* Posts by Giles Jones

2536 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2006

Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 handset review

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It supports USB mass storage now, you can drop and drop files.

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Even worse is EE are delaying the phone for a month stating there are issues with 4G and battery life on their network.

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Re: To ee or not to ee

They don't seem to have moved beyond the "sell to the operators" mindset of the last decade.

People don't want to change their network to obtain a phone, they look for the phone that is on the network they are on or if some cases look for an unlocked handset.

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Can I buy the review handset off you?

Cus I'm buggered if I can find some way of getting one without paying for a stupidly expensive EE contract.

Google expects Apple to block its not crap iOS maps app

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Re: If Apple don't

You do realise there is a Google YouTube app you can install?

Verizon staff arrested for stealing customer's nude pics

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Re: So...

A similar situation was what got Garry Glitter busted.

Microsoft opens Windows Phone 8 dev kit to world+dog

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Re: Here's an idea for Microsoft.

I can download 1.8GB in about 5 minutes or less. It's the OS requirements that are a mistake. You should be able to develop WP8 apps on Windows 7 too.

Ballmer bets 'all in' on Phone 8 and Windows

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I want a SIM free Lumia 920 but can you get one in the UK? can you bollocks.

The 920 will be the last Nokia phone I buy, not because I won't buy any of their phones again but I believe they won't exist by the time I need another phone.

Nokia are just like Kodak, failed to adapt and their cash cow shrunk. With Nokia it is the shrinking feature phone income and with Kodak it was the film market. Both failed to adapt to the new world (digital for Kodak and modern smartphones for Nokia).

The 920 is one of the best phones they have done, but they are just run by complete idiots.

Yahoo! will! ignore! 'Do! Not! Track!' from! IE10!

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That's okay as I ignore Yahoo.

Fifa 13 game review

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Never understood the point of football games unless you're into strategy or football management.

Just go find a field, spend a tenner on a ball and have a kick around. A lot more fun.

US Copyright Office approves phone jailbreaking and video remixes

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Funny how that sort of jailbreaking doesn't apply when it is a games console. Look at the mod chips that were banned.

Everything Everywhere prices up UK 4G

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Re: WOW 4G

Neither. But for most people not living or working in a city the service 4G or not will be identical.

iPhone 5 is the 'most difficult, scratchy device Foxconn has ever made'

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Re: LTE tests @Giles

This one?

http://recombu.com/mobile/news/iphone-5-vs-samsung-galaxy-s3-lte-4g-speed-test_M18405.html

Which has been done in the UK. The CNET test was done in the US and their LTE networks may favour the iPhone given it was developed over there. Could be down to a variation in LTE frequency band that makes the iPhone worse in the UK.

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Re: Poor choice of materials?

Anodising only surface hardens, hardening often results in easier chipping.

Obviously with their obsession with ever reducing dimensions they can't really add a decent level of lacquering at that might add 0.5mm.

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Re: Poor choice of materials?

There's plenty of choices. Stainless steel, titanium, magnesium alloy.

But why they persist with metal on a device which is more prone to needing to receive weak radio signals seems odd. The LTE tests of the S3 vs iPhone 5 found the S3 was faster in almost all tests.

Microsoft Surface priced up for Blighty

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Re: Didnt Pre-ordered mine last night

Simple, it does a lot more. It's a tablet with a full blown OS.

Slideshow: A History of the Smartphone in 20 Handsets

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Re: I started with the Orange SPV

It had very modest specs, the battery life was terrible too.

But the later phones were good (HTC Typhoon aka Orange SPV500), the Windows Smartphone platform was a lot nicer than the touch screen version where you would lose all your data if the battery ran out (they didn't use flash memory storage until Windows Mobile 5).

Skydiver Baumgartner in 128,000ft plunge from brink of space

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I'm sure almost none of the people on the ground would have wanted to be up in the capsule. Baumgartner could have lost his life and many people trying this before have done.

Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing

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I don't see that it will, I think it can mean people fixing things that were unfixable or hard to fix due to a crucial plastic part snapping.

Samsung, not Nokia, fans' most favoured WinPho brand

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Windows Phone 8 will allow the customisation beyond rearranging tiles.

Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?

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Re: Brings back memories

My first hard disk was about 80MB. I remember putting a 1GB SCSI drive in my Amiga A3000 and it seemed huge. But these days video files are huge too.

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Current flash memory is cack, that's why.

When memristor tech appears it will make flash SSDs seem like floppy drives.

http://www.dailytech.com/HP+to+Deploy+Memristor+Powered+SSD+Replacement+Within+18+Months/article22963.htm

Copper-obsessed BT means UK misses out on ultrafast fibre gold

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Re: FTTH is a waste of time

Lets face it, you aren't going to get 1GB broadband from coax or twisted pair. This is all about planning for future capacity, broadband isn't going to stop at current speeds.

HP: PC industry has forgotten how to innovate

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Re: HP has forgotten how to innovate

I'd say much of the PC industry has never innovated.

Look at your first desktop machine versus a current model. Different ports, LCD screen and obviously different RAM, HDD and other buses. But it is still more or less the same.

The tablet is the first big jump in form factor and technology in a long time. But the problem is we want things to be large enough to be usable., so the obvious next step (wrist based computing) isn't going to happen.

That horrendous iPhone empurplement - you're holding it wrong

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Having flares in your photo is typically a bad thing, worse than having flares in your wardrobe.

Most SLR lenses will come with a lens hood to try to eliminate it, often combined with a polarizing filter.

That's not to excuse the fact that iPhone is sensitive to flaring, but it is likely to be the result of the camera unit they are using, not the phone.

Patent troll targets ZTE

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ARM uses none of its patents or designs. Would you call them a patent troll?

Lancashire man JAILED over April Jones Facebook posts

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Freedom of speech is a right.

But freedom of speech also comes with a responsibility to use it legally. Break the law and your freedom to do something becomes a rather weak defence.

Steve Jobs is STILL DEAD

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Re: FFS

Would Microsoft not pay tribute to Gates if he croaked it?

Jobs was one of two people (Woz being the other) who built a hugely profitable company from a garage. So I'm pretty sure all of those who work at Apple are glad he did succeed.

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Re: Ridicule the Dead Guy

The tech world is a poorer place without the presence of pioneers like Jobs and Gates.

What is sad is the technology companies are now all run by businessmen with no vision. Ballmer, Whitman and Cook. So it's no wonder innovation seems to have stalled in the last few years.

Just how good is Nokia's PureView 41Mp camera tech?

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Re: "The best camera is the one you have with you"

Not to mention "no SLR" policies at many music venues.

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Re: If it was cheap..

You mean it will buy a lot of camera body. You would really need to spend £400+ on a lens and £400+ on a camera body to get anything decent.

Most kit lenses are slow, you won't get anything like f2.0 in a kit lens and the 920 can shoot at f2.0.

A camera is a combination of a good sensor and a good lens. People worry about the body too much and forget that the lens is the more important factor for getting sharp pictures.

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Re: Wait for the 920

Rubbish. The 920 isn't just back illuminated, it has optical stabilisation too, which uses gyros to keep the lens and sensor still.

Pair face £250k fines for spamming mobes with millions of texts

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Re: And landlines !

Do it the Kraftwerk way, disconnect the ringer and tell everyone you will pick up your phone at a set time each day.

Formlabs preps first home stereolithic 3D printer

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There's all manner of stupid little bits of plastic that snap and you wish you could replace them.

Of course the real problem then is learning to use a CAD system to be able to produce the 3D model of what you want to make :)

The Register iPhone and Android apps: Maintenance update

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Windows Phone still works

Windows Phone app still works :)

McFlurry McMisdemeanour costs Welsh lass McJob

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Re: Why?

I remember it when it was on the radio and TV. Punt and Dennis do the Now Show on R4 which is along similar lines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgt7

Texas Instruments: Screw smartphones, put our chips in the dishwasher

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You'd have thought TI would have learned from the calculator wars or from when Commodore dropped the price of the VIC20, thus forcing TI out of the home computer market.

It's the same old problem as back then, vertical integration. Meaning anyone specialising in just flogging chips it out of the market.

WTF is... NFC

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Re: ticketing

There's still the issue of losing your phone or having it stolen, thus rending you without any method of paying someone and no method of ringing someone for help.

Especially with how fast phone boxes are vanishing too.

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Re: I still like

That's the advantage of optical methods over radio based ones. But it requires more costly hardware if it is scanning QR codes.

At least with optical if nobody can see the screen then nobody can scan it.

GiffGaff: We've got no iPhones, but here's how to cut down your SIM

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Re: No chance

So you don't think that saving £180 is worth it?

Not to mention that with Giffgaff you can vary your package, so one month you can get a £5 bundle or the next £25.

Plus you have the freedom to sell the handset whenever you like.

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Re: Nice plug but GiffGaff oh my!

That's down to the stupidity of the iPhone. It doesn't recognise GiffGaff properly.

I moved from an iPhone to Nokia Lumia and it works fine, it never reverts to O2. It even displays "GiffGaff" as the operator not O2 like the iPhone does.

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Re: ...network run by you

They have less outages than Orange.

Chip strip reveals 'handmade' Apple A6

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Autolayout doesn't always work best. It's like Sat Nav :)

Apple iPhone 5 review

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So what if it was limited?

If feature count was that important then Symbian Series 60 would still be on top. Symbian is pretty advanced and there's tons of features on those phones that people are just getting around to implementing now.

I had my phone reading my text messages to me in 2007.

But guess what? the interface was awful and the interface is the most important thing. If you don't feel at one with a piece of technology then you'll slate it and hate it.

Many people got used to Word 2003 and Word 2007 doesn't remove any features, it is just that they are so much harder to find now. End result is many people hate it.

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My first smartphone was the Nokia 9110 communicator which I had in early 2001. Since then I've used all sorts, Windows Mobile devices, Symbian and iOS.

All of them had atrocious user interfaces. Start Menus and fiddly WIMP interfaces, or no touch screen at all (Nokia communicator, Symbian).

Apple took the ideas from these awful devices and made them suitable for the masses. They knew nobody wanted the stylus and that qwerty keys meant the screen had to be tiny. So they knew finger input on a capacitive screen was the way forward.

It doesn't matter what you think about Apple, the smartphones we have today are all because of the turning point of the iPhone 1, it wasn't even a smartphone when originally released either. But everyone publicly dismissed it and said it would fail while secretly buying them to copy the interface. Google's original Android phones looked like Blackberry phones, so you can't really say the iPhone didn't influence the industry.

So they weren't the first touch screen phones, but the first to be a product suitable for the masses, not geeks.

UK electric car funding - another subsidy for the rich say MPs

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Re: Plug in cars ain't green.

Plus transporting the fuel to where it is needed is done using wires, no huge tankers carting heavy tanks of fuel.

Motorola outs Razr phone with Intel Inside

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Re: Why oh why

The world must know that it contains an Intel processor, even if they don't give a toss.

It's all part of their plan to dominate mobile as well as everything else.

iPhone 5 adaptors goldrush begins

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Re: Not for me

£1 at poundland. Okay, they don't have the new ones yet but USB3 requires a much higher quality cable anyway.

'Over half' of Android devices have unpatched holes

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Some positive spin on the problem: The freedom to have your device rooted. The hole in the wall of the garden etc.