Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - phone

Nexus of possibilities

2012-01-06T22:47:00+00:00

Looking back the last few months I notice every post has been about family and parenthood. Time to redress the balance a little and add some geek friendly contents.

After Christmas I indulged myself with a new phone. When I got the HTC Hero I'd deliberately skipped the first generation of Android phones to give a chance for the hardware to mature. I also made the rash promise it would be my last phone for some time. As it happens I think 2.5 years is a fairly good innings for a piece of technology where the innovation cycle is measured in months. I still have the Hero but now it's not my main phone I can afford to be a bit more experimental with the software I put on it.

There were a couple of changes to my approach to choosing a new phone this cycle. The first was I brought it outright off-contract. Although I suspect I could get it slightly cheaper overall through a phone contract there are some non-financial downsides to the contract approach. The first is the operator takes the view that the phone belongs to them so they can install (and prevent you removing) what they like. The recent Carrier IQ controversy should certainly act as a salient reminder that the mobile phone companies do not have your interests closest to their hearts. The second is lack of flexibility. Although thanks to Ofcom we have number portability most people are only able to take advantage of it at contract break points. The operators know this and off course do their very best to keep you tied in to their deals. Now I'm off contract I'm currently paying £10/month for unlimited data and all the calls/texts I use. They have to work doubly hard to keep me as a customer as I can jump ship at any point. That flexibility is more than worth the up-front cost of paying for the phone in full.

As far as choice there was only really one in the frame. Much as I like Android and it's open-source nature it does suffer from a problem due to that openness. Although it's heartening to see manufacturers are starting to relent and cease the practice of locking boot-loaders to prevent 3rd party firmware there are still problems in their support. They tend to stop updating the firmware shortly after they stop manufacturing the phone. Some manufacturers also have a hard time meeting their GPL obligations which makes open source support for the hardware a lot harder. As a result I decided to wait for the next in the Google Nexus series which ships with the latest release of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Initial impressions of the new phone are good. The phone is a little bigger than the Hero but pretty much 100% screen with more than a few hints of Star Trek data pad ;-). The Super AMOLED display looks very clear and crisp with both photos and video. The phone is very nippy thanks to the accelerated 3D hardware and duel core processor. The camera is certainly an improvement on the Hero and with the LED flash is close to achieving the quality I was used to on my old Sony K750. The A-GPS also acquires location a lot faster than the Hero. In fact a lot of things I thought were app problems have cleared up when presented with faster hardware. All in all I'm very happy with the Galaxy Nexus and think it easily stacks up against any iPhone you might want to compare it with.

SIM Troubles

2009-11-12T10:29:00+00:00

My SIM card is starting to show it's age and refusing to allow my phone to connect to the network. It's not surprising as the thing is fairly old having had it since I first joined T-Mobile. I managed to order a new SIM yesterday throwing only a minor strop when they suggested I pay for it. However despite a final buff of the contacts it totally gave up the ghost this morning. It will be a few days before I'm available for GSM based voice chat again. Of course I remain very contactable by numerous other methods

New Shiny

2005-11-30T17:04:00+00:00

My new phone arrived yesterday, I'm quite pleased with it.

First of all the basics. It's a d750i which is a development of my old k700i. I'm pretty brand loyal with phones and while most of the world seems to be Nokia fans I've generally found Sony-Ericsson phones capable (and geek friendly). The basic layout is much the same although navigation is snappier indicating more processor power. Even Java doesn't suck!

A couple of welcome additions include a more sturdy connector for the hands free kit as well improvements to the Radio. The FM tuner is now RDS aware and seems to be more resilient picking up more stations than the k700 did. The volume the radio is capable of seems to be better as well (unless this mornings metro was a quite one). They lose marks for using the proprietary Sony Memory Stick Duo format although it is nice to have a way to boost the phones memory.

The thing I'm most pleased with is the built in camera. I've never been a fan of the concept of phone camera's. I generally regarded them (and the associated MMS photo messaging) as rather gimmicky. However the quality of the images on the 2.0 mega-pixel camera is quite good. Instead of the fixed lense the camera will focus. It has several shoot modes including a rapid 4 in a row mode that gives you more chance of catching a good picture in rapidly moving action. Most importantly the lense is covered so you don't have to clean the lint from your pocket off the lense before you take a photo. It's certainly entering the quick snap capable territory that means I'd be comfortable using it instead of a "real" digital camera.

This of course means the next real camera I get will have to be a decent SLR style digital ;-)