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This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Author
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Topic: The iNotaphone 4
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-19-2010 02:35 PM
First let me express a minor amount of frustration. WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT THIS "PHONE" IS!!!
Ok, that being said, for those not in the know, this phone actually isn't a phone. You can't use it AS a phone. Sure its got silly little animated everything that impress the iPeople of the world and ten gazillion apps of which are for the most part a waste of my time, but whatever. There are widespread reports of these things dropping calls if you hold the phone a certain way, but honestly no matter how I grab this thing I am in such a good reception area it doesn't matter.
That being said the problem is the proximity detector. Basically as I am talking, the screen keeps turning back on, causing me to bang out numbers during the call, initiate a 3 way call, mute the conversation or simply hang up on the other caller.
My phone is in essence an emergency line of sorts in the event a theater needs immediate assistance with something, and I've had this thing for a week or so and haven't had one normal conversation. Once a call comes in, I usually have to run find a land line somewhere and waste time explaining to them that the call is bound to be terminated at any point and that it isn't me hanging up on them.
I will never understand why people love iProducts so much. Every single one, and I do mean EVERY single iThing I have ever had was substandard, troublesome and in terms of computers, crashed repeatedly. Ugh! It must be because I don't drink enough Starbucks coffee.
Regardless I'm done with the iProduct and I am going to switch to the Droid X or HTC Evo 4G.
The questions for everyone here are:
#1 Do you have any knowledge between the Droid X or HTC Evo 4G? I am leaning toward the Droid X on every aspect except the 4G capability, but I'm not sure if it would really even benefit me enough to bother.
#2 Does anyone know when the 30 day "return the phone and cancel the ATT contract" actually STARTS? Is it when I received the phone in the mail, when it was activated, or when I initially ordered the phone online and signed that agreement?
There is a week'ish waiting period for the real phones, so I am trying to figure out how to transfer my number, but keep the iJunk active until the real one arrives. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today
Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-19-2010 04:18 PM
quote: Brad Miller
Every single one, and I do mean EVERY single iThing I have ever had was substandard
What other iThing have you owned besides an iPhone? I've never been a fan of the iPhone. My current cell phone works fine. It is old, but what more does it really need to do? Answer: nothing. It just needs to make and receive calls and texts. For everything else I have the iPod Touch, which has no reason to be substandard. True, many things could be improved like the onscreen keyboard, touch mapping, yadda yadda. I haven't noticed much if any animation in any of the apps or even the OS itself, just scaling when you touch something.
Solution to your problem: Get an Android phone and wait for it to arrive before you get rid of the iPhone 4. Be sure to get one of the more expensive models, because the Android OS runs pretty choppy on most non-expensive phones I have seen. And they still can't do Flash. What you can try to do in the meantime is hook the iPhone to iTunes, do a backup and then reinstall IOS4. This is the first I have heard of a proximity detection bug and if it is as bad as you say for everyone, it would be all over the news. So reinstall and it may go away or decrease.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-19-2010 04:51 PM
I can't speak to the iPhone for I do not have one (have a Sanyo M1 that I have been VERY pleased with for many years now). I also do not have an iPod <gasp> and, thus far, don't have a desire for one.
I do own an iMac...however and, quite frankly, have been VERY pleased with it. Its service record, as compared to equivalent aged PCs has been far above...I don't recall the last time it crashed...it has been that rock solid. It also is rather brisk. In fact, I was thinking that the next time I need a laptop, I may skip the PC because it take them FOREVER to load...and then they are not really loaded...they are still loading their services and processes and such while giving the illusion of being ready. So, in terms of reliability and speed, I'll take my iMac (despite being several years old now...something like 4 or 5 years) over an XP machine. For what its worth, I'm running "Snow Leopard OS X 10.6" on a first generation intel iMac. The only issue I've ever had was a crashed hard drive...which I've had on PCs to in equivalent amount of time. I changed the drive and it is better than ever.
Steve
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 07-19-2010 06:54 PM
On July 5th I dumped my iPhone 3G for an Evo 4G. Let me summarize my Evo experience for you.
- Like everything that runs on Linux, it's clunky because there is no standardization between apps for the UI, etc. It feels thrown together and lacks polish.
- The stock browser is broken, hangs while downloading pages with lots of content. You have to get a different browser like DolphinHD.
- The music player cannot figure out how to associate album artwork files with the correct songs or albums. Apparently the best known fix for this is to buy a $3 Android app that does nothing but handle album artwork for you. BTW I spent several hours trying to sort this out using music managers like doubleTwist, MediaMonkey and Songbird and it still doesn't work.
- The music player also cannot handle playlists very well. It will display, say, 6 songs on the playlist but only cycles through 2 of them (or whatever). With wrong or missing artwork.
- The Bluetooth media streaming cuts in and out randomly.
- We have 4G service here and I can get solid 4G connections, yet if I launch a web app like the browser (not the stock one!) the phone drops from 4G to 3G.
- If all the coolest features are enabled (Wi-fi, GPS, 4G, and Bluetooth) and you have a 4G or Wi-fi connection, this thing sucks the life out of the battery in record time. If they're all going, forget it. You have to learn to disable what you aren't actually using at the moment in order to extend battery life, or plan on having the phone connected to a charger in the car, at work, etc.
- Apps that are "official" on the iPhone, like the CNN news reader, are only available from unknown 3rd party sources for Android. Netflix is another example.
- Two work colleagues also have Evo. One of them told me this morning his phone is crashing all the time since he installed and then uninstalled a news aggregator app over the weekend.
- The Evo display looks good until there's motion, like a video. Then it falls way below the iPhone display quality.
- For some reason you will find background tasks running all the time for apps you never launch. Sometimes more than a dozen. There's lots of debate whether it's better to leave them alone and hope they're actually asleep, vs. killing them when you snooze the phone.
- Don't put anything but the phone by itself in your pocket or otherwise allow anything sharp to touch the screen or it will get scratched. BTW those screen protectors degrade the image quality horribly. I used one for a day and removed it.
- Brief testing with the Evo camera and video recording suggest both are very unremarkable and do poorly in low light.
- The Evo's virtual keyboard arranges keys in a way that makes them smaller, thus I make far more typing errors.
- The voice dialer is useless. I can say "Call Work" and it will think for a few seconds then present me a list of random phone numbers which I have no idea where they came from.
My final complaint is the phone is just too big.
Call quality on the Evo seems good but no better than my iPhone 3G was (not 3G-S). Sprint's 3G service is definitely faster than AT&T's 3G. You can easily get various discounts from Sprint, up to around 25%.
Some of the Evo's current faults will be fixed in future releases of Android and as 3rd party software evolves. Right now it's just not ready unless you REALLY like tinkering under the hood. I just want a smartphone where all these features work and I don't have to spend hours on a single task like associating artwork with my music files in a way that the phone will accept.
Other than that how did you like the parade Mrs. Kennedy?
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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today
Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-19-2010 07:11 PM
quote: Brad Miller
Joe, go check out the new iPods. The sound quality on them sucks.
I used to have an iPod Mini and the sound quality did not meet my minimum standards. The iPod Touch, however, sounds MUCH better. The Touch is the only iPod model I care about (I cannot stand the click wheel navigation scheme). It is also one of the best music players as far as usability and GUI are concerned, though I admit it's not 100% perfect (that would be hard to accomplish). Playlists and Shuffle are handled much better on the Touch than other non-touch iPods. Still, if the sound quality is not good enough for you, you can buy an external pre-amp. I can hook my iPod Touch to my receiver and control it with the receiver's remote. All audio data is transferred digitally. The iPod can play MP3s, AACs, uncompressed AIFs and WAVs at higher than CD quality specs. I doubt it can play WMA's or Real Audio, though.
My biggest problem with the iPhone/iPod Touch web browsers is that they cannot download the large PDF manuals from here on Film-Tech. It will show maybe two and a half pages no matter which browser I use. It can display the smaller PDFs just fine, though. It's always good to have access to manuals in the field.
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