Posts by Geoff Campbell

Battery life

The Galaxy S2 is happy to go 2, or even 3, days with an average usage profile. It's way better than the previous generation of smartphones.

GJC

Transformer

Just got mine today, Amazon shipped it yesterday. It is absolutely beautiful, the first time a new form factor has excited me for many long years in the industry. How it actually works out as a day-to-day machine, of course, remains to be seen.

GJC

Have you tried Windows Phone 7?

It's pretty bloody good. Forget everything you know about Windows Mobile, which was OK in the context of what they were trying to do, but crap in the context of phone operating systems.

Try and get hold of an HTC HD7, if you haven't seen one. It's a revelation, and I think Windows 8 next year is going to be quite something.

I'll carry on using my Android phones for now, though, having said all that.

GJC

Gwyn!

My dear chap, where've you been hiding? Still on the borders?

GJC

Ah, yes.

It was the other Stu who moved to Cardiff, I now remember. Do by all means drop me a line, we should organise a CIX survivors party.

GJC

Authors

Not only them, but also Charles Stross, and just about every leading IT, and some non-IT, journo of the '90s.

And me, of course.

GJC

@Stu

Ah, yes, there was a time when CIX was the place all the top techies from the UK ISPs went after work, to rant drunkenly about the money men, the sales teams, and the customers, whilst maintaining our best professional poker faces in our own official support conferences.

Damn, I miss those days :-)

You still out Cardiff way (and apologies if I've mis-remembered that, it was a while back)? We still have a big sort-of-but-not-quite CIX pissup at my place in August, if you're free?

GJC

Usenet

The NNTP protocol, and therefore Usenet, pre-dates CIX by a couple of years, but the concept is similar, and as you say, CIX has no spam. It also has a much more sophisticated threading system, and a history of subsets of the users meeting face to face regularly, leading to a much more civil environment. Flame wars still happen, of course, but at least they're threaded properly.

GJC

Got to be worth a try, Robert

It seems to me that CIX is the ideal home for small fragments of user populations around the place.

GJC

OTA updates are supported on the S2

But they seem to lag behind those offered via Kies, sadly.

GJC

Believe me when I say....

....that being Windows-only is the *least* of Kies many, many problems. Samsung make gorgeous, wonderful, stunning phones, but can't write client software worth shit.

GJC

@Monty

Yes, same here - battery life in normal use is way better than the old Galaxy S, I suspect it would go two days without a charge with my usage. Although it can still be flattened in three or four hours using critical business applications, for example Tower Raiders. That really hammers the CPU, though.

I think this is the nicest phone I've ever owned or used.

GJC

Nah

I've got four Galaxy devices, and they all work perfectly. The new Galaxy S2 is a thing of real beauty, in fact.

Perhaps you're not holding them right?

GJC

Why do you say that?

Is it actually the case? My experience is that some buyers will buy Apple no matter what, but others will buy whatever does the job for them, and don't have a bias towards Apple gear if the price/performance curves are approximately equal.

Of course, Apple do have a formidable marketing machine to persuade floating purchasers, but I'm not sure that carries the weight you seem to ascribe to it. Still, we will see in time, I guess.

Personally, I'm enjoying being an early adopter, but then I like a little chaos in my life :-)

GJC

I was certainly hoping to, yes.

I notice I got down-voted for doing so. Must be some marketing people in tonight.

GJC

You Fail, Sir.

That's not what 99.95% uptime means. They've blown it for this quarter/year/whatever their measurement period is. Next measurement period, the clock is reset.

GJC