Tag: General Hardware

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.

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.

Rail Mounted Cameras

Have you ever taken a trip to the range, shot extremely well, and taken the target home only for people to say you cheated and punched holes through the paper manually? Have you ever ran an awesome USPSA match and wished you had a recording? Well now you can verify your awesome shooting in any way via the wonderful world of rail mounts video cameras!

Personally I’ll keep them off of my rifle to save the embarrassment of my poor shooting.

Also that’s a pretty sly way to turn a little piece of the Consumer Electronic Show into a gun show. Kudos to Contour the manufactures of the rail mounted camera.

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.

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.

Springfield XD(m) 3.8 Compact Released

It appears as through Springfield Armory has actually listened to the comments made by their customer base and forwarded that information to HS in Croatia. Some time ago Springfield announced the release of the XD(m) 3.8 which was advertised as an ideal solution for concealed carry. The problem laid in the fact that the barrel may have been shorter but the grip, the hard part of the gun to conceal, was still full sized.

Springfield has now announced a “compact” version of their compact gun. Basically it’s a standard XD(m) 3.8 with roughly one inch shaved off of the grip length. Personally this is what I think the 3.8 should have been from the word start, it’s nice to see it get released in this configuration.

Smartphones and Battery Life

Since I’m on the comparison of Android and iOS kick I might as well talk about battery life. Most reviews of high-end Android devices knock the reviewed device for having poor battery life. I know the biggest hit against the Evo 4G is it’s battery life. My iPhone has had great battery life compared to my Evo giving me two days instead of one on a single charge (I count battery life in number of days before needing to recharge the phone, my Treo 755p got roughly three days).

There are many things to consider when comparing battery life including the storage capacity of the battery. The other major factory in battery life is the operating system and applications. The iPhone’s multi-tasking capabilities are… poor to say the least. If you want to run something in the background that Apple hasn’t provided a specific service for you have up to 10 minutes (the iPhone allows an application to run for 10 minutes in the background before suspending it).

Android on the other hand allows true multi-tasking. Any application is spawn a service that can run in the background even when the main application is no longer being displayed. This gives Android far more flexibility. Allowing real multi-tasking can also take a toll on the battery life as a runaway process can run the CPU at 100% and turn your battery life into a mere couple of hours. Personally I find the tradeoff worth it as any application that slaughters your battery life is poorly written and really the fault of the developer, not the device.

What I blame Android for is it’s poor built-in battery life reporting tool. On the Evo if you go under Settings->About Phone there is an item called Battery Life. This little application tells you the rough percentage of battery charge remaining and what has been using the battery life. This reporting tools does an abysmal job unfortunately.

I still carry my Evo around and use it as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot (which it works great as). I noticed when I returned home last night the phone was reporting the battery was almost completely dead. Usually this means some application is going crazy either pulling down data or racking up the CPU. A simple reboot of the phone generally takes care of this but I’m more of a curious person and wanted to know exactly what process was draining my battery.

Well the battery usage reporting tool did say it was the Android system that was using a majority of my power… of course that’s a catchall for every application on the device. The battery usage tool lumps every application under the Android system category and does not breakdown by individual application. In fact it’s not possible with Android’s built-in battery usage tool to see how much CPU time (and thus a rough estimation of battery life) an individual application has used. This makes finding the rough process difficult if not impossible.

I really like the fact Android has true multi-tasking and accept the responsibility that comes with such flexibility. But I’d also like a mechanism to see how much power each individual application is sucking down. Having such information would allow me to determine if an app I downloaded was poorly written and remove it. As it sits now you practically have to download an app, test it for a day, see the impact on battery life, and hope it doesn’t screw up later down the road.

Google Nexus S

Yesterday Google announced a new developer phone, the Nexus S. Over all it’s not nearly as awesome as the first Nexus was (in comparison to other phones on the market at the time vs. other phones on the market now). Really the phone is just a rebranded Samsung Galaxy S running a stock version of Android which in of itself is a great feature (Samsung’s TouchWiz interface is all sorts of crap in my opinion).

The only real changes from the already released Galaxy S that I’ve noticed is the inclusion of a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip (which nobody else has so the feature is limited to Nexus S phones at the moment), a gyroscope, and the removal of the microSD card slot.

The first two features are kind of neat but the last one left a sour taste in my mouth. Almost every Android phone has a microSDHC slot on board which allows you to expand the amount of storage space up to 32GB (the maximum the microSDHC standard allows). The Nexus S has a fixed amount of memory on board which weighs in at only 16GB. If this was simply and included microSD card that wouldn’t be a big deal as you could simply upgrade it but the memory is fixed. I have no idea why this route was chosen when the Galaxy S currently has a microSDHC slot on board.

The phone does have a Super AMOLED screen which I’ve heard is absolutely gorgeous. Along with that the basic specs are still pretty bloody good. Over all it looks like a decent, albeit lackluster, successor to the original Nexus developer phone. It’ll be interesting to see how Android 2.3 handles when this phone is released later this month.

Android Headaches Ended

A couple of weeks ago I made a post talking about a huge problem I have encountered with my Android device. Basically Google has lost all record of the applications I’ve purchased and if I want to continue using my paid applications I have to purchase them again.

The biggest headache here is the fact there is no phone or e-mail support for Google and thus if you have problems related to the Android Marketplace you have to post on the support forum. I did that on November 17th and have yet to receive any form of response. Worst of all I’m not alone. The more I dug into this problem to more obvious it became that there is no solution available and Google is worthless in providing any sort of help. The only solution so far is the following posted by user mjwhit3:

Update:
I had a conversation with a developer.
There is no way for them to change the account an app was purchased under (your apps account).

A workaround is (verify with the developer before doing anything):
1. Purchase the app again under your new primary (gmail) account
2. Provide proof of purchase for both transactions (apps and gmail)
3. The develop refunds your money for the first purchase.

This is a bit of work for them to do — especially to refund $1.50 or other small amount — so your mileage may vary.

Personally, I’m just going to safeguard my Titanium Backup files until Windows Phone comes out….

Yes the only solution so far is to repurchase your applications and ask the developers for a refund on the second copy. That’s bullshit through and through. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back after the previous series of failures I’ve encountered with the Android platform has lead me to this conclusion; Android isn’t a viable option as a phone platform. There I said it.

I’m willing to put up with a ton of shit but frankly losing all record of my app purchases without any method of getting technical support just crosses the line. I feel as though Google ripped me off and nothing pisses me off more than getting ripped off.

With all of that said I’m officially admitting to something now, I obtained an iPhone. Yes the platform I railed on more than anything else on the planet is currently what I’m carrying with me. As much as Apple pisses me off with their practices regarding the iOS platform I must admit the platform works. VPN works (which has never worked on Android as far as I can find), local backups of apps I’ve purchased are saved to my computer every sync (thus Apple losing all records of apps I’ve purchased it’s Armageddon), I receive no errors when syncing with my Exchange account calendar at work, and the media layer is rock solid. Between the options of an open and free platform that doesn’t work and a closed and restricted platform that does work I have to chose the latter because if my phone doesn’t work it’s worthless to me.

So what can I say about the iPhone at the moment? As I already stated all the features actually work which is a huge plus. The screen is gorgeous as Hell. Of course the phone does lose a lot of signal strength if you’re holding it in your left hand and having the front and back made out of glass if fucking stupid. The Last.fm app actually works and when I pause a podcast and come back to in five hours later it doesn’t restart from the beginning (huge plus). I also must admit that the built-in camera is the first phone camera that I can actually say does a half-way decent job (the Evo has an 8.0 megapixel camera but if the lighting isn’t absolutely perfect you get a ton of noise in the picture). Finally Apple’s practices with the App Store still piss me off to no end but at least if there is a catastrophic failure (like Apple losing all records of apps I’ve purchase) I can call somebody. Did I mention being able to use the phone function and my data plan at the same time seriously rocks?

I really tried to like Android but it fought me ever step of the way. Personally I’m not a fan of abusive relationships so I’m officially saying fuck that shit and moving elsewhere. I’ve eaten my words and realize I’m going to take endless shit for this but frankly I think the above makes a very valid case for my decision.

So why didn’t I jump to the Palm Pre instead? There are two reasons for that; I hold endless amounts of disdain for HP and the number of available applications for WebOS is sadly laughable. Considering the market share of WebOS has sunk to 1.3% I don’t know how relevant the platform will be in a couple of years. The last thing I want is to set myself up with a new platform only to have it die and thus have to perform yet another transition to a new platform.