Be Excellent To Each Other

The latest S5 update brings back the Mute function. Huzzah!
And it has also stopped mine running like a 1 legged dog through treacle. Double Huzzah!

Just need to see what the battery usage is like but so far so good.

Free PCs where?

Nexus Player update! It's quite good.

Plex works as well as Plex ever does. Netflix is flawless (and works with unblock.us). I have SNES and Mega Drive Emulators installed and a wired 360 controller attached. Best emulator experience I've ever had.

Oh shit - I'd not considered emulation.

I reckon a Bluetooth controller would make it even better. I think the ps3 controller syncs up pretty easily

You know there's a dedicated controller available for it yeah?

Yes, but for many the PS3 controller will be 'free'. Just like my 360 controller being 'free'.

Yeah, course, I was just mentioning it in case you weren't aware. It's worth being aware though that using a PS3/4 controller wirelessly with Android requires that your device is rooted and it looks to be quite the faf to do.

I think Android supports it now, and has done for a while.

Ah, some do, some don't. There's an app to find out: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... cker&hl=en

And that app disagrees. Well, I don't know now.

But root is always required.

Did anyone tried the Asus Zenfone 5?

I need a new phone but 200€ is my absolute maximum.

..........................................

I am now the proud owner of a Hudl2. Cost me £45 once I had used my ClubCard boost.

It's a bit chunky compared to the Mrs' iPad Mini but the screen is sharp and the interface (I use Nova Launcher) at least as responsive as my S5.

Battery seems to be a bit demanding but so far for £45 it's an absolute steal.

I bet that'd run Hearthstone very nicely.

Yeah, the battery is the weak point, but even at full price it's a good little tablet for the money.

Bug report for the Doc. Instead of being in my mate's car today getting a lift to Heathrow, Google Maps was convinced we were actually driving the Saatchi Gallery up the M3.

Heh. You should have Shaken To Send Feedback; that generates a much better bug report than I can after the fact.

Brilliant!

This isn't something I want fixed, I'm hoping to drive a variety of buildings around over the next while. ;-)

All: But is it art?

Whatever update that has landed on my s5 is terrible. Switching between tabs in chrome takes ages now as you have to press the key button, wait for it to load then scroll through all the apps to find the page you want.

You can turn that off (if its what i think it is) in chrome settings > merge tabs and apps >off.

Yeah, it's a Lollipop feature and a fucking terrible idea but easily switched back to normal behaviour.

Super, thank youm

I agree.

Ever since smartphones arrived I've only used iOS. For a time I felt I'd never be able to leave iOS because I was too wedded to the huge app library I'd accrued.

But lately, I've realised I don't use many apps. Swipes, Spotify, Evernote, Maps, Camera, City Mapper, Bus timetable. None seem to be apple only.

So, if I was to jump ship to Android, all I'd be missing is Apple's admittedly lovely hardware and the OS.

Anyone who's made the switch, for whatever reason (cost, a change, the choice) do you actually prefer the Android OS? Or is it something you don't like but grow to tolerate?

I'm torn between the iPhone 6 and the Sony Z3 Compact (love the size, long battery life, and PS4 compatibility, though worried about the dodgy sounding camera).

Anyone who's been through OS reassignment, what are your thoughts?

I made the switch to Android when I retired my iPhone 3GS, the money Apple were after for the iPhone 4 was just eye-watering. (I can't honestly remember how I ended up with the 3GS, must have bought it second hand or something, but in typical Apple fashion they'd released a version of iOS that ran on the 3GS but turned the whole phone into a juddery lump of shit.)

My initial thoughts with Android at the time were that it was a bit rough around the edges (obviously you're going back a few years), but I saved a decent chunk of cash moving to an Android phone that had all the functionality (and more!) of my old 3GS, and ran a lot better too. (Think it was a HTC Desire, as memory serves it got me a WiFi hotspot which iOS didn't have at the time.)

Since then Android has got better and better, and if you stick to a vanilla Android phone you get the 'unblemished' Lollipop which is a great UI and every bit as lovely as iOS IMO. Your mileage may vary with the various manufacturer customisations (personally speaking I abhor what Samsung does to their phones, but I think Sony's UI is actually pretty good - for example).

IMO they've lost the plot a bit with the Nexus 6 though, which is stupidly big and stupidly expensive, but there is talk of a 'Nexus 5 2015' model on the way which would be very interesting. (I'm currently on a Nexus 5 which on balance I'd say is the best phone I've ever owned and very reasonably priced.)

All that said I wouldn't necessarily rule out moving back to an iPhone at some point, but every time my contract comes up for renewal I look at the prices for iPhones, and then I look at the prices for good Android phones, and I'm just like, 'Yeah, fuck that'. (IIRC when I got the Nexus 5 I could get it 'free' on a £35 per month contract, whereas the cheapest iPhone was something like £240 cash upfront on top of the £35 per month. PLEASE NOTE - we pay crazy prices for mobile phones on the Isle of Man.)

If you're not particularly tied to the 'Apple Ecosystem' (loads of apps, big iTunes library etc, and by all accounts you're not), then the switch should be very painless.

Android does seem to make stuff that SHOULD be simple, nice and simple, for example Mrs Hearthly wanted a basic and easy to use media player on her Moto G 2, so I just installed VLC (free) from the Play Store and she can drag and drop stuff from folders on her PC to it. The last time I tussled with a simple task like that on an iPod I ended up in a murderous killrage. (Seriously fuck iTunes.)

I suppose the thing to do is just an Android phone a try, end of the day if you really don't like it you can move back to Apple at your next switch. But your use of your phone sounds very similar to mine TBH (not much in the way of apps, want decent camera functionality, etc), so I think you'd be fine.

Having had a quick look at prices the Z3 Compact costs a fair whack less than the iPhone6 too, so you've got a decent wedge of cash to spend on something else straight out of the gate.

I switched my personal phone from an iPhone 6 to a Nexus 6 a few months ago as an experiment, and I don't know if I'm going to go back. Is there anything specific you want to know?

If you do change, for God's sake read up about what you have to do to turn off iMessage (unless that's been fixed).

You can, in theory, now do it via iCloud.com even after the device has been nuked.

Thanks all!

Hearthly - I must say my first experience of a smartphone was the iPhone 4, which to this day remains my favourite phone (aside from the Nokia 8210). My iPhone 5 is fine, but the 6 doesn't do much to excite me apart from the awesome camera (and I do use the camera more than most other functions). The larger form factor isn't floating my boat. I have dainty (hairy) lady hands.

The nexus 5 "+" sounds interesting, though is it being made by Huawei? Not overly familiar with them.

Doc G: the fact you're considering sticking Android is promising - would be interested to know what's keeping you there (though I guess it could be helpful with work?).

It sounds like a move to Android wouldn't be one I'd regret, certainly. Though reports of self-cracking screens on the Z3 is worrying. I can crack screens quite capably on my own.

Cras, Grim... - iMessage stuff? Whagwan? If you keep it on and keep your old number, do messages to your new phone end up in an iMessage box you can't access?

Yeah, basically if other people with an iPhone send you a message, it doesn't realise that you're not on an iPhone any more, so it still tries to deliver it as an iMessage instead of turning it into an SMS that will reach your Android phone.

I've never made the jump myself having always been an Android guy but the days where there were massive difference between the two platforms are long gone I'd say. For your general use case (install and running apps, surfing the internet, taking pictures/video, etc) I can't imagine there's any real difference. The only 'complications' I can really see is that there's much more choice in terms of the handset you go for--and an attendant range of quality to go with it--so you obviously need to be more careful when choosing a handset. On that score, as you've said you don't want a 'big' phone, the Sony Z3 Compact is probably your best bet as it's one of the few Android handsets around that's a proper 'flagship' spec just in a smaller form factor. Most other Android phones are either larger sized or an over-priced shit heap phone trading on the reputation of it's bigger brother. Which is to say: avoid anything Samsung with the word 'mini' in it's name as they're shite. And HTC aren't much better.

I wouldn't worry too much about the various manufacturer skins as these days you can just install Google's vanilla Android launcher and get 90% of the pure Android experience right there. After that you just need to deal with the weird rearrangement of the Settings menu that some of them do; with Samsung being the fucking worst offender there as always.

Obviously there will be a bit of a learning curve as you'll always get when moving from one platform to another (I get stuck on really weird things on the few occasions I need to use iOS) but as long as you're not one of those people that freaks out at having to learn a few new things I'm sure you'd be fine.

On a completely unrelated note, I noticed the other day that the Lollipop lock screen actually lets you delete emails without unlocking the phone. Is it just me or is that pretty dodgy? I realise I can stop those notifications appearing at all but I prefer to have them and would rather anyone getting hold of it couldn't delete stuff.

Thanks Bamba. Like you say, a big complication (and boon) with Android is all the choice. Good to know re the minis. All the Samsungs leave me cold for some reason. Loved my old D900 though, back when phones were phones, men were men, Beex was WOS etc.

TBH I think Bamba is being rather harsh on the Minis.

Yes the Minis tend to have stripped down specs from their big brothers but they're entirely capable phones.

Mrs Hearthly had an S4 Mini (before she broke it ) and it was a great little phone (once you'd sorted out the clusterfuck of the Samsung OS), on paper it was underpowered but in reality it was absolutely fine - in normal use it was an snappy and responsive as any other phone. She has a Moto G V2 now, she isn't allowed nice things.

The HTC One Mini was a very similar story (mate at work had one for a while, really liked it, until the mic broke and he had to send it back to HTC).

You could argue that you pay 'most of the price' for not 'most of the specs' but I'm of the opinion that specs on phones are already getting a bit daft.

The latest nonsense is 2560x1440 screens that do absolutely nothing other than suck battery life and hit performance, and to discern individual pixels you practically need to use a fucking magnifying glass even on 1080 mobile screens.

We're up to octo-core processors now. In a fucking phone.

Hey motherfuckers, how about a battery that lasts more than a day, eh?

That's a properly bonkers way to look at it. Whether anyone needs the specs of the full-size handset or not is neither here not there; if you're paying not-much-less and getting a-lot-less then they're over-priced. That's just the reality of the situation. With HTC and Samsung, compared to their bigger brothers, they're always plasticy underpowered cheap feeling little things which, I personally feel, are just exploiting consumers who want a decent phone but don't want a large sized screen.

Ahem! Come on old chap the S3/4/5 were seriously plasticy, so in that regard the Mini versions weren't really much different.

And the HTC One Mini actually had the same finish of its big brother.

'Underpowered' is a loaded word too, 'less powerful' would be more accurate, as in terms of performance they were just fine. (And this is from someone who's used both the S4 Mini and the HTC One Mini - albeit not as my own phone.)

The fact that the mini Samsungs actually manage to feel more cheap and horrible than their already plasticy big brothers is quite an achievement, thank you for pointing that out.



It's actually got a good chunk more plastic in it's construction. Indeed it was more like the HTC One Max than the HTC One and, as someone who owned an One Max, I know that it didn't feel anywhere near as 'premium' as the original because of that.



Underpowered is exactly the term I mean because I'm gauging it in comparison to price. You can't say the performance is 'fine' unless you're gauging it compared to something and price is the best yardstick. It wouldn't be 'fine' if they were trying to charge £800 for them but, equally, it would 'awesome' if they only cost 50p.

Just having a look now though the "mini" versions seem to be about 25% cheaper on contracts than their full-size counterparts. Whenever I've looked at phones they have been quite a bit cheaper. To buy outright there is a big difference. I was looking just now at Galaxy S5 and the S5 Mini.

Maybe the big ones are overpowered.

I used to have a shit Android phone and now I have a better iPhone twice.

Gah! Underpowered has a very specific meaning and it's got precisely bugger all to do with price. Check it out in a dictionary.



if you think the price to performance ratio in the Minis is poor then that's fine, but it doesn't make them underpowered.

And you really are splitting hairs over the HTC One Mini's construction, I've held both the One and the One Mini in my very own hands - (this dude at work gets through phones like most folks get through underwear (unless you go commando like me)) - and they feel very similar in their 'premium-ness'.

It's good to see that with the success of the PS4 Sony still haven't lost the ability to punch themselves in the balls for no reason. They've got a new Android tablet out shortly, the Xperia Z4, which I was eyeing up; and certainly the reviews reckon it's a very nice piece of kit indeed. However, Engadget have confirmed that it'll only be available to buy in the UK bundled with it's keyboard dock, which pushes the price up to £500 and means they can basically fuck off. Offer a separate keyboard by all means, but bundling it in is going to kill the sales of the thing stone dead. Well, aside from the few people who genuinely want to use their tablet as a full laptop replacement. It just seems insane to force it on people, the twats.

Don't worry, it's an Android tablet, so it'll be half the price in six months anyway.

What's the business user view on it? Is it a good idea from that point of view?

I can't see how, if you're a business user (or, indeed, anyone that wants the keyboard) then you could happily just buy both parts at the same time. Force bundling them makes absolutely zero difference to the people that want the keyboard, but screws the people who don't.

I tried pairing my Nexus 6 with my PS4 pad last night for some VR fun and just couldn't get it to work. The phone could see the PS4 pad quite happily but the pairing would just never complete and eventually the pad would just time out. It works fine when connected by a cable but obviously it would be nicer to go wireless; has anyone else had any success getting the pairing working? I'm using these instructions in case that matters at all:

http://android.wonderhowto.com/how-to/c ... y-0160721/