North49th

My Battery OCD

Battery life needs to improve with most smartphones!  Sure, we all know that but I had to just add my 2 cents.

I don't know about you but I'm just slightly over the top worrying that I have lots of battery life.  If my phone gets to 50% I start to panic and look for a plug. In fact, I almost always have a charger with me...or a backup phone. :)

Today was the day for my Dad to go into surgery and I knew I'd be at the hospital for a long time.  Since my personal phone is a Palm Pre (which happens to have horrible battery life) I had to make a decision on whether to bring a charger or a backup phone. 

It's crazy I have to even consider this but it's the reality with far too many smartphones.  Battery tech REALLY needs to improve and phone makers need to do more in OS design to address this.  Old news, I know, but it's still a problem, so I still get to complain. ;)

I decided to just bring the HTC Hero with me as a backup as it actually does VERY well at stretching the battery.  I figured bringing a cord would still mean having to find a plug and waiting for the phone to charge.  

The Pre is now at about 25% and my battery OCD is kicking in.  Time to break out the Hero...to save my day, as it were.

Filed under  //   Mobile Tech  

Another Palm Pre Pic

Cimg0033


Very nice colours from the camera on the Palm Pre.

Filed under  //   Mobile Tech   family   pictures  

Thoughts On Text Entry on my Smartphones

Today on my way to lunch I thought of an article I wanted to write (not this one) just using one of my phones.  I had two phones (details on that in a second) with me, was considering which I would use and decided pretty quickly to scrap it.  Neither one was going to be easy enough to use to crash out any length of article.

I suppose I could back off that statement a tad, but it won't be by much.  Yes, I could have used either phone to create the article content.  Both have software keyboards with some level of error correction but neither does a particularly good job of it.  More phones all the time are using software keyboards and you would expect the experience to be better than it usually is. (grammar alert!)

The first phone I'll mention is the Samsung Omnia.  Yes, this is getting rather old at this point, but it's one that I like to use occasionally and one I had with me today.  It is a Windows Mobile 6.1 device with an on-screen keyboard.  The Omnia is generally a decent phone and fairly snappy but entering text is actually quite painful.  It's the one greatest reason why I put this phone back in the drawer for 2 or 3 months at a time.  The error correction is just not effective which means that for every line of input I have to correct WAY too much.

The other phone with me today is the HTC Hero, and it is much, much better for text entry.  The screen is capacitive, which does help a lot but it's the error correction that really makes a difference. Unfortunately, it isn't perfect and has enough hiccups to cause me to avoid long content.  The keyboard will occasionally lag and then cause the wrong character to be entered.  The only way around this is to type slowly...which is obviously a problem.  The error correction seems to be very good but that lag completely gets in the way of doing any serious typing.

While I am not generally a proponent of iPhone I do have to say that is does text entry quite well.  I have an iPod touch and don't have a problem at all in creating posts on it with its software keyboard. Apple error correction is almost magical; its not perfect but compared to most everything else it doesn't have to be.

Perhaps some of the new Android devices are much better, such as the HTC Incredible or Nexus One, but the Hero just doesn't cut it.  Windows Mobile may not fair so well.  A friend (name withheld to protect the innocent) has an HTC HD2 and while he loves the phone overall he is surprised that the text entry is not so great; not even up to the HTC Hero standard.  With its massive screen you would think it would be far more forgiving and easy to use, but not so.

Hopefully we will see the next gen of devices do better for text entry.  Clearly it isn't impossible, so why are some companies struggling with it?

Filed under  //   Mobile Tech  

Engadget Outs the Dell Lightning WP7 slider!

Delllightning

Look at what Engadget just posted:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/dell-lightning-the-ultimate-windows-phone-7-device-leaks-out/

It is the Dell Lightning, a Windows Phone 7 device with a beautiful portrait slider.  LOVE the look of this!!

Filed under  //   Mobile Tech  

Buying Out Palm? Hang on to that Tail!

The biggest challenge any company is going to have in buying out Palm is going to be convincing the executive team they are no longer in charge.  Well, I suppose this would be taken care of in negotiations but then the challenge is going to be to get the board to agree to a buyout and to convince them it isn't a merger.

This'll be an interesting story to watch.

Filed under  //   Mobile Tech  

All for Posterity

This past week I was reading about how Twitter's search engine only goes back 6 days. You can use other search engines to find old tweets but I think that's only if you search by topic.

That got me feeling like all those tweets are kind of a waste.  Well, in the greater scheme of thing they certainly are but when you compare that to blogging it almost feels like wasted thoughts.  At least with a blog people can read over your thoughts from as far back as you have recorded them and as far back as they want to bother.

As a result of these incredibly deep insights I'll probably blog some more things now.  Posts may not be too long, but at least they'll be recorded for posterity, whether you like it or not.

Filed under  //   random  

Oshawa 'Scientists' Plan to Match LHC Experimentation

In an attempt to match the accomplishment of the Large Hadron Collider experiment a group of ‘scientists’ in Oshawa are undertaking their own experimentations.  Plans are underway to collide two Adams.

The first of these tests will take place in April in the hallway of their new rented facility inside the head office of the Mary Brown’s Chicken.

We salute these courageous souls and their bold message that “Education ain’t everything”.  March on, brave soldiers!

Filed under  //   silliness  

Hey Google, Did You Forget About Blogger

I was just taking a look at Blogger.com, which I haven't bothered with in a very long time.  Wow, it is looking verrrrry old.  Google seems to have abandoned it. If I'm not mistaken, there was some announcement about a new theme generator, but I can't find that news now.

Oh well, Posterous is pretty darn nice.  Guess I'll stick with it.

Filed under  //   random