CES 2012: Day 2, 3, and a Wrap-up

I know, I know, it’s been days since the second and third day of CES 2012. But hey, it’s not totally my fault, most of the good products have been announced, so the rest of CES 2012 felt kinda dull. Fortunately, there are some cool gadgets I haven’t covered before, and I also got some thought over this year CES.

ASUS MeMO ME370T
If Acer Iconia Tab A700 is all about Quad-core, ICS, and 1080p, then this ASUS MeMO is all about quad-core, ICS, and $249. Yes, freaking $249! It’s totally unbelievable, with only $50 difference to Kindle Fire, you can get a tablet with ICS and the full Google ecosystem. A friend of mine is currently looking for tablets for a better reading experience, and if he’s willing to wait several month, I would definitely recommend this tablet.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga
Joanna Stern from The Verge totally nailed it, this is definitely one ”Crazy, flipping, Yoga laptop”. Flipping? Indeed, flipping is mainly how this laptop differentiate itself from the rest of Windows 8 laptops/tablets. Basically, this is your regular Windows 8 laptop, however, you can flip the screen to the back, effectively hiding the keyboard and transforming the laptop to a tablet. Unfortunately, Windows 8 is an essential element to the usability of the tablet, so this laptop here won’t come out until Windows 8 is released later this year.

I can’t wait to see various new form factors for Windows 8 devices =D

Ultrabooks
Intel has been pushing Ultrabooks really hard these days, another batch of them are introduced here at CES 2012. But, well, I’m just not really interested in them, even though I must admit that it’s really pleasing to see all those super thin laptops. The truth is, I’m really, really disappointed that none of those Ultrabooks have a decent GPU =/ You may say that you don’t need GPU for working, but according to my experience, that’s just wrong.

You see, my laptop is pretty much capable for working, since I can compile and test stuff quite quickly on it. Unfortunately, due to the lack of dedicated GPU, it isn’t capable of rotating canvas on Photoshop, something very very essential when drawing using a Wacom Bamboo. From then on, I decided that dedicated graphic card is a crucial element on laptops.

And one last thing, I barely used my laptop anymore =/ I’ve been really spoiled by my dual-monitor setup, so now working on a small, single monitor laptop really feels like it’s hampering my productivity. Nowadays, I only did some light works like checking and replying e-mails when I’m not on my desktop. However, to do those stuff, I don’t need a laptop since my tablet works just fine.

So here’s an idea to all those vendors out there, how about a tablet that can be used as a second monitor for your laptop? So all you need is a HDMI cable to connect both laptop and tablet, then voila, you get a dual-monitor laptop =D I sure am interested in that kind of devices.

Ice Cream Sandwich
This is totally against my prediction, but there are no Android phones with Ice Cream Sandwich announced on this year CES!

I really was expecting a flood of ICS-based smartphones, especially after those glowing reviews of Galaxy Nexus, but there are none of them here. We do get a lot of 720p phones like LG Spectrum, Sony Xperia S, and even Lenovo K800 which comes with Intel chipset, but they are all using Gingerbread apparently (even though most of them said that ICS is going to come via updates).

My theory behind this lack of ICS phones is because currently vendors are still developing their skinned version of ICS, which I suppose will take a lot of time since ICS is a really big departure from Android 2.x, so they’re not ready for any announcement yet.

So yeah, I suppose this means no vanilla ICS for your phones (honestly, if I was one of those vendors, I would just release one high-end phone with plain ICS while building another batch of skinned ICS phones =/). The swarm of ICS tablet supports my theory, since vendors barely customize the look of Honeycomb, they can release those ICS tablets much quicker.

Wrap-up
CES has always been special to me, it’s one year ago during CES 2011 where I started to get obsessed over consumer gadgets and technologies. I remember getting totally excited over the first dual-core smartphone, the Motorola Atrix. And even though the actual device turned out to be disappointing, the excitement of having a dual-core phone on the horizon made me really happy, it’s like being a kid in a toy store.

Well, CES did it again this year, it made me got really excited over 1080p tablets and NVidia Tegra 3 SoC. I’ve learned my lesson though, the first generation products will not be good, but the next iteration will be so awesome, just take a look at our current batch of dual-core phones, Samsung Galaxy SII, HTC Rezound, Droid RAZR, and compare it against the Atrix.

Now let’s look forward to what the Mobile World Congress on February will bring to us.
(I think there will be a Samsung Galaxy S3 announcement =D)

CES 2012: Day 1

The first day of CES 2012 is done! Well, even though it’s the first day, a lot of announcements have been made, since day 0 is really full with press conferences. So, what’s my opinion on various stuff in this year CES? Please bear in mind that I’m not really interested in things like camera or TV (been some times since I actually watched TV), so mostly it would be about gadgets.

Acer Iconia Tab A700
Three words: 1080p, quad-core, and ICS. Shit just got real.To be honest though, I’m sold at the word “1080p” already. But of course, spec isn’t everything. My friend has an Iconia Tab A500, so I’ve got the luxury to try out an Acer tablet, and well, despite having the same spec as my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the experience is completely different, A500 felt pretty clunky and plastic-y compared to my Galaxy Tab. Still, we don’t have the actual device on our hands right now, so we can just keep drooling over the potential awesomeness and hope it would provides an experience that matches the spec =D

Nokia Lumia 900
So, why would a Nokia device interests me? Because it’s their high-end phone, it’s their big return to the US, so I was expecting something mind-blowing. Instead, all they got is N9 / Lumia 800 design on a 4.3-inches phone with extra LTE, seriously? Oh, and don’t forget, it’s still the same old Windows Phone, no extra feature, no killer application, no customization. Do they forget that Nokia barely got any marketshare in the US? How do they hope to compete with other vendors when there’s nothing really different between a Windows Phone from HTC and a Windows Phone from Nokia?

Nokia Lumia 900

While we’re on it, let’s discuss differentiation. You might call Android fragmented, but I still believe that it’s actually freedom. Samsung and Sony are examples of OEM that managed to take advantage of this, they have made a lineup of devices (Galaxy and Xperia) that covers from low-end to high-end and could fit all kind of people. Other OEMs have failed on this aspect, let’s see HTC line ups: HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire, HTC Sensation, etc, etc. Seriously, those phones aren’t so different from one another, even their prices are similar, how would consumer know which phone is better? Anyway, back to Nokia, I really, really want them to starts differentiating themselves from other vendors, take advantage of their deal with Microsoft, and stop reusing the same design over and over again.

Asus Transformer Prime TF700T
It’s our second 1080p tablet! \o/ Asus has been delivering amazing products lately, both Asus Transformer and Asus Transformer Prime seems quite well received both by critics and by publics. Not to mention that Transformer Prime have started to receive the ICS upgrade. I definitely recommend this one if you’re looking for a 1080p tablet, though if you can wait, you should wait until iPad 3 announcement and Samsung’s counter to it =p

HTC Titan II
Another Windows Phone… phone(?) on the list. Not really interested in the device itself, but I’m more intrigued with the camera on this one, it’s a freaking 16-Mega-Pixel-Camera! But again, we all knew that mega pixel counts barely means anything these days, but I think it definitely is a good news if vendors have managed to manufacture a 16 MP camera for a smarphone.

Lenovo K800
We’ve got a newcomer to the the smartphone industry, Intel! Intel has been pretty late to the smartphone game, but with Medfield chipset now ready, they’re going to use their massive capability to spread their chipset all over the world (hell, ultrabook spread is all thanks to Intel). More competition is always good, with most tablets now using NVidia Tegra, we’ll see how Intel could change the balance. So, Lenovo K800 is the first device to run on Medfield, and bundled with ICS and 720p display, it would definitely be a great first step for Intel’s venture in the mobile market. And Intel also made a partnership with Motorola to make various devices using Intel processor, since Motorola is now owned by Google, would we see an Intel Nexus next time?

Razer Fiona
Razer has been experimenting a lot it seems, on last year CES they introduced Razer Switchblade (which later on morphed into Razer Blade) which is pretty revolutionary in my opinion. This year they introduced Razer Fiona, which shows another possibility for portable gaming, a tablet for PC gaming with integrated dual controller. Not really original you might say, since XPeria Play has the very same concept, but this is Razer we’re talking about, they made some ridiculously bad-ass-yet-comfortable design for their devices. Hell, I never know how much difference a good mouse could make until I tried Razer Orochi (and later on, Razer Imperator). Anyway, I’d really like to see they implement both Android and Windows on it, playing both Assassin’s Creed 3 and ShadowGun would be so awesome on Razer Fiona.

Razer Fiona: A PC gaming tablet?

Special mention would go to LG OLED TV
It’s ridiculously awesome, never know a screen could be so good.

There are still several interesting stuff I haven’t covered, let’s hope I can cover it on Day 2 =D

Android Games: Reviews

So, I finally run out of the 16GB space I have on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and most of them are because of the new games I’ve bought lately (most of the games for tablet require the user to download the resource pack which can go as high as 600-700 MB).

No wonder, December has been a pretty amazing month for buying Android applications. First they have those awesome 10 days where applications are sold at $0.10, then Gameloft decided to discount their games as well for celebrating new year. And I have pretty much spent a lot of time playing them, so I might as well give a quick review and compare them, so people can find out which games they should buy if they ever want to have them, they all look awesome on the page anyway =D

First off, here’s the list of the games (26 of them) I’ve bought recently and their prices as well: (sorted alphabetically)

GAME	ORIGINAL PRICE	DISCOUNTED PRICE
9mm HD	?	$0.99
BackStab HD	?	$0.10
Age of Zombies	$1.02	$0.10
Apparatus	$2.77	$0.10
Blood & Glory	FREE	FREE
Can Knockdown 2	$1.53	$0.10
Captain America	$2.99	$0.10
Fieldrunners HD	$2.99	$0.10
Great Little War Game	$2.91	$0.10
Heavy Gunner 3D	$4.99	$0.10
Jelly Defense	$3.11	$0.10
Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom Sim	$2.02	$0.10
Minecraft – Pocket Edition	$6.60	$0.10
Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation	$6.99	$0.99
MX Moto	$1.99	$0.10
N.O.V.A. 2 HD	?	$0.99
Reckless Getaway	$1.99	$0.10
Sentinel 3: Homeworld	$2.89	$0.10
Shine Runner	$1.99	$0.10
SimCity Deluxe	$5.21	$0.10
Sleepy Jack	$1.99	$0.10
Spirit HD	$1.24	$0.10
SummitX Snowboarding	$4.99	FREE
Tank Riders	$1.99	$0.10
Train Conductor 2: USA	$2.06	$0.10
Zenonia	$0.99	$0.10

Took quite some time compiling them @.@ Anyway, bolded items are the ones I have played, while the rest are still waiting to be played. I included both discounted and original price here so I can comment whether the game is worthed or no for their usual prices. The list is still missing the original price for most of Gameloft games though, since they’re still discounted at the time of this writing, I’ll update it as soon as it reverts to the original pricing.

On to the reviews then!
My rating: DON’T – YOU SHOULDN’T – DUNNO – PROBABLY – DEFINITELY

Blood & Glory (FREE)
If iOS got Infinity Blade, then Android would have Blood & Glory. The gameplay is pretty similar, swordfight that’s controlled with gesture, and not just the gameplay, the graphic is similarly amazing as well. It’s a really fun and addicting game, though it suffers the same lack of depth and length as Infinity Blade. But hey, it’s a really fun time killer =D

Get it? DEFINITELY, it’s free.

Can Knockdown 2 ($1.53)
Usually I don’t buy mini games, but since it was on sale for $0.10, I decided to give it a try. And I have mixed feelings about it; it definitely is addictive, I had some fun playing it all night long after I made the purchase. On the other hand, I haven’t played it again that much =/ Why? I suppose because it’s the lack of progress, it’s just a couple of mini games after all, so I didn’t look forward to play it again. So yeah, it’s kinda weird: it is fun to play, but not something I would play a lot.

Get it? DUNNO

Captain America ($2.99)
Okay, it’s official, game for movies should be made for smartphones instead of game consoles, they’re easier to develop and can easily reach mass market after all. Anyway, Captain America is a mix between runner and platformer where you use gesture to control your action and chain combos. Combos? Yeah, you can beat enemy down by chaining gestures, resulting in a very cool slow motion combo. Combined with tons of levels and collectibles, this game is just pure win. Oh, did I mention that you can also change the costume to various versions of Captain America? =D Now I hope they also made a Spider-man/Avengers game or something, it would be super awesome.

Get it? DEFINITELY

Fieldrunners HD ($2.99)

Ah, another tower defense game, would we ever run out of them? So, how does Fieldrunners differ from the rest? By offering a colorful visual combined with a chaotic yet balanced gameplay, each tower is just different from another, both in looks and in usage. The maps also have a lot of variety, you can never use the same strategy over and over again. All this resulted in a game that will make you spend countless hours in perfecting your strategy.

Get it? DEFINITELY

Heavy Gunner 3D ($4.99)
To be honest, Heavy Gunner is a pretty wonderful game where you control a twin turret and shoot down enemies coming from all over the place in a 3D world. The “control” part is very problematic though, using accelerometer just doesn’t give enough precision, while using touch control doesn’t give enough mobility. Overall it’s acceptable though, what’s not acceptable is the length of the game, I managed to finish it in one night, completely not acceptable for a 5 dollar game.

Get it? DON’T

Jelly Defense ($3.11)
Our second tower defense game in the list! (I do love tower defense games =D) I must say, the visual really impress me, not because it’s super-realistic or something, but because its direction of using only red and blue colors on white background made it really stands out, not to mention the jellies are really adorable. Though the gameplay definitely needs more depth, most of the time I can manage with using only 3-4 types of tower from the available 10 towers =/ But I’ve gotta to say, each level has a tiny difference that made you need to alter your strategy each time. BTW, have I mentioned that the level selection map is a planet (that you can rotate using your finger) that’s actually some kind of giant floating animal? =D

Get it? PROBABLY (for $1.99 it would be DEFINITELY)

Minecraft – Pocket Edition ($6.60)
Ah, Minecraft, previously available only for Xperia Play, now it’s available for most of Android devices. Overall, the experience is pretty satisfying, I managed to get absorbed in the game trying to build some underground cavern XD The price is an outrage though, but hell, if you’re going to buy this game, I bet you’re also into Minecraft on desktop, and I suppose $6 is an okay price to pay for satisfying your Minecraft addiction.

Get it? DUNNO (For Minecraft lover it would be PROBABLY)

Reckless Getaway ($1.99)
Reckless Getaway plays out exactly like what the title suggest, you control a reckless car running away from the police and other obstacles, though I still question why you would still need to collect coins when you’re on a getaway. Anyway, the game has good premises as well as tons of level, too bad I found the control lacks the tightness needed to make the whole experience fun, instead I found it to be very frustrating. Not to mention that the game turns out to be a game of memorizing the positions of those coins instead of a game about dodging obstacles =/

Get it? YOU SHOULDN’T

Sentinel 3: Homeworld ($2.89)
And the third tower defense game! While both Fieldrunners and Jelly Defense has a very cheerful presentation, Sentinel 3 offers a really serious narrative combined with a bit of RPG elements where you need to choose power up and upgrade your stats. The whole thing would be perfect if not for one tiny problem: it’s hard. I found myself have to grind on previous levels several times before I’m able to finish the latest one. Oh, and I also found some mechanism, like having several gates, to be utterly broken.

Get it? PROBABLY

Shine Runner ($1.99)
On the first glance, Shine Runner seems to be a pretty decent game, after all, what could go wrong with a 3D boat racing game? Everything apparently. Like a lot of other games, the control lacks something to be desired of, and hell, what racing? You’re simply going from the start line to the finish line with almost no penalty for arriving late. Oh, not to mention that the game apparently isn’t about racing at all, it’s about trading. Sounds weird? It’s even weirder that the trading mechanism is so random that you almost have no way to alter the outcome. And your actions are recorded and erased every 10 turns, so you have to start over next time.

Get it? DON’T

Sleepy Jack ($1.99)
Sleepy Jack is a 3D Shoot’em Up, kinda similar to the Gummy ship section of Kingdom Hearts. Even though I said Shoot’em Up, the game actually consist more of collecting stuff than shooting enemies. Well, the game manages to scale the difficulty quite well, the first few levels felt like a walk in the park, but past halfway mark, you would really need to fight your way through. Not to mention that the game has several modes with enough variety that it would keep the player from even feeling bored. All in all, it’s a really solid game even though it may not be as addicting as other games.

Get it? PROBABLY

Spirit HD ($1.24)
I remember seeing this game featured before I have credit card to buy it, I thought it’s an awesome game. Apparently, it’s not. The gameplay is pretty simple, you need to capture various spirits by controlling one spirit by moving it in circles. And well, that’s all there is to it, the only variety comes from the type of enemies. It would definitely be a fun mini game if not for the horrible control, trying to move the spirit around is a pain in the ass, I found my finger often goes over the bezel, making me lose control over my spirit =/ And the game has tons and tons of enemies, which, when combined with the horrible control, make the whole experience really frustrating.

Get it? DON’T

SummitX Snowboarding ($4.99)
3D snowboarding game? It would be super awesome, right? Well, it’s… complicated. The graphics is amazing (even though it’s only 50 MB!) and the gameplay also feels pretty solid, I can move around and perform various tricks quite well. Sounds perfect right? Well, the problem is there’s not much variety, sure, you can change your looks and there are several place to roam around, but that’s all, you can’t purchase more tricks or upgrade your stats, and the only thing you can do is raking up scores =/ I would probably think about purchasing it if it’s only around $2, but for $5? There’s no way. Though, now I’m interested in Tony Hawk’s Touch Skater, it snowboarding is possible, why skating isn’t?

Get it? YOU SHOULDN’T

Train Conductor 2: USA ($2.06)
Another mini game! This one has locked levels though, so there is some feeling of progress. Basically in the game you try to move trains to their designated tracks; it starts out slow, but as more trains are arriving, things are getting more hectic and you started to rely on nothing but reflex. What I absolutely loved from the game is that each level adds more twist to the original gameplay, preventing the player from ever getting bored =D Too bad when you unlocked all levels, the only thing left you can do is getting the score as high as possible.

Get it? PROBABLY

Zenonia ($0.99)
Zenonia! I absolutely loved Zenonia 3 (even with its kinda weird difficulty system). So what about the first one? Well, if you’re a fan of the Zenonia saga, this is a must have since it tells about how the whole story began, though the gameplay feels a bit lacking, especially when compared to the latest sequel. But hey, if you’re comparing to its sequel, then you simply must have the whole series, while if you’re not comparing it, then the game is actually pretty good by itself if you’re into some Action RPG goodness.

Get it? PROBABLY (it’s $0.99 for god’s sake)

To conclude:
You DEFINITELY should get Blood & Glory, Captain America, and Fieldrunners.
You PROBABLY should get Jelly Defense, Sentinel 3, Sleepy Jack, Train Conductor 2: USA, and Zenonia

Now, I’m still unsure whether I should buy that ShadowGun or no…

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Just got home from watching the new Tintin movie =)

So, how is it? Well, overall it’s a really complete movie, it has a bit of emotional moments, a bit of comedy, and tons of actions. We have most of the important characters like Tintin, Captain Haddock, Thomson & Thompson, and even Captain Haddock really undergoes a serious character development (you can kinda feel for him, something I didn’t actually get from the comic books).

Now, unlike animation movies made by Pixar such as Up or Wall-E, Tintin doesn’t really try to play with your emotion (though, seeing these characters came alive is already a very emotional moment). Where the movie really shines is the camera work, because it is not a live action movie, they can make some really interesting shots. There are various scenes in the movie where you have several interesting points, for example, while Tintin and Captain Haddock are in a conversation, you can focus on Snowy’s funny actions instead. Or when they’re chasing the bad guys on motor cycle, you can see a dam blows up in the background, making the river overflows, an event which would turn out to be important later as the river will block their path.

And damn, my favorite scene is that chasing scene at Morocco (with the overflowing river). The scene has a really dynamic camera, it simply follows where most actions take place. For example, when Tintin and Captain Haddock get separated, the camera focuses on the captain, and when he is safe, it slowly pans back to Tintin as he starts facing danger. Hell, at one point, the camera follows an eagle instead, and you can see Tintin in the background, frantically trying to catch that bird. And know what? This whole scene plays just like a cutscene in a video game, where you’ve only got one camera and you must pan it to show various interesting points.

Snowy is cuter in the comic books, but he's funnier in the movie!

One really disappointing thing for me is, well, the movie doesn’t really follow the story in the book. I know one book is not enough for a movie, so I thought they’ll be trying to have both Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure in the movie. But instead they combine Secret of the Unicorn with Crab with the Golden Claws. I didn’t really mind the combination, since we now have proper introductions of various important characters. What really bothered me is the ending where they jump straight to the ending of Red Rackham Treasure, essentially skipping the introduction of Professor Calculus and how they become friends.

Though, I’ve gotta say, I really like several twist they gave to the movie, it really adds to Captain Haddock’s character development.

Final thought?
If you’re a fan of Tintin, definitely watch the movie, it would make you want to read the comic books all over again. If you’re not? Well, start reading those Tintin books, goddammit.

BTW, my favorite book is Flight 714, what’s yours? =)

Exiting Application on Android

Warning! Massive technical rant ahead!

Anyway, a couple hours ago, I just realized that I haven’t implemented an “exit app” functionality on my game. So of course, I fired up Google and searched for how to exit an android application.

finish()

Most of the results said that I should use finish() function that behaves just like using back button (which isn’t available for me since I override the key press). Oh, and usually these stuff are accompanied with some lengthy reasons about why you shouldn’t have an exit functionality on android application XD

Apparently, the function doesn’t really worked well for me. Sure, I got back to the homescreen when I executed it, but the application doesn’t actually got destroyed =/ It usually wouldn’t be a problem, since the activity would still call the onCreate() method where we put most of our initialization stuff. Things are different with singleton classes though, since they AREN’T destroyed, they didn’t get instantiated again when the activity is started. So we are left with the old instance of the class, containing all the old values. I could have added an initialize() method on those classes that will be executed on the onCreate() method, but this would defeat the purpose of singleton classes, where you don’t need to instantiate the class.

So, even with all those articles that say people should be using finish() function, I still found the functions doesn’t work the way I had hoped. What I really want is to destroy the application utterly when the user quits, unfortunately, finish() just doesn’t cut it, and in the end I resort to the killProcess() function to destroy my own application.

Process.killProcess(Process.myPid())

There’s also that System.exit() function, though I don’t really know the difference XD