New Phone – HTC HD7
I’ve been after a new phone ever since I cracked the replacement screen about a week after replacing it. My 24 month contract has been stopping from getting a new phone as I still have a couple of months to wait. Not anymore though, the other day I decided I’d actually get a new phone, the idea has been flying around for quite some time (the idea being to get a phone out right and get a cheaper sim-only contract). I dislike paying £35 a month and being strapped down for 2 years and I think I’d get better value for money buying a phone out right and paying £10-£15 a month instead. Plus it also means I can trade/sell/buy another phone when I like!
So, I don’t know why but I somehow came to the conclusion that I wanted a HD7 with Windows Phone 7 and I’m glad I did. The phone is awesome, after having the same standard interface on the iPhone it is refreshing being able to swipe around Windows Phone 7. Its clean and simple and doesn’t get cluttered up when you install more than 10 apps. One of my dislikes with the iPhone is that you had to manage the interface, you had to decide where apps go and within no time you have around 5 screens of apps… WP7 is much simpler giving you an alphabetical list of applications..
Coming from the 3GS it is also nice to have a bigger screen although WP7 doesn’t seem to maximise the space it has available I think it works though, gives a much cleaner, less cluttered user interface.
One major annoyance though is that BBC iPlayer isn’t supported, although I read that Flash will soon be available it’s quite annoying not being able to watch iPlayer whenever I like. You have to remember it’s pretty new compared to Android or iPhone so I suspect it will be addresses soon!
This post seems to have developed in to more of a review / how WP7 is better than iPhone and I suppose it is in my mind. Although I did like the iPhone when it first arrived after two years and the fact everyone seems to have one takes away that brand new gadget that no one else has feeling, which for a techy person like me, is pretty important to be honest… This brings me to its development support…
Unlike Android you have to pay the £65 to unlock your phone for development, even just to run your own homebrew apps you’ve got to part with £65… I was annoyed when I discovered this information and was ready to start hacking the phone to bypass it, however I remembered and learnt that Microsoft likes students and offers it free with Dream spark which is great but I’m only a student for another couple of months and after than its £65 down the drain every year, maybe I should develop an app to recover the cost? Any ideas?
It is quite annoying that you have to pay but I can see why, it’s slightly disconcerting that Android and Google provide no moderation on its app store. Being open source is great but as everyone learns from the days in high school… Not all the kids play nicely… Hearing that over 50,000 Android devices are infected with a rootkit, whispering back to hacker HQ with you information is a little scary. You shouldn’t have to worry about your phone getting a virus; you want it to just work.
Anyway, the phone is pretty awesome, the battery life opinion is yet to be decided upon but generally I’m very happy with it. The People/Contacts tile is great adding everyone you know on Facebook, Outlook and Windows live which prompts you to remove those contacts you’ve not spoken too since forever but a little contract purge is something everyone has to do sometime…
Cracked iPhone screen!
Well it finally happened, after nearly 17 months I finally smashed my iPhone screen. I can add this to the list of smashed up phones including my D900 and a MP3 player I had in college. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner but the other day when I was at the gym my iPhone fell out of my pocket and hit the floor. It landed face down and I knew instantly it wasn’t going to be a lucky escape! I don’t have a photo but it was well and truly shattered.
I say was because £40 later I had a new piece of glass in the post. I was luck enough not to damage the LCD and what with replacing my laptop screen twice I thought I had the expertise to replace my iPhone screen. It was quite cheap really £40 included £8 posted as well as a £6 all you need tool-kit for opening up the iPhone. As you can probably tell I don’t have insurance but if you think about it I’m better off without it. 15 months x £9 = £135 or what is £6? still that’s £60 so I have saved myself at least £20!
Anyway I was surprised at how easy it was to replace. I checked out some videos on-line (there are many) and once you’ve removed all the broken glass its pretty simple. However I’m not sure if its because of the new screen or the jailbreak I have but the iPhone is slowly getting painfully slow and sometimes unresponsive I think its time for an upgrade but past Tom decided it was a good idea to tie myself into a 24 month contract.
Probably for the best as I shouldn’t really get any new gadgets while being busy with Uni. Although I have an eye on a Windows 7 Phone. Something with the iPhone I don’t like any more. Maybe its the tight grip the App Store has or the fact every man and his dog has one now… It doesn’t seem as cool does it?
June
I don’t like to say I’ve not posted for a while but I haven’t really updated the site on my ongoings lately just my new gadgets and tech which actually reminds me I’ve not reviewed or posted about my new quite awesome laptop.
We’ve had some new tech at work too. I’ve had my hands on a HTC Desire this week, I’ve been quite impressed with Android and the HTC phone but its not something I’ve got used too but then I’ve not had my sim in and my iPhone as always been in reach. I could though see myself hopping over to Android in the future. Looking at the iPhone 4 details nothing really shouts awesome which is good as it won’t make my iPhone 3gs to obsolete. I can however see future Android phones having some quite epic features and being able to root it and unlock more sounds pretty cool add-ons like tethering for free just seals the deal!
Last week marked a slight milestone for me on placement last week as well, firstly I kicked off my report for University but also I started the hand over period with my replacement. Although its 3 months of hand over it marks the time where I start taking a step back and sharing my knowledge.
I’ve also started preparing for going back to Staffs. I’ve got my moving date in the bag which is quite soon so I’ll be commuting for the final part of placement but I’d also been brushing up on my programming skills as I’ve had a tip off with regards to next years assignments and reading up on IPV6 as its likly that’ll be the subject of my final year project. I’m getting quite excited really it’ll be great to get back to work and
Linux Hosted
Over the weekend with some holiday time I’ve been back to my home town for a little break from city life. I went back Thursday night and came back to Birmingham very late monday night/early Tuesday. I was late as I had randomly ended up in Leicester with one of my good friends and we had gone to see Alice in Wonderland, which was pretty good.
It had been quite an eventful but great weekend, saw the family and friends, witnessed a car crash in which the offending party hopped up and drove off and moved my website to my linux host. I’m trying to make room for another server so I’m consolidating various services so I can free up an IP address but a new virtual machine running exchange2010.
The move didn’t go as smoothly as I had planned, the application I used to create a dump of the DB has filled it with random text doubling the file size and caused lots of issues when I went to load it up. I instead reverted back to using MySQLDump on the Windows command line console.
Didn’t have many issues with the new setup, Apache 2.0 didn’t like the previous .htaccess and reported an “Internal Error Page” was quite annoying as I didn’t know what was going on until I checked the logs. After loading up the proper .htaccess file I just needed to enable mod_rewrite using the following command.
a2enmode rewrite
I’m pretty happy everything is working now, one thing that did annoy me running WordPress in ISS 6.0 is that the WordPress iPhone apps did not work but now that do as I’m back on linux so look out for a few more picture uploads.
Just one more site to move and I should be able to setup Exchange2010.
Back From V
So I’ve finally been able to come home from work a write a post on V Fest 09. I’ve been totally knackered over the past couple of days and have pretty much come home from work and gone staight to bed! It is so nice sleeping on a soft surface rather than a stone ridden field that is Weston Park.
So how was V Fest I hear you ask? Well it so awesome! Actually awesome doesn’t do it justice! I had an amazing time at V this year as I did last year. I think the only difference in the awesomeness is that this year on the Saturday and Sunday there was not a drop of rain. I’m feeling the affects now. I got extremely burnt!
I think the best act I saw all weekend would have to be Pendulum. If I remember right it was their last tour gig and they made it count. I was at the front for most of it and saw at least 3 people get carted off by paramedics! (They couldn’t take how awesome it was!) They play amasingly. I’m very much a fan of Pendulum’s music but they are amasing live! I recommend seeing them to anyone. My next favourite act of the weekend would hands down be Snow Patrol. It was very emotional on the Saturday evening. The crowd kept singing along to songs after they had finished for a couple of verues I didn’t think the band new what to do.. Sing along or play the next song.. .
As it didn’t get the campsite didn’t get flooded again this year. It was nice to be able to chill out in the evening with a nice (not so cold) beer. I choose not to drink in the arena as it is so expensive but a few drinks in the evening went down a treat! The first night was pretty cold but I think my sun burn kept me warm the rest of the nights which was nice but painful!
I had hoped to update facebook/twitter with the antics I was getting up to at V but as cool as the iPhone is.. The battary doesn’t last very long and when I did have it turned on to update facebook it didn’t get a signal!
Here are just a few pics I took of the stages. I’ve also got a video of Fat Boy Slim. His set was awesome, never seen him play or heard much of his work but he was very good!
update: Removed images while I resize them
iPhone 3GS
My new iPhone 3GS!
Not a picture of it as I was using it to take the photo.. the box will have to do!
