Category Archives: THOUGHTS

Every day I wake up, thankfully, and take my iPhone off Airplane mode and download the Tech News Today podcast. I then check my emails and other notifications and make the kids their breakfast. Next up I fire up TomTom to get me around the traffic on the way to work and play the Tech News Today podcast on the journey.

None of the above takes long to sort out, but what I really want is a way to automate the process. It would be great if my smartphone could turn off Airplane mode when the morning alarm sounds and download the latest TNT podcast. Emails and notifications come in automatically anyway, but then I would like to be able to get in my car, attach the phone to the FM radio accessory and have TomTom automatically plot the route to work and start playing the podcast. I would set it up once and that series of small events would automatically occur every day at the same time.

Automation was possible, particularly under Windows Mobile, but admittedly not to the level described above, but this kind of development would be a huge bonus for people who have parts of their days which are identical. It won’t happen anytime soon of course and maybe it never will. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to crave such a time saving setup.

When you buy a mobile phone on a contract you get bundled minutes, texts and data for a monthly charge. This, however, is far from the full cost of mobile ownership for many people because the market for apps, music and video is growing exponentially and the true cost could be up to three times the network tariff charge.

Here’s an idea-

£50 / month for 2000 text messages, 500 minutes, unlimited data, 20 music tracks, 10 apps and 3 video rentals.

It would complicate tariffs somewhat and no doubt network providers would find ways to make further profits from such a setup, but there could be a market for people who want to know what they are spending every month.

The problem would be that the likes of Apple, Google, RIM and the rest would not want to give up the revenues from individual sales, but that is not to say that it won’t happen at some stage in the future. Network providers are, on the whole, not trusted by hardware manufacturers and are rather seen as a necessary evil to get their products in people’s hands. This does not mean that the networks won’t push to get their hands on some of this revenue- they tried before apps became commonplace and they will no doubt try again.

The question is, would you sign up to a bundled media tariff or do you prefer to buy each media piece singularly?

How do you know when a mobile app is truly worthwhile? You forget it is there. You don’t think about it when you are using it. You just use it every day and it works without complaint.

I have a few apps that fall into my ‘indispensible, but rarely thought about’ category; TomTom, Pocket Money, Week Calendar and Tweetbot are used every day and never, ever fail me. They just work every single time I launch them and I don’t even consider them anymore.

Awesome Note is an exception- I use it multiple times a day, but for some unknown reason I always consider how good it is every time I use it. In fact I marvel at its usefulness and couldn’t imagine using a phone without Awesome Note.

So, what apps do you use every day, but rarely think about because they are ‘just there’ doing what you need them to do?

All of the recent security scares woke me up to issue of securing my personal information and so I decided to change every password for each online service I use to auto generated, impossible to remember, ones that should help to ensure I am much safer now than before.

It is worth remembering, however, that changing a password will not always stop someone logging in with the old password. I changed my Google Calendar password at home and had to change them manually on Firefox and the iPhone so that I could access them again. On Tuesday when back at work I clicked my Google Calendar link and got straight in without inputting the new password. I am presuming that IE stored it, but that is not good at all because it makes a mockery of the whole process.

Anyone know if that is an IE or Google problem?

Deciding what makes a smartphone great is a near impossible task because everyone will have a differing view. I am going to use my experience of reviewing countless phones in this article to demonstrate why there have been very few great smartphones released to date.

In my mind there have only been 4 great smartphones; the BlackBerry Bold 9700, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, Samsung Galaxy S and iPhone 4.

They are great because of one all encompassing aspect- completeness. Each phone comes with decent call quality, good build quality, high-end features and battery lives that are above par. Admittedly I have changed my view somewhat on the iPhone when I did a series of tests for a freelance article and found that typical iPhone usage on other phones results in similar battery performance. The silly glass back on the iPhone 4 is still a problem in my mind, but the good far outweighs the bad here.

Too many smartphones come with significant problems which they really should not when you consider the price- HTC’s often have poor cameras, poor batteries and terrible external speakers. Nokia’s excel in the camera stakes, but Symbian will always be a major downer for me. Motorola has never quite got the software overlay right on most of its phones and the list goes on and on and on.

It is a sad fact that very few smartphones can be considered great because they are often rushed to market, crammed full of features they cannot handle or have a significant defect that ruins the entire experience. At least there are 4 really great smartphones that we can choose between.

Do you think there should be more?

Today’s comment of the day comes from John in response to the article suggesting that Apple’s Chinese workers are not treated fairly- “Welcome to the real world! It is common practice all over Asia. In any case you can’t produce in Europe or the US of A.. costs are prohibitive. And it is not as shocking as the “well thinking” press would like you to think, it is just a fact of life. I spent the last 24 years in factories in Asia (retired now), I have seen 200 hours OT some months when production had to get out of the door… and the rules are made to please the nice people in the Western world, to give them a good feeling… not to apply to the workers.”

Saturday was a big day for my son. His football team (under 11′s) received their medals for getting promoted to a higher league in the morning, a morning filled with blazing April sunshine.

All of the parents gathered around to take photos of the team and it was surprising to see that every single parent was using a smartphone. A couple of Galaxy S’s, iPhone 3GS’s and other older smartphones were used to take the photos. As I said it was very sunny and a selection of perfectly crisp, unaffected by the sun, photos were taken apart from those of us using iPhones. For all of the goodness within the iPhone camera, it faired much worse than a Galaxy S at this priceless moment. A small moment of hesitation creeped in where I wondered if the iPhone camera is a good in comparison to the competition as it was when the iPhone 4 was released.

Later that day my son’s team got to play at the Crawley Town stadium in a mini tournament and the parents watched from the stands. The Crawley and York City players took time out to watch the matches and it was a special moment for our children. Because we were some distance away zooming was required to capture the moment and again the iPhone failed in comparison to my friend’s Galaxy S.

And then Mr Xperia Arc turned up and the photos he grabbed were of a whole new level. The zooming was impressive and the sun seemed to have little effect. Even at the end of the day as the Crawley Town players did a lap of honour for being promoted to the Football League, the Arc and Galaxy handled the low evening sun far better than the iPhone 4.

Buy hey it’s only a camera isn’t it. Well, there is more to this story.

During the game one of my friend’s was continually checking the score in the Tottenham : Chelsea match on his Galaxy and it surprised me at how quickly he could whizz through the interface compared to how I could with Android. On the other side Mr Xperia Arc was checking the Bournemouth scores for me and doing so at a much quicker rate than I could on the iPhone 4 (fortunately Bournemouth prevailed as well!). We were on the same network and with the same cellular technology built in, but all of a sudden iOS looked dated compared to his Android set up and the iPhone looked like something from a few years back compared to the glorious Arc.

There is nothing technical in this article, it is just my experiences on the day. For the first time I realised that Apple needs to move quicker to keep the iPhone near the top of the pile. A bigger screen and a better camera this year will help, but much more is needed when I look at how quickly some of the Android phones are moving forward.

On a side note, it also highlighted how much ‘normal’ people use smartphones these days. There is still a view that most people who own smartphones just use a few standard features, but from what I could see everyone was deeply into their Android devices and had installed lots of apps and customisations and were using them all with vigor. The other realisation was that out of 15 people with smartphones (yes, I counted them) 2 had iPhones, 1 had a Nokia E series and 12 had Android phones. That is a small example of what may be happening in the wider world.

Quick question. I love Evernote to bits and use it every day for business and personal notes, photos and almost everything else. On my iPhone Awesome Note works perfectly for displaying huge amounts of information in a small space, but I haven’t found a decent notes client on Mac OS that does the same yet.

The standard Evernote app is OK, but far from the quality of standalone notes apps and so I am asking if any of you know of a good Mac OS notes app that syncs with Evernote?