Be Excellent To Each Other

The phone is about £650 to buy outright. (£1000-650/24) = £15/month for the cell service. How much do you pay for your SIM? No less, I'd wager, and your 6P was only, what, £150 less?

£11 (30 day rolling, not that I'll change it in a hurry, I doubt)! Bargain-tastic!

o/

\o

I did hear a rumor that Three were writing to customers on older cheaper contracts telling them to either upgrade or face cancellation but I haven't heard anything from them personally. I see also that newer mobile contracts have clauses baked in about an annual price rise so this kind of thing won't happen in the future it seems.

Three have written to me to increase my bill from £23 to £33 per month, so I can confirm.

Fucking hell, that's no small increase! I'm on the same £11 a month that Grim's paying (some amount of texts/minutes + unlimited data) so it's odd they're targetting people in your situation before us given that they were getting more money from you even before your increase.

They probably haven't written to me because I'm with O2

Also, apologies, my bill is £11.50 per month. That gets me unlimited texts, 500 minutes (of which I use about 20) and 3.5GB of data, which is about 0.5GB more than I need.

I was on 2GB data and going over it every month. I phoned EE and they offered me 20GB for an extra quid a month. Uh - yeah, thanks!

I pay £35pcm for S5, 600 minutes, 300 texts (I think), and unlimited data. I use 4 gig a month data.

Hey, if we're listing...

£32 a month for the Nexus 5x, Unlimited calls and Texts, 5GB 4g data on EE. Usually use around 2-3GB

SMARTPHONE 600 for me. Bargaintastic or what eh?

I use fuck all minutes and texts, it's the 6GB of data I need as 3GB wasn't proving to be sufficient so I had to go up a notch.

Is that really all that ludicrous? I pulled up the O2 UK site for a comparison and the closest they've got to that is 5GB data with unlimited everything else which is £49 a month with £50 upfront for the S7 Edge (or £54 a month for £10 up front if you're a dribbling fucking retard).

Interesting concept of Unlimited on the Isle of Man.

I'm on Giffgaff so I chop and change as I need.

I don't think it's dreadful TBH, we certainly pay more than the UK but yes it's fair to say not 'horrendously more', although we do get gouged somewhat on the phones themselves.

And I must say MT's 4G is blisteringly fast as well.

Do they not do any sort of addons that would let you get a lower tariff but boost the data allowance?

re: the edge.. I have the s6 and don't use the edgey screen for anything. If anything it's a PITA because my fingers slide off the side of the screen and trigger things I don't want. I am a clumsy shit though.

They put the 50GB cap in as people were ditching their broadband and just using a 4G wifi hotspot for their house's primary internet feed, as the 4G is good enough for it to serve that role.

@Cras - Nahhh they're really quite inflexible on that sort of thing, it's very much a take it or leave it kind of scenario, or you can always go to Sure with their amazing data LOLZ.

Got myself an S7 today. I was in town for a meeting but the meeting got pushed to Monday and I was close to the MT shop so I decided to have a look at an S7 in the flesh as I knew they'd got them in stock in the last few days.

Upon chatting to the helpful young chap in there he suggested that even though my contract isn't up until mid-July, since they allow renewal a month early anyway, I could get an S7 for the standard £210 upfront cost on my tariff, plus a one month contract buyout cost. Quite how that works I'm not entirely sure as mid-July pushed back one month is mid-June, plus one month buyout is mid-May, and we're only at mid-April, but since it was an S7 for £255 I decided I may as well get one.

It is indeed a gorgeous device, the screen is the nicest I've ever seen on a mobile, the always-on gubbins is great, the thing itself feels fantastic being metal and gorilla glass or something, fast charging over a cable is stupid fast (it did 55% to 100% in about 25 minutes, although it did get rather warm), and of course it has wireless charging on there and works fine with my existing two wireless pads.

Apparently I could drop it in a sink full of water and it would emerge unscathed which I guess is quite impressive but in 17 years of mobile ownership I've never really thought of water-resistance as a must-have, or even a desirable really, I mean, just don't get it that wet, surely?

As the reviews have reported already Samsung have MASSIVELY cut back on all the shit they've historically pre-loaded their phones with, to the extent that I've really had nothing to clear up on there at all. It's not quite vanilla Android but it it's a million miles away from the offensive annoyance that Samsung's destruction of the OS used to represent.

In use it's really lovely and slick, although then again so was my Nexus 5 and I'm not sure it's any better in that regard.

I've spent a little bit of time getting my preferred apps installed on there and getting the screens organised how I like them, three authenticators migrated over (Google, battle.net, Steam), although a lot of stuff was done automatically by Google of course such as contacts.

So yes, it's a perfectly lovely phone although looking at the S7 next to my Nexus 5 in front of me I'm very much aware that they're pretty much functionally identical. I mean, maybe the S7 will run Hearthstone a bit nicer, and it'll take better pictures I suppose.

2560x1440 versus a 1920x1080 screen, my eyes honestly can't tell the difference in resolution terms, but the OLED screen on the S7 does have visibly better colours and stuff I think. We have to believe that anyway, don't we, otherwise there's no reason to keep buying this shit.

Oh yes I miss my Google Now feed off on the left hand screen, there's a Samsung replacement for it which isn't as good, although maybe I need to spend some time telling it what I like.

Overall, probably better than spending £255 on blackjack and hookers.

EDIT - Oh yes the fingerprint reader is awesome, incredibly accurate and quick, almost spookily so.

If you miss Now that much you can install the Google Launcher from Play and replace the Samsung one.

Ahhh that is excellent news thanks Doc - TO THE PLAY STORE-O-TRON.

Ahhh right that's actually replaced the whole thing, rather than just giving me the Google Now screen off to the left.

To the DO ALL THE ICONS AGAIN-O-TRON.

It looks like my Nexus 5 now though, which is good.

Oh yeah, I guess that wasn't clear. Yes, it's the entire launcher. There's no other way (currently) to get the full-screen Now experience, third party launchers (like Samsung's) can't access that feature. Obviously this makes it more like your N5, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on how you feel about Samsung's customisations.

I prefer it back in Google-o-style, despite the brief interruption of having to get all the icons onto the home screen again.

I've found the Now screen to be really good overall on my N5, so having that back is splendid, in fact the whole UI is now very close to what I had on the N5.

The Samsung clock widget is worse than the Google one though, you can't just tap the clock to get to the alarm/stopwatch/timer menus, so I've had to put a separate Clock icon on the home screen for that. It's a minor annoyance but I do regularly dick about with my alarms for all the batshit times I have to go into work or remote in to do stuff.

Install Timely for all your alarm clock and widget needs.

Seconded

Cheers for that will take a look, but it'll have to be when I get home and can VPN the phone as it appears to be a paid app so doesn't appear in the gimped free Play Store we get by default over here.

(I realise I can VPN a phone anywhere, but my ISP supplies a VPN which all the details are already in my phone for, but it only works when it's connected to my ISP's network.)

Can you not just install the real play store?

WTF? Play is different on the Isle of Man?

TIL

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of- ... -1-5427119

FIG!

"It appears to be a problem which is not experienced by the island’s Apple users who have i-Pads and i-Phones."

lulz technojurnos

Right? People trying to buy their lunch from Sainsburys are also not affected.

Also "i-Pads" and "i-Phones".

That article continues to be great. One of the people was writing a letter to Google, telling them how it wasn't good enough.

Best of luck with that, Manx chappie.

Yeah it's a bit of a ballache TBH, they have signs up in all the shops that sell phones explaining the situation, it's been like this for years and I see no prospect of it changing.

I got caught out when I recommended an Android phone for a friend when her old iPhone 3G died, next thing I know I'm talking a total non-techie through setting up a VPN on her phone so she can get her normal apps back.

As soon as you leave the island the phone/tablet recognises it's in the UK and the full Play Store appears, but as soon as it's back on an IOM IP address you're fucked again.

We probably have the most clued-up VPN population anywhere in the world, since anyone with an Android device needs to use one to get the full Play Store.

Like I said, my ISP even runs its own VPN server and provides credentials to its customers to VPN their devices with.

Once you've got the apps installed over the VPN they usually carry on working and updating as normal even when homed to the IOM, but in the case of Hearthstone for example, the in-game shop where you can buy cards and stuff permanently displays 'CLOSED' when it's on an IOM IP address. Spotify just stops working once the VPN is taken away though.

Thread here on local forums going back years - http://www.manxforums.com/forums/index. ... s-android/

Fucking hell, that's terrible. Why does everyone just not use an iPhone?

What's the actual root cause? If free apps are available is it that Google don't take payments from IOM accounts for some weird reason?

Remember that the Amazon app store exists so there's always that as an (admittedly shite) alternative if it works. It's got Hearthstone and Spotify so it might be useful to you there.

Also - describing us "mainlanders" (?) as 'across'. I suppose it comes up often enough that a shortening comes up naturally. But it looks weird.

One theory from that thread, can't vouch for its accuracy any more than I can for its spelling though.

Also this one here - http://www.manxforums.com/forums/index. ... ?p=1045846

Basically it seems that we're 'rest of the world' so default to no paid apps.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/a ... le/3541286 <<< If you look at Google's list there, the IOM doesn't exist as a territory, but we're not part of the UK either.



That's not correct. There's no Isle of Man region according to google, so it's not a case of individual apps being eligable or non eligable. If it things you're in a territory it doesn't recognise, then you get no paid apps at all.

It's definitely broke, because it's so haphazard. I have all paid apps, and google music works just fine on my account. Other householders here don't have any paid apps at all and can't log into google music.

There's also lots of other nuances that you neglect to mention, like the IOM is covered by specific UK legislation, so we are part of the UK in certain circumstances. Lots of examples, thinks like patents, registered designes, trademarks etc are all examples of UK acts of parliament that specifically cover the isle of man and why you can't suddently decide to sell your own rip offs here as if it was the far east.

Google have this wrong, they think we're a separate terratory for digital rights, and we'r enot. Everyone else has it right, netflix, apple, iplayer, etc. Google even get it right sometimes, but when they introduced the nexus, they changed the regional detection so it operates without a sim card and it broke something else.

Quite an assumption that it's a digital rights law issue there. It could be taxation, consumer protection law, or frankly just laziness - it's a tiny user population and they've not got round to bothering to sort it out yet.

I think I'll file a bug report against that.

That would be very interesting, if you can get some movement on this Doc, you'll have achieved more than the IOM itself has managed in the last three years or more!

Further S7 reportage.

The camera is absolutely the tits, review after review does big it up large style but having used it a bit now it is indeed fantastic, especially in low light conditions. It's also got some fancy new shit going to make it focus super-quick and I can confirm this is the case. The video it shoots is remarkably good too. Loads of examples out on the wibbly wobbly web if you care to look.

S7 Camera Samples

I know the Nexus 5 was never much well regarded for its camera so it's probably not a fair comparison, but I'm genuinely impressed with the camera on the S7.

Beyond that the always-on display is proving to be marginally useful, it's handy being able to see the time at a glance at all times, but the customisation options for what appears on the always-on screen are limited and effectively amount to about seven variations of the same thing. It does hit the battery a little bit as well, around 1% per hour by my reckoning, to the extent that overnight the S7 will lose a bit more battery than my Nexus 5 did. The always-on screen can be turned off (SO NOT THAT ALWAYS-ON, eh?), but on balance I'll retain it.

Other things, it has an RGB notification LED like the Nexus 5 had. I'm a big fan of LEDs on the front of phones to indicate various notifications, charging yes/no, and other such stuff - so I am pleased by this. Apparently not all phones have them and/or they're not RGB? The multi-colour thing I find really handy as I can tell what it's indicating just by the colour and pulse pattern, and as such if I want to just ignore it for a bit.

The fingerprint reader is something I've really grown to like despite being somewhat ambivalent about it before purchase. It's really fast and accurate and I've given it several fingers in several orientations (fnaar), so I can unlock the phone with either hand and always in a way that's convenient and comfortable. This is an example of GOOD TECHNOLOGY I think, unlike a lot of technology which I find to be POINTLESS.

Other than that it's a smartphone innit, and it does smartphone stuff. I haven't tested the water resistance and I have no intention of doing so, I am far happier with the Google Launcher installed than the Samsung one, even though the Samsung one was a lot less horrible than their previous fuck-ups of the lovely Android UI.

Oh yes it pumps out surprisingly decent sound through its single speaker, I mean, you won't be replacing your home cinema setup with it but still, impressive for a tiny speaker in a phone.

The wireless charging works fine and it seems to charge quicker than my Nexus 5 did on the same pads, which is curious. However, one of the pads is on an angle and the S7 just slides down it, it still charges OK because its fall is broken by the bottom end of the phone hitting the table, but it'd be nice if it sort of stuck to it like the Nexus 5 did. It's only had a wire plugged into it once (when I first got it and wanted to get it up to 100% ASAP), but I imagine I'll be doing all my charging wirelessly going forward. (This feature alone was enough for me to put the S7 above the 6P in my desirability ratings.)

Overall, I like it and am content to recommend it to others even though it is STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE for a fucking phone.

Unless the implementation is different to the 5x, you don't need to bother with different orientations.

TO THE INVESTIGATE-O-TRON.

I've never had a fingerprint sensor before, it's all a bit new to me. AND SPOOKY. I mean, like, how does it recognise the print so quickly and accurately from just a small part of the digit itself?

I approve of this GOOD TECHNOLOGY, and put it in the same category as auto-dimming rear view mirrors in cars.

Line recognition is not a new problem, and one which has been broadly solved for quite a while.

You can spoil anything with science and facts.

I prefer to think of it as arcane magic and thus be appropriately impressed every time my phone unlocks IN A FRACTION OF A SECOND.

Woo it's my phone contract upgrade date!

Um... *looks at phones available* bit expensive and uninspiring innit?

I mean I've got a Note 3, which was a beast when released, so I'm the only reason to upgrade is to get something measurably much more powerful so I'm pretty much looking at large screened turbo-nutter phones... but at the prices they're asking... meh.

Nexus 6P is the way to go.

If you're looking to the past instead of the future.