Cell phones

[palmboy5]

My 2 cents about third party carriers is that I know that Virgin Mobile subscribers have a lower priority than straight Sprint subscribers, resulting in Virgin almost never getting fast data speeds. Heard this from a friend while he investigated why his speeds were so bad on Virgin Mobile. I see this as the only sensible way for third party carriers to exist. There HAVE to be disadvantages of using third party when the third party is the "better deal", I see no other way for it to happen.

I used Android Market back on the Atrix 4G (early 2011) and don't remember a time when there weren't categories and various 'most-popular under x criteria' lists, but regardless, they certainly do exist now. You can also see a list of similar apps when you view any particular app.

I agree that any of those old Android phones running pre-4.1 are slow, and would wager that the slowness is a guarantee. My Atrix 4G was the first dual core phone, had the most RAM (1GB), lots of internal storage (16GB), and blew away every other Android device on benchmarks for months. Even so, it was and still is slow as fuck. I can't imagine how bad competing phones were at the time. That said, Google did Project Butter as of 4.1 and then Project Svelte as of 4.4 with the primary goal of making everything smooth and fast. Needless to say, things are much better now.

When your fiance's phone had trouble charging, was she using the stock charger and stock cable? I only specify stock because those are guaranteed to be "good enough". Otherwise, the chargers and cables people buy can come from a grab bag of quality levels that I wouldn't even bother trying to analyze. The short answer is, use proper equipment. My dad has the HTC One M7 and has had problems charging too, but we didn't get mad at the phone. We just replaced the charger with one I like A LOT:
http://www.amazon.com/HP-North-American ... B0055QYJJM

FWIW: I specifically didn't want to use the stock charger because it makes a clicking noise when unused (same with the Nexus 4/5 charger) and it annoyed me too much.

You said "all kinds of problems" but the charging thing is the only one you mentioned..

[I7Iz490N]

lol

[Directive]

2005 it probably wouldn't happen that much at all but it could.

I have come to realize not everything can please everyone all the time.

[2005]

She's using the stock HTC charging cable and adapter, still has a lot of problems with the phone charging. Although you are correct, it isn't "a lot of problems".... it is one very serious problem. If you can't charge the phone reliably then you really can't use it. It has a long charge time and very small battery life, so charging at least daily is a must.

As far as the difference between third parties and the big names, sure you might not get 100% the same service but I think you get a fair deal of service. Maybe it's just a better option for me, because I wouldn't really even miss cellular data at all if I didn't have it. Working from home means I spend 75% of my time there and thus have access to the 105 Mbps broadband connection via wireless (now if only the iPhone 4S could utilize that kind of bandwidth!). So slow cellular data speeds are no deal breaker for me, especially when it means I'll save over $100 a month on my phone bill.

$207 vs less than $100 a month is a no brainer for me. I don't rely on high speed cellular data (or even view it as much of a convince for my every days needs) and even if I did use it on a somewhat regular basis, the trade off for speed vs money would be ok with me.

[palmboy5]

I've come to remember another friend with an HTC One M7 that had issues charging it. He told me it started being a problem after some update HTC released last year. It sounds like an actual issue with that model of phone.

Either way, I love the charger I linked. It outputs 5.3V instead of the standard 5V, which is genius. DC always has voltage drop across the cable and starting off at 5.3V makes it far more likely for the voltage to still be high enough once it reaches the phone. I'd say that is the secret of its success.

Also, did you know that a cable of twice the length literally results in half the charging speed?
Here's an example of charging where I make it maintain 4.61V at the end of the cable.
3 foot cable:
http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop- ... 1&x=66&y=6
6 foot cable:
http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop- ... 5&x=3&y=12
You'll notice that the amperage had to be cut in half when the cable length was doubled just to maintain the same low voltage.

I actually had a problem in the car due to these power characteristics, where a 28 AWG 6 ft cable wasn't charging my phone fast enough to make up for my use of GPS navigation and WiFi wardriving. The solution for me was to specifically go for the more expensive 24 AWG cable. The extra thickness helps a lot:
http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop- ... 1&x=41&y=6
versus
http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop- ... &x=58&y=17

[I7Iz490N]

lol

[palmboy5]

So what's R, breh?

[I7Iz490N]

lol

[Directive]

Good thing we have removable batteries. My wife's phone wont charge right anymore. Port on the phone is messed up. I can now put my charged battery in her phone and charge the other in mine. Good thing we only have 2 more days till upgrade. Prob getting the S4. They want double for the S5 and it's not worth double. The S5 just has a few more features then the S4, not double the cost more.

[palmboy5]

When a coworker's S4 port died (salt water damage), he ended up having to buy an external battery charger and keep switching between two batteries. That is, until I told him he could buy a Qi wireless charging receiver like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Wireless ... B00CU7FO5C

He went with that, got a Qi charger, and has been very happy with the setup.

[Directive]

We got the S4's in electric blue. That is definitely an option if we have an extended period of time before being able to get new phones. Isn't worth the money when ya plan on getting new phones soon. They are upgraded to KitKat now.

[palmboy5]

Time to try the Google Camera now

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ogleCamera

Photospheressss

[Directive]

Never heard of it but looks cool. I'll give it a go.

[palmboy5]

It is the Nexus camera app, made available for any Android 4.4+ device.

That also means that it has no support for removable cards (Google wants them gone) and will only save its pictures to the internal storage. Yay!

[Directive]

I tried it and its OK. took a min to find where it put that 3d image on my phone. Wasn't in the normal gallery. I had to hunt for it. It did work well tho.
One can get so much more storage with removable media rather then rely on phone storage for optimal price. Altho I heard the S4 will only reliably read Micro SD with a [1] or [10]. I put my old one in anyway. Not like I need it for anything else so if it does crap out in a few days, like the guy at Best Buy said, it's no biggy.