Posted by
Martyn Drake – March 3, 2010
Oh T-Mobile UK, how frustrating and tricky you can be.
When I took out Mobile Broadband a little over a year and half a go, I was lead to believe I had unlimited T-Mobile hotspot access as well. But you did not provide me with any login details. I called your technical support line and was given a series of confusing and conflicting statements from your support staff about logging in. Your web site has magically changed to remove ALL information relating to HotSpots (internal search reveals a link which redirects back to Mobile Broadband which does not mention anything about
Now. Am I to resolve this amicably by letter to Customer Services first? Or am I to “do an Orange” and take this up with Trading Standards in order to nullify my Mobile Broadband contract for failing to deliver and provide an acceptable level of information about using the service (which may or may not exist – tech news web sites say yes, you say yes but are a bit confused, your web site says no)?
Your choice T-Mobile UK. This may well be the last 18 month period I stay with you, after a good few years (was is it – 4 years now?) together. I’ll just switch to my employer’s mobile phone scheme (not T-Mobile or Orange I hasten to add) and probably get an iPhone in the process. Probably.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – January 22, 2010
Battery usage is now most satisfactory. Can happily Spotify/listen to Android’s music player for considerable amount of time while emailing, tweeting, reading news, etc. Similarly taking and making calls (after all, this is a phone..) don’t drag down the battery too much. I should mention that I am NOT using a task manager (auto or otherwise – I’m just not using one full stop).
Have become adept in typing using landscape mode and using both thumbs to “touch” type. Getting a relatively decent word rate, but still prone to errors which, thankfully, the predictive text system helps correct almost instantly (although I keep referring to Google Alps and not Google Apps).
The only real issue at the moment is the phone has twice failed to automatically join our home wi-fi network and needs manual intervention. But this isn’t too big an issue and I can live with it until I can figure out what’s going on, or if it’s an Android bug, Google fixes it in an Over The Air update.
The Nexus One is still the best damn smartphone I’ve ever come across.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – January 20, 2010
Battery life improving. Lasted around 16 hours from single charge and medium-ish use, including an hour and half’s Spotify use on the bus into work this morning. Experienced small lock-up during Twidroid application in that the keyboard wouldn’t respond properly, and whenever I tried to press the H key, I activated the voice input. It was if the CPU was taking a bit of a battering. After a minute or two the problem soon went away.
Still very impressed with the phone despite these couple of small issues. Have been playing around with Google Goggles and am very impressed by the way it’s able to detect objects and locate information on them online. Also very impressed with RingDroid which takes your music collection and turns them into ringtones or notification sounds. It has one of the most impressive user interfaces I’ve seen for the touchscreen.
Call quality is excellent, and I love the way that the phone disables the screen while you have it up to your face (so you don’t accidentally hit any buttons). As soon as you move your face away, the buttons are there and are easy to access. Far better than the HTC Hero.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – January 18, 2010
So far, everything has pretty much gone swimmingly. The only issue I’ve seen is where I’ve been running TasKiller with the “automatically kill when screen is off” option enabled. When pressing the power button to take the phone off standby, I’m greeted with the in-call display except I can’t activate any of the on-screen buttons. If I hold the Home key, it then takes me to the security pattern draw unlock and all is well. Disabling TasKiller’s automatic kill seems to have resolve this issue, so I can only think there’s a process that TasKiller is killing off that’s causing the problem.
As for the voice input, we’ve had marginally less success. It comes out around 70-85% accurate now. However, trying to search DediPower using voice input comes out as “Titty Palace”. Working becomes “Wanking”. And my name is really “Protein Drink”. So there’s a fair bit of work to do, but I’d imagine Google will continue to improve this to almost perfection soon.
More later!
Posted by
Martyn Drake – January 18, 2010
I now have a Nexus One Android phone. This runs the Android 2.1 operating system and comes with a massively impressive screen and a touchscreen that responds beautifully. As all of my contacts are stored in my Google Apps account, as well as my email, transferring from my previous HTC Hero to the Nexus One took literally just minutes.
The touchscreen keyboard operates a lot smoother than the Hero, although the Nexus does not contain HTC’s Sense UI and consequently does not feature a few refinements that make typing numbers and punctuation which means that one has to press a few more buttons to get to them. But this doesn’t particularly bother me, and I’ve been typing away like a madman.
I’ve yet to try the voice dictation system whereby input fields can utilise the phone’s microphone to allow you to dictate words and sentences rather than having to use the keyboard. Apparently the hit rate is anywhere between 70-80%, but will hopefully improve as Google’s voice recognition technology improves.
From what little I’ve been playing with it, this is one very impressive phone. Android is blossoming as a mobile phone operating system and it just keeps getting better and better. Now the hardware is catching up, Apple have a serious contender on their hands. I am very glad I’ve given the iPhone the elbow.
Update: The voice input is absolutely bloody marvellous – so far it’s had 100% success rate, but that’s with a very limited test (I’d like to see what it can do with a tongue twister!). I shall continue to experiment and explore.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – December 18, 2009
T-Mobile called me yesterday to let me know that I could renew my contract early. So I have done so, rather than opt to leave and go with the iPhone. In fact, it’s probably because of the iPhone’s popularity and that it’s now being offered by other vendors other than O2 that T-Mobile have revamped their contract plans. I’m basically on the same plan as before but with unlimited Internet (I’m sure there’s a caveat there with regards to the word “unlimited” so I will need to check that out) and my Flex-T allowance now takes into account 0845 and 0800 numbers and some international calls too.
But what’s sold it for me is that I’ve opted for the T-Mobile G2 Touch (aka the HTC Hero). I was sold upon seeing one in action as well as reading reviews from the likes of Stephen Fry and co. who have praised the handset to high heaven. It is currently one of the few phones that gives the iPhone a run for it’s money. While the Blackberry would have done almost everything I wanted it to do, it’s 3.5″ headphone jack is placed awkardly and there is no Spotify application. Yet. I also fancy having a go at trying my hand at Android programming.
Should be getting the phone over the next few days.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – June 22, 2009
Have successfully managed to lose my Sony Erricsson C905 phone this morning on the way to work. Have reported it lost to T-Mobile who have now blocked the phone line and are now sending out a replacement SIM card.
I probably lost it when grabbing tissues from my pocket dealing with this blasted hayfever.
The phone could be on a 28 Arriva bus, a 36 Arriva bus, or somewhere in the Friary Shopping Centre or Guildford Bus Station.
Frustrated and angry does not come close to describing my mood – especially with myself – right now.
