When a sat nav is useless like CoPilot

I have been the proud user of CoPilot for android since my HTC magic. Recently I am using it on my nexus one and have to admit I want something else.

Take a trip recently to Reading it frequently lost its signal. The live traffic was only reporting narrow lanes even though the I had been in my current jam for over one hour and when/if it detects a traffic issue it expects you to manually route around it rather than just get on and reroute like other sat nav solutions I have used.

Again relying on CoPilot to get me to Chester tonight meant losing its GPS even though when selecting the dialog message it can see 8 satellites and is communicating with them. Plus opening Google maps at the same time CoPilot still cannot find the GPS signal  yet Google maps does.

I have put these questions to CoPilot support and have yet to hear why their product just fails. Thankfully I have my n900 with Sygic maps with me for the return home.

Satellite navigation is something I expect to work especially considering I have paid for it. Even back in the days when I ran tomtom on Windows Mobile 3 with an externally connected Garmin GPS it worked, so why not today on better hardware.

Personally I cannot wait for Google navigation to come to the uk. For the interim if CoPilot cannot fix their bugs and sort out the automatic routing the last journey it will be planning will be to the garbage can.

Digital Economy Bill

I recently contacted my MP about the Digital Economy Bill and got a response from his colleague as follows:

......As Members of Parliament are bound by a strict parliamentary protocol, they are not permitted to intervene in matters which have been raised by the constituents of other MPs. I would be grateful, therefore, if you could provide me with your address .......

Whilst I am glad they have taken the time to write I cannot believe my MP is not prepared to do anything merely citing a canned response to my query.

My response to this was as follows:

....Whilst I look forward to receiving the reply I am somewhat surprised by your response.

As my local member of Parliament, irrespective if the questions have been raised by other constituents I am asking My Farrelly to look at this bill, its implications and to ensure that a full debate is completed rather than it being rushed through as a knee jerk reaction.

Working in the technology arena I understand the arguments on both sides however I do not believe this bill is the solution. Through putting pressure on ISPs to administrate the legislation will increase prices of which will be passed onto the consumer. The tracking of someone's activity via their IP address is flawed as the address changes regularly thus requiring ISPs to procure additional measures to administer and log this. Lastly the proposed body that will arbitrate in any offence after 3 strikes should be done by a court of law with a jury and not an unelected body of peers.

Whilst Mr Farrelly may have more pressing engagements that he has to deal with he also needs to put this issue high on his agenda.

Should the bill be passed it will take a period of time to amend and possibly even remove off the statute law.

I believe there will be further incidents of wrongly accused people and the increased costs will have a negative effect on the initiative of providing broadband for all.

Further do we need these extra costs when the economy is just beginning to improve.

When there are major market players such as Google and TalkTalk that are against the bill it surely demands some of Mr Farrelly's time to ensure it is given the appropriate amount of debate.

I sincerely hope that Mr Farrelly will take the time to look at the bill, its implications should it become law and ensure that it gets the required time to provide a proper solution.....

I may be asking for too much and do hope my MP does take this request seriously but I am am some what negative that this will happen.

I will update this blog as and when further communication is sent.

Emails have been edited

Spring Clean

Yesterday I made the drastic decision to get rid of all of my phones except the following:

• n900 - I am still interested to see how this develops
• E63 - a nice cheap phone that is being used as my work phone
• 5800XM - I am keeping this as a sat nav

I am getting rid of the following because I want a nexus one and an ipad later this year but here is a summary why:

• HTC Magic - Great android starter phone but limited on specification
• HTC Hero - Compared to the magic this is a breath of fresh air with the sense ui but HTCs lack of Android OS updates has shocked me. The magic is already on 1.6 whereas the Hero is 1.5 and newer applications I want to use are on android 2. HTC will update the Hero in march 2010 to Android 2 but my fears of not rolling out frequent updates where correct and as such I am abandoning non Google based Android handsets. I am of the opinion HTC either want people to upgrade to their new HTC Desire or Legend to use Android 2. Whilst this is their prerogative they have in effect stuck the two fingers up at existing owners. March isn't too far away but I believe this is a sign of things to come and I don't want to be party of it At least with a google phone I am guaranteed more frequent updates as Google develop the OS. SenseUI on the hero is great but does not bring that enough benefit to keep me on Android 1.5
• N810 - I now have the N900
• E75 - A great work horse but the 5800XM will now fill that position as being a back up device. The E75 is kind of phone you would either take out at night or away as the hidden keyboard really does make it look like a normal boring phone.
• E90 - A great communicator and specification on a phone on par with the E75. I a sad to see this go but I really haven't used it for for over a year.
• Palm Pre - There is a lot of potential with WEBOS but like the first generation iphone as there are no applications, the hardware is becoming long in to the tooth and now other phones such as the N900 and Hero with SenseUI no integrate with other social networks there is really no use for synergy. Should there be more applications that are more productive based I may look at WEBOS again. But for now, my conclusion is, it is nice to use but there is no substance due to lack of applications.
• Palm Treo 680 - An old phone I had just lying around doing nothing. Again, nice OS and lots of applications but long in tooth for me.
• BeBook Ereader - Not a phone but it will be replaced with the ipad or an android equivalent. I have not really used it and whilst it great on battery power I don't read many ebooks. Further its PDF support is limiting on the emagazines I read in that it is slow and does not render the pages well.

The replacements:

• Nexus One - To replace all of my phones with its larger screen and Google android based OS. Because I have already purchased a lot of android applications I can quite easily port them over to the new phone.
• Ipad Or an android equivalent - I am interested in a tablet device after using the Archos Android Tablet where the Ipad has caught my interest. However with the Dell Mini 5, ICD or a Tecra based Android tablet there will be others to look at.

Although 2010 might end up as 2009 with me purchasing many devices my intention ebaying the old devices is to fund the new purchased but also ensure I am not collecting clutter. I should hopefully have the nexus one within the next couple of weeks so will no doubt end up posting about it then.

Nokia spolit my fun.

Today Alk finally announced Copilot 8 UK Live traffic for Android and several other platforms at £19.99 per year. This is something that I have been waiting for since last year where I really could have done with it a few weeks ago on a long journey. However since it has only come out I had to resort to my trusty Navman S50 with traffic alerts on this particular trip.

I am also waiting on Sygic Mobile Maps for the N900 as the onboard OVI maps isn't really a satellite navigation solution. I believe the application has been submitted to Nokia for the past several weeks for approval but still nothing on when it will be launched or an indication of the actual cost.

Both of these announcements would have meant me rushing to purchase them straight away as I believe traffic announcements for Copilot are necessary and the N900 having an onboard mapping again enhances the use of the device.

However, old news as this is. I recently blew the dust off my old 5800, upgraded the firmware using windows 7 (another story some time) and installed the free Ovi Maps. I originally subscribed for 3 years to Nokia Maps (as it used to be known) when I first got my N95 because it worked out cheaper than getting 1 year. Since the subscription elasped I purchased Garmin Mobile XT for S60 another good satellite navigation program with freentraffic and cameras. So when Nokia announced that Ovi maps would be free my expectations were high but I was anticipating it to be no better then when I had initially subscribed.

Well how wrong could I be, free traffic alerts and rerouting. Free safety camera warnings. 3D landscapes rendering quickly. Lane guidance. It took me on my journey with the 5800 in landscape mode and didn't falter either on the routing, no delays in dispalyed or spoken instructions and the landscape display was large and clear to view the onscreen map.

Now the excitement of copilot and sygic has gone because I now have everything I need albeit in another phone but it is free. I only need to swap my sim as and when required.

So whilst nokia might have spoilt my fun because I really want to test these two software products, I am now getting all these features for free.

I will probably get Sygic for the n900 because it needs the software to make the device more useful especially considering this is now my main device. But I do hope Ovi Maps is extended to the n900 with free navigation.

All of the satellite navigation companies really need to wake up and smell the flowers, At the moment Ovi Maps for me is more cost effective than both Copilot and Sygic mobile maps because I have access to more mapping regions which can be stored on the device and free traffic/safety camera updates. It will be interesting to see how the satellite navigation business pans out in 2010 especially when Google extends their free navigation.

Today, my advice to anyone looking for a satnav is purchase a 5800 or another Nokia phone with free Ovi Maps Navigation.

Mini me

Recently I have purchased a lot of high end phones but today my VX1-mini phone arrived from ebay which is on the opposite end of the spectrum at only £20.

The phone boasts 90 hours standby and 100 hours talktime on a 400ma battery. It does sms with t9 has several ring tones and a built in speaker phone. The display is clear and the buttons very big for the times you cannot see the keyboard. Its also sim-free and dual band so no 3g here.

In all it is a back to basics handset for the times when I don't want to take out a high end device. The other use I have is to leave it in my car with a payg sim card for emergencies.

Because I rely on smartphones I have noticed that should I need to make a simple call, not forgetting this could be an emergency call. I am either fighting with a smartphone OS or a ridiculous boot up time all of which could be vital needed seconds.

Pessimistic as this may sound but the last thing on my mind insuch a situation is if I have hit the right key or if I cannot get a GPS lock when all that I want to do is a make a call.

The phone is functional, fulfills a purpose and could be useful to take away on holiday thus parting with my myriad of other expensive handsets I would normally take. It is also a handset that I can afford to lose or damage on a night out.

But I do honestly hope I don't get the chance to use it in an emergency. However if I do have to use it, I can trust that I am not waiting whilst looking at a manufacturers logo and the time is ticking......

Cross mobile platform exchange syncing with repeating events.

Back in the old days I used to sync a nokia 9500 and a Sony Ericsson P900 with outlook over a cable. I was pretty confident in that it worked and all appointments and events including repeats where duplicated correctly on each phone. It wasn't until my permanent move to linux that I needed to find a cross platform solution that didn't rely on a PC.

I had always used exchange and had found the S60 and windows mobile exchange syncing to be fine but there could be issues with duplicates or missing entries. I would then spend valuable time tweaking them until they appeared on both devices correctly.

Recently I have expanded the syncing to an android based HTC Hero, Maemo n900 and WEBOS Palm Pre. I have always sought to have a devicer with exchange syncing.

Today on looking in my n900 calendar a recurring birthday hadn't synced. I tried a full resync then extended my search to my other devices to see which one it appeared on. My E63 and Palm Pre synced the event fine bit both the hero and n900 hadn't. Further investigation on the E63 revealed the repeating annual event was started in 1994.
Now whilst you may argue just delete and recreate the event I was determined to get to the root of the issue.

The reason for starting in 1994 was because my old Psion 5 allowed me to create a start date for events and as such would advise me how old the event was. Hence I could work out some one's age. The P900 also allowed me to do this.

It would appear that both the hero and n900 exchange sync cannot cope with this. On changing the repeating start date to 2009 the event synced on all devices. I tried this also with an event from 2003 where I had an issue and again changing this to 2009 allowed it to sync across all devices.

Whilst birthday functionality has now moved from calendar back into contats it is amazing how something so little can cause an issue. It shows how mature both the webos and s60 exchange is compared to the newer platforms. Lastly it also proves that all exchange solutions are not 100%

Take the tablet in 4 hour intervals

Like many others I watched the Apple announcement on the 27 January to see what other revolutionary device was being brought to life. I am not an Apple fanboy because the only device I have ever owned was a first generation iphone for 2 months and I promptly sold it because it just wasn't for me. But I have to admit I am becoming bored of buying devices which either don't work, the manufacturers are not supplying updates or there are no good applications. Therefore an iphone 4g with multitasking would have been welcome.

I have previously owned 3 tablets an n810, an archos android 5 and now an n900. The n810 is a good web browser based device but to use it would mean carrying a phone of which can also do the same as the n810. The archos was better than the n810 at playing media but the android support was lacking in both applications and stablility. The n900 is a good compromise between these devices but is still really in beta.

I also own a netbook, a larger laptop and a bebook ereader and whilst all have their own merits from using the archos I have really enjoyed using a tablet form factor. The wider screen is good for reading on screen, you can tweet, reply to an email and play media.

Now whilst I can use these devices I should really be satisfied that I have this choice, but for me they do not offer the converged convinence that a tablet can give. On the netbook I lose real estate on the screen, on the laptop I have limited battery life, on the ereader I cannot web browse and my n900 has a small screen. A tablet should be able to plug all of these holes for me.

So enter stage left the ipad, a mobile internet device with a 10" screen in tablet format running iphone os not mac osx. Apple's view is that it sits between a smartphone such as the iphone and a mac laptop. Netbooks which would normally take this placed are merely viewed by Apple as a small laptop so aren't really new technology.

The ipad has the potential to be a complete failure like the newton, but unlike the newton it is riding on the back of the successful phone. Also because it will be using the infrastructure of the iphone app store and itunes it already has a working solution in place.

Now we have been here before with UMPCs and tablet devices running Windows Xp. I had a vega umpc but quickly got rid of it as the touch input was archaic with an onscreen keyboard that had to be used with a stylus. For longer text entry sessions I had to plug in a usb keyboard which then defeated the portability aspect. As a device for playing back media it was okay but a little under powered which showed with wrongly encoded video files.

There will be more competition for the ipad this year with android tablets such as the dell mini 5, windows based tablets such as the msi tegra and there will no doubt the myriad of clones to follow. Now I do believe these devices running windows and android will be more functional but do I want the windows nonsense of crashing. My previous experience of android on a tablet was disjointed because I couldn't access paid apps in the app store. The google experience had to hacked into the archos and ultimately the tablet was ridden with bugs.

With the ipad I get the iphone os experience, I get access to all of the applications which work, it is stable and tested and I have access to itunes although I will probably use other means to put media onto the device.

The only thing that puts me off is Apple's reluctance to open up the architecture so I am not restricted by their antiquated policies of policing the app store and restricting the device resulting in running a dumbed down OS on a high spec. We know it has the potential to multitask and do more because of the jail breaking scene on the iphone.

But it is this what I am fighting with because I don't want to be told how to use the device, what I can do with it and what I can run on it. The apple experience for a normal user is great because it ensures the device will always run at its optium and should be intuitive to use. However I am technical enough if it breaks to reflash and fix it if this is the resolution and it this option I want. My Palm Pre, HTC Hero and N900 offer me this.

So I am sitting on the fence as I want the ipad because it can complement the other devices I use but I have been stung by the apple experience before and know how limiting it can be.
The ipad like the iphone should in theory have an upgradable OS so even if I kept the device for a number of years I should be able to upgrade. With a windows based tablet it will no doubt stop working at some point. With android you are at the mercy of the manufacturer where my recent experience of aHTC with the hero there is a lack of regular upgrades and patching. A Google based android tablet might be different but I have already referred to the disparate experience you get on the archos android tablet.

Because the ipad is a device I want to pick up and just have it work the apple experience might be my safe guard. I have my other phones and laptops to tweak with whereas I see the ipad being the device I pick up and use if I want to sit and read, browse or email whilst on the couch having a coffee. I don't see as a device for outside the house but the potential for mapping applications is big, but I would look quite a prat using it as a satnav in the car. I don't want to make calls on it or need 3g as I have a mifi.

The writing is on the wall that I will probably get one and I am slowly finding reasons to justify it. My only challenge is do I want to be locked into Apple for apps, drm and being told what I cannot do.

The days of wearing clothes with my name in and gloves on a string so I don't lose them are long gone and I don't need to be reminded of this each time I sit down with an ipad. I also don't mind reading the instructions for example when taking tablets because I could harm myself if I get it wrong but then I am grown-up so do understand.

But do I want to take the apple pill?