Android phones, apps and tablets

O2 is consistently better than 3 for me everywhere but my parents place in Winchester, when it's the opposite.

I've no idea about 3.

I was talking to someone in the office and they have Vodaphone working in the farking basement where I get zero signal on O2.

I'll be in the City before the year ends so it's a bit irrelevant until I get there. O2 was pretty good there, from memory.

My Note and my iPad are both 3, my iPhone is O2.

I'm waiting until back in the city, then will likely try this funky new tech with a prepay sim at home and work. If great success do full purchase.

Makes sense

I'm waiting until back in the city, then will likely try this funky new tech with a prepay sim at home and work. If great success do full purchase.

That's what I did with ThreeUK.

Bought £10 PAYG SIM cards from every network, tried them all for 1 day each, testing home and work signal and also the train commute and cycle commute routes (train in, Brompton home).

In London Three actually came out best everywhere except when at Barnes train station.

Vodafone were second, O2 third, and EE came last.

I didn't bother testing GiffGaff and the like as those are virtual operators that piggy back on one of the other networks.

Also checked http://opensignal.com/ to confirm that Three UK would actually work in Exeter, Bristol, etc.

Pretty happy with Three, and that it had unlimited data was a big bonus.

A few people I've spoken to said that Three sucked big time for them, with no reception at their work place, etc. But this is all radio based and all networks have holes somewhere. Pick the one that works for you.

my signal on EE fucking sucks. pretty much need to be outside to get a decent signal

Ok, so I am told that these Samsung Gear watches will not sell in the gazillions that I think it will - who cares eh? The point is, what do people think of it. Well, since I am definitely getting the Note 3, it would be rude of me to refuse the Gear.

Samsung GALAXY Note 3 + Gear : Official First Hands-on - YouTube

Gear appears at 13:00 minutes.

GA2G, you do realise that the Note 3 is the phone that is region locked?

Don't buy Samsung phones:
http://gigaom.com/2013/09/26/seriously-samsung-sorry-european-roamers-but-the-new-galaxy-note-3-is-region-locked/

They've started region-locking them.

You will not be able to travel abroad and swap out your SIM card or have any freedom at all. You will be compelled to pay the full data roaming rates.

For the Note 3, that appears to be incorrect. They just require the device to be activated using a regional SIM, allowing the use of any SIM after that.
However, with a lack of dirty protests at Samsung's reception desk I fear they might extend this policy for the Note 4

http://gigaom.com/2013/09/27/samsung-region-locks-for-our-galaxy-smartphones-only-apply-the-first-time-you-insert-the-sim/

Anyhow, here’s how the system is supposed to work, according to Samsung’s German reps: let’s say you buy the device in Germany and want to take it with you on a trip to the U.S. If you activate it for the first time using a German SIM card, you’re good to go. If you want to activate it for the first time with a U.S. SIM card while abroad, you will need to find a local Samsung service partner to unlock it for you.

So you arrive in the USA and your number one task is to find a Samsung service partner to unlock your phone.

Meanwhile, someone arriving on the same flight with any other phone is good to go.

It's a pretty dumb thing, and anyone buying one is supporting the use of such region locks when no carrier actually is asking for them. This is 100% a Samsung created barrier.

Oh I'm not saying it isn't stupid, but if you buy one in the UK and stick your UK SIM in it to use it day to day, it doesn't stop you taking it abroad and buying a local PAYG SIM there for your time abroad.

What this is clearly to do is to try to control distribution - if it was £100 cheaper in Hong Kong it wouldn't stop me going to HK and picking one up - I'd just buy a cheap PAYG SIM in HK and activate it before coming home. What it does stop is a UK reseller buying 10,000 from HK and selling them in the UK, because they'd either have to pre-activate them, which is a bit dodgy or somehow get their customers to activate them in the UK using a HK SIM card, which is pretty tricky.

So, saying that you can't use a Note 3 with a foreign SIM card doesn't seem correct from what I'm reading. The region lock is reportedly for the first activation only - once it's activated, it's like any other unlocked device.

The way I'm reading it is "first activation of that SIM". So if you changed the SIM card again you'd have to activate it with a service provider again, but that the SIM card you activated previously would remain activated for future visits.

Either way, arbitrary controls that affect the end user and forces them to visit Samsung service partner as a first port of call when travelling abroad is a major pain in the arse, even if that only happens once.

Consumers should reject region controls. Even if those region controls are to prevent imports. Why is it right that the price of the device in your region be artificially inflated and protected using such controls?

Seriously... whatever way you look at this, it's fucked and you the consumer end up having to pay more for the device, and to suffer inconvenience when travelling, just to serve Samsung's profit goals.

I think you are reading it wrong vb. You wouldn't have to do anything when traveling from your home country to somewhere overseas. It would work out of the plane as any other phone would.

Not to say that I agree with samsung policies. Particularly their nasty habit of launching services that are locked down to being used by samsung phones.

Snip.

Consumers should reject region controls. Even if those region controls are to prevent imports. Why is it right that the price of the device in your region be artificially inflated and protected using such controls?

Snip.

This is quite an uncharacteristically naive thing for you to say. When marketing globally to disparately different economies, which have no free trade agreements between them and poorly policed customs, this kind of thing is both inevitable and also proper.

IMO.obv.

The way I'm reading it is "first activation of that SIM". So if you changed the SIM card again you'd have to activate it with a service provider again, but that the SIM card you activated previously would remain activated for future visits.

I don't think that's what Samsung said, it's the first activation of the phone. Once the phone's been activated with a Sim from the territory it was bought in then any SIM can be used.

Yeah sure, but in many cases (such as within the EU) "grey imports" are perfectly legit, yet the manufacturers still hold on to artificial restrictions to protect their prices in certain markets.

A fine example of that is UK pricing of electrical goods compared to continental pricing of electrical goods.

Looks like the service manual for the Nexus 5 has leaked over the weekend. Confirms some spec details at least, but I don't see mention of the MEMS camera...

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/10/05/purported-service-manual-gives-a-look-at-the-next-nexus-phone-reveals-32gb-storage-8mp-ois-camera-photos-and-more

Unboxing of the Note 3 by Floss.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 UnBoxing and First Impressions - YouTube

Samsung Galaxy Gear UnBoxing and First Impressions - YouTube

Wow.. Look what it's done to his arm! Avoid!

So I was pondering Google Glass this morning, since some story came up on my reader feed. It occurs to me that Glass with a garmin style navigation app is absolutely killer for riding. I want.

I thought about that the other day and then realised the likelihood of distraction with a HUD in place might be too high.

We were talking about how the only time I ever read was on the Tube and I don't take the Tube when I'm not racing and having rest days so I don't read. Enter, Google Glass.

Just using it for Garmin data might be less distracting than looking down at head unit but I want it for reading.

Yeah. That is stupid.

A friend has offered me his old Garmin iQue M5, an ARM XScale 272-based device, 416MHZ, Windows Mobile 2003SE... Wondering whether this would be recent enough to run Gingerbread on, and whether there would be enough memory left to run Strava, or if it's only good for low-level hardware hacking and robotising.