New Facebook Messenger for iOS is smaller, faster, simpler

The latest version of Facebook Messenger on iOS devices is a major overhaul. Actually, no – it’s fully rewritten from the ground up. The new Facebook Messenger app is rewritten with 3 things in mind – smaller, faster, and simpler.
Facebook claims that the new Messenger app for iOS is 84% smaller than its former versions as it now only has 360,000 lines of codes. That’s a major improvement from the more than 1.7M lines on the former versions.

With fewer lines of codes also mean that the new Messenger app for iOS is faster than ever. Facebook also upped the ante by using SQLite as a universal system and building a server broker to operate as a universal gateway between Messenger and its server features. This cuts the overhead between app and server communication, hence further improving the speed.

Even by cutting so many lines of codes, Facebook says that they “kept most of the features” while continuing to add more new features over time. The company also claims that this new rewritten version of Messenger for iOS has a streamlined codebase whereby engineers can innovate even quicker than before.
Facebook also made a vow to not have the Messenger app swell up to the size that it used to be. Moving forward, the company will be putting a “budget per feature” and the engineers have to follow the architectural principles.

Facebook also has a system to gauge how much weight a feature will bring to the device, which is great for aging iPhones and iPads around the world.
We’ll see how Facebook hold their promise over time, but as of now – I truly wish that Facebook rewrites the main Facebook app for Android instead. It’s a buggy mess with features scattered all over. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s a battery hog, too.
Though, at least now we know that Facebook is paying attention to improving its products.
To learn more about the new Facebook Messenger app for iOS and Project LightSpeed, click here.

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Review – Honor Band Z1: Too good to be true

Lets just cut to the chase; the Honor Band Z1 is a very budget concerned wearable device or smartwatch. It is the perfect smart watch for people who wants to own a smart watch but never had the money to buy one since most of them are all expensive in the market. For first time buyers or users of smart watch, it serves its purpose very well.
Packaging

The watch comes int a very nice small solid box. There’s nothing much to see, other than a proprietary charger and the Honor Band Z1 itself, and the usual The watch face is presented first, being a plain and round watch.
Physical design

The overall watch design is plain. It is designed to be optimized and efficient and as minimal as possible. This is mostly what contributes to its low price tag. The watch face is made out of normal glass with brushed metal bezel around it. The band itself is rubber or PVC but it really felt like rubber. I would give credit to the design as being as simple as possible. It has no buttons at the side or any other interface except for the charging port and touch screen.
The display is using a black and white LCD display. The resolution is just enough to make out numbers and symbols. Perfect for those who wants simplicity, operational and reliable wearable. Here, you won’t have to worry about navigating complex menu and interface. All you have to do is swipe up and down but most of the time you will be swiping up.

There is one thing that I think is a hit-or-miss according to the user – the band of the Honor Band Z1 itself. Available in both white, beige, and black colour, the band itself is made out of a very springy rubbery material. This particular material is not really favourable for my taste, as it does make me sweat a lot more than I usually do.

Honor also included a white colour interchangeable strap holder, but I don’t see the use of it other than being a substitute when the black one snaps  in half.

At the back of the Honor Band Z1 is the aforementioned proprietary charging port, which has a hardwired USB cable instead of accepting a basic micro USB port and charging the device itself. I find it quite a bummer, and this means the charger is a little more fragile and bulkier to carry around.
Software
The software is proprietary HUAWEI Band version 01.03.09. One thing about this watch is that you would need to use its own app on your Android smartphone to even pair with it. After paring, you can change simple settings such as ‘Do not disturb’, ‘disconnection reminder’, ‘idle sitting reminder’ and alarm function.

The Huawei Wear app can be obtained via the Google Play store for free. The app lets you download additional tracking data off the band such as sleeping hours and walking steps. This lets you analyze your health goals and basically, try to be healthy and improve on where you might miss when you are not wearing it before.
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Not too bad I would say, as it does work as expected.
Battery Life
The battery life on this watch is pretty amazing. It could last around 4 to 5 days depending on how often you turn on the LCD or operate the watch. A single full charge from empty would take only around 10 to 15 minutes. Perfect for no fuss and no waiting kind of people. I’ve met a few people who complains about having to take off the watch and charge it everyday so this might be beneficial for them.
Customization
Not much except for the watch faces that was included which are only a couple of them. Would be nice if Honor lets us actually select from a larger choice of watch faces from the phone app instead of preloading a small amount into the device itself.
Interface and Notifications

The watch functions as a notification screen quite good. It would display everything exactly as it would show on your notification bar on the phone. All of the texts scroll well and effortlessly, you could instantly check what was going on your Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS and all other supported applications.
You can also reject calls from the watch if you wish to. Of course, the watch can’t accept calls but a plus point for it having a vibrator. All of your notification would buzz your wrist for discreet alerts.
Conclusion

The watch is very ideal for those who are on a budget but would want a watch that could show notifications from your phone. This not only allows you to be discreet but at the same time, might even save you the phone’s battery life since you won’t have to constantly turn on the screen just to check notifications. Especially unimportant ones on Facebook. Else if you have an already-beautiful watch and just want all features other than the watch on your wrist, get the Xiaomi Mi Band which we reviewed here.
Price: RM259. Click here to get one for yourself!
Score: 5/10

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Jelly Bean – the tidbits

So I’ve been using Jelly Bean for a little more than a week now and I can finally have a verdict out of it. Last week, you read about the introductions of Jelly Bean and a little insight of what’s new and what’s not. Today, let’s look a little more in-depth in a few sections.

Project Butter

It’s really impossible to describe what the effects of Project Butter brought into the Android ecosystem. Google described it as an effort to bring the entire Android OS to run smoothly in the 60 frames per second range, which I think is done extremely well! The video posted a week before is also able to show the buttery smoothness of Jelly Bean. But of course, I have more solid proof.

Yes, benchmark comparison for ICS and Jelly Bean on Nenamark2!

Google Now

Took a brief look at it last week, but I just can’t resist to tell you how great and smart Google Now is! Every weekday morning, this is what I see when I am about to leave home.

It smartly detects the place where I commute to daily and asks me if I go to work there. Smart, and it doesn’t only function this way for work alone.

It also shows up where my home is when I’m out, but of course it also shows this whenever I’m at “work”, and obviously I’m not going to show you where I live.
However, it does take rather long to launch from the lock screen or when Google Now is killed. That lag is so bad that it takes about 5 seconds to be launched, and it takes another 4 seconds for the “Hotword detection” (explained later) to pick up.

Keyboard

One of the major changes on Jelly Bean that I never mentioned is the keyboard. Any users of SwiftKey 3 can skip this part as the entire core of SwiftKey 3 is now on Jelly Bean’s keyboard. But how does it fare out, you asked?

To be honest, it is nowhere near SwiftKey 3 although it is the stock keyboard of Jelly Bean. The “typing with no spacebar” isn’t as good as SwiftKey 3’s but it still works. Auto correction is great here, a big thumbs up to speed typers or those with plum fingers (like me).
Oh, of course, voice keyboard has also changed as it now works without internet connection (we’ll get into that a little later) and it works exactly the same, yet it only hogs up 22MB of your phone!

Also, now with a beautiful UI to work with.

Text and speech

You might have misread as text to speech, but I assure you I’m going to talk about text and speech. Back from the days of Android 2.2 Froyo, personalized recognition is still there and some additions of options are for Google Now.

Google also took a lot of effort into improving speech to text, and is now offered in various languages for users to interact with the device through speech. The hastiest thing I ever done was actually to select Bahasa Melayu and tried out Google Now. Turns out it does work quite well, though sometimes it detects a complete English word rather than a Malay word. It took me 4 tries to get this search alone, and the cards doesn’t work!

Nonetheless Google added a lot of foreign languages yet never forget about its own original language. English input is now offered in various dialects, but I tried and compared Generic and US English only. There is a difference in Generic and US English as shown below, where the “Hotword Detection” is unavailable in Generic English.

In text to speech however (yes, text to speech), also has a few minor ups such as the selection of output language which I think was available quite some time before this.

Play Music

First off, I do use Play Music. There are also a few minor changes here in the functionality as it is now with something called “instant mix” that works like Apple iTunes’ Genius, but I tried on two songs, and none of them can get it to generate me a playlist.

Playing around with the old Google Music was frustrating when it comes to rearranging song order in the playlist and searching for a song album, but now on the new Play Music, it has become very intuitive in rearranging songs and streamlined as the seek bar now is the same as the one on People (Contacts) app.

Developers

There are certainly much more options on the Developer options menu on Jelly Bean compared to ICS, yet the weirdest thing I saw was the option to disable the all developer options. I guess Google is trying to please developers and consumers together?

Verdict?

Definitely the smoothest OS I ever used on Android. I actually didn’t get to compare this to Linaro, but I did get to compare this to other Android 4.0 custom ROMs (CM9 and AOKP) and I have to say, even the battery life on Jelly Bean is much better, the user experience is superb.
Google Now works with some of my weirdly named contacts (e.g. detected as buddy, but dials to Birdy) but not on Chinese/Indian/Malay names sadly, though I think twisting the tone of the names could do the trick. Detecting my work place and my home is something I think is nice to have, but since I commute to work every day, don’t you think I already know the way to work? Though it does detect where you are where you’re not at home or work.
Project Butter is by far the biggest asset here. It will make you love your device again (if Jelly Bean is supported in any way) as it really does get rid of all the small, tiny little delays and lags while using the phone.
Overall, Jelly Bean really got all the things (UI and function) streamlined, Google apps are now tightly integrated within the Android OS itself and works silky smooth!
To those who are using Android 4.0, Jelly Bean doesn’t have the data dropping problem (big plus!).

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Review – ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D: It’s AMD’s turn to rise

ASUS has been one of the early adopters of the ultrabooks under the ZenBook series of laptops. However, the ZenBooks were always with Intel-inside only. Now, the new ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D is using completely AMD-only inside – including GPU.
It’s good to see ASUS going AMD this time around because the laptop space has been stagnant in terms of hardware – and perhaps the AMD-powered ZenBook offers something different? Let’s find out in this review.

Overall, we think that the new ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D still has the high-quality, premium build quality from the other Intel-powered ZenBooks that we’ve got used to. It still has the iconic concentric circle design on the lid too.
ASUS also shook things up by applying a fresh coat of paint called the Utopia Blue. It looks mostly silver – but it does have a tinge of blue in it. I didn’t realize it at first until I looked at it at a certain lighting condition.

The I/O ports here are a bit of a mixed bag. On this laptop, we have:

Power jack
Full-sized HDMI
USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A
USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C

Full-sized SD card reader
Combo audio jack
USB 2.0 Type-A

I mean, at this point, USB 2.0 should be completely phased out. Perhaps ASUS expected us to use that USB 2.0 port for an external mouse – but then again, if it is placed on the right side, then it’ll hinder my mouse movement anyway.
However, I do love the full-sized SD card reader. I think for many other laptops from ASUS’s catalog should have this instead of a microSD card reader.

Opening up the laptop, we’re immediately greeted by the ErgoLift hinge that lifts the laptop by a few degrees to make it ergonomic to type on – and also to improve the breathability of the laptop.

It is here that we can see the new ZenBook layout. There are two speakers here – one on each side of the keyboard and two more below the wrist rest area. The speakers are definitely loud – but they still don’t sound the best. Great improvement over the other laptops, though.

Once again, the laptop here is covered in the Utopia Blue color. One interesting thing is that the keyboard still uses the gold-colored legends like the previous ZenBooks with the Royal Blue color. However, on the ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D, the legends look very orange and I can’t help but feel a mismatch in the colors. Perhaps it needs some time for this color scheme to grow on me.

As of now, I’m just going to disable the backlight of the keyboard because that orange color with this Utopia Blue color is just not my cup of tea.
Other than the color scheme, the keyboard itself is great to type on. It feels responsive and fun to type on as it has a great keyboard layout with properly-sized keycaps (except the arrow keys) and I absolutely love this keyboard.

As for the trackpad, it uses Windows Precision Touchpad drivers and supports all the fancy Windows 10 gestures, and it also has a fingerprint scanner at the top right corner for quicker login via Windows Hello.
Some sharp-eyed readers might have realized that the ASUS ZenBook 14 which was unveiled this year at Computex had ScreenPad. Well, unfortunately, the Malaysian version does not have ScreenPad.

But then again, the ZenBook 14 UM431D does come with a beautiful 14-inch 1080p IPS LCD screen with 86% screen-to-body ratio and has 100% sRGB color gamut coverage. The brightness however, could’ve been better for outdoor uses.
Then comes the brains of the ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D. The specs set it apart from the usual ZenBooks that we’ve seen, but it does come with some drawbacks:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U
GPU: Radeon Vega 8
RAM: 8GB DDR4-2400
SSD: 512GB PCIe Gen3x2

The biggest drawback here is that for us Malaysians, ASUS is only selling the 8GB RAM variant of this laptop. The RAM is soldered and cannot be upgraded, yet 2GB out of the 8GB RAM will be reserved as VRAM for the Radeon Vega 8 GPU. That means we only have 6GB of RAM to work with – which is not sufficient for our day-to-day use as we open lots of Chrome tabs and have Photoshop open most of the time.
The performance, however, is an interesting one. The AMD Ryzen 5 3500U performance is somewhere between a Core i3 and a Core i5, but the Radeon Vega 8 is miles ahead of the Intel integrated graphics.

That means we can play some games on the ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D – which is just unheard of for an ultrabook. But it gets even more interesting as we can last for about 9 hours on the battery while using this laptop on our usual workload. That’s just mindblowing.

Another mindblowing thing here is the price. The ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D is only priced at RM2,999 – and I literally gasped when I heard the price. This is the company’s most affordable ultrabook to date while maintaining that superbly high-quality build quality and that magnificent keyboard and trackpad, coupled with long battery life.
My only complaint about this laptop is going to be the non-upgradable 8GB soldered RAM. To add salt to injury, only 6GB is usable since 2GB is reserved for VRAM. It’s just insufficient for our usage – but we do get better gaming performance with the Radeon Vega 8 GPU. I just wish ASUS brought in the 16GB variant to Malaysia as well.

However, we do see the ZenBook 14 UM431D as an everyday laptop to get some simple Microsoft Office work done, with Chrome running YouTube and social media. Maybe Spotify and lightweight Photoshop too. For that use case, the ZenBook 14 UM431D is an instant recommendation from us.

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