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Old 02-20-2012, 10:37 PM   #1
Undertoad
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Oh but I do love my phone

Well I did not want to be like all bragging about technology for many reasons, but I felt like it was important for me to finally upgrade and get worked into the phone world.

I mean I may be called upon to develop something for it

So first, I put in a program of delayed gratification. I said to myself, I said, just put up with your dumb Blackberry for another year. It doesn't run any great applications, and it feels like a piece of shit now, but maybe it'll save you money not having all that cool shit, who knows.

With all that delay I began to see what I was missing, and it became more painful over time

But the nice thing is, I was able to look over the phone market, research it, read about it and understand it well before *pouncing* on precisely the phone I wanted.

(The Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus on 4g LTE with Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich)

With Xmas came a chunk of money that I could set aside for this item after all the regular bills were paid.

*pounce*
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Old 02-20-2012, 11:00 PM   #2
Undertoad
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And I do not regret it, not one moment. The multiple techgasms I've had with this thing have made it worthwhile.

The display is a thing of beauty. I feel joy just looking at it.

There are no buttons at all on the phone. When the display is off, it's just a piece of black glass. That's very clean and beautiful, Apple-like attention to design. Buttons appear along the bottom row when the display is on, and they have figured out that a momentary vibration gives you "tactile feedback" that you have pressed a button. It feels great as well as looks great.

It's taken a month to learn everything about it, customize it just the way I like to use it, etc. That seems like a long time, and seems like it would be a pain in the ass. But no, it's been a true joy putting this thing through its paces. It's not the sort of learning where you have to read long PDF manuals to remind yourself how to get from point A to point B. It's more like play: if I push this button, what will it do?

At one point, every day I was finding amazing new things I could do, and I considered starting a thread and just calling it "the cool thing I did with my phone today". Then I thought that would just sound like so much bragging.

But you guys, sometimes it's just too cool. Sometimes you would want to know.
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Old 02-20-2012, 11:13 PM   #3
Pico and ME
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Yeah, go ahead and share. I'm still using a flip phone, so I will just sit here and enjoy a better phone vicariously through you.

Quote:
It's not the sort of learning where you have to read long PDF manuals to remind yourself how to get from point A to point B. It's more like play: if I push this button, what will it do?
I LOVE that part when you get new techie stuff.
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Old 02-20-2012, 11:32 PM   #4
sexobon
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Samsung seems to have paid attention to clean lines and intuitive controls on everything from the antiquated a707 Synch flip phone I still carry to the remote control menu on my 46" HD LCD TV. For that reason, after I've identified the features I want in any given product, first I'll see if Samsung has it.
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Old 02-20-2012, 11:33 PM   #5
Undertoad
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OK. Some ideas are not just limited to the phone.

Live wallpaper: imagine your wallpaper background, animated. On a desktop PC, this might be bad; movement attracts your eye's attention. But on a phone, a light ripple of movement makes everything look just a little more interesting.

I found the Beautiful Live Weather Wallpaper, and I love it. It looks something like this (this is not from my display):



What you don't see here is how the leaves of grass gently sway, and the clouds gently move across the screen; and it's all done very tastefully, very Japanese, if you know what I mean. It's subtle enough to be natural.

But the great thing? The scene changes to reflect your actual outside weather. Right now, at midnight, the moon is up; the display is a dark blue with stars, and the grass at the bottom is dark and colorless. It reflects real sunset and sunrise times.

And when it rains, drops of water land on your display and roll down it as if it were a window.

I can't wait for it to snow. Our mild winter has only enabled a few flurries. I need to see this wallpaper when it's snowing. I think I could convince it I live further north. But that wouldn't be zen. Best to let nature happen and I will see the different display when I see it.

I always imagine the cynics pointing out that, hey, you could just look at the window and get a real indicator of what is going on outside. That is SO not the point. The point is, having a tasteful, changing background is a really cool thing AND if it's going to be all that, having it reflect the actual weather is natural and human.
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Old 02-21-2012, 02:46 AM   #6
limey
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I'm so glad you're in love, UT
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Old 02-21-2012, 06:40 AM   #7
Sundae
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I worry that I'm so far behind on this that I'll never catch up.
I use a basic Nokia, no camera, no internet connection and not even a colour screen!

I didn't fully utilise my swishy phone, so I downgraded.
But that was 5 years ago now... The best I accomplished with it was sending and receiving photos and putting them in a slideshow.

By the time I have a good phone there will actually be a jetpack app, but I'll be too busy working our Call Waiting to use it.

Congrats on your sparkly new phone UT, you deserve it.
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Old 02-21-2012, 07:16 AM   #8
infinite monkey
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My phone's background has the grasses in the wind. It slowly gets darker or lighter depending on the time of day. But mine doesn't snow or rain or sunshine! I want.
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Old 02-21-2012, 07:32 AM   #9
glatt
 
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Work gave me a new Blackberry Torch last year, and at the time, I was very thrilled to have it. It was (is) my first phone with a camera, and the camera is actually pretty decent. But I get so frustrated when I try to do things with it. Let's say I want to go to a website. Well, I click a link or something, and I want the phone to follow my command, but it seems to always have its own priorities. Like it wants to synch with e-mail at that particular time, or do some other crap. I wind up spending what seems like forever waiting for the phone to do its thing before it will do my thing. And it's not a connection speed problem. This will happen when I'm connected to FIOS via wifi. Stupid Blackberry.

I do like the slide out keyboard. I have the touch screen when I want just a touch screen, and a keyboard when I want to feel keys. That's the only thing they got right, IMHO.
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Old 02-21-2012, 08:58 AM   #10
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The reason I had to have a phone: Spotify

As a dedicated music lover there are times in my life where I have bought one CD per week. That's about $600 a year to *own* a limited subset of all the music I would like to listen to at any given moment.

That's not to mention the various hauling around of crates of albums in various formats, and the buying/installation/hauling of shelving to stow it all.

Arrive the mp3 era and now it could be made portable! But converting all this into sound files took weeks of planning and execution, and at the end of it, I had 100GB of files. No portable player would load up the entire set. And now it was necessary to manage this collection, another pain in the ass. And if the hard drive takes a crap, it's all gone, unless you had the resources to entirely back it up.

Well, streaming music platforms make almost all of this suddenly unnecessary. Instead of owning all this stuff, you are renting it. Instead of $600 a year you pay $120. Instead of having access to only what you have bought, you have access to 99%[1] of everything[2]. Instead of having to sample it in tidbits over the net, you just hit play and have access to complete works.

Using Spotify has been a big personal boon to me, and I've posted about it before. This thing has opened up major sectors of music and brought back a lot of personal joy of music to me.

Now. Instead of owning a separate music playing device, one has just a phone, and Spotify streams the music to the phone. Instead of buying a shit ton of memory for a device, the files arrive as needed and are played, not permanently stored. Suddenly 99% of everything is portable[3] and cheap.

When the light went on in my head that streaming meant all of the above, that the phone could receive streams, and there was a Spotify app, well that was it; that was the moment I had to have a phone. Because I knew it would not just be a toy for me, but really improve my life, you know?



[1] 99% is a necessary oversimplification. My finding is that it is everything except Pink Floyd and the Beatles and other money-grubbing greedhead acts. I expect there is an economics reason why they are not there, such as their management still makes more money from old people buying CDs at a rate of $600 a year. But I have heard all the Floyd I will ever hear[1a], and I can play almost everything in my head from memory -- without incurring a charge for songwriting royalties. (YET. I'm sure they are working on that.)

[1a] No need for Floyd when there is Mogwai. Because Mogwai!

[2] I am not aware of the coverage of Spotify's Jazz/Classical music collection.

[3] As long as there is a data connection to your phone. People who live where cell towers are unavailable will not be happy with this new lifestyle. You may have to wait 6 months... or install Wi-Fi everywhere you need music.
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Old 02-21-2012, 09:39 AM   #11
Sundae
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I don't understand what the above means completely.
But listening to an interview with Sir Alan Ferguson last night, everyone seemed impressed that this 70 year old who doesn't "get" Twitter loves Spotify.

Personally I think it makes sense. He has no need for Twitter in his life - everything he needs to know will come to him immediately through his contacts. But he likes music. And things not really played on the radio these days.
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Old 02-21-2012, 09:52 AM   #12
Undertoad
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I did find it hard to convey all the concepts involved.

But yes: the takeaway is that, phone in hand, I can play 99% of recorded music in seconds. And imagine how awesome that is for any lover of music.
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Old 02-21-2012, 09:53 AM   #13
glatt
 
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Yeah. I'm a 44 year old who doesn't "get" twitter. I have a FB friend who sends his tweets to his FB wall, so I see those. He's a smart guy, but his tweets don't add much.
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Old 02-21-2012, 10:57 AM   #14
BrianR
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Cool UT. I, too, have a flip phone, a Pantech Breeze II. I'm just an old-fashioned girl in that I only want my phone to be a phone. I don't wear it on my belt, or hang it off my purse but I know where it is, assuming no one has moved it. I have yet to download ringtones, or play any of the preinstalled games or even use the alarm clock feature. I purposely turned off the data abilities because they cost an arm and a leg. I send, maybe two text messages a year, mostly because it takes me that long to TYPE THE THINGS OUT! I don't have texting in my plan so they cost me a dime each. I am eligible to upgrade to a newer phone like yours (that model would cost me tho) but I have to bump up my plan to include data and such at an additional charge that I cannot afford.

I will also live vicariously through you. Rock on!

Pam
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Old 02-21-2012, 12:30 PM   #15
jimhelm
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i bought a case for a samsung galaxy S II for the kids to give to their mother for xmas. it didnt fit. she has some other derivative of that model. so i was to return it. i waited too long.

it was $40. would it fit your phone?

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