Mike Dent's Blog

Samsung Galaxy Sii / S2 Unboxing

2011-05-16T21:23:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to upload my short 'unboxing' video to the YouTubes:-

HTC Desire video sample and Samsung Galaxy SII samples

2011-05-15T23:30:00.000+01:00

Whilst on my way to the workshop I made this short video filmed from the dashboard of my car using my HTC Desire which I have had for the past 12 months. I did it so I could compare the quality of the Samsung Galaxy S2 when I picked it up from work!

On the way back, after collecting my SGS2, I just about managed to fit it in to the car bracket and filmed the trip in the opposite direction. The quality is much better but also the shake from the road/car is much more apparent! The video is filmed in 1080p

When I got home I made a much shorter 1080p test video which I uploaded to YouTube direct from the Samsung Galaxy S2, here it is.

Samsung Galaxy S2 has now arrived!

2011-05-14T20:48:00.001+01:00

Well I finally gave up on O2, they still have not delivered the phone I ordered *and* paid for, so I ordered the phone from Amazon yesterday and it arrived this rnorning! I had it delivered to my work location and thankfully the security guy was on duty and able to sign for it at 08:30 this morning!
The phone remained boxed up until late morning when I finally got round to unboxing it! I filmed the unboxing and you can view it below.
First impressions of the phone are amazing! It is so light and the screen is so vivid and colourful! As the days go by I will update the blog with anything worth noting.

[UPDATE]
You could view the video if I had managed to upload it to Youtube! Instead you can see this!

I'm having some small technical difficulties which are preventing the damn upload from actually completing! This is about the furthest it got before it stalled! Hopefully I will manage to get it online for your viewing pleasure very soon!

O2 - Appalling service and failed promises!

2011-05-12T18:50:00.000+01:00

On the 4th May I looked on the O2 website and found the Samsung Galaxy SII in stock, £399 PAYG.
I ordered it, next day delivery it said! Well the next day came and went, and the next, and the next. It's now the 12th May and just over a week later no sign of it! I've followed the official complaints procedure on the O2 website but no reply as yet. I've had at least 5 online chats with O2 and keep getting fobbed off with
different stories.
I phoned O2 yesterday and was told stock would be in today and I should have the new phone tomorrow, Friday. Well I've not had any dispatch confirmation yet, I checked the O2 website and it shows "in-progress" still.
My bank account was debited the same day I ordered the phone, which leads me to believe that O2 took my money whilst they knew damn well they could not fulfil my order, let alone fulfil it next day as it said in their website.
I'm not alone on this, there are currently 60+ pages of complaints and mainly unhappy 'customers' of O2 on the XDA forum website here.

What is particularly annoying is that they do have stock, they are sending that stock out to contract customers and just ignoring the people who have paid up front for the phone.
So yes O2, you suck!

Below I will add links to any other information/blogs I find which have further details:-
http://www.villainrom.co.uk/forum/content.php/292-O2-UK-Are-you-Lying-to-Us

Next Smartphone?

2011-04-24T23:58:00.000+01:00

I've been keeping my eyes out for the past few months for the next phone to replace my HTC Desire. I've been very pleased with the Desire, it's served me well since my nasty accident with my G1almost a year ago.
There hasn't been anything really that's stood out and I thought it would be wise to wait and see what the dual core mobile processors could deliver.

The Samsung Galaxy S II, which is allegedly released in the UK this May, looks one of the best in my opinion.
I find myself taking more pictures with my HTC Desire and I must say I'm not altogether pleased with it's built in camera. I end up using something like PicPlz to enhance the photos each time. The Galaxy S2 has rearward facing 8MP camera that seems to take decent photos it can also shoot video in 1080p, which is a plus!
It has a 2MP front facing camera which seems to be the norm these days on the more recent Android devices. Oddly Google does not seem to have updated their Google Talk application to support this yet, I'd have thought this would be an obvious enhancement to it, so we could have video chats to our google contacts sat at their desks etc?

There are many other nice features like dual core 1.2GHz processor, 4.3 inch Super AMOLED plus screen, Bluetooth 3, NFC (some markets) HDMI - 1080p tv output, DLNA etc.

We shall have to wait a week or two more and see which carriers get it and at what costs before making the final decision!

Electric Pig have done a nice review here.
Check out Dom Asmstrong's Blog too, lots and lots of info, videos etc! (Samsung Mob!ler)
Computer Weekly review here.

YouTube > 15 min upload?

2011-04-24T18:26:00.000+01:00

Just noticed this on my YouTube file upload page today:-

So it looks like I can upload files greater than the 15 min limit? Not sure what the heck I would upload which would exceed 15 minutes but I guess it might come in useful one day?
Does anybody know why I qualify for this limit increase?

My Sons Minecraft videos.

2011-04-24T13:23:00.002+01:00

My youngest Son has started putting a few Minecraft videos on YouTube. These are basically tutorials or "Lets Play" as they seem to call them. Click on the videos below to view them. Please leave comments on the videos on YouTube, I'm sure he will be pleased if you do!

Test post

2011-02-03T22:56:00.001Z

Trying a test blog post from my android phone using the new google blogger app.

First blog post of 2011.

2011-01-02T13:26:00.000Z

Well here we are at the start of another year. We had a great Christmas at home and Ubertechs was very busy right up to Christmas day! Lots and lots of Apple repair jobs coming in and it really is great being able to get all the parts for the repairs direct from Apple, usually next day.
I'm upgrading MythTV from 0.23 to 0.24 as I type this. Just doing the frontend at the moment, need to go in the garage and kick the backend off soon too.
We will finish off taking down the Christmas decorations this afternoon and that will be it over for another 12 months, it soon comes round though!
Happy New Year to both of my readers!

Four weeks at the University - done.

2010-12-03T22:48:00.001Z

For the past 4 weeks (and several odd weeks here and there before that), I've been working at Lancaster University on a contract, mostly installing new computers as part of their rolling upgrade plan. I've also been doing a few faults here and there and other odd jobs as requested. It's been enjoyable and good being back with some of the old 'team' that I worked with several years ago.
Lots of the departments I've been working in have changed a great deal in the past few years since I worked their permanently. Most of the buildings have been redeveloped and upgraded but it was nice to be recognised and have a chat with several staff whom I used to know almost 10 years ago!
Whilst I have been up there working on behalf of Ubertechs, work has not stopped! Many jobs have still been coming in and lots of Apple repairs are beginning to come through. Ian has been doing a great job keeping on top of these and I've done what I can in the evenings, so lots of long days but it's been worth it.
Starting next week I'll be able to get back to our new workshop in White Cross and bring myself up to speed with the Apple repairs.

Busy, busy, busy! Apple repairs are all systems GO!

2010-11-27T16:23:00.000Z

Exciting news! Something we have been working towards since February of 2010 is to gain Apple Authorised Service Provider status, and in the past 3 weeks we finally got it! This means my company, Ubertechs Ltd, can now repair most Apple equipment which is both covered by Apples warranty or out of warranty.
We have access to Apples internal ordering system and diagnostic tools and we can order parts direct from Apple. I intended to make a short blog post about this when it happened but I've been tied up with this and lots of other work recently so I've just not had time!
So if you are in the Lancaster area, Preston, Lakes or even further afield, we are now your nearest Apple repair shop.
You can visit our Apple pages on our website here for more information.

iPhone 4 "Antennagate", I don't get it?

2010-07-23T21:55:00.000+01:00

I've briefly tested an iPhone 4 and yes I was able to watch the signal drop from 4 bars to 1 bar in about 10 or 15 seconds. I held it in my left hand as I normally do to browse, check email etc. I'm right handed by the way.
I did not make a call but I usually hold the phone in a similar grip, in my left hand, I would guess if I was in a marginal signal area that I'd have lost a call.

Now at the press conference that Apple held recently, Uncle Steve showed us how several other modern smartphones fell foul of the same problem as the iPhone 4 does.
Apple showed how holding the phones in a particular way caused the signal level to drop on these devices.
Since then they have released a web page showing these cases of signal drop. (shame the pages require Quicktime to view the videos?!)
The web pages showed the following models suffering from attenuation caused by the human hand.

Blackberry Bold 9700
HTC Droid Eris
Nokia N97 mini
Samsung Omnia II
iPhone 3GS

During the press conference Apple declared they would be issuing free bumper cases to all those who have suffered the so called "death grip".

Now in my opinion if the iPhone 4's signal problem is caused by attenuation from the hand, then the bumper case will move the hand a whole 0.5mm or so away from the metal, I don't believe this is far enough to counter this attenuation problem.

My opinion is that the metal band around the iPhone 4, which makes up the antenna, is actually becoming de-tuned by the conductivity of the hand/skin. This is perhaps why some people are not seeing the problem as much as others, ie there skin is less conductive perhaps? Or my other opinion is that they have become brainwashed and refuse to believe anything could be wrong with an Apple product.

Apple have cleverly designed the "bumper case" which is just a silicone/plastic band which covers the antenna strip around the case, to stop the skin making contact with the antenna and effectively stopping the antenna being de-tuned.
If they had designed the phone from the outset with some kind of plastic or glass edging covering the antenna, instead of trying to make it some kind of feature, they would have stopped any of this problem all together. Of course the phone may not have looked as appealing but it would have remained a damn site more functional than it does do at present.

I still can't believe how Apple can release a flawed product like this and I struggle to understand how people are putting up with either using a case to cover up part of the appealing feature they have paid for or are adjusting how they would normally hold a phone just so it does not drop calls?

Yes it may have been blown out of proportion slightly but when Apple are as huge as they are they have just got to get things like this absolutely spot on. Every man and his dog are out there waiting for the slightest slip-up from them.

Disclaimer.
We currently have several Apple products in our household, including an iMac, Mac Mini and recently I sold my iBook 12". I believe Apple make some great hardware and that OS X is an excellent operating system.
I'm just not being persuaded by what I believe to be a cover-up story by Apple to hide the fact they have made a glaring design error with the iPhone 4.

I'm now Certified!

2010-07-16T21:27:00.000+01:00

Apple Certified of course.
Yesterday I took two Apple exams:-

Mac OS X 10.6 Troubleshooting Exam. 9L0-0062
Macintosh Service Certification Exam. 9L0-008

Thankfully I passed both with flying colours! So I'm now an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician.
As well as other benefits I can now display the logo below on my email, website, business card etc.

Ubertechs now Meraki Reseller!

2010-06-01T22:31:00.000+01:00

My company, Ubertechs Ltd, recently became Silver level partners with Meraki of California. Ubertechs are able to offer support services and UK sales of Meraki's unique wireless mesh networking equipment.
Please see the Ubertechs website for more details.

HTC Desire has arrived!

2010-05-15T17:10:00.000+01:00

Well since my last post I've been using an old Motorola V80 phone, pictured on the right. Things have been tough, i.e. no access to calendar, no access to email and no access to my contacts!

Anyway, the wait is over, after Amazon screwed up on my order by ignoring my wish for Express delivery, the HTC Desire is finally here!

To the left you can see the V80 next to the Desire, I'm just setting up the mobile carrier in this photo.
I've been using the phone for about 1 day so far and all I can say is WOW!

Compared to the G1 it is so quick, I mean really quick! The screen is so vivid and bright, Android 2.1 has some nice touches over the 1.6 version I had on my G1 and the HTC Sense UI is great. HTC have added calendar search in their Android version so this is a big bonus to me!

Ooops! Butter fingers!

2010-05-08T13:17:00.000+01:00

As you can see from the photo my G1 phone has had a nasty fall! I was walking down some rather long stone steps at the University last week when somehow I lost grip on my beloved Android phone and it flew from my hand!

It probably went at least 10 feet outwards and then fell towards the steps below! The screen is smashed and it managed to break the hinge on the back too!

Luckily we were insured so the case is now in the hands of our insurers. I feel totally lost without it though! I keep reaching to where the case used to be on my belt.

I'm currently using a rather old and very basic Motorola V80. Thankfully as I use Google Apps it was a simple job to set up my calendar reminders so that they are sent as a text/sms message!

The Youtube 1,000 views challenge!

2010-05-03T13:47:00.000+01:00

Thanks for reading this.
My youngest son, 10, is a big stop motion fan, he has recently been making a few short stop motion videos. I've given him my webcam to make these with which unfortunately has a rather
nasty fault on it, which is a red line from top to bottom of the image!
I said to him that if he gets a thousand views on his first stop motion video he uploads, then I will consider getting him a new camera :)

He does not know about this blog post and will be totally amazed if he manages to get 1,000 views of his video!

He thinks the task will be impossible and that he will be stuck with the faulty camera for ever!
Here is the video below, please click on it, have a watch, its very short, and pass the link on to your friends!
With your help I'm sure we can get his 1,000 views!
Thanks!

Beware the dust!

2010-04-18T17:15:00.000+01:00

I'd forgotten I took this photo a while ago. It's the rear of a computer power supply showing the air holes completely blocked by dust!
As a result the power supply had over heated and failed!
This is one reason why you should certainly have your PC checked once
in a while!

Bird-box Web Cam.

2010-04-02T15:16:00.000+01:00

Last week my company fitted a bird/nesting box at a local primary school. The birdbox has a colour camera fitted inside it which connects back to a PC running Linux. The camera can then be viewed from any PC or Mac in the school! At night the image is illuminated by infra red LED's. Below is an image I captured just now.

Any movement that happens inside the nest box is also recorded and archived, this can also be played back from any computer on the school network.
We may have been a bit late getting it installed though! Still there's always next year if we don't manage to get any nesting birds this spring.

(Shameless plug; If you want one of these birdbox webcams installing at your school please get in touch.)

Gone Google?

2010-03-31T22:27:00.000+01:00

My "Gone Google" sticker recently dropped through the letter box. Decided to stick it on my tiny Acer netbook!

Out with the old, in with the new! (Windows Server that is!)

2010-02-20T19:13:00.000Z

Over the past few days my company Ubertechs Ltd has been working on a clients Windows 2000 server migration. Our customer has had the same Dell server since the year 2000! It has served them well and has certainly earned it's keep. At the time it was over £4500 and about 5 years ago we installed a second raid 5 array and some additional memory.
However the time came to replace the whole unit with a much faster and more efficient server.

The new Dell box is based on Windows Server 2008, it operates as file and print server also hosting the usual DNS, DHCP and Windows Active Directory.
We successfully migrated all server roles from the old Windows 2000 server to the new server, including about 50 group policy objects (which needed some modification), 40+ user account and about 80 workstations.

It's been an interesting few days and now thankfully things are once again running as normal, albeit much faster!

Ubertechs Special Offers!

2010-02-13T11:43:00.000Z

About 4 years ago I had a smaller batch of door to door cards printed, these worked well, so I thought it about time I did a slight re-design on them and had some more printed!
As usual I used the Lancaster branch of Printing.com, who have always produced great results for me!
Here is a pile of some of the cards ready for delivery. I have a few people standing by to deliver them in different areas!
So if you need your PC or Mac computer or laptop repairing, look no further than Ubertechs Ltd.
Serving Lancaster and surrounding areas.
I've also started a customer referral discount scheme, details of this are here. And finally in my shameless plug! You can follow Ubertechs on twitter at http://twitter.com/ubertechs .

Some missing Android features.

2010-02-12T17:33:00.000Z

Android is Google's operating system for mobile devices, initially smartphones but perhaps others. There are several very big over sights in my opinion.:-

Firstly is the inability to search your calendar. Surely not! I hear you gasp. Oh yes, it's true, unless you have a HTC Hero, with HTC's modified android applications, you are unable to search your calendar.

So, here is the link to the google code bug I filed about it. When I filed this bug , Android was at version 1.1 so perhaps it was fine for it not to be included. Now we are at version 2.1 on some devices! If Android want to compete with the Blackberry or iPhones of this world then they must include this basic feature very quickly.
Please check it out, comment and be sure to 'star' the issue so it gets the attention it deserves from the android developers.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2518&can=5&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
By the way, the search facility is implemented in iPhone version 3.0 and above software.
(23 stars @ 12/2/2010)
(49 stars @ 01/04/2010)
(56 stars @ 13/04/2010)

Next up, not as serious but still very inconvenient is the lack of 'click-to-dial' in email messages.
One of the reasons I switched from iPhone to Android was because I use the calendar application a lot and found it was not possible on the iPhone to click on a phone number in the description or body of a calendar entry and have the phone dial for you. This feature was already there in the early version of Android 1.1 and so this was one of the factors that made me move.
Now further down the line, I realise that a phone number sent to you in an email, is not 'click able' in Android!
This was possible on the early version of the iPhone, pre version 3.0 software. Now the iPhone wins, you are able to click-to-dial on numbers both in email and calendar.
Yes you guessed it, I have an android bug filed.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2383&can=5&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
Please visit that link, comment or at least 'star' it, thanks.
[Update. Just checked this on a HTC Hero and it seems to work! It does not work on my G1 though.)
(5 stars @ 12/2/2010)

Garstang Booths.

2010-02-06T16:21:00.001Z

Having a coffee in the Booths cafe after doing some shopping. Free WiFi with your drink and 50p off each drink for every £10 you spend. Not too shabby.

[Uploaded from mobile]

Dent Family History.

2010-02-05T11:35:00.000Z

My Gradnfather Alan E (left) with his brother William H.

Over the past few months I've been working on finding out as much as possible about my family history. I've been mainly concentrating on my fathers side. I've had a good start with it as my aunt had done a lot of work on this many years ago.
Most of my work revolved around using the Ancestry.com website. This has proved very useful and has allowed me to fill in many gaps and even find relatives that my father did not know about in the USA.
Last night I received two unconnected emails from Dent relatives in the USA. I'd not made contact with these people before and I was very surprised when I found out that neither of them knew the other had written to me!

Things I've discovered so far include:-

My family originates from Burnley in Lancashire where they were stonemasons and later brick-makers.
My great grandfather moved to Lancaster area to manage a brickworks near to Caton.
My grandfather was a carpenter for Waring & Gillows, he was in the Royal Engineers and I have been able to find all his military papers.
My grandfather worked for just over a year in Buenos Aires, South America on the woodwork in the prestigious Plaza Hotel. This was 1913 to 1914.
My grandfather came back from Buenos Aires and within 6 months he was in the Royal Engineers until the end of the war when he returned to Waring & Gillow.
Lots more...

I'm currently waiting for the will of my great, great, great grandfather to arrive, he died in 1835.