Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones
** John Cooper l...@discoverlinux.co.uk [2011-10-03 18:05]: On 03/10/11 17:24, Paul Tansom wrote: A bit of a vague subject, but I'm looking at the possibility of finally getting a smartphone and at the moment the HTC Wildfire S and the Samsung Galaxy Ace There is very little between them so I'd go for 2.3 (gingerbread) on the HTC. Ace is supposed to be upgradeable but check this. I've got a Samsung Galaxy S2 which is excellent but I would be just as happy with the HTC equivalent. ** end quote [John Cooper] Thanks for the info everybody. From the details I got from the Phones4U store (euch, their adverts make me cringe!) the Galaxy now seems to ship with 2.3 pre-loaded. The Desire S looks good, but I doubt I'll stretch to that right now, my current usage doesn't justify a contract, so upgrading on Orange and then likely switching to GiffGaff is on the cards - so £150 for the phone and £60 per year in topups should do it (more than I currently topup, but to get the package benefits and allowing for increased usage it seems fair). It is still comfortably below the cheapest contract and would supply more minutes, etc. I may well wait for a bit to see if the new iPhone has an impact on pricing, but somehow I doubt it - well, little impact except on older iPhone models and I don't want one of those! -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 == Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones
On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:03:47 +0100 Paul Tansom p...@aptanet.com wrote: Thanks for the info everybody. I may well wait for a bit to see if the new iPhone has an impact on pricing, but somehow I doubt it - well, little impact except on older iPhone models and I don't want one of those! And according to 'El Reg' you shouldn't even think about getting the new iPhone Of course I am still very much a 'stick in the mud' as far as new-fangled gadgets are concerned and am quite happy with my Nokia 2760 on Tesco's payg network. It must be 6 months or more since I last did a £10 top-up and still have plenty of usage left. It works as a mobile phone perfectly well, but I haven't even attempted to set it up for email or web browsing which it apparently will do. I have occasionally used the camera and have bluetooth usb dongle to get piccies off the phone onto a pc. it cost me all of £69 several years ago and will only get replaced if it breaks. My wife is perfectly happy with her even older Nokia basic phone and refuses all attempts by a daughter who works for Tesco to get her an upgrade. -- John Lewis using Debian sid -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones
** john lewis johnle...@hantslug.org.uk [2011-10-05 14:30]: On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:03:47 +0100 Paul Tansom p...@aptanet.com wrote: Thanks for the info everybody. I may well wait for a bit to see if the new iPhone has an impact on pricing, but somehow I doubt it - well, little impact except on older iPhone models and I don't want one of those! And according to 'El Reg' you shouldn't even think about getting the new iPhone Of course I am still very much a 'stick in the mud' as far as new-fangled gadgets are concerned and am quite happy with my Nokia 2760 on Tesco's payg network. It must be 6 months or more since I last did a £10 top-up and still have plenty of usage left. It works as a mobile phone perfectly well, but I haven't even attempted to set it up for email or web browsing which it apparently will do. I have occasionally used the camera and have bluetooth usb dongle to get piccies off the phone onto a pc. it cost me all of £69 several years ago and will only get replaced if it breaks. My wife is perfectly happy with her even older Nokia basic phone and refuses all attempts by a daughter who works for Tesco to get her an upgrade. ** end quote [john lewis] An iPhone simply won't fit my requirements, however popular they are. This whole process started when I got a 3 USB dongle for my netbook some time back. I was quite impressed by the network coverage, and could get my netbook connected on 3 where my phone failed to get a signal on Orange. This could be down to the phone of course (my old Nokia 7110 used to get a decent signal on Vodafone where my Erricson T230 completely failed on the same network). When I looked into switching I found I couldn't as my phone is not compatible (no 3g). That started the thought process. The next trigger was Laura tweeting about GiffGaff, which got me thinking again as their costings are pretty good - even better than my Orange PAYG package which is much cheaper than anything they offer now (12p instead of 25p per minute and 10p instead of 15p texts, etc.). Of course if I upgrade before abandoning Orange it makes the phone cheaper, and having inclusive data will start me looking at internet usage on the phone. The other prompting trigger is plans to drop one of my land lines and switch it to VOIP, so a SIP client on my phone would be handy too (and I really need to check if GiffGaff block this!). -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 == Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones
Hello Paul, On Wed, October 5, 2011 15:03, Paul Tansom wrote: An iPhone simply won't fit my requirements, however popular they are. This whole process started when I got a 3 USB dongle for my netbook some time back. I was quite impressed by the network coverage, and could get my netbook connected on 3 where my phone failed to get a signal on Orange. This could be down to the phone of course (my old Nokia 7110 used to get a decent signal on Vodafone where my Erricson T230 completely failed on the same network). When I looked into switching I found I couldn't as my phone is not compatible (no 3g). That started the thought process. The next trigger was Laura tweeting about GiffGaff, which got me thinking again as their costings are pretty good - even better than my Orange PAYG package which is much cheaper than anything they offer now (12p instead of 25p per minute and 10p instead of 15p texts, etc.). Of course if I upgrade before abandoning Orange it makes the phone cheaper, and having inclusive data will start me looking at internet usage on the phone. The other prompting trigger is plans to drop one of my land lines and switch it to VOIP, so a SIP client on my phone would be handy too (and I really need to check if GiffGaff block this!). Sorry to bang on about the OSF, but your scenario looks like it could be handled perfectly well by the OSF. It's quick and free to unlock once you have it (I use mine on Vodafone's TalkMobile reseller). It has it all. The only downer would be that you have to spend some time on it to install an Android distro based on 2.3 (Gingerbread) in order to get the cool wireless sharing stuff going, because the crippled Orange Android disables that. If you are cost-sensitive (I'm not, I'm just cheap), this is your phone! :-) £99 is hard to beat for a brand new smartphone. Note to self, give GiffGaff another look-see... -- Regards, Jan Henkins -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Hampshire Digest, Vol 60, Issue 5
European Service Engineer Biodot ltd. The Kingley Centre, Downs Rd. Chichester UK PO18 9HJ Phone +44 1243 572044. fax +44 1243 575752 On 5 Oct 2011, at 14:00, hampshire-requ...@mailman.lug.org.uk wrote: Send Hampshire mailing list submissions to hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to hampshire-requ...@mailman.lug.org.uk You can reach the person managing the list at hampshire-ow...@mailman.lug.org.uk When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Hampshire digest... Today's Topics: 1. Re: Smartphones (Peter Andrijeczko) 2. Re: Gaining feedback (Tim Brocklehurst) -- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 18:13:11 +0100 From: Peter Andrijeczko peter.andrijec...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones To: j...@henkins.za.net,Hampshire LUG Discussion List hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Message-ID: cagdfa1_v7jscoxprvec+lkq22aw_abgzm2qtxrcnxkt-tv0...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 I'm on Vodafone and had a Google Nexus One (which I've kept to use with PAYG and as an audiobook player) but recently had the option of a free upgrade so went for the HTC Desire Z - the only thing that swung it for me was the pull-out keyboard which I use with the Android ConnectBot SSH client for remote SSH access to my home Linux systems. I also plan on installing VNC on it to get desktop access also. Both phones are running Android 2.3 by taking advantage of the most recent Vodafone Android upgrades. I hope that helps. Regards Peter On 4 October 2011 11:04, Jan Henkins j...@henkins.za.net wrote: Hello Paul, Ian and all, On Mon, October 3, 2011 23:34, Ian Grody wrote: The ZTE Blade (Orange San Francisco) is a far better choice than the Wildfire S. Same specs, but has a 640x480 screen and better display overall. Even if you do get one locked to orange, there are free aps on Android Market that will work out your SIM unlock code easy peasy. I have this phone, and I have to say that even though it is by no means perfect, it is certainly one of the most impressive phones I have had. I had the pleasure of using an HTC Desire for a week, and it really sets the bar. As far as I'm concerned, the Desire is the bare minimum one should want in the medium to high-end smartphone. Anything equal to or better than the Desire will make you smile! :-) Back to the OSF (ZTE Blade). I have to say that in comparison to the Wildfire S, it's not neccessarily better. The HTC just oozes quality and solidness, whereas the OSF is plasticky. The OSF's buttons is also not it's best feature. The Back button doubles as the indicator, and the little arrow graphic is so small that you won't notice the flashing red or green LED, unless it's really dark. You might think that I'm unloading a huge indictment against the OSF, but really I'm not! :-) Even though the phone itself has these shortages, there are major plusses that pulls it into a class of it's own: * It has the biggest screen in it's price-class (?89-?99 brand new, depending on where you buy it) * It is one of the prime Android hacking platforms available today. You have a broad choice of Android distros you can load on this phone * Battery life, depending on your Android distro, is actually quite good for a smartphone. I almost get 48 hours on a charge with light usage, which goes down to 16-20 hours with heavy usage. * Even though the CPU is rated at 600MHz, it is overclockable. My current distro (Ginger Stir Fry [1]) overclocks to just below 900MHz on demand, which makes the phone really nice to use. OK, it's not a 1.2GHz dual-core monster, but for what I need it is perfectly acceptable. There is another Android distro called Monfro CAE [2], which apparently is quite a bit better on this front, but reportedly at the cost of some battery life. Links: [1] Ginger Stir Fry: http://android.modaco.com/topic/342009-romgen2zte-gingerbread-ginger-stir-fry/ [2] Monfro CAE: http://android.modaco.com/topic/346475-monfro-cae-zte-leak-234-v31/ -- Regards, Jan Henkins -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/private/hampshire/attachments/20111004/54a03c95/attachment-0001.htm -- Message: 2 Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 09:25:01 +0100 (BST) From: Tim Brocklehurst t...@engineering.selfip.org Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Gaining feedback To:
Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones
On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:27:59 +0100 john lewis johnle...@hantslug.org.uk wrote: Of course I am still very much a 'stick in the mud' as far as new-fangled gadgets are concerned snipped Having said that I remembered that a few weeks ago I upgraded my camera to a Pentax K-r, which is a step up from the Fuji Finepix S5600 bridge camera I've been using for a couple of years, so 'stick in the mud' isn't strictly true ;-) I picked the Pentax because it will use the K-a mount lenses I have left over from the days when I was using a Pentax ME Super. I still have it but even if film was easier to get I don't think I want to give up the benefits of having digital images. And in theory lenses should be cheaper as they don't need image stabilisation built-in to each lense as the camera body has the software for this. I only got the 18-55 lens with the camera but one day when my wife isn't looking I'll get the matching 55-300 lense (not the 50-200 one that was sold with the twin lense kit). The Tamron 75-210 K-a mount lense I'm currently using doesn't quite have the range I'd like as the two together barely matches the zoom capability of the Fuji I'd been using (38-380 equivalent) The Tamron doesn't give me auto-focussing either but that isn't really a problem. The Pentax is much better in one respect than the Fuji. I was using the Fuji to take lots of photos in quick succession and quickly realised I was trying to take pics faster than the camera allowed. The Pentax 'reloads' quicker so I don't miss pics as I did with the Fuji, I also found it has a multi-image setting which I don't think the Fuji has (I've lent it to my son-in-law so cannot check). Plus it has many more options in its software though I can't see me using the built-in filters very often. -- John Lewis using Debian sid -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Hampshire Digest, Vol 60, Issue 5
Hi Mike, 1. No actual content. 2. The digest header does say When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Hampshire digest... Generally when I see a post with that title I don't bother reading it because I can predict with a good degree of certainty that it will be a top-post that quotes the entire digest without indicating what topic it is replying to. -- best regards, Victor Churchill, Bournemouth -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Smartphones
If you are thinking of a HTC desire (I have one) I would say that the internal storage is rubbish, however the good news is that rooting and installing cyanogen mod 7 is really easy and with e2sd you can move your dalvik cache (android Java bit cache) to an ext partition and that frees up a huge amount of space. I wrote a blog post on how to do it http://www.strangeparty.com/2011/06/23/cyanogenmod-on-htc/ I do reccomend rooting (it is even easier before you have data to back up) it as you really run out of space quickly otherwise. Anton - Anton Piatek (sent from my phone, please excuse any typos) email: an...@piatek.co.uk blog/photos: http://www.strangeparty.com pgp: [74B1FA37] (http:// www.strangeparty.com/anton.asc) No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
