It is a sad day when all these gadgets become the focus of life. There is more to life than getting
excited about the next smartphone. But on the other hand you can you it as a mini-tablet
and mp3 player without any service provider? Nokia smartphones are well build and dirt cheap.
They are running Windows 8.1 and make GREAT little portable media players, note takers, app runners.
Just set up that Microsoft account, do your updates, put the phone in airplane mode and then
(selectively) turn on Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth and you're good to go.… see more
Consider it as a device similar to electronic
bracelet that some prisoners are forced to wear. So better, more expensive smartphone means a
better more powerful watching device that you wear. Much like electronic handcuffs. Unless you
root the phone you do not have much control what applications it runs. and if you can root you
phone, you probably know better that it is impossible to control spywar ethatif installed on the
phone.
Phone parameters can be checked at
gsmarena which usually
have pretty precise information.
There are several important feature that you can strive to get in your smartphone
Larger size of the screen. Unless you have some special needs (for example want
to put phone in pocket of jeans) larger is better. Low end 4.5" and 5" smartphones now are reasonable
cheat (some are less then $150 unlocked). For storing phone is jeans pocket 5" is probably the
upper limit after which it is less comfortable (for larger man probably 5.5" or even 6").
Phones with 5" screen and larger can be used for reading books. That's very convenient.
For basic browsing moderate resolution such as 540 x 960 pixels (~220 ppi pixel density) for
5" screen is adequate
Battery life. This is very important parameter. Phones with 2 core CPU adequate
screen resolution and large battery are able to run for three-five days without recharging. Higher
end phones barely make two days.
Ability to switch to Wifi automatically when it is available. this feature is now
available on most phones. Such phones it can be used as your home phone.
Dual SIM (that means that you can by separate SIM for data plan). Taking into account
the level of rip off the typicall smartphone plan provides this is an important (or very important
if you browse a lot) feature. For people who just look at weather once a day it does not matter much.
Ability to withstand brutal drop. This is less important as phone can be put in cheap
rubber cover. See amazing video about capabilities of phones with corning grass to withstand
brutal drop:
Fashion in its most stupid form rules smartphone world (look at Apple enthusiasts that pay several
hundred bucks, sometimes close to a thousand dollars for newest Apple phone). There are two powerful
fashion trend is smartphone world. Both from pure technical standpoint are extremely stupid but still
there are powerful forces behind them that shape consumers (as sheeple or poor f*cks) behaviour
like behavior of clueless lemming.
One especially stupid notion is that thinner smartphone is somehow better. In reality not only
thinner mean better. Often it is quite opposite. Higher parameters (more pickers on the screen)
in addition to thinner body affect reliability. Everything is packed in tight small space with
very little airflow and that equals higher operating temperatures inside and a higher likelihood
of failure rate compared to something slightly bigger/thicker with a better airflow and cooling capability.
The second is screen resolution. As for pixels in screen this is the second mantra by which Apple
cult works. It affect temperature of internal components on the phone and drastically affect
battery life. For basic browsing moderate resolution such as 540 x 960 pixels (~220 ppi pixel
density) for 5" screen is adequate for most needs and provide much better battery life then high-end
resolutions. Apple managed to force on competitors a rat race in screen resolutions.
Phones with screens below 5.5" generally can't benefit from 800 x 1024 resolution. Or more
correctly benefits are marginal, but the drop in battery life is very real (the energy consumption
of the screen is proportional to the total number of pixels).
Similar is the situation with more pixels in camera. More pixels in camera means that pixles
itself are so tiny that it negatively affects quality of the picture.
And ability to access Facebook from smartphone is more curse then blessing ;-). IMHO Facebook is
the ultimate expression of the infantile, shallow and narcissistic approach a lot of people take to
their lives nowadays. People who like to be watched and spied. People who thoroughly enjoy being
stupid. There no advantages in being able conveniently work with the Facebook on smartphone. Only
disadvantages (
Leave Facebook if you don't want to be spied on, warns EU by Samuel Gibb)
Loveable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users "dumb fucks" for
trusting him with their data, published IM (Instant Message) transcripts show. Zuckerberg has
since admitted he made the comments.
Zuckerberg was chatting with an unnamed friend, apparently in early 2004. Business Insider, which
has a series of quite juicy anecdotes about Facebook's early days, takes the credit for this one.
The exchange apparently ran like this:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
And the ability to run games on smartphone looks pretty absurd to me, unless you spend most
of your life in planes ;-). Even in this case a small form laptop is a better deal. I am at a loss to
know anyone how doesn't have an extra space in their house or office to put a mini PC form factor
with 19" display to play games. The regular $399 home PC with 3 GHz i5 CPU, 8GB of memory and
cheap NVIDIA graphic card such as Dell Inspiron 660 will run most games out of the box without any drama.
And as people spend most of their time in office, home and driving that's enough. Although I did saw
once a guy who was sitting and playing some game on his smartphone on a hiking trail. To me he
looked like a complete idiot.
The lesson is simple: respect your privacy and try to save money and ignore fashion propagated by
Apple and Co. In simple terms that means never buy a smartphone phone for over, say, $250 (unlocked),
and in most cases you can get a decent one for approximately twice less. Resolution does not
matter much but you should never settle to less then 4.5" screen.
If you add to this good "pay as you go" plan from Tracfone or Wal-Mart family plan you can
save additional money. If you use a lot a minutes a month, then WI-FI calling is very important
as it saves a lot of money. T-Mobile plans provide this feature.
If you phone switches to Wifi it can be used as your home phone.
There are few people for whom smartphone is the major informational center and they use all spectrum
of capabilities, including camera and GPS navigation. But most people use only a tiny fraction of
capabilities. Theoretically a smartphone combines functions of a phone, tablet, camera, GPS and
hand scanner. But in reality even $800 smartphone will never be as convenient for Internet browsing
and playing music as $160 tablet with G3 (such as Lenovo A3000),
will never produce photos comparable with $150 camera (such as $135
Nikon Coolpix L610) and might never achieve a quality of call and reception of a decent $60 flip
phone (flip phones have better form factor and both microphone and speaker are located in better positions
to achieve higher quality). They also will never match specialized car GPS in speed of locating satellites.
Smartphone is by definition a jack of many trades, but master of none. That means that it make sense
to lower expectations and settle for a midrange or budget smartphones leaving "Cadillac style models"
for those who can't withstand the temptation of
conspicuous consumption.
Consumption for the sake of status.
Another important consideration that favor buying budget models is that only a tiny fraction of users
use those four functions of a smartphone on a regular basic. Probably 80% use it mainly as a phone with
occasional minimal browsing such as checking weather, checking bus/train schedule and looking at Google
maps. Those basic users are badly served by the industry as it is tilted toward "super expensive phones
(in $400-$900 range) and plans (in $60-$120 range). In other words industry artificially stimulated
"conspicuous consumption".
If you read reviews you instantly get the impression that, for example, that smartphone camera is
very important (despite the fact that many users use it only occasionally when they forgot their camera
at home). Smartphone will always have a mediocre camera due to limitations of the form factor,
optics and absence of good flash although some vendors manage to provide amazing camera in this form
factor, defying all the limitations. For example camera in most
Lumia phones and many higher end Samsung phones such as
Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4 produces amazing low light shots.
Another nonsense that is universally praised is the ability of the smartphone to run complex games
is a worthwhile feature. That's utter nonsense. What we face here is a powerful PR campaign of stimulation
of perverted usage of the device ;-). And this creates rat race for more and more powerful CPUs although
basic 2 core CPU is adequate for common usage and light browsing of the web. There is simply no
real need for 4 core CPUs in the phone and such a CPU make battery life considerably shorter even if
it is able to switch off extra cores when not loaded.
There is no doubt that smartphone area (to a certain extent) demonstrates the excessive
greed of both top vendors and the telecom industry. It is known that Apple iPhone 5S costs around $200
to produce. So if you want a smartphone that is not a vanity fair appliance you can try to
find a model below $250 that probably will be at least satisfactory (we added $50 for profit margin
to the base price; that's still 25% margin). People buying $600-$900 phones are mainly buying
"status symbol", not so much technical capabilities (moreover the higher price of smartphone is, the
more chances is that the user is a basic user ;-).
Here are the data on cost of manufacturing Apple iPhone: (September 25, 2013, Associated Press)
While the iPhone 5S includes a handful of new features that set it apart from Apple's previous
model, the actual cost to make the phone hasn't changed very much, according to a new study. An IHS
Inc. teardown of the new smartphone found that the components that make up a 16-gigabyte iPhone 5S
cost $190.70. Manufacturing costs add another $8, bringing the total production cost to $198.70.
Budget smartphones sacrifice little in the area of capabilities, but some components are by definition
budget. For example, they usually have screen less or equal 5" with lower resolution then higher end
models. Still quite adequate for most uses. Please note that smartphones with 5" screen and higher
usually are referred as phablets. We will not discuss this class
of smartphones here.
Again, while shopping for the phone you should remember that the cost of producing smartphone such
as iPhone 5 is around $200. So low cost phones are those that cost, say, less then $350. As with most
items in the USA the fair price can be obtained only on Black Friday ;-).
GPS phones use so called SIM (Subscriber
identity module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) a smartcard that is plugged in your phone
and provide you with the phone number, connection to provider parameters and has some storage. There are several SIM sizes for smartphone:
You can usually cut mini-sim to micro sim size and use a converter to use micro sim in mini-sim slot.
Adapter to micro and mini cards exists also for nano SIM. So nano SIM is upward compatible with all
three sizes. micro is upward compatible with mini-sim. and Mini sim can be cut to micro-sim size.
Attempt to pinch pennies typically badly misfires on Amazon. Attempt to save last
$10 of $100 phone or $30 on $250 phone can backfire is a very nasty way.
You need to buy phone that can be returned during first 30 days (which means only Amazon Prime
covered phones) and has verifiable US warranty. Otherwise you are playing in casino, not
buying a phone, especially with more expensive models (close to $250)
DO NOT PURCHASE FROM THIS SELLER! I was told I purchased a new phone, but after 3 months and
the phone stopped working I sent it into LG for repairs... and Guess what?! There is a work
history on this phone from 1 year ago! This company lied and sent me a USED phone that already
had problems! As a side note, I have another one of these phones and it died the exact same
way and LG was horrible to work with and has refused to repair it even though its in the 1
year warranty period! DO NOT PURCHASE THIS HORRIBLE PRODUCT!
I thought I was buying a new phone...
By Tara Son September 28, 2015
Verified Purchase
I purchased this LG Nexus 5 for my husband because we have been satisfied with other phones in
the Nexus family. I have this exact model of phone, purchased when one could buy them directly
from Google. When it came time for my husband to need a new phone, Google was not selling this
model any more, so we purchased it here. We have had his phone for less than 6 months when it
stopped working. We took it to a cell phone repair store thinking it might be the the charging
port. They replaced the charging port only to discover that was not the problem. Upon further
inspection they asked if I bought the phone new as it appeared to be refurbished and had a
wire on the internal parts that should not have been there if it were a new phone. The only
reason they could find that this wire would be present was if an internal componet had short
circuited and someone tried to fix it by bypassing that componet. So, now I sit with a phone
that is less than 6 months old that is nothing more than a paperweight.
Grand Discounts is a fraudulent seller. Beware of third party seller.
By Pronine Canada on November 1, 2015
Verified Purchase
Grand Discounts: Fraudulent seller. Sold me two Nexus 5 that were not sealed and had their
bootloader unlocked.
One of them stopped working in two months. It would shut off on its own and not start up.
The second one has GPS issues. At first I thought it was the area I was living in but I took
it in for repairs they said this phone is not sealed and was refrub by the seller and not by
LG.
Called LG for warranty and they said the two phones did not have any warranty.
I am a previous owner of a Nexus 5 that got stolen and it worked flawlessly. Its the seller
that is fraudulent
Refurbished Phone - Not Recommended!
ByRushon December 3, 2015
Color: BlackVerified Purchase
It says the product is "New" on the website, but actually it is a poor refurbished
product.
1) When I opened the sim placement holder to keep a new sim card, the product number written
there was different than the one provided in the booklet. I am sure Google or LG would have a
thorough process to have one product number.
2) Battery life of the phone when started using was relatively low as compared to the
description provided for a new Nexus 5 phone. There has been many times that phone will
blackout and won't charge for about 7-8 hours and the red light keeps on flashing.
3) The updates on the phone are annoying, it happens every couple weeks (could be related to
android though).
4) The charger I received from this seller stopped working after few days.
5) There are hearing issues on the phone and speaker is not good at all
6) Even though you have full signal from the provider, when someone calls you - you will not
get the calls. Or when you call someone, it will go directly to voicemail.
7) Camera is worse
Phone has lots of glitches. You get what you pay for - Not recommended!
Piece of crap phone. Saved all summer to get this phone ...
By Tamara Casadoon October 6, 2015
Color: Copper GoldStyle Name: New Verified Purchase
Piece of crap phone. Saved all summer to get this phone ($500+ brand new, so they say) only to
have the screen turn green with lines and keep freezing only 4 weeks after getting it. You
guessed it, there's only a 4 week return policy on this. The phone was a couple days past
this. Unbelievable! Never buying from here again.
Another nasty surprise if you are buying unlocked phone is getting a locked phone instead
1.0 out of 5 stars The phone I got was not factory unlocked
ByKyleon February 5, 2015
Color: Charcoal BlackStyle Name: New
The phone I got was not factory unlocked, I tried using my t-mobile sim card and needed a code
to unlock it. Now I have to wait to see if at&t will unlock it. Not impressed at all
I recommend not to buy it with this dealer (breed)
By sol on July 26, 2014
Verified Purchase
I got this phone from amazon.com -> breed yesterday and I was upset when I tested it by
placing a t-mobile sim.
This phone is locked to ATT.
If you are planning to buy a unlocked device, I recommend not to buy it with this dealer
(breed)
So, my phone had some few issues from day one but knowing it was under warranty I kept it. It
finally gets to the point I know the problem isn't software and it's hardware. I not only had
to purchase a cheap second phone to use just so I could ship it I then get told they won't
f'in fix it. Supposedly something came lose and they don't care because as far as they are
concerned it's "Beyond Economical Repair" . What is "Beyond Economical Repair"? It's whatever
repair Samsung decides it doesn't want to do and jacks up the price to cover themselves. So a
phone less than 6 months old is a paperweight.
After this experience I will never be buying another Samsung device and would recommend
anyone to not do so. There customer service and warranty service is horrible. They even got
the color wrong when they had the serial number!
To update:
1.) It was BER because it was not white. Yet I ordered the Charcoal Black model and
the back of the Box w/ the same IMEI as the phone says "BLACK".
2.) Amazon graciously is allowing me to return it. But this is not Amazon's problem and
unfortunately they are having to handle Samsung's bs.
3.) My Moto X Pure arrives tomorrow and I will be glad to be no longer using a Samsung device.
Smartphones are to large extent "vanity fair" game, so technical specifications are not everything
here. High end models depreciate like real fashion items -- approximately 50% a year. And
that does not mean that this year model are considerable better. Sometimes it is completely opposite.
Smartphone screens keep getting bigger and at this point, we would avoid anything smaller than 4.5
inches. Devices like the 4-inch iPhone 5 are really suffering from small real estate.
One important feature that the phone should support is WI-FI, so that you can use WI-FI calling.
This allow to cut costs dramatically in case you use "pay as you go" plan (please do not use AT&T in
this case; they are just crooks; Tracfone is a much better deal for "pay as you go" contracts -- they
use Verizon as the carrier). There are applications that help you to connect to available
public hotspot and keep a map of such hotspots. For example, AT&T provides such an application with
its phones.
We can subdivide budget Android smartphones into two interlapping sub-categories:
Smartphones with android 4.3 or higher can be used in combination with
Smartwatches. Optimal size is probably 5" and in
this sense Samsung Galaxy S4 has optimal size and weight.
Larger phones such as Samsung's Galaxy Note (5.3-inch) is largely credited with pioneering the worldwide
phablet market. They are better book readers, but are less convenient to carry in the pocket.
"When we first introduced the Note in 2011, a lot of people made a mockery of it and some even
said it was doomed to fail," Lee Young-hee, executive vice president of mobile marketing at Samsung,
recently told reporters.
"But we noticed that people were carrying more than three devices on average such as phones,
music players and gaming machines, and we thought people may want just one device that can do it
all."
The Samsung Galaxy Note[19] used a 5.3 in (130 mm) screen. While some media outlets questioned
the viability of the device,[20][21] the Note received positive reception for its stylus functionality,
the speed of its 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, and the advantages of its high resolution display.
The Galaxy Note was a commercial success; Samsung announced in December 2011 that the Galaxy
Note had sold 1 million units in two months. In February 2012, Samsung debuted a Note version
with 4G LTE support, and by May 2012 the Note received an update from Android 2.3 to Android 4.0.[22]
By August 2012, the Note had sold 10 million units worldwide.[23]
The 2012 Samsung Galaxy Note II employed a 1.6 GHz quad-core processor, a 5.55 in (141 mm)
screen and the ability to run two applications at once via a split-screen view.[24] Sales of the
Galaxy Note II reached 5 million units internationally in two months.[25] The 2012 LG Optimus
Vu used a 5 inch (130 mm) display with a 4:3 aspect ratio—which was considered an unusual ratio
for a smartphone screen.[5][16] Joining the Galaxy Note II on many carriers' websites in 2013 was
the nearly-identically-sized LG Optimus G Pro, released in April.[26] The two 2013 Samsung
Galaxy Mega phablets, with 5.8 or 6.3 in (150 or 160 mm) screens -- neither with an integral stylus
-- were released in May and June, respectively.[27]
Budget ($50-$150 category). There
is no free lunch. It is very difficult to buy a recent model of unlocked Android smartphone in
this price category from major manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Sony or HTC. But
you can buy an excellent one year old model or this year model from the second tie manufactures.
Please note that Android 4.4 and later has somewhat better security, which is a very weak
point of low cost Android phones with older versions. As it is difficult to get an unlocked
Android smartphone with one year warranty in this category from Amazon
The main sacrifices for
models in this price range is the quality of the screen. And/or reliability, if you go to the second
tier manufactures (Although for unlocked phones paradoxical situation exists in the USA: they
are very difficult to buy with official warranty). You probably can't get better then 4.5"
screen with decent resolution. It is still OK for calls, texting and light browsing, but slightly
small for reading books.
Upscale (up to $250 category). This category can be called "luxury
phones from previous year or two". Classic example is
Samsung Galaxy S4, which in 2015 can be bought unlocked for
250 or less. And refurbished model for Verizon or AT&T can be bough for less then $150.
Display: 5" TFT capacitive touch screen, 256K colors, with at least 800×480 resolution.
Protection: Scratch-resistant glass
Memory: 512 MB RAM, 4GB SSD (2 GB user available),
Android OS: v4.1 (Jelly Bean) or v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), upgradable to v4.1.1 (Jelly
Bean)
CPU: Dual Core 1 GHz or better.
5 MP Primary Camera, autofocus (probably no LED flash)
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, LE, EDR, NFC
microSD Memory card slot;
At least 1500 mAh battery
On the low limit of this price range only Nokia phones with Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 are
reliable option if we are talking about unlocked models. The flagship on such "low budget
phones" used to be Lumia 520. For the price it is a
very good, reliable smartphone. Now it is probably
Nokia Lumia 635 or
Nokia Lumia 920 RM-820 32GB Unlocked GSM 4G LTE Windows 8 For
someone interested in a first low cost smartphone, Lumia 920 is an excellent choice. The Lumia 920
has a stunning 4.5" IPS LCD, 1280x768 resolution, 332 ppi display. This phone has up to 32 GB
storage and 1 GB RAM. 8.7 MP camera and a 1080p HD Video. 1.5 GHz dual core processor.
Some BLU models have pretty good customer reviews too but this is more ricky option.
Newer finds:
Samsung phones
Samsung
SCH-i545 - Galaxy S4 16GB Fir particular carrier such as At&T or Verizon you can get certified
refurbished for $150 or less.
Classic
Samsung I8190 Galaxy S III Mini fall into this price range in 2014 (with cost
around $130). It has 4.3" FWVGA (480 x 854 pixels ) screen which is smaller then you
can get from other models, but this is still an excellent phone.
Motorola Moto G (2nd generation) Unlocked Cellphone, 8GB, White Cell Phones & Accessories
Micro-SIM, 5" screen $99. This is a very good deal. 1GB of RAM, 8GB SSD in base version.
Uses single micro SIM card; will also be getting a dual-SIM variant later. The Moto G features
a 4.5 inch (11.5 cm) display with the resolution of 1280 x 720 and all-day battery. Gorilla
Glass 3 for protection. It runs Android 4.3. The handset packs in a 1.2GHz quad-core
Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 5-megapixel with LED flash front and and 1.3-megapixel
rear cameras. 8 GB ($179) or 16 GB SSD ($199). See review at
GSMArena
Dual Mini SIM Card Dual Standby. Support 2G: GSM 900/1800/1900MHz and 3G: WCDMA
900/2100MHz frequency. Android 4.2 operating system, better reliability and compatibility.
High performance MT6592V Octa core 1.4GHz CPU, excellent processing platform. 5.5-inch(960
* 540) capacitive touch screen. 5 Mega-pixel AF rear camera with flashlight and 0.3 mega-pixel
front camera.
1G RAM + 4GB ROM and support micro SD card / TF card (not included) expansion up to 32GB.
Support GPS, Bluetooth, G-sensor, Wifi, etc.
1 * Lenovo A850+ Smartphone 1 * 3.5mm Earphone 1 * Power Adapter 1 * USB Cable 1 * Battery
?1 * User Manual (Chinese)1 * 2600mAh dodocool Power Bank
You can get much better specification from second tier manufactures. Actually Alcatel is pretty reliable
brand. If you are young and adventurous, you can try manufactures like Blu which can have
better screen up to 7" and latest version of Android (remember that this is a higher risk/faith buy).
Blu is reportedly has audio problems and uless the phone has large batttery (same phones do have
4000 mAh battery) short battery life problem. If you are desperate to save money you
can also buy of a refurbished phone but it will save you only around $20 in this price range, so generally
it does not make any sense.
Older models that are now "super-budget")
(I actually am not that impressed with the interface and colors of android 5. On Samsung s4 upgrade
spoiled previously excellent phone and added nothing in return. So older phones with Android 4.1-4.4
have an edgle over android 5 phones from my point of view. The only problem is that when the phone was
manufactured two or more years ago, battery might be not as good as in newer models.
Beware fraud in this category
Sold without US warranty. International unlocked version is around $140, but screen is slightly
smaller that should be in this category. You can't get it directly from Amazon, but there
are several sellers with above 4.6 rating and you can get it on Prime (free shipping by Amazon
from Amazon warehouse) This phone was the most popular unlocked phone on Amazon for a long
time (2013-2014 I think); for this reason Apple sued to blocks direct sales by Samsung in
the USA relying of some flimsy patents.
This $80 model has 4.0" screen ( 480 x 800 pixels ) and comes with Android 4.2.x, 4 GB (2.7
GB user available), only 512 MB RAM, 4GB SSD and US warranty. Can be bought directly from
Amazon. Blu products have problems with audio as well as weak noise suppression for mike).
Looks like there are some problems with screen, but they are evident only when watching
movies which is not a good idea for the device..
Type TFT capacitive
touchscreen, 16M colors Size 480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density) Internal
4 GB (1.8 GB user available), 768 MB RAM CPU Dual-core 1.2 GHz OS Android OS, v4.2 (Jelly Bean)
Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice! Great choice for international travel., April 29, 2014
oldtechdude
This review is from: Samsung Galaxy S Duos II S7582 White DUAL SIM Factory Unlocked International
Ver (Unlocked Phone)
This Samsung Galaxy S Duos II S7582 was a GREAT choice and I am very happy with it.
I needed a Dual SIM Phone for my daughter while she is traveling across multiple continents, so
I can stay in contact with her, and she can use a local pre-paid SIM card. I only had the phone
a few days before sending it out again, so this review is limited to that. She had a GT-S7562
and was happy with it until it was stolen out of her hand in India (Travelers Beware!)
Helpful info:
Came with Android 4.2, the phone updated to 4.2.2 as soon as I connected it to the internet.
This phone has slots for two of the larger SIM cards – not the mini-SIM.
My US carrier's SIM card (AT&T) plugged in and worked fine for both Voice and Data. Phone calls
and voice quality worked fine. I did not test the data speed on AT&T but it seemed fine. Google
Maps worked great using GPS and AT&T data.
This is the same size as the Galaxy Mini phones – it just has dual SIM slots.
This phone came in a small, factory sealed, Samsung box with: the Phone, plastic back, battery
(1500mAh), USB-A to Mini-USB cable (18 inch?), “In ear” style earphones with microphone, and an
EU plug wall charger.
Pros:
Unlocked from Samsung, designed for international use – so it should work with most any WMA/SIM
carrier in the world.
Great size for travel. Big enough for the Android experience - slightly larger screen than an
iPhone but not nearly the size of the more expensive 5 inch phones.
Great screen, very easy to read and worked well even in sunlight.
Phone worked great. Very responsive. First power up screen asked for the language with a LOT of
choices. WiFi connected first time. AT&T SIM card worked first time.
Price – paid 158USD with free overnight shipping from Prime.
Cons:
Battery life - Though I did not get much of a chance to test this phone, all Android phones (smart
phones in general??) seem to lose their charge in less than a day. Plan for it.
Only 4GB internal Flash. Minor: Wall Charger is an EU Plug. But I have many US Chargers and it is an international
phone...
I suggest ordering/having the following for this phone:
1) Case – I got the 7USD Amzer AMZ95155 TPU case and it works fine for basic protection.
2) Micro-SD card – the phone had over 1.5GB available, but for travel (taking pictures, storing
music/video) I got the SanDisk SDSDQU-016G-AFFP-A 16GB Micro-SD card for 13USD.
3) Additional Battery or portable USB charger.
4) International AC Adapter, or Micro-USB power source for charging.
Over all I highly recommend this phone and I would buy another one if needed.
One last note: This order was fulfilled by Amazon Prime and the seller was “aSavings” – Kudos
to Amazon and aSavings for a perfect transaction.
Dual Core 1.2ghz
Built In GPS
Bluetooth 3.0
Wi-Fi:IEEE 802.11g / 802.11n / 802.11b
Micro USB 2.0
Back camera: 5.0 mega pixel /Auto Focus
Front camera: 0.3 mega pixel
Support to shoot 30 fps @720p with sound, time depends on storage
Gravity Sensor
Light sensor
Proximity sensor
Digital Compass
FM radio
3.5 mm Audio Jack
Sony Xperia M C2004 - Dual Mini SIM - Unlocked - US Warranty Sold by Amazon with US warranty.
4" display. Screen resolution is 480 x 854 pixels, diagonal is 4.3". good phone but inferior
to
Moto G. 1GB RAM.8 GB SSD. Only Android 4.1 is preinstalled but it is good enough.
Released in June 2013.
Very good quality, phone works perfect, has a long battery life, comfort Sony virtual keyboard,
non-sliding plastic like rubber when you touch it, size the same as iPhone 5, android work fast
and smooth, fast 3d graphic chip
**** Huawei Ascend Y300 (Huawei
U8833-Y300 Android 4.1 Dual Core 1.0GHz 4.0 inch WVGA )Used to be a good phone, No.50 in best selling unlocked
phones on Amazon. Specification-wise it can compete with Nokia Lumia 520. Only one regular size SIM.
I hope Chinese do not produce Huawei counterfeits ;-) Popularity of the phone attests
the fact that there multiple skins offered for this model. There is one Prime seller on Amazon with
the price around $120. They are cheaper non-prime sellers with good reviews selling bulk-packaged
variant, but in this case you need to take additional risk. Far from entry level in features. The
only phone from the top tier manufacturer in this category with 4" screen, Android 4.1 and 512 RAM
. See
Huawei Ascend Y300 Review from
CNET UK. Might have microphone issues: "I've had two of these phones and both had the same
microphone fault - at random intervals during a call the microphone would stop working and the person
I was talking to couldn't hear me. "
Sony Xperia E C1604 dual SIM ($140-$156 on Amazon; probably can be bought for less
on Black Friday. Ships directly from Amazon. Comes with android 4.x; ). It has
good sound quality, competitive with Lumia 520 (Noise
cancelling microphone and HD sound) and great battery life. See review at
gsmarena. They
say "Xperia E will most likely get the job done for first-time smartphone users."
LCD or Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen 4.7" or 5.5" or larger (but 5.5" might be
not that convenient to wear in jeans pockets) . 1280*720 resolution might make sense
if you watch a lot of videos or browse text documents with tiny fonts. But up to 5.3" screen
480 x 854 resolution is OK and saves battery life.
Android OS: v4.4 (this is compatible with Wear smartwatches, if later you want one ).
Or, if you prefer (I don't) Android 5.1 (which IMHO sucks). Verion of Android actually does not matter
much for casual uses who do not download many applications(many users generally do not download anything
on their phone), but if you use Wear smartwatch you need at least 4.3
CPU Dual-core 1.2 GHz,
Memory: at least 8GB SSD; at least 1 GB RAM;
microSD Memory card slot;
Battery, Li-Ion at least 2000 mAh
For example,
LG Nexus 5 D820 Unlocked Cellphone, 16GB, Black It can be bought from prime sellers on
Amazon (but not Amazon itself). The current cost of a new model is around $250 and refurbished $180.
Beware getting a refurbished unit. This phone comes with a five-inch 1920-by-1080-pixel display (that's 445 pixel per inch) and is powered
by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.3GHz with 2GB of RAM.
Google is making the two models latest Nexus phone, which will sell starting today for $349
without a contract for the 16 GB model and $399 for the 32 GB model, available in more countries
(10) and retailers and carriers (T-Mobile, Best Buy BBY +0.3%, Amazon, Sprint, and Radio Shack)
than previous models. It won’t be available on Verizon, which uses different cellular frequencies
than other carriers, but will work with AT&T.
However, Google’s intention is less to gain market share than to provide a reference model
that will push the rest of the industry forward faster, Pichai said. Google’s flat shares in today’s
trading may reflect that reality.
Perhaps most important for Google, KitKat was designed to require less memory to run, only
512 megabytes of RAM, which is common to many low-end smartphones. Google did that by reducing
memory consumption needed by the software, by taking apps like maps and mail and making them use
less memory, and exiting out of apps or processes automatically if they’re not being used. In
addition, the software will give app developers way to recognize that a particular phone has only
a small amount of memory, so they can do a different user interface to make it fit better.
“It’s a cutting-edge OS meant to operate on cutting-edge phones, but it can work all the way
back on less sophisticated phones, in one version of the OS,” Pichai said. “That makes a big difference.
We want to reach the next 1 billion people on one version of Android.”
KitKat, aka
Android
4.4, has faster multitasking and full voice control, according to Google, and a smarter caller
ID system so that if the number dialing in isn't on your contacts list then Android will take
a guess at who it is using businesses listed on Google Maps.
KitKat devices can now send documents to printers directly using Google Cloud Print or
HP's ePrint system, and Quickoffice has been redesigned to make finding files easier and
editing documents and spreadsheets more simple. The email application has also had a facelift,
as has the download function.
... ... ...
Google has stuck with LG as its hardware maker for the Nexus 5, rather than switching to Motorola
as some rumors had suggested. The mobe comes with a five-inch 1920-by-1080-pixel display (that's
445 pixel per inch) and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.3GHz with
2GB of RAM.
LTE and dual-aerial Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) is built in and the handset has two cameras –
a bog-standard 1.3Mp front facer for videoconferencing and an 8Mp rear camera. For auteurs, there's
also a new HDR+ mode that takes multiple shots quickly and combines them into a single photo that
takes the best features from each image.
The new Nexus – one of the most
gossiped-about smartphones in a while – is the slimmest one yet at 69.17 x 137.84 x 8.59mm
and weighs in at 130g. Google claims the 2,300mAh battery is good for 17 hours talk time, 300
hours of standby and 8.5 hours of use with Wi-Fi, or seven hours on LTE. Wireless charging and
NFC is also built in.
The Nexus 5 will cost $349 for the 16GB version and $399 for 32GB of storage, but there's
no slot to fit any removable media, presumably since we're all supposed to be cloudy these days.
Google has also eschewed Apple and Motorola Mobility's fruity color schemes – the Nexus 5 is available
in black and white only.
Nokia Lumia 830 (see more on this phone). This is
a really nice, solidly build upscale smartphone but with Windows 8.1 instead of Android. If it does not matter
for you go for it if you can buy it with US warranty. The current price is around $200 on Amazon,
but few sellers offer it. Beware getting a refurbished unit.
Nokia Lumia 830 - Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
The Lumia 830 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 MSM8926 SoC with a 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7
CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 305 GPU. There is 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage; the latter
can be expanded with MicroSD cards up to 128 GB in size.
The Lumia 830 has a 5.0 in (130 mm) IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1280x720
and an aspect ratio of 16:9. The display features Nokia's ClearBlack polarisation filters and
is protected by curved Gorilla Glass 3.
The Lumia 830 has a 10 MP PureView-branded rear camera, sporting a 1/3.4-inch BSI sensor with
1.12 μm pixels, and an optically stabilised Carl Zeiss 6-element lens with an f/2.2 aperture.
The camera supports 1080p video capture and is complemented by an LED flash and a two-stage shutter
button. The front camera has a 0.9 MP sensor with a wide-angle f/2.4 lens, and supports 720p video
recording.
The Lumia 830 supports 4G LTE technology with maximum transfer speeds of 150 Mbit/s.
Other wireless connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, NFC,
Bluetooth 4.0, and wireless screen projection via Miracast. Physical connectors include a Micro-USB
2.0 connector for charging and data transfer, as well as a 3.5 mm audio jack.
Samsung Galaxy s4 As of December 2015 it dropped to below $250 price range. This is a very
good, smartphone with a lot of Samsung junk pre-installed (which is removable). See
Galaxy S4
"... The important thing is that the penalty for spoofed calls needs to be on the telecom company, not the originator, who is outside American jurisdiction. If the originator can't be 100% verified, then deny the spoofing. ..."
"... I can't believe how bad the text spam/robocall situation is in the US. I mean, I'd read about it, but until a few days ago I'd both never had a US phone number and never had a robocall in my life. Then I activated a US SIM for travel, and within about fifteen minutes had text spam and several voicemails (which I've deleted without listening to them). Asked a US friend who said that she never answers phonecalls on her cellphone and has her SMS set to mute because it's so bad. ..."
"... How do people live with this? It makes cellphones basically unusable. ..."
(thehill.com)
73
thwarting the scourge of robocalls dialing up U.S. consumers
, about one month after the
Senate adopted its own anti-robocall bill
. From a report:
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman
Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) on Thursday announced the legislation, which
differs from the Senate's version on some points but seems to have significant overlap. Pallone and Walden's
Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would require phone carriers to implement technology to authenticate whether calls
are real or spam, and allow carriers to offer call-blocking services. The legislation specifies the carriers
should make sure that legal calls, such as those from doctors offices or creditors, are not blocked, while
opening the door for the government to broaden its definition of what constitutes a "robocall."
A better solution would be to put an end to call spoofing, so incoming phone numbers can always
be verified. Then, make it easier to sue spammers across state lines or out of country, and
that $1,500 - $7,500 per call fine that consumers can sue for (and get the money from) will
make robocalls and scams and fraudsters go away quite quickly...
Any company of that size can do it's own infrastructure.
But lets say it's necessary
for smaller companies, the phone companies can simply have registries for which phone
numbers are allowed to be spoofed. Then any use of that spoofing service beyond their
terms of use would result in termination of their contract and exposure of their call
records to complainants so they can be sued.
Exactly this. It's not like phone companies can't set up case-by-case exceptions for
legitimate businesses. It's all computerized, so it would take little effort to have a
X-to-Y allowed spoof list on outgoing calls.
The issue is the way it is right now:
You can spoof your call as coming from ANY number, with no verification, limitations,
or penalties. Limiting it to spoofing to a number that leads back to your own company
would be a trivial verification step for a phone company to set up in comparison to
the spam call blocking they're working on.
Exactly this. It's not like phone companies can't set up case-by-case exceptions
for legitimate businesses.
It doesn't even need to be case-by-case. If a company owns the originating
number AND the displayed number, then the telecom (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile) can let
it through. Otherwise, it should be illegal for the telecom to allow it.
The important thing is that the penalty for spoofed calls needs to be on the
telecom company, not the originator, who is outside American jurisdiction. If the
originator can't be 100% verified, then deny the spoofing.
I can't believe how bad the text spam/robocall situation is in the US. I mean, I'd
read about it, but until a few days ago I'd both never had a US phone number and
never had a robocall in my life. Then I activated a US SIM for travel, and within
about fifteen minutes had text spam and several voicemails (which I've deleted
without listening to them). Asked a US friend who said that she never answers
phonecalls on her cellphone and has her SMS set to mute because it's so bad.
How
do people live with this? It makes cellphones basically unusable.
Isn't that more of a PBX you are describing and not the call spoofing that robocallers
use? I think it would be more them calling you from a number that has the same area
code and prefix as you - or from 000-000-0000 or some other obviously fake number is what
OP meant.
So you want businesses to have over 1000 different customer facing phone numbers when
they have to call a customer back?
If they want to display 1000 different outgoing phone numbers, then they need to OWN
THOSE NUMBERS.
If they want all their outgoing phones to display a single number, that is fine too,
as long as they OWN THAT NUMBER, and it is a valid call-back number that leads to a
human.
Overlaying calls onto numbers that belong to unsuspecting innocent people should not
be allowed, and it is outrageous that this is currently legal.
Sorry, but no company is going to have 1000s of call back numbers that lead to a
human.
Why not? Then can all lead to ONE human. If it takes more than one to deal with
all the angry calls, then they have two choices:
1. Hire more people.
2. Stop spamming.
The staffing requirement alone would scare them all off.
Why is that a bad thing?
Further it would destroy call centers.
Only if they are in the business of making unsolicited robocalls.
Yes. If they can make my phone ring I should be able to make their phone ring the same
one that called me. Or I should be able to set up a charge to call the reversing the
billing automaticly for incoming calls registered to businesses. I have a personal phone
line for personally is. If a business entity entity calls me and they should have to pay
per call. Personal non-business affiliated numbers should continue to work as normal.
Make the businesses pay. leave normal people alone.
Samsung patents S Pen featuring built-in camera with optical zoom With its Galaxy
Note 9, Samsung brought Bluetooth functionality to its celebrated S Pen, allowing users to use
the stylus as a long-range shutter button – perfect for taking selfies and group photos
from a distance.Now, it appears that Samsung is looking to expand the S Pen's photo taking
functionality with the inclusion of a built-in camera, according to a patent that was
officially granted today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.As reported by
Patently Mobile, the patent, which was originally filed in February of 2017, involves an
"electric pen device" with an "optical system including a lens and an image sensor", allowing a
camera to be "controlled from the external electronic device." You can check out the various
drawings and diagrams from the submission in Patently Mobile's tidy graphic below.
Image credit: Patently Mobile
Optical zoom functionality has long been considered an obstacle for phone manufacturers, due to
the added thickness it brings to a handset's form factor. However, moving that optical zoom
functionality to an external device (such as the Note Series' famous S Pen) would cleverly
side-step this hurdle entirely. If used for selfies, it could also make pinhole cameras and
notch cutouts a thing of the past, at least in theory. Of course, it's been two years since
this patent was initially filed, so there's no guarantee that Samsung is still planning to
implement a camera in its S Pen in the Galaxy Note 10 (or any other Note for that matter).
Still, it doesn't hurt to dream!
Galaxy Note 10 may have brilliant camera zoom if Samsung buys this company
(reuters.com)BeauHD on Monday
November 05, 2018 @09:30PM from the can't-come-soon-enough dept. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on
Monday wrote the chief executives of major telephone service providers and other companies,
demanding they launch a system no later than 2019 to combat billions of "robocalls " and
other nuisance calls received by American consumers. Reuters reports: In May, Pai called on
companies to adopt an industry-developed "call authentication system" or standard for the
cryptographic signing of telephone calls aimed at ending the use of illegitimate spoofed
numbers from the telephone system. Monday's letters seek answers by Nov. 19 on the status of
those efforts.
The letters went to 13 companies including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Alphabet,
Comcast, Cox, Sprint, CenturyLink, Charter, Bandwith and others. Pai's letters raised concerns
about some companies current efforts including Sprint, CenturyLink, Charter, Vonage, Telephone
and Data Systems and its U.S. Celullar unit and Frontier. The letters to those firms said they
do "not yet have concrete plans to implement a robust call authentication framework," citing
FCC staff. The authentication framework "digitally validates the handoff of phone calls passing
through the complex web of networks, allowing the phone company of the consumer receiving the
call to verify that a call is from the person supposedly making it," the FCC said.
22 minutes ago remove Share link Copy There's still way too much fake liquidity in the system.
Until C/B's pull back their exposure, or rates become so unattractive that lending against
yourself [like APPL issuing debt to buy back stock] **** will continue as usual.
play_arrowplay_arrow Reply reply Report
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Apple was under severe pressure to pay dividends as apple was buying back stock instead to
increase earnings.
Apple has bigger issues...a slowing consumer base that have grown up with adult
problems...paying for diapers, mortgages and car payments. All of a sudden that old phone
with some nicks and scratches seems just fine instead of shelling out $1100, for a phone
call, $10 per month for an insurance plan and $95 for a case and extra charger.
1200 dollars to make a phone call. ATT of 1980 was cheap by todays standards
While the phone has been
teased and hyped up for several months, Koh stressed that it will not be a "gimmick
product" that will "disappear after six to nine months after it's delivered."
It'll reportedly
be available globally. CNET reports:
However, the foldable Samsung phone, like the Galaxy
Round, will be Samsung's testbed device to see how reviewers and the market react. The Galaxy
Round, which bowed vertically in the middle, was Samsung's first curve-screen phone. It's a
direct ancestor to the dual curved screens we see on today's Galaxy S9 and Note 9 phones.
The
larger screen is important, Koh said. When Samsung first released the original Galaxy Note, he
said, competitors called its device dead on arrival. Now, after generations of Notes phones,
you see larger devices like the iPhone XS Max and the Pixel 3 XL, proving that consumers want
bigger screens.
A foldable phone would let screen sizes extend beyond 6.5 inches.
(qz.com)
50While we're now on 4G networks, it was only 35
years ago this week that Ameritech (now part of AT&T) launched 1G , or the first
commercial cell phone network. That network, called the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS),
went online on October 13, 1983, allowing people in the Chicago area to make and receive mobile
calls for the first time. Ameritech president Bob Barnett, who made the first call, decided to
make the historic moment count by ringing Alexander Graham Bell's grandson. A little more than
a year later, UK's Vodafone hosted its first commercial call on New Year's Day. Israel's
Pelephone followed suit in 1986, followed by Australia in 1987.
Cellphone technology had been around for quite a while before that. AMPS was in
development for around 15 years, and engineers made the first mobile call on a prototype
network a decade before the first commercial network call. It took that long to troubleshoot
the various hardware, software, and radio frequency issues associated with setting up a fully
functional commercial network.
The obvious question came up: Should I buy a smartphone to replace my trusted Ericsson?
I tested several of the current top-of-the-line smartphones - Motorola, Samsung, Apple. They
were in the same relative price range as my old Ericsson was at its time. But they lack in
usability. They either have a too small screen for their multitude of functions or they are
bricks that require an extra pocket.
I do not want to give all my data into the hands of
some unaccountable billionaires and unknown third parties. I do not want my privacy destroyed.
So no - I decided not to buy a smartphone as replacement for my trusted Ericsson
companion.
It is a Chinese product sold in Germany under the Olympia
brand. It is a GSM quad-band 'dumb' phone with FM radio and a flashlight. The standby time is
140 hours and talk-time is 3+ hours. The battery is a standardized model and future
replacements will be easy to find.
Size and weight are nearly the same as the old Ericsson. The keys are much bigger,
illuminated and easier to handle, especially in the dark. It is a robust construction and the
sound quality is good.
It cost me €22.00 ($26.40).
Posted by b on April 2, 2018 at 03:28 PM | Permalink
I'm not convinced the new generation of retro dumb phones aka feature phones do not also have
all the same surveillance capabilities as their smart brethren - even though they don't
expose those capabilities as features to the end user.
b - I only scanned your post, but my answer is: NO!
Don't buy a "smart" phone (or anything else labeled "smart"). They are nothing more than
data collectors, part of the Internet of Things that, IMNSHO, is an existential threat to our
civilization.
I just decided to look back at the end of the post. and I see that you took my advice.
;-)
Well you have to ask yourself, Do i want to participate in a mass surveillance system for
one, Then you have to ask Is their any reason i would accept constant audio recordings being
made of my environment, then you have the camera angle to contend... Then your GPS location
is a major issue, add the ultrasonic beacon thing and the cell tower triangulation aspect to
consider.... the phone you have from 2001 is not anywhere near as proficient at many of these
tasks being built well before the 2006 legislation regarding this series of systems... If it
were me and i knew all about this stuff, i would pay a hell of a lot more than a new phone is
worth to keep the old unit in service for as long as you could... Any new phone is going to
do all the above to your privacy and then some the old one is very limited, so how concerned
are you with being an open book to who ever has access to your phone from the hidden parts
and functions you never get to use? Me? I have seen a ton of serious problems with the uses
of the tech being built into the modern smartphones, some models give you lots of functions
to use, some give you a basic lite experience, But ALL new devices give the state running the
system a HEFTY pack of features you will never know about until it's damage has been done.
Take my advice Keep the 2000 model going for as long as you can if you must have a mobile
phone. If you WANT to be the target of every nasty thing the state does with this new tech
investigator/spy then by all means get one of the smart type, Any new one is just as bad as
any other after 2006 legislation changes went into effect. 2001 was a very bad event for this
topic... I will not have one after the events that befell me. A high performance radio
computer with many types of real world sensors, using a wide spread and near unavoidable
network of up link stations is the states most useful weapon. Everyone chooses to have what
they have, You can also choose to NOT have, but few choose NOT, many choose the worst option
on old values of this sort of choice and never think about the loss they incur to have the
NEW gadget for whatever reason they rationalize it.
Smart phones are destroyers of information sovereignty. With a PC one can save a copy of
every page you visit whereas with the smart phone all you can practically do is view things.
It pisses me off.
Has anyone noticed how shallow the so called world wide web has gotten these days.,?
Search terms which would in the psst throw up hundreds if not thousands of webpages on the
subject matter now result in sometimes no more than 3 or 4 entries. Google has stolen the
internet of us all. The web is dead. Cunts like zuckerberg should be drop kicked into the
long grass.
The main espionage equipment in a smartphone or dumbphone is not the application processor
and the programs that run on it. It's the GSM/3G/UMTS/LTE/5G chipset which every single one
of them obviously has. "We kill with metadata" is the most important aphorism about phones,
no matter which kind, ever.
However, a smartphone gives you lots of convenience which your 22$ chinaphone doesn't give
you. A browser when on the road, a book reader, a map device.
You have to take a few precautions, e.g. use LineageOS, install AFWall and XPrivacy. Nothing
different from using a PC basically. And you certainly shouldn't shell out 500$ for one.
Every dollar/euro above ca. 100 has to be very well justified.
Sure, you can live in the 80s, nothing wrong with that. We lived fine back in those days
too, but why not take advantage of some of the improvements since then?
psychohistorian | Apr 2, 2018 4:23:43 PM | 15
Nice post b. Expresses my sentiments exactly.
I had to take my Nokia X2 out of the plastic bag I keep it in so it doesn't get wet to see what model it was....I keep the
battery out and pay T Mobile $10/year to have emergency minutes when I need them....I maintain and use a land line for all my
calls.
It is not like these devices couldn't be useful but like the desktop OS world, bloatware is a standard now. I have programmed
handheld devices since 1985 and my latest was a MS Windoze10/C# inventory management application with barcodes and such.
Prior to the Nokia I have now I was nursing along a Palm 720p until I couldn't get a carrier to support it anymore. So since
the Palm I have consciously gone back to a Weekly Minder type of pocket calendar which I had to use before the online
capability came along.
If our world were to change like I want it to by making the tools finance a public utility I might learn to trust more of my
life to be held by technology than the 5 eyes already know......Everyone has seen the movie SNOWDEN , correct?.....my Mac
laptop had tape over the camera as soon as I brought it home.....I have a nice Nikon Coolpix camera with the GPS turned off
and the battery out......grin
I understand your choice, but you should have looked for a basic phone not just with GSM
(2G), but also at least with UMTS (3G).
GSM is being wound down, and the frequencies reallocated to LTE (4G).
Many operators in several countries have already switched off their GSM networks
(Australia, USA...) This means that in about 3-4 years, you will have real difficulties using
your new mobile phone, at least in developed countries; in the Third World, GSM will probably
last a bit longer.
I have a cheapo Nokia 100 for calls and a YotaPhone 2 as a tablet. The Yota is Russian but I
don't mind the FSB 😃 Aldo it has two screens, one being a passive black and white for
use in full bright sun light.
I think b made a wise decision. Up till now I've also not needed a smart phone and the
continious "connection" or being hooked to the "matrix" would not only eat my valuable time
away but would also make me feel more bound.
"Another disadvantage of smartphones is enormous amount of personal data they
inevitably steal for uncontrolled use by third parties. The technical consultant Dylan Curran
studied this:
As soon as an Android smartphone is switched on Google will collect ALL data on every
location change and on anything done on the phone. Apple does likewise with its
iPhones."
That's the basic privacy nullification. There is also what can be described as the
invasive potential. Certain companies, next to intelligence agencies, have made it their
business to switch a victims own smart phone into a full blown active spy device. Obviously
the victims are particular persons of interests like Dilma Roussef. Whenever a person is
having a conversation, talks to himself out loud, has a meeting or is intimate, all sounds
and conversations can be recorded next to video when the phone is positioned well. As we
know, most people will not or can't part from their beloved smart phone.
I can not tell what to do. In fact, when buying a "smartphone", you have to get used that the
phone will be discharged during 1 or 1.5 days, you will become dependent to next USB source,
or a battery pack (which is somewhat heavy, 1 pound ca. but not too bulky.
Personally, I am using such a device since 5 yrs ca., first a 4.7" HTC one of my daughters
gave me. I soon installed Cyanogenmod (now LineageOS) and threw away all the bloat and
especially the Google and Facebook dirt and spyware. I do not have an email account on the
brick, rather a browser over which I may access the Web representation of my email account,
which is NOT gmail or similar. I do not use Google playstore.
The "killer apps" for me are mainly FBReader, a free ebook reader, VLC for audio and
video, and OSMand, an OpenStreetMap client. Some simple calendar, picture etc. apps are on as
well. My recent phone is a Samsung S4 mini, bought used for 50€.
This is a minimalistic setup, but makes tracking and spying other than by government
agencies difficult. LineageOS is updated nearly every week, so fairly safe against Android
malware.
With a "regular" smartphone, you will lack updates after a few years, have a lot of bloat
on board you cannot get rid of, be forced to have a Google account for access of the software
repository Google playstore, which is deeply integrated into Android. If one does not care to
be spied and sniffed not only by the FBI and NSA, but by Brin and Zuckerberg in addition,
ok.
Provided one has access to good public WiFi: It seems to me that Wifi and a tablet, or laptop
(with a good battery) + the use of a virtual proxy network, VPN, which are almost always
encrypted, is better than a smartphone. (Of course if the tablet is Android don't use the
Chrome web browser.)
Then just buy a 25 euro Samsung or LG flip phone for the talking part of phone use. It
won't last 17 years, but one can still get batteries for them.
Of course this approach doesn't work if you don't have solid public WiFi where you'd
normally use a smartphone in public.
@mh505 #27 Even with a SIM card not linked to your personal ID card it's fairly easy to
automatically tie your smartphone to your person whereby you end up in the drag net you try
to escape. Not in the least thanks to your close ones whom probably have you listed with your
full name + phone number (thus SIM) in their smartphone. And that's even besides you
connecting to all kinds of services offered by Google and the likes that know where you
personally hang out because of WIFI access points, GPS location (if enabled), connected IP
address where someone else connected to who has GPS enabled etc.
Unfortunately your list of EU countries that don't require personal ID to purchase a SIM
card is incorrect.
In USA it pays to be stupid. The choice I have is to use a smart phone with a monthly
charge ca. 100 dollars or a stupid phone with a monthly charge of 8 dollars (or is it 15? and
the phone for 8). And if you are old enough you can bear with hardships like memorizing the
map of the area were you live, having to check stuff on your own desktop computer before you
leave home etc. And the difference in costs can be spent on cigarettes, beer, donations to
OxPham, it is your pick.
Concerning surveilance, a stupid phone is used sparingly, so it definitely provides less
tracking info.
I'm a 53 year old dog and try to keep things simple for myself. Being paranoid about being
tracked and watched isn't my thing. I use my smart phone as a phone when I need to talk to an
asswipe at work or my only friend to schedule a meetup or the wife unit when she calls. I
have limited data so I usually wait until I'm home to view porn and news websites on the pc.
I don't do any financial tasks on the phone, rarely text anyone, rarely use the camera, have
only a few apps for things like weather and writing myself a note to remember to pick up milk
or dog food on the way home from work. My life is so boring and my bank account so empty I'm
not worth a bother to "them".
(cnbc.com)BeauHD on Wednesday
February 14, 2018 @05:45PM from the heads-up dept. The heads of six top U.S. intelligence
agencies told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday they
would not advise Americans to use products or services from Chinese smartphone maker Huawei
. "The six -- including the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA and the director of national
intelligence -- first expressed their distrust of Apple-rival Huawei and fellow Chinese telecom
company ZTE in reference to public servants and state agencies," reports CNBC. From the report:
"We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden
to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our
telecommunications networks," FBI Director Chris Wray testified. "That provides the capacity to
exert pressure or control over our telecommunications infrastructure," Wray said. "It provides
the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to
conduct undetected espionage."
In a response, Huawei said that it "poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT
vendor." A spokesman said in a statement: "Huawei is aware of a range of U.S. government
activities seemingly aimed at inhibiting Huawei's business in the U.S. market. Huawei is
trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater
cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and
production capabilities."
(wsj.com)Flashy phones of yesteryear, particularly Apple's iPhones and Samsung's Galaxy
S handsets, are getting refurbished, and U.S. consumers are snapping them up. Many shoppers are
balking at price tags for new phones pushing $1,000, and improvements on latest launches in
many cases haven't impressed[Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative
source ] . As more people hold on to devices longer, new smartphone shipments plunged
to historic lows at the end of 2017. "Smartphones now resemble the car industry very closely,"
said Sean Cleland, director of mobile at B-Stock Solutions, the world's largest platform for
trade-in and overstock phones, based in Redwood City, Calif. "I still want to drive a Mercedes,
but I'll wait a couple of years to buy the older model. Same mentality." Another trend borrowed
from the car industry that has helped consumers get around sticker shock: leasing. Instead of
buying new phones, Sprint and T-Mobile allow subscribers to effectively lease them, allowing
them to trade up for the latest device. That option, though, hasn't yet gone
mainstream.
[...] Second-hand phones long found their way to Africa, India and other developing
markets. But now, U.S. buyers represent 93% of the purchases made at second-hand phone online
auctions run by B-Stock, compared with an about-even split between the U.S. and the rest of the
world in 2013. Samsung and Apple together sell more than one out of every three phones globally
and capture about 95% of the industry's profits. U.S. consumers, spurred by two-year carrier
contracts and phone subsidies, were upgrading every 23 months as recently as 2014, according to
BayStreet Research, which tracks device sales. Now, people are holding onto their phones for an
extra eight months. By next year, the time gap is estimated to widen to 33 months, BayStreet
says.
Every smartphone owner struggles to some extent with battery life
. But when your charge drops by half in just a couple of hours, you're in trouble. This can
happen when a battery suffering from old age
starts degrading fast. In this case, if you have an older phone, you should look at getting the
battery professionally replaced. Or, if you're do for an upgrade, consider buying a new phone
model and recycling your old one
.
However, before you start researching new phones, try a few tricks to maximize
your battery life . First, figure out if you can lay the battery drain blame on one or two
apps. In Android or iOS, you can check this via the Battery entry in Settings. If you do
identify a few energy hogs, remove them from your phone to see if the problem clears up. While
you're poking around the Battery menu, you can access the special battery saver mode (called
Battery saver on Androids and Low power mode on iPhones). Turning this on won't fix your
underlying problems, but it can give you a bit more time between charges.
To extend battery life even further, at least temporarily, dim the brightness of the display
or put the phone in airplane mode periodically. Location tracking can also drain your battery
-- switch it off in Android in Settings > Location and in iOS in Settings > Privacy and
Location Services. Poor reception
Don't blame your phone if it's having networking issues that make it difficult to connect to
Wi-Fi or catch a cellular signal. The culprit could be external. Are you in a notorious dead
spot where no one can get any signal? If you're at home, are other devices struggling to
connect to the web? You might need to focus your troubleshooting on something other than your
handset .
A call to your carrier or Internet Service Provider -- if you can bear it -- could be the
next step in trying to get everything working again. They will know more about the issues
specific to your phone and service. Alternatively, try a quick web search using the make and
model of your phone, and the name of your carrier or internet provider. You might well find
solutions from people who've had the same problem as you.
If you've determined that your phone is truly at fault, then start with a simple reboot.
This resets all your phone's wireless connections and establishes them again from the
beginning. If you'd rather not turn your phone off and on again, try putting it in airplane
mode and then turning the mode off -- this will have pretty much the same effect.
For persistent issues, make sure you're running the most recent version of your mobile
operating system. This will have the latest bug fixes and be ready to work with the latest
settings from your carrier or router. If you've been putting off an operating-system update,
then deal with it now.
If both the reset and the update fail, you've exhausted your home-repair options.
Connectivity is one of those features that should "just work," so if it doesn't, then you may
be looking at a faulty phone, a damaged SIM card, or a problem with the network itself. If the
issue started suddenly, and not because you altered any settings on your phone, it's more
likely that it's not your phone to blame. In this case, you'll definitely want to call the
experts at your phone's manufacturer or your service provider.
First, the good news. You cant overcharge your phones battery, so dont worry about that.
Your phone stops drawing current from the charger once it reaches 100%, according to Cadex Electronics marketing communications manager
John Bradshaw. Cadex manufactures battery charging equipment. Go ahead and charge to 100%,
Bradshaw says. No need to worry about overcharging as modern devices will terminate the charge
correctly at the appropriate voltage.
Edo Campos, spokesperson for battery-maker Anker , echoes that sentiment. Modern smart phones are smart,
meaning that they have built in protection chips that will safeguard the phone from taking in
more charge than what it should, says Campos. Good quality chargers also have protection chips
that prevent the charger from releasing more power than whats needed. For example, when the
battery reaches 100%, the protection hardware inside the phone will stop current from coming in
and the charger will turn off.
... ... ...
Dont wait until your phone gets close to a 0% battery charge until you recharge it, advises
Cadexs Bradshaw. Full discharges wear out the battery sooner than do partial discharges.
Bradshaw recommends that you wait until your phone gets down to around a 35% or 40% charge and
then plug it into a charger. That will help preserve the capacity of the battery. You should
also keep your phone cool, as higher temperatures accelerate the loss of battery capacity. Pro
tip: Take off your phones case before you charge it.
The main value in phone surveillance is not data but metadata. It is impossible t block the
collection of metadata. So in a way this is a deceptive advertizing.
At a business forum in Moscow on Friday she presented "TaigaPhone", a brand new smartphone
created by InfoWatch Group, her software development company, costing around 15,000 rubles
($260).
The TaigaPhone is entirely green to represent the Russian northern forest after which it is
named and has a five-inch touch screen.
"We have created it for the corporate market," said Kaspersky, president of InfoWatch Group
and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab.
... ... ...
"Half of all data loss in Russia happens on mobile devices, we intend to fix that problem
with the TaigaPhone," company representative Grigoriy Vasilyev told investors at the forum.
InfoWatch says the device can guarantee the confidentiality of all TaigaPhone users, track the
location of each device and prevent information leakage.
(theverge.com)
115 Posted by BeauHD on Thursday
September 07, 2017 @03:00AM from the there's-a-first-for-everything dept. According to
analysis
by consulting firm Counterpoint Research, China's leading smartphone marker, Huawei,
surpassed Apple's global smartphone sales for the first time in June and July . The company is
only behind Samsung in sales. The Verge reports: Figures haven't been released yet for August,
though Counterpoint indicates sales for that month also look strong. However, it's worth noting that
with Apple's new iPhone releases just around the corner, the iPhone maker is almost certain to get
back on top in September. Researchers at Counterpoint also point out that Huawei has a weak presence
in the South Asian, Indian, and North American markets, which "limits Huawei's potential to the near-to-mid-term
to take a sustainable second place position behind Samsung." Its strongest market is China, and it's
also popular in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Still, Apple doesn't have much to worry
about; Counterpoint says the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus remain the world's best-selling smartphones, while
Oppo's R11 and A57 claimed the third and fourth spots, respectively, followed by Samsung's Galaxy
S8, Xiaomi's Redmi Note 4X, and Samsung's Galaxy S8 Plus. Surprisingly, despite overtaking Apple
in global sales, none of Huawei's phones appear on the Top 10 list.
Vodafone's own-brand devices have been hit and miss over the past few years. There was the
Smart Ultra 6 , which was one of the best affordable phones of its time, and the
Smart Platinum 7 , which was an interesting step into more expensive, sub-flagship category.
But alongside those, there have been a number of
humdrum
handsets that failed to impress. As per its yearly update cycle, Vodafone recently released new
own-brand hardware, with the
Smart V8 in particular slotting into the carrier's roster as one of the best affordable options.
The most immediately striking feature of the Smart V8 when you free it from its box is the build
quality. It's almost entirely brushed metal aside from two pockets of textured plastic, with neatly
chamfered edges and loudspeaker grilles. While it's not pushing the boundaries of design by any means,
it certainly looks and feels like it's punching above the £159 pay-as-you-go price point.
The spec sheet isn't to be taken lightly either. You're looking at a 5.5-inch, 1080p LCD display,
an octa-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon 435, 3 gigs of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a 16-megapixel primary
camera and 8MP front-facer, all powered by a decent-sized 3,000mAh battery. You also get a rear-mounted
fingerprint sensor and NFC chip -- hello Android Pay. Perhaps even more important, the Smart V8 is
running Android 7.1.1, so it's basically as up-to-date as you can get on the software front.
It's more or less the stock Android experience, albeit with a few borderline-bloatware apps from
Vodafone added in. One quirk I've discovered worth noting is I can't seem to resize widgets on the
homescreen. Not a huge deal, but it does mean the digital clock widget is naturally off-centre, which
is slightly irritating.
In sunny summer conditions, the 16MP camera can be pretty handy. Good colour saturation, clarity,
and contrast thanks to the HDR mode. The app is pretty busy with filters and features and settings,
from full manual control to long exposure and "active photo" modes (kinda like GIFs/Live Photos).
You won't find much help in them in low-light conditions, though, where the camera begins to fall
off fairly quickly.
All in all, there's nothing particularly special about the Smart V8. These days, metalwork,
this kind of spec sheet and value-added features like fingerprint sensor and NFC are becoming standard
at the mid-to-low end. The new handset does have something going for it, though -- a pretty competitive
price tag.
Vodafone's pay-as-you-go range is relatively sparse around the £150 mark. You've got the £149
Sony Xperia L1, which is less attractive enough on paper to justify the jump to the £159 Smart V8.
The closest handset beyond that point is the fairly comparable £199 Huawei P8 lite (2017). The
Moto G5 gets a nod too, obviously, as well as the
Wileyfox Swift 2 , since they can be bought elsewhere for bang on £159. You wouldn't say either
of them are significantly better than the Smart V8, though.
Smart N8
If you've set yourself a slightly tighter budget, Vodafone also recently launched the
Smart N8 , an £85 handset sitting in the crowded low-end of the pay-as-you-go spectrum. It's
more than appropriately specced, with a 5-inch, 720p display, quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek chip, 1.5GB
of RAM, 16 gigs of expandable storage, 13- and 5-megapixel cameras, fingerprint sensor, NFC and 2,400mAh
battery.
Despite looking a little on the drab side, it's a decent value device. You could always save yourself
a London pint and opt for the £79
Moto G4 Play instead, which recently began receiving Android Nougat, but you would be sacrificing
the fingerprint reader/NFC combo. But that's true of most other devices dipping below the £100 marker
at the moment.
Smart Tab N8
While the two smartphones have obvious places in Vodafone's backroom, the new
Smart Tab N8 is where things get confusing. The draw of pretty much all own-brand tablets is
ultimate portability, thanks to 4G, at a reasonable cost. I wouldn't call the Smart Tab N8 very portable
though, because it's massive. It's not that heavy at 465g and it's pretty thin, too, with
8.95mm between the glass front and textured, tactile plastic back -- it's that it's all face.
Not only does the slate carry a 10.1-inch display, but a significant bloating of bezel around
it. It's not something you could slip into a handbag and it not be a nuisance, let's say. Worse yet,
that 10.1-inch screen runs at a very noticeable 1,280 x 800 resolution, making it easy to pick out
individual pixels. Large tablets are typically geared more towards entertainment, but 149 ppi doesn't
really cut it nowadays.
The other specs are largely irrelevant: A quad-core 1.1GHz MediaTek processor, 2 gigs of RAM,
16GB of expandable storage, 4,600mAh battery and 5MP/2MP cameras on the appropriate sides. Vodafone
is selling the Smart Tab N8 on contracts starting at £16 per month for a 5GB data cap and no upfront
payment. I'd sooner get exactly the same plan with Samsung's 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab A (2016), since
it's been upgraded to Nougat already and waves a more alluring spec sheet, the 1,920 x 1,200 display
being the most important upgrade. Hits and misses for Vodafone again, it would appear.
How strange to think the iPhone is 10 years old. How will all those Millennials and Xers maintain
their self-image?
You can't be a cutting edge techie warrior when your "hot new" gadget hasn't
materially changed in a decade. I think it's pretty indisputable we've entered a period of stagnation.
No antitrust enforcement in 15 years - we're paying the price.
The only reason we got the web is because David Boies went after Microsoft before Bill Gates
could strangle it in its cradle.
Those tech companies better hurry it up with the flying cars and sex bots. They can only point
at plastic WiFi-enabled fitness bracelets and bluetooth juice machines for so long. All the smart
people in Silicon Valley are stuck working on better ways to spy on their customers and sell them
ads. That is not innovation.
"... In many ways Treo/Palm and Windows CE anticipated it, but especially the latter tried to bring
a "desktop" UI on tiny devices (and designed UIs around a stylus and a physical keyboard). ..."
"... The N900, N810 and N800 are to this day far more "little computers" than any other smartphone
so far. Indeed, as they ran a Debian Linux derivative with a themed Enlightenment based desktop, which
is pretty much off the shelf Linux software. While they didn't have multitouch, you could use your finger
on the apps no problem. It had a stylus for when you wanted extra precision though. ..."
"... I was reading a BBC news web article and it was wrong too. It missed out emphasising that the
real reason for success in 2007 was the deals with operators, cheap high cap data packages, often bundled
with iPhone from the Mobile Operator. ..."
"... Actually if you had a corporate account, you had a phone already with email, Apps, ability
to read MS Office docs, web browser and even real Fax send/receive maybe 5 or 6 years before the iPhone.
Apart from an easier touch interface, the pre-existing phones had more features like copy/paste, voice
control and recording calls. ..."
"... I remember having a motorola A920 way back in 2003/2004 maybe, and on that I made video calls,
went online, had a touch interface, ran 'apps', watched videos.... in fact I could do everything the
iPhone could do and more... BUT it was clunky and the screen was not large... the iPhone was a nice
step forward in many ways but also a step back in functionality ..."
"... Apple invented everything... They may have invented the iPhone but they DID NOT invent the
"smartphone category" as that article suggests. ..."
"... Microsoft had Smartphone 2002 and Pocket PC 2000 which were eventually merged into Windows
Mobile and, interface aside, were vastly superior to the iPhone's iOS. ..."
"... Devices were manufactured in a similar fashion to how android devices are now - MS provided
the OS and firms like HTC, HP, Acer, Asus, Eten, Motorola made the hardware. ..."
"... The government was looking for a display technology for aircraft that was rugged, light, low
powered and more reliable than CRTs. They also wanted to avoid the punitive royalties taken by RCA on
CRTs. It was the work done in the 1960s by the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern and George William
Gray and his team at the University of Hull that led to modern LCDs. QinetiQ, which inherited RSRE's
intellectual property rights, is still taking royalties on each display sold. ..."
"... The key here is that Steve Jobs had the guts to force the thought of a useful smartphone, gadget
for the user first and phone second into the minds of the Telcos, and he was the one to get unlimited/big
data bundles. ..."
"... He identified correctly, as many had before but before the power to do anything about it, that
the customers are the final users, not the telcos. ..."
the point is flat on it's back just like the sophistic reply.
Lets take apples first machines they copied the mouse from Olivetti , they took the OS look
from a rank XEROX engineers work, the private sector take risks and plagiarize when they can,
but the missing person here is the amateur, take the BBS private individuals designed, built and
ran it was the pre cursor to the net and a lot of .com company's like AOL and CompuServe where
born there.
And the poor clarity in the BBC article is mind numbing, the modern tech industry has the Fairchild
camera company as it's grand daddy which is about as far from federal or state intervention and
innovation as you can get .
Deconstructionism only works when you understand the brief and use the correct and varied sources
not just one crackpot seeking attention.
CEEFAX, PAL Colour TV, 625 line transmissions, The BBC 'B', Satellite Broadcasting, Digital
Services, the iPlayer, micro:bit, Smart TV services.
There's also the work that the BBC did in improving loudspeakers including the BBC LS range.
That work is one reason that British loudspeakers are still considered among the world's best
designs.
By all means kick the BBC, but keep it factual.
LDS
Re: I thought I invented it.
That was the first market demographics - iPod users happy to buy one who could also make calls.
But that's also were Nokia failed spectacularly - it was by nature phone-centric. Its models where
phones that could also make something else. True smartphones are instead little computers that
can also make phone calls.
In many ways Treo/Palm and Windows CE anticipated it, but especially the latter tried to
bring a "desktop" UI on tiny devices (and designed UIs around a stylus and a physical keyboard).
the iPod probably taught Apple you need a proper "finger based" UI for this kind of devices
- especially for the consumer market - and multitouch solved a lot of problems.
Emmeran
Re: I thought I invented it.
Shortly there-after I duct-taped 4 of them together and invented the tablet.
My version of it all is that the glory goes to iTunes for consumer friendly interface (ignore
that concept Linux guys) and easy music purchases, the rest was natural progression and Chinese
slave labor.
Smart phones and handheld computers were definitely driven by military dollars world wide but
so was the internet. All that fact shows is that a smart balance of Capitalism & Socialism can
go a long way.
Ogi
Re: I thought I invented it.
>That was the first market demographics - iPod users happy to buy one who could also
make calls. But that's also were Nokia failed spectacularly - it was by nature phone-centric.
Its models where phones that could also make something else. True smartphones are instead little
computers that can also make phone calls. In many ways Treo/Palm and Windows CE anticipated
it, but especially the latter tried to bring a "desktop" UI on tiny devices (and designed UIs
around a stylus and a physical keyboard). the iPod probably taught Apple you need a proper
"finger based" UI for this kind of devices - especially for the consumer market - and multitouch
solved a lot of problems.
I don't know exactly why Nokia failed, but it wasn't because their smart phones were "phone
centric". The N900, N810 and N800 are to this day far more "little computers" than any other
smartphone so far. Indeed, as they ran a Debian Linux derivative with a themed Enlightenment based
desktop, which is pretty much off the shelf Linux software. While they didn't have multitouch,
you could use your finger on the apps no problem. It had a stylus for when you wanted extra precision
though.
I could apt-get (with some sources tweaking) what I wanted outside of their apps. You could
also compile and run proper Linux desktop apps on it, including openoffice (back in the day).
It ran like a dog and didn't fit the "mobile-UI" they created, but it worked.
It also had a proper X server, so I could forward any phone app to my big PC if I didn't feel
like messing about on a small touchscreen. To this day I miss this ability. To just connect via
SSH to my phone over wifi, run an smartphone app, and have it appear on my desktop like any other
app would.
It had xterm, it had Perl built in, it had Python (a lot of it was written in Python), you
even could install a C toolchain on it and develop C code on it. People ported standard desktop
UIs on it, and with a VNC/RDP server you could use it as a portable computer just fine (just connect
to it using a thin client, or a borrowed PC).
I had written little scripts to batch send New years SMS to contacts, and even piped the output
of "fortune" to a select few numbers just for kicks (the days with free SMS, and no chat apps).
To this day I have no such power on my modern phones.
Damn, now that I think back, it really was a powerful piece of kit. I actually still miss the
features *sniff*
And now that I think about it, In fact I suspect they failed because their phones were too
much "little computers" at a time when people wanted a phone. Few people (outside of geeks) wanted
to fiddle with X-forwarding, install SSH, script/program/modify, or otherwise customise their
stuff.
Arguably the one weakest app on the N900 was the phone application itself, which was not open
source, so could not be improved by the community, so much so people used to say it wasn't really
a phone, rather it was a computer with a phone attached, which is exactly what I wanted.
Mage
Invention of iPhone
It wasn't even really an invention.
The BBC frequently "invents" tech history. They probably think MS and IBM created personal
computing, when in fact they held it back for 10 years and destroyed innovating companies then.
The only significant part was the touch interface by Fingerworks.
I was reading a BBC news web article and it was wrong too. It missed out emphasising that
the real reason for success in 2007 was the deals with operators, cheap high cap data packages,
often bundled with iPhone from the Mobile Operator.
"Those were the days, by the way, when phones were for making calls but all that was about
to change."
Actually if you had a corporate account, you had a phone already with email, Apps, ability
to read MS Office docs, web browser and even real Fax send/receive maybe 5 or 6 years before the
iPhone. Apart from an easier touch interface, the pre-existing phones had more features like copy/paste,
voice control and recording calls.
The revolution was ordinary consumers being able to have a smart phone AND afford the data.
The actual HW was commodity stuff. I had the dev system for the SC6400 Samsung ARM cpu used it.
Why did other phones use resistive + stylus instead of capacitive finger touch?
1) Apple Newton and Palm: Handwriting & annotation. Needs high resolution.
2) Dominance of MS CE interface (only usable with with a high resolution stylus.)
The capacitive touch existed in the late 1980s, but "holy grail" was handwriting recognition,
not gesture control, though Xerox and IIS both had worked on it and guestures were defined before
the 1990s. So the UK guy didn't invent anything.
Mines the one with a N9110 and later N9210 in the pocket. The first commercial smart phone
was 1998 and crippled by high per MByte or per second (or both!) charging. Also in 2002, max speed
was often 28K, but then in 2005 my landline was still 19.2K till I got Broadband, though I had
128K in 1990s in the city (ISDN) before I moved.
xeroks
Re: Invention of iPhone
The ground breaking elements of the iPhone were all to do with usability:
The fixed price data tariff was - to me - the biggest innovation. It may have been the hardest
to do, as it involved entrenched network operators in a near monopoly. The hardware engineers
only had to deal with the laws of physics.
The apple store made it easy to purchase and install apps and media. Suddenly you didn't have
to be a geek or an innovator to make your phone do something useful or fun that the manufacturer
didn't want to give to everyone.
The improved touch interface, the styling, and apple's cache all helped, and, I assume, fed
into the efforts to persuade the network operators to give the average end user access to data
without fear.
MrXavia
Re: Invention of iPhone
"Those were the days, by the way, when phones were for making calls but all that was about
to change."
I remember having a motorola A920 way back in 2003/2004 maybe, and on that I made video
calls, went online, had a touch interface, ran 'apps', watched videos.... in fact I could do everything
the iPhone could do and more... BUT it was clunky and the screen was not large... the iPhone was
a nice step forward in many ways but also a step back in functionality
imaginarynumber
Re: Invention of iPhone
"The fixed price data tariff was - to me - the biggest innovation".
In my experience, the iphone killed the "all you can eat" fixed price data tariffs
I purchased a HTC Athena (T-Mobile Ameo) on a T-Mobile-Web and Walk contract in Feb 2007. I
had unlimited 3.5G access (including tethering) and fixed call minutes/texts.
When it was time to upgrade, I was told that iphone 3G users were using too much data and that
T-Mobile were no longer offering unlimited internet access.
For fun, I put "first smartphone" into Google. It wasn't Apple's. I think a BBC editor may
have temporarily said that it was.
As for Apple inventing the first multitouch smartphone, though -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38552241 claims, with some credibility, that Apple's engineers
wanted to put a keyboard on their phone. The Blackberry phone had a keyboard. But Steve Jobs wanted
a phone that you could work with your finger (without a keyboard).
One finger.
If you're only using one finger, you're not actually using multi touch?
nedge2k
Apple invented everything... They may have invented the iPhone but they DID NOT invent
the "smartphone category" as that article suggests.
Microsoft had Smartphone 2002 and Pocket PC 2000 which were eventually merged into Windows
Mobile and, interface aside, were vastly superior to the iPhone's iOS.
Devices were manufactured in a similar fashion to how android devices are now - MS provided
the OS and firms like HTC, HP, Acer, Asus, Eten, Motorola made the hardware.
People rarely know how long HTC has been going as they used to OEM stuff for the networks -
like the original Orange SPV (HTC Canary), a candybar style device running Microsoft Smartphone
2002. Or the original O2 XDA (HTC Wallaby), one the first Pocket PC "phone edition" devices and,
IIRC, the first touchscreen smartphone to be made by HTC.
GruntyMcPugh
Re: Apple invented everything...
Yup, I had Windows based smartphones made by Qtek and HTC, and my first smartphone was an Orange
SPV M2000 (a Qtek 9090 ) three years before the first iPhone, and I had a O2 XDA after that, which
in 2006, had GPS, MMS, and an SD card slot, which held music for my train commute.
Now I'm a fan of the Note series, I had one capacitive screen smartphone without a stylus (HTC
HD2), and missed it too much.
nedge2k
Re: Apple invented everything...
Lotaresco, I used to review a lot of the devices back in the day, as well as using them daily
and modifying them (my phone history for ref:
http://mowned.com/nedge2k ). Not once
did they ever fail to make a phone call. Maybe the journalist was biased and made it up (Symbian
was massively under threat at the time and all sorts of bullshit stories were flying about), maybe
he had dodgy hardware, who knows.
Either way, it doesn't mean that the OS as a whole wasn't superior to what Nokia and Apple
produced - because in every other way, it was.
imaginarynumber
Re: Apple invented everything...
@Lotaresco
"The weak spot for Microsoft was that it decided to run telephony in the application layer.
This meant that any problem with the OS would result in telephony being lost....
Symbian provided a telephone which could function as a computer. The telephony was a low-level
service and even if the OS crashed completely you could still make and receive calls. Apple
adopted the same architecture, interface and telephony are low level services which are difficult
to kill."
Sorry, but if iOS (or symbian) crashes you cannot make calls. In what capacity were you evaluating
phones in 2002? I cannot recall ever seeing a Windows Mobile blue screen. It would hang from time
to time, but it never blue screened.
MR J
Seeing how much free advertising the BBC has given Apple over the years I doubt they will care.
And lets be honest here, the guy is kinda correct. We didn't just go from a dumb phone to a
smart phone, there was a gradual move towards it as processing power was able to be increased
and electronic packages made smaller. Had we gone from the old brick phones straight to an iPhone
then I would agree that they owned something like TNT.
Did Apple design the iPhone - Yes, of course.
Did Apple invent the Smart Phone - Nope.
IBM had a touch screen "smart" phone in 1992 that had a square screen with rounded corners.
What Apple did was put it into a great package with a great store behind it and they made sure
it worked - and worked well. I personally am not fond of Apple due to the huge price premium they
demand and overly locked down ecosystems, but I will admit it was a wonderful product Design.
Peter2
Re: "opinion pieces don't need to be balanced"
"I am no fan of Apple, but to state that something was invented by the State because
everyone involved went to state-funded school is a kindergarten-level of thinking that has
no place in reasoned argument."
It's actually "Intellectual Yet Idiot" level thinking. Google it. Your right that arguments
of this sort of calibre have no place in reasoned argument, but the presence of this sort of quality
thinking being shoved down peoples throats by media is why a hell of a lot of people are "fed
up with experts".
TonyJ
Hmmm....iPhone 1.0
I actually got one of these for my wife. It was awful. It almost felt like a beta product (and
these are just a few of things I still remember):
It had no kind of face sensor so it was common for the user to disconnect mid-call via
their chin or cheek;
It's autocorrect functions were terrible - tiny little words above the word in question
and even tinier x to close the option;
Inability to forward messages;
No email support;
No apps.
I think it's reasonably fair to say that it was the app store that really allowed the iPhone
to become so successful, combined with the then Apple aura and mystique that Jobs was bringing
to their products.
As to who invented this bit or that bit - I suggest you could pull most products released in
the last 10-20 years and have the same kind of arguments.
But poor show on the beeb for their lack of fact checking on this one.
TonyJ
Re: Hmmm....iPhone 1.0
"...The original iPhone definitely has a proximity sensor. It is possible that your wife's
phone was faulty or there was a software issue...."
Have an upvote - hers definitely never worked (and at the time I didn't even know it was supposed
to be there), so yeah, probably faulty. I'd just assumed it didn't have one.
Lotaresco
There is of course...
.. the fact that the iPhone wouldn't exist without its screen and all LCD displays owe
their existence to (UK) government sponsored research. So whereas I agree that Mazzucato is
guilty of rabidly promoting an incorrect hypothesis to the status of fact, there is this tiny
kernel of truth.
The government was looking for a display technology for aircraft that was rugged, light,
low powered and more reliable than CRTs. They also wanted to avoid the punitive royalties taken
by RCA on CRTs. It was the work done in the 1960s by the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern
and George William Gray and his team at the University of Hull that led to modern LCDs. QinetiQ,
which inherited RSRE's intellectual property rights, is still taking royalties on each display
sold.
anonymous boring coward
Re: There is of course...
I had a calculator in the late 1970s with an LCD display. It had no resemblance to my phone's
display.
Not even my first LCD screened laptop had much resemblance with a phone's display. That laptop
had a colour display, in theory. If looked at at the right angle, in the correct light.
Innovation is ongoing, and not defined by some initial stumbling attempts.
juice
Apple invented the iPhone...
... in the same way that Ford invented the Model T, Sony invented the Walkman or Nintendo invented
the Wii. They took existing technologies, iterated and integrated them, and presented them in
the right way in the right place at the right time.
And that's been true of pretty much every invention since someone discovered how to knap flint.
As to how much of a part the state had to play: a lot of things - especially in the IT and
medical field - have been spun out of military research, though by the same token, much of this
is done by private companies funded by government sources.
Equally, a lot of technology has been acquired through trade, acquisition or outright theft.
In WW2, the United Kingdom gave the USA a lot of technology via the Tizard mission (and later,
jet-engine technology was also licenced), and both Russia and the USA "acquired" a lot of rocket
technology by picking over the bones of Germany's industrial infrastructure. Then, Russia spent
the next 40 years stealing whatever nuclear/military technology it could from the USA - though
I'm sure some things would have trickled the other way as well!
Anyway, if you trace any modern technology back far enough, there will have been state intervention.
That shouldn't subtract in any way from the work done by companies and individuals who have produced
something where the sum is greater than the parts...
... in the same way that Ford invented the Model T, Sony invented the Walkman or Nintendo invented
the Wii. They took existing technologies, iterated and integrated them, and presented them in
the right way in the right place at the right time.
And that's been true of pretty much every invention since someone discovered how to knap flint.
Not so sure, Singer did a little more with respect to the sewing machine - his was the forst
that actually worked. Likewise Marconi was the first with a working wireless. Yes both made extensive
use of existing technology, but both clearly made that final inventive step; something that isn't
so clear in the case of the examples you cite.
Equally, a lot of technology has been acquired through trade, acquisition or outright theft.
Don't disagree, although your analysis omitted Japanese and Chinese acquisition of 'western'
technology and know-how...
Anyway, if you trace any modern technology back far enough, there will have been state intervention.
Interesting point, particularly when you consider the case of John Harrison, the inventor of
the marine chronometer. Whilst the government did offer a financial reward it was very reluctant
to actually pay anything out...
Aitor 1
Apple invented the iPhone, but not the smartphone.
The smartphone had been showed before inseveral incarnations, including the "all touch screen"
several years before Apple decided to dabble in smartphones. So no invention here.
As for the experience, again, nothing new. Al thought of before, in good part even implemented.
The key here is that Steve Jobs had the guts to force the thought of a useful smartphone,
gadget for the user first and phone second into the minds of the Telcos, and he was the one to
get unlimited/big data bundles.
He identified correctly, as many had before but before the power to do anything about it,
that the customers are the final users, not the telcos.
The rest of the smartphones were culled before birth by the Telecomm industry, as they demanded
certain "features" that nobody wanted but lined their pockets nicely with minumum investment.
So I thank Steve Jobs for that and for being able to buy digital music.
Apple didn't invent the smartphone. The iPhone wasn't as good as many of the other phones the
likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola were selling to the mobile networks. The real breakthrough
was that Apple circumvented the buying process.
There has always been a battle between the mobile phone networks and the handset manufacturers.
The networks see phones as a necessary evil for selling airtime. Anything which sells more airtime
or chargeable services is a good thing. Anything which reduces the customers likelihood to buy –
such as a high handset price – is a bad thing.
And the network wants to own the customer. We'll get back to Apple in a moment but first a bit
of a brief history lesson.
Back in the early 2000s, before 3G the mobile networks had the purchasing of handsets down to
a fine art. They would look at the cost of the components, know what a handset cost to build and
then offer the manufacturer a little less than the total. I saw this when I worked for both Motorola
and Sony Ericsson. We'd propose a new handset to a network with a price of $80, and a cost to us
of $60, and the network would offer us a huge promo, millions of units at $58. They'd argue that
their volumes would let us get the cost down to under $50 and then when we sold to other people at
$80 we'd make more money. Sometimes we took the deal, particularly if the order spanned a number
of models and some of the other models were more lucrative.
For Motorola "more lucrative" meant clamshell phones such as the V60 and 3G phones such as the
A830 (codenamed Talon) and the A920 smartphone (Paragon).
The important thing that was going on here is that 3G shifted the power balance. In 2003 the only
manufacturers who could ship in quantity were Motorola and NEC. Vodafone was so desperate for 3G
phones it had set up Orbitel, a joint venture with Ericsson to make 3G handsets. Unfortunately these
were made by people used to building high spec military equipment so while the manufacturing was
superb and they worked well, the production rate at the factory in Nottingham was relatively weak.
Suddenly the handset manufacturers could up the ante on what they sold phones for. They could
play the volume game the other way. If a network wanted some A830s they would also have to buy some
GSM phones at a sensible price.
It set the scene for Apple to make a move – even though I suspect Apple never realised this.
The incumbent manufacturers all worked within the framework the mobile network buyers laid out.
They had a consumer segmentation model, which classified types of consumers – Stay-at-home-mom, smart
businessman, blue collar worker and the like. They'd have snazzy names thought up at ideation sessions
with lots of Powerpoint and post-it notes.
The segmentation model would then be translated into phone specs. The stay at home mom might be
called "Ellie Ballet", and the specs would say she wanted better headphones, a 2MP camera, bar phone
with a five day battery life, and a retail price of under $50.
The business phone could be $300 but it needed to be 3G and offer lots of services which would
drive more revenue to the network.
All phones had to support the current obsession of the network: Vodafone Live, Orange Signature,
T-Mobile My Faves. As ever all driven by usage and loyalty.
So when Motorola
touted the ill-fated Odin, Ericsson offered
Pamela and Nokia any one
of a number of concepts, the networks demurred. They didn't fit in to the consumer segmentation planogram,
were too expensive and most importantly moved the ownership of the customer from the network to the
handset manufacturer.
Into this war came Apple, with a frankly inadequate phone. It was $300 and 2G, didn't have MMS
and the Bluetooth was rubbish. It would never have made it past the handset buyers. Apple wanted
customers to use side-loading of music from iTunes. The networks had rebelled against Nokia trying
something similar with
Ovi.
Apple also wanted the networks to re-engineer their voice mail to support Visual Voicemail, something
Motorola failed to do with the P1088.
But Apple didn't sell to the handset buyers. Apple had a secret weapon: Steve Jobs, and he met
with Ralph de la Vega, the big cheese at AT&T. And de la Vega welcomed the new rival to the evil
handset manufacturers he'd been doing battle with. It also had cool. So even though the iPhone had
a commercial model which included revenue share and a dozen red flags that would have seen any of
the established players shown the door, AT&T took the iPhone.
And Apple was right, customers didn't want Live, Signature or My Faves. Customers did want email,
music and open internet access. So the iPhone became an nifty customer acquisition tool. Networks
were faced with two options, take the iPhone and give all your portal revenue plus a chuck more cash
to Apple or lose customers to a rival who did take the iPhone. The proposition was so powerful, O2
which had decided to go from 2G to 3G and bypass EDGE (kind of 2.5G) reversed the major engineering
decision and rolled out EDGE just to support the iPhone.
Even though sales have started to dip, the iPhone still currently dominates, and history has been
re-written to say that Apple invented the smartphone. Apple didn't, but the real irony is that when
the networks went with Apple to defeat Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola they ended up handing the vast
majority of the profits in the mobile phone business to Apple. ®
(theverge.com)
46
Posted by
BeauHD
on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:00PM
from
the
all-in-one
dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge:
T-Mobile just revealed
its answer to ATT's NumberSync technology, which
lets customers use one phone number across all their connected devices
.
T-Mobile's version is called
Digits
and it will
launch in a limited, opt-in customer beta beginning today before rolling out to
everyone early next year. "You can make and take calls and texts on whatever
device is most convenient," the company said in its press release. "Just log in
and, bam, your call history, messages and even voicemail are all there. And
it's always your same number, so when you call or text from another device, it
shows up as you." When it leaves beta, Digits will cost an extra monthly fee,
but T-Mobile isn't revealing pricing today. "This is not going to be treated as
adding another line to your account," said COO Mike Sievert. "Expect us to be
disruptive here." And while its main feature is one number for everything,
Digits does offer T-Mobile customers another big perk: multiple numbers on the
same device. This will let you swap between personal and work numbers without
having to maintain separate lines and accounts. You can also give out an "extra
set" of Digits in situations where you might be hesitant to give someone your
primary number; this temporary number forwards to your devices like any other
call. You can have multiple numbers for whatever purposes you want, based on
T-Mobile's promotional video.
(theverge.com)
118
Posted by
BeauHD
on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @02:00AM
from the
very-particular-set-of-skills
dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge:
Dutch film student
Anthony van der Meer had the unfortunate pleasure of having his phone stolen
while having lunch in Amsterdam. Unsatisfied with the response from the
Amsterdam police, who register an average of
300 stolen phones per week
, Meer decided to find out what kind of person
steals a phone. He downloaded DIY security software on a decoy Android phone,
intentionally got the phone stolen, and
was able to spy on his thief for weeks
. He recorded the ups and downs of
his covert investigation and turned it into a 22-minute documentary called
Find My Phone
. Meer
preloaded the decoy device with an anti-theft application called
Cerberus
, which allows the owner of
the device to access any file on the phone remotely, as well as discretely
activate the phone's camera and microphone. Meer and his friends were able to
navigate the technicalities of surveilling the thief with relative ease. They
even snapped a close-up of the guy's face. The hard part, it turns out, was
getting the preloaded phone stolen in the first place. It took Meer four days
to get his device pilfered in a city with
high
rates of theft
because concerned citizens kept coming to his rescue.
(theverge.com)
66
Posted by
BeauHD
on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @05:00PM
from the
access-denied
dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge:
Today
, ATT
introduced a new service for automated blocking of fraud or spam calls. Dubbed
ATT Call Protect
, the system identifies specific numbers believed to be
sources of fraud, and
will either deliver those calls with a warning or block them outright
.
Users can whitelist specific numbers, although temporary blocks require
downloading a separate Call Protect app. The feature is only available on
postpaid iOS and Android devices, and can be activated through the MyATT
system. Phone companies have allowed for manual number blocking for years, and
third-party apps like Whitepages and Privacystar use larger databases of
untrustworthy numbers to preemptively block calls from the outside. But ATT's
new system would build in those warnings at the network level, and give
operators more comprehensive data when assembling suspected numbers. More
broadly, marketing calls are subject to
the national Do Not Call registry
. Specific instances of fraud can still be
reported through carriers or directly to police.
"... Submitted by Sophie McAdam via TrueActivist.com, ..."
"... He disclosed that government spies can legally hack into any citizen's phone to listen in to what's happening in the room, view files, messages and photos, pinpoint exactly where a person is (to a much more sophisticated level than a normal GPS system), and monitor a person's every move and every conversation, even when the phone is turned off. ..."
"... "Nosey Smurf": lets spies turn the microphone on and listen in on users, even if the phone itself is turned off ..."
"... Snowden says: "They want to own your phone instead of you." It sounds very much like he means we are being purposefully encouraged to buy our own tracking devices. That kinda saved the government some money, didn't it? ..."
"... It's one more reason to conclude that smartphones suck. And as much as we convince ourselves how cool they are, it's hard to deny their invention has resulted in a tendency for humans to behave like zombies , encouraged child labor, made us more lonely than ever, turned some of us into narcissistic selfie – addicts , and prevented us from communicating with those who really matter (the ones in the same room at the same time). Now, Snowden has given us yet another reason to believe that smartphones might be the dumbest thing we could have ever inflicted on ourselves. ..."
In an interview with the BBC's 'Panorama' which aired in Britain last week,
Edward Snowden spoke in detail about the spying capabilities of the UK intelligence
agency GCHQ. He disclosed that government spies can legally hack
into any citizen's phone to listen in to what's happening in the room, view
files, messages and photos, pinpoint exactly where a person is (to a much more
sophisticated level than a normal GPS system), and monitor a person's every
move and every conversation, even when the phone is turned off. These technologies are named after Smurfs, those little
blue cartoon characters who had a recent Hollywood makeover. But despite the
cute name, these technologies are very disturbing; each one is built to spy
on you in a different way:
"Dreamy Smurf": lets the phone be powered on and off
"Nosey Smurf": lets spies turn the microphone on and listen in on
users, even if the phone itself is turned off
"Tracker Smurf":a geo-location tool which allows [GCHQ]
to follow you with a greater precision than you would get from the typical
triangulation of cellphone towers.
"Paranoid Smurf": hides the fact that it has taken
control of the phone. The tool will stop people from recognizing that the
phone has been tampered with if it is taken in for a service, for instance.
Snowden says: "They want to own your phone instead of you." It sounds
very much like he means we are being purposefully encouraged to buy our own
tracking devices. That kinda saved the government some money, didn't it?
His revelations should worry anyone who cares about human rights, especially
in an era where the threat of terrorism is used to justify all sorts of governmental
crimes against civil liberties. We have willingly given up our freedoms in the
name of security; as a result we have
neither. We seem to have forgotten that to live as a free person is a basic
human right: we are essentially free beings. We are born naked and without certification;
we do not belong to any government nor monarchy nor individual, we don't even
belong to any nation or culture or religion- these are all social constructs.
We belong only to the universe that created us, or whatever your equivalent
belief. It is therefore a natural human right not to be not be under secret
surveillance by your own government, those corruptible liars who are supposedly
elected by and therefore accountable to the people.
The danger for law-abiding citizens who say they have nothing to fear because
they are not terrorists, beware: many peaceful British protesters have been
arrested under the Prevention Of Terrorism Act since its introduction in
2005. Edward
Snowden's disclosure confirms just how far the attack on civil liberties
has gone since
9/11 and the London bombings. Both events have allowed governments the legal
right to essentially wage war on their own people, through the Patriot Act in
the USA and the Prevention Of Terrorism
Act in the UK. In Britain, as in the USA,
terrorism and
activism seem to have morphed into one entity, while nobody really knows
who the real
terrorists are any more. A sad but absolutely realistic fact of life in
2015: if you went to a peaceful protest at weekend and got detained, you're
probably getting
hacked right now.
It's one more reason to conclude that smartphones suck. And as much as
we convince ourselves how cool they are, it's hard to deny their invention has
resulted in a tendency for humans to behave like
zombies, encouraged child labor, made us more
lonely than ever, turned some of us into
narcissistic
selfie–addicts,
and prevented us from
communicating with those who really
matter (the ones in the same room at the same time). Now, Snowden has given
us yet another reason to believe that
smartphones might be the dumbest thing we could have ever inflicted on ourselves.
Posted by BeauHD on
Tuesday September 06, 2016 @07:30PM from the theory-of-relativity dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Next Web: T-Mobile
plans to boost its LTE speeds to up to 400 Mbps in the very near future.
The Next Web reports: "The company is getting ready to boost its maximum theoretical
internet speeds to become the
faster carrier in the U.S. by a wide margin. The network will soon support
theoretical speeds up to 400 Mbps -- nearly half the speed of Google Fiber.
There's a two-pronged approach to the upgrade. First is incorporating 4x4 MIMO
(multiple input, multiple output) technology, which will supposedly double the
speed from the current 7-40 Mbps customers tend to experience with T-Mobile
(about the same as Verizon with LTE-A). This upgrade is available now in 319
cities, although it's a moot point because only the S7 and S7 Edge will be able
to use the tech via a software update "later this month." In October, the company
will roll out
256 QAM support to the S7 and S7 Edge (and again, more phones later), which
increases the amount of bits per transmission. T-Mobile says this will lead
to theoretical maximum speeds of 400 Mbps." The Next Web followed-up with
T-Mobile to ask about what the real-world speeds would be after the upgrade.
The company says "customers can expect to see real world peak speeds of 190
Mbps," which is over four times current peaks speeds, but also far below the
theoretical 400 Mbps.
Buying iPhone is mistake in itself. but as for neocon propaganda machine do
you thing that Google or Yahoo are better? they are not.
Notable quotes:
"... Anyone else notice that their apple iphone has turned into a raging anti-trump propaganda machine? I'm talking about the news headlines apple pushes to you when you slide your home screen all the way to the right. ..."
"... I didn't pay $700 for my iphone 6 to get a neocon propaganda machine. ..."
"... I have never actually read the anti trump stories that apple feeds my iphone because i didn't want to set up a preference for such things. I just see the headlines and they are quite negative. This is not the phone responding to my preference. It is content that is being deliberately pushed by Apple to my phone sans any info suggesting that i want it. ..."
"... Paying $700 for a $200 phone says unflattering things about i-Phone owners. ..."
Anyone else notice that their apple iphone has turned into a raging anti-trump propaganda machine?
I'm talking about the news headlines apple pushes to you when you slide your home screen all the
way to the right.
I didn't pay $700 for my iphone 6 to get a neocon propaganda machine.
Piotr Berman | Aug 6, 2016 4:22:11 PM | 6
Sometimes you get something extra with no additional cost. For 700 bucks you should get hourly
updates from the Lord of the Universe, so neocon urgent news are perhaps a step in this direction
:-)
More seriously, this is the fault of the browser and evil business model. Some click is cheerfully
interpreted as your request to get bombarded from some source, and sometimes it is clear how to
undo it, sometimes not.
Browsers should not have such features, but this is what makes them profitable.
Coming in near future: discount versions of cars that are steered by a computer. Every
few minutes the car stops and restarts only after you confirmed with clicks that you have seen
another ad.
alaric | Aug 6, 2016 5:13:45 PM | 14
"More seriously, this is the fault of the browser and evil business model. Some click is cheerfully
interpreted as your request to get bombarded from some source"
I have never actually read the anti trump stories that apple feeds my iphone because i didn't
want to set up a preference for such things. I just see the headlines and they are quite negative.
This is not the phone responding to my preference. It is content that is being deliberately pushed
by Apple to my phone sans any info suggesting that i want it.
Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 6, 2016 11:26:13 PM | 30
I didn't pay $700 for my iphone 6 to get a neocon propaganda machine.
alaric | Aug 6, 2016 2:41:59 PM | 3
Paying $700 for a $200 phone says unflattering things about i-Phone owners.
Style Name: US GSM (U)Color: BlackVerified Purchase
Ok so I got this in march of this year. I put some games on it and and I play them a lot. Now I try
to play one game and my battery is dead within ten minutes. This is not good I have battery saver
apps and that does not help. The rest of it is ok but it does no good if it will shut off on you
within a couple minutes of using it.
Update:
After looking online for a replacement battery and not finding anything withing the price I wanted.
I was about to give up on the phone and buy something else. In a last ditch effort I looked at the
compartment for the battery. To me it seems a little over-sized. So I took a small piece of card-stock
and wedged it in there to force the battery closer to the terminals. After doing that I am no
longer having any problems with the battery. If the company would make the compartment a little smaller
or the battery a little bigger it would be fine. i am back to liking the phone again.
This review is from: BLU Advance 4.0 Unlocked Dual SIM Phone (Black) (Wireless Phone Accessory)
To introduce myself, I had a Samsung Skyrocket S2 that decided to die on me at the end of last
month, and then my backup phone (a cheap Chinese phone) decided to start dying too. There's a phone
I want to spend some money on coming out in the next few months, but I need something to get by and
to act as a backup phone when I do make that purchase, so after some searching I settled for this
one. I listen to a lot of music on my phone, read email, do some app development of my own as a grad
student, and occasionally watch videos on Youtube or use GPS to find some place I've never visited
before. All in all, barring development I'm a fairly gentle phone user but I also have some tech
savvy to form a useful opinion. When I looked up info on the Advance 4.0, I was able to find specs
but not much in the way of useful reviews, so I tried to be as thorough writing this as possible.
Design: The Advance 4.0 is bulky for a 4" phone - it's nearly as large in length and width as my
4.5" Samsung S2 Skyrocket, and it's thicker too. The outside of the case is smooth plastic - it isn't
slippery in the hand but it does attract fingerprints more than any other phone I've had. However,
the phone does come with an Otterbox-like case and a screen protector, and I'd recommend using both.
Inside under the battery are two SIM slots and an SD slot. The SIM slots are easy to use and well-labelled
but the SD slot frankly scares me. It's flimsy and easy to bend and doesn't offer much protection
to the card in the slot. Add that to being under the battery and this isn't a phone for someone who
likes to use multiple SD cards. However, all of this is to be expected with a phone in this price
range, and getting a case and screen protector included is a great deal.
Performance: The MediaTek chip and 512mb of RAM in this phone might not be impressive compared to
a flagship phone, but for day to day operation they perform admirably. Multitasking is generally
quick, Youtube and Google Maps load quickly and the phone is loaded with what is basically stock
Jelly Bean, which is great. There's no extra junkware to get rid of and the Play Store is ready to
go. I should note that I am not a phone gamer, but if you want a cell phone that can play high-end
games this is probably not the phone for you. Social games and the like should work fine (I only
tried Angry Birds, hardly a tech demo game).
Connectivity: The Advance 4.0's antenna is quite strong - I had trouble getting signal in my basement
with my S2, but get 3 bars with this phone. Bluetooth connectivity is similarly impressive - I was
able to pair my headset immediately and had signal with my phone in one corner of the house all the
way to the garage on the other side - 45 feet away through walls. Data connectivity is flawless -
both on wifi and 3g (the phone is compatible with HSPA+) are capped by my provider and ping was good
per Speedtest. 3g tethering also works well - assuming your provider lets you do this.
Battery: The Advance 4.0 comes with a 1600mah battery, which with the MediaTek chip should last a
very long time. To test, I unplugged the phone at 7AM yesterday, and for the entire day streamed
music via wifi to my bluetooth headset - a double drain on the battery. I also downloaded a variety
of apps and podcasts and browsed the web some. Then I left the phone on overnight, continuing to
download more podcasts while I slept. When I plugged it in at 7:30 this morning it still had 25%
battery left. For a budget phone this is outstanding. I wouldn't normally listen to 12 hours of music
like that, so there's no way I'm going to kill the battery unless I forget to charge it for two days.
Screen: ... and this is where the wheels come off. The screen on this phone is just short of abysmal.
It's not that it's an 800x480 screen - I've had that resolution on other phones and they looked much
better than this one. The colors are distorted unless you are looking directly at the phone. This
isn't the usual complaint that reviewers have about viewing angles - you literally can't be tilting
the phone at all or it's no good. In addition, even if you are looking directly at it images and
videos are grainy and just don't look right. However, for normal phone navigation and app use it's
adequate. If you wanted to watch anything on your phone, you will be disappointed. I'm lucky that
my top use for a smartphone (streaming music) doesn't require much use of this screen.
Conclusion:
With a phone in this price range, something always has to give. You either get an a phone that's
still running Gingerbread, specs that are subpar, or a battery that can't make it through the day.
In this case it's the screen, but even that is really only so bad if you want to watch videos. I
expect later this year there will be a lot of competition for budget phones, but if you need a phone
right now and only have $100 to spare this is not at all a bad choice.
Consumers looking for a holiday deal on Nokia's Lumia 520 will find the price slashed in half
at Best Buy.
The retailer is currently
selling the phone for $50, down from the
usual price of $100. The 520 is offered through AT&T's GoPhone program, which lets buyers prepay
for the device without having to sign up for the usual two-year contract. Under GoPhone, consumers
can choose from among
four different
plans ranging in price from $25 to $60 per month.
Best Buy is promising a delivery date of December 24, so holiday shoppers should be able to squeeze
this one in as a present to put under the tree.
The deal is good only online. And eager shoppers will have to be quick about it. The price of
the phone will rise to $60 later in the day, a price that will be valid through Thursday.
The
Lumia 520 offers a 4-inch LCD IPS screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 5 megapixel camera,
8GB of onboard storage, and support for 64GB of additional storage.
Washington (AFP) - Motorola's smartphone aimed at cost-conscious consumers hit the US market ahead
of schedule on Tuesday, in time for the key holiday season.
It's funny to read rabid Android update fanatics rants. See
499 comments They do not understand that a new Android version stabilizes only in a year or
more. And what if after update the phone will be unstable ? Probably only 1% of Sony customers
will benefit from update. Bug fixed are way preferable ;-)
The next Sony software rollout for
Xperia P,
Xperia go and
Xperia Edual is starting this week – it is a phased process and will ramp up over
this month and next*.
The new software brings Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean", along with a number of different and improved
Sony features. We've been working to blend our Sony Xperia software with Google's Jelly Bean release
to create some cool user experiences – some of the functionality you can look forward to includes:
Newer and even more intuitive versions of Sony Media apps: WALKMAN, Album and Movies
A set of slick, easy-on-the-eye libraries that let you access and share all your snaps, videos
and tunes.
Battery STAMINA Mode lets you get the most out of your battery when you need it. Fully
customizable, your phone knows when the screen is off and shuts down the draining apps you don't
need, and then instantly starts them up again when the screen is back on.
Organize and search for your apps in a new quicker way
Application tray sorting is that bit breezier – just press and hold on any app – move, add it
to your desktop or create a folder within the tray by dropping it on top of another.
We've also added a new search function within the application tray that makes it easy to locate
your favourite apps.
Personalize your phone even more with your additional panes
A revamped homescreen experience for handling widgets, apps and shortcuts… with up to 7 desktop
panes, widgets that auto-resize and actionable notifications, you have complete flexibility to create
the interface you want with a few simple touches.
Google Now brings you just the right information at just the right time even before you
know you need it
Combining the power of Google search and user profiling, Google Now helps you accomplish daily
tasks more efficiently. You can learn more about Google Now
here.
In some cases – particularly for Xperia go users – we've only made the upgrade accessible via
PC Companion or Bridge for Mac due to the size of some software packages, and these users will only
receive an in-phone notification if running Ice Cream Sandwich.
We've heard your questions and know you guys are keen to hear about updates for
Xperia S,
Xperia SL,
Xperia ion and
Xperia acro S – these smartphones are next in line to start receiving Sony's Android 4.1 software
from the end of May.
We'll bring you the latest info when we can and, as always, you'll only find the official details
right here on the blog.
Google is making the two models latest Nexus phone, which will sell starting today for $349 without
a contract for the 16 GB model and $399 for the 32 GB model, available in more countries (10) and
retailers and carriers (T-Mobile, Best Buy BBY +0.3%, Amazon, Sprint, and Radio Shack) than previous
models. It won't be available on Verizon, which uses different cellular frequencies than other carriers,
but will work with AT&T.
However, Google's intention is less to gain market share than to provide a reference model that
will push the rest of the industry forward faster, Pichai said. Google's flat shares in today's trading
may reflect that reality.
Perhaps most important for Google, KitKat was designed to require less memory to run, only
512 megabytes of RAM, which is common to many low-end smartphones. Google did that by reducing
memory consumption needed by the software, by taking apps like maps and mail and making them use
less memory, and exiting out of apps or processes automatically if they're not being used. In addition,
the software will give app developers way to recognize that a particular phone has only a small amount
of memory, so they can do a different user interface to make it fit better.
"It's a cutting-edge OS meant to operate on cutting-edge phones, but it can work all the way back
on less sophisticated phones, in one version of the OS," Pichai said. "That makes a big difference.
We want to reach the next 1 billion people on one version of Android."
At $349 it puts serious down pressure on upper segments of the market. Especially on Samsung models.
But "No SSD card" might mean no sales. Those of us who travel outside the metropolitan areas know that
mobile Cloud access is not viable and you need to have your staff on the card that you carry.
KitKat, aka
Android 4.4,
has faster multitasking and full voice control, according to Google, and a smarter caller ID system
so that if the number dialing in isn't on your contacts list then Android will take a guess at who
it is using businesses listed on Google Maps.
KitKat devices can now send documents to printers directly using Google Cloud Print or HP's ePrint
system, and Quickoffice has been redesigned to make finding files easier and editing documents and
spreadsheets more simple. The email application has also had a facelift, as has the download function.
The Chocolate Factory promises that KitKat will be able to run on a wider variety of hardware
than other versions because it doesn't require the latest and greatest hardware to run. By shutting
down background services and trimming memory requirements, Google reckons KitKat will need just 512MB
of RAM to run smoothly.
That said, in the near future it's only going to be available for high-end hardware such as the
Nexus 4, 7 and 10; the Samsung Galaxy S4; and the HTC One Google Play edition. As for the Nexus 5,
of the major US carriers only Verizon isn't carrying the handset, and it is also available unlocked
in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and South Korea.
Google has stuck with LG as its hardware maker for the Nexus 5, rather than switching to Motorola
as some rumors had suggested. The mobe comes with a five-inch 1920-by-1080-pixel display (that's
445 pixel per inch) and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.3GHz with
2GB of RAM.
LTE and dual-aerial Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) is built in and the handset has two cameras – a
bog-standard 1.3Mp front facer for videoconferencing and an 8Mp rear camera. For auteurs, there's
also a new HDR+ mode that takes multiple shots quickly and combines them into a single photo that
takes the best features from each image.
The new Nexus – one of the most
gossiped-about
smartphones in a while – is the slimmest one yet at 69.17 x 137.84 x 8.59mm and weighs in at 130g.
Google claims the 2,300mAh battery is good for 17 hours talk time, 300 hours of standby and 8.5 hours
of use with Wi-Fi, or seven hours on LTE. Wireless charging and NFC is also built in.
The Nexus 5 will cost $349 for the 16GB version and $399 for 32GB of storage, but there's
no slot to fit any removable media, presumably since we're all supposed to be cloudy these days.
Google has also eschewed Apple and Motorola Mobility's fruity color schemes – the Nexus 5 is available
in black and white only.
I think this is a pure marketing trick on the part of Apple: the idea is to plain premium price
because other smartphones (even better executed Windows 8 phones and Samsung models of Android are 32
bit). But phone time is over and Apple closed ecosystem does make much sense for advanced users. It's
OK for lemmings though. Apple is simply great in separating fools and their money.
For current smartphones applications, 32-bit is plenty. But 32-bit will eventually run into a
bottleneck for applications needing more than 4GB dynamic RAM memory. This limitation is easily removed
with 64-bit OS. PCs and Macs moved from 32-bit to 64-bit some years ago. That is the future for smartphones
and tablets running data-intensive applications.
The iPhone 5S sports a new brain, the A7 chip, with a dual-core 64-bit CPU (central processing unit)
running at 1.3 GHz, along with 64-bit operating system iOS 7. It is a brilliant move. This is one
of the best executions during Tim Cook's tenure as CEO of Apple. Becoming the first to introduce
high-volume 64-bit smartphones helps Apple on multiple fronts. 64-bit computing (along with fingerprint
sensor) establishes Apple as the technology leader. Many may correctly argue that current smartphone
applications do not need as much horsepower. But that is not the point.
Being on the forefront of technology is the right strategy in oligopolies (markets where only a few
companies compete). Ten years ago, AMD used a similar approach to launch 64-bit microprocessors for
PCs even though Windows XP was not ready for 64-bit. The comments from naysayers today about 64-bit,
are reminiscent of initial reaction from Intel to AMD's launch of Athlon 64 in September 2003. Intel
realized that AMD was gaining share by being perceived as a technology leader although they were
still running 32-bit OS. Intel followed quickly with its own 64-bit PC processors, the correct strategy
in oligopoly.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com with US warranty (one year). Talk time (up to): 6.3 hours.
Great, standby time (up to 530 hours). Real glass on the screen, noise cancellation microphone and
nice sound system.
3.5 inch TFT - 262,000 colours / 320 x 480 pixels
Google Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon? MSM7227A processor
3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus
Talk time (up to): 6.3 hours: Standby time (up to): 530 hours
Alexandre Jacob Arantes
Exactly what I was looking for, October 4, 2013
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
Not a top of the line android, but it has all that I'm looking for so I'm very happy with it.
On the positive, it's slim, simple, reliable, good battery life, comes with android 4.1, has dual
sim card, and memory expansion up to 32gb.
On the negative, it's a little bit slow sometimes, if you push it too hard (when compared
with high-end equipment. But as they say, you get what you paid for and I'm willing to compromise.
If you are looking for an android phone with the latest version and is on a budget, I definitely
recommend it.
Don Leavitt
Great budget phone, June 1, 2013
Got this phone for my wife, as we were having trouble with our other phones on our carrier. She
didn't need anything fancy, but I wanted to make sure her new phone had a newer version of Android
as we plan to keep them for a few years. She likes it, and it does everything she wants it to do
(which honestly, isn't much). Runs smoothly enough, and has great battery life if your aren't a hard
user.
One thing that would bother me if it were mine is the screen resolution. You can definitely tell
that this is a budget phone. Fortunately, my wife doesn't really care that much.
- SNS integration
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
This review is from: Sony Xperia E C1604 Dual-SIM Unlocked Android Phone--U.S. Warranty (Black)
(Wireless Phone Accessory)
Not a top of the line android, but it has all that I'm looking for so I'm very happy with it.
On the positive, it's slim, simple, reliable, good battery life, comes with android 4.1, has dual
sim card, and memory expansion up to 32gb.
On the negative, it's a little bit slow sometimes, if you push it too hard (when compared with
high-end equipment. But as they say, you get what you paid for and I'm willing to compromise.
If you are looking for an android phone with the latest version and is on a budget, I definitely
recommend it.
Black, White, Purple, Yellow (single sim model only)
- SNS integration
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264 player
- MP3/eAAC+/WAV player
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
I bought this phone to replace 2 year old blackberry. Before buying this phone I tried LG L7 P705
which turned out to be extremely slow - slow UI and even slower internet connection. It went back
to Amazon. I also tried Blu 4.5 Dash but it had build problems and was not connecting to my car using
bluetooth. It also went back to Amazon.
So far I like this phone a lot - it connects to my car,
has responsive UI, internet is reasonably fast with AT&T.
2 core cpu is fast enough for most applications.
This phone has a customized UI and instead of hating it, I actually like it!
Couple of issues related to connectivity: for some reason it was not able to connect to internet
until I entered all connectivity options in settings. All other phones I used recently were able
to connect to AT&T without any extra steps.
Another issue is that internet speed is not very high, I think it is less than 1Mb/s. The phone
shows "H" instead of "H+", I think that explains slower internet speed. Still, internet works reasonably
fast for checking email and some light browsing.
Build quality is good, although it is not one of those super slim models. On the other hand,
being fatter, the phone actually feels like a phone and not like a thin piece of paper.
Battery life is ok but not great. It can last 2 days with little use or 1 day with heavy use.
I was not able to install Skysafary pro on this phone because it does not give much space to application.
It looks like I need to root in order to reallocate the space.
This device is very new so I hope that this review will help other
folks.
I spent few weeks deciding on which phone to buy.
The device is based on latest System on Chip MT6589 by Mediatek. Before buying this phone I considered
buying a device based on the same chip from China, but BLU offers very competitive pricing and at
the same time there is some chance of getting support given that the company is US based.
The only shortcoming of this device I could see before buying it, was 512MB of memory, which some
experts consider too low. I have couple of more Android devices which also have 512MB and they seem
to work fine, so I decided to take risk. Again, given that the phone ships from USA, I would have
a much better chance of returning it.
I received it today and so far I am very happy with it.
I plugged in AT&T SIM and the phone immediately recognized it and connected to the network.
Connecting to WiFi was also very simple. So far I have not experienced WiFi disconnects I have
with my Samsung Tab 2 7.
Next test was installing a planetarium software SkySafari. This software shows frames per second
so it can be a good benchmark. BLU scored around 20fps, where as Samsung Tab 2 7 was scoring
around 2fps.
Display is very bright with good contrast.
The only thing which worries me a little is that the battery seems
to be draining pretty fast, although this could be just because I did not charge it properly.
I will update this review once I use the device more.
This review is from: BLU Dash 4.5 Unlocked Dual Sim Phone with Quad-Core 1.2GHz Processor,
Android 4.2 JB, 4.5-inch Display, 4G HSPA+ up to 21Mbps and 5MP Camera (Black) (Wireless Phone Accessory)
Originally had the ATT HTC One X - nice hardware, etc., however, no SD Card slot! (the sales guy
told me to use the cloud for my data/music - yeah right, spend money to have someone else store and
retrieve (capped @ 2GB/month), not only that but if the cloud is down/compromised/account locked
out for whatever reason, can't get my info). Phone given to my kid (he likes the bling, etc.)
New phone doesn't have the "bling" factor - no bloatware/cripple-ware, just pure Android 4.2 (doesn't
hinder/slow down unit). Dual SIM is a good idea, in particular when out of the country (Note: uses
850/1900 3G, worthless in EU, but just use for phone calls is fine).
Overall, not a a bad phone.
UPDATE 09142013: One problem which might crop up (this happened to me) is that you might lose your
ability to use ATT's 4LTE/HSDPA+ data (if you are using ATT & have a data plan) - this happened to
me a couple of days ago & couldn't figure out why (even reset the phone etc, thought the phone had
prematurely died).
Seemingly, ATT has unified their APN settings for 4LTE/HSDPA+ a while back and the default APN
settings for this phone (maybe SIM?) is out of sync.
Had to create a new APN which follows the current ATT protocol (just do a web search to get the
proper settings - this would also apply for T-Mobile and MVNOs).
The phone downloads/uploads seem to be quicker (feels like it anyway - actual network benchmarking
would need to be conducted, but I have better things to do).
This phone is perfect for PlatinumTel, the cheapest pay as you go service
(Rides on TMobile carrier). I picked up a PTEL sim card on EBay for $0.99, slipped it in and it works
with no issues. Voice is $0.05 per minute, texts are $0.02, and data is $0.10. Data is spendy if
you are streaming video, but otherwise this is the cheapest way to go for a full featured phone.
And this phone is Fast!
The dual processors make easy work of HD movies I loaded on the SD card (I can scan back and forth
to find my place with no lag). I have never seen a phone as responsive. Battery life has been excellent,
swipe works great for text entries even with my fat fingers, but I use Google voice to write most
of my texts. The multi-touch capacitive screen is responsive. Only caveat, no dedicated accessories
yet. I had to cut down a generic screen protector, and there are no custom fit cases out there, just
generic sleeves. Still, at this price for an unlocked phone (that can go international), and no commitments,
this is a no brainer.
I purchased this phone in hopes to replace the smart phone I purchased while in the Philippines (Cherry
Mobile Flare). The Blu Dash 4.0 D270a doesn't quite stand up to the performance of the Cherry Mobile
Flare, but since the Flare doesn't work in the United States, it is a pretty close replacement. Overall
I'm pretty pleased with it so far. But like anything there are positives as well as negatives with
anything. Some of the specs provided on Amazon and Blu's website ([...]) are a little off. Not anything
major but I will run down those and the minor negative points of the phone in this review.
[website & amazon specs]:
4GB with 512MB RAM; Dual Core 1GHz Cortex-A5; 5MP camera (main)/ 0.3MP camera (front); 4 inch screen
/ 480x800 pixels; Android 4 operating system; Dual Sim Card GSM 850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900 Mhz/ UMTS 850/
1900 Mhz; 3G HSDPA (AT&T only)/GPRS/EDGE/Wifi; Wifi hotspot capable; A-GPS support; SMS/MMS messaging;
micro sd card support up to 32GB
The only thing I found to be a little off, was the main storage size of the phone. The phone reads
in settings, and also in other apps I have downloaded, that the total size of the hard drive is 2GB
not 4GB. That's a nice chunk of space for the phone, but I still put a 32GB micro sd card in it for
more storage. The 512MB of RAM is not that impressive, but it handles most of everything I need my
phone for. If you are the type of person that likes to download a lot of games, maybe it won't be
enough for you. The Android version is 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich.
I currently use AT&T's Go Phone service and the phone had no problem identifying the network. I wasn't
sure if I would have to manually enter the APN settings, but the phone picks it all up automatically.
I've had another unlocked phone with Unnecto, and I had to enter all that info in manually which
took some time to research. I use the second SIM slot for my Philippine SMART sim card. It reads
it just fine, and is set to roaming (which uses the AT&T network). The good thing is that this phone
will also work when you travel abroad. I have not used T-Mobile with this phone, but according to
what I've read, the 2G connection will work, but the 3G will only work with AT&T. The fact that the
phone also has the ability to be a mobile hotspot is also a plus.
One annoyance that I've found with the firmware of this phone is setting up certain contact info
and ringtones. For some reason the phone would reset certain contact settings I had made to default.
The problem has seemed to stop, but it was irritating at first. Trying to set custom ringtones for
contacts is also an annoyance. Unlike the Cherry Mobile Flare I own, Blu Dash 4.0 doesn't give you
a menu in the sound settings to choose from your custom MP3's. You have to open them in the audio
player, and then set them as your main ringtone for sim 1 or sim 2. I have yet to find a way to set
your custom ringtones for individual contacts. When you go to set the individual ringtone for the
contact, the regular ring tone menu pops up, and is all that you can choose from.
Another downside to this phone, is that I haven't been able to find much as far as accessories go.
I contacted BLU through their website, and they referred me to an online dealer that had some BLU
accessories, but nothing for the Dash 4.0. It would be nice to have a skin or case to protect the
phone, but they just don't have one out that I know of. Universal screen protectors are easy to find,
so you can trim them to custom fit the phone no problem. I've also tried a few different headset/mics
in this phone, and only the one that came with it seems to work properly. The others will work as
a headset, but the mics won't work for some reason. I have not tried to use this phone with a blutooth
headset, but the phone is blutooth capable.
Battery life is not the greatest. If you are using the phone pretty regularly to surf the web, or
download apps it drains the battery faster. Certain apps can also eat the battery pretty quickly,
so I've found that disabling them when not in use is the best way to avoid killing your battery.
When using the phone moderately, the battery has lasted through out the day, but usually by night,
you will need to plug it up.
Overall, I would say that if your looking for a dual sim smart phone that won't break the bank, the
BLU Dash 4.0 D270a is a pretty good choice. Blu also offers other smart phones with better specs,
but they are quite a bit more expensive. $130.00 was more than what I paid for my Cherry Mobile Flare,
but I don't think that you will find anything in the United States this cheap without having a contract
phone. Unlocked phones are nice, and offer you the freedom of choice with your service.
Hopefully this review is helpful to anyone considering purchasing an unlocked smart phone.
Update 4/6/2013 :
Check the comments to see how to resolve the ringtone issue.
I have also encountered a slight problem with sending MMS messages. When I attempt to send them I
get an error. Looking at the APN settings, everything is as it should be, so I'm not sure why it's
not working. I've sent photos through different apps with no problem, but attaching them to a MMS,
I always get this error. Maybe it's an issue with AT&T, but I will update if the problem is resolved.
Update 4/7/2013 :
MMS error resolved. I had to download a messaging app from the google play store, but it seems to
have fixed the problem. I am finding out that the built in functions for this phone are not the best.
But fortunately you can download free apps to solve the issues you might run into. I downloaded Handcent
SMS and now I can send my MMS messages without receiving an error.
Read more ›
This review is from: BLU Studio 5.0 Unlocked Dual Sim Phone--U.S. Warranty (Black) (Wireless
Phone Accessory)
"I have received my phone Blu, but I just realized that all products Blu are having problems
with the audio. Previously I had purchased the Dash 3.5 and the inside speaker stopped working.
The current model (Studio 5.0) also faces problems with the handset (only hear left speaker).
Indeed I think that even if the product is not completely bad, you should check them so that the
consumer receives a quality product. The price I paid for the latter is $ 150 (a price is not
very cheap because we are talking about more than RD $ 6,000.00) plus tax which is higher than
30%.
The Moto G was made available on Google-owned Motorola's website at an off-contract price starting
at $179.
"We're giving people plenty of mobile goodness to gobble up this holiday season," the company
said on its blog as it started sales just ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
The device is being sold at "one third of the price of current high-end phones, for a smartphone
stuffed with plenty of great features," the blog posting said.
The Moto G had been expected in the United States in early 2014, but Motorola said its versions
using GSM networks were being sold now.
It is currently on sale in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Britain, Germany, France, and
Canada and will be sold in more than 30 countries by early 2014, according to the company.
The new device is a low-cost version of the Moto X released earlier this year in the United States,
lacking some features such as a high-density camera and the ability to access the fastest networks.
But the cost is not as low in some countries. In Brazil for example, known for high electronics
duties, the lowest price for the Moto G will sell for around $280, or 650 reals. That is still well
below the price of an iPhone, which can cost more than $1,000 in Brazil, or premium phones like Samsung's
Galaxy S4.
The Moto G features a 4.5 inch (11.5 cm) display and all-day battery, and will include the latest
versions of the Google Android operating system.
The handset packs in a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 5-megapixel and 1.3-megapixel
cameras front and rear.
Some analysts say the handset is not aimed at buyers of high-end devices like the iPhone or Samsung
Galaxy S4, but those who might otherwise buy a low-cost smartphone such as those on the Firefox operating
system.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Great entry level android phone, October 3, 2013
