Showing posts with label Mobile Phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mobile Phones. Show all posts

Friday, 28 June 2013

Technology Hates Me

Once again, technology has bit me in the backside.

I switched my phone off to save battery life, and when I turned it on later tonight, it told me my microSD card was damaged, and that I needed to reformat it!

I tried putting it in the computer, and got this message:


Nooo!!! The last time this happened was when I was in Hong Kong! Fortunately I was able to recover almost all of my files.

This time around, I've tried some data recovery software but it can only recover about 500 out of 3000 files, and some of them are damaged!

I don't know whether reformatting my card and then trying again will make any difference. That's what I did last time.

I'm just hoping Google+ auto-uploaded most of my photos and videos so I haven't lost all of my memories from the past year or so.

This should teach you all a valuable lesson: BACK EVERYTHING UP!

Saturday, 21 July 2012

Phone Upgrade!

After being told that it would take about a week or two for my phone to get fixed, I decided I better find another phone to use till then. I've already had to go two days without texting (I know...WOW)!

We do have a few spare phones at home, like my ancient K800i or the even more ancient Nokia brick, but the problem is we don't have chargers for them! My old HTC Desire is currently sitting there unused ever since Aonghas upgraded, but he hasn't reset it yet.

In the end, I went for the quickest and cheapest option. Introducing the $29 Samsung GT-E1081T!


My third phone in two years...

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

So It Wasn't Broken Afterall..

This weekend has been tough on me - my phone died on Sunday and I've been using Grace's old phone. Today though I put my foot down and decided that enough's enough! It's time to end this misery and buy a new phone!

It almost didn't happen yesterday though as I tried ringing the shop in the morning and only got the voicemail message. I was thinking that maybe the shop was closed due to Labour Day.

Later on in the day I decided to try again, and was surprised to have my call answered! They said they would be closing in half an hour. I grabbed Aonghas, jumped in the car and took off!

We only just got to the shop in North Shore just as it was about to close. You can now say hello to Samsung Galaxy S2!


Along the way home we stopped off at a KBB Music Store so that Aonghas could check out the electronic drums that were on sale, then badum before you know it, we were directed to their Henderson Rock Shop and ended up buying an electronic drum set!

We came home not knowing how to break the news to our parents that we had just bought a drum set. We didn't even know where we were going to put it yet either! We thought maybe we'd put it in our bedroom, so we told our parents when we got home that we were going to clean up our bedroom! They thought it was a little fishy that suddenly we were keen to tidy up the house.



You end up realising you can't hide anything from your parents, so by the end of the day we manned up and told our parents about the drum set!

Today I ended up passing on my old HTC Desire to Aonghas and told him that he could have it if he could get it to work, and he could then pass on his HTC Legend to Hamish so Hamish could finally jump on the Android bandwagon.

It turns out all Aonghas had to do was wipe the data (or something like that) and my (old) phone was working again! He rooted it like a true engineering student does and it's working and doing a lot more than I ever managed to make it do!

Monday, 24 October 2011

Back to the Future

I've been saved! Grace lent me her old Sony Ericsson K700 phone to use till I get a new phone! It's brought back many memories of texting with a keypad! I'm slowly getting used to it again. Thanks heaps Grace you lifesaver!


Here's a little bit of Rugby World Cup magic I captured at the West Fanzone last night using this phone!


Saturday, 1 January 2011

Know Your Product, Vodafone Customer Service

This afternoon I rang up Vodafone to ask them whether it was possible for them to enable my phone to do Hotlink, as I had seen a Vodafone staff member being able to do it on one of their forums. I was surprised I was able to talk to someone within a few minutes of calling, but even more surprised by the service I received.

When I asked the customer service representative (who had a slight American accent and sounded like he wasn't from this country) about enabling Hotlink, he told me I'd have to contact the handset manufacturer (HTC) and offered to give me the company's website and phone number.

I asked him if there was anything he could do though, since Hotlink was a service provided by Vodafone. Now this was what caught me by surprise. He asked me what Hotlinking was! I would've thought he would have known what products and services the company he worked for sold/provided! I then proceeded to explain to him what Hotlink was.

He then told me that Vodafone didn't manufacture the handsets (obviously) and told me he could provide me with HTC's website, phone number and the Vodafone website. I let him continue to give me the details for HTC. I then asked him whether there was a specific page on the Vodafone website that could help me, as I was already on the site. That's when he told me I should be able to find it somewhere.

Thank goodness calls to customer service don't cost a dollar anymore, because that call definitely wasn't worth one dollar!

Monday, 20 December 2010

This is my Desire

So I couldn't wait in the end, and decided to get myself the HTC Desire! It's not the newest phone out and not exactly my dream phone, but at least I can make phone calls that last longer than a couple minutes, can take better pictures, use the internet and GOD away from home, and I can also experience Android!

I'll comment more on the phone once I've had more time to try it!

I've also managed to get a 2degrees mobile phone number that is exactly the same as my Vodafone, so if you ever need to, you can contact me via either of those numbers!
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Friday, 17 December 2010

Could This be the One?

The LG Optimus 2X has just been announced by LG and it will be first released in Korea in the next month or two, before being released in other markets.

What makes the LG Optimus 2X quite an exciting phone is that it just might be the 'dream phone' I've been waiting for! Let's see the specs it has that I've been looking for:

- Android
- Dual-core processor
- 8 megapixel camera with 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera
- Camera flash
- 1080p video recording
- microSD card slot

The above is what I want in a phone. In addition, it also has HDMI out which is a bonus.

The only thing is LG are known for making phones with poor battery life. It'll also probably be a while before it's sold in NZ.

The Samsung Google Nexus S has also been announced, but what counts against it is that it is only a single-core processor and doesn't have an SD card slot.

It's inevitable that much powerful and better spec'd smartphones will be released next year, with it being reported that Nokia will release dual-core processor phones with improved camera zoom.

My dilemma right now is that I currently have a phone that cannot last longer than a couple minutes into a phone call. My options are:
- Buy a cheap/mid-range phone and use it till a good smartphone that meets my requirements comes out and buy that phone
- Buy something that is more top-of-the-line for now like the Samsung Galaxy S
- Don't buy anything right now and just wait for the new smartphones to come out next year.

Any suggestions?

Tuesday, 7 September 2010

Where's my Dream Phone?

After the announcement of the new iPod Touch, I've been tempted to buy the latest iPod Touch as a stop-gap measure till my dream phone is designed and being sold. I figured I'd just keep using my existing Sony Ericsson K800i that I've had for the past four years and use the iPod Touch to surf the net and for all the other apps.

What has made the iPod Touch even more tempting to buy this time around compared to past generations is that it has both a front and rear-facing camera as well as HD video recording. I could use it as a pocket camera/video camera as well. Today though I discovered that the rear camera is not as good as the iPhone's, or any previous iPhone for that matter!

That led to me to rethink my desire to buy an iPod Touch. Rather than spend the $489 on one and then trying to sell it after (or keeping it) and spending extra money to buy another device. Maybe I should just spend money on one device and not bother buying the iPod Touch.

The only thing...which phone to buy?

These are the specs I'm looking for:
- Touch Screen (preferably min. AMOLED, capacitative and no smaller than 3.5")
- 1 Ghz processor
- Front facing camera
- Rear camera (min. 5 megapixels)
- Flash (min. LED flash, preferably Xenon flash)
- Android
- GPS
- Wifi, bluetooth, 3G

The main contenders I've been looking at so far have been:

 iPhone - pretty much meets all of the above, but antennagate makes me feel slightly weary about it. I also don't know about the restrictions and the need to use iTunes. I don't think it has a flash either

HTC Desire - Fulfills most criteria and has HTC Sense which is quite good according to my brother and critics, but has no front-facing camera

Samsung Galaxy S - Fulfills most criteria, but I've heard the camera isn't too good and it has Samsung's TouchWiz which isn't as good as HTC Sense. It doesn't have a flash either

Nokia N8 - Isn't available yet, but apparently has a really good camera. It's also touch screen as well. Only downfall is it runs Symbian which isn't exactly the best mobile OS and it has a slower processor

I know I shouldn't be picky and I probably should decide which specs and hardware is most important to me. I'm just very cautious after I bought my current phone (K800i) and have been having to put up with all these faults, such as the joystick-like button not working properly, the internal memory being extremely slow and the video camera quality being very poor.

I've been keeping an eye out for rumours of new phones supposedly being developed to see if any of them are my dream phone, and so far this HTC phone looks promising. It may be slightly big at 4.3" though, but I guess that wouldn't be too bad if it has all of the above specs!

There is also Windows Phone 7 coming out in the next couple of months, but I'd rather go for a more mature OS like Android for now and wait to see how Windows Phone 7 comes along. We all know what happened to Microsoft's Kin phones...

I don't know whether to wait for future phones (you could always end up waiting for something better in the future and find yourself never getting anything in the end) or to make a decision on one of the phones listed above!