Cragnet

It was June 24th 2010 I had enough of Android due to lack of application and poor handset choice, symbian was a non starter due to lack of handset choice and longevity of the os, mameo; now meego hand disappointed with the n900-again due to lack of applications, Web os whilst a new and exciting os had poor device build quality, blackberry was never a contender and windows mobile had really died. On this day iphone 4 was launched where for myself the handset on offer had caught up with other devices in terms of specification and was finally an option for me to look at. My last venture in apple devices was when the original iphone launched in the UK in 2007. This was very short lived as the device was only 2g and there was little that could be done with it other than jail breaking. At the time I got rid of it apple has started their application store, but the specification of the iPhone didn't win me over as Nokia was still releasing decent devices that were 3g, so using a 2g device

I have tried a galaxy tab and immediately wrote it off after have three other android tablets and figured I could get an iPad for the same price that was a more complete product. The problem I have with the tab is the phone version of android on a tablet that looks like an oversized kiddies toy. The ipad might have its limitations but has always felt a more complete product. I am still tempted by the galaxy as I like tinkering where this is something the ipad doesn't really allow me to do. However with the recent announcements of the galaxy tab 2 and the htc flyer combined with the price hike of £450 from a shop,o I figure the tab will either be reduced in price soon or will be left by the wayside. I have had samsung products before and they do not support a product when they deem it as obsolete. There has not been any concrete announcements from mwc 2011 that the tab 7" will get honeycomb or if samsung will continue to support it. Samsung have announced there will be no

I am currently away on training in London so made the drastic decision to travel light and only bring my Ipad and a mifi. Okay I did bring some more gadgets but settled that I only should require the Ipad. My thoughts will be blogged after the week is up. The mifi itself has been a god send as I put it in my back pack attached to a battery extender which gives me wifi for 8 hours. More than enough to get me through the day with my devices. I no longer subscribe to a contract for the mifi but have opted to purchase data sim cards from EBay or other outlets dependent on what best deal I can get. Recently I have been purchasing Vodafone sims from eBay at £8 for 3gb as the signal strength has been very good and the speeds acceptable. There has been a few reports in the Press that vodafone has been blocking Voip and I reported recently that Cydia had been blocked on my Ipad However I am finding that more sites are being blocked by vodafone content control for example Iplayer streaming,

Two weeks ago I started Italian lessons which was organised via work and an external tutor. For the course we were following a book called Talk Italian by BBC Active. I found a very good deal on the book from Amazon for £7.44 which included the book and the 2 course CDs and free delivery. 3 lessons on and 2 weeks later I am still waiting on delivery for item which was expected to arrive on 16 December. I know that eventually it will be delivered and this blog post is not a rant about the UK, lack of infrastructure and being unable to cope with snow. But it got me thinking. I own several electronic devices such as an iPhone, iPad and MacBook and previously had an ebook reader. However I could not find for the life of me either a digital version of the course book or an mp3 download of the CDs as a legal purchase or torrent which I could have used on the course as I have all of the peripherals put them on. I can see christmas 2011 being different from this year as 2010 has shown one th

Over the past year I have jumped between mobile devices and various operating systems and have purchased a lot of software as I like to ensure consistency between my devices that I have the same if not similar applications on each one. One thing that I am doing more is using my device more for data and media consumption rather than making phone calls. This is why I am now looking for a data only tariff that will allow me to use voip for making outgoing calls but also allow incoming as I will have a sim in the device. Having being predominately a symbian user in the past using both s60, s80 and uiq in its former days I found that any application that I purchased could not easily be transferred to another device without having to make the purchase again. Whilst I can understand this for pc based os such as windows and Mac os x when I upgraded from s60v3 to s60v5 I found the same rule being applied by many software houses. More recently I have found this with meego/maemo with an applicat

One of the best things with ios 4 was the introduction of folders. This has meant my application icons rather than taking up several screens can now be placed in a folder. I now have all my applications organised on one screen in separate folders depending on the category. Apple replaced a restriction of only 12 icons per folder which is okay if you don't have many applications. But being a heavy mobile user I have a lot of applications installed. Through jailbreaking I have been able to install an application through cydia called infinifolders. The application is priced at $1.99 but has removed this restriction and now allows more icons in a folder and you scroll to locate them. The following video shows this in more detail and the various options infinifolders has. This is a very cheap and recommended enhancement if you have jailbroken. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

It was good to see a recent jailbreak of the iphone 4 where all you had to do was go to a website, click on the jailbreak me switch and within a few minutes it was all done. However there are serious security implications of this jailbreak as all it required was to download a pay loaded pdf file which then allowed remote code to be executed which effectively compromised the phones security within seconds. Whilst apple believe a controlled environment can always ensure a more secure safer experience this is a prime example that this philosophy is not always true. I also believe that because apple cannot easily roll out an over the air update to fix this issue if there were several hundred iphones within an enterprise to update then hooking up to itunes via USB is just not practical. There are two distinct types of iphone users now the jailbreak has come along, Consumers and customisers. A consumer will use a phone how it has been designed and will not venture far from doing stock

Last night I went to the site http://www.jailbreakme.com on my iPhone 4. After a few minutes I had successfully jail broken my iPhone and now have the cydia store installed. Apparently this is possible due to a bug in safari when downloading PDFs, but I have no further information on this. The first app I loaded was mywi which has allowed me to use my iPhone 4 as an access point. This will allow me to use the extra data I pay for for tethering. I have also installed backgrounder which allows apps that cannot multitask to be sent to te background. These two apps out of the hundreds available are a reason enough to jailbreak. It's early days, the jailbreak didn't work on my iPad and there's a rumour that mms will no longer work on my iPhone 4. I don't care about the latter but really want to jailbreak my iPad. So let the games begin.

I have had the iphone 4 since the launch on June 25 and have been happy with its performance overall. The only niggling thing that has been annoying me has been the poor performance over wifi. As I download a lot of podcasts over a month as I follow 16 separate shows this can usually mean over 2gb in downloads. Originally I used to do this over 3G but since getting broadband at home and wifi I have been attempting to use this instead and preserve my 3G data usage. Originally I was using podcaster and then drivecast to download the podcasts but was swapping forwards and backwards between the applications due to the poor performance of each application crashing or slowly downloading over wifi. It even got bad with some podcasts in that I elected to switch back to 3G which was totally defeating the object. Recently I have purchased an iPad. Again using the same drivecast application via the same access point I am getting expected download speeds over wifi. This in my eyes proves the issue