Taken on the Galaxy Note’s 8Mpx camera, then given the ‘Antique’ effect. I’m very pleased with the quality of the camera. A lot of the images I saw in reviews looked a little unsharp, but the results are much more impressive in real life. And though the picture of the old sign I put up yesterday is definitely soft, for a shot in low light indoors without flash I’m more than satisfied.
So that’s a good start with photography. My next task is to find a browser that works well enough for primetime. Coming from MicroB on the N900 I am a little spoiled, but there really doesn’t seem to be such a thing as the perfect mobile browser yet. Of the ones I’ve tried so far – the inbuilt one, Firefox Mobile and the hot new Dolphin HD – I think Dolphin has the edge. Though this is mainly due to how easily you can make it display sites as they would appear in a desktop browser rather than a simplified mobile view. (Why would I use that, this phone has a higher resolution than my desktop PC…) Every one fails in some way when it comes to complex tasks like – well, like the one I’m doing right now, editing this blog. The WordPress interface just seems to overwhelm the touch metaphor. For example, the menus that pop up when you hover over them with your… Ah. Can’t really hover over them with your finger. Not until someone invents some sort of sonar finger-detecting screen at least
It’s worth mentioning though that the same pen technology as used here does precisely that on a tablet PC, which is why it was chosen by Microsoft. On a capacitive (or resistive) screen position is only detected on contact, so a touch is equivalent to both a mouse movement and click. A digitizer pen gives its position when it’s near the screen, so it is capable of triggering hover events like opening a menu. The hardware is in place therefore on devices like this phone and the Note 10.1 tablet, it just isn’t in the software.
Will such mouse events be available when support for them is introduced with Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)? We can hope.