Cragnet

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 ha

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 w

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

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 bot

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 bebo

There are a lot of n900 reviews online talking about specifications of the hardware/software and how all of the applications work to the nth degree of detail. My post is from using the n900 as my main device for a period of 4 weeks (the length of time will become significant later). Before Christmas 2009, after much deliberation I decided to purchase an N900. The phone was bought through a reseller where the price was competitive with what they where being sold for on eBay. When the phone arrived I promptly unpacked it and charged it up but within 1 hour of use it rebooted. I over looked this and promptly set about configuring the exchange sync, my email accounts and looking at what applications were available. I used various sources from NokiaAddict.com to allow me to access all of the development and testing resources and twitter for recommendations which gave me access to more applications. Previously being an N810 user I was aware of the issues around using test applications and

The idea of a large tablet device is nothing new to me because I used to have a small 5" touch screen pc running windows XP home. For playing back videos it was okay but pretty useless as an internet tablet because it needed a usb wifi or 3g dongle to provide any connectivty. I now have 2 android phones a HTC Magic and Hero. I really like android and feel its potential can grow beyond a phone either to a desktop or notebook computer. When I saw the Archos tablet I was interested because there was finally a large screen android device. QVC had a deal on recently to try the tablet and return if not happy. Normally I am not bothered by such deals but as I was interested I took advantage of the offer. Whilst waiting I looked online for reviews or any kind of hacking. Now some might say that this where my issue started but please read on. Gareth over at mobiletech addicts also got an archos where you can read his experience here . There is also the podcast here where you can hear his