Smartphones

You, sir, are an iphone 5s waiting to happen. But yes, apparently HTC does have build quality issues. My old Desire was a bit less than expected in that regard - the volume rocker crapped out well before it should have.

Meanwhile....

BUYING GUIDE Top mobile phones compared: what phone is best for you?

The "Tech Expert" on Radio New Zealand says he carries 2 phones. One is a 'smart'phone and the other is an 'old-fashioned' phone like my Nokia 6120c.

The reason? His old phone has a battery that can last up to a week.

There must be a moral to this story but I think only Calech would be able to find it.

 

   

Grrr...the screen on my HTC is now malfunctioning. It works, it just does not light up, so I cannot see anything on it. This is...hmm...the fourth time this HTC crap has malfunctioned. Went to the phone store today and found that that was a good way of getting a headache...so many phones...so many brands...HTC is definitely not a brand I will be buying again.  

Wow, I was talked into a Desire years ago and fell in love. The only reason I bought a new "One" was because some idiot (me) forgot the phone in a cab a never got it back  .

I prefer the Desire over the One, but I really like HTC. The g/f has an iPhone somethingorotherIjustdon'tcarewhich and she loves it

For the amount of stuff I do, it's overkill. It serves my needs

The moral of the story is NEVER TRUST A TECH EXPERT! Phones aren't a convenience! They're not a utility! THEY ARE COMPUTER BARBIES! You can change their outfits, build up whole play houses on your computer, chat online with fellow aficionados. YOU CAN COLLECT THEM AND DISPLAY THEM IN THEIR ORIGINAL BOXES! It is my Barbie, I am it's Ken.

I wasn't coerced by a salesman, a friend who knows shitloads more than me (which is easy) helped me out. She asked for my requirements and budget. She made a few suggestions, explained what I'd get with different machines and left it to me. The only problems i've ever had were caused by me. I'm surprised HTC doesn't have a bigger market share

They do make a good charger. The dinky little cube that came with my Samsung popped its clogs a while back and in its place I've been using the charger that came with the Desire. Howevaire... according to "the internet", the HTC One has had issues with build quality and users do somewhat often complain.

I dunno. Mobile phone reviews are always, always like highly sophisticated Chinese essays - "everything has two sides". There's always a section of "HOW AWESOME IS THIS!!!" and then always a section of "O, THE MARK OF CAIN! I HOPE WE CAN IGNORE IT BECAUSE IT MIGHT LEAD TO DAMNATION!"

Well, I got myself a Samsung Galax Trend II G3...that's what it says on the box. It seems to do the job of a phone so far, and now I can also be on wechat, forced to do so by gf. Yay, a phone...seeing as it is a smartphone, I will enjoy until it breaks so I can buy a new one, as that is what we humans do. Which would explain the one gazillion different yet completely similar phones available.

After trying most other options out there, I recently invested in a Nokia Lumia 720. Have to say it's awesome!

I really like the Windows 8 os. It's lightning fast and all the Bing stuff is fast and reliable in China. I had lots of problems with my Android phone as the Play store didn't work properly and any google stuff was crap and slow.

I paid 1900 kuai for the phone which is an absolute bargain. I'm going to stick with Windows from now on and my next phone will be one of Nokia's high-end offerings.

How's that for apps and whatnot?

If it's not apparent to everyone by now, I use my phone for entertainment - partly tech toy gizmo stuff, partly media consumption stuff. News is more readily accessible on my phone than on the actual computer, for instance. And there's games and book reading and checking the weather and dictionaries, but that's not Android specific, I guess.


/redundant questioning, since obviously it's working out fine, but I don't know anything about the Windows phone scene, so...

So Cyanogenmod has officially recognised Ye Olde Kitkat and started releasing cm11 nightlies. "Nightlies" are the cutting edge of development in device-specific Cyanogenmod versions of Android as released by Google. They incorporate changes to code made as recently as a few hours before the release - and often they include new errors too so one uses them at his own risk. But whatevs, I like the new, and yesterday the first i9300 specific cm11 was released into the wild. Interestingly, this new cm comes with Google Play, Google Play Services, and the new Google Launcher already installed. It has the "Ok Google" hotword implementation and everything.

This presumably is done with the permission of Google, since back in the day when Google wanted developers to stop using Google Apps in their custom roms, it was Cyanogen they made the example of, sending them a Cease and Desist letter. I wonder if it's a new policy or just a one-off. Android 4.4 has changed a few things on the inside and Google Apps don't work unless they're the Kitkat specific versions, so.....

Cross-fingers, CM didn't just make themselves unwelcome in the middle king's dorm.


This conspiracy theory brought to you by data wiping the unofficial CM I already had on my phone and not actually installing the new official CM. Upon actual installation of the true official version, no Google.

For what it's worth, Cyanogenmod, in some of its iterations, now includes WhisperPush, an SMS encryption, um, thing. As I understand it, you use your SMS app like normal, but if the recipient is a Cyanogenmod phone (or has the WhisperSystems TextSecure app), then your message, instead of being sent out as normal SMS, gets encrypted and sent through your data connection. The recipient gets it as a push message.

I await news stories explaining how it's no longer secure.

So that would be like how Messages work on the iPhone OS?

Same basic idea, as far as I can tell - a server in between phones that generates or maintains encryption somehow. The technical details are a mystery to me. One detail in particular I don't know how to work out is how the server itself stays secure.

Interestingly, a lot of custom roms, of which MIUI is or was one, build off Cyanogenmod source, and TextSecure is open source too, so this service will be coming to China?

I have no idea.

960 OS

China unveils native mobile operating system

BEIJING - A new mobile phone operating system was unveiled by a Chinese tech firm on Thursday, making it the country's first smart phone system with independent intellectual property rights.

The system, named 960 OS, was developed by the Coship Electronics Co., Ltd. It is a brand new operating system following predecessors such as Android, IOS, and Windows phone, the Shenzhen-based company said.

960 OS is a native operating system based on the Linux kernel and took Coship 15 years to develop, said the company's chair, Yuan Ming, noting that the system can provide better protection for information stored in a smart phone.

As the majority of smartphones in the Chinese market use foreign operating systems such as Android and IOS, the ownership of one system with independent IPR is essential for both national and individual information security, according to Liu Yunjie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

It can boost the competitiveness of China's mobile and Internet industry, he added.



Filthy, stupid lies, I'm thinking (and surprising myself with how partisan I'm deciding to be). There's another article somewhere calling 960 OS "wholly-self-innovated". Not sure exactly how that fits with "based on Linux". Nor do I quite see where the "independent intellectual property rights" came from. Whatevs, I guess. Maybe they'll be great.