OnePlus One!

Been a long time. But I am back with yet another phone.

Why Android?

I have been a fan of the Android platform for a while now. I started with the wonderful HTC Hero, moved onto the Samsung Galaxy, then to the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and now the OnePlus One.

Android has been a love hate relationship. It has a fairly large app platform, with a mix of true high quality apps, and some so so ad ridden apps. The user experience is fine, but the Android performance issues and quirks do annoy you from time to time.

Anyways, onto the OnePlus One! This phone has two major selling points, the OS (Cyanogenmod) and the price. I purchased the $349 version with 64GB of internal storage. It can be had for $299 with 16GB of storage. This undercuts the value of the incredible Nexus 5!

Quick Thoughts

Cyanogenmod comes with built in support for the Apple TV, Chromecast, Miracast, and DLNA. This is perhaps one of the best device agnostic devices out there!

Initial picture quality seems to be quite good, but also quite inconsistent. It is hard to get an in focus shot at all times. Battery life seems to be seller, heavy use all day no issue. Call quality is impressive, supporting HD Voice on the T-Mobile network (not VoLTE though …).

The antenna data performance also seems quite decent.

Not much to say about this mythical phone. It performs well, feels like a quality construction, and is priced quite competitively. If you were in a market for an unlocked smart phone, wanted a stock like experience, I’d consider the OnePlus One, I’d even consider it over the Nexus 5.

 

Frustrations of Technology

Small rant. Apple products do not always work. It is incredibly frustrating to have to work so hard to do something as simple as use your Apple TV as a desktop extension.

I am not the only one.

It took a few reboots of my Macbook and a reboot of my AppleTV to get audio working. Apple just works … yeah right.

F.E.A.R. Combat

F.E.A.R. 2’s multiplay sucks. The  game dumbed down quite a bit of what made F.E.A.R. special. Particle effects were greatly reduced. Craters in the walls

FEAR 1

FEAR 2

http://www.projectorigincommunity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=89870&postcount=9

Great improvement in FEAR 2 right?  In addition there are no dedicated server files available.

Good news is FEAR Combat is still available. https://joinfear.com I encourage everyone to go and get that game.

Many will probably end up

Another Android … Nexus 5

I was lucky enough to get a Nexus 5, I am sure everyone who wants one will receive them within the next few weeks. We’ll see if Google learned a thing or two with the Nexus 4 debacle.

I had the Nexus 4, and the Galaxy Nexus before that. I am addicted to Nexus .I had the original Nexus 7, which was by far the worst Nexus device I have owned, requiring two RMAs, and generally just being slow and low quality feeling. Google support was great in getting them replaced, but that device was awful.

I always toyed with the idea of getting a Nexus 10, but never did, perhaps I will after the refresh.

So the Nexus 5, well , the initial impressions are good. The phone feels great in your hand. It is thinner than the Nexus 4 by a good margin. The construction materials feel great as well. The soft touch polycarbonate ‘silk’ back has a high quality feel to it. This is the first plastic phone I do not mind.

KitKat is great. It feels smooth, it has a cleaner more professional look. I am sure you guys have seen many screenshots of the OS itself.

The first thing you notice about the Nexus 5 is the screen. It is beautiful, at 4.95″ 1920×1080. The ceramic buttons do feel quite nice, gives the phone a better premium feel.

For an Android phone, this feels fast. Android inherently just feels choppy and slow in some areas. Chrome is awful, ironically Firefox (Android) feels fine. Windows Phone , Windows RT, and iOS have much better touch responses with lower spec’d hardware. I had the Surface RT at the same time I had the Nexus 7, both ran Tegra 3, the Surface was much more responsive.

I think the Nexus 5 is a steal. Unlocked, you get a 1920×1080 screen, LTE, and arguably one of the best mobile SOCs out there. The only downside or upside of this device is Google. Google is becoming more evil everyday. From backtracking on promises of openness (Hangouts replacing XMPP / Jabber) , controlling open source (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/) , moving to proprietary protocols (Chromecast in favor of miracast) , to shutting out competitors (http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-google-battle-over-youtube-windows-phone). Google still provides value, and they win me over still, despite being more and more evil.

I’ll comment more on the battery life and camera when I have had the device a bit longer.

Poor Hans

Poor Hans

Fan of his music, but it is ridiculous how over used some of these sounds are. Just like Dub Step proliferating. 

I’m back

After a long stint away, I am back.

Lots has changed. I am a degreed Chemical Engineer, and I have owned two apple products (WHAAAT).

Let me start with expressing frustration with technology. I recently purchased the 2013 Apple Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch model. One of the first things I did was set up my mail accounts, mail crashed.

I am tired of the mantra that Macs do not crash, and Windows does. They are equal here. I thought it was pretty interesting comic relief.  The notebook then became unresponsive, or at least the keyboard and trackpad did. Apparently this is a known issue. I expect more from Apple.

I like the Notebook, I can write a formal review later perhaps.

I also run a Windows desktop, of which I love. Upgraded to 8.1 and am having a pretty swell time. I am an 8 lover , not hater, despite that, there are issues here too.

I snapped IE11 next to another app, then IE freaked out.

Snapping the Xbox Music App next to the Bing News app, makes some of the news article unreadable. How does this stuff get past QA?

My windows 8 PC is also my gaming PC. Picked up BF4, which is a great game, but severely bugged, once again another frustration with technology.

LVLCAP does a great job at explaining the issue. Netcode is awful, frequent server and client crashes.

Nvidia drivers are awful, the latest WHQL 331.65 gave me artifacts, possibly ruining my GTX 680.

 

Marketing and Music

So that song that Geico uses for their car commercials is kind of addictive….

What I just found out is they released the full version song free…

http://www.geico.com/about/commercials/music/

Mysto & Pizzi, in collaboration with Agent Jackson music, have partnered with GEICO on our latest commercial campaign. The music in six new Kash spots is Mysto & Pizzi’s remake of Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” featuring singer Renald Francoeur. This 1980’s remake is fresh for 2009 and available in full length downloadable format, free, from GEICO.

http://www.geico.com/public/audio/somebodyswatchingme.mp3

I love it when companies do this!

Another good webpage is Audi’s.

http://www.truthinengineering.com/

I got a link to the music on that page, it is just some good chill background music, kind of makes you feel powerful.

If you click on “Truth in Progress” on that webpage, that song is also distributed by Audi. If you look at the youtube comments, lots of people loved that song.

http://microsites.audiusa.com/my09/model_home/downloads/us_en/NotesonProgress.zip

In addition Microsoft has great little pieces of light music. The ones in my skydrive are a few I collected, I believe the website they came from is defunct.

Being Sick Sucks II

I rarely get sick, but I got it good this time. I’m pretty sure I have the flu, the body aches are quite powerful and surprising. At least I am starting to feel better.

Exams Suck as Well

I just had a physics exam, now I have Chemical Engineering and Organic Chemistry to worry about. I’ve been practicing my H NMR stuff, I can’t seem to get it quite right still.

 

Someday I will conquer the world that is Organic Chemistry, and I shall win!

Email Clients Suck Too

Continuing with the suck is email clients. I like outlook, mainly because of the task list.

The problem is I experience IMAP errors with Outlook.

"Your IMAP server has closed the connection. This can occur if you
leave the connection idle for too long".

 

I like the look and simplicity of Windows Live Mail as well, but it does not have the all important task list, and when waking my laptop from sleep, it has this crazy “purging email” dialogue that stays around for a while, during which time the app is too slow to work with.

 

Zimbra Desktop From Yahoo might work out, I dunno yet. The only problem with Zimbra is I can’t use Live Calendar, and it is kind of ugly.

What do people use with IMAP? Thunderbird I hear, but I do not know if I want a client with that kind of functionality. I have filed so many bugs for Windows Live Mail and feedback to help improve IMAP support, and while it has gotten really fast, that purging issue is too annoying.

Windows 7 odds and ends.

I highly suggest everyone go through these articles, they wrote them so I do not have to :P.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars/1

Windows + P looks useful , as does Windows + arrow keys.

Windows 7 Released to the Public

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

Windows 7 was up for download at TechNet, but naturally it was hammered to death.

In any case, I am quite excited for the release of 7. The new taskbar will take some getting used to for many people, but I think many will find that it is a nice added improvement.

The speed is wonderful. Apparently 7 will turn off services when they are not being used, and dynamically start them up.

Here is what really got me though.

Little things like that make me happy.