Category Archives: Android

I Got the Samsung Galaxy S4

It never fails. Thursday night, exactly one minute after I boarded the bus to Tai Po, I got the SMS alert from SmarTone that I could go to the Wanchai shop to pick up the Samsung Galaxy S4. Later I got an email with all sorts of instructions about how I could go to the store, get a ticket, and then they’d notify me 30 minutes before my ticket number would be called – obviously to help deal with the massive numbers of people they expected to be lining up outside the shop to collect the latest marvelous electronic dingus.

I spent the evening second guessing myself.

Do I really need a second phone dedicated to business? “Need” is relative but it would make my life easier.

And should it be the Samsung or the HTC One? That night I came across a few more reviews of The One, all of them claiming it was so much better than the S4. But based on what, exactly? Its looks. End of story. Aluminum instead of plastic. The S4 has the faster processor, more intriguing software, possibly a better screen and camera, accepts cards to expand storage, you can pop off the back.

So Friday at noon I went to the SmarTone shop in Wanchai expecting massive lines. Instead there were 3 staff standing around looking bored. Even so, it took almost 30 minutes for the deal to be done. It’s a new contract and new number and SmarTone also makes you choose a package of crapware and I was stumped trying to figure out which of the options would annoy me the least.

But finally, done, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was mine. The screen is gorgeous. 1080p resolution. The camera is disappointing – images seemed kind of flat and bland, though I haven’t spent any time trying to figure out all the various software options for photo processing they include there, except for the one that lets you take a picture with the front and back cameras simultaneously. I presume some clever people will come up with some fun stuff based on this but for me it’s just a gimmick.

Next I added on the apps I knew I’d need – stuff like Dropbox and Evernote. Then it appeared that even though the phone was brand spanking new, half the apps there had updates available.

Then I spent a very long time indeed getting rid of all the crapware that SmarTone puts on the phone – an app to get the latest golf scores?

Next I’m going to have to find a better email app. I get a torrent of emails at work – somewhere between 300 and 500 a day and only about 20 are actually for me. Our email at work is hosted by Gmail and we use Outlook on our desktop – I may not be a fan of Outlook but at least I can create all sorts of rules (more than 50 at last count) to sort through and prioritize all the gunk coming in. I need something on my phone that will let me do the same. Any recommendations?

After one day, I appreciate the customizability of Android, but I find some aspects of it annoying. The 5 or 6 page “home screen” that’s different from the 5 or 6 page screens of apps installed. And all the confirmations!!!! Even I’d go to make a call, even though I pressed the phone icon, it then asked if I wanted to use the phone or use Skype, and then asked if I wanted to do it that time or every time, then there was some warning screen or other, and finally I got to make the call.

Simply put, for all its power, Android is not as intuitive or easy to use as iOS. There will be a learning curve.

Finally, I noticed that this sucker runs HOT. I mean really hot. I mean if I don’t put the screen to sleep and put this in my pocket, it’s burn-a-hole-in-your-leg hot after a few minutes.

I do like it, I suppose. I think it’s come a long way since the Galaxy S2 that I had for two weeks and hated. I’ll spend more time trying to figure it out and get the screens set up the way I like.

Probably more to come later. Until then, recommendations on Android email clients and any other programs you think are must-haves gratefully appreciated.

Thinking About a New Phone

My new job has brought with it a torrent of email. I’ve only been there two weeks and I’m getting between 150 and 200 per day. Yes, most of this is via distribution lists, but I still need to look at a lot of it. In addition, I’ve set up a second Skype account for business use only. And since the company reimburses one’s phone bill, I’ve come to the decision that I will get a second phone for business. However, I’m not going to go out and buy a phone per se, I’ll do one of those “free with contract” deals, one of those things where they reimburse the cost of the phone back to you over the life of the contract.

Since I already have an iPhone and don’t want to have 2 identical phones, I’ll be dipping my toes back into the Android waters. I’d had a Samsung Galaxy S2 for a short time – one reason I didn’t like it was the cheap-feeling plastic back. And at the time I didn’t like having to juggle between multiple Android stores plus the iTunes store for my iPad. But this time out the second phone will be primarily used for phone calls, email, Skype and documents. I’m assuming that any games I play or media I consume can remain on my iPhone.

There are three hot Android phones right now, though only one is actually on the market as of this writing. That’s the Sony Xperia Z. And yeah, that’s one I can get for $0 with a Smartone contract.

The Sony is being touted as the best smart phone Sony has ever made, and it probably is. It’s main selling point seems to be that it is waterproof – use it in the shower (!) or at least don’t worry if you drop it in the toilet. It comes with all of the stuff one expects in a smart phone these days, along with a beautiful case. It has a 5 inch screen but some of the reviews I’ve read noted that you have to look at the screen straight on, it looks a bit odd from an angle. Some reviews have also noted software bugs and some finickiness when trying to sync it with a Mac.

Then there’s Samsung’s Galaxy S4, which will be released in Hong Kong before the end of April. Will it be free with contract? Or will there be such a long line to get it that one would have to pay thousands and wait months? I don’t know. I see that it still has the same crappy plastic back. But it possibly has the best hardware inside and also has Samsung’s nice enhancements to the basic Android interface. One commercial has been touting a Samsung specific translation program – in the ad a woman speaks into it in English, presses a button and it speaks Chinese to her Shanghai taxi driver. When he answers her she presses again and it speaks the English translation. Does it work well? Is a translation app enough of a differentiator? I’m not sure.

There is a third contender and that’s the HTC One, also coming out this month in Hong Kong. Before Apple released the iPhone, HTC was possibly the global leader in smart phones, with only Blackberry as serious competition. Then the iPhone came out and HTC has been a perennial also-ran. The HTC One is their attempt to get back into the game. David Pogue, in the NY Times, says it’s the most beautiful phone he’s ever seen. The screen resolution, at 468 ppi, is the highest available (this month anyway). The camera sensor isn’t being measured in mega-pixels, it has 4 ultra-pixels (I’m sure that’s a marketing gimmick).

However, unlike the Sony or the Samsung, there’s no memory card slot. And the one review I’ve read on it takes a little issue with HTC’s enhancements to Android. But, as David Pogue writes, “Wow, is this phone packed. It’s ridiculously fast. Its camera, screen and speakers take first place in smartphones. And hey — did I mention how beautiful it is?”

So right now for me it’s a tie between the Samsung S4 and the HTC One – depending on the availability of both once they are released as well as my ability to get one for free (with contract). I’ll only consider the Sony if I can’t get my hands on either of those for “free” by this time next month – which is when I think the amount of emails and calls I’ll be getting will be seriously ramping up.

Android Under Attack

In a manner of speaking. A report from the Juniper Global Threat Center (found via a post on Pad Gadget) highlights the fact that Android is a more popular platform for people writing viruses and malware than iOS.

What happens when anyone can develop and publish an application to the Android Market? A 472% increase in Android malware samples since July 2011. These days, it seems all you need is a developer account, that is relatively easy to anonymize, pay $25 and you can post your applications. With no upfront review process, no one checking to see that your application does what it says, just the world’s largest majority of smartphone users skimming past your application’s description page with whatever description of the application the developer chooses to include. Sure, your application can be removed after the fact—if someone discovers that it is actually malicious and reports it. But, how many unsuspecting people are going to download it before it is identified as malicious and removed? This is precisely what is playing out in the mind of mobile malware developers today.

Juniper found a 400% increase in Android malware from 2009 to the summer of 2010. We have since seen exponential grow in Android malware over the last several months. The Juniper Global Threat Center found that the months of October and November are shaping up to see the fastest growth in Android malware discovery in the history of the platform. The number of malware samples identified in September increased by 28% over the number of the known Android malware samples. October showed a 110% increase in malware sample collection over the previous month and a striking 171% increase from what had been collected up to July 2011.

One question Juniper always get when discussing our research is if Apple’s iOS is more or less secure than Android? Maybe, but it’s not necessarily because of the security or lack of vulnerabilities in the platforms themselves. The main reason for the malware epidemic on Android is because of different approaches that Apple and Google take to police their application stores. Android’s open applications store model, which the lacks code signing and an application review process that Apple requires, makes it easy for attackers to distribute their malware. There is still no upfront review process in the official Android Market that offers even the hint of a challenge to malware writers that their investment in coding malware will be for naught.

There’s various ways one can interpret this information. To me it simply says that if you’re on Android (as more and more people are every day) you really have to know what you’re doing and be continually on alert. And most people aren’t doing this or even aware that they need to do so. For the few brief weeks I was on the platform, I made a point of not downloading things I hadn’t either known from the iOS platform or had read about from a trusted source. And I never clicked on the option that would allow apps to auto-update themselves. But the simple fact is that now that I’m back on iOS, it’s one less thing that I need to think about each day.

I Fully Accept That I Am Insane

Many of you will be pleased to know that.

I had two days of off-site company meetings this week. Each day I had to leave my house before 7 AM, sit in a conference room for 10 hours, go out with co-workers for drinks and dinner, home by 10 PM. We were forbidden to check our phones or email during the meetings which meant my phone was sitting in my pocket, untouched, in silent mode and only being used briefly every couple of hours. And still as the afternoon would wear on, I’d watch my battery meter reading drop till it would be at around 30% before dinner. Granted, I kept WiFi and Bluetooth switched on all day and I would have done better on the battery if I’d switched those off.

Not to mention that during the week I’d downloaded several albums that I would have liked to have loaded onto the phone but it was too much hassle and I didn’t have the time to deal with it. And after filling up the tank on my car a couple of days ago, I realized that I couldn’t find an Android app as nice as Gas Cubby (no idea about the name) for tracking my mileage and spending.

The Samsung Galaxy SII is selling used in places like DCFever.com for a hair under $4,000. Mine’s a month old and has 11 months to go on the warranty.

The 64 gig version of the iPhone 4S is now going for around $8,500 in Mong Kok, which isn’t too bad a premium over the roughly HK$6,600 that Apple charges for an unlocked one in the U.S. My mom’s coming over next week, ever so slightly before they will start selling unlocked ones in store. My good friend who used to work for FedEx and would let me ship things to her address and then ship to me (and pass along her employee discount to me) changed jobs just last month. The premium charged by these US forwarding services would make the price almost equivalent to the Mong Kok price.

In other words, I’ve got this notion in my head ….

Ice Cream Sandwich & Samsung Nexus

At this stage, the competition between Google and Apple is tacit proof of why we need competition – each is pushing the other for more innovation and less complacency. I’m now a month into the Android OS and the Samsung Galaxy SII – and I’ve updated my iPad 2 to iOS 5. So I’m vaguely looking forward to the Android OS update – ridiculously named Ice Cream Sandwich (or ICS for short). Here’s what’s new in ICS, via the folks at TechCrunch.

Roboto: Goodbye Droid Sans, a new typeface called Roboto is here to rule the roost.

Landscape Controls: We knew that the Galaxy Nexus opted to move the classic Android buttons onto the screen, but they smartly disappear when viewing video or in widescreen mode.

Flexible Widgets: Ice Cream Sandwich’s stock widgets are resizable and more robust than previous versions. They also now occupy their own separate space in the app drawer.

Folders: Dragging apps and contacts on top of each other create re-arrangeable folders a la iOS.

Favorites Tray: Users can stow their favorite apps, links, and folders into a new Favorites tray for quick and easy access.

Taking Screenshots: This one has been a long time coming. Hold down the power button and the volume down button to snap a screenshot.

Notifications: Hefty revamp here, as the contents are much more customizable. Music controls have been integrated, and notifications are also easily dismissed with a quick swipe left or right.

Improved Copy & Paste: Copying and pasting content is made much easier, as you can now move around entire blocks of text. Very useful.

Face Unlock: One of the most ambitious is Ice Cream Sandwich’s new Face Unlock feature, which allows users to unlock their handsets just by looking into the front-facing camera.

Enhanced Talk-to-Text: Voice input seems much smarter this time around, as it’s more accurate, requires less time, and even accounts for pauses.

Browser: The stock browser now sports tabs, and it maxes out at 16. Web pages can now also be saved offline for later perusal, and users can directly request the desktop version of a site.

Gmail: Gmail now supports two-line previews, and sports a new context-sensitive action bar at the bottom of the screen. Gesture support allows you to swipe left and right between emails.

People App: A new spin on the contact list. The phone’s owner has their own profile, and people’s contact details are sourced from Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Users can define favorite contacts, and individual people can be placed on the homescreen or in folders for quick access.

Calendar: Features a redesigned UI and includes pinch-to-zoom to vary the level of detail on a calendar page.

Data Usage: Users can now drill down into their data usage over a certain period of time, including the ability to see which apps are the biggest data hogs and the ability to limit data usage to a certain threshold.

Camera: There’s a lot to love here. It features image stabilization, improved autofocus, and integration with other apps for sending photos or instant upload to Google+. Oh, and who could forget built-in face detection, panorama and time lapse modes, and on-the-fly photo retouching and enhancements.

Android Beam: An secure NFC-powered sharing platform that lets users share nearly any kind of content, save for applications (in that case, a link to the Market is sent instead)

Probably most telling was the comment made during the presentation about how people like Android but don’t love it and how they hope people will indeed get all sticky about version 4.0. Me? I suppose the facial recognition feature will be a nice to have (if it works, it didn’t go so well at the demo) but it doesn’t get me hard. As a matter of fact, nothing on that list comes close to giving me a chubby.

Honestly, after a month … I find I miss Apple’s auto-correct, something that is fodder for a million internet jokes but is mostly incredibly useful for me. Creating folders is kludgy and moving icons between X “home screens” and Y “app screens” takes forever. I can’t find something that syncs the music on the phone to iTunes that either doesn’t take a year and day or that doesn’t bomb out halfway through. And apparently there’s no headphone cable with a full set of controls on it, much like cables made for iPhones. I went to the headphone shop I visit the most and they told me the only option was a cable by Monster – which has a mike built in and you can click once to pause, twice to skip songs, but no volume control.

I’m not all that jazzed about the iPhone 4S either (especially at the grey market prices it’s selling for in HK; now around HK$10k for the 64 gig model) but I have a feeling that the iPhone 5 could get me to switch back.

In the interim, what about Samsung’s Nexus phone? Well there is that ever-so-slightly larger screen with 720p resolution – that would be a big bump from what I’ve got now. But the rest of the specs are fairly underwhelming for me – a little bit thinner, a bit of a curve, same processor speed, camera for some reason knocked down to 5 megapixels from the Galaxy SII’s 8. And judging from the pictures I’ve seen, you will still need to remove the battery to swap memory cards; still not hot-swappable, which I think is just stupid. I’m not seeing enough here to make me think of upgrading so soon after buying the Galaxy SII but perhaps I’ll pay more attention to Motorola’s RAZR Droid or whatever’s coming down the pike from Sony or HTC.

Oh, I also wanted to say: Samsung & Google – WTF is wrong with you? A major global product announcement and there’s no fucking release dates or prices? You don’t know? Or you don’t want us to know? It’s juvenile “that’s for me to know and you to find out” bullshit.

Or maybe I’m just being cranky and whiny because it’s a Saturday afternoon and I can’t figure out what I want to do today ….

iPhone 4S Day In Hong Kong … Sort Of

Today’s the day that people expect grey market iPhone 4S’s to start showing up in Mong Kok and around town. Hong Kong isn’t included in the first or second wave of releases worldwide. There’s no release date announced for HK yet – 3′s web site will let you “register” to let them know you’re interested and probably other mobile companies are doing the same. I expect that this early in the game, and it is indeed something of a game, the iPhone 4S will sell for at least HK$10,000 in Hong Kong (that’s US$1,300) and possibly the 64 gig model will go even higher. I’m sure we’ll see breathless reports about this in the media by tonight or tomorrow.

Once you get beyond the normally ecstatic reviews from the Walt Mossbergs and David Pogues, I’ve read some interesting speculation. Mostly it centers around why a 4S now and not a 5 and the concensus is that people who bought the 4 are still only midway through their contracts – the 4S is targeted primarily at people who are still on the 3GS or never bought an iPhone before. Of course that’s not likely to stop probably millions of fans who need to have the latest and greatest.

I found out that I have a year and a half left on my contract with 3. Li Ka-Shing owns my mobile soul through June of 2013.

I did upgrade my iPad to iOS 5 on Thursday night. Aside from finally having the ability to do wireless sync, I’m not seeing too much difference so far. I suppose I’d be more interested in iCloud if I hadn’t given my iPhone 4 to my gf and bought an Android phone for myself.

The next big Android announcement, curiously enough, will be made in Hong Kong on October 19th. It’s expected that this will be the official word on the next upgrade of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich, blecch) and Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus or whatever it will be called. As of now my only real dissatisfaction with the Samsung Galaxy SII is the screen resolution. Yes it’s bigger than an iPhone and brighter and all that but the reduced resolution calls attention to itself whenever I look at photos on it. I also wish that there was a 64 gig microSD card because having to remove the battery to swap memory cards is a pain in the rear. So the new one is rumored to have a very slightly larger screen at a higher resolution.

But aside from the screen resolution and the amount of manual labor required to sync music (Spotify is sort of working but well under 100%), I’m kind of enjoying the Galaxy SII.

Possibly the last Android update for awhile

First, unrelated to Android but too lazy for a separate post – went to a party in Lan Kwai Fong tonight. My first time there in months. Around 9 PM realized I was quite hungry and wanted to grab something fast before heading home. I went into Ebeneezer’s. I can remember when they used to be good; it was a long time ago and I guess I keep going back hoping that one day they’ll be what they used to be. $60 for a lamb kebab? I almost walked out there and then. So I get my kebab, sit at the table, and in through the front door walks an old woman begging. No one from their staff did a thing to stop her as she went from table to table shaking her cup. Now, I’ve heard many times that these beggars are actually organized and not quite what they appear to be. I’ve got no proof of this but I very rarely give them any money. But in this case, after I shook my head no, the woman pointed at the half of my kebab still sitting on the tray. Having already taken a bite from the first half – the lamb was so dry that it was sticking in my throat and I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to eat the second half – I gladly handed it to her. I hope she didn’t get sick from it.

Coupla quick notes:

Finally something succeeded in syncing music from iTunes to the Galaxy where all the others had failed – Spotify. Go figure. Thanks to the folks on Twitter who kept insisting I had to try this. Of course one can’t join or download Spotify in HK. This meant that for the PC version I needed to use a VPN and for the Android version I needed to manually download the file. Then it wasn’t immediately apparent how to get it to sync to the memory card instead of the phone’s main memory. So all in all in took a few attempts but when I woke up this morning, 20 gigs of music on the phone.

Volume is still low on most stuff. Dug out my Fiio headphone amp and I guess that will become part of my daily kit – and yet another thing I need to charge every night. I get home, I need to charge my phone, my iPad, my Blackberry, my camera battery … not to mention my own internal battery.

Speaking of which, phone battery ran out on me today. I was only out of the house for 10 hours and thought I used the phone less than the previous day but just seconds after I got home the battery was at zero. Good thing I have an extra.

Yes Another Android Post

No, I’m not turning this into an all-Android blog. Bear with me. It will pass. If you’ve got no interest in this, feel free to skip it.

I seem to be getting more responses to this stuff over on Twitter rather than directly on the blog. Whatever, I’m grateful for all the attempted help. One of the most frustrating ones was the recommendation for Spotify. Spotify’s only available in a few countries and of course HK isn’t one of them. I signed up and downloaded the program via VPN, no problem. But then Google’s Android Market wouldn’t let me download the program for my phone, VPN or no, since it knows I’m in Hong Kong. And then I was given a URL for directly downloading it.

But whether I’m being illogical or not, it all strikes me as having to jump through hoops of fire and that’s not what I want to do. There are dozens of programs out there that claim to let you sync Android devices with iTunes. Sure, they’re probably all using the same sets of API’s, but at least one of them’s gotta work, no?

Then I noticed. Each time I tried syncing, no matter what program I was using, it was hanging up on the same file. So clearly something wrong with one of my song files. Three or four, as it turns out. Once I eliminated those from the playlist, I should be golden, no? So I went back to Winamp and this time it seemed to be going okay. But then it got up to the F’s and starting giving me error messages about how it couldn’t create folders (though the card was far from full) and that it was going to take another 1700 minutes or so to finish syncing.

Well, it seems that even though the phone was connected to the computer via USB, something had locked up or gone wrong. No idea what but for the hell of it, after reconnecting, I decided to start things up again. I’m probably jinxing myself by writing this but as of now, 2500 out of 3000 songs have synced, 25 minutes to go, I probably won’t stay up that late so I’ll be surprised one way or another in the morning ….

BTW, Winamp is really fucking messed up with the way it handles iTunes playlists, unless there’s something I missed. Load the playlists into Winamp, check. Then do some playlist updating on iTunes. There doesn’t seem to be a way to refresh the lists on Winamp, so you gotta import them again. And it’s not smart enough to know that you’re just updating existing playlists. So at the moment, each of my iTunes playlists appears three times on a really long list in Winamp. Way to go, AOL!

Nope, never mind, only 500 of 3,000 songs got synced. Sigh.

Android Day 3 quick post

Well, doubleTwist isn’t working for me. It locks up when syncing music. And I’ve read that their Air Twist, which they charge for, won’t sync to memory cards, only to phones’ internal memory. So that’s pretty much out.

I noticed today when playing an album that the volume was much lower than on the iPhone. Sitting on the tram, listening to Miles Davis’ Live in Europe ’67 Bootleg Series Volume 1 (which is freaking amazing by the way, I was stunned by the intensity of one of Wayne Shorter’s solos) and with the volume cranked all the way up, I could still hear the people talking around me. Tomorrow will try something more recent, more rock-y, see if it’s the same. Though I do have a headphone amplifier lying around … somewhere. Better find it, think I might need it.

Love the “live wallpapers” though I realize they’re goofy – I’ve got this animated one now of the HK island skyline at night. Getting into widgets, which look pretty powerful (and also pretty battery-draining).

Will try WinAmp for Android this week, too tired to deal with it tonight. There’s also TuneSync and iSyncr and probably others. Hell, one of ‘em has to work.

Repeating an answer from a friend’s email today. Today – 15 hours out of the house, few phone calls, several SMS, some Facebook Twitter & Foursquare, little bit of web surfing, little bit of maps, played a CD, played 30 minutes of backgammon, some general fooling around with configurations, downloaded a few apps and widgets from the market, made some ringtones, took a couple of photos, etc., when I got home battery was at 49%. Quite acceptable!

Android Day 2

Did I mention how much Samsung’s Kies synchronization sucks? I tried using it last night to transfer music to the Galaxy SII and it just kept freezing 20% of the way in. And the messages one gets in the application all seem to read like this one: If the device does not connect well with a connection error fix connection error, try to connect again diagnosed. Godfrey Daniels, you’re fucking Samsung, you don’t have anyone in the company who can write proper English? Not to mention that the podcast aggregation feature in Kies absolutely does not work – at least not for my favorite podcast which you won’t be surprised to learn is called What The Fuck. And when you load music into it and then view that music in order of albums, the songs are displayed in alphabetical order – track numbers are ignored.

There are several minor annoyances – not that the iPhone lacks for these either. Since I’ve got the Galaxy’s social hub feature turned on, it seems that every time I turn the phone off and on again, I get informed that my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn sessions have timed out and I have to re-login to each of them again individually. And every time I connect the USB cable, it tells me that doing so will turn off Bluetooth, so I have to remember to re-enable it again every time. What The Fuck indeed.

My other problems are all of my own doing, but probably not unique to me, which suggests that someone out there should be working on fixes for this stuff. I mean, where do I even start with apps and widgets? Okay, that one’s relatively simple actually – I start with the stuff I had on my iPhone. And that’s actually kind of sweet because once I locate them in the Android Marketplace and click on install, they’re sent instantly to the phone, no waiting till I sync later on. But with two major App stores (Google’s and Amazon’s) and something like 200,000 apps available, where do I go next? I’ve got 14 Android review sites loaded into my RSS but it’s going to take awhile till I feel as if I’ve caught up.

The last one for now – music. I keep all the music I listen to in iTunes – at the moment more than 63,000 songs weighing in at more than 400 gig. Of course there’s no way to sync the Samsung from iTunes and I wasn’t expecting that. I managed my iPhone’s music contents via playlists, so I spent an hour (probably two) going through the playlists and copying the relevant music to a folder I titled “Samsung Sync.” And then went to copy all of that, about 18 gig, to the phone’s microSD card via the attached USB cable. It tells me that it’s going to take around 2 hours to do that – and my PC mysteriously lost connectivity to the phone part way through and I had to disconnect, reconnect and start over. (I suspect it would be quicker to just copy directly to the card and then put the card in the phone – but the user manual says one shouldn’t do this, and it would also mean opening the phone, removing the battery, removing the card every time I want to update its contents, which could be a daily thing for me.)

On the other hand, out and about last night, the phone was a joy to use. Internet was super fast, as expected. Facebook, Foursquare, Gmail, everything I tried, loaded super fast.

So I’m still going through this learning curve but I think I’ll get there.