Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
Hi Owen, Glad to help. Short answer: Buy an iPhone. Longer answer: When people ask me what phone to buy, I ask one simple question: Are you married to iTunes? Do you have a playlist for every mood? Have you spent years getting it to work just right? If so, buy an iPhone. You will be massively unhappy otherwise. To a lesser extent, if you are married to the Apple ecosystem -- iCal and such -- this also applies. Modern smartphones are becoming the sharp point of your digital life; one that doesn't fit will drive you mad. If you are not married to the Apple ecosystem, then try out a few phones side by side and see what you like. Frankly, they are all good enough. I find the current real differentiator to be the screens. Here, Android has the lead, and it is widening. (Sorry for the pun!) State of the art here is the new -- and for the moment, insane appearing -- Galaxy Nexus Prime, with a full HD 720 screen -- !! -- that's just over 4.6 inches. What appears to be happening here, btb, is that Apple is betting heavily on larger tablets, and Google is trying to find out if a phone can have a screen big enough -- while the device remains small enough -- that you don't want a tablet. So, specific advice. It sounds like you are in the Apple eco-system. If so, buy an iPhone. If your 2 is dead dead, buy a 4s; its a very nice device. If your 2 can be coaxed through another year, wait for the iPhone 5. Rumor has it that this will be the last Jobs designed phone, and that it will finally have a bigger screen. If you are not married into the Apple eco-system, I would definitely give the dual core Android phones a look. My advice is to focus on either the HTC phones, or the Google Nexus line. The Nexus line are Google Experience phones; they get every Android release first. HTC is also good about this, and makes solid equipment. Take a look at the Sensation if for nothing else than the manufacturing: instead of a battery cover, the entire back is a single milled piece -- aluminum, IIRC -- that pops off the screen. You could drive nails with the thing, and its beautiful. (To be clear, Do Not Drive Nails With Your Phone.) Carriers: Verizon-Stupid expensive. Good service and coverage. ATT-Stupid expensive. Bad service and coverage Sprint-They suck so bad we won't use them T-Mobile-Great plans! We have multi-line T-Mobile plans that cost less than single lines on ATT and Verizon. Good data tiers. Great Android phone selection. Pretty easy to get the phones unlocked to swap out SIMs for international roaming. Alas, no iPhone. Hope I haven't overexplained as usual... cjf From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Owen Densmore [o...@backspaces.net] Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 7:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice Please keep firing questions as you think of them! God, what an offer! Thanks! History: I bought the initial iPhone 2G, first by trying ATT, which failed due to lack of coverage (and poor service reports) so I bought one on-line and use pwnage tool to jailbreak/unlock for TMo and european travel. It just died (after 4 years!). I rather like the iDevice ecology, having macbooks, macmini, ipad, ipod etc, and have an app that is not yet on android but has a poor replacement on android. I like that the apps span ipad/pod/phone too. I'm not a power user, but use phone, web, mail, music, apps, maps, angry birds, ... at least once a day, no more than an hour, I'd say. I like TMo quite a bit, but am willing to try Vzn, less so ATT .. they still have poor coverage where I live (Santa Fe). I find that the plans my friends have are impossibly expensive, $90/mo, .. while I pay $58/mo. There are some interesting alternatives such as buy unlocked and use prepaid plans, but this mainly makes sense on GSM, which here means TMo. Even with Vzn, I would prefer a world phone, thus GSM (Italy 1-2 months/yr). Main negative for TMo is AWS rather than the more standard 3G etc, and would eliminate iPhone unless Edge was good enough, which I haven't found to be the case. I've looked at a lot of alternatives: MVNOs, WiFi carriers, prepaid, Senior plans (I'm 69) and even cheaper phones + iPod. If I had my choice, I'd buy an unlocked iPhone, 4 or 4s, and use it on ... hmm, ATT, no, lousy coverage, TMo, no, uses non-compatible broadband. Well what's left? 1 - See if the Vzn iPhone 4s is OK, get the european SIM unlock, and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills. 2 - Suck it up, embrace android, and go with TMo. They seem to have OK phones. They have brilliant plans, both contract and pre-payed. And are way less than $90/mo. They've saved my skin more than once with problems traveling. 3 - Buy a prepaid GoPhone ATT SIM and try it on unlocked phone to see if coverage has improved. Then try ATT + iPhone and see if I can
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
Brilliant! Just what I needed, thanks! If I'm wedded to anything in the apple world, its unix and programming and command line. iTunes is just a fairly reasonable interface to manage phone/pad/pod. I don't need it for music/video/books etc, there are fine alternatives. Quite willing to give it up and start really using my google ecology: calendar, mail, contacts etc. We have Vzn TMo near to each other so I'm going to eliminate ATT, and focus my Android attention on TMo as a carrier, and iPhone via Vzn with their world-phone iPhone. I'd like to wait for a larger screen iPhone but as for my 2G, Its Dead Jim! No worries. Glad to see we agree on TMo. Damn I wish they had not gone the AWS route. -- Owen On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Chris Feola ch...@nextpression.com wrote: Hi Owen, Glad to help. Short answer: Buy an iPhone. Longer answer: When people ask me what phone to buy, I ask one simple question: Are you married to iTunes? Do you have a playlist for every mood? Have you spent years getting it to work just right? If so, buy an iPhone. You will be massively unhappy otherwise. To a lesser extent, if you are married to the Apple ecosystem -- iCal and such -- this also applies. Modern smartphones are becoming the sharp point of your digital life; one that doesn't fit will drive you mad. If you are not married to the Apple ecosystem, then try out a few phones side by side and see what you like. Frankly, they are all good enough. I find the current real differentiator to be the screens. Here, Android has the lead, and it is widening. (Sorry for the pun!) State of the art here is the new -- and for the moment, insane appearing -- Galaxy Nexus Prime, with a full HD 720 screen -- !! -- that's just over 4.6 inches. What appears to be happening here, btb, is that Apple is betting heavily on larger tablets, and Google is trying to find out if a phone can have a screen big enough -- while the device remains small enough -- that you don't want a tablet. So, specific advice. It sounds like you are in the Apple eco-system. If so, buy an iPhone. If your 2 is dead dead, buy a 4s; its a very nice device. If your 2 can be coaxed through another year, wait for the iPhone 5. Rumor has it that this will be the last Jobs designed phone, and that it will finally have a bigger screen. If you are not married into the Apple eco-system, I would definitely give the dual core Android phones a look. My advice is to focus on either the HTC phones, or the Google Nexus line. The Nexus line are Google Experience phones; they get every Android release first. HTC is also good about this, and makes solid equipment. Take a look at the Sensation if for nothing else than the manufacturing: instead of a battery cover, the entire back is a single milled piece -- aluminum, IIRC -- that pops off the screen. You could drive nails with the thing, and its beautiful. (To be clear, Do Not Drive Nails With Your Phone.) Carriers: Verizon-Stupid expensive. Good service and coverage. ATT-Stupid expensive. Bad service and coverage Sprint-They suck so bad we won't use them T-Mobile-Great plans! We have multi-line T-Mobile plans that cost less than single lines on ATT and Verizon. Good data tiers. Great Android phone selection. Pretty easy to get the phones unlocked to swap out SIMs for international roaming. Alas, no iPhone. Hope I haven't overexplained as usual... cjf -- *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Owen Densmore [o...@backspaces.net] *Sent:* Monday, October 31, 2011 7:18 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice Please keep firing questions as you think of them! God, what an offer! Thanks! History: I bought the initial iPhone 2G, first by trying ATT, which failed due to lack of coverage (and poor service reports) so I bought one on-line and use pwnage tool to jailbreak/unlock for TMo and european travel. It just died (after 4 years!). I rather like the iDevice ecology, having macbooks, macmini, ipad, ipod etc, and have an app that is not yet on android but has a poor replacement on android. I like that the apps span ipad/pod/phone too. I'm not a power user, but use phone, web, mail, music, apps, maps, angry birds, ... at least once a day, no more than an hour, I'd say. I like TMo quite a bit, but am willing to try Vzn, less so ATT .. they still have poor coverage where I live (Santa Fe). I find that the plans my friends have are impossibly expensive, $90/mo, .. while I pay $58/mo. There are some interesting alternatives such as buy unlocked and use prepaid plans, but this mainly makes sense on GSM, which here means TMo. Even with Vzn, I would prefer a world phone, thus GSM (Italy 1-2 months/yr). Main negative for TMo is AWS rather than the more standard 3G etc, and would
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
In that case, one more word in praise of the Google ecosystem, which people don't tend to think of as such. Until iOS 5, iPhones were largely ancillaries to your desktop -- you needed to cable up regularly to synch with iTunes to do stuff. For better or for worse, Google is pushing deep into the cloud space. Go to the Android Market; pick an app. The Market knows which of my devices are compatible and cloud installs; the next time I use that device its just there. The phone backup is seamless and wireless; when I upgrade my games are not only installed, I'm on the same levels! But, as Apple has proved, its the little things that often count most. If you use Chrome, you have The. Same. Bookmarks. Everywhere. Yes, I realize there are bookmark sync tools/social tools/etc. This, however, is seamless. If I'm working on something like the BlackBerry SDK -- don't ask -- and find a good reference, I drag it to my toolbar, and that's exactly where it is every time. On my desktop. On my laptop. On my tablet. (Honeycomb or better.) On my phone. (Ice Cream Sandwich.) When I'm done with it, delete it/file it/what ever. Changes how you use things, for sure. cjf From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Owen Densmore [o...@backspaces.net] Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 11:43 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice Brilliant! Just what I needed, thanks! If I'm wedded to anything in the apple world, its unix and programming and command line. iTunes is just a fairly reasonable interface to manage phone/pad/pod. I don't need it for music/video/books etc, there are fine alternatives. Quite willing to give it up and start really using my google ecology: calendar, mail, contacts etc. We have Vzn TMo near to each other so I'm going to eliminate ATT, and focus my Android attention on TMo as a carrier, and iPhone via Vzn with their world-phone iPhone. I'd like to wait for a larger screen iPhone but as for my 2G, Its Dead Jim! No worries. Glad to see we agree on TMo. Damn I wish they had not gone the AWS route. -- Owen On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Chris Feola ch...@nextpression.commailto:ch...@nextpression.com wrote: Hi Owen, Glad to help. Short answer: Buy an iPhone. Longer answer: When people ask me what phone to buy, I ask one simple question: Are you married to iTunes? Do you have a playlist for every mood? Have you spent years getting it to work just right? If so, buy an iPhone. You will be massively unhappy otherwise. To a lesser extent, if you are married to the Apple ecosystem -- iCal and such -- this also applies. Modern smartphones are becoming the sharp point of your digital life; one that doesn't fit will drive you mad. If you are not married to the Apple ecosystem, then try out a few phones side by side and see what you like. Frankly, they are all good enough. I find the current real differentiator to be the screens. Here, Android has the lead, and it is widening. (Sorry for the pun!) State of the art here is the new -- and for the moment, insane appearing -- Galaxy Nexus Prime, with a full HD 720 screen -- !! -- that's just over 4.6 inches. What appears to be happening here, btb, is that Apple is betting heavily on larger tablets, and Google is trying to find out if a phone can have a screen big enough -- while the device remains small enough -- that you don't want a tablet. So, specific advice. It sounds like you are in the Apple eco-system. If so, buy an iPhone. If your 2 is dead dead, buy a 4s; its a very nice device. If your 2 can be coaxed through another year, wait for the iPhone 5. Rumor has it that this will be the last Jobs designed phone, and that it will finally have a bigger screen. If you are not married into the Apple eco-system, I would definitely give the dual core Android phones a look. My advice is to focus on either the HTC phones, or the Google Nexus line. The Nexus line are Google Experience phones; they get every Android release first. HTC is also good about this, and makes solid equipment. Take a look at the Sensation if for nothing else than the manufacturing: instead of a battery cover, the entire back is a single milled piece -- aluminum, IIRC -- that pops off the screen. You could drive nails with the thing, and its beautiful. (To be clear, Do Not Drive Nails With Your Phone.) Carriers: Verizon-Stupid expensive. Good service and coverage. ATT-Stupid expensive. Bad service and coverage Sprint-They suck so bad we won't use them T-Mobile-Great plans! We have multi-line T-Mobile plans that cost less than single lines on ATT and Verizon. Good data tiers. Great Android phone selection. Pretty easy to get the phones unlocked to swap out SIMs for international roaming. Alas, no iPhone. Hope I haven't overexplained as usual... cjf From
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
Greetings, We're a mobile development company, and consequently we have one or more of everything: iPads, iPhones, Xooms, Transformers, Moto Atrix, HTC Sensation, MyTouchSlide 4G, Samsung Galaxy's... Of the phones, the Galaxy has far and away the best screen, but you'll always find them laying around here because the staff doesn't grab them. Samsung NEVER updates, so bugs and such never seem to get resolved. (The GPS STILL doesn't work on the original Galaxy, after more than a year.) People who have all their music in iTunes trend toward the iPhone here, but no one is crazy about the 4 the way they were when the 3G came out. The phone that disappears if you put it down is the Sensation. The screen isn't as good as the Galaxy IIs in terms of color depth, but it is HUGE-4.3-while the phone itself seems incredibly small even next to an iPhone or Galaxy. You really have to think about it as a small tablet, actually, with that screen. I use it as my Kindle, do most of my surfing on it; I gave up both my Xoom and iPad because I'd simply stopped using them. That said, it doesn't have a tablet's battery. I get less than half the battery life I did on the Galaxy or HTC G2; but then, I didn't read books on either. So we all carry a battery pack that recharges USB stuff. It's fast -- dual core processor -- its small, GPS and call quality are great, and the screen is huge. Recommended. cjf From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Mike Orshan [mors...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 12:39 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: [FRIAM] Android Choice I use the HTC sensation and love it. The battery life is short and I need to recharge at least once a day. My pet peeve is that these need to slip into a sports coat jacket or back pocket. It is really too large for a holster. Anyone have any solutions for holding the larger cellphones? I use TMobile, the price is right and have great reception almost everywhere including overseas. On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:32 AM, glen e. p. ropella g...@tempusdictum.commailto:g...@tempusdictum.com wrote: Owen Densmore wrote circa 11-10-29 09:10 PM: Do any of us use one of these phones? Or something close? Any recommendations? Possibly other androids I should consider? How to tame them? I haven't had the chance to test out the GSM mode, but my Droid 2 Global is quite good. It's got a beefy feel, which makes typing on the slide out keyboard pretty smooth and fast. I can manage my cloud sims nicely from it. Battery life in CDMA mode is 1-2 days, depending on how you use it. There's a handy app called Spare Parts that helps identify what's draining the battery. The only advice I have is to get one with a 1GHz or higher processor. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095tel:971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Chris Feola ch...@nextpression.comwrote: snip Of the phones, the Galaxy has far and away the best screen, but you'll always find them laying around here because the staff doesn't grab them. Samsung NEVER updates, so bugs and such never seem to get resolved. (The GPS STILL doesn't work on the original Galaxy, after more than a year.) People who have all their music in iTunes trend toward the iPhone here, but no one is crazy about the 4 the way they were when the 3G came out. Great info, Chris and everyone else. This brought up an issue that first time android folks wonder about: update. I thought Android phones were open so to speak .. so wouldn't you just update by downloading the latest from Google? I realize the mfgrs want to add value but I'd prefer the vanilla Google distro, I think, unless there is reason to prefer the mfgr's modifications. Are there particular vendors that are best for plain Google android? The phone that disappears if you put it down is the Sensation. The screen isn't as good as the Galaxy IIs in terms of color depth, but it is HUGE-4.3-while the phone itself seems incredibly small even next to an iPhone or Galaxy. You really have to think about it as a small tablet, actually, with that screen. I use it as my Kindle, do most of my surfing on it; I gave up both my Xoom and iPad because I'd simply stopped using them. That said, it doesn't have a tablet's battery. I get less than half the battery life I did on the Galaxy or HTC G2; but then, I didn't read books on either. So we all carry a battery pack that recharges USB stuff. It's fast -- dual core processor -- its small, GPS and call quality are great, and the screen is huge. Recommended. cjf OK, this is another puzzler: wouldn't battery life for a phone be quite important? It may be that I just don't push my original iPhone 2G hard, but it seems to go for a week on just a couple of calls, nearly no SMS, lots of email (yes, even on TMo/Edge .. phone's hacked), modest web, maps etc. Do androids have the same battery life as the iphones? I do know the latest iphone 4s has shorter standby time. So maybe 3G etc drains the battery a lot. I don't want to be on Edge-only if I can avoid it. Thanks again, really a big help; -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
Hi Owen, Yes, Android phones are open. There are two paths for this: 1. Download updates yourself. Lots of places to do this, the best of which is generally regarded to be CyanogenMod http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ 2. Wait for your manufacturer to stream you updates. Plenty of good reasons to do both. The best manufacturers -- I like HTC -- are consistently tweaking and adding features. CyanogenMod tends to be faster to the big updates. Use what you like. There has been some controversy about locked bootloaders, but everyone has pretty much backed off of that now. As to battery life, I'm sorry if I was unclear. The Sensation is as good or better for battery life when you use it the same way. But you won't. If you keep that quarterHD screen lit for four hours non-stop reading Heinlein on your Kindle app while streaming Pandora...yeah, you're going to need to recharge. If you only flick the screen on when you hear a text come in, not so much. Please keep firing questions as you think of them! cjf From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Owen Densmore [o...@backspaces.net] Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 4:52 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Chris Feola ch...@nextpression.commailto:ch...@nextpression.com wrote: snip Of the phones, the Galaxy has far and away the best screen, but you'll always find them laying around here because the staff doesn't grab them. Samsung NEVER updates, so bugs and such never seem to get resolved. (The GPS STILL doesn't work on the original Galaxy, after more than a year.) People who have all their music in iTunes trend toward the iPhone here, but no one is crazy about the 4 the way they were when the 3G came out. Great info, Chris and everyone else. This brought up an issue that first time android folks wonder about: update. I thought Android phones were open so to speak .. so wouldn't you just update by downloading the latest from Google? I realize the mfgrs want to add value but I'd prefer the vanilla Google distro, I think, unless there is reason to prefer the mfgr's modifications. Are there particular vendors that are best for plain Google android? The phone that disappears if you put it down is the Sensation. The screen isn't as good as the Galaxy IIs in terms of color depth, but it is HUGE-4.3-while the phone itself seems incredibly small even next to an iPhone or Galaxy. You really have to think about it as a small tablet, actually, with that screen. I use it as my Kindle, do most of my surfing on it; I gave up both my Xoom and iPad because I'd simply stopped using them. That said, it doesn't have a tablet's battery. I get less than half the battery life I did on the Galaxy or HTC G2; but then, I didn't read books on either. So we all carry a battery pack that recharges USB stuff. It's fast -- dual core processor -- its small, GPS and call quality are great, and the screen is huge. Recommended. cjf OK, this is another puzzler: wouldn't battery life for a phone be quite important? It may be that I just don't push my original iPhone 2G hard, but it seems to go for a week on just a couple of calls, nearly no SMS, lots of email (yes, even on TMo/Edge .. phone's hacked), modest web, maps etc. Do androids have the same battery life as the iphones? I do know the latest iphone 4s has shorter standby time. So maybe 3G etc drains the battery a lot. I don't want to be on Edge-only if I can avoid it. Thanks again, really a big help; -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
Please keep firing questions as you think of them! God, what an offer! Thanks! History: I bought the initial iPhone 2G, first by trying ATT, which failed due to lack of coverage (and poor service reports) so I bought one on-line and use pwnage tool to jailbreak/unlock for TMo and european travel. It just died (after 4 years!). I rather like the iDevice ecology, having macbooks, macmini, ipad, ipod etc, and have an app that is not yet on android but has a poor replacement on android. I like that the apps span ipad/pod/phone too. I'm not a power user, but use phone, web, mail, music, apps, maps, angry birds, ... at least once a day, no more than an hour, I'd say. I like TMo quite a bit, but am willing to try Vzn, less so ATT .. they still have poor coverage where I live (Santa Fe). I find that the plans my friends have are impossibly expensive, $90/mo, .. while I pay $58/mo. There are some interesting alternatives such as buy unlocked and use prepaid plans, but this mainly makes sense on GSM, which here means TMo. Even with Vzn, I would prefer a world phone, thus GSM (Italy 1-2 months/yr). Main negative for TMo is AWS rather than the more standard 3G etc, and would eliminate iPhone unless Edge was good enough, which I haven't found to be the case. I've looked at a lot of alternatives: MVNOs, WiFi carriers, prepaid, Senior plans (I'm 69) and even cheaper phones + iPod. If I had my choice, I'd buy an unlocked iPhone, 4 or 4s, and use it on ... hmm, ATT, no, lousy coverage, TMo, no, uses non-compatible broadband. Well what's left? 1 - See if the Vzn iPhone 4s is OK, get the european SIM unlock, and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills. 2 - Suck it up, embrace android, and go with TMo. They seem to have OK phones. They have brilliant plans, both contract and pre-payed. And are way less than $90/mo. They've saved my skin more than once with problems traveling. 3 - Buy a prepaid GoPhone ATT SIM and try it on unlocked phone to see if coverage has improved. Then try ATT + iPhone and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills. I also prefer their more standard broadband, but not a big deal. That sounds like Pogue's great I Want An IPhone video, but I really am open to change. The difficulty is the gotchas: plans that are really expensive, having duplicate apps for android and iOS (pad/pod/phone), phones that I don't trust (yet), mobility (I really find it hard to understand folks leaving europe out of their plans, but then...), batteries that die if I forget to turn off x,y,z and kill app a,b,c ... and billions of cellular issues that I don't really understand as well as I'd like (TMo about to die? Why do plans cost so much?, WTF w/ AWS?) So that's it! And I really thank you for your clear explanation of some of the android world that I didn't get. -- Owen On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Chris Feola ch...@nextpression.com wrote: Hi Owen, Yes, Android phones are open. There are two paths for this: 1. Download updates yourself. Lots of places to do this, the best of which is generally regarded to be CyanogenMod http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ 2. Wait for your manufacturer to stream you updates. Plenty of good reasons to do both. The best manufacturers -- I like HTC -- are consistently tweaking and adding features. CyanogenMod tends to be faster to the big updates. Use what you like. There has been some controversy about locked bootloaders, but everyone has pretty much backed off of that now. As to battery life, I'm sorry if I was unclear. The Sensation is as good or better for battery life when you use it the same way. But you won't. If you keep that quarterHD screen lit for four hours non-stop reading Heinlein on your Kindle app while streaming Pandora...yeah, you're going to need to recharge. If you only flick the screen on when you hear a text come in, not so much. Please keep firing questions as you think of them! cjf FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice
Look up the word obsession in the dictionary, see Owen's picture... On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:18 PM, Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net wrote: Please keep firing questions as you think of them! God, what an offer! Thanks! History: I bought the initial iPhone 2G, first by trying ATT, which failed due to lack of coverage (and poor service reports) so I bought one on-line and use pwnage tool to jailbreak/unlock for TMo and european travel. It just died (after 4 years!). I rather like the iDevice ecology, having macbooks, macmini, ipad, ipod etc, and have an app that is not yet on android but has a poor replacement on android. I like that the apps span ipad/pod/phone too. I'm not a power user, but use phone, web, mail, music, apps, maps, angry birds, ... at least once a day, no more than an hour, I'd say. I like TMo quite a bit, but am willing to try Vzn, less so ATT .. they still have poor coverage where I live (Santa Fe). I find that the plans my friends have are impossibly expensive, $90/mo, .. while I pay $58/mo. There are some interesting alternatives such as buy unlocked and use prepaid plans, but this mainly makes sense on GSM, which here means TMo. Even with Vzn, I would prefer a world phone, thus GSM (Italy 1-2 months/yr). Main negative for TMo is AWS rather than the more standard 3G etc, and would eliminate iPhone unless Edge was good enough, which I haven't found to be the case. I've looked at a lot of alternatives: MVNOs, WiFi carriers, prepaid, Senior plans (I'm 69) and even cheaper phones + iPod. If I had my choice, I'd buy an unlocked iPhone, 4 or 4s, and use it on ... hmm, ATT, no, lousy coverage, TMo, no, uses non-compatible broadband. Well what's left? 1 - See if the Vzn iPhone 4s is OK, get the european SIM unlock, and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills. 2 - Suck it up, embrace android, and go with TMo. They seem to have OK phones. They have brilliant plans, both contract and pre-payed. And are way less than $90/mo. They've saved my skin more than once with problems traveling. 3 - Buy a prepaid GoPhone ATT SIM and try it on unlocked phone to see if coverage has improved. Then try ATT + iPhone and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills. I also prefer their more standard broadband, but not a big deal. That sounds like Pogue's great I Want An IPhone video, but I really am open to change. The difficulty is the gotchas: plans that are really expensive, having duplicate apps for android and iOS (pad/pod/phone), phones that I don't trust (yet), mobility (I really find it hard to understand folks leaving europe out of their plans, but then...), batteries that die if I forget to turn off x,y,z and kill app a,b,c ... and billions of cellular issues that I don't really understand as well as I'd like (TMo about to die? Why do plans cost so much?, WTF w/ AWS?) So that's it! And I really thank you for your clear explanation of some of the android world that I didn't get. -- Owen On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Chris Feola ch...@nextpression.comwrote: Hi Owen, Yes, Android phones are open. There are two paths for this: 1. Download updates yourself. Lots of places to do this, the best of which is generally regarded to be CyanogenMod http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ 2. Wait for your manufacturer to stream you updates. Plenty of good reasons to do both. The best manufacturers -- I like HTC -- are consistently tweaking and adding features. CyanogenMod tends to be faster to the big updates. Use what you like. There has been some controversy about locked bootloaders, but everyone has pretty much backed off of that now. As to battery life, I'm sorry if I was unclear. The Sensation is as good or better for battery life when you use it the same way. But you won't. If you keep that quarterHD screen lit for four hours non-stop reading Heinlein on your Kindle app while streaming Pandora...yeah, you're going to need to recharge. If you only flick the screen on when you hear a text come in, not so much. Please keep firing questions as you think of them! cjf FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
