The Week-End mini-Special – Part V

Dear All,

Its getting busier and busier here, and there is lot more to communicate.

Today I want to cover stuff of battery and some clarification on UI. But before we do that, there are two things I need to share:

1. There are so many reasons that why so many logos were not selected, like being similar to a lot of existing logos, extremely difficult to print in one-two color, using proprietary images from the net (serious issue), in-sufficient explanation when the logo was not self-explanatory, etc. You will find that many logos in the top 43 are not either perfect or better than the ones not in there. But the reason they are there is because they represent a very different concept, and if given a face lift, would be much better! My uncle used to say, “You should be disappointed at least for a while, when you don’t win, cos it shows that it was your genuine effort and you really loved what you did!”
2. The EAP. Probably we will have to do the closure earlier than on 3rd November because of the sheer entries and participation. We have got real serious people out there, and just after reading their application (and without even communicating back) it was sure that they MUST get the first Adams. What we are doing here is to talk to all of them personally and check what is the end use case, how can we work together and improve the current eco-system and Adam itself. If you have submitted your application and feel that there is still more you can add in the sections, or there is something missing, please do so, cos your words count a lot!

Now let’s get started on the mini-special part!

The Speakers!

I am also a musician (I play guitar and mouth-organ). And since starting it was extremely important for us to get the best sound to come out from Adam. And we think Adam has the best sound when compared to any tablet out there! You can easily watch movies on it without using any other speaker (that would mean that now more than one can enjoy the Media on the device if you are not closer to your home theater and it’s really important) or head phones.

Most of the small speakers falls in the category of syndrome called “No Bass Man!”. In simple words they have good treble but bass is just not there! You can generalize that small speakers will not have good response below 200Hz (it’s not manufacturing or speaker quality issue, there is a lot of physics and surface area properties involved). We have tried to resolve this problem by designing better speaker enclosure and using the body of the Adam itself as the resonator!

The battery!

The most power hogging elements on Adam are (in decreasing order) LCD, Wi-Fi, 3G, Speakers (in full power mode) and then CPU (Tegra). I am getting from more than 2 full days to minimum of 15 hours (on average which will some idle time as well) ! I am thinking of posting an interactive chart where you all can fill in details of how you will use it and then get the usage value out! Tegra consumes nothing for Open GL so it’s definitely a paradise for Gamers. I have seldom seen it crossing its 60-70mW line (idle) and touching 200-400mW for heavy usage. Adam has 24Whr, and you are bound to be extremely happy with its battery performance. On a comparison, iPad (couldn’t find other device to write here) has 25Whr, and gives you around 11-12 hour. On similar calculations Adam has 24Whr battery and consumers around 1.2Whr (on similar tests as mentioned on their website) and ended up giving 24/1.2=20 hours. (That’s why I want to develop that interactive chart which you can use and see yourself).

The USBs!

Its real fun and time saver to watch 1080p movies, videos, etc. (on device as reduced 1024 or on 48″ LCD TV, full 1080p via HDMI) directly from the USB without actually transferring it into the memory of Adam!

See an old image of Adam here. 2 quick USB connections and your keyboard and mouse are alive! Tablets are supposed to be independent devices. Not requiring a MASTER (PC) to get data from, get songs from, etc. And hence I/O ports are extremely important.

For the UI I am waiting for something very important to be done first. I read the comments on the Eden blog and wanted to clarify few things here. Eden has 3 panels. That would mean you can run 3 application which you can SEE. On the right and on the left there are as many applications opened as you wish! You just need to swipe across to access them. The Eden allows you to easily switch panels, so you have full control which one to view. You can set Application to auto open as panel when they have some notification, etc (like chat window).

Things are getting hectic here and I will start the next week-end special right now so we have actually something very special (that’s why we have “mini” in today’s header.

With Warm Regards