[Jim]

[geek warning]
Dabbled with my first bit of debranding recently. My E71 on Three was stuck in the dark ages of v300 software. Quick debranding exercise put a generic euro product code on it and the Nokia Software updater was then happy to shove the latest software on it (v500). Dead easy. What I was most impressed with (and surprised with) was the way the phone still went and got the correct Three network settings and configs automatically. The need for branded software is bollocks. Since then the phone hasn't dropped a single call (was was the main reason for doing it)
 

have done this with every nokia since the days of the n73, works brilliantly. every phone that is sim free should aquire network settings automatically.
branded software = shite

[Adam Lincoln]

Just taken delivery of my HTC Desire. I have to say, on first impressions, it is excellent. Only downside seems to be battery is supposedly poor.

[slackline]

Not many smart phones that'll go for much more than a day with usage.

I'm sure you know the obvious like turn off GPS if not in use, reduce the frequency of roaming updates for different apps, blah blah blah.

Best twitter client I've come across it touieur, there are Spotify clients, Dropbox (easy way to get stuff synced with your computer). Wifi Analyzer is handy for seeing what Wifi networks are available.  Task Manager is useful for killing things off, Astro File Manager is good too.

[Jim]

every android phone I have used doesn't come with a file manager. have had to download one.
pretty poor IMHO

[dobbin]

Yeah, but you can at least download one - and i bet you dont have to pay for it. No concept of a file manager with an iPhone either. And the requirement to tether to iTunes to manage content is restrictive.

Suprised you consider this a problem jim - you love meddling with your phone (hence why you've kept flogging that dead M$ phone operating system horse).

I dont know what to buy next to be honest. I'm totally happy with my BlackBerry, as a messaging device thats a phone its brilliant. Yes browsing is log, and the screen is a bit wee for media, but I get my podcasts automatically to it, battery life is ok and it works fine in areas of poor signal. The hyperbole around the iphone has me daydreaming about owning one, I am entranced by the idea of being able to watch movies and play angry birds on my phone, but really, honestly - when do I think i'm gonna do these things? and, its prohibitively expensive. And, in six months time when the novelty has worn off, will i still be playing angry birds?

Whats the answer? I dunno. BlackBerry and new gen iPod touch perhaps? Talking to someone at work about this and they're answer was - stop agonising about it - its just a phone, you'll only have it 18 months and then you'll get a new one.

But it does matter to me - I use it every day, and I dont want to hate it!

[tomtom]

Jailbreak the iPhone and you get your full file system - should you need it... (and its not a problem..)

I agree it seems stupidly expensive to have/use a £500 phone, but tbh I use the thing so much every day - its one of the best value for money things I've bought... Its not just about playing angry birds  (personally I play cards on it loads!) but checking train times, finding taxi's, when the next bus is.. where to go for dinner - pictures, vids blah blah..

I've been in Oz for the last two weeks, and I've been using 'facetime' (what wanker came up with that name) to video call MrsTT every day - and its been fantastic - shit loads better than skype (no delay) and great quality.. at £1 a min for a normal call I've saved a fortune (well £10 as I wouldnt have called her much if it cost that much!)...

There is alot of hyperbole/hype about the thing - but it just works well.. (apart from when it fell over and cracked the screen!    )

Anyway, thats enough pro iphone shizzle from me, I await the android flaming 

[dobbin]

Facetime is a majorly wanky name.

[Jaspersharpe]

I just don't understand why anyone would pay anything for an iphone when I got my Legend for nothing on a £20/m (discounted but still) contract......and it's brilliant.

Check this by the way:

http://lifehacker.com/5599116/how-to-turn-your-android-phone-into-a-fully+automated-superphone?

(highlighted by @jim_p_thompson on Twitter)

[dave]

I just don't understand why anyone would pay anything for an iphone when I got my Legend for nothing on a £20/m (discounted but still) contract......and it's brilliant.

Exactly. my nokia although it has its faults is amazing value for the fuck all it costs me to have it. The problem is when people spend half a kubrick on a phone the majority of them will then never admit to it having any flaws, or that they've just wasted a shit load of money. I use my shoes every day for everything I do but i wouldn't spend 500 sheets on a pair.

[tomtom]

I use my shoes every day for everything I do but i wouldn't spend 500 sheets on a pair.

But just think what you could do with a £500 pair of shoes....

[slackline]

I agree it seems stupidly expensive to have/use a £500 phone, but tbh I use the thing so much every day - its one of the best value for money things I've bought... Its not just about playing angry birds  (personally I play cards on it loads!) but checking train times, finding taxi's, when the next bus is.. where to go for dinner - pictures, vids blah blah..

All possible on other Smart Phones, and for far less pennies.

I just don't understand why anyone would pay anything for an iphone when I got my Legend for nothing on a £20/m (discounted but still) contract......and it's brilliant.

 

Discovered a uPnP client for my Hero the other day so I can now play all the music over wifi to my phone, makes getting something like a Squeezebox redundant.  In theory it should also act as a remote for the uPnP on the PS3 too, so I can pause films I'm watching on it. 

[Fultonius]

Slackers, have you managed to get your PS3 to play music from your computer via wifi?  Mine is very hit and miss, crashes all the time. 

I can usually get 2 full days out my Desire (That's proper use, i.e. browsing, texting, phoning. There's a few tips'n'tricks to saving battery:

Keep the screen on medium brightness unless you're in daylight.
Get a good task killer and regulalry kill all the programmes your not using.
Get a shortcut for 2g/3g switching - you can leave it on 2g most of the time and just whack 3g on for browsing.
Like others have said, you can set the autoamtic updates for things like faceshit and twatter to manual, which helps.

The sat nav simply nukes tha battery - if you're using it in the car, get a charger!"

[slackline]

Slackers, have you managed to get your PS3 to play music from your computer via wifi?  Mine is very hit and miss, crashes all the time. 

Yes, and video streaming too (although decent res videos are jerky over wireless, currently trying to suss out why my laptop works with powerlines, but the PS3 doesn't).

I use Mediatomb on my computer.

[tomtom]

  theres a few home truths here:

http://www.livedigitally.com/2010/08/16/the-handy-android-fanboy-detector/

[slackline]

theres a few home truths here:

http://www.livedigitally.com/2010/08/16/the-handy-android-fanboy-detector/

Its missing the "Android Users : those who get on with and like the phone and don't have petty grumbles", but 'cause I'm waiting for a few things to update I'll bite.

Openness - Well it is a good thing and with the release of Android App Inventor you don't have to learn detailed coding.  Literally anyone can develop apps easily and share them.

Widgets - Err, bit of a non sequitur really.  He only finds some of the widgets useful, others find other widgets useful, the worlds made up of different people with different preferences who is he to be the arbiter of taste.  Besides, most of these are likely developed not by the platform developers but by application developers, rather than bitching about the OS they're running on provide feedback to the developers on what the problems are and he might see an improvement.

Little Details - No idea what the problem is here, with an old 6300 Nokia phone you have to go through a sequence to write a message (usually Messages -> Compose -> To -> write).  Thats the nature of software, the developers code a sequence of doing things, sometimes they get it wrong, as above, feedback and it may be corrected, and its likely that he's grumbling about many applications rather than Android itself.

Updates - Another non sequitur.  Anyone naive enough to think that software is complete and bug/security-hole free should be answering emails from Mr Obaggio from Nigeria.

Huge phones - Err no, must have a very old/cheap model (mentions he didn't get the newest).

Commonplace - One example does not provide enough evidence.  He's selectively picked one review by someone who probably used to have a phone with a proprietary phone jack and who was sick of not being able to line-out.  More examples required.

Impractical Features - As above, one example only, needs to provide more evidence.  The one example uses something that is in development, by having it out and used you get feedback and can improve the product faster than internally testing.

iWhat - ???

 

[Jaspersharpe]

Well said slackers. Zero truth in any of that whatsoever from what I've experienced in around 2 months use. I can only imagine that the "big phone" gripe is a US thing and other than that the problems the writer has mentioned are down to him having a really old model (as he admits).

What a dick.

[bobkatebob]

I think that the one issue at the moment with smart phones is the apps, or to be more precise app writers thinking that only the iphone exists.

I was looking at an android phone until I found out that my bank had done an app for a smart phone, unfortunately only the iphone.

I hate apple for quite a few reasons but until app writers for major buisnesses write apps for more than the iphone, then apple will have the upper hand. I think this is slowly happening, but it isn't there yet.

[Jaspersharpe]

With 10.6m Android phones sold in the 2nd 1/4 of 2010 (up from 756k a year ago) you would have thought large companies would be waking up to this problem.

Actually this explains how things should be moving forward on that score soon:

http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/android-adoption-surges-so-where-are-all-apps/2010-08-16

[slackline]

I think that the one issue at the moment with smart phones is the apps, or to be more precise app writers thinking that only the iphone exists.

I was looking at an android phone until I found out that my bank had done an app for a smart phone, unfortunately only the iphone.

I hate apple for quite a few reasons but until app writers for major buisnesses write apps for more than the iphone, then apple will have the upper hand. I think this is slowly happening, but it isn't there yet.

Why do you need an "App" on your phone to do your banking?

All they need to do is write their web-site with smart CSS so that the browser is recognised and you are presented with a web-page thats optimised to your phone's browser instead of the normal page you'd get when browsing on your phone.  You get this with UKB forums at present (and there's even the stripped down version for basic text only borwsing).  Barclays already do this and I've found their smartphone optimised web-page to be very usable (such browser specific sites are not available yet with the other banks I have).

In essence this is what most "apps" are doing, for example the BBC News app under Android isn't anything special, all it is doing is just parsing HTML and reformatting it for the phone whilst running it under its own process (I suspect this is the case with the same app under iFern and also true of things like weather apps, they're just grabbing data and parsing it and presenting it in a pretty format).

Thats not to say I don't think this is a problem, but as SteG has hinted, the process of writing Apps isn't that dissimilar for the different platforms so its technically not that hard its more likely down to something along the lines of companies big cheeses employing IT nerds who are Apple-faboi's so they call the shots as to what company phone they get, and the big cheeses are happy with this, 'cause you know Steve Jobs is cool and wears turtle neck sweaters so they feel cool too.  Then they realise that they're missing an "App" on their phone for their own business so they want one and go and tell their minions to "Make it so", without realising there are others out there.

More fundamental than this sort of problem is that of using proprietary file formats.  For long term storage you need to have an open format that can be read by newer versions.  Not the case with the most widely used software M$-Orifice, anyway I digress (yet again!).

[tomtom]

With 10.6m Android phones sold in the 2nd 1/4 of 2010 (up from 756k a year ago) you would have thought large companies would be waking up to this problem.

Actually this explains how things should be moving forward on that score soon:

http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/android-adoption-surges-so-where-are-all-apps/2010-08-16

Of course they will... (wake up to it)

Apple (love em or hate em - or really not be fussed by them) shook up the market with the iPhone - as it was much better than anything else around at the time.. and part of this shake up was the app store - which meant apple and the developers could readily make a few bucks. Now theres loads wrong in many ways with the apps store - but you can't deny that its been a financial success.

So, the others notably android - have been playing catch up. So its kind of enevitable that many (not all) things are released first on the Iphone then on Android...

When there are X more Android phones than Iphone it'll probably turn the other way around... 

[slackline]

Wiping faeces on your iPhone more popular than Spotify 

[tomtom]

Wiping faeces on your iPhone more popular than Spotify 

  qwalidy....

[Jaspersharpe]

Dear HTC, please make this phone:

http://designfabulous.blogspot.com/2010/07/htc-1.html#

[underground]

I've been an #iphonegaylord for a week now having had a HTC Hero for almost a year; the iphone4 has been a breath of fresh air. The Hero was always dropping, or not even connecting calls, especially in the centre of Sheffield - advice given - turn off 3G. Lots of other sucky things about the UI and OS had got me steaming, tomtom's link earlier rang very true in my case. I had gone from Android newbie, to being 'into it', to someone who just couldn't be arsed with the constant niggles and fucking about.

With the iphone I got a phone with a lovely interface, fast responses, fantastic ipod functionality - best sound quality I've ever known from a portable player, and IMO itunes is brilliant as the sync / maintenance tool, and as a phone, I can't fault it - connects immediately and holds the calls. The best time I had with the Hero was when I was waiting for a warranty replacement for the same set of issues and put my sim card in a big old Nokia.

I'm now even more set on a Mac - I've got too much to do and think about without having to get into 3rd line support mode very time I want to do something like use a laptop.

Anyway, as an Android aficionado, I can't praise the iphone 4 enough quite frankly - worth the cost considering the use it gets, especially for business when I want it to work reliably.

[lagerstarfish]

The Hero was always.... Lots of other sucky things.... got me steaming,

If there's a smart phone that will suck my cock, then I'll buy one.




(I do not mind whether the smart phone is male or female; in case anyone views my cocksucking comment as misogynistic)