Downgrade for a better phone!

I bought an Android smartphone in the spring when my ancient dumb phone finally expired. (The battery physically expanded until the back cover couldn't be attached, and it held less than a day's charge.) But as usual I went the cheapest possible route: a pay-as-you-go top-up "plan" with an out-of-date almost free phone.

As an Android newbie I gleefully configured my new to me (but actually rather old) Huawei Y215 with everything I could think of. I frequently updated all the apps, both pre-installed and some I downloaded. I learned that when you get the "insufficient memory" message it was time to clear all the app caches. I was a wizard.

But the phone slowed down. I frequently had to wait for it to come out of an apparent coma when I tried to launch apps. Eventually even simply turning it on was a chore and it would very often ignore my frantic stabs at the screen. I had to reboot it daily (or more) and it recently started crashing randomly -- even while sleeping in my pocket -- or producing the weirdest garbled UI screens you can imagine.

I started to think that perhaps I should contact somebody about a warranty exchange or hardware repair or something (do these cheapies even have warranties?). But then I remembered that it's always a good idea to try a factory reset first. So I Googled it and found out you can do a neat trick with the volume up and power buttons after pulling the battery, so I tried it.

Amazeballs! All kinds of memory freed up, messaging has returned to the Facebook app, everything runs faster again, and so far -- touch imitation wood grain vinyl -- it hasn't crashed or bluescreened. Too good to be true, but I'll take it.

Lesson learned: under no circumstances am I to update any apps. I have disabled all the updates and notifications. I will only install the bare minimum of extra, non-builtin, apps. So far just Instagram since Gmail, Twitter and Facebook are all standard -- though obsolete -- pre-installed apps.

So there you go folks: one of the very few occasions where a complete and utter downgrade has netted me a vastly improved user experience. I hope that this thing gives me a few more years of reasonable service before succumbing to the "Sorry, you need a new widget to play" doom.

Address Book Blues and I Hate Cellphones

Cellphone holder

A little rant for today.

I decided to get a slightly more modern cellphone on the weekend. You need to know that I am one of those curmudgeons who only uses a cell sparingly and only for making actual phone calls--short ones like "I'm going to be late".

I'm also really cheap and I hate the ridiculous fees charged by the local incumbent telcos for voice and data plans and refuse to be taken by them. This means that I only buy older tech and use a pay-as-you-go "plan" to keep it configured on their networks. My old Motorola V120c, new in October 2001, likely one of the oldest cellphones in existence still in working order, is holding less battery charge lately. And since the 60 day air-time top-up was due, I figured time for a new one.

I had done my homework: all the pay-as-you-go plans out there rely on you forgetting to top-up and therefore losing your accumulated minutes. "Oh gee, too bad, boo hoo! - say those a-holes at Rogers and Bell.

I had discovered that 7-Eleven sells phones, mostly Nokia, and SIMs that connect to the Rogers network. Their pay-as-you-go plans expire after a full year, so you don't have to remember to top-up so often. Seemed like the least expensive solution. I wanted to be able to sync my Mac's address book to this phone so I made sure to select a model with Bluetooth, the Nokia 2720 Fold, a new model in September 2009.

If you're a well-read Mac person you may be groaning inwardly now. Yeah, I have since discovered that Address Book sync'ing on the Mac is problematic, older phones aren't supported, and the coup de grace: Apple has completely removed syncing suport from Lion, the latest OS.

Luckily, I'm still running Snow Leopard, I was able to figure out how to hack one of the newer phone-plugins to fool iSync into accepting my 2720 and sync to it. if I want to upgrade to Lion, I can get temporary relief by copying iSync.app and my DIY plugin over to it after the install.

But this took all of Sunday and most of today. Plus I've learned one of the critical reasons why Apple sells so many iPhones: the Nokia phone is one of the most exasperating devices ever created. I have become really adept at removing the rear cover and extracting the battery. That's the way you get the phone's attention in a number of use cases.

For example: fire up the FM radio and listen to it for 5 to 10 minutes. The phone's user interface becomes completely unresponsive. Pull battery, wait a few minutes, replace, reboot.

Tinker with Bluetooth software -- pull battery, etc., etc.

Oh. My. Fecking. Gawd.

I've also learned that I'm somewhat clairvoyant. I can see quite clearly that this phone is going to die by being submerged far out in Lake Ontario at some point in the future. Maybe then I'll overcome my extreme frugality and get an iPhone.

Mr. Rogers: piss off

Well Mr. Rogers has gone and done it: totally screwed the pooch with the iPhone's intro to Canada. The rates for voice and data, especially data, are way out of line with US, UK, and in fact most of the rest of the world. He's caused some pretty serious rage out there in blogland ...

Fuck You Rogers