Be Excellent To Each Other

I'd test that assumption if I were you. With the new low-power modes in modern wifi chipsets that's a lot less true than it used to be, and depending on which exact modes your device supports on both radios, might be outright false. Also, your 3G might go faster than Bluetooth, meaning preferring that radio will a) cap speed and b) mean the radio is powered up for longer periods of time, which again, makes Bluetooth's battery impact worse.

Are you sure? I'd expect any difference to be quite small.

I don't understand why people drive at less than 80 mph on a motorway.

Laws.

This backs up Troop's thinking but I don't know anything about it so have no idea whether it's true or not:

http://lifehacker.com/5967128/tether-yo ... tery-drain

Most likely,but the other reason I like this solution is that I don't need to touch my mobile, it can stay in my pocket. The whole connection control is handled by the tablet.

Google seems to agree with me,but that could well be based on out of date info I'd be interested in seeing some proper tests.

However, WiFi tethering needs to be controlled by the phone,so I have the faff of getting my phone out of my pocket still the Bluetooth solution means I don't have to do that.

Minor science ahead.

This is the battery usage from this morning's train journey into work using BT. I'll do the same on Monday morning when i'm next in but using Wifi and see what the difference is over the same journey and time period, with similar usage.




The bluetooth tethering actually worked really well, my phone was in my pocket all the time and I didn't need to touch it. I have one deadspot (as you can see on the pics) on my new 3 sim, but my ovivomobile sim that is in the tablet actually has reception then, and it is a matter of moments to turn on and off the bluetooth tethering, as the settings app stays open on that page in the open apps list. The bluetooth tethering also takes precedent over the sim in the tablet, so there is no faffing around needed there.

Android users who can't get enough of Excellent Radio can listen using this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... com.armamp

Similar usage but using WiFi hotspot instead. It ran for 20 minutes longer as the train was a bit late, and I forgot to run it off until I got to Euston, but it's close enough.




On WiFi the battery usage curve is slightly steeper, but not by much, however because it is broadcasting WiFi rather than accessing it, the phone needs to use GPS more frequently to find out its location if you are on the move, which wasn't something I even considered! Scientific data eh, can tell you all sorts of interesting things.

So BT does look to be better on your battery, but not by a huge amount. That, plus the fact that it can be fully controlled from the tablet, rather than needing to be initiated from the phone, makes for a compelling argument to use BT tethering instead of WiFi.

/bows

You can prove anything with science.

I don't understand this bit, why does broadcasting a wifi signal have any location dependence?

The phone likes to know where it is for various reasons. If you have WiFi switched on, then even if you aren't connected to a WiFi network, it'll use the WiFi nodes it can see to find out where it is. When you use your phone as a WiFi hotspot, it can't do that anymore, so when it wants to know where it is (for Google Now, or Facebook, just for shits and giggles. I have no idea why Android likes to know where it is quite so often) it fires up GPS to find out instead.

Can't you just plug it in when you get where you're going?

Sure, but that isn't the point The battery usage is of minimal difference, so the convenience of using the BT option wins out.

I had assumed that even when broadcasting wifi it could remain aware of other wifi networks around it. Certainly when you switch on the hotspot function it won't show you details of surrounding wifi networks but that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't know any more, possibly it just won't show the user because that function isn't available to them due to being in hotspot mode.

I'd assumed the same, yet the evidence from the two status screens I posted shows that not to be the case...

Just noticed an Engadget article about a new Android phone due to launch in China sometime soon. Not usually a noteworthy event but the spec of the thing is just ludicrous:

• Six inch screen
• 2K resolution, so 2,560 x 1,440 with a pixel density of 490(!)
• Dedicated audio chips that are allegedly a cut above what you'd usually get in a phone (ESS Technology's ES9018 DAC and Texas Instruments' OPA2604 amplifier if those mean anything to anyone)
• 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800
• 3GB of RAM
• 13-megapixel camera

I presume it would be pretty useless outside China due to different 3G bands and whatnot but bloody hell, that's a nice bit of kit (on paper at least, obviously the build quality could be a concern) for a price that converts to £350.

It should be fine to use in the UK, there are a number of chinese android phones on the market these days with impressive specs for not much money.

The Cubot, for example.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cubot-GT99-1280 ... B00DFDN7RM

Shame that's £420 after 20% VAT even before you add translation, CE approval, shipping, import duty, 2 year warranty provision and "fuck the Europeans in the arse, especially those idiot Brits".

Even at that it would be incredibly cheap for that spec mind.

It's not hugely cheaper or better than the Lumia 1520 which is out now, has a paid-for OS and European wages.

The Lumia 1520 is £650 so even with your assumed price mark-up it's substantially more expensive and, on paper at least, that Chinese phone beats it on every spec feature. Obviously the comparison is rendered a little bit meaningless when we're talking about the relative apples and oranges of Android phones vs Win Phone stuff. And I don't really understand what you mean by the second half of the sentence?

Its £550. All I meant is that the OS costs more and so does paying the people that make it.

Chinese no-name stuff sells on the basis of being half the price. Without that, where's the hook to overcome the worry about it being chinese-no-name?

Does Google Play prioritise reviews of apps done by G+ contacts? Or is Grim...'s one word review of SwiftKey the top result for everyone? That would be an extraordinary coincidence. Screenshot to follow

Yeah, I've got the reviews from him and one of my mates sitting at the top of the review list.

Ah, then it's not a weird coincidence.

Shame because it fair freaked me out this morning.

I'd just done a price check against Amazon where it's currently up for £660 but yeah, I see it's only £550 on Clove and £590 on Expansys. Weird that it's so much more expensive on Amazon.



I wouldn't be so sure of that. Yes, the base Android OS is open source and thus technically free; but:

• To get the Google apps and access to Google Play a company has to pay to license all that stuff from Google. The Engadget review of the company's previous phone talks about grabbing stuff from Google Play so it's safe to assume they've paid the licensing and thus the OS isn't actually free.
• If you look at the video in that article and read the review of their previous phone the company has spent quite a lot of work on creating a custom skin and a lot of custom apps so it's not like they're just sticking vanilla Android on there and walking away. All of that costs money.
• Nokia are very likely getting 'mate's rates' from Microsoft to get the OS on there so I'd be surprised if they're paying a lot per handset themselves.

Are Nokia phones actually assembled in Europe? Certainly almost everyone else has their stuff made in China etc, including Apple who produce arguable the most 'premium' kit so I'm not convinced this is a differentiator. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that Nokia do have their own European production plants they're going to be leveraging the sort of environment and skills they've spent decades building up which means cheaper production costs in the here and now. Either way, if you do an arguably more accurate comparison to Samsung, Apple and HTC who do manufacture in China the price of the Xplay 3S is very low for what it is.



I'd argue it is close to half the price. If you look at other phones in the same bracket (the HTC One Max and Sony Xperia Z Ultra) you're looking at at least £600 to pick up on day one. Obviously they lose their price as they get older and presumably this will too but the day one price is much lower. That aside though, there's two differentiators here to my mind:

• This isn't the usual iffily specced knock off; this is arguably the highest specced phone in the world at the moment (as far as I know anyway). Whether you care about what it brings to the table is a different matter of course but the hardware is undeniably impressive.
• This isn't really 'no-name'. That Engadget article links to their review of Vivo's previous flagship phone the Xplay. At every point (build quality, camera, screen, etc) they come away very impressed and it's obvious this is a company striving to create good gear; not some guy in his bedroom slapping together cloned nonsense to get swamped in all the other pish Deal Extreme sells. Even watch the advert video on that original article I linked, this is a proper company doing premium stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not running out to buy the thing and I do wonder what the final cost would be if they did start selling stuff in Europe (which they apparently have plans to get into officially) but if you read the two Engadget articles I linked and watch the video I really don't think you can wave this away as the usual Chinese pish.

The quality may well be excellent, but it's a Chinese no-name brand which comes with all the stereotypes.

I don't know where Nokia assemble but it's designed in Europe, and all the custom software is written there, including the mapping and pureview camera stuff (the 1520 isn't really pureview but gets the OIS and software).

the price on amazon is probably.scalping because it currently sells out as soon as stock arrives. £550 is the SRP. Unlocked mobiles are the lowest I've seen - £549.98! There's a £20 store voucher bundled at the moment.

As if it's even possible to spend £20 on the store!

Why isn't Jesus Magana offered a degree of anonymity?

His strange featureless face makes him stand out

In a SwiftKey update I got the other day, one of the new keyboard themes/layout is pleasingly Christmassy (Ice), and when you type, it snows.

I like it lots.

I don't visit this thread much, so this has likely already been mentioned, but anyway.

Flashing roms is a nightmare.

Got the Google Play edition of 4.4 on my HTC now, but it is stuck in a reboot loop. HMMMM.

Anyone have any hands on experience with either the HTC One mini or the S4 mini? The missus is due a new phone but the flagships are getting a bit big for her needs

Engadget review the two here and here if it helps. The One Mini review was done after the S4 Mini so it spends some time comparing the two and prefers the One Mini despite some spec shortfalls on paper.

It's worth noting, in case it matters, that the two Minis aren't just smaller but aren't as high specced as their bigger brothers either so if she's looking for flagship performance but just with a smaller size they won't necessarily work. An alternative might be Sony's Xperia Z1 Compact which puts genuine flagship level specs in a smaller case.

Also, what is she using right now? I ask because HTC's Sense overlay is pretty heavy I find so if she's used to Samsung or vanilla Android she might struggle a bit to switch depending on how she generally manages such changes. I find Sense much prettier than TouchWiz, but harder to use from a UI perspective and quickly ditched both for a custom launcher that gives a more vanilla Android feel. I've never used a Sony myself but from fiddling with them in shops their overlay's always struck me as a lot nicer than the alternatives.

She currently has a shitty Nokia candybar phone since she dropped her SG2 face down on a concrete floor and smashed the screen

I'm very much pushing her towards the S4 mini as Touchwiz is the only smartphone UI she's ever used*. She doesn't need flagship performance as she's hardly a power user but I don't want to lumber her with a shit phone for the next few years. Actually the lack of SD slot on the HTC might be a decider. She's a heavy camera user and needs that 16GB of space for snaps of the Pazlets

* I tell a lie. She had a HTC Tattoo for a year. Damn that was an underpowered phone, but she seemed to like it.

In her position I'd be tempted by the Sony because the camera and screen are meant to be very good and there's very few spec compromises made. Also it takes SD cards so you're sorted on storage.

If not that though then yeah, the S4 Mini's probably a better bet; the Sense UI could well confuse here as it's radically different from both TouchWiz and the older Sense that she'll have experience of from the Tattoo.

In your other Android news, my bank's mobile app got a big update the other day and, aside from a UI overhaul, it did something else I thought was quite clever: when you fire up the app it replaces whatever your default keyboard is with it's own in-built keyboard.

It's a bit of a pain to use as it's not as good as Swype et al obviously but from a security point of view I thought it was an interesting idea given the concerns over the level of access keyboard apps enjoy.

A malicious keyboard is one of the main issues I have with supporting secure apps on Android, so very welcomed indeed.

It strikes me as a potential security enhancement that could be baked into Android directly. Have some kind of 'require secure keyboard' flag that apps can set so that when those apps expect user input the OS over-rides any keyboard preferences the user has made and just pops-up the default OS keyboard regardless.

Doesn't help for tapping credit card numbers or passwords into the web browser, though.

Certainly true, but it lets an app get closer to being able to define its own security perimeter though. The less it relies on you being able to insert interface elements from outside its own container, the more confident it can be of its own integrity.

And of course, there's nothing stopping someone producing a 'secure browser' that would enforce its own keyboard, amongst other features.

The concept could be applied with varying levels of success by either having the browser try to recognise password/card detail fields and switch to the 'secure' keyboard or have people tag such fields on their website. The latter approach is a pain in the arse for web developers I realise. Well, for credit card details anyway; I presume that password fields are somehow tagged already given that it 'stars' the characters out automatically in most cases?

I might swap my s2 for mrsa's iphone4

Will she notice?

I've resorted to running an auto task killer app, due to now having 2 apps on my phone that if I don't remember to shut them down completely, they destroy my battery even when in the background and supposedly doing nothing.

Marvel Puzzle Quest and MyFitnessPal, i'm looking at you...

Interesting article in PC Pro this month, I knew Apple were gouging on the iPhones but hadn't realised quite how much.

Total manufacturing cost of the 8GB Motorola Moto G is $110 and it sells for $180. (A $70 difference)

Total manufacturing cost of the basic 16GB wireless iPhone 5S is $200 and it sells for $650. (A $450 difference.)

I know iPhones are a nice piece of kit and all, but not THAT nice. My HTC One X is still going strong after nearly two years, but should it break I'll just replace it with a Moto G and move onto PAYG. Seems silly to subsidise a stupidly expensive handset with a contract these days.

Besides which I'm an anti-social fucker anyway so hardly need any minutes or texts, just data does for me in the main.

A friend of mine has the 16GB Moto G and she says it's a really good phone, you wouldn't know it's a 'budget' smartphone at all, apparently.

I'm strongly considering the moto G when I renew in 2 weeks. The only bummer is the lack of sd card slot

The lass I recommended it to loves hers, and because it's effectively a Google phone (since Google bought Motorola) it's bang up to date with the latest Android releases too.

There's no doubt that it's built to a tight cost (by all accounts Motorola are going for break-even on the hardware to get people into the Google ecosystem), but overall it's amazingly similar to my HTC One X in build and performance, and the One X was a £500 phone less than two years ago.

Lots of very positive reviews out there too.