Bloodgate - Hardware - Phototainer Review

All images are (c) 2003 by Tels. Photos taken with a Nikon Coolpix 5000 and post-proccessed with The Gimp. Full resolution images (2560x1920 pixels) available upon request.

Feedback of any kind is very welcome, although flames will be handled by Mr. Dave Null. Please use GnuPG with my key when emailing me.

If you wish to upgrade the HDD of your Phototainer, see these instructions.

Introduction and Mini-Review

The Phototainer is a portable mediaplayer, meaning it's a bit bigger than most PDAs or portable MP3 players, but smaller than even "small" laptops. Weighting about 350 gr, featuring a 3.5" laptop harddisk (with 20 GB) it falls into the same class as the devices from Archos.

However, the Phototainer is set apart by some highlights that (currently :) no other portable device brings together.

The Phototainer:

• enough space for your entire musik and photocollection, plus some tools and space to spare (Yes, I know, some people are not satisfied until they carry as much space in their pocket as the Enterprise main computer had RAM. However, Terabyte laptop harddrives are still not here...)
• uses USB 2.0 and is usb-storage compliant - meaning you can use it as a big, giant USB stick/pen drive. Good enough for storing a Knoppix CD image...
• has a small, native speaker
• TV out
• runs Linux with it's ARM CPU on 16 MB RAM and 4 MB Flash memory
• has a 3.5" screen with a usable resolution of 320x351 (certainly bigger than the Archos one :-)
• a very bright, but adjustable backlight for the screen. Good for the dark hours and bright sun light.
• playing MP3 uses very little power (we are talking over 2 hours continous playing) (2003-06-22 I tested this by charging the device fully until the charge LED got green, then let it play continously popular pop/rock songs without opening the display. Ater 2 hours and 43 minutes the device shut down. The battery I used is the one that came with my PT and is about 3-4 weeks old.)
• can read and write CF cards (or other cards via adapter)
• has a detachable/rechargable Lithum-Battery (meaning you can carry spare ones)
• A very usefull infrared remote control and receiver port (which is active even when the device is off, meaning you can switch it on with the remote). Once you have shown your photo collection to the family while slouching on the couch, you never want to kneel beside the TV set and operate the buttons of your camera/player while beeing ridculed by pesky family members again. Trust me :)
• buttons on the side for operatng the musik playing features without the need to open the lid and look at the display

The next firmware revision (scheduled to appear on 2003-06-30) will add support for Western Charsets (so that file names with special characters like Umlaute will be displayed correctly), support for .jse files, some support for .tif files (only TIFF files with embedded thumbnails, like the ones that are produced by digital camers) and probably some more.

As a plus, the developers are very helpfull, listen to feature requests and implement new features pretty fast. And so far their firmware updates were very punctual, not something you find very often. Visit their forums for more information and discussions.

Of course, there are some negative things. There always are :) Most of them are wishes for (yet) more features. People are never satisfied :)

• Some people wish for a bigger harddisk (no matter what the cost), but currently there is only one model. However, I show you here how to fix this.
• The screen resolution could be bigger, especially when doing TV out.
• It's not a full Laptop nor PDA, so it has not "organizer features" and no keyboard or other means of (text) input.
• no network access
• the MP3 quality is very good, but only if the display is off and the power source is not attached. If you open either the display or attach the power cord, then there are very notable hums on the audio out.
• Does not understand "enough" formats like .ogg, .tif, .raw etc. Some of these things will hopefully fixable by firmware upgrades.
• It cannot play videos in popular formats. This is probably the biggest "problem", since converting videos is cumbersome, slow, error prone and increases them in size. However, the CPU is to slow to play back DivX videos or something like that.
• The device is very sleek, but this means it is not very rugged. I like the rubber corners of the Archos, giving it a very "solid" feel. The PT looks very delicate and breakable. And despite a quite caring owner, my device already got badly scratched at the corners since the case is just cheap spraypainted plastik. Not to mention the venting slits at the bottom of the unit, which allow dust and dirt into the unit.

One of the main purpose of the PT is to act as a portable storage device which can backup media (CF cards etc) from digital cameras. E.g. it is an image tank.
However, I use it as MP3 player, presentation unit for my photos, backup for my entire photo and musik collection and as a giant USB stick. Walk softly, and carry a big stick, as the saying goes... :)

Bittersweet aftertaste

One of the "biggest" complains I have is that the PT uses Linux (and MicroWindows plus some propritary applications like the file explorer), but neither the package, nor the documentation, nor the website mention the GPL. In fact, it is barely mentioned that the device runs Linux.
Also, requests to the source code to the parts that are covered under the GPL (like the linux kernel) went unanswered.
So I can only conclude that InnoPlus is violating the GPL. I have notified them of this, but have today not received a response. It is quite a shame that they take the hard work of hundreds of people and turn it into a commercial product, but cannot be bothered to honour the license as they should.
If you think that is not fair, you might also file a complaint with the FSF.

Back to my hardware page.

Tels Created: 2003-06-16   Last modified: 2003-06-22