Random Mobile phone pics...

...just been tidying up my telephone memory, found an old folder full of a few *rather* random pictures, thought I would share... ;)

(wow, look how small Thomas was!)



I dunno, I was obviously half way to a blog idea and then forgot about it (several times!)...more over here... ;)

Crude Panorama - View from One Canada Square

So I get up nice and early, hear the favorable weather report, grab my camera and rush into the office, gasp at the great conditions when I hurry from the lift, fiddle with my settings and boot the camera up -*AaaaaND*- dead batteries, 2 seconds of life, it *almost* manages to auto focus, then it just shuts off, so we'll have to make do with what the crappy camera on my phone can do, I even stitched them (very crudely) together...originals are below (you can click to zoom if you feel so inclined, very big version here, although you may need to log into Yahoo/Flickr to view it)-



...and now I promise to stop going on about it... ;)

HTC Hero Review

So, I've had a busy couple of days playing with my new 'phone, and if you are interested, I'm going to offer my first impressions...was I right not to get an iphone? Looks like it, while 3G drops in and out a *bit* here in the Wharf, it's generally strong, I've been able to upload pictures to flickr and download 4-5Mb applications sat at my desk (at lunchtime I might add), so that's one worry out the way...second worry was battery life, as I said, it merrily charges from USB (took about 4 hours for a full charge on my PC - not all USB ports are equal), and this means we can charge up in the car (if needs be) from our USB/cigarette lighter thingy, web browsing works amazingly well (both the iphone browser and the Android browsers are children from the same technology and they both work equally well) Android flip to horizontal is just slightly quicker than the iphone, but not much in it, touch keyboard is intuitive and accurate, auto-complete is obviously aimed at geeks (I'm getting suggestions of things like "Mbps" as I'm typing...and even with everything turned on (GPS/Bluetooth/Wifi/GPRS/running apps) after 24 hours I'm still at 80% juice...you can buy bigger batteries though, if you like (and you can't do that with an iphone either)... ;)

One very cool thing about the Android marketplace (although searching it is admittedly a bit confusing) is that every purchase (if you make one, most things are free that I have found) is fully refundable in the first 24 hours, so you really are free to try *everything* out... ;)

Apps I've installed so far (apart from *lots* of games - Robot tower defence is *ACE*, not to mention "almost miss your stop" addictive) are as follows -

Locale - allows you to set power settings based on your GPS location - i.e. automatically turn on wifi at home, or at known hotspots, don't waste energy searching while on the train (that sort of thing), it does the same with other phone settings, so set normal ringtone at home, set it to loud on the train, set it to vibrate in the office (etc)...

Google Skymap - an "augmented reality" app where, when looking at the night sky through the camera it overlays the view with planets, star and constellations (incredible)! Even links to the latest sweet hubble shots of what you are observing!

Wikitude - another "augmented reality" app, wave the phone around using the camera and find related wikipedia articles/restaurant reviews/facebook events/youtube video/flickr shots of what you are looking at! There are about 50 different wikis you can choose to overlay on reality, it's truly amazing!

Dolphin - a different web browser - absolutely pin sharp rendering - super fast

Skyfire - an amazing web browser that plays flash videos and games even with hardly any signal (incredible)!

Shopsavvy - a barcode/QT scanner (combined with a quick search to price comparison websites) - also scans QT codes on websites (just point the camera at the screen or bit of paper) to auto download content or quickly get to a linked site

Geobeagle - a geocaching app (not tried it out yet, will do when I get some downtime)

The most impressive things about it so far? Turning it on for the first time and it asking me to log in to gmail/flickr/twitter/facebook etc. and them just all suddenly springing to life - that was amazingly impressive...Watching yourself zooming along on Google maps on the train, and being able to say "find me the nearest x" and the phone give you directions (does the same job as a TomTom in the car too - out of the box)...'phone making a noise and you want it suddenly to be silent (like when your headphones fall out on the train) - just turn it upside down and everything is automatically muted...All websites - including Flash sites - just working (well, that I have tried so far)...want to watch youtube? Just go there and hit the video...true multi-tasking (run everything you want all at once) - be downloading apps while listening to music while browsing the web...

The least impressive - the camera - although apparently there is an app you can download that greatly improves it (but it costs a quid so I haven't downloaded it yet)..I can honestly say the one on the Nokia N73 was twice as good...still, it's not the end of the world, it's just time to go back to bracing the phone against things to get blur free shots...

Overall - Very happy indeed... ;)

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)...!