Things Smackie Thinks You Need to Know...

Just spent the last hour with a Galaxy Nexus.  One.Beautiful.Phone.

good thing no one is allowed to buy it

sweetcell wrote:
aww, thanks buddy.  i have to tread somewhat carefully with the device, since android support at the firm is still at the low end of the learning curve and i can't afford to be out of commission because i got all experimental. 

i'm starting to re-think my overly-conservative position (as most people should, really…).  i'm still loving the phone but it's ability to do everything, and do it quickly and constantly, has a drawback: it can drain the battery quickly.  depending on how much i do with the phone and where i'm located i can kill a full battery before i return home/to the hotel at night.  i've done some optimizing so it's gotten better, but i'm still not getting the battery life i want.

i've come up with three options to address this, thoughts appreciated:

1) get a second battery and an external charger, and charge one battery in the carger while using the other.

2) get a replacement battery with larger capacity, like this one.  it would make the handheld fatter and heavier.

3) root the phone and take out at&t's *%@#*&!!!! bloatware that they won't let you uninstall gracefully.  the phone company has put a ton of cr-apps on the phone that are constantly running in the background and sucking up juice.  one particularly bad offender can consume up to 10% of a charge, who knows how much more i'm losing to all the other services and processes.  unfortunately i can't keep root: if my company's secure e-mail platform detects open root access, it auto-destructs.  so i'd need to get root, uninstall the bloatware (and do whatever other tweaks), then relinquish root.

*sigh*.

I've done all three, but I prefer the 1st option to the second (with my GSI I carried two batteries).  Charged one on the dock at night in the phone and put the spare in the extra charge slot.  Your phone is pretty thin though so it might not bee too bad if you go with a bigger capacity battery.

Going through all the trouble to root the phone just to remove the apps and not enjoy all that you can do with a rooted phone doesn't make much sense to me.  With ICS you'll be able to disable carrier bloat apps so they don't run in the background.  You might as well just wait.

A couple of simple battery saving tips though:

(1) use the auto-brightness feature as I'm guessing that big screen is taking most of the battery. 
(2) Use wifi as much as possible.  The wifi radio takes less juice than the 3G/4G radio.
(3) Obviously try to keep the phone in a place where it has a decent signal.  The majority of my phone battery loss is "Searching for Signal" because my office is in the middle of the building and not by a window.

vansmack wrote:

Originally posted by BookerT:
you're childhood friends with chris draft?

I am.  We lived about 3 blocks apart and were on the same soccer team and little league team for years.  His older brother was actually my age, and Chris was in the grade behind me.  They were both the best athletes in the neighborhood - Chris just got big while his brother stayed skinny.

Very sad: 

NFL star mourns wife a month after wedding

Just one month after marrying his longtime girlfriend, former Atlanta Falcons linebacker Chris Draft is now mourning the loss of his wife.

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2011/12/30/chris-draft-nfl-falcon-wife-dies

heya smax,

i'm currently at DFW on my laptop, tethered to my phone with a strong LTE signal. ohmyfrickengawdihadnoideaitcouldbethisway.  three different speed tests confirm that i'm getting 22-25 mbps down and over 4 mbps up.  that's faster than the corporate network of the client i just left, and not that far off from my Fios at home. 

CHANGING THE GAME.

we really are fucked when electricity isn't so easily produced.

agreed - and we won't have message boards to bitch and moan about it! ;D

you guys who read this thread like football right?  good, i thought so.

football just got political

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/06/maddow-indiana-gop-picked-bad-time-to-fight-unions/

walkonby wrote:
you guys who read this thread like football right?  good, i thought so.

football just got political

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/06/maddow-indiana-gop-picked-bad-time-to-fight-unions/

"Just" got political?

This is much a do about nothing and probably belongs in the conspiracy theory thread…

Even thieves don't want your stupid tangible media:

[T]hefts of entertainment products like CDs and DVDs have collapsed in England and Wales, to the point that they are now taken in just 7% of all burglaries in which something is stolen. They are now targeted no more frequently than are toiletries and cigarettes.

…

?These sorts of crimes are regarded even by criminals as the preserve of the desperate,? says James Treadwell, a Leicester University criminologist. Burglars are generally drug-addled, unskilled and opportunistic. Yet they are capable of making economic calculations. And their behaviour reveals something about the state of the media business. Hollywood and the record labels believe they can hold off the threat from technology, both legitimate and illegitimate, and maintain the value of their products. Britain?s burglars disagree.

http://www.economist.com/node/21542438

Whether you watched the game or not, call and get your credit.  My disdain for Comcast knows no boundaries:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/23/comcast-xfinity-ads-interrupt-nfc-championship/

No argument from me….except I'd swap out the BB drinking for Android online dating.

What does your smartphone say about your life love?

iPhone Users: The Office Romantic

[li]iPhone addicts are the most likely to date someone in their workplace. Nearly a quarter of iPhone singles have had an office romance in the last five years.[/li]
[li]After a first date, iPhone users wait just one day to reach out, while Android or BlackBerry users will wait until after 2-3 dates.
[/li]

BlackBerry Users: The Drunk Dialer

[li]If you?re dating a BlackBerry fan, prepare to imbibe. BlackBerry users are most likely to drink alcohol on a first date ? 72 per cent will have a boozy beverage on a first night out.[/li]
[li]A whopping 67 per cent of BlackBerry users say they have experienced love at first sight.[/li]

Android Users: The Seducer

[li]Android users are most likely to be seduced on a first date. 62 per cent of Android singles say they?ve done the deed after date number one, compared to 57 per cent of iPhone users and 48 per cent of BlackBerry users.[/li]
[li]Out of all smart phone users, Android fans are most likely to have a one-night stand (55 per cent).[/li]
[li]72 per cent of Android fans have visited an online dating site, compared to 58 per cent of iPhone users and 50 per cent of Blackberry users.[/li]

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/31/match-com-android-users-are-more-likely-to-have-sex-on-first-date/

Interesting:

Google Reportedly Working on a Wireless Home Entertainment System

I'm heading to Mountain View Tomorrow.  I'm definitely going to ask to peek behind the curtain. 

You Gotta Fight!  For your Right! To Paaaa…wait…what?  Net Neutrality? 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/15/sec-sides-with-beastie-boys-mike-d-says-atandt-must-allow-shareh/

The latest nonsensical technology to catch Smackie's ire is this whole SiriusXM merger. 

The merger was announced 5 years ago yesterday, happened 3.5 years ago, and still the company supports two different technologies and their content is still not merged into one.

Absolutely incredible that they would support two different technologies in OEM's for automobiles and handhelds (XM radios and Sirius radios), not offer all of the content on one of the two technologies (Sirius cannot play MLB games) or you have to pay a premium for one on the other (for XM radios, you have to pay $3.50 more a month for Sirius programming)

I will be streaming all content in my new car and not bother touching the sat radio and I LOVE technology, but if they haven't merged the hardware in 3.5 years, continue to push out OEM radio's that will need support for the life of cars and haven't fixed their bandwidth issues, SAT radio is dead as LTE gets better coverage.

i thought i heard that "sirius" is dead.  it is only really xm.  all new equipment is xm players only.  places that carry "sirius" equipment told me that it all stopped befored christmas and they haven't got a single piece of equipment that says "sirius" on it anymore.

its a dead medium anyway.  had it for six or seven years.  was incredible when it first came out.  now it is boring and outdated.

pandora . . . for the win.

walkonby wrote:
i thought i heard that "sirius" is dead.  it is only really xm.  all new equipment is xm players only. 

Unless you purchase (or have purchased in the last 5 years) a vehicle from the following manufacturer, which comes pre-installed with a Sirius Radio:

Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley, BMW, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Fiat, Jaguar, Jeep, Kia, Land Rover, Lincoln, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mercury, Mini Cooper, Mitsubishi, Volvo or VW.

I would be willing to bet most SAT radio subscriptions are vehicle based and that owners of many of these vehicles fit one of two profiles for SAT subscribers (1) live in a huge area with poor radio coverage or (2) have a fair amount of disposable income. 

I would agree with you that XM will be the future based on compression structure and available bandwidth, but what are they going to do with all of these cars?

was it just me . . . or did the dead milkmen do a cover of "cars" on sat in dc?  everything at some point revolves around the dead milkmen.  smoking banana peels was a highlight.