCs, rather than the single unit of the CCDs) with a different gain. But then again, you could just add more resolution to the one you've got.
Though there's a Tascam field recording doing this with audio... one full sensitivity ADC, one with an attenuator in front of it. If you're clipping on the first one, you'll have a usable recording on the second. In short, it's extended the dynamic range beyond the 24(-ish) bits of the ADCs involved.
The idea already done by Fujifilm is to build a sensor with two different sensor site sizes, so one's inherently more sensitive than the other. That would seem a more valuable use of the technology than making all of these tiny, tiny sensors.
My DROID cost me $100, and the extra cost versus the dumb phone it replaced was $30/month. So that's $720 for two years... about $600 more than the iPod-only solution for those same too years. But it's way, way better than an iPod, so there's that, too. And I don't also have to carry a phone. I get my email, both personal and business. Also replaces my GPS and a dozen other pocket electronic devices.
If I didn't want the network, I'd consider it expensive. But I want the network. Internet radio without glitches up and down the East Coast, so I'm avoid the need for a Sirius/XM subscription, too. There's a ton of value in an ever-present network connection.
Jobs doesn't really want to drive the competitor out of HIS marketplace... he has absolute control there. If he say "no Flash", there's no Flash.
The problem, of course, is consumer demand -- if Steve says "no HTML", there would be no HTML, but it would be a problem. People need HTML.
So his goal was to marginalize Flash... make people, or at least iPhonies, believe they don't need or, for that matter want Flash. Part of this was very easy -- Apple didn't both to open up the video acceleration APIs on the iPhone, so only Apple could do high performance video using video acceleration. Problem solved -- Flash, or for that matter, any other video not using Apple's high-level APIs, would simply suck. This was even true of the MacOS until earlier this year.
And they might just have got away with it.. .because Flash kind of sucked on the Mac (due as much to Apple as Adobe.. .both somewhat at fault), and Apple was becoming successful in spreading the "Flash Don't Work on Smartphones" meme, Ok, well, there were a few of these Nokia phones that did Flash just dandy, but we in the US ignore them anyway.
Only now, there's Flash on Android, it's pretty good... and Android has outsold iPhone for the last two quarters... quite nicely, if you look at the Global market. Most Android phones will have Flash bundled in by late 2010 or early 2011. Fact is, most new smart phones are substantially faster than PCs were when Flash was young. The main concern is battery life, but with most Flash video in H.264, Flash video isn't going to eat more battery than any other H.264 video.
Apple, of course, wants to kill Flash so they control the purse strings. Free video is fine, do it in HTML5. Want to DRM or charge for something? Your only choice is iTunes downloads. Apple gets ALL the money for things you pay into on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod.
Easy... make the radio FM-only. That'll keep away most of the "radio porn" out there.
The major music labels (as represented by the RIAA) and the major radio stations have had a sweet deal for ages. They control the music that most of the public buys, by simply controlling the one major outlet for music.
They have pulled every trick in the book to ensure this continues. They've screwed with laws, to limit the power of college radio stations. They screwed with the proposed low power radio initiative some years back. It's a prime example of the Golden Rule (eg, he with the Gold makes the Rules), despite public demand for alternatives.
It was inevitable that this model fail, once the internet came along. Sure, they've been fighting in internet radio tooth and nail, trying to make it too expensive to launch internet "radio" channels.... largely driven by the fact that commercial broadcast radio in the USA is getting to live by a completely different set of rules. And yet, they've failed miserably at this.
Earlier this year, I drove to a friend's house... a six hour ride from South Jersey to Boston. Rather than use radio, I had my Droid smartphone playing off the net via the Pandora application. This went flawless, never a glitch the entire trip. Ok, this is on Verizon... iPhone users might get a dropout or two along the way. But still... that's pretty much the last place broadcast radio is at all useful. This pretty much confirms that the radio model as we know it is obsolete.
Sure, there's no reason to reject the option of radio. In fact, if broadcast radio actually has to compete with online and PMP options, it's at least possible it'll get better. But a mandate for this? That's just crazy... no one needs radio anymore. What's next -- a mandate to make all PMPs compatible with CDs and LPs? A mandate for at least one vacuum tube in every TV? Get off my lawn, RIAA!
Any "Google Experience" phone is vanilla Android with no carrier or manufacturer add-ons. These existed before the Nexus One.
I'm not worried.. other companies have been reasonably good at delivering new Android releases to existing phones. Motorola in particular. You might be asking for trouble if you buy a phone with an alternate GUI... that means more work for the vendor, so they're more likely to drop support sooner rather than later.
The real probably here, though, is absolutely this: we're dependent on the hardware vendors for software updates. Unfortunately, that's the way Android is currently architected. If you're lucky, your vendor does the upgrades... if you're unlucky (like those few 1.5 and 1.6 users still being counted, on devices that can't or won't be upgrades) you are currently very much on your own.
What Google really needs to do is separate the manufacturer supplied hardware layer from Android proper. Create a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that lives permanently on the Android device (optionally upgradeable by the manufacturer) and then Android OS proper, which can be updated to any old phone via the Marketplace, or other alternate installers. That done correctly doesn't eliminate the ability of a vendor like Motorola to push the new OS to all devices, but it also means, if they lose interest in your particular model, you have an easy and supported way of upgrading.
It doesn't really matter that this isn't in-place now... unlike PCs, there's a high rate of turnover on these devices. Put this in Android 3.0 at year's end, and before long, most Android devices will support the new upgrade model. Those that don't probably can be loaded with custom ROMs to deliver that functionality, and need only the one custom flashing, tapping into the standard upgrade going forward.
Most phone vendors have long offered the sales model that Google ultimately offered. Motorola's store is here: http://www.store.motorola.com./ You can order a number of Motorola smart phones there, and, as with the Nexus One, pay the full MSRP for an unlocked phone.
Of course, good luck getting a discount from your network carrier unless it's T-Mobile. And while they don't promote it, the model is the same.
The problem is, that's not the model Google originally spoke of. They were going to release the phone unbundled, period. If they had actually done that, they could have sold it for $250-$300... supposedly they cost $170-$180 to make, based on the usual folks doing a dissection and price estimate. But Google really just pretended at this -- they kept the price as artificially high as any other cellphone, so they had the option of selling though T-Mobile as well. That's not the real experiment they spoke of, but that is the one they actually conducted.
The Motorola Droid actually started that trend, well before the Nexus One was officially announced. Maybe Google got things going at HTC, but they were hardly ignoring the issue. Some of the recent HTC phones are based on the same platform as the N1, other new models are not.
Regardless, it's pretty clear the Nexus One failed in the market, only because Google didn't actually make the market changes they spoke of.
But publicity wise, maybe it was a success. It sure had the rumor mills and press going for far long than even a new iPhone announcement (well, at least one without a slew of problems), and it brought attention to Android, maybe in ways that some of the others could not. Though it's hard to say... Verizon had been running Droid ads on network primetime TV, billboards, magazines, etc. for a few months before the N1 was even leaked. I'm sure some folks were confused, but if you were in the smartphone market, you got the message.
So maybe the N1 helped, or maybe it wasn't even necessary. It's clearly not necessary anymore... Android has been growing like crazy, even as the Nexus One itself faltered.
They were afraid, though. They talked big about changing the model, but they didn't change the model. Yes, they sold the phones directly. So do most other cellphone vendors... here's Motorola's direct-buy store: http://www.store.motorola.com./
Yes, they're expensive... so was the Nexus One. That was Google's first point of failure. The reason the MSRP on a cellphone is so high, dramatically higher than any other piece of consumer gear, is that these are made to be sold en mass to the telcos. Verizon doesn't pay full MSRP for a Droid, but they pay as a percentage of the MSRP. That's the hack the telcos came up with long ago, to help prevent the rise of unbundled phones. If you want to get into a major carrier's store, you have to price your phone like crazy, or lose a bundle on each unit you sell to them.
Google said they wanted the direct sales model, but they didn't only want that... they still had to be able to go into the T-Mobile stores. And so they released the Nexus One with a ridiculous price... about $30 less than the Droid you could always buy directly from Motorola.
Second big failure is network support... a smartphone is pointless without 3G support. The Nexus One supports 3G on T-Mobile's frequencies (1700MHz and 2100MHz), but not on AT&T's frequencies (850MHz and 1900MHz). And there's not even a good reason for that... they still have to support 850MHz and 1900MHz for 2G with roaming. The bad reason, of course, is that the telcos have opposed phone portability, so it would take extra hardware, most likely, to be able to support multiple GSM carries in the USA. Regardless of the reasons, Google failed here too... the Nexus One was not really transportable to other GSM systems, it was fully functional only on T-Mobile.
Actually, most of the "closed" phones are not preventing either rooting or side-loading apps. The are a few with encrypted ROMs, which only prevent user-modded/non-OEM versions of the OS from being loaded... at least until developers figure a work-around.
Loading apps from outside the Android Marketplace is a standard function in Android. It's up to the carrier to remove this functionality. To date, only AT&T has show any interest in invoking that option. The other carriers have absolutely no problem with apps from other sources. In fact, Verizon's been selling the Droid series based on their being more open than AT&T and Apple, and doing quite well as a result.
This is also, ultimately, an important move, looking toward business use. Large enterprises don't for a minute want to require users to buy individual apps from the iTunes store or even the Android Marketplace. They develop apps internally, or license on a corporate level, and expect their IT people to be able to install these as they see fit. Android supports this, iPhone doesn't... and as these two platforms continue to grow, there will be interest in them in the Enterprise. Android wins, iPhone fails. Today, sure, this is RIM's strength, but ultimately, that comes down to a bit of extra software for any other smart phone platform.
A good portion of those incompatibilities are easy to address.
CDMA2000 is CDMA2000... the problem is that the laws for unbundling phones didn't match the technology. Your carrier is required to unlock your phone if you request it (with some limits), and they're required to allow any old SIM card on their network, for GSM networks. The legislators dropped the ball on CDMA2000, though, by not requiring the carriers to accept any old phone. On GSM, the network is always locked at the device, and legislation makes it illegal to lock that out. But on CDMA2000, the way it's run, the devices are locked out at the network. No reason that has to be so, it's just policy, and no one's telling Verizon or Sprint they can't do this.
For GSM, the big problem is 3G compatibility... but that's really no more of a problem than any other GSM issues. There used to be phones just for Europe and phones just for the USA on GSM, but these days, nearly every phone is a 3-Band phone if not a 4-Band phone (you need 2 bands for either country, though technically, T-Mobile doesn't own much if any 850MHz in the USA, like Sprint they're all at 1900MHz). There's no reason you couldn't have support on a phone for 3G at 850MHz, 1700MHz, 1900MHz, and 2100MHz, to easily support AT&T or T-Mobile. The telcos don't demand this... in fact, they probably don't want it, since that makes it easier to jump over to the other guy. But there's no big technical challenge here.
And yeah, that was one of the big problems with the Nexus One -- it was fully functional only on T-Mobile.
If Google had conducted the experiment they really spoke of, things might have ended differently. But that's not what the Nexus One was.
First problem: price. Telecoms negotiate for their paid price on a cellphone as a percentage of the MSRP. They do this specifically to discourage unbundled sales of cellphones. Just do the math... an iPhone has roughly $35-$40 additional cost over an iPod Touch: cellular modem, microphone, camera, that's about it. MSRP on an iPhone runs $499-$699 depending on model (eg, how much memory)... over twice that of the comparable iPod Touch.
Why? Because Apple's customer isn't you or I, it's AT&T, and they still want to get a reasonable price from AT&T. So they have to jack up the MSRP of the phone model of their PDA/PMP to unreasonable levels. And that's why few people try to buy them unbundled, even where possible.
Google's experiment needed to fix this: sell the device at a reasonable price, based on comparisons to any other piece of CE gear. They didn't do that. The Nexus One was a follow-up to the Motorola Droid, and they priced it $30 below the Droid MSRP. Why in the world would they do that, one would ask (as I did, right after the N1 was released)... no obvious reason. Well, for a minute or two -- then we find out that T-Mobile will be carrying the N1 too. Thus, the same old, same old pricing structure. In short, while they were advocating direct unbundled sales, they didn't do anything to change the functional cellular model -- you can buy any number of unlocked phones directly from the vendors.
Then there's the second issue: network support. To handle GSM 2G worldwide, you need to support 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz cellular bands. Many phones manage that. But this is a smartphone, it needs 3G support. Which means supporting HSPA on 850MHz, 1700MHz, 1900MHz, and 2100MHz... just to handle AT&T and T-Mobile in the USA. The Nexus One was T-Mobile-only... no AT&T 3G. So this device didn't even properly function as an unbundled phone for US use.
The idea was sound. The implementation is why the Nexus One failed.
No... the shock is only when you think non-Apple approved thoughts. Don't worry, though, you'll be "thinking correct" Real Soon Now... the iMindControl app is extremely effective.
Well... Job apologized for users being unhappy. Never once did he actually cop to the iPhone 4 issue being an unusual problem.. in fact, they spent more time and energy finding other phones to blame than actually dealing with the problem.
Well, that's your own damn fault if you use the iPhone that way. Actual R/C radio controllers have to pass a number of certifications to be legal for sale in the USA (I designed a number of ground-based R/C controllers for Nomadio, Inc.... I know the industry). Anyone using a toy like the iPhone to control a plane is just asking for a disaster. The only question is when it'll fail, not if it will.
But you have to love the irony of their fix... they made a bad-performing phone even worse in their endless quest to make the world's thinnest smartphone (damn that Google!). They chose form over function as they did every since the original iPhone. And so to fix it... you put on a case. Which now makes it a fairly fat smartphone, compared to most modern models that work just dandy without a case. Hell, my Droid even squeezes a keyboard into that extra 1mm it has over the 3GS.
But really, did ANYONE think Apple would actually apologize? This is the most ego-driven company on the planet... even Bill Gates in his prime wasn't this good at it. Apple's first response is how they really felt -- if the iPhone isn't working right, there's something wrong with YOU, not it. So now there's also something wrong with the cellular industry. Though you'll notice Jobs didn't chose any of the better cellphones to compare... he had his people find a few phones that could, under very controlled hand-holding, also behave badly. But here's the thing... did any one of them drop to 1 bar with just a single finger on it, as the iPhone 4 can? I thought not...
Well, in fairness, Apple has spend years training their users to accept horrible cell phone performance. So of course they only had a few complaints. Most of the huge volume of iPhone 4 sales were to existing Apple iPhone customers. And in particular, the most iPhonie of them all... many of these people are paying extra to upgrade early. They are in the reality distortion field, they drink the Kool-Aid, and when Apple says "2-bars are the new 5-bars", they accept this without question.
Every iPhone has had reception problems, call dropping problems, etc. The simple fact that, given that history, this had become such a big issue that Apple had to hold today's conference is evidence that they really outdid their crappy reception, this time around. Just regular poor reception on an iPhone is hardly news... I've lent my Droid to numerous iPhone users who, from time to time, actually had to make calls and just couldn't get a signal (yes, AT&T is also sharing the blame, and at least in my area, they're a strong #2 in coverage quality... the BlackBerry people don't seen to have any issues).
Right.. being able to actually touch the antenna is the first problem.. you fingers in direct contact change the impedance of the antenna... same mechanism used to work the capacitive touchscreen. Antennas aren't made randomly, they're designed with a very specific impedance, usually 50 ohms in modern RF devices. Changing the impedance of the antenna causes an impedance mismatch between the radio chip and the antenna, causing more of the RF energy to reflect back to the radio chip (or power amplifier) on transmit. This doesn't just screw up your signal, it causes more of that energy to remain in the phone.
Second problem was locating these external antennas so close to one another that one finger can bridge them. Really dumb idea there, and easily avoided... if only they weren't going for this particular "form over function" design decision.
And finally, diversity or MIMO antennas. Very modern RF devices have multiple receivers which operate in parallel from multiple antennas. Block one, and the other one is very likely still clear. Older technologies support diversity antennas... any RF engineer can add diversity to a system, it's not a necessary feature of the radio chip. All you need is an RSSI sensor (eg, you can read signal strength), an RF switch and two antennas. Software switches between antennas, selecting the stronger of the two for regular use. Better smartphones have this kind of design, but apparently, with Apple's obsession with being thin, they had to leave this out.
That's why with better phones, you actually have to cup the phone in your hand to kill the reception. Just holding it doesn't hurt anything, even with an unlikely grip, because you're only going to block one antenna at a time.
Check out Apple's own demonstrations of these. You can clobber the iPhone's reception with a single fingertip. On some of their "see, the competition has this problem too" examples, they're close to covering the phone with the hand. And these were hand-picked examples... the worst of the competition.
Yes... Apple certainly brought in as many other manufacturer's phones as they could get their hands on, and found a couple that, when held just so, perform poorly too. Don't think for a nanosecond that the phone they're using as counterexamples are typical, randomly selected models. They found others with problems.... and far as I can tell, much more difficult to demonstrate problems.
Who on their right mind would make a phone designed with an antenna that you're going to directly touch in normal use? Yes, the answer is "no one". Most decent cellphones, like my Motorola Droid, employ diversity antennas... two independent antennas in different parts of the phone, just like the dual antennas on many 802.11g routers and laptops. The device selects the antenna that's delivering the best signal, and in a phone, keeps a strong signal even if some fingers cover one of the antennas.