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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out their video showing how the app works:

Photo: Texas Advanced Computing Center

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out their video showing how the app works:

Photo: Texas Advanced Computing Center

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

Now, its all there off-the-shelf for the taking, says Russell. So why reinvent the wheel?

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

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

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

For Evo users, the upgrade will be pushed over-the-air to the device and automatically installed. Those who cant’ wait, will have the option to manually download it. Customers can access the update through their phone under the Settings Menu > System Updates > HTC Software Update.

Sprint says the change to the firmware will not wipe personal data such as contacts, apps, settings and photos but users should back up their device.

Photo: (Mike Saechang/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[via Make and Droid Ninja]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out the video:

Photo: (spieri_sf/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Seven months after Google launched its first phone, the HTC-designed Nexus One, it has stopped selling the devices through its online store.

“Sorry, folks…The Nexus One is no longer available for purchase directly from Google,” the company announced.

Google had warned users about this in May, saying it planned to wind down its web store.

Those who still want to buy a Nexus One will now have to go through Vodafone but that’s limited to some parts of Europe. Google promises it will make the device available to “registered developers” through a partner.

The Nexus One launched with what seemed like an innovative idea in the retailing of phones. Instead of being sold through stores, Google would directly sell it through the web to customers –something that worked for other consumer electronics products. However, the strategy didnt resonate with consumers.

Potential customers found they couldnt find a Nexus One in the real-world to play with, unless they knew a friend who already had the device. Google’s customer service support for the device also left many users unhappy.

Google has acknowledged that its retailing model with the Nexus One failed to catch on with consumers.

“While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not,” wrote Andy Rubin, vice-president of engineering and Android czar at Google in a blog post in May. “Its remained a niche channel for early adopters.”

At the same time, Google tried to put the devices into retail stores in U.S. I wireless, a T-mobile affiliate, got Nexus One at its 250 stores mostly in the Midwest. So far, it hasn’t announced any other retail partnerships.

So is the Nexus One dead or is the Nexus One web retail experiment over? The answer to that will depend on whether Google will take the risk to launch a successor to the phone or if it will be content to let other handset makers take Android forward.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

After a long and painful decline, Google has finally put the Nexus One phone out of its misery. After it has shifted the last batch of handsets, the search company will stop selling its first and possibly last Android handset.

After a big launch back in January, the Nexus One went into decline. It was sold only through Google’s own web-store, and the lack-of a hands-on, try-before-you-buy option kept this online store a “a niche channel for early adopters”, according to Google.

Google dropped the web-store in May, putting the Nexus One into bricks-and-mortar stores, but it seems that even that couldn’t help. As soon as Google’s “last shipment of Nexus One phones” is sold out, you’ll only be able to find the handset via a few retail partners in (Vodafone in some parts of Europe and KT in Korea). Developers will still be able to buy the hardware, too. It will be available through an as-yet unnamed partner.

While the hardware dies, though, the software is still going strong. Android continues to grow, and its open-source nature means that handset makers are doing all sorts of great things like adding unremovable bloatware or preventing the user from running an unapproved version of the OS on their own handset (Motorola’s eFuse). Kidding aside, Android is shaping up to dominate the mobile OS market the same way Windows has dominated the desktop market, and we’re excited to see the first of the Android tablets as they become available. And Android 2.2 Froyo, despite taking rather a long time to make it to Google’s own handset, is a pretty neat OS.

Nexus One changes in availability [Google]

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Motorola’s Droid is the most popular phone among Android users, followed by HTC Hero, while Google’s Nexus One ranks tenth on the list, according to a monthly metrics report from mobile advertising firm AdMob. AdMob has ranked the top ten Android smartphones by market share.

The data is based on 12.7 million Android phones in the AdMob network in May. It’s also why the HTC Evo, released in the first week of June, is missing from the mix.

About 21 percent Android users have the Droid, while 16 percent users own the HTC Hero. Just 2 percent of Android phone users have Google’s Nexus One phone, says AdMob.

Motorola launched the Droid in November 2009 and made it available exclusively on Verizon Wireless. And despite the gaggle of Android phones launched every month, the Droid has been holding strong.

The only Android phone that could challenge the Droid’s position is the HTC Evo, which is available exclusively on Sprint. It will be interesting to see if the Evo can beat the Droid, though Sprint has a smaller marketing budget and fewer subscribers than Verizon.

Here’s a chart that shows the popularity of different Android smarpthones.

About 67 percent of Android users are in North America while China is the second largest market for Android with 13 percent of Android users coming from the country, says AdMob.

Combined HTC and Motorola have 83 percent share among Android devices. Since the Android OS debuted in 2008, the two companies have been on a roll, churning out phones faster than consumers can keep up with.

Last week, Motorola introduced its eleventh Android phone, the Droid X. It was also a big month for HTC, whose Evo phone is the first and only 4G device available currently.

Data: AdMob

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews