The iPhone 5S Camera

So, the weekend had been spent taking the 5S through its paces and the main focus was on the camera. How much if an impact it was?

The quality of the 4 compared to 3GS was huge. And the jump was maintained when the 4S was released. I had been happy with the 4S until I got my hands on the HTC One and as a camera phone, the One was not short of awesome. But it remained what it was. A mobile phone with a camera. It's nowhere near my X-Pro 1.

So, in came the 5S. Does the camera present a big jump compared to its predecessor? Bear in mind that I jumped from the 4S, the quality increase was expected. I do not have a iPhone 5 to compare it to, so I did the next best thing. Comparing it to the HTC One. But I would leave that to the next entry.

Let's just look at the camera on its entirety. The snaps were good. And coupled that to the Camera+ app, the photos were really good. The focusing speed was faster and they tend to find the right focus points as well.

But I found that the snaps tended to be underexposed and cooler temperature-wise. Nothing that Camera+ couldn't fix.

Is it spontaneous enough? Unfortunately I did not. I found that snapping photos were fiddly for some reason. Compares to the HTC One, the photos tended to be warner and brighter. Maybe it was just the screen, but the same was seen on the computer monitors as well. I tended to like the HTC One snaps better, and tended to get the photos I wanted first time.

Maybe it was an unfair criticism for the new iPhone since I only had it for one weekend. I understood the HTC One's quirks better having used it since May. I might change my mind in a couple of months.

I will post up comparison photos between the HTC One and the iPhone 5S on my next entries.

Ed - the comparisons are here in not one, two, three or four, but five instalments!

The 5S Has Landed

So, the 5S has landed on our shores. And Low Yat had a few units available. It didn't take long for me to get hold of a 32Gb grey unit. Decided against the gold. Too obvious, but they were available. There were plenty of 5C units of various colour on display as well. But I think it won't be long before the 5S ran out of stock. They were flying off the shelf really fast.

No news as to when the local units of 5S and 5C would be made available at the Apple retail shops. Until then, the phone would thrive at places like Low Yat.

First impression? The fingerprint sensor worked much better than I thought. I have yet to program my nipple to unlock the phone. I programmed Idlan's thumb and he was well impressed. The phone was also snappy. Camera was good, but ineould need to take it for a ride - tomorrow I guess before I could compare it with my HTC One.

I also updated my Celcom SIM. Theoretically I should be able to surf on LTE speed similar to my HTC One on the Maxis network. At work in Subang, the LTE speed on the HTC was bang on. Uploading photos onto Flickr was blazing. Downloading was something else. At my home in Gombak, I have yet to see an LTE signal detected on my HTC. The fastest was HSDPA. But not in my study. It was only EDGE down there.

Expect more update on battery life, the camera and of course some cases over the coming days.

Paperless

SDMC Desa ParkCity has yet to have a proper launch. It was opened to then public on 12.12.12. They had a few deliveries on the day, but since then, they had only accepted walk-in cases. Efforts were still being made to get insurance approval for the Center, and it looks like that would only come in the next couple of months.

So, I had only seen my first patient there yesterday. The first after a couple of weeks. And then I realised that the place was completely paper-less. A shock to the system none the less. And I had a crash course on how to muse the system courtesy of one of the ER nurse. Learn I did.

The system was actually straight forward if you keep things simple. Almost all the features could be accessed from the main page, including blood results, history, Xray as well as charging and ordering your next tests. Same with ordering then items from the Pharmacy. Apparently referring patients to another Doctor could also be done online.

The system was actually rather slow when loading, which is troubling as the patient load was still minimal. Imagine implementing such system in a busy hospital?

A good start, but after using the system, now I appreciate writing on paper that bit more ....... I would need some time to get used to this.

Hmm! Which One?

I was at Low Yat earlier this afternoon and had he chance to take a close look at the latest Samsung offering, the Note 2. A modest gunfire and clearly DiGi was pushing the product pretty strongly. They offered a 3 year package, where you take home the device for RM1399, plus a RM600 bill advanced payment. You would then had to pay RM88 for the data alone - 5Gb - monthly which is slightly more expensive than the current DiGi package I was grandfathered in. And the thought of having tonne tied down for a couple of years on a contract alone made me cringe.

It was a hard sell that the promoter made, but I was keener on the software than the hardware. I was trying to test the Jelly Bean, but the promoter kept on telling me about the magical thing the device could do. I could do those task better on a 7 inch tablet, but those were yet to run the new operating system except the Nexus 7.

And the problem with the Nexus 7 was the fact that it was wifi only. I want my tablet to be cellular.

One of my colleague - @palmdoc - carry the Tab 7.0 with him, and it looked quite handy. I held on to see what the Nexus 7 going to be like, and maybe a bit longer to see whether the iPad Mini would materialise. iPhone 5 was yet to interest me as I find the 4S more than adequate. I just wanted a 7 inch device I could carry in my labcoat, for me to access emails and various other app on a screen larger than my iPhone. The Note is big, but a 7 inch device would fare better. And I prefer to have an Android device along, just for the variation.

So, at the current rate, it looked like it was going to be the Nexus 7 as I have a debt wifi coverage at work. Hmmmm .... dilemma.

Apple TV

It took a fair while before Apple TV was released in Malaysia. It was partly due to the limitation of Malaysian App Store, which until only recently sold songs and movies. It was only purely applications prior to that, although it did not stop me from having both the US and UK app store accounts for my fix of movies and videos.

The Apple TV was surprisingly affordable at RM350, but compared to Western Digital media hubs and the like, it was pretty limited in terms of what it could do. But what ever it could do, typically of Apple, it did them well. It could stream. From iTunes. And that was it biggest selling point. And it streamed media directly from the iPads and Macs very well, although at a very noticeable latency.

The unit was much smaller than I expectedAnd it came with a slick remote unitTypical of Apple, it came in a nice tidy packageIt could also perform AirPlay, a way of turning the TV into a computer screen remotely, but the latency and lag were just too long. It was unusable at best. I also suffered from limited bandwidth as my router was located at my study, and I had to use a repeater to get signals onto the Apple TV. Streaming YouTube was effortless, but anything from the iTune Store took a while to download. I ended up downloading onto my MacBook, then streaming it onto the TV.

The situation maybe a little better if the wifi signal was stronger, something I would try on a later venture. At the moment, I was happy with the YouTube streaming, and media from my iPad. And another thing to be aware, the Apple TV unit did not come with an HDMI cable. You would need to purchase that separately.