Category: Technology

HTC One Initial Thoughts

The HTC Once arrived Monday morning, and so far, HTC is continue their tradition of excellent build quality in a phone. The HTC One is the best feeling phone I have held. It’s just the right size for my hands, and it’s weight is light, but not so light that I think it will blow away.

For the HTC One, they went with a uni-body design, that is slightly curved on the back side, and fits nicely in the palm of your hand. As you hold the phone, you can truly see how much work went into the design. As you look at it, you notice the screen. The screen is very vibrant and looks amazing. Everything I have looked at so far looks amazing on it. Pictures, videos, and web pages.

The phone does not come with stock Android, it comes with HTC Sense, which is just their launcher that is used. It is actually better than I thought it would be and the built in widgets work very well.

The phone has great battery life, which, with Android phones, is not always the case. I have owned 4 Android phones, including the HTC One, and this is the 1st time I have made it through an entire work day and not needed to charge my phone. I took the phone off the charger as I walked out the door yesterday morning, and did not need to charge it until 8:30-ish last night. And that was through slightly moderate use.

HTC has a partnership right now with Beats By Dre and the audio from this phone is pretty damn good, for a cell phone. I like that there are two speakers on the phone. One at the top and one at the bottom. When I am looking at a YouTube video and the audio is playing towards me and not away from me as it does on other phones, it really does make the listening experience a little nicer. I don’t own a pair of Beats By Dre headphones so I can not tell you if there is any kind of special audio intelligence going on there, but I hope there is.

To put a few things into perspective, there are the smart phones I have owned throughout the years, in the order that I had them.

Nokia E62 – Symbian OS
iPhone 3G – iOS
Motorola Droid X – Android
HTC Thunderbolt – Andorid
Samsung Galaxy Nexus – Android
Samsung Galaxy II – Android
iPhone 4 – iOS
HTC One – Android

I would rate the phone an 8/10, and it is still the best phone I have ever owned.

Removing All Hidden Files

If you go between multiple operating systems pretty regularly like I do, you will end up with a lot of hidden files. There was a previous post where I talked about removing .DS_Store files if you use a Mac and a Linux box. This is a more refined version of that post, and this one addresses all hidden files in general.

Use the following command to list all hidden files in /path/to/dest/ directory
[darkmatter@metroplex]$ find /path/to/dir/ -iname “.*” -maxdepth 1 -type f

To list all hidden directories use the following command:
[darkmatter@metroplex]$ find /path/to/dir/ -iname “.*” -maxdepth 1 -type d

To delete all hidden files under UNIX or Linux use the following command:
[darkmatter@metroplex]$ find /path/to/dir/ -iname “.*” -maxdepth 1 -type f -delete
OR
[darkmatter@metroplex]$ find /path/to/dir/ -iname “.*” -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec rm {} \;

To delete all hidden directories under UNIX or Linux use the following command:
[darkmatter@metroplex]$ find /path/to/dir/ -iname “.*” -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

Rolling Up My Sleeves Again

As some of you know, I work in the tech support industry, so that last thing I want to do is repair computers when I get home. However, it seems that I may have to do just that. So after doing some digging on my PS3 issue, it appears that the solution to my problem is a technique called reflow soldering. It’s not a very complicated process, but a process that takes some time.

Doing this myself will only cost about $60 in supplies and a couple of hours of my time, instead of the $150 plus shipping charge to send it to Sony and wait 6-8 weeks. Sometimes I just want stuff to work….but with that kind of time and price disparity, I’m going back in with my sleeves rolled up.

Sync Your DROID X With iTunes

So I have found a web site with some instructions on syncing your DROID X with iTunes. I can only assume this will work with other Android devices. I was previously using DoubleTwist for this task, but DoubleTwist still has some work they need to do before they over take iTunes when it comes to media management.

The downside to DoubleTwist is that it is not an open source project so I can not grab the source code and contribute to this project. I need to start emailing them and find out how I can contribute. I believe in the Android platform and want to help it succeed. It’s a very cool mobile platform and I see some very nice things on the horizon for hit.

Has much as I used to hate writing code, when you are working on projects that you believe in, writing code can be a very good thing.

2 Weeks With The Droid X

So I have had my Droid X for 2 weeks now. The phone has been amazing. There were some issues with it in the beginning with the syncing, but that was my fault for not setting it up correctly. The phone has a beautiful design to it, and a beautiful screen to match.

The Motorola developers and designers behind this phone really went all out. It’s a great device that feels good in your hands, and has a good weight to it. The phone has a 4.3” screen on it that is gorgeous and bright. so bight that if you do not turn it down, the battery life diminishes a lot. Even with the screen not on full brightness, it is still gorgeous.

The battery life of this phone has gotten a lot better since the Android 2.2 update. I can get through the entire day now and not have to charge. The touch screen took some getting used to, then again, I’ve been using an iPhone for the last 2 years. The differences in their virtual keyboards are subtle, but enough to feel different.

There are a couple of things that I do miss from my iPhone. The battery life if the iPhone 3G, while I do not like iTunes, I love how it can manage the apps for the iPhone, and the amount of apps in the iPhone App store.

Those are all things that I do believe will come to Android, it’s just a matter of time. As someone who was a die hard iPhone user, I have no regrets about moving to Verizon and Android. And by the way…can you hear me now? The call quality and so far, no dropped calls is amazing.

Anyone looking for a smart phone, you have to at least look at the Droid X. My other recommendation would be the HTC EVO on Sprint.

A New Player Has Entered The Game

So I just found out that a friend of B’s works at T-Mobile. She got me to looking at the Samsung Galaxy S on T-Mobile. It’s an Android phone with a 4” screen. I’ll make a trip to the T-Mobile store and play with it to check it out.

It has 16MB of on board storage, plus it supports up to a 32GB microSD card. Yes, when it comes to cell phones, I’m easily swayed by who has the best feature set. While the HTC EVO has a slightly larger screen, the Sansung Galaxy S and it’s 16GB on board storage, and additional 32GB of storage capacity, make for the better option. T-Mobile here I come.

Vacuum Your Computer

So I learned a valuble lesson today. Vacuum your computer. You don’t have to spend money on cans of compressed air, and, you don’t end up with dust and other crap floating around in the air. We had to do some work on a PC today, still working on it now actually, and the thing was full of dust.

And what do you do when your computer is full of dust? You get a can of compressed air and blow it out. Well, until today, that is what I thought as well. Angie stops me as I am about to start with the can of air, and tells me to get the vacuum and vacuum our the computer. Now, this sounded silly to me, but hey, I’m always willing to try new stuff, you never know what you are going to learn.

The lesson that I learned is that vacuuming out your computer does just as a good, if not a better job than a can of compressed air. And since I have a vacuum cleaner at home, no more buying cans of compressed air. the one caveat, make sure you have a soft brush head for your vacuum.

Wow….the shit you learn at work.

Leaving The Empire

I was finally able to play with an HTC EVO today. I love this phone. The screen looks amazing. I don’t know how it looks compared to an iPhone 4, but it’s damn sexy. The only issue for me is that the phone only has 1GB of internal storage, but supports an SD card up to 32GB.

At the end of the month, I am leaving The Empire, and joining the Rebel Alliance. I have done some searching, and while a lot of the apps I have on the iPhone 3G are not on the Android Market Place, most of the apps I have on the iPhone I don’t use. While there at the Sprint store I did a few searches and my most used apps are on the Android Market Place.

And, to make it even sweeter, my bill is going to go down by $30 a month. I can see that savings account growing more and more.