Mobile Tweaks

To what lengths would you go to extend the battery life of your Android phone? Would you switch your display to night-vision mode if it could reduce the power consumption in half?

Android engineer Jeff Sharkey has discovered a fun hack that a allows you to power each specific color channel (red, green, and blue) found in an AMOLED display. Organic LED displays have separate pixel elements for each color channel so powering only one color can save quite a bit of power.

Which colors use the least amount of power? Jeff hooked up an industrial power meter and found that powering only the red pixels could nearly double the battery life.

“Filtering to show only red pixels only requires 35% of the original baseline OLED panel current, on average. Adding back the baseline current, the best case overall is about 42% of the original system current, effectively doubling the battery life. Also, showing only red pixels doubles as an awesome night vision mode, perfect for astronomy.”Jeff SharkeyAndroid Software Engineer

For the full details on how to apply the hack, be sure to visit Jeff’s blog. This looks like an interesting tool to conserve some power at night, so I expect we will see this feature built into some of the custom ROMs like CyanogenMod.

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• T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G Slide gets rooted, just like all HTC phones

Source: Android and Me

Did you know some Android phones can do video out via the 3.5 mm headset jack? We have seen examples of video out using USB and HDMI, but the Galaxy S is the first Android phone (that I know of) to offer this feature using a 3.5 mm headset jack. I find this kind of surprising since we just attended the Galaxy S launch party and no one from Samsung mentioned this interesting feature.

Apparently the international version of the Samsung Galaxy S has a TV out option built into the display settings that allows you to pick your TV type (PAL or NTSC). All you need is the appropriate cable, which goes from the 3.5 mm jack to the standard AV ports on your television.

Best of all, this implementation of TV out mirrors the phone’s display and shows everything that happens on the phone in real time (see video below). This includes the home screen, web browsing, games, and any other Android applications. Previous phones like the HTC EVO 4G limited video out to the Gallery application and YouTube (which I could never get to work).

We have no idea if the U.S. versions of the Galaxy S will include this TV out feature, but we do know they can share video via WiFi using DLNA. The only problem with that solution is your TV must support DLNA, which is mostly limited to newer HDTV sets.

If we can confirm with Samsung that the Galaxy S does TV out with the 3.5 mm headset jack, we will post an update and let you know.

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Source: Android and Me

While the Android OS is being used by developers to deliver information and entertainment, the guys over at MIT are using the open platform to help bring the world into focus.

Some of you might recall MIT’s Bokodes technology which they hope will replace all of today’s various barcodes.  Well, it turns out that the 3D/holographic nature of Bokodes technology can also be used to measure variations in eye sight.  With the help of a $2 optical box and an application that runs on Android, MIT’s NETRA system is able to measure one’s prescription very similarly to a Shack-Hartman sensor (minus all the lasers and the huge price tag).

The application and optical box work together to display two separate lines on the handset’s screen which represent your retinal focal points.  Simply align the two lines by using the device’s controls and the application spits out your prescription for perfect vision.

Now, MIT’s optometry app may be able to tell you how bad your sight is, but it’s probably not going to be replacing your optometrist any time soon.  From what we can tell, this technology does not measure astigmatism and certainly doesn’t get a readout of how healthy or unhealthy your eyes really are.

We’re pretty sure that the application that MIT developed could work on other platforms, but MIT’s hopes of having the technology dispersed to developing countries to bring low-cost vision correction to the impoverished people of the world truly ties in with the openness and the variety of devices available on the Android platform.

MIT's NETRA optometry system

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Related Posts

• Google releases I/O app for 2010 conference
• The iPhone 3G gets seduced by Android’s open ways
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Source: Android and Me

The ultimate profiles manager! Define smart profiles that are activated automatically based on time, agenda, power connection and even location! Each profile can fully control your phone sound settings, notifications, communication and much more! With PhoneWeaver, your phone status adopts to your lifestyle like a real smart phone should!

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Source: Google Android Applications

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Source: Pocket PC freeware downloads

Please join me in congratulating ARJWright for being selected as our Contributor of the Month for June 2010.  He’s been a long-time contributor at Nokia Beta Labs, and – as evidenced by his contributions throughout June – has a knack for making insightful suggestions and building upon the ideas of others.

Thank you, ARJWright!  In honor of this, we’d like to send you a small token of appreciation – this light windbreaker.

- John, Community Facilitator @ Nokia Beta Labs

PS – Remember that all of you can influence who gets selected each month by rating each others’ posts as “helpful”.

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Check it out…even Apple thinks NPR Music is News & Noteworthy. Hey, so do we!

Source: Bottle Rocket Apps