Category Archives: Smartphones

BlackBerry: still the best for messaging

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I’ve always had a soft spot for BlackBerrys. Besides their QWERTY keyboards being the best in the business, I like the idea of having a centralised inbox that everything goes into: email, SMS, BBM, Facebook messages, chat messages, etc – it’s something that no other platform offers. Oh, and that blinking red light is just pure genius for letting me know that something needs my attention – I know other phones that have kind of implemented this with a pulsing LED, but they’re pale imitations to that vibrant, attention-getting, one-of-a-kind red BlackBerry indicator.

If only the web browser and app stores weren’t so crappy! I’ve got a BlackBerry Torch running BlackBerry OS 6, which has the latest WebKit-enabled browser on it, but it’s still shite compared to what I’m used to on iOS and Android. BlackBerry App World is also a joke. I don’t care what numbers RIM tosses out in support of their app store growing – there’s still hardly any good apps to download there, and the ones that are any good are priced ridiculously high compared to their counterparts in iOS and Android. Case in point is IM+, which is one of the better multi-platform chat clients on the market. In the BlackBerry App World, it costs AUD$44.39. For iOS, it costs $12.99, and AUD$5 for Android. That pricing disparity is just insane, and while I realise it’s a developer thing rather than any fault of BlackBerry, it’s still a massive deterrent for users. Plus, if there was more competition in the BlackBerry App World, then that developer wouldn’t be able to get away with charging such insanely marked up prices in the first place!

Ah well. I’m having another play with BlackBerry over the next few days just for the sake of it. There’s a new Facebook client beta out that adds chat among other features. I’m also trying to get friends who have BlackBerrys (and there aren’t too many of them!) to add me to their BBM. I posted my PIN to my Twitter in the hopes of getting friends to add me, and only realised in hindsight that it would attract a lot of weirdos after a tonne of people I didn’t know added me and sent me the usual stupid “Hey sexy”-type messages. Some people really need to get a life! I still think BlackBerrys are the Grand Poobah (that’s a good thing) when it comes to anything to do with messaging, whether that’s email, SMS, Facebook chat, WhatsApp, BBM, Google Talk and anything else that entails sending text back and forth.

More on using the Dell Streak 5 as my full-time phone

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I’m still enjoying using the Dell Streak 5 as a ‘full-time phone’. It reminds me of using a PDA back in the day because it’s larger than what I’m used to in a phone. Funny how perceptions of size can change over time, huh? I used to think the HP iPAQ hx4700 was massive, but it only had a four-inch screen like the Samsung Galaxy S and HTC HD2. And the HTC Advantage – which I’m sure I still have sitting around somewhere at my parents’ house – was SUPER massive and there was no way in the world that I would use it as a phone back then, and yet it has the same five-inch display as the Dell Streak 5!

Then again, those older devices were larger, thicker and uglier than the ones that are available now. Industrial design has come a long way since then, largely thanks to Apple and its game-changing iPhone!

I’ve taken a few calls on the Dell over the weekend, and yeah, it does feel like I’m holding a shoe up to my head. These calls were all taken in the privacy of my own home, and I’m not sure how I’ll feel about doing it in public! I’ve paired it with a gold Plantronics headset that I had lying around, however, so this might help me to preserve my dignity while I’m out and about. We’ll see – I’ve never been all that good about fumbling for a Bluetooth headset while the phone is ringing!

One annoying aspect that I’ve discovered about the Dell Streak 5 is the absolute dearth of accessories that are available for it locally! It seems that Dell and Optus have fobbed the responsibility onto each other, and as a result, you really can’t buy anything for it from Dell’s online store or from the Optus retail shops. Especially annoying as I’ve seen lots of cases for the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Optus shops, as well as some electronics retailers like Harvey Norman. Where’s the love, Dell? I managed to find a white rubber case for the Dell Streak at a local mobile phone accessories shop, but even there I think I got lucky – it was the only one that they had, and it wasn’t even on display – it was hidden inside one of the carts! In demand, much?

One of the oddities of being me is that I love accessories for my gadgets much more than I love accessories for myself, so it looks like I’m going to have to source them all from overseas. I’d like to get a nice leather case, and the official car kit and multimedia dock (the latter lets you connect the Dell Streak to a HDTV via HDMI). I might even get a secondary battery for it – Mugen has a ridiculously large one that’s over three times bigger than the standard battery, which would be worthwhile if I flew overseas on a regular basis, but don’t see that happening in the near future with bubs on the way! I do like that I can get a spare battery for it, however, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Apple iPad!

New toy in the house: the Dell Streak 5!

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I’ve been wanting to play with this gadget for awhile now, but for some reason it never landed on my desk for review. Someone on Gumtree offered to trade a smartphone I was selling for his Dell Streak 5 with a 16GB microSD card, and I jumped at the chance. No, I don’t need a new tablet, given I have an iPad and Galaxy Tab already. But a new toy is a new toy!

From biggest to smallest: Dell Streak 5, HTC HD2 (running Android) and iPhone 4

Of course, the Streak didn’t exactly match the description the guy gave me over the phone. He promised that there were no scratches on the screen, when there were, but ah well. It was still in reasonably good condition. So far I’m really liking the size of the Streak 5 – bigger than the HD2, but smaller than the Galaxy Tab. Actually reminds me more of a portable gaming console like the PSP than a phone. It’s already been updated to run Android 2.2, and I’m going to be investigating cases and custom ROM options over the next few days. I’ve popped my ‘main’ SIM card in there, and it’ll be interesting/amusing to hold this up to my ear to make phone calls – more likely I’ll be pairing it with one of the many Bluetooth headsets I have lying around!

Falling in love with the iPhone 4 all over again

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I’m feeling so fickle at the moment. Not long after I had publicly declared affection for Windows Phone 7, my iPhone 4 started to turn my eye again.

After chatting with Mitchell Oke, who blogs over at Gear Diary (and is pretty much the only Australian I know in ‘real life’ that’s as into smartphones and related gadgets as I am!), I discovered a couple of cool jailbreak apps (both paid) for the iPhone 4 that have me falling in love with it all over again! The first is LockInfo with the Typography Time plugin: this is a lockscreen replacement that gives the iPhone a little more ‘pizzazz’ than the default screen, and reminds me more of the Windows Phone 7 UI.

 

LockInfo, bringing sexy back to the iPhone

 

The second is Notified Pro, which gives the iPhone 4′s notification system a much needed kick up the pants. I’ve whinged about the iOS’s crappy notification system before, but I only discovered yesterday that there’s something you can do about it! Notified Pro with the Notified GriP plug-in and the relevant Activator setting gives you Android-style notifications on the iPhone 4, and it works just brilliantly. Seriously, this one little hack has completely changed the way I look at the iPhone, and I’m considering now going back to using this as my full-time phone!

 

Android Honeycomb-style notifications that you can configure to appear at the top or bottom of the screen

Notified Pro's drop-down window for displaying notifications - groovy!

 

Does anyone know of any good Winterboard themes for the iPhone 4? I’ve had a look around, but most of them look like overkill and don’t do much about skinning the folders (which is what most of my homescreen consists of!).

I’ve also been whinging on Twitter about how there’s no paid version of Words with Friends for Android, and how annoying the ads are in between each move. I decided to go and see what the paid version of Words with Friends HD was like for the iPad and WOAH! So much better! Again, this one little thing will probably see me using the iPad a lot more than the Samsung Galaxy Tab now, although I’d really like to see a new UI for the springboard that makes better use of all that screen space! Here’s hoping that Apple announce iOS 5 today, in addition to iPad 2! :)

Seriously though, I think I need help. I’ve taken to carrying around an iPhone, Android AND Windows Phone 7 device with me, as well as my iPad. Intervention time?

I heart the Google cloud

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Another day, another person in my Facebook feed comments that they’ve lost their phone – and hence all of their phone numbers – and for people to please DM them with their number.

Ha – n00bs! I haven’t had my phone as the single source of my contacts in over five years, which means that any time I’ve had a phone lost or stolen (and that’s happened a few times over the years!), losing my contacts is the last thing on my mind.

I first started syncing my address book when I bought my first Pocket PC (the HP Jornada 545). I had it setup to sync my calendar, contacts and notes with Outlook on my computer using ActiveSync – a system that worked well when it actually worked (and thankfully, this was most of the time for me – I became something of an expert at figuring out how to fix wonky ActiveSync sessions). Since then, I’ve tried Exchange Sync, syncing with MobileMe, and finally, using Google to sync my calendar and contacts. The latter works especially well for me given I’m prone to switching devices, as you can Google sync any smartphone OS and have all of your contacts and calendar items automatically appear after a brief syncing period – a big timesaver, let me tell you!

Even my dad, who’s not tech savvy but nevertheless loves new technology (this is where I get it from!), has implemented Google Calendar into his workflow – and he came up with the idea on his own! He runs his own financial consulting small business out of a special ‘office’ wing of the house, and for years, he’s been using a battered old schedule book for keeping track of his appointments, which would be passed around between himself, my mum, and his secretary. Now, he just uses Google Calendar, which is set up as a bookmark on the secretary’s PC and on a dedicated second monitor in his office. This calendar automatically syncs with his iPhone, as well, so he gets alerts for new appointments or scheduling changes while he’s out and about. A great, free system that thus far has worked flawlessly for him and required minimal setup and maintenance!

Giving Windows Phone 7 a go

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In the name of science (or maybe because I’m a masochist?), I decided to try and get Windows Phone 7 onto my HD2. Again, not an easy process, although easier since I’d already wrapped my head around HardSPL and MAGLDR – it was just a process of following the procedure to load the Windows Phone 7 ROM onto the HD2.

My HTC HD2 running Windows Phone 7

The hard part was getting it activated. Every WP7 smartphone has a unique activation code to enable it to access Windows Live services like Marketplace and Xbox Live, and there’s a multi-part process involving installing the Windows Phone 7 SDK, Zune, the Chevron unlocker, and various other little bits and pieces – plus you have to actually call Microsoft support and request an activation code once all the hacks are in place!

Another four hours (of my life that I’ll never get back) later, I’d finally achieved success with unlocking my HD2 with the Chevron unlocker! Seems you have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops like changing the date on your PC and smartphone to 1 October 2011, disabling network connections and Skype connections, putting the phone into airplane mode, running Chevron and Tom XAP installer as an administrator, right-click on XAPs to install them (this I had to figure out on my own!), etc – and naturally all of this information wasn’t in the original post with the ROM download – I had to trawl through lots of long discussion threads to find those extra bits of advice!

But once again, several hours of stress and a phone call to Microsoft support later, and I’ve now got a “new” Windows Phone! Which led me to the crazy idea – why not use this as my ‘main’ phone for the week so I can really get to know this new operating system? Crazy, I know, but it’ll be useful for work as well, since I have to write a feature on tips and tricks for Windows Phone 7 anyway – best dive in headfirst! I’ll still be using my Samsung Galaxy Tab – mainly to keep playing Words with Friends – but for day to day use, it will be Windows Phone 7 all the way!

Half a day in, and I’m actually having fun using it! Naturally it doesn’t have anywhere near all of the apps that I’m used to using on Android, such as Tweetdeck, Evernote, Pocket Informant, WhatsApp and Skype, but I’m coping. I’ve customised the homescreen with photo speed dials, frequently used apps and a few live tiles, installed a bunch of software and games (including Amazon Kindle, Facebook, Twitter, Flixster, IMDb, Shazam, Resco Radio and WinMilk), and have started poring over the discussion forums to learn more about this new operating system. Yes, it’s the underdog, but it’s early days yet, and I got my start as a gadget monkey back in the day with a HP Jornada 545 running Pocket PC 2000 – so it’s kind of my first love as well, and it’s nice to see it all grown up now and trying to compete with iOS and Android.

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming OS update and all of the new apps that are coming! Will I keep on using Windows Phone 7 after the week is up? I’m not sure! For now, it’s novel and I’m enjoying using it, but I’ll have to see how I feel after seven days, and whether I can live without all of the apps that I’m used to using on Android!

Running Android Gingerbread on the HTC HD2

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It goes to show how far ahead of its time the HTC HD2 was that it can run the latest Android and Windows Phone 7 ROMs despite being two years old!

I recently saw that my friend Judie from Gear Diary was using a modified HD2 running Android in my Twitter feed, and this got my little Gadget Monkey mind intrigued. I actually hacked my HD2 to run Android last year, and while it worked, the ROM was too buggy to use full-time – too many weird errors messages and random reboots. The good news is that the latest custom Android ROMs are far more stable than the first ones were, and since my HD2 was already modded to run custom Android builds, trying one of the new ones was as simple as copying over the relevant folder to a microSD card and running the relevant executables. The first ROM I tried, ShiftPDA Gingerbread, was big on the eye candy, but it didn’t support Android Market or any of the Google apps! I quickly replaced this with one of the Vanilla Froyo builds, which worked a lot better.

Being the fiddler that I am (as in, I like to fiddle, I don’t actually play the fiddle), however, I wasn’t content with running Android that way, which was using the old-fashioned ‘boot from SD card’ method. My HD2 was still running a modified version of Windows Mobile 6.5, and whenever the phone rebooted, it would reboot into WM6.5 and I would have to manually boot Android from there. How inconvenient! The clever hackers over at XDA Developers figured out a way to load Android into the NAND memory of the HD2 so that it would boot into Android automatically each time. Perfect!

Three hours later, I was finally booting into the Hyperdroid Gingerbread Xtreme Edition ROM. Yes, it really did take me that long! Having to decipher all the extra little bits that I needed to install, that is, HardSPL 3, MAGLDR 1.3 (I first installed MAGLDR 1.0, realised that it wasn’t the one I wanted, then spent ages trying to figure out how to upgrade it to 1.3!) and Clockwork Mod Recovery 1.3. It was then a matter of flashing all of these things to the HD2 and then flashing the Hyperdroid ROM. This initially only took an hour and a half, but then it got stuck on the Android boot screen, and I had no idea how to fix it! Cue another hour and a half tearing my hair out trying to figure out why it wouldn’t go past the boot screen! Thank God I finally figured it out (switching to the 150MB CWM fixed the problem), otherwise it would have put me off my entire Sunday!

After all that effort, I now have Gingerbread installed natively on my HD2. Yippee! I’ve only been playing with it for the last 10 minutes or so, but from what I can see, it runs FAST! The developer  has also done some trickery with the screen res and has increased the LCD density to 167 – this basically makes the resolution bigger so you can fit more on the screen – perfect for the HD2′s massive 4.3-inch screen size! I can’t remember now why I wanted to get a HTC Desire HD, he he. The hacking community working on the HD2 are so diligent that it’s really the perfect device if you’re the sort that likes to try the latest and greatest ROMs – it seems that custom ROMs for the HD2 come out before any other device!

The increased pixel density doesn't actually let you insert any more widgets or shortcuts than you could with the 800 x 480 native resolution - it just looks roomier

You can fit lots of apps within each screen for the app launcher!

The higher pixel density is heaven for browsing desktop-formatted web pages!

Selling a friend on Android – too easy!

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One of the joys of being a Gadget Monkey is getting a technophobic friend hooked into a new gadget. In this case, my partner’s brother had lost his old phone and wanted recommendations on a new one. His choice came down to the Nokia N8 or an old Android smartphone that I had lying around. He liked the hardware of the N8 – in particular the 12-megapixel camera and the magnesium aluminium body – but he liked the idea of Android after I told him it had ‘pretty much’ as many apps as the iPhone. An oversimplification, yes, but from his point of view, fairly accurate nevertheless.

Naturally, I wanted him to go for the Android phone, so I told him I’d set it up for him with lots of cool apps and games, and he could make his decision from there. From that point, it was simply a matter of installing lots of ‘wow factor’ free apps like Shazam, Google Goggles, Google Translate, Angry Birds, Skype, TuneIn Radio, Urban Spoon, Layar and Zyna Poker (which he’s addicted to on Facebook). I also installed a bunch of other free games like Replica Island, Gem Miner, Bonsai Blast, Abduction, Sketch Online and Barrr, customised his homescreen wallpaper with a picture of him and his girlfriend, and setup a few widgets and shortcuts on the homescreens (including a photo speed dial for his girlfriend, a weather forecast, and links to commonly used apps).

I haven’t actually had a chance to demo it all for him yet, but he and his girlfriend are coming over tonight to play Scattergories, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I sell his girlfriend on Android as well! (She’s just about to buy an iPhone 4.)

Upgrading iPhones, wireless printers and new Kindle features

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The work of a gadget monkey is never finished.

Yesterday, I had my broken HP Photosmart e-All-in-One B110a multi-function printer swapped out for a new one. I originally got this printer following HP’s launch of the new range in Hong Kong last year, and I was excited to try out the wireless printing and web apps. Unfortunately, back when I got it, I didn’t have a wireless network OR an always-on broadband Internet connection, so I pretty much just used it as a regular MFP until it broke down.

The HP B110a - quite cheap at $99!

Now of course, I’m rocking an unlimited broadband Internet connection and a wireless network, which just opens up so many more doors that were closed to me in the past. One of these doors is wireless printing, both over a wireless network and by sending the printer jobs over email (one of the unique features of HP’s e-All-in-One range). Plus, this printer is one of the only ones that natively supports iOS AirPrint for printing directly from an iPhone or iPad (although the first time I tried it with the iOS 4.2 beta, it didn’t work properly), and since I have it working over a wireless connection, I can store the printer anywhere in the house!

AirPrint on the iPhone

While the B110a replacement was en route yesterday, I remembered that my partner’s iPhone 4 only ran iOS 4.0.1, which obviously doesn’t support AirPrint (this feature was released with 4.2). Since it’s a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone (I bought it locked to AT&T when I was in Hong Kong for the HP launch last year – how’s that for serendipity!), I couldn’t just upgrade it to the latest firmware, as a carrier unlock hasn’t been released for 4.2.1 yet. However, with a bit of Internet sleuthing, I discovered a workaround that would let me upgrade the iPhone’s operating system to 4.2.1 without upgrading the baseband. My partner’s iPhone 4 still had the old 1.59 modem firmware, so I could re-use the existing Ultrasn0w unlock after upgrading the operating system (after jailbreaking 4.2.1 with greenpois0n, of course).

I was a little nervous that I would stuff the upgrade up, as the procedure is a little tricky, and my partner would not have been impressed if I screwed it up and ending up locking the phone back to AT&T! He’s become attached at the hip to his iPhone 4 since I gave it to him for Christmas and simply will not put the darn thing down! Needless to say, I’m quite proud of getting him addicted to it, he he. He’s not nearly as techie as I am, but yesterday I could hear him on the phone teaching his older brother (who’s just gotten an iPhone 4 as well) how to move icons from one screen to another. And the student becomes the teacher! :P Given the risks, I was prepared to put my money where my mouth was and replace his 16GB iPhone 4 with my 32GB iPhone 4 if I botched the upgrade process.

Thankfully, it all went off without a hitch, although I did forget to back up his iPhone on my computer, and he lost all his contacts and notes. Whoops! Oh well, small price to pay for having the latest operating system! Now he and I both have the latest operating systems on our iPhones. Now, if that isn’t romantic, I don’t know what is! :P He wasn’t as impressed with his new ability to print directly to the HP printer as I was, but he liked the idea of Game Center and the free ‘Find my iPhone’ feature.

After setting up the HP B110a and doing a test print from my iPhone 4, I was glad to see that the bugs I noticed in the beta version of iOS 4.2 were gone – it printed a webpage exactly as I saw it on the iPhone’s screen. I wasn’t so pleased, however, with the fact that there are still only four web apps available for the printer! Last month, I got a press release saying that there was a new Yahoo!7 Daily Brief app for getting access to Australian news and headlines, but where are the cool Google Maps and Google Docs apps that I got told about at launch last year? The apps that are currently available (including a Dreamworks colouring app and a forms app) are underwhelming at best.

In other news, I got an email this morning that the 3.1 software update for Kindle is now available, with features including ‘real page numbers’, public notes, and a new browsing layout for newspapers and magazines. It said that it would be automatically downloaded to Kindles over Wi-Fi ‘over the next few days’, but rather than wait, I headed to the download page and applied the update manually. Time waits for no man! Thank God updating a Kindle isn’t as difficult as applying iPhone hacks, otherwise I probably would’ve waited a few days before doing this upgrade!

Upgrading the Kindle to 3.1

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