Cragnet

Due to delays in the n900 and the lack of software both in this and the Palm Pre application catalog I decided to purchase a HTC Hero. There was some hesitation wondering if I could easily transfer my original HTC Magic software over where kind soles on Twitter indicated this should be easy. I opted to get the sim free version from carphone warehouse. Setting the phone up took a couple of hours as I had over 100 applications to reinstall. Thankfully from entering my Google credentials the app market recognised what I had purchased and allowed me to download and reinstall the apps again. Overall I am happy with the phone and find it a lot more responsive than the magic. This is no doubt helped by the additional RAM available for the Hero. The other difference is the application installation space is smaller than the magic. However the changes that HTC have done to Android including built-in exchange support and the sense UI make this one hell of a phone. Also the multi touch on the brow

As part of the excessive usage on unlimited web for O2 in addition to the text warning you get a letter. The letter was from the Credit and Risk department. I called them up to try and find out some more information and whilst it was a pleasant conversation the information again was conflicting to what I was told the previous week. On this occasion I was told the make of phone was irrelevant and the fact that I was using my HTC Magic instead of the E75 I got on my new contract. The issue was still the amount of data that I had downloaded. If you can recall it had been 6 gb the previous month where there was no issue. This month it was 1 gb and this is what had triggered the cease and desist text and letter. During my conversation I said I liked to manage my bill so I am not over using my allocated allowances. Bearing in mind the Internet is defined as unlimited web with an excessive policy where you cannot tether the phone to a PC, use VOIP or stream video/ audio and dow

When I was young I can remember going to the newsagents and asking for a ten pence mix. The shop owner would count out ten sweets (or the equivalent) and I would hand over ten pence and then have a bag full of sweets. Back then you knew what you would you get when you paid the money and would be able to sort out any problems should there be a sweet missing. Today shouldn't be too dissimilar in that you pay for service and you either get it or you don't. There are always issues with the quality of service thus you have to look at the terms and conditions. Now take O2 where I have been a customer of theres' for a number of years. I pay so much a month I get 600 minutes and 500 texts. If I use them the usage decreases until it gets to zero then I start paying. I used to pay for their data bolt on called data max at 3GB a month where I knew I had up to 3GB of data allowance. Through being made redundant and reducing costs I decided to go to O2 simplicity where I was told t

The HTC Magic has been driving me mad today. It has taken me over 5 minutes to write a tweet to the extent I ended up slapping the phone through frustration . Although this calmed my nerves I ended up looking at cooked roms for the phone hoping it would speed it up. After advise from people on twitter I downloaded a recovery image to put phone into a mode where I could back it up to SD. I also used the Astro file manager to back up my apps as well to SD. Then using Linux ( Ubuntu 8.10) I re flashed the phone and went upon my way restoring it. The Asto File manager was bad in that it would allow me to bulk select all apps for backup, but I had to individually restore the apps back onto the phone. Further even though I had restore the apps individually the market application would not acknowledge this. This means I would not be notified of any application upgrades unless I reinstalled the application via the market place. This, coupled with the phones failure to sync agai

I have been an N810 user for over a year where I originally made the purchase of the device as I was disappointed using a converged device like the E90 as there were always issues browsing the web. I thought the idea of going back to two devices with a less powered mobile phone and using this to tether with the N810 would be ideal. Although the N810 was a good device, from being used to a converged device for a number of years the idea of carrying two devices again was daunting. Further while the N810 was good for web browsing it was slow. In the end I ended up hacking the N810 to utilise the internal 2 gb of SD space to allow me to install more applications but ultimately it has been gathering dust and is either used as an ebook reader for my emagazine or if I want to tinker. The last word 'tinker' is quite important because in reality this is all I can do with the device. There aren't really any productivity applications out there other than abiword and gnu s

I will be posting an initial impressions blog of my HTC Magic in a few days but this morning I was using the phone for sat nav and it was a major failure. On my normal route to work a road was closed where I was forced to go another way. Because I was not familiar with the area I fired up my Co Pilot Live 8 Sat Nav on the HTC Magic and this is where it began screwing up. For some reason it insisted it needed setting up again with my local language, choice of voice navigation, imperial or metric measurements then to accept the disclaimer. The last time this happened I managed to select maps of Italy that required a complete reinstall. Considering I was using the sat nav at the weekend why did it do this? Then the icing on the cake it already had my route in from the weekend (several stops) and insisted on routing me to these destinations. Trying to clear each one out (it has to be done indivdually) resulted in slow menus, bad response and general sluggishness as it was trying to ca

The first picture taken on my phone. Can anyone identify the beetle and how to get rid of it?