HTC Desire HD

After considering my options for a long time, I finally decided what I am going to get in terms of a new phone. Knowing that a new iPhone is probably around the corner and knowing that there are many new Android phones coming out right now as well, it had to be a compromise of some sort.

So I opted for a one year contract instead of two year contract (T-Mobile Flex +Internet) and ordered myself a HTC Desire HD. Yup: I opted for Android – again. Biggest reason for me to do so: it’s a whole lot cheaper than an iPhone 4 (about 40%) and this way I don’t end up with a first generation iPhone 4.

Yes, that’s right: I still want an iPhone, but I’m not going to get one until 2012. I figured: if I wait a little longer I can get a 2nd generation iPhone 4 (or maybe they will call it iPhone 5). And – maybe – by that time I will be able to buy a white one!

Anyway, the Desire HD isn’t exactly a slug compared with an iPhone 4 – or my Samsung Galaxy S (SGS) for that matter. It has a nice 1ghz processor (as does my SGS) and has the same 480×800 WVGA resolution. It does not have a Super-AMOLED screen as my SGS, but having compared it up and close with my SGS I’m sure it will do just fine as it is 4.3″ versus 4″ for my SGS.

One thing I think I will enjoy about this phone, is the HTC Sense interface that adds many cool feature to the Android experience. Also, the build quality seems to be ok, as it has a sort of unibody design (although I have read about some build quality issues as well).

On the down side: the battery life seems rather horrible (which I why I got an extended battery for my SGS) and the build in memory is only 1,5GB (my SGS has 16gb) so you will need a MicroSD card for sure! But since I travel by car and am in the office most of the time I have some juice readily available and charging it should not be a problem.

Anyway: I might give this phone (or my SGS – depending on which one I like better) to my girlfriend when I visit her later this year; that way we both can enjoy being online & mobile.

In short: I hope to receive my HTC soon (hopefully later this week?).

In the meantime I can watch these cool videos on my – soon to be – new Android Phone.

Official HTC Desire HD Video

Phone Arena review

Related Links:

• HTC Desire Dutch website http://www.htcdesire-hd.com/

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1. iPhone 4 or Android?
2. In a Galaxy far, far away…
3. Damn, I’m converted

iPhone 4 vs Android

Ok, I admit: this falls into the “luxury problem” category. But it is a problem nonetheless: in about a week I need to take a decision on renewing my current T-Mobile mobile phone subscription. This means I can choose a new phone as well. I am still torn between getting an iPhone 4 or another Android phone.

Which is it going to be? Well, I am leaning towards Android at the moment.

If you have been following my blog, you know I have been really interested in getting an Apple iPhone 4 ever since it got launched in June 2010. However, by the time it became available, there where loads of caveats surrounding this wonderful device. In fact: I wanted the white iPhone 4. And I kind of hoped for it to be available around November/December (as I can renew my subscription 4 months before it ends). But we all know that the albino iPhone still isn’t out there. Rumor has it that the new release date is March 2011, but who knows?

So in October 2010 I decided I wanted an Internet enable phone and set out to buy an Android phone. To be exact: a Samsung Galaxy S. I was able to get one  pretty cheap (Euro 350 for a brand new 16gb model) and I have been using it ever since and haven’t regretted it for a moment.

But I still am very much drawn to the iPhone 4. In terms of build quality, look and feel and design it still is top of the bill – to me. I have had multiple chances to play with it extensively (not just 5 minutes) and it feels just great to hold one in your hands. The retina display is superb (although my Super Amoled is not bad either) and iOS 4 is very nice and smooth.

Apple rocks when it comes down to their user experience (emphasis on “their”).

But there are things about the iPhone 4 I don’t like as well.

First of all – as with all Apple products – you pay a premium price for all the design:  a 16gb iPhone is still 30-35% more expensive than comparable non iPhones.

Second: I hate iTunes. I am both using Apple (MacBook Pro) and PC (Dell XPS 420 desktop) and on a PC iTunes just sucks balls. It is a huge memory hog and slow as s***.

Also the vendor lock in with Apple is annoying. Sure you can jailbreak it, but that is mostly useful for obtaining illegal Apps.

Another annoying thing: you can not expand the memory of an iPhone. Android does not have that problem: my Galaxy now has 32gb of storage: 16gb internal and 16gb on MicroSD. Most Android phones support MicroSD.

When I connect my Samsung to my PC (or Mac for  that matter) I can just mount the internal and external storage as USB storage. That way I can store anything on there I want. MP3′s can go on there without any problems. Divx video’s, you name it.

As far as web experience goes: I can watch anything online that uses flash without a problem – if I want: I can turn flash on or off: Apple just flat-out denies me that choice.

Android has given me a very good experience so far. I rooted my Galaxy S (the equivalent to jailbreak) and that opened up a new world to me.

One of the biggest pro’s of the Android platform to me is the amount of customization you can do as a user.

For instance: I am currently running a custom ROM that is geared towards performance. I.e. it has a completely overhauled kernel that benchmarks my Galaxy at twice the speed of a out-of-the-box Galaxy. To my knowledge you can’t do that with iOS. Or at least I haven’t seen anything like a custom ROM out there.

Where Apple tries to give everyone exactly the same experience on exactly the same hardware, Android pretty much leaves that up to the manufacturers and end-users. Choice = good.

Widgets, notifications, wallpapers and the kitchen sink

Something I have grown quite attached too, are the different “homescreens”  Android offers. You can fully customize these screens with widgets. These widgets are essentially apps that show their data without you having to start it up full screen – as you always need to do with iOS.

On iPhone your homescreen is basically just the application overview. If I want to see what is going on with your Twitter stream you need to start the app. Not very interactive.

The big downside to having all those widgets on Android is, off course: battery life. But the good thing is: you are in control on Android. You can set updates the way you want them and can choose how many widgets/homescreens you want to use.

This brings me to another hit on iOS: the notifications. On Android notifications are very nicely done and you can decide yourself how obtrusive they are. The current notification system on iOS 4 doesn’t just notify; it completely stops all other interaction and whatever train of thought you had; it’s rather in your face.

On Android you choose how you like to be notified. The top bar is perfect for that: you can pull it down and see what application needs you attention.

Apart from that you can fully customize the look and feel of Android. One manufacturer has his down to a ‘T’: HTC. With their Sense interface you can switch easily between a business look and feel  or a social look and feel or a pre-set “travel” theme. Not to mention you can get different themes/color schemes that go with that.

And then there are the interactive, “live”, wallpapers.

My wallpaper for instance can show the (live) weather conditions – all animated- based on my GPS location. On the iPhone you can only get that – sort off – if you jailbroken it. And they are (mostly) not really interactive at all: it just shows a looping video (big deal?).

Out of the box my Android powered Galaxy allows you to kill all apps with one push of a button: it comes with a build-in taskmanager. Out of the box on your iPhone you need to close all apps by hand: the build-in taskmanager is laughable! You don’t even see what services are running the background! Sure: Apple will say they leave that up to developers (or again: jailbreak your iPhone and get something like Multifl0w)

Also I feel that development for Android is going way faster than with iOS. Android Honeycomb looks like a really mature interface that is also very much geared towards Tablets. Most new Android phones now already support Near Field Communication (NFC) which gives your phone many new exiting possibilities.

Also: as off Android 2.2(.1) “Froyo” most Android phones support Over The Air (OTA) updates of the OS. With Apple you need to hook up with iTunes for that!

Freedom baby, yeah!

All in all I don’t think I am the average iPhone user Apple has in mind: I think I like my individuality too much and as such I like to be able to be more in control of my own user experience and not the one Apple forces onto me (and million others).

I always want to experience different things when it comes to IT. I use Windows 7, Apple OS X and have a Ubuntu Linux webserver and workstation.

There good things about Windows 7 and bad things. Same goes for OS X and Ubuntu. But in order to find out, you need to use all of them.

So the bottom-line is: maybe I need to get an iPhone 4 and just use it for a year to see if all the above things I don’t like, really matter to me in practice?

Hmmm. That is food for thought for me for the next week. Time to make up my mind.

Android event: Honeycomb

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Maybe this is Chuck Norris’s mother?

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1. A flight attendants exit strategy

It is quite a fun format: the contestants always (think they) have a very profitable business idea, but just lack funding (one can wonder why).

So they pitch their idea to five (very) rich, successful entrepreneurs: aka the “dragons”. Before each show the contestants name an amount of money that they need to get, and the rules are that if they do not raise at least that amount from the dragons, they get nothing. In return, the contestant give the dragons who participate in their business idea, a percentage of the (new) company’s stock. Off course the exact number of shares is usually a difficult point during negotiations.

The fun part obviously is the presentation of the idea by the participants and the resulting questions or remarks they get from the Dragons, as this many times reveals an embarrassing lack of preparation or uncovers troubling facts and or big holes in the business plan, and as a result in rejecting the investment.

Anyway: someone probably asked the question: what if Steve Jobs had to pitch his iPad idea in the Dragon’ Den?

Well, here is what could have happened

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Just watch this video from this guy called George Clarke  (if you can make it past the annoying self-promotion – just skip it if you need) and hear and see what the fuzz is all about:

So, did that make you go “Hmmm”?

Don’t you think, however, that his explanation with the video, is that of a classic nutcase?

“My only theory – as well as many others – is simple… a time traveler on a mobile phone. See for yourself and feel free to leave a comment on your own explanation or thoughts about it.”

Seriously. That’s your only theory? Not a lot of imagination, right?

Dude, have you ever heard of Occam’s razor? How logical is the explanation? “A time traveler on a mobile phone”.

I really wonder then: how do you use a mobile phone in a time when there are no mobile transmitters around? Who would you talk too?

And why, of all advanced futuristic devices a time traveler could take from the future, would he/she use a mobile phone? C’mon. Even the secret service uses these nice ear-buds that are almost invisible.

Also, remember how people reacted when we all started to start talking on our mobile phones while walking on the street? I do! When I first answered my mobile phone back in ’95 of the last century I felt quite awkward! And people stared at me as well. How come no one seems to mind the lady/man?

You got it right: because it can’t be a mobile phone.

Now, on his blog, Clarke posted the following:

Please keep in mind, that when I first made the Chaplins Time Traveler video, I simply made my point – to me, my explanation of the 1928 footage was that of a time traveler on a mobile phone (or some form of communication device), followed simply by asking for yourviews on what you were seeing! With this, I will state that until the mystery of our suspect person is solved, there is no correct answer… Not mine, not yours, not the millions of other people that have answers around the world.

We just don’t know.

Off course that is total & utter nonsense: because we know one thing for sure: time travel is not possible (or else our history would have been quite different already) and so it can’t be a mobile phone.

Yup, Internet sometimes is just like real life – there are many nutters out there- isn’t it?

Related Links:

• http://gizmodo.com/5678591/cell-phone+using-charlie-chaplin-movie-time-traveler-debunked
• http://georgeclarke.webs.com/apps/blog/entries/show/5208685-4-million-hits-later-

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(Answer: when I was this age there where no Gameboys, chocolate cake was not my favorite food and Lauren Holly was only 4 years older then me).

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Lancair Columbia 300

Yesterday I had the privilege to hop along with our CEO in a Lancair Columbia 300 airplane. Together with two fellow co-workers we made a very fun trip from Lelystad Airpoirt to Eelde (doing an instrument approach) and then flying back – on visual navigation – to Lelystad Airport via the city where I work: Purmerend. The weather was pretty nice, although we had some low clouds and overcast on the way to Eelde. However on our way back we flew towards clear skies and enjoyed the whole experience.

Man, there is nothing cooler than seeing our own country from above. It’s so interesting to see the way we build here in Holland: you can see the layout of our cities and how we keep expanding. Up north you will see it’s mostly agricultural (farm land for cows and other crops).

One of the fun things was that I could keep track of our full flight my MyTracks from Google. Using the GPS on my new Samsung Galaxy i9000, I was able to track almost 100% of the first part of our trip and about 98% of the second part (follow the links to see them).

Lancair Columbia 300 cockpit

Anyway: it was a great experience: you don’t get this kind of chances very often – at least not me. Our CEO is a great pilot: both landings were so smooth that I did not even feel we touched down!

What is even nicer is that during the whole flight you can see everything that is going on as well. Try that in a commercial airplane. You never see the cockpit anymore (thanks to 9/11) or the pilots actually doing their work, flying the plane. In fact, given the circumstances I feel that flying has lost almost all of its ‘magic’ and has become more and more equivalent to taking public transport – with all the annoying things that go with doing so.

Anyway: here is a (long, 15 minute) video about our whole experience (enjoy):

Related Links:

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Aircraft

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JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater (Personal Photo)

Let me tell you something. I fly internationally frequently. And ‘flight attendants’ – or as we know ‘m: stewards or stewardesses - do not  have the glamorous job people might think they have. Sure, if you look no further than the surface you see mostly young, attractive people flying all over the world to cool places. And people generally envy them for that.

Well, reality is that they are mostly playing babysitters to annoying people. People that don’t obey the safety rules on a plane. People who are rude and get abusive because they experienced a delay of simply because they had to much to drink. Or people that are just assholes in general. Also, they get underpaid a lot, just like pilots.

Let’s face it: if you are in the service industry – and that’s what I think flight attendants are in – you can have a hard time and your job may become just a modern variant on “cattle herding”.

Well, this morning, it was one of those days for JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater (38) who has been in the business for many years, working for 5 different airlines. But this time Slater took matters into his own hands and decided that enough was enough.

The official report of what happened is as follows:

When the JetBlue flight landed on JFK International airport in NY, one passenger stood up to retrieve her belongings from the overhead compartment before the crew had given permission and the plane was still taxiing. Mr. Slater instructed the person to remain seated. The passenger defied him. Mr. Slater reached the passenger just as the person was pulling down the luggage, which struck Mr. Slater in the head.

Mr. Slater asked her for an apology. The passenger instead cursed at him. Mr. Slater then got on the plane’s public-address system and cursed out the womand for all to hear. Then, after declaring that “20 years in the airline industry” was enough, he blurted out, “It’s been great!” To everyone’s surprise he then activated the inflatable evacuation slide at a service exit and – on his way out the door- paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart. Then he slide out the plane and ran to the employee parking lot and drove off to his home where some time late he got arrested.

Neighbors in California, where Mr. Slater grew up, said he had recently been caring for his dying mother, a retired flight attendant, and had done the same for his father, a pilot.

A former flight attendant, Janet Bavasso, who lives next door to Mr. Slater in Queens, sympathizes with Slater: “Enough is enough — good for him,” Ms. Bavasso said. “If he would have called me, I would have picked him up.”

What can I say: I can understand why Slater did it and I sympathize with him as well.

Just because you paid for a ticket doesn’t mean you can do what you want. Safety rules may look stupid to you but the last 9 years have shown us that those safety rules are not there just for fun.

I’m sure he will be out of a job because of this (he broke many serious FAA safety rules) and might even go to jail. I think he also will become an icon for many of his fellow flight attendants who might dream of doing the same he did.

Anyway: when I am flying to the US this weekend I will make sure I thank the flight attendants and the pilot when I leave the plane.

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I seriously think those infomercials should come with a warning, just like they put on cigarette packs:

“Warning. Watching these stupid infomercials causes severe braindamage and/or mental retardation. No shit, Fool!”

Personally I think the only way they are bearable to watch,  is when you’re stoned as a shrimp or someone just knocked your lights out with a hockeystick.

Since I am not into drugs (never even smoked a joint in my whole life – even though it’s perfectly legal here in Holland) – or into violence (well, only when it’s “functional”), I’d like to show you a fine example of how a stupid infomercial actually can become fun to watch

First watch the stupid original Slap Chop commercial down here:

Now check out the “Enhanced Trinidadian” version ……Ya ain’t hear meh or wa?”

Funny thing: there is actually a Spanish version of the Slap Chop infomercial as well:

First I thought it was dubbed too, but then I saw the part where the guy tosses the other chopping machine and it actually hits the window (at 1:05)! LOL

For more retarded products check out the following links:

The Comfort (Ass)Wipe
The Snuggie (dub) and another Snuggie Dub: the WTF Blanket.

You know what: watching infomercials suddenly isn’t that bad anymore

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iPhone 4 grip of death

My initial enthousiasm for the iPhone 4 has faded within a week. Yes, once again Apple has lived up to it’s reputation of delivering bad crappy 1.0 products.

No kidding: as long as I have been following Apple (basically since 2002) they have been delivering their new products  with some sort of problem. So it’s no surprise that the beautiful iPhone 4 has problems as well.

For starters the special glass casing (advertised as “…20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, the glass is ultradurable…”) seems to not nearly as scratch resistant as Steve Jobs wants us to believe. If you look on YouTube you will find many videos of users that scratched up their brand new iPhone within a day. And, more problematic: the glass breaks easy as well: a 1 foot drop (33 centimeters) is enough to do the trick.

Folks: that’s just not acceptable. I have dropped all the phones I have owned so far at least once from 3 feet (standing up) on various surfaces (carpet, wooden floor, tiled floor) and none of them ever expired on me from that.

EPIC fail!

Epic fail

Then there is the “yellow stain” problem: people report yellow spots or stains on/in the screen. It seems to be some glue or epoxy that has not dried up sufficiently. Apple’s response: “it just needs to dry”.

But the clincher is “the Grip of Death”. iPhone 4 owners started to notice how they lost reception when you hold it by the antenna band. It has been well documented by now and even confirmed by Apple. But what is even more annoying, is their response to the problem.

Steve Jobs himself replied back to a user’s email about the problems, by saying that he should ‘avoid holding the phone in that way’. So what is Apple’s official fix to the problem?

”If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”

Are you kidding me? Apple is trying to tell us how we should hold a phone? Excuse me but that is a 100% FAIL for *any* phone. I damn well decide myself how I should hold my phone! I have never *ever* had any mobile phone manufacturer tell me “how to hold my phone”. It’s unheard of. Shame on you Apple!

I bet you anything that the 1.1 version of the iPhone will have a solution for this problem, but too me that’s way too late. Apple should find a fix and do a product recall. Making calls is a primary function of – well –  a phone! Come on!

I tell you: the chances of me buying an iPhone 4.0 just dropped by 60%. I think that instead I might buy a Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 or HTC Evo 4.

Anyway: are you annoyed with your spanking new iPhone 4 because you suffer from the “grip of death” as well? Here’s a solution for you: just blend you’re iPhone 4 and get it over with!

Update (27-06-2010, 11:50am): Engadget has a funny photo up illustrating the problems

You can't touch this iPhone 4!

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