The Android expandable memory rip-off

The Android expandable memory rip-off

One of the advantages Android phones always had over the iPhone was an external memory slot. The second is a removable battery. The first one seems to be either disappearing (notice that the "Official" Google phones and tablets no longer have external memory slots). The simple reason for this is that they are no longer supported.

I'm not going to go into the why - differences in external microSD card speeds etc.

Instead, what pissed me off was that I could not install "Real Racing 3" onto my mid-range LG Optimus L9 Android phone. This is not because the phone is not supported, but because the Game needs at least 1.6GB of disk space for the downloadable installer. Now the the LG L9 comes with 4GB of internal storage, but unfortunately only 1.7GB of that is "user available". This is fairly common with mid-range Android phones.



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Disappointing Android tablet

A few weeks back I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7 inch. I had been quite happy with the first edition of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch, but it is getting a bit long in the tooth for an Android tablet, and I wanted to move up to something faster and lighter. I didn't get an iPad Mini mainly because of price and because I have an iPad anyway.

My first disappointment was that the price dropped by between $20 to $30 a week to the day after I bought it. It wasn't worth returning because of the hassle and a restocking fee from the online store I'd bought it from - the price you pay for shopping online with free shipping.
Now minor price drops are a fact of life with electronics.

My second disappointment was when I wanted to get the game "GTA : Vice City" for my new Samsung tablet. It is listed as "not compatible" with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7 inch - never mind that most of the previous Samsung Galaxy Tablets are compatible (including the current Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 inch). This really peeved me since my old Sony Xperia Play android phone is compatible. Now of course I have bought this game for my iPhone/iPad, but I wanted to play it on a bigger screen.

Ironically the game is compatible with the "Google Asus" Nexus 7 tablet, which I briefly looked at prior to buying the Galaxy Tab. I had wanted a tablet with an expansion slot, but it seems like they are becoming more and more rare. Also Android 4.x and above seem more aimed at tablets (and phones) without expansion slots.


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2012 the year of Mobile Gaming

This year has really been the year of mobile gaming. Traditional console gaming languished while people waited for the next generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony in 2013. The number of quality games on the iOS (and Android) platforms increased rapidly as the hardware improved. I must confess to playing more games on my iPad than anything else. From "Flick Soccer" to "Infinity Blade 2", and more recently "Road Trip 2" I spent many an hour playing on the iPad. Other games like "Zombie Highway", "Road Trip 2" occupied chunks of my time on the iPhone, the latter being particularly addictive. As for traditional game consoles, I finally bought a PS Vita earlier this year, although I must confess that I've spent more time playing the Sony PSP game "GTA: Liberty City Stories" on the PS Vita than any PS Vita title. That might change now that I've got "Need for Speed: Most Wanted" for the PS Vita. I started playing it last night, or tried to. Ironically this game was a lot easier to get into on the iPhone. Once I got into the game though, this is the best racing game so far for the PS Vita. It is like a mobile "Burnout Paradise" - very good.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Emergency Power

Well, Hurricane Sandy has come and gone, and left a trail of destruction in its wake. I noticed a CNET article about preserving your smartphones battery life when there is a power outage - I haven't read it yet, but thought I'd give my take, since I've been without power for close on 36 hours. I am typing this on my iPhone (if one if my Android devices had data service I would be typing on it, especially one with a physical QWERTY keyboard). Naturally the one of the main tech problems is keeping a smartphone charged. My current "solution" consists of a number of rechargeable battery packs of varying vintage and capacity. I initially bought them for convenience - being able to use my smartphone while charging it is a major plus. Also when traveling they come in very handy. The first is an older APC "Mobile Power Pack" with a powered USB port which I used to use with my iPhone 3G several years back. It can top up an iPhone but I don't think it has enough juice to charge from a low battery. Then I have two 5200 mAh "Mobile Juice Pack Ultra" rechargeable batteries with single powered USB ports (both have enough power to charge an iPad, but I haven't tried that yet) and a small LED flashlight which I have found so handy I usually keep one on my bedside table. I was so impressed with the first one I bought the second one, which has a different brand name. Both of them come with various connectors and adapters, but a USB charge cable can be plugged directly into the USB port. The "PowerGen" branded one came with its own USB charger,and both have a micro-USB in port for charging. The PowerGen one also has a neat feature that it turns off once the device being charged is fully charged - this works with my iPhone 5, so I assume it would do the same with other smartphones. These two batteries are about half the width of an iPhone, an inch shorter, and at least twice as thick and fairly hefty. They have 4 blue lights which give an indicator of charge when the button is pressed. This same button also needs to be pressed to initiate a recharge when connected to a smartphone/tablet. This same button turns on the LED flashlight when pressed twice. They charge from USB, and if the power hasn't come on by this afternoon, I'll try my luck at topping one of them up from a DC to USB adapter I have for my car.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Hey Apple, my iPhone screen is shrinking

Every day my iPhone screen seems to be getting smaller and smaller. This is especially so after playing on my iPad or even reading my Kindle.

So, right on top of my list for features for the iPhone 5 would be a 4 inch (absolute minimum) screen.

Commute Tech

After commuting into the city for over four months, I've noticed some interesting Tech in use while people are commuting.

Since I travel on both a "suburban" railway as well as the (NYC) subway, there is a fairly large range of technology being used. Most of it is for entertainment, a lot for drowning out fellow commuters or the squealing of the wheels, and then there are people with deadline, or simply making use if time.

Probably more than half of the tech is for audio (iPods (from the shuffle to the Touch), iPhones, Android phones, and other devices. A new trends seems to be watching videos of some sort, usually on iPads or iPhones, occasionally laptops. People also play video games on iPod Touches, iPhones and iPads, and Android phones. Since a lot if the games are in both iOS and Android, sometimes it's difficult to tell if someone is playing a game on an iPhone or an Android phone, unless of course the phone has a 5 inch screen.

Last but not least, reading is still popular, with a large percentage of people still reading actual books. I haven't done a proper count, but there are usually about the same percentage of e-Readers - Kindles and Nooks - in sight as actual books- it all depends which train I'm on I guess. Not many people read on iPads or other color tablets. I've only noticed one or two Kindle Fire tablets, but they are difficult to pick up, having a very generic look to them.

Sometimes there are whole bunches of people with iPads. The people who work are usually on laptops, or using pen and paper. I've seen a few people reading the New York Times on an iPad, and once a very non-nerdy looking guy reading comics in an iPad. Otherwise it is books, games and movies.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

New Year, New Security Suite

Well , I've finally replaced the ZoneAlarm Internet Security suite on my machine at home. Last year I was caught out by an auto renewal payment I had forgotten about. I canceled that soon after, but was stuck with another year of ZoneAlarm. Then I switched my secondary machine to Norton Internet Security and was duly impressed. On Windows XP NIS runs virtually unnoticed. Its resource hogging ways of several years ago have been changed to run in idle time.

My main gripe with ZoneAlarm was that it continuously ignored autoupdate settings, and often I'd want to do something which required a lot of system resources to find that an update was running.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

So did I get one?

If you mean the Viewsonic G Tablet which was for sale on Woot!, then the answer would be no, although I was quite tempted. It is the cheapest 10 inch Android tablet with a Tegra 2 chipset dual-core processor available at present. A few things made me decide against it:

1. It was only released in December 2010, but as Android tablets go this means it is "a bit old".
2. Although it can be hacked to run Android Honeycomb (3.0), the prices of Android tablets with Android Honeycomb pre-installed are dropping fast. Best buy has a refurbished Acer Iconia A500 Tablet (16GB) on special for $299. Okay, that's refurbished, but it is a Honeycomb tablet.
3. Admittedly the Viewsonic G Tablet is extremely hackable, but I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3G (the original 7 inch version) which is also really hackable, although I have only rooted it and enabled Non-Market Apps. The particular Galaxy Tab I have can be hacked further to have the same features as the European version, namely make phone calls.

Now that isn't to say that I may still get one...

Viewsonic gTablet on Sellout Woot yesterday

Well, the the Viewsonic gTablet was listed for sale on Sellout Woot yesterday, September 18, quite a few days later than I predicted, but less than a week. And yes, it wasn’t on the main Woot! Site, but that wasn’t bad for an educated guess…

Viewsonic gTablet on Woot tommorrow?

This is just a guess, and I may be wrong, but the Viewsonic gTablet may be sale on Woot! tomorrow, or failing that, in the next few days.
I don't work for Woot or Amazon, but I'm taking a guess here, based on Woot no longer selling the Viewsonic gTablet on Amazon - they were until a day or so ago. 

Almost bought one this week

Wow!, I almost bought a Nintendo 3DS two days ago! One of the main reasons I changed my mind was the price.

Today I saw that Nintendo is reducing the price of the Nintendo 3DS to $169.99, almost a third less than its current selling price of $249.99. This will be effective on on August 12.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20084670-17/nintendo-slashes-3ds-price-to-$169.99/?part=rss

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Jailbreak Me!

I really wasn't planning on Jailbreaking my iPad, but when "Jailbreakme 3.0" was released about a week ago I just couldn't resist. After waiting a few days for the bugs to be ironed out I navigated to jailbreakme.com on my iPad, clicked the "Free" button, and within seconds my iOS device was Jailbroken. It was so quick I thought it hadn't worked until I saw the Cydia icon.

Ironically I'd re-jailbroken my iPhone a few weeks ago using "redsn0w" after a few months of running without it being Jailbroken. I'd been psyching myself up for the release of iOS 5, which I expect may not have an untethered Jailbreak available for some time.

Before that, something was interfering with the Infinity Blade game on my iPhone - with "Dodges" just not being recognized - and I was trying to eliminate all possibilities. I'd previously encountered some problems with in App settings of the Activator library, when I found that a lot of my screen taps in the "Zombie Highway" game by RenderPlaz just not being recognized. Then it was a case of changing the Activator settings to only recognize hard buttons. So my favorite Jailbroken App SBSettings had to be activated by a volume up button press and hold.

The problems with Infinity Blade were much more difficult to diagnose - people on the Epic Games forums were reporting that the Dodging mechanism had been changed in an update. I took the drastic step of upgrading my firmware and not re-breaking my iPhone, and somewhere between that and the latest firmware the problems went away. Of course I not only lost the free SBSettings App (the quickest way to change a whole bunch of settings, as well as Power Off or reboot an iPhone), but also the paid Overboard and Multifl0w Apps, which I still sorely miss, especially Overboard.

I haven't dared re-installing any of these Apps on my iPhone, as they all depend on the Activator library. Also, it has forced me to scale back to the iPhone maximum 11 Pages instead of 14 (Overboard and a few other Jailbroken Apps remove the 11 Page limit). Also, with the firmware upgrade I was forced to prune a lot of the Games and Apps from the "Free App a Day" Feeds which I had been hoarding.

The really good 4th of July Game Sales since then have put a whole bunch of new games on my Springboard in "Games 2 try" folders.

Yesterday Apple released a patch for the latest security hole in Safari. This was the same hole which was used for the latest "Jailbreak Me" Jailbreak which was so easy to use. My iPhone and iPad are both patched with PDFPatcher anyway, so they my staty Jailbroken until iOS 5.

Sometimes you win

One of my favorite iOS games is "Infinity Blade". The same game is playable on both the iPhone and the iPad, so you don't have to buy it twice.
In the screen shot above, taken prior to the latest update, the "god-king" gets his...

(Infinity Blade and the characters depicted in the screen shot above are copyright Chair Entertainment and Epic Games, Inc.)

Originally Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Trading up...

So I sold my Dell Streak. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, in fact it was one of my favorite toys. I'd upgraded the Android OS firmware to the official 2.2 (Froyo), and rooted it. I had even bought "Need for Speed: Shift" when it was on special and really was into playing it on the 5 inch screen.

The problem was I really didn't want to re-purchase the huge collection of games and Apps I had bought (mainly on sales) for the iPhone. I was also eyeing the iPad, not the iPad 2, but the entry level Apple refurbished iPad with a new battery and outer shell and same guarantee as a new one.

Anyway, I cut a deal with my spouse - sell the Dell Streak so that it cost less to buy the iPad. So now I have an iPad. It is pretty amazing.

iPhone 4 times 2

Well, we are a two iPhone family - joining many other multi-iPhone families.
I got my wife a Verizon iPhone as a present (with prior approval if course). I managed to get my order in on the Verizon customer pre-order day. Hopefully the mobile voice service on Verizon remains as reliable as it has been up until now. When traveling you need reliable cellular service, and Verizon coverage has always been better that AT&T - I've had an iPhone since the iPhone 3G came out, and my wife had a Verizon phone, and it was always blindingly obvious which voice network was superior. It will be interesting to see how the data coverage compares.

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Rooted

Last night I finally managed to "root" my Dell Streak. I was debating whether or not I should, but to do something as simple as a screenshot an Android device needs to be rooted. Apparently I could connect it to a PC and take a screenshot using the Android SDK, but that seems an awful lot of hassle for something that is so simple on the iPhone. Yes I know that iOS and Android are two totally different animals, but I've got quite used to easily taking screenshots. Anyway, it was relatively easy once I'd found out that I needed to use version 1.55 of "SuperOneClick", and not the latest version. It was definitely a quicker process than upgrading the Dell Streak's firmware from 1.6 to 2.2 (the latest firmware available for the Streak at the end if last year). That was quite a process, but I learned a lot about ADB Drivers and factory restores while doing it - I had a few glitches along the way, and the mini tablet was unusable for a day or so, but it was worth it. The 2.2 firmware has some nice features although the new Dell Stage launcher really didn't impress me, but the great thing about Android is that I was able to download and install an alternative launcher which suited me better.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Take a small Tablet

My Christmas present last year was a Dell Streak. Originally called the "Dell Mini 5", it is almost too small to be called an Android tablet. With its 5 inch screen, it is a large Android phone, the screen around half an inch larger than the Droid X. It is a cell phone because of Android licensing requirements, but I'm using it as a mini tablet.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Have a New Chair

Happy New Year, Have a New Chair, preferably an ergonomic one to reduce the backache.
In other news I'm eagerly awaiting the untethered Jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 on my iPhone.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

iPhone no longer cool?

Well it's no surprise when you have one of the most popular smartphones, that some people regard it as not "cool". This very sentiment was expressed on the Buzz Out Loud podcast last week (Buzz Out Loud 1333: Introducing the Ginsu Air). Is BOL still "Cool" - I don't care, I listen occasionally anyway.
As for the iPhone, when I decided to get an iPhone, just after the iPhone 3G was released, I didn't do it because I was "cool", I thought it would be a nice gadget. Now I still like the iPhone, despite its flaws, and use it more as a information portal and secondary gaming device than anything else.

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Unjailbroken

Last night managed to save the "SHSH Blob" Baseband finger signature of my iPhone 4 to the TinyUmbrella Application on my MacBook. Unfortunately I hadn't thought things through, and when it came to restoring the iPhone I realized that it was going to crash because I had too many Apps.
It does seem like iTunes restores Folders and their contents, but since I was using the Infinifolders Jailbroken App, some of the Apps would have overflowed out if their folders. Anyway, I cancelled the restore, and then spent hours pruning the Apps which I could so without restoring. After I restarted the restore, it didn't go as per the documentation - the restore was supposed to crash with a specific error which would allow the TinyUmbrella Application to restore the baseband for iPhone OS 4.01. Instead, my baseband was upgraded along with the firmware, although I have the "SHSH Blobs" saved so theoretically I can restore to the older baseband. However, I most likely have to Jailbreak the iPhone to do this. My iPhone firmware is now 4.1, the iPhone is no longer Jailbroken, but on the bright side it seems that most if my settings and data for third party Apps was restored, which I'm really glad about.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

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