Well suddenly, later on yesterday downloads suddenly sprung into action. I don't know if it was to do with the googlemaps updates or what, but now I'm able to pretty much download most apps.
The ones I presume I can't are possibly because the the app server is not responding (I'm presuming there is offsite hosting for most of the apps)
So I'm much happier, though a little worried about how often this is going to happen.
As regards the Crackberry. There seems to be a little issue with the account, until later this week apparently the handset won't get proper GPRS, so some functionality is not available yet. i.e Facebook and msn. We're both hoping that facebook is going to work properly too, or I'll be getting some jealous digging in the ribs about my phone.
Monday 16 August 2010
Sunday 15 August 2010
Arggh Android
My other half has been prodding at me to upgrade her phone for a while (it's my old contract, and to keep the number it has to stay in my name).
So when her boss and a the locum showed her the Blackberry Curve 8250, she increased her prodding. Worse of all, it was on a good deal with our mobile provider.
So I got dragged along to sign her up. The problem was, I was getting a little tired with my old, but venerable, Ericsson K510i. However, it's been dropped a few times and it has sand in it, so occasionally the caller has gravel effect to their voice.
So I thought, why not look at one of these lovely new Android phones. I've seen the iPhone and think it incredibly overpriced and running Linux creates problems with less support. Not only that it seems to just be a cash cow, and I'm not into jailbreaking items. Though I firmly believe in free/open source software, I also believe people should be free to run the revenue streams they want without people stealing their income.
So now to the phones. I've had a Crackberry way back, it was useful tool for what we needed, but not really for me. However, my other half is still new to the InterWeb, so mail and the other few bits server her well. The phone seems familiar to the old style I used and has a few nice extras on top. All in all not a bad phone, especially as they gave her the wrong one, a 9700 rather than 8250.
So far I've yet to see how to download and install extra apps, or other capabilities. The keyboard is small, but very usable for our hands and is a good competitor to the touchscreen technology. However my other half has noted that it does make the web pages small.
The major gripe so far: Apparently it can't cope with YouTube vids of more than 5MB in size, which seems to be a real issue.
Now to the HTC Wildfire Android. First impressions are fantastic. It required me to almost double my monthy fee, but hey that's what promotions are their for. (I got one recently.) The touch screen works well, it took only a few minutes to get used to it.
I've hooked it up to my internal mail (I'll test out other options at other times). WiFi is working a treat. Overall it really looks good. I have seen a good bunch of apps I'd like, including some ssh stuff, which I really hoped it had.
What made me plunge for the extra expense was the fact I had a 28 day return on the item, if I decided I didn't like it.
So to the apps reviews, which I have to give 0 out of 5 for every single one. Why? Because I can't download a single one. The googlemail (which I HAD to, I mean it refused to use the existing login, my previously used none googlemail account), and the google talk work a treat, but I just can't download a single app, I wasted most of yesterday and half of this morning on.
And this is not isolated, apparently it has been ongoing for about a year (perhaps even more hard to tell), thousands of people complaining that the marketplace download just stops. Some people have attributed it to moving to gmail from googlemail in the UK, others to not logging in on gtalk. But in the main it just stops work. For me it's just not working, even after a reset of the phone.
This is a major show stopper. If this affects this amount of people I could see the whole project failing and I can't believe the manufacturers and Google are looking at this more.
So for the moment I'm somewhat angry and annoyed. I'll wander around abit and see if I can pick up a decent 3G signal somewhere (I live out in the sticks, so dependent on the wifi for data, though apparently the Crackberry is picking up a signal)
So long for now.
So when her boss and a the locum showed her the Blackberry Curve 8250, she increased her prodding. Worse of all, it was on a good deal with our mobile provider.
So I got dragged along to sign her up. The problem was, I was getting a little tired with my old, but venerable, Ericsson K510i. However, it's been dropped a few times and it has sand in it, so occasionally the caller has gravel effect to their voice.
So I thought, why not look at one of these lovely new Android phones. I've seen the iPhone and think it incredibly overpriced and running Linux creates problems with less support. Not only that it seems to just be a cash cow, and I'm not into jailbreaking items. Though I firmly believe in free/open source software, I also believe people should be free to run the revenue streams they want without people stealing their income.
So now to the phones. I've had a Crackberry way back, it was useful tool for what we needed, but not really for me. However, my other half is still new to the InterWeb, so mail and the other few bits server her well. The phone seems familiar to the old style I used and has a few nice extras on top. All in all not a bad phone, especially as they gave her the wrong one, a 9700 rather than 8250.
So far I've yet to see how to download and install extra apps, or other capabilities. The keyboard is small, but very usable for our hands and is a good competitor to the touchscreen technology. However my other half has noted that it does make the web pages small.
The major gripe so far: Apparently it can't cope with YouTube vids of more than 5MB in size, which seems to be a real issue.
Now to the HTC Wildfire Android. First impressions are fantastic. It required me to almost double my monthy fee, but hey that's what promotions are their for. (I got one recently.) The touch screen works well, it took only a few minutes to get used to it.
I've hooked it up to my internal mail (I'll test out other options at other times). WiFi is working a treat. Overall it really looks good. I have seen a good bunch of apps I'd like, including some ssh stuff, which I really hoped it had.
What made me plunge for the extra expense was the fact I had a 28 day return on the item, if I decided I didn't like it.
So to the apps reviews, which I have to give 0 out of 5 for every single one. Why? Because I can't download a single one. The googlemail (which I HAD to, I mean it refused to use the existing login, my previously used none googlemail account), and the google talk work a treat, but I just can't download a single app, I wasted most of yesterday and half of this morning on.
And this is not isolated, apparently it has been ongoing for about a year (perhaps even more hard to tell), thousands of people complaining that the marketplace download just stops. Some people have attributed it to moving to gmail from googlemail in the UK, others to not logging in on gtalk. But in the main it just stops work. For me it's just not working, even after a reset of the phone.
This is a major show stopper. If this affects this amount of people I could see the whole project failing and I can't believe the manufacturers and Google are looking at this more.
So for the moment I'm somewhat angry and annoyed. I'll wander around abit and see if I can pick up a decent 3G signal somewhere (I live out in the sticks, so dependent on the wifi for data, though apparently the Crackberry is picking up a signal)
So long for now.
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