"I've just switched from using a Smartphone back to using a simpler, cheaper mobile phone. What a revelation! I had forgotten how good and practical they are. During the past couple of years I've used an iPhone and two Android mobiles, but even after this time I still find the experience profoundly depressing. They've always need charging every day - forget to do it and they won't make it half way through the second day. And then there's the updates; every day 3 or 4 or 5 of the apps need updating. Yes I know they have to fix problems and security issues as they arise, but why don't they put more effort into making them better in the first place? So, I've finally ditched them and switched back to a cheap Nokia with a qwerty keyboard that cost less than £50. It makes calls, gets email, plays music and has a basic camera, which is all most people need. The interface is not pretty but it is functional and everything just works. Best of all, the battery lasts nearly a week depending on what I am doing. Maybe when Smartphones truly get their act together I might think again but for now I'm sticking to a dumb(er) phone"
A reader writes:
"I've just switched from using a Smartphone back to using a simpler, cheaper mobile phone. What a revelation! I had forgotten how good and practical they are. During the past couple of years I've used an iPhone and two Android mobiles, but even after this time I still find the experience profoundly depressing. They've always need charging every day - forget to do it and they won't make it half way through the second day. And then there's the updates; every day 3 or 4 or 5 of the apps need updating. Yes I know they have to fix problems and security issues as they arise, but why don't they put more effort into making them better in the first place? So, I've finally ditched them and switched back to a cheap Nokia with a qwerty keyboard that cost less than £50. It makes calls, gets email, plays music and has a basic camera, which is all most people need. The interface is not pretty but it is functional and everything just works. Best of all, the battery lasts nearly a week depending on what I am doing. Maybe when Smartphones truly get their act together I might think again but for now I'm sticking to a dumb(er) phone" We've mentioned the low-cost Roku TV streamer previously (see here), and we are unashamed fans of the Synology NAS. As Synology boxes are able to serve up media - videos, music, photographs - and the Roku is able to display such things on a TV set, it would seem a perfect match. And now Synology have released the missing part of the equation - an app or 'channel' for Roku. To make everything work you need a Synology box of some sort, a Roku box or the Now/Sky variant, the DS Video channel (download from Roku) and the Video Station application installed on the Synology. Load the Synology with your videos (you can rip DVDs using tools such as DVDFab and Handbrake) and let it think about things for a little while. The Video Station application will index your videos by searching for information on the internet, bringing down cover art, actor/actress/director data and so on (it sometimes gets it wrong, though, in which case you can edit it). Go to your TV, switch to Roku, select the DS Video channel and you'll be presented with an attractive visual catalogue of your videos (see the screenshot above). You can scroll through the catalogue, sort it alphabetically, by genre, producer, actor and so on. It all works very well, far simply and more consumer-friendly than playing about with Plex or Twonky or the other home streaming solutions. In addition, Roku have an app for Android and iOS. This lets you control your Roku using a smartphone or tablet, plus adds other tricks such as streaming music and photos direct from your phone to the TV. Apple have launched the iPhone 5, the latest incarnation of the hugely popular and top-selling Smartphone that everyone wants. The main change is that it is thinner and lighter than the previous versions, yet the screen size has increased from 3.5 inches to 4 inches. Also, the somewhat flimsy connector has changed to something completely different, so all the existing docking stations, music systems and so on become incompatible (a converter will be available). Lastly, the iPhone 5 supports 4G/LTE connections, which allows for ultra-fast data and Internet. Or rather it will - 4G doesn't launch in the UK until later in the year, and will be not be available from most mobile phone operators until 2013. There is no doubt that the iPhone 5 - like it's predecessors - is a good phone. But looked at objectively, what is amazing is just how limited and expensive it is compared to the opposition, and how much Apple are simply paying catch-up. Here's some examples: Battered Batteries Smartphones have a relatively poor battery lilfe. A cheap and cheerful basic phone might last a week between charges (obviously it depends on how much you use it), whereas Smartphones such as the iPhone typically need charging every day or every other day. For a serious user, it is a good idea to carry round a spare battery, which can be swapped over in the event that you run out of power whilst on a business trip or holiday etc. Only you can't do this with an iPhone - the battery is non-removable. This also has major implications for when the battery finally wears out; with most brands, you buy a new battery for a tenner or so to replace the old one and you are good for another year or two. When the battery on an iPhone fails, the phone has to go back to Apple to be replaced (and it costs more than a tenner). My Memory is Going... You can't have too much memory (storage). Put your photos, favourite music, a couple of videos on a Smartphone and the memory soon fills up. Not a problem, though: simply buy another micro-SD card and slot it in. Not, however, if you have an iPhone as Apple don't use micro-SD cards. In fact, they don't have any method of incresing the storage on an iPhone at all - you are stuck with what you've got. Because of this, when buying one it is important to buy it with as much memory as possible. And here's the sting: despite being probably the larger buyer of flash memory in the world, Apple charges a fortune for memory. Typically, an iPhone with 32GB storage costs around £100 more than one with 16GB. Yet, if you have another brand of phone that takes microSD cards you can buy a 16GB card for between £5-£10 and a 32GB card for between £10-£15. It's Expensive. Must be Good, eh? The iPhone 5 on PAYG costs an eye-watering £529. That's a lot of money for a phone, between 50% to 100% more expensive than broadly comparable phones from the likes of HTC and Samsung. Of course, most people who buy an iPhone will do so on a contract basis and will pay a lot less than that, maybe even nothing at all. But in reality, a substantial part of a mobile phone contract is a disguised form of hire purchase in which you ARE paying for the phone in monthly instalments, along with your calls. This is reflected in higher monthly rates or less call value. For instance, you might be paying £30 a month for a 'free' iPhone and receiving 100 minutes a month, whereas with another branded phone you might be receiving 600 minutes for the same price. Conclusion Undoubtedly another winner from Apple, but also a timely reminder of how expensive the iPhone is. Now, I just need to get down to the Apple shop and get in the queue to buy one... On the face of it Apple, Microsoft and Google are competitors in the cloud business. All are keen to have your business; their services might be free for now but they are hoping to cut-out the opposition and longer term to migrate you to a paid service. If you can stick with one 'ecosystem' then generally everything can be made to work. For instance, if you have a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone then they all play together very nicely indeed - change your calendar on one of them and the change instantly replicates to all your devices. But realistically, most people will have technology from more than one vendor. For instance, what if you have a Windows PC with Outlook, an Apple iPad and an Android mobile phone from say HTC, Samsung or Sony?
Lets's take the iPad as the starting point, as this is often the device that causes erstwhile Windows users to take their first tentative steps away from the Microsoft mothership. Apple's syncronisation solution is based around iCloud. Among other things, it enables mail, calendar and contacts to be syncronised across all Apple-brand devices. To use it, it is necessary to sign-up for a free Apple ID (indeed, you can't really do anything on an Apple device without one). The iCloud software is built-in to the Mac, iPad and iPhone. However, the numbers game means that most new iPad purchasers are likely to have a Windows PC. What now? The answer is Apple's own iCloud Control Panel for Windows. This free utility adds the necessary support to a Windows PC (Windows 7 or Vista, not XP), providing the link between Outlook and iCloud. It will create a new calendar and set of contacts in Outlook (it should pick up the existing details but worst case you can simply drag existing data across from the old calendar and contacts). Email can be made to sync too; however, this requires you to use your Apple ID address. As most people already have an existing email address they tend not to bother with this bit. Now, any time you make a change to your calendar or contacts on your PC or iPad it will instantly pop-up like magic on the other one about 15 seconds later. You can also login to the iCloud website from any PC and view or change things from there. But what about your mobile phone? You might have an iPhone, in which case that will automatically sync too. But suppose you've got an Android phone and don't want to change to iPhone? No problem. From the Android Marketplace (or rather, the Play Shop as they call it these days) download two apps called SmoothSync for Cloud Calendar and SmoothSync for Cloud Contacts. These cost about £2 each, but are well worth it. Run each one and create a new account, for which you should give your Apple ID details. These apps will then link the standard Android calendar and contact apps to iCloud, such that they can update each other. One caveat: unlike native Apple stuff, the SmoothSync apps do not 'push' the changes automatically. Rather, it is necessary to explicitly sync the changes. In theory you can configure them to do this on a regular basis, say every 15 minutes or so. In practice, this may not work due to inconsistencies in setting up general background sync on some Android phones. However, forcing a manual sync once or twice a day is not exactly a hardship. Another consideration is that new calendar and contacts files are created on the phone (much as happens when the iCloud Control panel is installed on a PC), so it is important to use the right ones on the phone or set the iCloud ones as default if that is an option. Other than that, it works a treat. |
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