iOS4 on iPhone 3G: My Review
As mentioned previously, I installed iOS4 on my iPhone 3G a few days back. I have been using my iPhone sparingly since then and here comes the long overdue review.
First of all, as mentioned in the post earlier, the iOS4 felt slow and sluggish compared to 3.1.2 on iPhone 3G. It didn’t take me much time to figure out the reason. As I mentioned before, I’ve used redsn0w 0.9.5b5 to jailbreak my iPhone 3G. Now, redsn0w has a couple of checkboxes named “Enable Multitasking” and “Enabled Homescreen Wallpaper” which comes checked by default.
It is pretty much self-explanatory what they do. All you have to do is disable them to avoid sluggish user interface and applications. While disabling “Enable Multitasking” is strongly recommended, you can keep “Enabled Homescreen Wallpaper” turned on by sacrificing a little memory for the sake of better looks.
Now, getting to the actual review, the two major enhancements I can access are Folders and iBooks (iAd is not really a feature, is it Steve?). I didn’t like the concept of folders on iPhone to be fair. I seriously don’t know how people can (or more importantly, want to) install more than 180 apps on their phone. If you have to for some reason, why scroll through screens when you have excellent app searching enabled in spotlight? The other “major” addition iBooks is slightly better than Classics. I wouldn’t like to read books on a 3.5 incher device anyway.
Looking at the minor enhancements, I like the 3D dock and wallpaper support on home screen. Birthday Calendar is an excellent addition and makes $4.99 app Birthdays useless. Search suggestions in Safari are vaguely helpful (mostly to make sure my crappy EDGE connection is not lost 
). Finally, a search bar in messages which is very helpful (After using android, I always look for search button in my iPhone if I need to search for something anywhere, just to be disappointed).
As expected, not a major upgrade for me owning an iPhone 3G. Just a fairly polished enhancement release, I suppose. Nonetheless, it makes the upgrade worth it. It’s a good thing Apple stopped charging iPod upgrades.
Windows Live Essentials beta and Photo Fuse Impressions
I wanted to try out the all-new Windows Live Essentials beta because of its awesome new features; especially Photo Fuse. I was in love with the concept the first time I heard about it. Mostly, because I always click multiple pics of same scene just to make sure nobody is looking around or has their eyes closed. Even after taking enough precautions, when I transfer the pics to the computer, I find many flaws that shouldn’t have been there (probably because I’m a lousy photographer). So, when I heard about the Photo Fuse feature Microsoft has been working on for next Windows Live Photo Gallery, I couldn’t wait to see it in action.
I was a bit unsure whether it will work as expected because most of these so-called “cool” features don’t quite work out for me. So, today I downloaded and installed Live Essentials Photo Gallery and I’m glad to say that Microsoft has implemented it in unique way. I tried almost dozen of sets of similar photos for Fuse. Some of the results were good, while others were not-so-good. Out of the 11 sets I tested, it identified all the front-facing faces in the photo and displayed alternative faces from other similar photographs. Only glitch is, it doesn’t identify the faces, it just assumes the same position in the other photo.
Blending multiple photos in one is also not as clean as I would’ve wanted. It does not detect or blend the background of the faces but considering image processing hasn’t reached there yet, it’s good enough for now.
The software is still in beta, so I’m sure Microsoft will improve things for final version. But, I will certainly be waiting for the day where photo management applications start identifying the person in the photo and we can replace the face without affecting the background.