Binatone iHome Phone 2

Yes, it all only ‘seems’. Binatone, a UK-based electronics manufacturer has released a similar phone which simply, is horrible. It crashed all my dreams.

Many of us could remember Binatone name from the Binatone TVs that were popular in the early years of 1980-90s. Yes, it’s the same company.

This  cordless phone with Android OS and full touch screen is named Binatone iHomePhone. The first version of the phone had Android 1.6 and the next version has 2.2. The apparent features that attract any geek is:

1. DECT based cordless phone – means advanced features, better clarity and range in cordless.
2. Full touch screen – FUN!
3. Android OS – Market and thousands of apps!

The image obviously looks futuristic and as good as any Android mobile. Any geek would want to own it.

I fell for my gadget cravings and bought it from Letsbuy.com even though there were clear warning, its obscurity – i.e., no news coverage or blog reviews. And the buying experience with Letsbuy.com is ‘worldly’ and requires another separate blog post to list its laurels!

In just couple of hours of use I was very disappointed with the phone. There were too many short comings to call this ‘Out of beta’ and ‘market-ready’ device. I’ll list some of them here:

1. The phones’ resistive touchscreen is worse than any resistive touch I have ever used. The touch screen doesn’t work most of the time we touch it. Either we have to touch it very hard or touch/swipe multiple times. Even a basic resistive touchscreen mobile phone has decent touch input. When there is a call, it ends before we could answer. Even a cheap (or China) touchscreen mobiles are better.
2. The UI is very slow and lagging. You open an app or press a key and it takes ages to respond. And when we touch and tap it multiple times thinking it isn’t working, it jumbles it up.
3. Now the big let down – No market access and No Skype – I actually had this wonderful idea of using Skype on a landline phone!
4. The touch screen calibration. Surprisingly this screen needed a calibration before its first use. The calibration is done using the screen itself. If the touch screen goes haywire how would you calibrate it?
5. The dock speakers are utterly bad. Sounds like an old worn out radio. The music playback is very poor for any use. Again even a basic mobile phone has better music player and speakers.

At this point the display calibration was completely off. Once the calibration is wrong there is no way it can be fixed since it is the only input point. The phone is now rendered useless.

With all this flaws in place you can never trust this phone for its basic function, i.e., to make a phone call. Without much ado, I strongly recommend against buying it. This product is obviously not ready for public market. May be Android is not suitable for a landline phone. May be no one wants to make devices like these because landline phones are depleting in developed worlds.

Of course, I returned it.

Your kid gives a nice pose, you see a beautiful scenery or a rare bird and in the nick of time, you find the camera batteries have dried out. For the geek in you, you obviously have moved from dry cell batteries to rechargeable batteries – NiCd or NiMH. But even this wouldn’t solve the problem. They tend to discharge very fast and worse they don’t last as long as promised.

Thanks to Murphy, when ever there is dire need of a fully charged battery, you wouldn’t have it.

I have faced all these problem several times and lost precious moments. I have trashed many of my rechargeable batteries thinking either they are dead or run out of their steam. I was looking for tips online on how to revive such batteries and stumbled on a nice gadget.

La Crosse Technology‘s smart and intelligent battery charger - BC-700 Alpha Power Battery Charger. After reading its reviews, I immediately ordered it from Amazon. Apparently, I found it cheaper on Amazon (even including custom duty) than local or overseas shippers.

BC-700 Alpha Power Battery Charger: All Advantages

This ‘smart’ charger can detect how much of charge is left in your battery and charge accordingly. The conventional ‘dumb’ chargers will keep charging your batteries irrespective of full or empty and ultimately destroying it if not unplugged after use. If you have ever noticed your batteries heat up extensively while charging, then the charger is killing them slowly.

As per the manufacturer, this charger features:

• 4 modes: charge, discharge, refresh, and test
• Overheat Detection to Protect Over-Charging
• Charges both AA & AAA rechargeable batteries simultaneously
• 4 separate LCD displays for simultaneous readouts
• All Modes Automatically Default to 200mA Charge (the optimal setting for prolonging battery life)

The nifty LCD screen shows charge/discharge status of each of the battery. The three buttons – current, display and mode can be used in combination to make numerous independent settings for each battery. You can revive dead rechargeable batteries using the ‘refresh’ mode which charges and discharges the battery up to 10 times.

The best feature is the ‘Discharge’ mode can be used to remove the memory effect of rechargeable batteries. All in all this is one of the best gadget added to my collection in recent times.

If you have used any other charger or had faced any problem with batteries, do share them here.

I am not sure what the developer and program director at MS were smoking when they wrote this code!

The above image is of Amboli Water Falls at Amboli Ghat in Maharashtra, India.

Via: CellPhones.org

The details of the study may be surprising for few but not a startling finding though.  Every one knows how much online advertisers (even offline) are interested in the demographic and other details of their audience. A similar kind of tracking has been happening on the computing and web platform for decades now. Although the study is a commendable work by the scientists, I would rather say it is a ‘false debacle call’ made by skeptics, iPhone fanboys and the like.

The permission required by the app being displayed before installation.

The list of 30 applications which were under the scanner of TaintDroid are: The Weather Channel, Cestos, Solitaire, Movies, Babble, Manga Browser, Bump, Wertago, Antivirus, ABC – Animals, Traffic Jam, Hearts, Blackjack, Horoscope, 3001 Wisdom Quotes Lite, Yellow Pages, Dastelefonbuch, Astrid, BBC News Live Stream, Ringtones, Layer, Knocking, Barcode Scanner, Coupons, Trapster, Spongebob Slide, ProBasketBall, MySpace, ixMAT, and Evernote. The detailed paper is available here (pdf).

I am not saying this is not a matter to worry, but it is. I am a power user of my Android phone and by work I am a security consultant, so this is a matter of concern to me and other privacy advocates. I believe Android is one of the first platform which gave granular access control to the applications and a window to the users on what app an application has access to. This is displayed to the users during installation. The first part of this notification has generic sections and the second which is minimized shows the users the complete list of specific data the application will use.

The actual problem is due to the following reasons:

1. Advent of super feature rich smartphones to the masses,
2. Masses do not check what all information the app has access to,
3. Masses are not worried much on what all information the app sends to and to where

So help yourself and do a quick glance and check for the permission required for an application every time during installation. For example, a puzzle game asking for current location coordinates (network or GPS based) is suspicious.

You can also view these access even after the installation by going to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > {Application name} > Permissions.

The list below is exhaustive but still not complete. Some of the apps including native ones which I use frequently are not listed here and also because they are used infrequently. The apps are sorted on last update/installed on my phone and not alphabetically or by my choice. The app link will take you to appbrain.com, a site for third party Android app market listing which is way better than the Google’s own Android market on web.

1. LauncherPro: Free. The best launcher app ever. Beats the stock (native) Android launcher app. Saves lot of memory and CPU.

2. CardioTrainer: Free. To track my workouts; supports many types of workout – jogging, cycling, etc. Syncs with their online account and with Google Health also (yes, there is something called ‘Google Health’).

3. Shark for Root: Free. Wireshark on Android.

4. Foursquare: Free. The worst Foursquare app I have used. But no choice.

5. Barcode Scanner: Free. Must have. Quickly scan QR codes, barcodes, etc., and fetch information from web.

6. DiskUsage. Free. Simple, semi-graphical representation of disk size and consumption.

7. Google Goggles. Free. Mostly used for demo of Android phones.

8. Locale: Paid. A must have for me. I had a similar app on my Symbian phone – ‘Best Profiles’, more here on another blog post. This app reads a specific state like GPS/network location, call status, battery etc., and performs specific tasks. For e.g.: If I am in office it shuts off wifi/ BT/ GPS, lowers sound volume and vice versa when I am at home. Up to your guess on what all it can do further.

9. Lookout Mobile Security: After using anti-theft apps on all my previous phones, I couldnt resist one for my Android phone though I have not lost any of my phone! This is a simple app for anti-theft, GPS tracker and SMS backup. Though not much versatile and robust, it does work. I had to replace Wavesecure with this, since Wavesecure tech support miserably failed to fix a subscription issue bugging me for months.

10. Laputa Book Reader: Free. An e-book reader. Does the job. Alternative is Aldiko.

11. Locale Location Plug-In: Free. All these are plugins for Locale. Names says the function.

12.Locale Call Status Plug-In

13. Locale Auto Sync Setting

14. Locale GPS Plug-in

15. CamCard – Business Card Reader: Paid. Ultimate Business Card reader. I transferred all my 500+ cards into my Gmail contacts. Need say more?

16. Beautiful Widgets: Paid. Only the weather widget is good, but worthy to pay for. Also useful to demo Android.

17. Call Logs Backup & Restore: Free. The next three apps are for Backup of Call logs, SMS and APN – developed by a single Indian origin developer (at least the name suggests so). These are again a must have. This guy really has great knack for simplicity. All these apps combined into one plus auto backup feature has a potential for a killer paid app for complete backup solution.

18. SMS Backup & Restore

19. APN Backup & Restore

20. Android System Info: Free. Advanced android and system state info.

21. WordPress: Free. Posts and comment editor for WordPress.

22. Transdroid: Free. Awesome tool to access my Transmission client remotely over Internet/wifi and check or add my torrents.

23. wardrive: Free. A must have. Wardriving, of course.

24. Network Discovery: Free. A simple 3G/Wifi network discovery too.

25. ClockSync: Free. Syncs phone time with public NTP. Can’t trust the service provider time – gone haywire many times.

26. Bluetooth GPS: Free. To sync with my external GPS Bluetooth receiver for stronger signal.

27. Stocks: Free. Better than Google finance.

28. Tapatalk RO – Forum App: Free. Quick access and check updates with several forums e.g.: XDA-Developers and Samdroid.net.

29. Phonalyzr: Free. A simple calls and SMS graphical analyzer – top callers, top minutes, etc.

30. android-vnc-viewer: Free. Android VNC client.

31. DailyStrip: Free. Again one more awesome app. Reads all my favorite comic strips. For some reason, its not available in many markets. I don’t have it now and not getting a copy from developer either. :(

32. AppBrain App Market: Free. Appbrain Android app browser app.

33. My Tracks: Free. To tracking and logging GPS. By Google – not the best but does the job.

34. Wifi Analyzer: Free. In depth analysis of wifi signals.

35. IMDb Movies & TV: Free. To quickly check a thing or two about a movie.

36. Seesmic: Free. My favorite Twitter app.

37. Quick Settings: Free. Quick access to my most needed system settings from notifications bar.

38. Layar Reality Browser: Not much of use for me. Has helped in Android demos.

39. Dictionary.com: Free. Needs data connection but one of the best.

40. Compass: Free. A compass.

41. Facebook for Android: One of the worst Facebook app. But any other alternative other than web access?

42. Google Sky Map: Another app for Android demo.

43. SpeedView: Free. Nice graphical representation of speed in analog meter.

44. Google Maps: Need to say?

45. CoolS: Free: This app reduces load on CPU put on by erring apps.

46. EStrongs File Explorer: My favorite file, FTP and LAN explorer.

47. Wireless Tether for Root: Free. To tether 3G connection for laptops and other mobile phones! ;)

Also, I am running a rooted custom v2.1 ROM from Samdroid.net and few of the above apps require root access.

Needless to say the Livewallpapers is also one of the most used (and a batter hogger) feature. The demo apps mentioned above and the Live wallpaper coupled with 3G connection for playing YouTube HQ videos are must have to showcase Android for novice users. All these will knock them off their feet!

Trust me many of these features and apps can even unnerve an iPhone, Blackberry or for that matter user of any other phone.

Do you disagree with any of these, or have a better alternative? Then please leave a word or two. I will make sure to include them.

Update [26-09-2010]: Google has sent out an email to all Android developers indicating it is going to extend paid apps support for ‘additional’ countries without mentioning which are those additional countries. Find the screenshot below.

Now this is to be believed. A week ago androidos.in reported paid apps were available for few users; which I doubted. To get all my favorite paid Android apps (like Locale, Camcard BCR, etc) I had to buy it from publishers directly, from a 3rd party app market or using a Non-Indian SIM. Its really a hassle using these workarounds because the updates and other messages don’t reach you in time.

Google

Now coming back to topic, I have been repeatedly checking for paid apps on  my phone and couldn’t find any, till now.

Today I was surprised to find paid apps being listed on my phone. I had to check if I had my own SIM and yes it was. You may see the screen shot along side, its got the date and time (and I assure you I am using a legitimate Indian SIM). Yes, Google is indeed testing paid apps in India. The paid apps are being enabled for users randomly. But why? Whats the need for testing? And whats the criteria for enabling it?

I don’t know whats the point in ‘testing’, are they worried of weak app market share and revenue?

At least for me, if there is an app I like I do not hesitate to buy it weather for my business or fun. And I am sure its same for many other android users in India. Its a plain simple use of Google checkout. You can use any of your Indian credit card. I have been using Google checkout for years and for hundreds of dollars and have had no issues it.

Android paid apps listed on an Indian SIM

As for as the result, its a full ‘thumbs up’, Google can release it for all user. Now let me get back to my phone and explore all those new apps. If you have any suggestion for a must-have app, do let me know.

I doubted the availability of paid Android apps in India. Now I am eating those words!

Also drop a line if its enabled for you too!

Once all these are done, expect a sea of blog posts on different topics. :-)

Hopefully, after the maintenance it will be more attractive for me to spend some time on interesting articles.

Adios friends, not for so long!

Update: I am moving my blog to WordPress from Blogger and to obviously to different hosting provider. Hopefully everything goes fine.