Wow - NFC Fun!

I'd been wondering when I'd have a chance to play with the NFC on my HTC One...!  Turns out it was on the train on the way home the other day...and guess what?

It did *absolutely* NOTHING... ;p

BBC UK 3G Survey App

Thought I would give the BBC's new Android App a little try, basically it's does two things -

1) Gives you access to graphs and (Google) maps showing where your signal has been either 3G (full internets), 2G (crap or zero internets) and no signal at all
2) Upload this information to a company called Epitiro who are going to put it into a highly detailed map (with everyone else's results) and make it available to all on the BBC website (most mobile provider's coverage maps are extremely vague, so this will be just about the biggest independent survey of UK network coverage ever conducted, assuming enough people join in, of course)...

It's *only* available on Android at the moment, and I strongly suspect it won't ever appear on the iPhone/iPad simply because Apple don't want you seeing the holes in their coverage (and can control which apps are approved for use on their devices), they have even hidden signal strength information behind an engineers code (as I mentioned previously)...bit silly...

Anyway, I've been running it for three days now, my preliminary results are as follows - 80.2% of the time I have 3G coverage, 16.8% of the time I only have access to 2G and 3% of the time I have no network coverage at all...so actually not *all* that bad (considering the amount I travel around the place), but that does equal 12 of the 72 hours I have been using the app where (had I needed to) I wouldn't have been able to use the Internet on my telephone...hrm... :S

Anyway, I'll keep you posted with results (if they change dramatically) and let you know when the map is up and running (it's supposed to be ready sometime late July, early August)...read more about it over here (if you are interested in this sort of thing)...

What do mobile phone signal bars mean?

It's a constant moan when trying to use a mobile 'phone at 'The Wharf', "I've got full bars, but I can't make a call!"...this annoyed me...if we are at (apparently) full signal strength, what on earth is going on? It turns out, those silly bars? You can basically ignore. Apart from being a subjective measurement (varying from device to device), the absolute killer is that they are purely a measurement of signal+noise...that microwave oven running nearby? Those computer monitors? Those other mobile telephones near you? All that noise that's completely useless for making calls? Yep, they are all added up into your happy signal bars...it's a waste of your time even looking at them...

Want to know what your *actual*, (error corrected) connection level is? It's actually pretty easy-

On Android, go into "Settings", "About Phone", "Network"...

On an iPhone (you lot aren't trusted to know this information, as Apple routinely fib about how good their devices are) so you need to trick your brick into an engineers testing mode - dial *3001#12345#* and hit Call...

The number you are interested in is the dBm (the error corrected measurement), on your 'droid it's under signal strength, on the iPhone it's in the top left of the screen, and (if I have understood correctly) you read it thusly...

-63 (ish) - Perfect signal, i.e. you are practically feet away from the nearest base station
-89 (ish) - Borderline for successful communication
-103 (ish) - Basically useless, anything much less than this is "no signal"

Up on the 22nd floor, my 'phone waves wildly between -70 and -112, as does my neighbours iPhone, so there's not much surprise service is slightly erratic up here in the clouds, down on the ground, and I've walked around a *lot*, everywhere I have checked is a totally solid -63, so absolutely no problem with connection, our problem in 'The Wharf' would appear to be the sheer number of people connecting to the base stations trying to make calls, so mystery solved, plenty of coverage, but not enough bandwidth - mobile operators? Care to help us out?

Anyway, this should (at least) help you diagnose exactly what is going on when your telephone is being silly...

Orange and T-Mobile Merge Networks

Ah, just had a lovely few days off including a lovely trip to Tilgate Park to see some farm animals (more about that, probably, tomorrow), get to the station and hop onto my (for once perfectly on time) train and get a text message from Orange telling me I'm ready to go on the new super network that has resulted from Orange and T-Mobile combining their base stations! All I had to do was reply "Yes" to a text message, turn on "Roaming" data (which results in an extremely scary message about how much it could cost - as you would only normally use roaming data when overseas), set network detection to "Automatic" and off we go! Hopefully this means the gaping holes in Canary Wharf Orange mobile coverage will now be significantly reduced! Guess I'll find out at lunchtime when I try to ring Flyingpops to see how her and Thomas have enjoyed their morning! :)

Phone has arrived...

...according to the tracking code, just got to wait for it to make it's way to my desk now! ;)

Time for a new telephone...

So, while changing my Orange contract to get a slightly better rate (down to £19) I also noticed that my handset was *well* overdue for an upgrade, even better than that - I had accumulated so much "loyalty" that almost any telephone was being offered to me for free (including iphones)...however, I didn't want an iphone, and I'll explain why...firstly, and most importantly, iphones use a lot of bandwidth, and while they will probably work just fine in most of the country, I work in Canary Wharf where (as you can imagine) there are quite a few iphones...all I hear all day long is people complaining that (while they appear to have a signal) they get missed calls, delayed text messages, network busy, slow internet connection (etc. etc.), it's probably not *so* bad on Orange (as they only recently adopted the iphone), but the older iphone networks around here are pretty swamped (apparently it's just as bad in New York City)...secondly, the battery life is extremely poor on iphones, the few charging cables in the office are traded *constantly* and I've got used to week-long battery life with my little Nokia...thirdly, the iphone (unless you risk your warranty) is highly restrictive, people worry about even plugging it in to charge it in case itunes wipes off all their music, and (actually) I really don't like itunes, I don't want to have to manage all my media via itunes, I want to drag and drop files in file manager (and have them just work without itunes converting them to some other format)...so, I decided to take a look at the latest HTC devices (loved my C500 running Windows mobile), and I noticed with no little amount of interest, they run Android - the operating system made by Google (which is completely open source - much more my sort of thing - as I'm an "under the hood" sort of fellow)...

iphone=locked/idiot proof, Android=open/flexible (nothing against all those millions of iphone users, it's just not for me - how can 8.5 million iphone sheeple users be wrong)...? Baa... ;)

After a little reading, I settled on the HTC Hero (the review is a little old, the latest software eliminates the lag they talk about - and apparently Android 2.1 is due any day now - so I've avoided the "ironing out" phase)...it's got all the flashy things the iphone does - digital compass, gps, multi-touch screen, wifi, accelerometer, ambient light detection, 3.5mm headphone jack (yes!), and just a few very nice things the iphone doesn't - it connects via standard USB (mounting itself as a drive), takes up to 16Gb MicroSD expanded storage, connects you up to all the Google services right out of the box (email, RSS reader, calendar etc.) as well as things like twitter/facebook etc...even does augmented reality through the camera and (purportedly) voice to text (so less fiddling with little keyboards on the screen), so I'll tell you tomorrow (when it is due to arrive), if it is as good as it looks and if I find any good apps to install (all the decent ones from the iphone have already been ported apparently)...!

Baby Thomas playing with his mobile

Hehe...not *hugely* acurate (yet), but obviously having soooooo much fun even just trying to interact...!

I could watch him do that for hours... ;)

Although it's not *all* such hard work -