The World Accoding to Greg

EDITORIAL: why modern smart phones make terrible “phones”

gregbilton — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 05:47:42 +0000

I do take some heat from my friends who think Steve Jobs is their lord and savior by bashing apple products like the iPhone. Even with a Verizon model now available i am still of the belief that the iPhone is a terrible phone. While i have a slightly more open view of Android most of them are still plagued by the same problem have we all completely stopped talking on our phones? Is having a bigger screen and lack of physical dial pad or keyboards make us less likely to talk to others? Sadly I think yes.

You might think I’m crazy for saying this but this baffles me because i think the 3-7 presses on a touchscreen to place a call is unacceptable because these should be phones first, texting and email a strong second and games and apps should be and added bonus. however, i think the current priorities of smart phones is vice-versa. Think about it you first have to unlock the device tap the phone icon and if the person you want to call isn’t in you recent calls you then have to scroll through your contacts to find their name then you have to select the number you want to call. It should not take fewer steps to do a foursquare check in then it does to make a phone call. Also these big phones with 4″+ screens baffle me as well their fine for watching video on but they’re like holding a pop-tart to your ear.

Which gets me to my point while iPhone and Android have all the apps and other stuff there is a smart phone manufacturer who has it right and of corse they aren’t american they are Canadian yes i am talking about humble Research in Motion makers of the Blackberry. Who have been doing smart phones longer than anyone else since the first pager style email only device in 1997. Now if you have made it this far you might think i have gone completely mad but hear me out. The one thing RIM have always done right is their keyboards the keys are properly spaced and in a QWERTY layout like your computer keyboard and it is a key part in phone operation to place a call you press the send key and either type in the name of the person you want to call and press send or look through your call log, or just press and hold the contacts personally assigned speed dial key it’s just that simple. Email and text messaging is also just that easy too it is neatly organized to get you in and out without all those unneeded steps. The Blackberry also has all the essential apps Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Weather bug and Amazon. RIM has used its years of experience tweaking the experience to make it simple and logical to operate and it also just works. it might not be the best looking or most popular smart phone choice out there right now but it’s the best.

(Yes I know about the Blackberry storm lets just admit it was a massive cock-up )

Mini Review: the new iPods

gregbilton — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 01:15:36 +0000

I recently visited my local Apple store to check out the new iPods announced the beginning of the month. First what changed the iPod nano lost its video camera and ability to play video entirely and just about everything else it is now about the size of the iPod shuffle and has a 1.5” touchscreen. The iPod Touch got the A4 chipset a front and rear camera retina display. The iPod shuffle got it’s old shape and buttons back YAY!!!!

iPod Nano

like I said above changed the iPod nano lost its video camera and ability to play video entirely and just about everything else it is now about the size of the iPod shuffle and has a 1.5” touchscreen.

While it looks like an iOS device you cannot put apps on the device just the ones it comes with. The touchscreen is a nice touch but I have a problem with the implementation of it is just too small for me to use scrolling through music especially if you have a lot will take a while and you if it is not clipped to you it is a two handed affair whereas the old one with the click wheel was not. If you are in a screen and want to go home you press and hold the screen in a blank space the only problem is and it could be me it would not do it consistently and while and owner of it would get better at it I find it quite annoying that it doesn’t work consistently. There is one cool thing you can do with it though with it being so small with the clock on it you can get a special watch band the nano clips on and becomes an expensive watch that plays music, neat (I guess).

iPod Touch

The iPod touch has always been the iPhone for the people who don’t want to commit to AT&T’s god awful cell service. (I don’t blame you) The iPod touch followed suit with the A4 chipset the retina display and the 2 camera which include the ability to Face Time with iPhone 4 owner s and other iPod touches and the new game center a way to play games with friends like on your console. I have always liked the iPod touch and it just gets better over time

iPod Shuffle

the iPod shuffle (the cheap one) got it’s buttons back and no longer looks it a stick of gum not much more to say about it.

Spot the problem with this sign???

gregbilton — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:44:53 +0000

- Greg. Sent via BlackBerry on Verizon Wireless

waiting at Lucas Ford for my car to get serviced

gregbilton — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:28:35 +0000

That is a 5 1\4″ drive when is the last time you have seen one of those

gregbilton — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:30:37 +0000

Rocking it old school.(Not mine)

gregbilton — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:34:56 +0000

- Greg. Sent via BlackBerry on Verizon Wireless

Recycling good….hydrolics failure in front of your house … Not so much

gregbilton — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:58:07 +0000

- Greg. Sent via BlackBerry on Verizon Wireless

IMG00144.jpg

gregbilton — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:38:09 +0000

Left for kids. Right ummm no

gregbilton — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:11:41 +0000

- Greg. Sent via BlackBerry on Verizon Wireless

AT&T & iPhone 4: Fewer bars in fewer places

gregbilton — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:56:55 +0000

Upon the beaconing of our tech god Steve Jobs some (about 2 Million) people went out and stood in line to get the new must have gadget from the Apple. It is the iPhone 4 the 4^th generation of Apple’s entry into the smartphone arena and among all the new features it has what is quite possibly the best screen on a phone at the moment but it is only somewhat better than the AMOLED screens in some of the newest phones on the market like the Sprint HTC EVO 4g, HTC DROID Incredible, and the HTC Google Nexus One. Apple calls it the Retina Display and claims that the pixel dimension of the display is so high that it is more than the eye can see. Steve Jobs says “It turns out there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around to 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels,” the iPhone 4 is at 326PPI,however Raymond Soneria of Display Mate a company that has spent years calibrating displays disagrees a more accurate “retina display” would have a pixel resolution of 477 pixels per inch at 12 inches” (Wired.com) to read more go to the wired magazine article http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/iphone-4-retina-2/ .

The newest feature of iPhone 4 is the front facing camera and the chat program FaceTime however to initiate FaceTime you first need to call the iPhone 4 user and be on a Wi-Fi network because the video chatting works over Wi-Fi only for now coming to 3g sometime later on. You must be on the cellular network to initiate the call in the first place, weird huh and it is ONLY iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 which limits the number of people you can FaceTime with, making this feature a cool thing you can’t really use. Now the real revolutionary feature the antenna design which consists of 3 Stainless steel bands which make up the thickness of the phone the top left antenna being the 3G GPS antenna the top right being the Wi-Fi Bluetooth and the bottom being the GSM cell phone antenna

apple claims it gives you the best coverage of any iPhone so far. Or so they thought as soon as the iPhone 4 started to hit the streets there were reports of being able to short out the 3G and cellular antenna by holding the phone in their left hand making the phone lose service completely, and there are numerous videos of people demoing this and being able to do it on command. A friend of mine let me see his new toy I was personally able to replicate the problem without any difficulty at all on command multiple times so I can say it is a problem. What is more ludicrous is Apple’s initial response to the problem “Your holding it wrong” I’m not kidding and apple advised their Apple Care support team to NOT give out free Bumper cases (the Apple frame case) which will remedy the problem . Why because doing that admits we screwed up which they did admit last Friday saying that “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.” So what Apple is saying your iPhone has been lying to you the WHOLE TIME!!!!! ‘ so when the iPhone says it has 5 bars full signal it is really 2 – 3 bars add this to the absolutely horrid state of AT&T’s network all one can say it WTF Apple and AT&T? Read the whole press release at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html .

You might call me anti- Apple but I am not I proudly own and love my MacBook (fall 2007 black polycarbonate) I do own and use a Verizon Wireless Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 and have no intentions of buying an iPhone or moving to AT&T but if Apple puts the A4 chipset and retina display in the next generation iPod Touch you call stand in line behind me.

image source http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/#10-35-26-am