Audio Technica ATH-ANC25

November 16, 2010 hevangel Leave a comment

I have been using my old Creative noise cancellation head phone for a few years. It is starting to falling apart after all this years of good service and my abuses from 5 Indian trips. The wire connection is getting lose and sometimes the left side has no sound. It is time to get a new noise cancellation head phone for my yet another India trip.

I have been looking into buying a noise cancellation head phone for quite some time. The offering at Future Shop or Best Buy are limited. They are only selling Sony, Philips, JVC even Maxwell noise cancellation head phones. None of those brands are particularly great and they almost double the price I paid for my old Creative head phone. One day I was having lunch at Broadway and I came across into Headphone Bar, a small shop focus in selling high end head phones. It only sells brands well known among Hi-Fi fans but normally don’t available in chain electronic stores.

Headphone Bar has two new noise cancellation headphones from Audio Technica, which is a well known Japanese band, ATH-ANC27, a bigger cover the ear model and ATH-ANC25, a smaller model. The ATH-ANC27 is pretty expensive but the ATN-ANC25 is only $99, so I decide to give it a try. The moment I put it on, I already like the head phone. The ear mug is very comfortable and cancellation is good. One feature I like is the wire is detachable, so I can just wear the head phone in flight without the wire dangling over me. Since I am flying out in a few days, I don’t have time to order the head phone online or double check its review. I took my chances and bought it right on the spot.

When I got home I checked the internet to confirm my buying decision. It turns out the price I paid is the exactly list price on the web. I can find it less than $10 cheaper on eBay, so the shop does not mark up the price. Then I look at the online reviews, it turns out the ATN-ANC27 is the next generation of ATH-ANC7b and its quality almost on par with the Bose Quietcomfort 3, which is absolutely the best noise cancellation headphone. The ATN-ANC25 is the little brother of ATN-ANC27, the only difference is the padding size and the power of the sound driver. It also has very good review, it is the best noise cancellation in the sub $100 category.

I tried my new headphone on my flight from Vancouver to India. The noise cancellation is better than my old creative headphone. In the old headphone, the static pink noise was very obvious and the new headphone is much quieter. One feature I like is the wire has a volume control, so I can easily adjust the volume. The only complain is the 2-pins to 1-pin in-flight audio adapter is very flimsy. It is broken when I squeezed through the sleeping guy sitting next to me to go to the toilet. The adapter just a piece of cheaper plastic with 2 wires and I can get replacement in HK for less than $3.

Overall, I am very happy with my new noise cancellation headphone. Highly recommended for long flight, it will give you have a good night of quiet sleep.

Product Reviews

Samsung Galaxy S Captivate

November 12, 2010 hevangel Leave a comment

My Palm Treo has reached the end of its lift, it is time to buy a new cell phone. I have been debating whether or not should I get the iPhone 4. iPhone 4 is sleek but I disapprove the control freak business tactics of Apple. Although almost everyone around me use a iPhone, I decide to go against the trend and embrace Android, a truly open platform compare to Apple’s walled garden. I naturally picked the Samsung Galaxy S, since it is the flagship Android phone and its specification is on par with iPhone 4. I used Rogers, so I have to picked up the AT&T version of Galaxy S Captivate. All Galaxy S versions are essentially the same under the hood, only cosmetic difference on the shell.

Galaxy S is actually slightly lighter and thinner than the iPhone 4. The Captivate looks like a Blackberry while the Vibrate looks like a iPhone. I must admit iPhone has better design of the shell, however that’s purely cosmetic. Galaxy S use normal SIM card, I just plug in my old SIM card it simply works. It comes with 16GB internal RAM and a micro SD card slot, so I can expand the memory if I ever need more, another point winning over iPhone. The screen and sound quality is top-notch, although the screen resolution is slightly less than iPhone 4. The battery is pretty good, I can watch 5 hours of video before runs out of the battery. In stand by mode with Wi-fi data enabled for background update and occasional short phone calls, it used about 20% in a day.

The contact and calendar links up to my gmail and facebook account. Since all the data is stored in Google’s server, I don’t have to worry about sync up with my computer and I can access my data anywhere. Transfer contact from my Palm is really easy, I just need to export the old address book to a vcf file and then import it to gmail, I got all the numbers and addresses into the phone in less than 30 seconds.

The haptic feedback of the screen is nice, every time I press a button or a key on the screen, the phone will vibrate to give me a freedback. The swype keyboard is definitely an improvement over iPhone. I don’t have to lift my finger when I type, I can simply trace the characters on the screen. I think with enough practice, I can type in swype as almost as good as using a real keyboard. The only complain is the stock OS does not come with Chinese input, I have to download the Chinese IME separately.

For most applications your found in iPhone, you can find the pretty much the same on Android. The Android apps market is the equivalent of the iTune app store. I can find most of the apps I need for free. I can also download paid software without paying from Applanet instead of download from the Google Market. iPhone boost to have many more apps than Android, but most of those extra apps belongs to the long tail that nobody really use. Android allows game console emulators, combined with the one stop game ROM download apps, I play virtually every single old games from the 80s and 90s on my phone.

iPhone has has a one stop sync up solution for music and video files with iTunes. Android does not come with any fancy sync up tools. Although Samsung has the Kies software but it is not very user friendly. For better or worse, a Android phone can just act like any other USB driver. I can easily copy files between my computer and my phone using Windows Explorer. I have a few options if I don’t want to plug in the USB cable all the time. I can either run FTP client from the phone to log into the FTP server on my computer or run FTP server on the phone and log in from my computer. The only problem is FTP cannot not handle Chinese character properly. Double Twist Air Sync comes close to a one stop solution, but its file database still has too much influence from iTune and does not let me control the directory structure. Web Sharing seems very promising, I can mount my phone as a network drive on my computer.

The stock Captivate comes with Android 2.1, so I decided to upgrade the OS to 2.2. Flashing the ROM of your cell phone is not for the fainted heart. I bricked my phone a few times before I get the new OS up and running. Instead of using the Samsung stock firmware, I used the Cognition ROM, which is better performance and has more features built into the OS. It double the speed of the stock ROM according to benchmark result. This is a major advantage of Android over iPhone, I can do whatever I want with the cell, including installing a complete new OS.

Android is not only a smart phone, but is really a full function computer inside your pocket. It just happen to be I can also make phone calls from this pocket computer. After all Android is Linux under the hood, with the root control I have complete control any feature of the phone.