Category: Technology

Mobile Hotspot on AT&T iPhone

One of the things Verizon advertised when they announced their iPhone was mobile hot spot. The latest iOS 4.3 beta includes this feature on the AT&T iPhone 4 as well. I have the beta in hand but am usually very wary about loading beta code on a device I use every day and I’m not paying AT&T $20.00 for tethering (which is required to get the hot spot feature working). It’ll be interesting to see what Verizon does for pricing vs. AT&T.

From the comments in the article is seems Verizon offers mobile hot spot on some Android phones at the cost of $20.00 for 2GB of data with each additional GB of data costing $20.00 (so it’s not included in the unlimited data plan). I wonder if Verizon will change the price of leave it alone for their iPhone.

The Verizon iPhone

It seems as though people who know me actually value my opinion. I haven’t a clue why this is, maybe people asked me all sorts of questions about devices because they enjoy listening to me prattle off mundane details that nobody cares about. Either way a lot of people have been asking me about my opinion regarding the Verizon iPhone so here are my thoughts.

First the most obvious question, am I angry I went with AT&T so shortly before Verizon announced their phone? No. There are advantages and disadvantages to each carrier. AT&T uses GSM while Verizon uses CDMA which leads to some differences. The two things I like about GSM are the ability to use voice and data at the same time (on 3G, it doesn’t work on EDGE) and the ability to pull my SIM card out of one phone, plug it into another, and start using that new phone without getting AT&T’s permission. On the other hand Verizon has much better coverage. I can’t use my iPhone when I visit my parents while CDMA phones work perfectly fine. Of course I still have a Sprint phone for when I travel down there so I’m not too worried (granted my Sprint phone is mostly used for tethering at this point as Sprint’s data plan and network are second to none).

Honestly I’m rarely outside of AT&T’s coverage area so that’s a minor issue for me. Being able to use voice and data at the same time is extremely nice and honestly I’m getting quite addicted to it. Verizon hasn’t announced any plan pricing for the iPhone yet so that’s all up for speculation. Since I like to speculate I’m going to assume Verizon will use their current plans and rates. AT&T’s data plan is $20.00 for 2GB and $10.00 for each GB after that (so it’s a flat rate of $10.00 per GB basically). Currently Verizon is charging $30 for their unlimited data plan which is a much better deal. Frankly there is no competition between the two plans.

As far as voice plans are concerned AT&T and Verizon exactly mirror one another. If you want 450 minutes you pay $39.99, if you want 900 minutes you pay $59.99, and if you want unlimited minutes you pay $69.99. What is interesting is the price difference for their text messaging plans (also known as the biggest and most expensive data plan on Earth). For $20.00 AT&T gives you unlimited text messaging while Verizon’s plans with unlimited text messaging come in at an astounding, well, $20.00 as well. That’s a pretty even match.

Verizon is saying they’re going to throw in mobile hot spot for up to five devices on the iPhone for free. If so that’s one Hell of a good idea compared to having to pay an additional free with AT&T for tethering (although Verizon’s wireless hot spot tethering may not cover USB tethering which is valuable once in a great while when you find yourself at a hacker convention in Las Vegas and every Wi-Fi hot spot is being attacked and thus is basically unusable).

Basically if Verizon continues to use the plans they already have established they win out over AT&T without any competition.

As far as hardware there really isn’t any noticeable difference between AT&T’s iPhone and Verizon’s. The radios are different and the outer antennas are a bit different but everything else is basically the same. From what people have told me AT&T’s 3G data network is faster than Verizon’s but I’ve never used Verizon’s so I can’t attest to that. Verizon does have LTE now which is even faster than 3G but the iPhone doesn’t support it so it’s really not a valid criteria here.

One last advantage that AT&T’s phone has over Verizon’s is the fact you can actually use your AT&T phone in other countries (at the exorbitant cost of international roaming or plans). Of course since the iPhone is SIM locked you can just drop in a SIM card from a local carrier in another country but if your phone is unlocked you gain this advantage.

Basically it’s the same damned phone on two different networks. In this case if you want an iPhone you really have free reign to chose which of the two carriers you want to get it from. There are no game ending differences between the two as far as I can see.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

With all the bad news I’ve been posting lately I thought I’d post something that should lift your spirits up. It seems MySpace isn’t doing so hot and have had to lay off 47% (500 people) of their workforce. The fact that 500 people lost their jobs is sad but the fact that MySpace is slowly dying is great news.

Granted I’m a little bias and still have rage bottled up from day when everybody would link to their horrible MySpace page with the bright pink text on a neon green background.

Hell Hath Frozen Over

Verizon actually annouced the availability of the iPhone on their network. Verizon is throwing in tethering for free which AT&T tries to nail you $20.00 a month for, very cool. Sadly the iPhone 4 won’t work on Verizon’s LTE (4G) network and like every other CDMA device on the planet will be unable to make phone calls and use a data network at the same time (one huge downside to CDMA that GSM doesn’t have to worry about). I did find one thing very interesting though:

11:23AM Q: Is the CDMA iPhone exclusive to Verizon?

Tim: It’s a multi-year, non exclusive deal.

Maybe that means it could work on Sprint’s network someday (sorry but I still love their data plan over Verizon’s). That would be cool although if Apple is working with Verizon I doubt the iPhone will ever have the hardware inside to run on WiMax.

Hopefully this announcement will get AT&T to start making some massive improvements to their network. One thing is for certain, competition is always good.

iOS Alarm Clock Bug

Nothing makes you feel quite as stupid as fucking up something you’ve done correct time and time again. That’s why I’m betting the iOS developers at Apple are feeling really stupid as they introduced another bug in something that’s been correctly done on almost every software platform on the planet, alarms.

The alarm on iOS apparently wouldn’t go off on January 1st and 2nd of this new year. How the Hell do you fuck up an alarm clock? We’ve been doing these in software since… well it’s been a long fucking time. Hell my first Palm PDA did alarms. Yet this is the second alarm clock bug found in iOS within a year (the last one dealt with time zones).

Internet at the Speed of Light

I found a rather interesting idea being implemented by city officers in St. Cloud. Apparently they’re installing ceiling lights that flicker faster than the human eye can see in order to transmit data. This supposedly will ease congestion on the wireless network but I really wonder why they don’t just install more access points if that’s their problem (seems the easier and cheaper solution). Still this type of data transmission should be interesting so long as everybody works with all the lights on (which often isn’t the case as many companies).

Personally I think it’s kind of a dumb idea just because it requires you to have your work environment setup in a specific way (namely lights on) in order to get Internet access. Wi-Fi is great because you just need to have an access point and a wireless card in your laptop without any specific changes to your work area.

Strange Android SMS Bug

Here’s an interesting short message service (SMS) Android bug that has been making some headlines today. I don’t believe I’ve ever head this happen on my phone but there apparently is a bug in Androids SMS’s application that can cause a text message to be sent to a random person on your contact list instead of the person it was intended to go to. You can imagine some embarrassment when a text message meant for your girlfriend ends up going to the phone of your mother or other such nonsense.

I find this bug interesting mainly because it seems like a rather difficult thing to screw up and honestly the consequences could be hilarious.

iPhone Thoughts

I’ve been running on my iPhone for roughly a month now so I figured I’d give a quick overview of my thoughts on the device.

Because I’m a cantankerous asshole I’ll start with the things I don’t like about it. Apple put some rather silly restrictions in place on the phone. There are obvious ones such as the fact you can only install applications that Apple has personally approved but there are also odd little ones that you look at and get a headache trying to wrap your brain around. One of these restrictions is the fact you can’t download anything through the iTunes or App Store applications over 3G if it’s larger than 10MB. I don’t get this at all. AT&T uses tiered data now meaning you get 2GB and then pay an additional $10 for ever gigabyte over that. How that data is used should be irrelevant. Hell since they’re charging for tiered data they should throw in tethering for free. It’s retarded. On the other hand third party applications aren’t restricted to this behavior which is a nice thing.

Another thing I don’t like about the iPhone 4 are the fact that signal does drop if you hold it in your left hand and the back is made out of glass. The antenna thing has been covered to death and frankly you all know what’s up with that. Likewise I’m sure you can determine why making the back out of glass is a bad idea on a device that is generally dropped at least once in it’s lifetime (I haven’t dropped a phone yet but my friends have dropped my phones, on the iPhone 4 that’s pretty much game over).

Of course there is AT&T. I’ve not had any major troubles with their network or customer service (which I haven’t had to contact) yet. Their coverage sucks and back in my hometown there is no signal to be had. Meanwhile my Sprint phone has no issue finding a signal almost anywhere except in some valleys back in my hometown area. AT&T’s data network also seems slower than Sprints (and I’m not even talking 4G here). And there is that whole tiered data thing that AT&T has going but it seems Verizon is looking to do exactly the same thing and T-Mobile already has something in place (when you go over 5GB of data on T-Mobile they throttle your speed down to below 3G). Sprint is the last network with unlimited data but I wonder how long that will last.

Do you like iTunes? If not you’re going to absolutely hate the fact that everything done on the iPhone has to go through iTunes. Loading music, pictures, apps, movies, anything is done via syncing with iTunes. Frankly this is complete shit compared to doing the same tasks on Android. On my Evo I just plug the phone into my computer via a standard USB cable, enable disk drive mode, and copy the files I want to put onto my phone over through the file browser on my computer. Simple, easy, and effective. I wish Apple would implement this but that would destroy their god-like powers over their device which I know won’t happen.

You know what sucks about my Evo? The battery life. You know what rules about my Evo? The fact that I can just carry a spare battery. The battery in the iPhone is fixed which is just fucking stupid. The device’s battery life is great but it would be even better if I could just drop in a different battery when the primary one dies. Just saying Apple it wouldn’t be hard to implemented an easily replaceable battery.

Now the things I like about the iPhone. The device itself just feels sturdy. There isn’t any plastic to be had on the outside casing meaning you don’t have any real “creak” factor when you try to flex the device. It’s not a big deal but it does make the phone feel well built.

I really like the fast app switching implemented on the iPhone. In order to switch between previously opened applications you double-click the home button and a bar appears with every applications currently residing in memory. It’s fast and extremely easy. The Android equivalent would be holding down the home button for a couple of seconds and having the list of the last eight applications you used appear. Although Android has a better multi-tasking system their interface for dealing with it needs a lot of work (they should really just up and copy WebOS here).

The entire phone interface feels polished and consistent. When you have complete control on what can and can’t be loaded onto your device you can enforce some measure of consistency. I would like to see such consistency come to Android in the future but I don’t think that it will happen anytime soon.

iOS actually syncs properly with my Exchange server at work. This is a huge plus in my book because my Evo has had endless troubles syncing with my calendar at work and when it can’t sync with the calendar it refuses to sync with e-mail as well. I can actually use my iPhone for work, it’s great.

Likewise unlike my Evo the iPhone doesn’t have any trouble using Pandora or Last.fm (Pandora problems have been mostly fixed on the Evo at this point but Last.fm is still unusable). Apple has a stable and well tested media layer that they seem to be content with leaving alone. I can’t say how much I appreciate this fact.

Apple also makes quite a few cool accessories for my iPhone. Although my Evo has an HDMI-out port on it it’s not really very useful. Apple has VGA, AV, and composite cable adapters for the iPhone (they also work on the iPad) that allow you to push any video you’re playing on the iPhone to a television or projector. The VGA adapter also allows you to use an iPad as a Keynote presentation tool.

Overall I’m rather happy with my iPhone so far. Although I like the freedom that Android gives my experience with my Evo has left me sour. I’m still pissed that Google lost all records of Market apps that I purchased for my phone. Between the iPhone and my Evo I’ll take the iPhone hands down even with all the stupid limitations Apple has put into place.

More Rail Gun Goodness

Rail guns are perhaps the most awesome advancement in the world of throwing projectiles at things. The Navy broke their own record a while ago by firing a rail gun that impacted its target with 33 megajoules of force. How can you make something that bad ass even more bad ass? How about if those projectiles happen to fire missiles? The Navy has successfully launched their first fighter jet using a rail gun.

Well technically it’s not really a rail gun but it runs off of the same principal. The electromagnetic launchers are being developed to replace the current steam catapults used on air craft carriers to fling fighter jets forward with enough velocity to attain flight on carriers’ short runways.