How iPhone ruined HTC

HTC is essentially an Android iPhone producer. They pay attention to style, but also get wrapped up in the negatives of trying to emulate the iPhone.

I once owned an HTC Wildfire S, and it was a beautiful phone, and the UI was really fantastic. I remember thinking to myself that it looked very refined and that I would be a happy user and be able to impress those around me. Well, how wrong I was. The battery lasted about two hours from full charge down to critical, which is one reason I don’t use iPhone… There is limited room for the battery.

Application memory was abysmal, and total RAM available after boot was a joke. This was back in the days of Android 2.3, when Google was gaining momentum but far behind Apple. In order to make an iPhone knockoff they skimped on components to achieve the form factor they needed.

More and more other manufacturers are trying to make a svelte phone while ignoring the fact that batteries just can’t be reduced in size any more than they are already, and this results in a high spec phone that needs a new battery after 3 to 4 hours. The battery testing most review websites use must factor in an assumption that we won’t use our phone half the time.

Kudos to Motorola for their MAXX line of phones, they are the only company who make a phone for a power user out of the box. So far, iPhone style makes for iPhone capability, even in the Android world.

N7 2013 Updates

The updates to the Nexus 7 2013 have been a mixed blessing. The first update, which shows up right away, causes the glitches with the touchscreen. A new update fixes or reverses the previous patch, although some oversensitive clicking still exists. Hopefully they will continue to refine the device. I suspect 1080p makes for some interesting changes from 720p optimized code.

Now that the device has a screen protector I have had a more consistent experience, but find I have to add some extra pressure to register a press. I think I was spoiled by the N7 2012, nonetheless I an disappointed, and hope Google has a fix for it coming along with KitKat (Android 4.4) in the next couple of weeks. The tablet thankfully is still functional, just not up to par with the first iteration when it comes to the screen.

Cymera App Test

From Cymera

Very handy app I’ve found called Cymera created the effects in this picture. Picture taken by Nexus 7 2013.

Nexus 7 Arrived, First Impressions

The aspect ratio on the Nexus 7 2013 takes some getting used to, although the ability to hold it in one hand is a plus. It is much more responsive than the 2012 model, and seems to hold a battery charge as well as the older unit.  The camera on the back would be fine except it has trouble focusing, though this could have been the subject matter I chose to use: a picture from the couch past the bookcase and into the kitchen.

The screen is beautiful and seems to handle fingerprints better than the previous version, I suspect the glass is coated with a different compound than the original. Swiftkey works well, and I have had no problems with apps as of yet.  I estimate the Android operating system takes 9 GB since there was 23 GB left over when I received the unit fresh, out of a total of 32 GB. They really need to put an sdxc card slot on these units…

Typing is easier holding the unit in portrait mode while using the Swype style typing system on the unit. During the course of writing this small post I have noticed that there is some occasional randomness to the inputted text, so it seems that all the input bugs mentioned on fan sites still need to be worked out. Chances are the high resolution of the unit posed some challenges to Asus and Google.

I have been an ASUS fan since they were a motherboard manufacturer and little else so I am willing to put up with some temporary glitches, as long as they are patched. I am also a fan of Google, I think that this tablet is a good deal at just shy of three hundred dollars, and look forward to many hours of productive nerding out.

Nexus 7 2013 Ordered

Currently waiting for Google to ship my new Nexus 7 32 GB tablet. While it is a definite upgrade from the unit I am currently typing this out on, I can’t stress enough how much I will miss this unit. Despite all its little quirks, this tablet has become my go to device for anything my phone cannot handle.

My roommate had an unfortunate accident with her tablet, such that the screen is ruined, so she is taking ownership of this N7 2012 16 GB. I can only hope she has better luck with this unit than the previous one. TRIM support came OTA recently and I am finding this tablet to be much more responsive the last few days, so I assume the flash ROM has been cleaned out. I will have to wipe this unit when the new N7 arrives, I hope it will behave properly afterwards.

Many people have complained about the Nexus 7 2012 tablet, from build quality to stability, and I have to say that while there have been periods of time where the device performed to less than expectation, factory resets always solved the problem. I learned that whenever an Android Update happened, and also when getting a new unit, to always do a factory reset. Since I use the cloud extensively, losing data was never an issue, at least now that I am used to using the cloud and have learned to check to make sure that transfers have completed.

The N7 2013 is the next step I am taking in the Android experience, and I hope to get a decent model right out of the box. Apparently there have been teething issues for some early adopters, I hope my luck with Nexus remains the same or better.