Bob's Blog

Previously I wrote about what I like about Windows Phone. Now I’d like to take a bit and explain what I don’t like and hope they fix in future updates (Apollo, I’m looking at you). I’m still trying to figure out if Windows Phone is right for me. Are these issues enough to make me take the phone back and revert to my iPhone 4 until October’s iPhone 5 launch? Read on for more.

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I “broke down” yesterday and bought a Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone, in Black. It was $99 on a 2 year contract and then Nokia decided for the next week to give everyone that buys one $100 due to a small software glitch that will also be fixed on Monday, so they’re effectively paying me to take a WP for 2 years. If I don’t like it, I have 30 days (now 29) to take the phone back and it’ll only cost me $35. How can I say no to that? I was already going to get a white one in two weeks, but this affords me the chance to kick WP around the block for a bit and see if I like it before making the full plunge.

So far, I’m pleased.

I mailed my dad last night and told him I bought one and he sent me a mail tonight, asking me to explain why I did that and what the phone does for me. After the break, I’ll list what I mailed to him.

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Technology is a bitch sometimes. It seems that as of late, every 90 days some shiny new “thing” comes out that makes you go “oooh…. I’ve gotta have that”. Sometimes, that’s fine, if you have a need for it. If you simply WANT it, this feeling can be a huge pain in the butt.

Case in point: I have an iPhone 4 and I’ve made no secret that I want a new phone (plus my contract is up, which help the issue) but which should I get? New Android phones are released like clockwork almost once a month, but average about every 90 days. Luckily, I have no interest in Android after testing the latest Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket for under 24 hours before racing it back to the store. Maybe I’ll post about that some other time.

Lately I’ve been watching Windows Phone 7 because it’s doing something completely unique from iPhone, which I find very intriguing. I’ve had my eye on the HTC Titan 2 or the Nokia Lumia 900 and am leaning towards the Lumia 900. Neither of these phones are out yet, but they’re “coming soon”. The current rumor was that at least one of those phones would come out today (March 18th), but that didn’t happen. The latest rumor for the 900 is that it’ll be out before the end of April and there’s no date yet for the Titan 2. I’m OK with that, because I don’t NEED a new phone, but I WANT a new phone like nothing else.

Meet my new shiny “thing”.

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As my current phone contract expires at the end of December, I’ve now started to pit all of the current phones and OS’s against each other to see where I’m going to go and as such, I wanted to write a blog about it.

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While continuing to obsess research about getting a BlackBerry 9900 when/if AT&T gets it (after the Torch 9810 exclusivity period expires), I’ve been reading that the other side of the world has basically had a BlackBerry BlackOut. BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) has been down for 2 straight days, and now BBM service is being delayed in US, Mexico and Canada. Oy.

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-services-down-again-emea-region

See, kids: this is what happens when you let another company get between you and your internet. It’s one thing to be under your cell provider’s wing, but it’s another to ALSO be under RIM’s guard.

I really want to believe, but there are so many clusterfuck things going on around RIM and the BlackBerry OS that I think sticking with the iPhone, which does indeed “just work”, is the best idea.

I had to go to the Tacoma Best Buy, so while I was there, I meandered into the cell phone section to see if they had the 9900/9930 and of course they did NOT. The 9930 display looked like the phone was ripped off its stand, so I got nothin’. Again.

It’s like someone’s trying to tell me something. Or not. But still, it feels that way!

I keep wanting to like Blackberry and RIM keeps doing everything in their power to make me not like it. The OS is old and outdated, but they’ve managed to make OS7 apparently look and feel great on the new Bold 9900 with updated hardware. I went to my local T-Mobile store tonight to check it out, but they didn’t get any in yet and it’ll be another week before another shipment comes in where they might get some, but you can order it online! No thanks. At least the reps were nice. He got to play with a 9900 yesterday and thought it was cool. That’s nice.

As I was browsing crackberry.com today, I learned that RIM hasn’t updated the Theme Studio program yet so people can make custom themes for OS7 handsets.Wait… let me get this straight: RIM is considering OS7 their flagship OS, the best and last of the bunch for about 3 months before the first QNX device ships, and yet they STILL haven’t released the Theme Studio program yet? The new handsets have been out for almost 60 days… I consider that ridiculous.

I want to like RIM and the Blackberry ecosystem and I want to play with one to see if I could see myself with one in addition to my iPhone (it’s the hardware keyboard – I’ll admit it). However it feels like they keep taking 2 steps forward and one back and I don’t know that I can spend $600+ for that kind of experience, especially since the iPhone 5 is right around the corner when my contract is up next July.

My initial post was going to be “Man, I really wish I could buy the Torch 9810, as it meets the best of both worlds of a fullscreen touch device with the hardware keyboard that RIM is known for industry wide.”

http://us.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberrytorch.jsp

However, it uses BlackBerry 7, which, while it’s the latest and greatest version of the OS they’ve ever made, it’s going to be EXTINCT in less than 4 months when the first QNX BlackBerry drops before year’s end, lovingly dubbed the “Colt”.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/blackberry-colt-to-launch-before-end-of-2011/

Here’s the first kicker – IT IS A 100% TOUCHSCREEN PHONE!

Here’s the second kicker – all OS7 phones won’t get the QNX engine upgrade, even though the Colt will be a single core CPU driven machine. Originally RIM was saying that QNX would only work on dual core smartphones, which made sense, but now they’re rushing the Colt out by the end of the year effectively eating their own words and forcing upgrades just ’cause. I realize that’s business and all, but for early adopters that eat, breathe and sleep BlackBerry (like the awesome Kevin at CrackBerry.com), that’s just retarded.

For a company like RIM, who knows that their userbase absolutely loves the keyboard, to release a new smartphone with a new OS, without a hardware keyboard, BOGGLES MY MIND, especially since (and don’t tell my wife this) I was briefly considering thinking about maybe checking out the new BlackBerry next year. However, now that they’ve removed the hardware keyboard (really the only reason why I’d get a BB anyway) from their flagship upcoming product, I’ll just sit back and let them do whatever they’re going to do and take my time. No use buying the 9810 and being pissed that it’s already at “end of life” when it was just launched last week in Canada and this Sunday in the U.S.

Should I thank RIM for saving me $200+ bucks?

Yesterday, my best friend asked me what I thought of the newly released MacBook Air. I thought I’d re-print it here in case anyone else is having a similar purchasing decision conflict.

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My current contract with AT&T is up in early September, so I’ve started researching what’s out there now in preparation for purchasing a new phone, as I don’t want to go to AT&T on the day I can upgrade and look like a tool, asking a bunch of questions that I know the store rep is tired of hearing. On top of that, I don’t want to be surrounded by reps that think they know what’s best for me; I want to walk into the store and buy it without any hassles.

So, with that said, the  3 smartphone Operating Systems I’m interested in that are on the market today are Blackberry, iPhone and Android. I’m going to list out the new features for each. I’m not convinced this will help me make a decision, but it’ll be nice to have all this information in one place and maybe it’ll help you.

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Apple has already unveiled iPhone OS4.0 software and a few weeks ago, RIM/Blackberry announced Blackberry 6 (to mild fanfare, everyone seems to agree) and tomorrow, the Google I/O conference begins, which is where Google will be unveiling Android 2.2 (“Froyo”). Exciting times!

Since I’m right in the middle of a heated debate with myself to figure out which phone I’m going to get next, I’m going to do the unthinkable and make a huge post (most likely this weekend after everything is announced) detailing all 3 new and improved OS features, most likely pulled from all the usual tech blog sites, but at least it’ll all be in one place and I’ll be doing all the fingerwork so you don’t have to.

Tomorrow morning at 10am PST, Apple will unveil OS4 for the next iPhone.

At 11:01am PST, depending on how that announcement goes, I’ll either be waiting patiently for the new iPhone G4 (HD, if you believe the rumors), or I’ll be purchasing a Nexus One from Google’s website and give Apple the finger.

Grab some popcorn! This should be good!

It looks like AT&T is locking down the next Android phone coming to the network… the Dell Aero.

http://tinyurl.com/y8rya57

What this means is that if you wanted to install a program outside of the Android Marketplace, you cannot. This also means that AT&T has the option to add extra programs, or remove them, if they want to.

From BGR:

As a result of this decision, the Aero will not have the “With Google” branding that graces many of the Android phones currently on the market. If Google is not the centerpiece of the services on the phone, AT&T may be free to swap out Yahoo for Google and put its custom bloatware software on the Aero as it did on the BACKFLIP.

Yet another reason I’m thinking about getting the Nexus One… but I’m still going to wait to see what Apple does with the iPhone G4 and if AT&T does indeed get the HTC Desire, which is the spiritual successor to the N1.

It looks like Sprint is hitting the Android market hard with the HTC Evo sometime this year. Because of this, I have no choice but to hold off on getting the Nexus One or the HTC Desire. I just know that HTC is going to fix the issues that plagued the Nexus One on a future phone not on Sprint. They already fixed the sensitivity issues that plague the Nexus One on the Evo, so now it’s just a matter of time for HTC to make a 4.3″, full touchscreen Evo on AT&T. Desire 2, anyone? I desire that too as well.

Android Central has the full Evo scoop:

http://www.androidcentral.com/full-hands-sprint-evo-4g

I start to sound like a broken record when I say “Sorry, I haven’t updated in forever”, but, sorry, I haven’t updated in forever.

I’ve decided to have this specific blog be about tech over random BS in my life for the people that actually care to read about it. Those BS things I post via Twitter, which you can see in the handy dandy streaming plugin section on the right.

I’ve decided to do a huge brain dump on e-paper about the current thing I’m obsessed about, which is nothing out of the ordinary, and was one of the huge things I posted about on this very site almost 2 years ago, at this time: Upgrading my cell phone.

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I can’t seem to find a damned WordPress based music player, so I’m just going to post it here and you can check it out however you wish.

Paradigm

I got an e-mail from my spam filter that I had a comment to a post on my blog here and I remembered that I haven’t posted in forever and a day. Sorry.

The last time I updated was in March about getting a netbook. A LOT has changed since then. The long and the short of it is I had emergency surgery on my intestines, had a bunch removed, and decided that I want a Mac, so I bought a 13″ MacBook Pro and I absolutely love it. It’s got everything I wanted and more. Yes, it was expensive and some would say overpriced, but for what it can do and for hopefully how long I’ll have it, it was worth every penny.

I don’t really have much going on right now, but anything I do update on I usually put on LJ or Twitter first. You can see my Twitter feed on the right side of the main page, so you’ll always know what I’m up to… if you care.

I was testing Windows 7 again today and it really is a lot like Vista, which means if you dislike the UI of Vista, you’re probably going to dislike Win7. I was very mad at first that the Quick Launch taskbar was removed (I use mine all the time; I have 30 programs on mine right now), but you can add it back in, though it’s a pain in the ass:

http://mintywhite.com/tech/windows-7/windows-seven-7-restore-quick-launch-toolbar/

I know that MS wants to make Win7 as minimalistic as possible, but did they really have to remove the Quick Launch OPTION from the Toolbar options? Now it’s a power user command.

I really wonder what it’d take for me to become a Mac convert on days like this.

I have been debating, for quite some time now, about making “the switch” to OSX from Windows. This isn’t because of OSX at its core, believe it or not… it’s because of the hardware. The MacBook line of laptops are, in a word, gorgeous.

However, they’re costly. It’d cost me roughly $1600 to upgrade to the 13″ MacBook with a Windows license.

That’s a lot of frickin’ money for just an all-aluminum chassis of awesomeness.

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My favorite band, Live, has put together a music video contest that I just had to enter. They filmed a bunch of footage back in July when they were filming their DVD release and they posted it on the internet for us to edit our own video together.

Here’s my take on it: