Android and other phone gossip

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Gavin Scott
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Beep wrote:[off topic]
Gavin Scott wrote:On the downside, my phone seems to sometimes drop its wireless network at home lately - and the constant "acquiring IP address" drains the battery in no time. I'm beginning to think that's my wireless router in the house, though, so maybe not a handset issue at all.
Have you tried changing the WiFi channel, usually does the trick with phones and other things [PSPs, PS3s, iPods/Pads], they don't seem to like Channels 1,4 and 13 on our router for some unknown reason.

[back to topic!]
I hadn't. Worked fine for ages, but then there are lots more wireless networks in the vicinity than there was when I moved in, so will give it a shot.
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Sput
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Just installed handcent...OMG THERE ARE MORE LED COLOURS THAN ORANGE AND GREEN!
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Gavin Scott
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Sput wrote:Just installed handcent...OMG THERE ARE MORE LED COLOURS THAN ORANGE AND GREEN!
Yep, I think its a little tri-colour LED in there, and it cleverly mixes the RGB balance to one of the other hues.

My text notification is pink, dontchaknow.
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Pete
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oh wifi is a nuicence these days. I used to have the only wifi network around apart from a feint one from the coffee shop along the road. There are currently 8 showing up on my PC with a "Stagecoach Wifi" network appearing every time one of the new buses drives past.

Have had to do some careful tweaking of the channels to find a gap that'll work. yay @ Windows 7 and the fab "netsh wlan show all" command :D
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Critique
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Just thought that I'd note that I suggested a BlackBerry as the mobile application for BlackBerry doesn't show crossed out text with the cross through it. Gavin, I've never been on BES, and I'm on BIS now, but I've never had a problem, apart from it being too easy to Brick a device and stop it working after downloading an app. At least you can't have that problem on the iPhone.
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BBC LDN
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Pete wrote:The Omnia 7 looks a stunning phone frankly but I note it's £30 more expensive than the price that I balked at for the iPhone 4 so it would probably have to be the Mozart out of the two of them.
Not sure how you got £30 more expensive than iPhone - are those prices quoted by Orange Retentions? I've not been able to replicate the same pricing via the Orange website - the iPhone always seems to come up MASSIVELY more expensive than anything else (for example, a 16GB iPhone 4 is showing as £169 on a £30pm contract, with only 150 mins and 250 texts; compared with £99 for an Omnia 7 on Panther 30, with 300 mins and unlimited texts):

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If you're upgrading, you may be able to get some wiggle room on the pricing of the Omnia 7 (or indeed of any handset) by going through Retentions by asking for your PAC and signalling your intent to leave the network. T-Mobile, for example, refused to budge on pricing until I asked for my PAC - they initially said I'd have to pay £49.99 for my Omnia 7 on a £35pm contract, and I'd lose my existing loyalty discount of 25%; once I'd got through to Retentions, and made some noise about other, better deals on different networks, they gave me a free handset and allowed me to keep my monthly discount.

Orange is one of the pricier networks though; in fact, despite the Orange UK and T-Mobile UK companies merging to form Everything Everywhere, the two brands will continue to co-exist for precisely the reason that Orange has a more premium market position, whereas T-Mobile is being more specifically focused upon value propositions in the market, such as their £35 Business Unlimited tariff for small businesses, which provides unlimited UK landline and cross-network mobile calls, unlimited texts and 'unlimited' web (fair usage up to 3GB). You may find better deals - for whatever handset you eventually choose - by shopping around, or by at least trying out the Retentions route, if you haven't done so already.

It's worth noting that Orange smartphone data offerings are dreadful - 500MB or 750MB on most tariffs, where T-Mobile is offering 3GB a month if you get an Android or Windows Phone handset, and Three offers unlimited data usage with no caps on their 'The One' plan. You may be able to use this as a further stick to beat some juicy discounts or deals out of Orange Retentions - or it may be time to check out another network.
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Sput
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T-Mobile have just announced they're cutting theirs to 500MB
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lukey
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Worth noting that only today T-Mobile signalled an end to the 3Gb cap in favour of the now woefully standard 500Mb.

And my contribution to all this - I got the HTC HD7 just after launch. The platform is very beautiful - as LDN said, it's the first time I've owned a phone which felt at all elegant, after a history of SE phones and having finally just diposed of an embarrassment of a Symbian phone, the slickness of WP7 was a huge huge pull. It's obviously immature and could do with all the improvements that appear to be on the way - a priority being while I'm not all that fussed about 'proper' multitasking, the current tombstombing strategy is pretty horrific in practice, particularly with games.

As you'll know from my previous bitching to you, I can't recommend the HD7 to you yet purely because I've had outrageous stability issues from launch, which will manifest several times a week - including random reboots, graphical corruption (as in the YouTube video embedded earlier), and apps which randomly refuse to load until the next reboot (including fringe apps like SMS...). My digging into this points into particular issues affecting a number of the HTC launch phones rather than WP7 itself - so as soon as the promised firmware update materialises I'd be happy to recommend this. This ordeal should also prove to be an interesting test of MS's centralised update strategy - as this is exactly the edge case where Android's fragmentation helps - I suspect there's a lot of toing and froing with neither HTC or MS wanting the first WP7 device to be outed as inherently broken, and MS's infamously mammoth cert process won't help to get a device-specific update out.

It doesn't have the superior display of the Samsung, but having owned an AMOLED phone for a couple of years before this one it's one of those things where I objectively know the AMOLED was better and I adored it at the time, but don't actually miss in practice. The camera is a bit poor, but the lack of bezel and thin thin form factor appeal....despite the minor 'doesn't really work' issue. I'd be happy to ramble a bit more about WP7 but I sense you've already written it off :p
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BBC LDN
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Sput wrote:T-Mobile have just announced they're cutting theirs to 500MB
Good lord, you're quite right - I'm gobsmacked.
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Pete
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That price was from clicking the "show me my upgrade phones" link from the my account pages, the rest of the Orange shop was exploding as I wrote the post and I've since discovered they offer it for free to new customers. tut tut. That would definately be used as ammo.

Certainly have wangled decent discounts out of Orange retentions in the past and they do tend to cave in quite quickly (although suspect I'd have to wait until within the 30 days rather than the 90 days to get the really nice discounts). Obviously couldn't be on T Mobile as I'm such a snob and, as mentioned, they've just removed the only good thing they had going for them (the 3GB cap).

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And yes Lukey as I mentioned on MSN earlier, the image of Ballmer personally sweating into each handset is mildly offputting. >>

The issue I think I am having the most is iPhone vs other, and as it's iPhone 3GS I'm concerned I'd be stuck in a position where i'd be lumbered with old tech for 2 years and potentially be left behind or given a software update that turns the handset into treacle (as happened with the 3G).

I've not seen a Window Phone handset in the wild yet and I am very curious as to how it actually goes about integrating Facebook into your address book. I'm quite strict with Facebook and refuse loads of people and cull the dregs regularly (as the 10 or so people off here who tried to add me and were instantly rejected will testify), but I'm still curious. Certainly the reviews have been inconsistent with some suggesting its quite nicely done whilst others suggest that every fool and their mother's images start appearing on my phone hether I want them to or not. How does it fare in real life?
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bilky asko
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Sput wrote:T-Mobile have just announced they're cutting theirs to 500MB
I'm now glad I returned to Virgin Mobile.
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