This is a series of posts where I describe my experiences in moving from a Nokia Symbian device to a Google Nexus 4 running Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean).
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At 8:30am one morning, my phone had 100% charge on it. I used for about 20 minutes that day. At 4:00pm, it was at 13% and screaming at me to plug it in... This is terrible! My Nokia used to give me 3 days of battery life, this phone can't last one working day without a lot of usage??
Surprise! there's an app for that.. I was recommended one called "Juice defender", which promises to improve battery life primarily by turning off radios when not in use. Really? does it really take an external app to tell the OS that if its not supporting a data transfer it could turn the Wifi/GPRS radios off? Anyway, with Juice defender, my battery life has improved! I can now come home at 7pm and still have 50% battery life. This is much much better!
Another day, I took to a baseball game - when I left home at 5pm, I had 95% charge. I used the GPS device to navigate me to the stadium. During the game, I took a bunch of pictures (no flash), browsed the web a bit and sent two text messages. I then used the GPS to bring me home (more on that in another post)... When I got home at 10:30pm, my battery was at 10% and the phone was crying bloody murder at running its battery so low.
Two 30 minute GPS guided commutes, 20 pictures and 2 text messages = over 75% of the battery gone? This is just sad coming from the Nokia world of Symbian.
I'm also starting to notice a trend here, "there's an app" for a lot of the stuff. However, coming from the Symbian world, I have to ask "You need an app for that?" Its just weird to see so many of the functions that I'm used to the OS providing, not being available and having to depend on a third party to develop. There are pros and cons to this - so I won't make a call either way other than to say its weird...
Saturday, June 08, 2013
Moving to Android: Part -3 : Contacts
This is a series of posts where I describe my experiences in moving from a Nokia Symbian device to a Google Nexus 4 running Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean).
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Contacts
Moving 165 contacts from my old phone was easy. On the E-72, Goto to the Contacts application, goto options, Select All, Send, Send using Bluetooth, pair and send. 1 minute later 165 contacts including contact pictures were on this Nexus-4. Now, tell the Nexus-4 to import contacts and the People application has this data. Fantastic!
Did the data come across correctly, yup! Can I use it seamlessly? not really... About 50 of those 165 contacts, had custom contact labels, not one of the custom labes came across. So now I have contacts with 4 "Work" entries and 2 "Home" entries and no way to differentiate between which of the 4 work contacts was "Mobile, Vonage Number, Skype Number or Mobile in India"...
This is an issue with vcard - the format used to transfer contacts over bluetooth, and not Android. vcard2.0 which was used, doesn't support custom labels.
But, there's a weird restriction - if I have these contacts sync with my Google account, I can re-assign them custom labels. However, if i want to sync with another non-google account (in my case using Activesync), I'm limited to 8 options and no 'custom' option.
This is something I have to figure out. I really don't want the phone book contacts merging with the 300 odd contacts that my Gmail account has managed to accquire over the years, and I do want the contacts to have custom labels...
===========
Contacts
Moving 165 contacts from my old phone was easy. On the E-72, Goto to the Contacts application, goto options, Select All, Send, Send using Bluetooth, pair and send. 1 minute later 165 contacts including contact pictures were on this Nexus-4. Now, tell the Nexus-4 to import contacts and the People application has this data. Fantastic!
Did the data come across correctly, yup! Can I use it seamlessly? not really... About 50 of those 165 contacts, had custom contact labels, not one of the custom labes came across. So now I have contacts with 4 "Work" entries and 2 "Home" entries and no way to differentiate between which of the 4 work contacts was "Mobile, Vonage Number, Skype Number or Mobile in India"...
This is an issue with vcard - the format used to transfer contacts over bluetooth, and not Android. vcard2.0 which was used, doesn't support custom labels.
But, there's a weird restriction - if I have these contacts sync with my Google account, I can re-assign them custom labels. However, if i want to sync with another non-google account (in my case using Activesync), I'm limited to 8 options and no 'custom' option.
This is something I have to figure out. I really don't want the phone book contacts merging with the 300 odd contacts that my Gmail account has managed to accquire over the years, and I do want the contacts to have custom labels...
Moving to Android: Part-2: Notifications, Emails and Flashlight mode
This is a series of posts where I look at my experiences in moving from a Nokia Symbian device to a Google Nexus 4 running Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean).
[Flashlight Mode] So every Nokia device to date has had some sort of flashlight option. I use this every night when I take a walk to my mailbox. So is there a flashlight mode/option/switch? Nope, but there's an app (or 200) for that. Ok, I went to the app store, and found one called "Simple Torch". Does what its supposed to do, no mess, no fuss. This is good.
[Email accounts] This was quite a breeze. Add account, give it the account type and credentials and about 5 minutes later, my Yahoo and my own domain hosted email accounts were synced. Great!
Wait, my domain hosted email would only partially sync ... every so often it would die with an "Unfortunately, email has stopped" notification. Looking online, I realized that this "has stopped" is Android terminology for the application has crashed. I've managed to crash my device 4 times in the first week?
[Missed call/text Notification] Oops, I got a text message back from a friend, but I didn't realize that she had sent me a text message. Strange, every Nokia device has had by default, some sort of flashing/blinking notification for missed calls/messages/emails. How do I set that up on this? You can't. Android doesn't have a way of notifying you without you turning on the screen.... except, wait, there's an app for that. There's an app called "Light Flow" that does allow you to make your phone's notification LED blink (in multiple colors!). Ok, this is good! I got Light Flow installed.
[Flashlight Mode] So every Nokia device to date has had some sort of flashlight option. I use this every night when I take a walk to my mailbox. So is there a flashlight mode/option/switch? Nope, but there's an app (or 200) for that. Ok, I went to the app store, and found one called "Simple Torch". Does what its supposed to do, no mess, no fuss. This is good.
[Email accounts] This was quite a breeze. Add account, give it the account type and credentials and about 5 minutes later, my Yahoo and my own domain hosted email accounts were synced. Great!
Wait, my domain hosted email would only partially sync ... every so often it would die with an "Unfortunately, email has stopped" notification. Looking online, I realized that this "has stopped" is Android terminology for the application has crashed. I've managed to crash my device 4 times in the first week?
[Missed call/text Notification] Oops, I got a text message back from a friend, but I didn't realize that she had sent me a text message. Strange, every Nokia device has had by default, some sort of flashing/blinking notification for missed calls/messages/emails. How do I set that up on this? You can't. Android doesn't have a way of notifying you without you turning on the screen.... except, wait, there's an app for that. There's an app called "Light Flow" that does allow you to make your phone's notification LED blink (in multiple colors!). Ok, this is good! I got Light Flow installed.
Moving to Android : Part-1
After many years of being a Nokia user, I'm moving to Android on a Nexus 4. I've had my Nexus 4 for a few weeks now. This is going to be a set of time delayed posts on my impressions of the device.
I'm a long time fan of Nokia's hardware and their Symbian OS. I started my mobile journey with a Nokia 1100, moved to a Nokia 6126 and then until a week ago used a Nokia E-72.
My E-72 is still in working condition - it allows me to check email, browse the web and still gives me 3 days of battery life. However, one careless morning about a year ago, I dropped it and the screen got a crack in it. Over the last few months, that crack has started to expand. I decided that it was time to find another device before this one completely gave up on me. This way I could move to a new phone and still have my E-72 available should I need a backup device.
So what device do I move to? I'm still a Nokia fan, my mom has a pretty amazing N-8 device - the last of the Nokia Symbian devices, so that was one option. Alternatively, I could goto IOS or Android. Lots of searching and researching later, I decided that I would go to Android.
My basic requirements for a new phone are primarily (a) it be unlocked, (b) it doesn't change my contract (I have no contract!) (c) It should last me at least a few years, (d) it should allow me to tinker with it as I want to and (e) be priced around the $300.
I could have tried a Nokia Windows phone (its available unlocked on Amazon for about $500), but a) its running Windows phone not Symbian (b) You can't buy it unlocked from Nokia, you have to find it from a third party vendor and (c) at $500, its above my budget. So the only other phone I was left with was the Nexus-4, so I went and bought a Nexus-4 directly from Google.
Lets get started. To begin with, its huge! It is at least 1.5x bigger than my E-72. Makes putting it into the side pockets of a pair of jeans quite a tight fit if you decide to sit down. Its a got a very decent screen. I can read it quite comfortably in day light, though, in direct sunlight, its not the easiest thing to read. I don't plan to read books on this device, so that's not really a factor for me.
Lets set it up. A friend of mine helped me trim my original SIM card into the Micro SIM form factor that this device uses. I charged up my phone, put in the SIM card and started playing with it.
Initial setup:
Initial setup was quite smooth. I was asked to sign in with a Google Account and it asked me for my WIFI credentials, did some stuff (??) in the background and then told me that it was ready to be used. Great. I could text people, I sent a text message or two. It could find me on Google Maps, it was able to download some updates for the existing apps from the web, I was able to go online and browse the web. Excellent!
Overall, I'm quite happy with the phone even if I am about to criticize it a lot. When it isn't complaining about battery life and such, it is fast, the screen is brilliant and very responsive. The much bigger screen makes it easier for me to read the text and overall, the availability of the app store (and improved technology under the hood) provides a number of features that my E-72 just couldn't provide.
My next few posts will look at my experiences in getting it to do what I want.
I'm a long time fan of Nokia's hardware and their Symbian OS. I started my mobile journey with a Nokia 1100, moved to a Nokia 6126 and then until a week ago used a Nokia E-72.
My E-72 is still in working condition - it allows me to check email, browse the web and still gives me 3 days of battery life. However, one careless morning about a year ago, I dropped it and the screen got a crack in it. Over the last few months, that crack has started to expand. I decided that it was time to find another device before this one completely gave up on me. This way I could move to a new phone and still have my E-72 available should I need a backup device.
So what device do I move to? I'm still a Nokia fan, my mom has a pretty amazing N-8 device - the last of the Nokia Symbian devices, so that was one option. Alternatively, I could goto IOS or Android. Lots of searching and researching later, I decided that I would go to Android.
My basic requirements for a new phone are primarily (a) it be unlocked, (b) it doesn't change my contract (I have no contract!) (c) It should last me at least a few years, (d) it should allow me to tinker with it as I want to and (e) be priced around the $300.
I could have tried a Nokia Windows phone (its available unlocked on Amazon for about $500), but a) its running Windows phone not Symbian (b) You can't buy it unlocked from Nokia, you have to find it from a third party vendor and (c) at $500, its above my budget. So the only other phone I was left with was the Nexus-4, so I went and bought a Nexus-4 directly from Google.
Lets get started. To begin with, its huge! It is at least 1.5x bigger than my E-72. Makes putting it into the side pockets of a pair of jeans quite a tight fit if you decide to sit down. Its a got a very decent screen. I can read it quite comfortably in day light, though, in direct sunlight, its not the easiest thing to read. I don't plan to read books on this device, so that's not really a factor for me.
Lets set it up. A friend of mine helped me trim my original SIM card into the Micro SIM form factor that this device uses. I charged up my phone, put in the SIM card and started playing with it.
Initial setup:
Initial setup was quite smooth. I was asked to sign in with a Google Account and it asked me for my WIFI credentials, did some stuff (??) in the background and then told me that it was ready to be used. Great. I could text people, I sent a text message or two. It could find me on Google Maps, it was able to download some updates for the existing apps from the web, I was able to go online and browse the web. Excellent!
Overall, I'm quite happy with the phone even if I am about to criticize it a lot. When it isn't complaining about battery life and such, it is fast, the screen is brilliant and very responsive. The much bigger screen makes it easier for me to read the text and overall, the availability of the app store (and improved technology under the hood) provides a number of features that my E-72 just couldn't provide.
My next few posts will look at my experiences in getting it to do what I want.
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