Smart phones do have a second life

When I lost my beloved iPhone 4 I was devastated, I replaced it with a new look alike iPhone 4s.

Fast forward 2 years later, the phone started showing its age. First evidence was the lack of voice in FaceTime and then came the day I realized I couldn't plug my earphones to the phone. The last straw was when the power button on the phone broke, imagine not able to lock or power down your phone, it was a night mare for few days.

All the above and the imminent launch of iPhone 6, I had almost made up my mind to wait for the launch and buy the new iPhone. But the new phone looked more Androidsh and to top it off my service provider threatened to hike price if renewed.

All said and done, to get a new phone I would have to pay $400 extra plus the equipment cost over period of 2 years and $180 year on year from there.

That pushed me to look into nexus 5, but after owning nexus 7 I am not a fan of bare bone Android any more.

So, I looked at the last option of repair and resurrect my existing phone, a quick Google search led me to icracked.com, a few phone calls and a day later, all my iPhone problems were fixed and it is working like a champ. The total cost was $65 including the cost of a new battery. Thankfully only 1 part broken and rest of it was just cleaning and removing lint.

Not so smart Google maps

I have come to rely on  Google maps for everything related to  travel, so much so that I no longer carry my stand alone trusted Garmin gps with me. It works fairly well in most cases but did utterly bad in one case. The recent example was when Google maps was showing my destination to be in the middle of an elevated freeway, while my actual destination was on the access road of the freeway.

Made me think about the addressing schemes, if the address is something like xxx on yyy freeway, then can I really blame Google for asking me find my destination on an elevated freeway. Another possibility is that the address of the destination existed and the freeways had a make over and became elevated to add more roads underneath. At which point, may be the address ought to have been updated to reflect the change in road schemes but didn’t for some reason, Again benefit of doubt Google. But considering Google is smart and it’s applications like Google maps are one of the best it should realize the destination can't be on an elevated freeway. Yes, I tried both Android and an iOS device with the same result.

All the above being true, the irony was, the blue icon for destination was showing the right location (on the access road) using which I used to reach my destination by manual navigation but the automated routing was telling me to jump off the freeway.

I think its the case of not so smart Google for once :).  

IMessaging/Text Messaging problem with IOS 7

Over last few of months 2 things happened with some of my friends in terms of their cell phone handsets.

1. Some of them got fed up with IOS and switched to Android
2. Some of them got fed up with Android and switched to IOS specifically Iphone 5s

So, what is the significance of these 2 events. For those who do not know, Apple supports something called Imessage between IOS devices (Iphone, Ipad or Ipod) and it introduced this with IOS 5 and it is free. For people like me who refuse to sign up for a text plan it was a good deal. Now we have alternatives like whatsapp and all so it is not so big a deal, but not everybody in my contact list are on whatsapp either.

Now back to the events, because of event 1 I was unable to text message my friends any more and it always came up with “Imessage delivery failed”. In event 2 I wasn’t able to send my friends Imessages, no reason it should not work as according to Apple any IOS 5 or higher devices should be able to use Imessage.

I was hoping Dr. Google would provide answers but they said “Sorry, you are on your own”.  I tried deleting phone numbers of these specific friends and re-entering the same but no use either.

On a final try I deleted the contact of the friend who switched to Android completely and recreated the contact again. And the miracle happened, I was able to send text messages to this new Android friend and at the same time was able to send Imessages to friends who had switched to Iphone 5s.

If you were encountering problems like me and if the above solution works in your case too, will you please let me know?

Google Nexus 7– First impressions

Considering the fact that in our family of 3 we have 3 Ipods (1 of them being the Ipod-touch) and 2 versions of Iphones, when it came to choosing a tablet pc, the ideal choice should have been the Ipad. But after reviewing the amount of usage the Ipod touch has received in the last year of ownership, I was hesitant to pay the Apple tax and buy the Ipad, thus started the hunt for alternatives. 

Thankfully I only could find 2, one being Kindle Fire and other being Google’s own Nexus 7. If I had to buy an year ago, I probably would have bought kindle fire itself but after reading the reviews on the product, I went with the other alternative. 2 things that prevented me from going with Kindle Fire, 1 is its exclusion of accelerometer and the other is its extreme customization of Android OS (updates have to come from Amazon).

First impression, I loved it. It has a nice rubber grip on the back,.a nice responsive touch screen, pretty slim form factor. and is fairly light weight. The size was something I was apprehensive about (for Ipad has a 10” screen while this is only 7”), boy was I surprised, it being 7” makes it easier to hold in 1 hand and use other hand to manipulate the tablet. The battery life is pretty impressive (haven’t measured or compared but it seems to last a while). The underlying CPU is pretty responsive and even after playing around with Google Earth for a while, I didn’t feel it warm at all. One other thing I liked the most was the lack of mechanical home button on the Nexus which is a standard for Ipad.    

It is an Android OS and not the IOS, so it has a bit of learning curve but in less than a couple of hours I was able to install apps and check updates and all the good stuff. The screen resolution is not very high but I could hardly make out the difference between my Iphone4 (with retina display) and the Nexus 7.

One caveat though, the screen on my Iphone is so strong that I have let my daughter toss it around couple of times on a tiled floor and it has come out unscathed, but I don’t think Nexus 7 can stand that treatment.

I haven’t played around with the front and back cameras or taking any videos or pics with those. I doubt if I ever will do it considering we use our Iphone’s for most of that work and if we need more precision and clarity we bring out the big guns (Canon Rebel Xsi).

If you are in the market for a tablet PC and are on the fence whether to pay APPLE the tax or not, then I would recommend Google Nexus 7.