This Christmas is different. It's the first one I've spent alone in recent memory, the least festive of them all. I woke up rather early, and went back to sleep, overslept and didn't make it to church. I've heard this poem as a song many times and while it's not my absolute favourite, it's the most fitting this year. Have a blessed Christmas.
I heard the bells on Christmas day.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and mild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
-ONWARD!
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Saturday, December 01, 2012
Xperia Sola: One week in
After using the Sola for a week now, here are some of the things I've noticed.
Initial Setup
When you get an Android phone you need to connect it with your Google account as part of the initial setup. I have two factor authentication setup for my Google account and could not find a way to sign in with my account without disabling two factor auth first. This was a pain because my password is quite long and alphanumeric but once it was disabled on the Google website I could sign in and start downloading apps.
Contacts Migration
When you like with your Google account, you can opt to pull in all your Google contacts. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life sorting out the contacts mess that results from that action I'll recommend connecting to your pc and using the companion app to pull in contacts from outlook or similar contacts applications. There needs to be an easier way to transfer contacts from one phone to another. Nokia has been good in this area for years I don't know why it's so hard to do. This needs to be fixed.
Memory
The Sola comes with 5GB available for apps which is more than enough for me. I don't use a lot of apps. I have the usual suspects, instagram, flipboard, whatsapp, line, twitter and so on. There's expandable memory in the form of an SD card, up to 32GB for other media like music and photos. The RAM on the other hand I find to be a little inadequate. 512MB is not enough for a smooth experience. I notice a lot of lag even with native apps like the phonebook or messaging app. I don't expect these to load slowly at all but they do and it's puzzling.
Android 4.0
I expected the upgrade from Gingerbread to happen over the air but you have to connect to a computer to get the Ice Cream Sandwich update. It takes a while to update though so make sure your battery is full. In my opinion its a worthy upgrade.
Battery
After the update to ICS battery performance took a noticeable hit. My battery can last a day of moderate use but it doesn't last as long as it did before the update. The biggest battery drain is the screen, so if I am reading long articles I notice the battery indicator value drop one value every few seconds.
Connectivity
On my Nokia N82 I used the Maxis 5mb per week data plan for whatsapp, twitter and light facebook and it was more than enough. I blew through that rather quickly on the Sola. For some really the phone does not detect my home router, so using wifi is quite wonky. I found a way to make it work though its a temporary fix. Turns out it's not uncommon to have problems with wifi on smartphones.
Camera
The camera is not great. I really miss my N82 camera, though they're both 5 mega pixels, the Nokia takes far superior pictures. I miss the fine grained controls on the Nokia. The Sola's shutter button is a two stage one but it's quite hard to use well. I find it to be unnecessarily stiff.
Screen
The 3.7" display is great. I have that I can operate the device with one hand and can reach every edge though something a bit bigger like a 4" display or even a 3.9" would make typing in portrait mode much better. The 854 x 480 pixels is good enough for me, nothing to complain here. One more thing, though not related to the screen is the LED notification light at the top of the display. I find it very handy to know if there's a message waiting or something that needs my attention so I don't have to unlock the phone to know if there's a message I've missed. It starts to blink red when the battery is low, I like that.
Going with white
I'm now questioning the decision to get the white one. The finish of the plastic makes it retain dirt and stains easily. I wish it was more glossy like the back of my N82. I still think the white looks best though.
I think that's pretty much it. I would love the battery to last a bit longer and more RAM, otherwise I'm a happy camper.
-ONWARD!
Initial Setup
When you get an Android phone you need to connect it with your Google account as part of the initial setup. I have two factor authentication setup for my Google account and could not find a way to sign in with my account without disabling two factor auth first. This was a pain because my password is quite long and alphanumeric but once it was disabled on the Google website I could sign in and start downloading apps.
Contacts Migration
When you like with your Google account, you can opt to pull in all your Google contacts. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life sorting out the contacts mess that results from that action I'll recommend connecting to your pc and using the companion app to pull in contacts from outlook or similar contacts applications. There needs to be an easier way to transfer contacts from one phone to another. Nokia has been good in this area for years I don't know why it's so hard to do. This needs to be fixed.
Memory
The Sola comes with 5GB available for apps which is more than enough for me. I don't use a lot of apps. I have the usual suspects, instagram, flipboard, whatsapp, line, twitter and so on. There's expandable memory in the form of an SD card, up to 32GB for other media like music and photos. The RAM on the other hand I find to be a little inadequate. 512MB is not enough for a smooth experience. I notice a lot of lag even with native apps like the phonebook or messaging app. I don't expect these to load slowly at all but they do and it's puzzling.
Android 4.0
I expected the upgrade from Gingerbread to happen over the air but you have to connect to a computer to get the Ice Cream Sandwich update. It takes a while to update though so make sure your battery is full. In my opinion its a worthy upgrade.
Battery
After the update to ICS battery performance took a noticeable hit. My battery can last a day of moderate use but it doesn't last as long as it did before the update. The biggest battery drain is the screen, so if I am reading long articles I notice the battery indicator value drop one value every few seconds.
Connectivity
On my Nokia N82 I used the Maxis 5mb per week data plan for whatsapp, twitter and light facebook and it was more than enough. I blew through that rather quickly on the Sola. For some really the phone does not detect my home router, so using wifi is quite wonky. I found a way to make it work though its a temporary fix. Turns out it's not uncommon to have problems with wifi on smartphones.
Camera
The camera is not great. I really miss my N82 camera, though they're both 5 mega pixels, the Nokia takes far superior pictures. I miss the fine grained controls on the Nokia. The Sola's shutter button is a two stage one but it's quite hard to use well. I find it to be unnecessarily stiff.
Screen
The 3.7" display is great. I have that I can operate the device with one hand and can reach every edge though something a bit bigger like a 4" display or even a 3.9" would make typing in portrait mode much better. The 854 x 480 pixels is good enough for me, nothing to complain here. One more thing, though not related to the screen is the LED notification light at the top of the display. I find it very handy to know if there's a message waiting or something that needs my attention so I don't have to unlock the phone to know if there's a message I've missed. It starts to blink red when the battery is low, I like that.
Going with white
I'm now questioning the decision to get the white one. The finish of the plastic makes it retain dirt and stains easily. I wish it was more glossy like the back of my N82. I still think the white looks best though.
I think that's pretty much it. I would love the battery to last a bit longer and more RAM, otherwise I'm a happy camper.
-ONWARD!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Xperia Sola
The last time I bought a new phone was in late 2007, I traded-in my Nokia N72, a nice phone that takes decent pictures and had great sound but it's slow operation drove me crazy so I got an N82.
The N82 has a 5 Megapixel camera with Xenon flash, it takes great photos and I've been more than satisfied with it until I discovered whatsapp, the messaging app that wants to run all the time on Symbian devices. My battery usage took a hit once I started using this app so I recently got a new battery for the N82 to help me get through the day. The sound quality is also above average especially with nice headphones. I've told myself I don't need a smartphone, my phone is smart enough but alas I have succumbed to my fleshly desires.
These days having a smartphone has become a necessity, it makes life so much easier especially now that most of the airlines prefer their customers to use their respective apps to check-in and stuff, not that I'm a frequent flier but the time has come to bit the bullet.
I chose Android, after looking at Windows Phone. I'm a big fan of the OS and I think it has potential to be great but it's not ready for prime time and as a Symbian user for so many years, there are things that I have gotten used to and have come to expect from my device that Windows Phone has not offered yet. I'm optimistic that they will get there someday. I didn't an iPhone because you its expensive, and to play in Apple's ecosystem, you have to be willing to spend more than the average amount for everything. Maybe someday when I'm earning enough money it will make sense but not right now. I never liked Blackberrys so I didn't even consider it.
Android is also the cheapest option available to me. My N82 cost me MYR 1200 which is a little under USD 400. I didn't want to spend that kind of money on a phone again. I bought a Sony Xperia Sola today for MYR750 670 at a phone shop in Imperial Mall Miri. It comes after weeks, maybe months of comparing phones and specs, watching reviews and weighing the pros and cons. Sony makes decent mid to low end phones though historically they have been reluctant to push out Android updates to their older models. The Sola runs on Gingerbread but will be upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich or Android 4.0, the latest version of Android is at 4.2 as of the time of writing.
I don't have much to say about the phone, there are reviews on youtube so I'll leave you with some pictures.
I got the white one. Its also available in Red and Black
Power button on the top left side
volume rocker and camera button on the right side
three capacitive touch buttons on the bottom
Micro usb put on the top right side
the sola next to my old sony ericsson w810i
-ONWARD!
The N82 has a 5 Megapixel camera with Xenon flash, it takes great photos and I've been more than satisfied with it until I discovered whatsapp, the messaging app that wants to run all the time on Symbian devices. My battery usage took a hit once I started using this app so I recently got a new battery for the N82 to help me get through the day. The sound quality is also above average especially with nice headphones. I've told myself I don't need a smartphone, my phone is smart enough but alas I have succumbed to my fleshly desires.
These days having a smartphone has become a necessity, it makes life so much easier especially now that most of the airlines prefer their customers to use their respective apps to check-in and stuff, not that I'm a frequent flier but the time has come to bit the bullet.
I chose Android, after looking at Windows Phone. I'm a big fan of the OS and I think it has potential to be great but it's not ready for prime time and as a Symbian user for so many years, there are things that I have gotten used to and have come to expect from my device that Windows Phone has not offered yet. I'm optimistic that they will get there someday. I didn't an iPhone because you its expensive, and to play in Apple's ecosystem, you have to be willing to spend more than the average amount for everything. Maybe someday when I'm earning enough money it will make sense but not right now. I never liked Blackberrys so I didn't even consider it.
Android is also the cheapest option available to me. My N82 cost me MYR 1200 which is a little under USD 400. I didn't want to spend that kind of money on a phone again. I bought a Sony Xperia Sola today for MYR
I don't have much to say about the phone, there are reviews on youtube so I'll leave you with some pictures.
I got the white one. Its also available in Red and Black
Power button on the top left side
volume rocker and camera button on the right side
three capacitive touch buttons on the bottom
Micro usb put on the top right side
the sola next to my old sony ericsson w810i
-ONWARD!
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