Palmcricket Review

22 February 2015 - Palmcricket with StyleTap on Android smart phone.

Multi-Media tested Palmcricket running with StyleTap on a Samsung Fame Lite smart phone by scoring match 13 of the 2015 Cricket World Cup, contested between India and South Africa at the MCG on 22 February 2015, directly from the live TV broadcast.

The Samsung Fame Lite and runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.1 OS and comprises a 3.5" LCD colour screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, 1300 mAh battery and 3 MP camera. As with most modern smart phones and tablets, this unit's screen washes out significantly in direct sunlight, making scoring while umpiring difficult but not impossible. However, as a low cost unit Android smart-phone, the Samsung Fame Lite will be more useful for scoring matches in the shade or overcast conditions.

The match also provided an extended opportunity to test the operation of Palmcricket 1.50 using the StyleTap PalmOS emulator on Android devices.

Results:

Battery life: On medium brightness, we scored the entire match, including preambles and wrap-up, using less than 40% of a full charge, for a total of just under 7 hours non-stop usage. Unfortunately, South Africa were bowled out less than 41 overs, resulting in the match finishing 40 minutes earlier than scheduled. However, the unit has enough power to run for much longer than a full ODI, even with the display on maximum brightness.
Clock Timing: Android's world clock allowed one to switch easily to Australian Eastern Standard Time with daylight saving, for correct recording of event time-stamps. The match was scored in South Africa, with a 9 hour time difference between Melbourne and Durban, but with local Melbourne time-stamps.
Touch-sensitive scoring: Worked suprisingly well, despite the tap areas being somewhat smaller than ideal, having been designed for PalmOS and stylus operation. With larger display screens such as the 5.1" Samsung Galaxy S5 smart phone or 7" tablets, one should have no problems at all.
Wagon-wheel: Positional co-ordinates were recorded for every scoring shot, and this worked well, without noticeably affecting battery life.
StyleTap: An absolute breeze to operate, no compatibility problems at all. The same should be true for using Palmcricket with StyleTap on most Android smart phones. On completion of the match, FileZ, a free PalmOS utility that comes with StyleTap, was used to copy the archived Palmcricket score-sheet to a user folder. From there, it was e-mailed out as a standard file attachment, for post-match P-Viewer analysis on a Windows laptop computer.
Overall impressions: The Samsung Fame Lite is a useful little unit, with positives comprising low cost and sufficient battery life. The only drawbacks are the low visibility of the screen display in direct sunlight and the less than optimum size of touch sensitive areas on the display screen. As a result, it is not really suitable for scoring while umpiring, unless one turns up the brightness to maximum. The display is excellent, however, when scoring in the shade or indoors. Under such conditions, the unit can be used with confidence.