TOPIC: INFORMATION APPLIANCES
A new phone
4th February 2012After a few years with a straightforward Nokia 1661 and a PAYG Blackberry 8520, I decided to go and upgrade from the former to an HTC Wildfire S. So far, the new phone has been good to me with only a few drawbacks. Other than working out how to insert a SIM card, the phone has been easy to use with just a few nuances to learn, such as finger pinch zooming and dealing with an onscreen keyboard as opposed to a real one.
The touchscreen and 3G connectivity are major upgrades from my Blackberry, making web browsing much faster, especially on the larger screen. Checking Google Reader and emails on the go is quicker, with the screen responding well most of the time. It does get dirty, so using a screen protector or regularly cleaning with a lens cloth is advisable. As it happens, I'm still adjusting to the onscreen keyboard, which remains the one area where the Blackberry remains superior. Rotating the phone sideways helps by enlarging the keys, reducing typing errors even for my average-sized fingers. Switching between alphabetic, numeric, and punctuation keyboards still takes some getting used to.
Otherwise, the user interface is bright and pleasing to the eye, with the typical presentation of both a clock and current weather on there. Handily, the screen is locked easily too with a press of the button at the top right of the phone. That will put a stop to inadvertent phone calls, emailing, web browsing and other things, so it is to be commended. To unlock the screen, all that's needed is to swipe the lock bar to the bottom. Any alerts are viewed similarly with holding down your finger on the top bar presenting an extension that can be pulled all the way down to see what's there.
The Android Marketplace icon on the home screen lets me easily add apps with automatic updates, though this requires monitoring data usage on your phone plan. The WordPress app works better than on my Blackberry, but UberSocial's retweeting function is worse on Android. It displays all account feeds on one screen and requires swiping for actions like replying or retweeting, which I find awkward. I might try an alternative app. I've downloaded several others, including CrossCountry Trains' app (which is good, despite failing to find Macclesfield-Edale Sunday trains) and LinkedIn (which works well). You can move apps to the microSD card to save internal storage space, though I don't plan to install many.
The Wildfire performs well at its core function: making and receiving calls. It imported contacts from my SIM card, though Bluetooth transfer from an old phone is also possible. Call sound quality is clear and loud. The side rocker button adjusts speaker volume during calls and ringtone volume otherwise. By default, the phone vibrates and rings simultaneously for incoming calls, which I may change later. The same applies to notification sounds for text messages, emails, and tweets.
Battery life is this phone's main weakness. It needs charging every night, unlike my previous phones. The bright, responsive screen likely causes this drain. Many users report similar issues online, with some experiencing even worse battery performance. While there are tips for extending battery life, they involve disabling key features like 3G or data connectivity, which defeats the purpose of having a smartphone. Thus, I'm considering buying a spare battery, as I did for my Pentax DSLR. Some users recommend higher-capacity replacement batteries, though this seems riskier.
All in all, first impressions of the HTC Wildfire are good ones. Over time, I should find out more about the ins and outs of the gadget. After all, it is a mini-computer with its own operating system and other software. Since I continue to learn more and more about PC's every day, the same should be the case here too.
An avalanche of innovation?
23rd September 2010It seems that, almost despite the uncertain times or maybe because of them, it feels like an era of change on the technology front. Computing is the domain of many of the postings on this website, and a hell of a lot seems to be going mobile at the moment. For a good while, I managed to stay clear of the attractions of smartphones until a change of job convinced me that having a BlackBerry was a good idea. Though the small size of the thing really places limitations on the sort of web surfing experience that you can have with it, you can keep an eye on the weather, news, traffic, bus and train times so long as the website in question is built for mobile browsing. Otherwise, it's more of a nuisance than a patchy phone network (in the U.K., T-Mobile could do better on this score, as I have discovered for myself; thankfully, a merger with the Orange network is coming next month).
Speaking of mobile websites, it almost feels as if a free for all has recurred for web designers. Just when the desktop or laptop computing situation had more or less stabilised, along came a whole pile of mobile phone platforms to make things interesting again. Familiar names like Opera, Safari, Firefox and even Internet Explorer are to be found popping up on handheld devices these days along with less familiar ones like Web 'n' Walk or BOLT. The operating system choices vary too, with iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows and others all competing for attention. It is the sort of flowering of innovation that makes one wonder if a time will come when things begin to consolidate, but it doesn't look like that at the moment.
The transformation of mobile phones into handheld computers isn't the only big change in computing, with the traditional formats of desktop and laptop PC's being flexed in all sorts of ways. First, there's the appearance of netbooks, and I have succumbed to the idea of owning an Asus Eee. Though you realise that these are not full size laptops, it still didn't hit me how small these were until I owned one. They are undeniably portable, while tablets look even more interesting in the aftermath of Apple's iPad. Though you may call them over-sized mobile photo frames, the idea of making a touchscreen do the work for you has made the concept fly for many. Even so, I cannot say that I'm overly tempted, though I have said that before about other things.
Another area of interest for me is photography, and it is around this time of year that all sorts of innovations are revealed to the public. It's a long way from what, we thought, was the digital photography revolution when digital imaging sensors started to take the place of camera film in otherwise conventional compact and SLR cameras, making the former far more versatile than they used to be. Now, we have SLD cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony that eschew the reflex mirror and prism arrangement of an SLR using digital sensor and electronic viewfinders while offering the possibility of lens interchangeability and better quality than might be expected from such small cameras. Lately, Sony has offered SLR-style cameras with translucent mirror technology instead of the conventional mirror that is flipped out of the way when a photographic image is captured. Change doesn't end there, with movie making capabilities being part of the tool set of many a newly launched compact, SLD and SLR camera. The pixel race also seems to have ended though increases still happen as with the Pentax K-5 and Canon EOS 60D (both otherwise conventional offerings that have caught my eye, though so much comes on the market at this time of year that waiting is better for the bank balance).
The mention of digital photography brings to mind the subject of digital image processing and Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is just announced after Photoshop CS5 appeared earlier this year. It almost feels as if a new version of Photoshop or its consumer cousin is released every year, causing me to skip releases when I don't see the point. Elements 6 and 8 were such versions for me, so I'll be in no hurry to upgrade to 9 yet either, even if the prospect of using content aware filling to eradicate unwanted objects from images is tempting. Nevertheless, that shouldn't stop anyone trying to exclude them in the first place. In fact, I may need to reduce the overall number of images that I collect in favour of coming away with only the better ones. The outstanding question on this is: can I slow down and calm my eagerness to bring at least one good image away from an outing by capturing anything that seems promising at the time? Some experimentation but being a little more choosy can save work later on.
While back on the subject of software, I'll voyage in to the world of the web before bringing these meanderings to a close. It almost feels as if there are web-based applications following web-based applications these days, when Twitter and Facebook nearly have become household names and cloud computing is a phrase that turns up all over the place. In fact, the former seems to have encouraged a whole swathe of applications all of itself. Applications written using technologies well-used on the web must stuff many a mobile phone app store too and that brings me full circle for it is these that put so much functionality on our handsets with Java seemingly powering those I use on my BlackBerry. Then there's the spat between Apple and Adobe regarding the former's support for Flash.
To close this mental amble, there may be technologies that didn't come to mind while I was pondering this piece, but they doubtless enliven the technological landscape too. However, what I have described is enough to take me back more than ten years ago, when desktop computing and the world of the web were a lot more nascent than is the case today. Then, the changes that were ongoing felt a little exciting now that I look back on them, and it does feel as if the same sort of thing is recurring though with things like phones creating the interest in place of new developments in desktop computing such as a new version of Window (though 7 was anticipated after Vista). Web designers may complain about a lack of standardisation, and they're not wrong, yet this may be an era of technological change that in time may be remembered with its own fondness too.
Exploring the mobile web
16th July 2010With a change of job ahead of me, I decided to make my web usage a little more mobile. The result was the purchase of a Blackberry 8520 Curve on a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go tariff to complement my existing phone. The attraction included mobile email access and some web browsing capability. Though GPRS provides slow web browsing, it works adequately whilst highlighting the value of mobile-optimised websites. It's just as well that this website that you're reading has a mobile version.
Hooking the Blackberry up to GMail was no problem once I had paid my dues and the necessary set up was done for me; it was only then that the required option was available through the set-up screens. While RIM's own web browser may be no slouch when it comes to rendering websites, I put Opera Mini in place as well for those times when the default option could be bettered and they exist too. Speaking of RIM applications, there's one for Twitter too, though I added Übertwitter for the sake of greater flexibility (it can handle more than one account at a time, for example). In addition, I have instated applications for WordPress and LinkedIn too, and it was then that I stopped myself spending too much time in Blackberry App World. If I was of the Facebook persuasion, I might be interested in the default offering for that as well, but I have learnt to contain myself.
Of course, there are limitations to the device's capabilities regarding email and web on the move. Long emails still need desktop access (messages can get truncated) and mobile unfriendly websites will take an age to load and explore; a small screen means much more finger work. After all, this is a small device, so the observations aren't astounding; it's just that I encounter the reality of life on a small screen now. Nevertheless, useful sites like those from Google and the Met Office have a mobile variant, though I'd like to see the latter including its rain radar as part of the package.
Speaking of life on a smaller scale, there's the size of the keyboard to consider too. So far, I haven't had much practice with it, but I am unsure as how some craft longer blog entries with the tiny keys. Then, there's the ever-present threat of arm discomfort and RSI that you have to watch. For that reason, I'll stick with use for an hour at a time rather than going mad altogether. Navigating around the screen using the tiny trackpad is something to which I am adjusting, and it works well enough too, so long as you're not looking through long web pages or emails.
To bring this piece to a close, the new gadget has been finding uses and I don't intend to leave it idle after paying over £150 for it. Apart from acting as an expensive calculator, it has already travelled abroad with me with roaming not being a problem; while I may have failed to make it work with hotel broadband, there was EDGE availability to keep things connected. All in all, the device is earning its keep and teaching me a few things about mobile handheld computing with my main website in process of being made more mobile compatible with the front page and the photo gallery gaining versions for handheld devices after the same was done for the outdoors blog earlier this year (might make the design look more like the rest of the site though). Without something on which to do some real testing, that idea may not have become reality as it is. It may be no desktop substitute, but that's never to say that these devices may never get near that situation. After all, there was a time when no one could imagine the same for laptop PC's, and we all know what has happened to them.