Demise of my Toshiba P4010 30 March, 2011
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1.add a comment
Sigh…
I suppose it’s about time anyway. Read here and here.
I bought my faithful Made-in-Japan laptop in August 2002 when I first started my undergraduate. My laptop and I went through numerous tutorial, assignments and presentations. It stay up with me all night running the many Java programs and Matlab simulations. We had our fair share of fun too – our collection of music, anime, movies and games.
It started breaking down bit by bit towards the 4th year of my undergrad, and so I had nearly everything replaced since it was covered under warranty. Essentially, my laptop was given a new breathe of life after its first 4 years. That was in 2006.
Over the last 5 year or so, my laptop started taking on an easier life. Not many intensive programming, simulations or gaming, and more of just web browsing, typing documents and maintaining excel sheets. I suppose the relatively light usage over the later years prolonged its life.
Late last year in 2010, I decided that it was probably time to retire my laptop. So I decided to do some experimenting – installing Ubuntu 10.04.
Things went well for a while. Ubuntu was really light on resources and had no problem running on my old Pentium 3. I had barely used it for a day or two when an update notification popped up and prompted for a software update. Being update savvy as I always am, I proceeded with the recommendation. Little did I know that this marks the beginning of end for my laptop.
The update corrupted my master boot record and I was unable to boot up my laptop. There were only 2 other ways of booting. First, by USB 1.44″ floppy disk drive using floppy disk. Negative – my USB floppy drive was spoilt long ago. Second, by CD-ROM. Negative – my CD-ROM drive was also spoilt long ago. Boot by USB? Negative – Back then, the bios do not support boot by USB (sidetrack, my laptop was only USB 1.1 compatible). Oh no, what am I to do?
And so I set my laptop aside on the study desk, gathering dust, while I try to think of a solution. During this time, I inadvertently left a AC/DC power brick directly on top of my laptop…
Fast forward to earlier this week on Monday. I decided that my best option was to open up my laptop to retrieve my internal harddisk and backup my data. Next, I will do a fresh install of Ubuntu directly onto the harddisk and place it back into the laptop. Hopefully that will work. I powered up my laptop again just to make sure as least the electronics were still working.
As I raise the lid of the LCD screen, I was greeted by an acrid and suffocating smell. To my horror, more than half the LCD screen was partially melted. I stared at the power brick and immediate know what had happened. The heat from the power brick left on the laptop melted the screen. Hastily, I powered up my laptop to see if everything was still alright. I was pleasantly surprised when the bios screen appear without problems, except for some blurring effect due to the melted LCD surface. It seemed that the underlying pixels were fully functional, only the surface was damaged. Good old trusty.
I proceeded to bring my laptop to work, hoping to find someone with an external harddisk enclosure with the IDE interface. Fortunately, I was able to find one. I unscrewed the covers on my laptop to retrieve my internal harddisk and backed up all the data onto my desktop. Now, to proceed with the OS repair. I raised the lid again, the toxic smell was still there, just as intense as the last time.
I told Dear2 about the circumstances surrounding my laptop and my plans to restore it to basic functionalities. However, Dear2 was not keen about it. She mentioned the health hazard with regards to the smell of melted plastic and insisted that I throw the laptop away. After all, it had already served me so many years.
And there was nothing I could think of to refute Dear2′s suggestion. It was definitely a health hazard to continue using the laptop even if I was able to restore it successfully. I guess it was really time for old faithful to retire. It really was.
Thinking back, I was partly to blame too. If I had not left that power brick on the laptop, it would not have caused the melted screen and I could have probably continue using it for another year or two. Then again, maybe it was destined to go the way it had.
It is hard to throw away something that had gone through so much with me. I am a sentimental person. Maybe that’s why I have so many junk at home. Well, I have to learn to let go of the past and welcome the future with an open mind. This I shall do. Goodbye my trusty Toshiba P4010. I will remember you for staying with me throughout my entire stay at university – both undergrad & postgrad.
Toshiba P4010 (August 2002 – March 2011)
-Dear1
My Samsung Omnia 2 8 October, 2010
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1.1 comment so far
Wow. Samsung-Panasonic-Sony Ericsson-Samsung-Nokia-HTC-… and now I’m back with Samsung again. I suppose Samsung really does hit the sweet spot for me for their phones.
Remembering my lousy luck with handphones, you would have known that my latest HTC smartphone went dead some time ago. Since then, I’ve been using the relatively no-frills Nokia until recently. It has been one year since our switch from M1 to Singtel and my consolidation of all our telecommunication services under Mio Home. Part of the benefit was that the main line holder gets to upgrade his/her phone after just 12 months instead of the usual 18/21 months. I decided to take advantage of this and get myself a new phone that will hopefully last me a longer time.
As my last phone was on the ageing Windows Mobile platform, I wanted to try out some of the newer smartphone OS (operating system). There’re quite a few choices but iPhone and Android stands out among the crowd (i.e. WM7, Symbian, Blackberry, Bada, etc). Well, the title already tells you that I picked the Samsung Omnia 2 which runs the Windows Mobile 6.5. Here’s the sad and short story of why this is so.
iPhone was over budget for me, period.
Well, that left Android and there were plenty of budget Android phones around. My very first choice was the Samsung Galaxy Spica (yes, Samsung again) @ $88. Very nice hardware, very nice price point which I think I can still exploit to make it cheaper, very good modding support from the community, but sadly out of stock. I monitored the situation for several weeks and no new stock appeared so this one was out of the question.
Next candidate was the Motorola DEXT. I can’t remember the price for this one but it was within budget. However, the hardware was lousy, the software seemed laggy, I’ve never used a Motorola phone before (which can both a pro and con), and Dear2 disliked the design. So this one was out too.
Finally, the Samsung Omnia 2 caught my eye. It had pretty good hardware, great support from the community, and it’s 3.7″ AMOLED screen is no joke, not to mention a fairly decent price of $138. Dear2 very much preferred this phone’s design. I preferred this design too, simple yet elegant.
But this was Windows Mobile. Am I really going into Windows Mobile yet again? I really wanted to try out Android and its App Store. But then, an App is just another program that you install on your smartphone but with a much more streamlined installation process. The Omnia 2 is also just slightly over my intended budget. But then, I’m familiar with Windows Mobile, so I can quickly get back to doing all those things that I used to do on my HTC such as tracking my expenses. What should I do? What should I do?
Well, as they say, the rest is history.
Now, what do I think of the Omnia 2?
For one thing, the AMOLED is truly worth it. The blacks are really deep and dark and all the colours are vibrant. I had the chance to compare it side by side with a colleague’s iPhone 3GS and I can say that AMOLED screen wins hands down and blindfolded!
Everything else is decent and up to standard. My big surprise came from the the calling and voice quality. The reception and voice is top notched. In fact, Omnia 2 has the best calling and voice quality from all the phones I had used so far. Put it another way, Omnia 2 performs its primary function as a phone far better than any phone I had ever used.
Samsung customer service is also good. I upgraded my firmware at the Samsung customer service centre at Jurong Point and everything was done within 90 minutes.
Now comes the not so good parts. Hardware didn’t turn out as good as expected. Omnia 2 was marketed as 256mb RAM but only about 140mb is available to the user, the rest is reserved for other hardware uses. Seriously lor, I see this as deliberate misinformation. My impression of Samsung just went steeply downhill.
Same issue with the ROM, marketed as 512mb ROM but only around 60-70mb is available to the user. *%#&%@*^@!
Software is also laggy. Can’t they do it more like the iPhone? Draw the screen transitions to make it *feel* like the OS is very fast but in fact isn’t. The transitions basically distracts the user just enough to make him oblivious to the background loading times. Of course, some of these issues can be addressed by seeking out the many custom ROMs made by the modding community supporting Omnia 2.
In the end, I would say that the Omnia 2 is a decent phone at a relatively affordable price for the savvy user who will strip away everything Samsung in software and just run the basic WM6.5 OS with a custom installation of applications. And the AMOLED screen is great.
I really hope this phone will last me at least 18 months.
-Dear1
My lousy luck with handphones 16 January, 2010
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1, Slice of Life.4 comments
Haiz…
My HTC Touch 3G is spoiled, just barely 14 months after I bought it. You can read about my earlier review of the phone and my bad luck with previous phones at this post. Not to mention that this is the first phone that I bought without telco contract, which meant that it was expensive. Looking back at my previous post, I bought this phone at $480. And 14 months of usage = 420 days. That’s about $1.14 per day. Haiz…
My phone was just sitting on my work desk, idling. Suddenly, I feel like checking my organizer, so I pressed the on/off button to wake my phone up. Nothing. Hmm… Press again. Nothing. Press and hold. Nothing.
Hmm…
Press all the buttons and scribble on the touchscreen. Nothing. Take out the battery and replace the battery. Nothing. Press the reset button at the back of the phone. Nothing. Plug into charger and turn on. Nothing.
Oh my… This was serious. After another few minutes of fiddling, I’m convinced it was something really serious. I decided to visit the HTC service centre at HabourFront immediately.
At the service centre, the service staff there told me that the phone came with 12 months of warranty which was probably over according to the production date of my phone. The diagnostic cost will be $30 something. Without diagnosis, the person speculated that he had seen this problem many times before and it was due to the micro-processor crash and a complete replacement of motherboard was normally required. The parts replacement cost will be $400 something. I rejected their repair proposal.
Overall, the impression that I got from the HTC staff was that of an uncaring attitude. All they were concern about was doing their job and following procedures. There was no offer to retrieve my contact list for free or the sort of friendly customer service I was expecting. Was I expecting too much? All hail corporate heartless-ness.
Next, I brought my phone to those Ah-beng handphone shops for repair. But I was told that there isn’t any HTC spare parts on the market and that the service centre is the only place to repair HTC phones. Haiz.
I was really saddened by the sudden demise of my phone. Why me? Why do I always have bad luck with phones? I liked many things about this phone, the GPS, the maps, the accounting software, the stock monitor, the internet browser. I lost my contact list and organizer too. Maybe this will teach me not to be over reliant on my phone. Haiz.
Now, I’m back to using my Nokia 6288, luckily it is still functional. Dun think I’ll be getting a new phone any time soon. Wait until July, when my Singtel is due for upgrading. And just get a cheap phone will do. No point spending on an expensive phone that spoils immediately after the warranty period and the repair cost is about the same price as the phone.
Look on the bright side, I still have my old contact list on my old Nokia which I can copy out to my SIM card. All is not lost. :)
-Dear1
p.s. Ignore my rants and sieve out whatever useful information between lines.
Self repaired my laptop 10 December, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1.4 comments
Haha… remember my old old laptop? I wrote that blog entry more 2 years ago. Even before that, I used my laptop to play DVD movies for my guests during house warming. Since then, I’ve used it many times for my various presentations at work. Guess what, my faithful Toshiba Protege is still alive and kicking! That makes it more than 7 years old now. Wuahahahaaaa….
But it was not without problems…
The battery went dead a long time ago so now it has to run on AC power. The internal battery is dead too, so if I switch off the main power socket, my laptop will “forget” the date and time. And the next time I boot it up, it’ll give a system error and reset the date and time back to midnight of year 1900 (iirc). Oh well, just leave the mains on then.
The mouse interface or some mouse input related hardware inside the laptop is probably loose or not connecting properly. My mouse cursor will sometimes wander off on its own on screen, or oscillate randomly about its position. I found a way around this. That is, I have to maintain my LCD panel at a certain angle and that seems to make the mouse respond correctly. Problem suppressed.
The LCD screen is still fantastic, zero dead pixels! But there are now numerous scratches on the screen that are somewhat distracting. I tried to clean it off but to no avail. What to do, just live with it lor. Try not to face the sun as the scratches become more apparent with sunlight reflecting off them.
Some of the keys on the keyboard are gone too. PageUp, PageDown, Home and End are definitely not working. The ever useful ‘\’ is also not working, making is difficult for me to log on to my school email. I have to copy-&-paste to get this specific character. Other than these few keys, the rest are fine.
Then just a few weeks ago came a devastating problem. The keyboard continually exerts the letter ‘e’. Oh no, was it a virus? I had had experience with the keypress-virus a long while back (in secondary school). It’d just continually exert a keyboard command to disrupt your work. With this ‘e’ being pressed all the time, I couldn’t even login to my desktop.
Somehow, I managed to login, and I ran the anti virus program with the latest virus patterns. Nothing. So it was not a virus after all. Maybe the keyboard was really spoilt. With my limited hardware knowledge on laptops, I dismantled the keyboard to examine it. Nothing seems wrong, wires are good, all buttons are bouncy, no cracks, maybe just some biscuits here and there. I cleaned the keyboard thoroughly and reinstalled it.
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
Sigh… Maybe this was the end, I thought. There was simply no way to use it while the letter ‘e’ was being pressed all the time. Buy a replacement keyboard from ebay? Too expensive (about $70). It had been a good 7 years of service. My laptop was ready to retire. Or so I thought.
Out of curiosity, I decided to unplug the entire keyboard from the motherboard. Earlier, I had just opened it up and cleaned it without unplugging it completely. What’s this? Some black residue had built up on the connection to the motherboard. Probably some form of oxidation. Remembering another quick fix of my old desktop (residue short circuit on sound card) many years back, I took an eraser from the stationery tray and started erasing the gold plated connectors. The residue came off completely after several minutes of intense rubbing.
Now, the moment of truth, will this solve the problem? I reconnected everything and turn on the power once more.
Nothing.
Hooray! No more ‘eee’s. Ahahahaha. I was ecstatic. My laptop lives to surf the web another day! Good old Pentium 3 – 933Mhz, truly worthy of the Made-in-Japan label. No netbooks for me just yet. ;)
-Dear1
(p.s. okok… it’s not really a full fledged repair, it’s just a simple eraser trick. :P check out my other ‘Self repair’ post where I really repaired my DS.)
Our free induction cooker 2 December, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1, Shop till you drop.1 comment so far
Our new Stylux induction cooker, free with 2 year subscription of Simply Her magazine.
Just the other day, Dear1 and Dear2 walked past this Guardian store and saw this wonderful induction cooker. Dear1 had always wanted an induction cooker and a larger steamboat pot becos our mini steamboat is really too small for the both of us. Hehe…
This Stylux induction cooker is a free gift that came with any 2 years subscription of of Simply Her magazine. And since we both liked Simply Her magazine quite a lot during our last subscription period, we started seriously considering this promotion.
Back track a bit, we bought a 1 year subscription of Simply Her magazine for $40 in 2007. When that subscription ended, we switched to a 1 year subscription of National Geographic (NG) magazine which was on promotion of $57 (free 1 fleece jacket) in 2008. And now with NG ending soon, it was the perfect time to start on a new magazine subscription.
Let’s consider the subscription package now. The price for 2 years subscription (24 issues) of Simply Her is $80, so it seems that the price did not increase over the past year. A cheap induction cooker easily will cost around $65-$80. So the Simply Her subscription package does sound like a good deal. Until now, our mini steamboat is working fine so I suppose the quality of Stylux products are at least passable. The induction cooker will come with a 1 year warranty.
Ok, that settles it, let’s buy that magazine and that free induction cooker.
So we paid for the subscription at Guardian using our Maybank credit card which gives us an additional 5% rebate, hence our subscription is going to cost just $76. :D
One complain I had about the subscription form was that we were required to fill in our credit card details on the subscription form despite having already paid the full amount over the counter at Guardian. I don’t understand why they still need my credit card details if I have already paid! So now, just have to check my bill and make sure they do not double-charge me for the subscription.
We brought the induction cooker home and eagerly opened it up for testing. It turns out that the included cooking pot is of rather poor quality and made of really thin metal. In fact, there were several deep scratches on the underside of the pot and the dents made by the scratches could been seen from the topside of the pot. Totally unacceptable. We brought the whole box back to Guardian for an exchange and the kind staff at Guardian promptly gave us a 1-to-1 exchange without further questions. Thumbs up for good service.
We tested our the induction cooker over the last weekend by having a twosome steamboat dinner. The induction cooker cooks really fast and our soup was boiling in no time. However, I thought the power was a bit too overwhelming and our boiling soup kept spewing soup all over the dinner table. To overcome this, we set the ‘Hot Pot’ default power wattage from 1800W to 800W instead.
Overall, it was decent enough considering that it was free. We’ll probably get a sturdier steamboat pot to replace the free one. And probably get a induction-compatible saucepan to do some stir-frying as well.
-Dear1
Self-repaired my DS 24 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1, Leisure & Games.2 comments
If you remember, I received my DS as a birthday present from Dear2 in 2007. It was really fantastic. I’ve always always wanted one of those handheld games since I can’t remember how young I was. As such, I have treasured this gift very much both because it was something that I really wanted and because it was a gift from Dear2.
For the past nearly 2 years, my DS seldom left my backpack as I carried my backpack to school everyday. I’ll always play it while travelling on the bus or train. Sometimes, Dear2 and I would challenge each other to a game of Mario Kart or Tetris when we’re travelling together. I can get pretty exciting. At home, we also play Animal Crossing with each other, visiting each other’s town and bring new furniture. We really had fun with our DS.
But unfortunately, my DS was dropped twice. I can vividly remember both times. Once at night, I left my DS on the bedside table, and I unknowingly threw my arm around while asleep and swept the DS onto the floor. Sad. That was the last time I left my DS on the bedside table. Nowadays, it goes under the bed if I was playing DS just before bedtime. The other time, I left it under my pillow, and in a similar fashion, I swung my arm under my pillow to cuddle up into a cosy sleeping position and swept the DS from under the pillow onto the floor. Sigh. Under the bed is the safest place for a DS to be.
I think it was during one of those drops that the lower screen started spoiling. The screen produced a yellow tint and discoloured everything. Soon, the resolution started reducing and I would see missing horizontal lines and vertical lines. I would say the resolution reduced to about 1/4 the max. There were no dead pixels however. Some time after that, the screen started flickering up and down, but it would stabilize after some ‘warming up’ so I was still able to play my games. Things took a turn for the worse and the lower screen gave up completely and wouldn’t even light up. I would turn to playing GBA games becos they only used 1 screen and my top screen is still working perfectly. This whole deterioration process spanned over about 6 months or so. But it was clear, I needed to get my DS repaired.
I brought my DS to a repair shop and asked for a quotation. It was going to cost about $30 or more for parts and labour and I would need to leave my DS there overnight. Hmm… I certainly do not want to leave my precious DS with some stranger overnight. So I began looking for new alternatives. I turned to my favourite DS accessories website – Dealextreme.
I also looked up some DS repair videos on Youtube to get an understanding of how DS works and how do I go about disassembling it. Surprisingly, I found this video of a young girl, probably about 10 years old, give a demonstration of how to replace the lower screen for the DS. So I thought, if she can do it, so can I. I ordered all the parts that I needed from Dealextreme – a replacement lower screen, a trigram screwdriver, a replacement touchscreen (just for good measure although my touchscreen isn’t spoilt), and a set of screen protector (because my lower screen protector was already badly scratched). The total cost was about $20, and since Dealextreme owed me $7 from a previous transaction, I paid only $13 for this shipment.
The actual instructional video that I followed to repair my DS.
The parts arrived last week after some delay and I sat down to repair my DS right away. Following the instructional video found on Youtube, I disassembled my DS and replaced the lower screen as well as the touch screen. All this took about 1 hour to complete for a complete first timer like me (don’t understand why the repair shops require the whole night to do it). At this stage, I suddenly became a bit skeptical. Maybe it wasn’t the screen that was spoilt. Maybe it was one of the video processors in charge of rendering the lower screen that was faulty. Then I would have wasted money buying all these replacement parts. Too late, I just have to turn on the power to find out.
Yes! It works! It was indeed a faulty lower screen. Haha.
I quickly applied on the new screen protector and began playing my DS again. I miss those DS games, GBA games can be a bit stale. My lower screen hasn’t looked this gorgeous for so long. I realized how much rubbish resolution and eye strain I’ve been putting up with for the past how many months. Getting replacement parts is this cheap and self-repairing is this easy. I should have done it a long time ago. Damn procrastination. #@*%!
Hopefully with this repair, my DS would last me another few years. Playing DS together with Dear2 is really fun. Although Dear2 always beats me at the Tetris Push challenge but I just enjoy playing together with Dear2. :D
-Dear1
Our E66 and E71 16 August, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1, Shop till you drop.add a comment
When we signed up for mio Home, we also signed up for two mobile lines with Singtel. After all, it is the 20% off mobile lines with the mio Home plan that constitute most of the savings in our phone bills. And since we’re signing up for new mobile lines, it also meant that we’re eligible to get 2 new mobile phones at contract prices.
Dear1 had recently gotten a Window Mobile phone in the form of the HTC Touch 3G so there’s no real need to get yet another phone so soon. Dear2 was still using her Nokia 6288 which had began to give problems so it was a good opportunity to get a new phone for her.
After seeing how *useful* my HTC Touch 3G is, Dear2 decided that she also wanted a smartphone, with GPS and WiFi, capable calendar/organizer functions, and Microsoft office like functions so that she can write a post whenever she gets an inspiration (i.e. on the MRT). Of course there’s also the budget constrain, hopefully we can get something cheaper than my Touch 3G.
A small search finally settled us on two candidates. The sibling phones, Nokia E66 and E71. Their differences are quite minor. E66 is a smaller slider with standard mobile keypad and equipped with accelerometer. E71 is a candy bar with QWERTY keyboard and a larger battery capacity. Other features are nearly identical. So the decision boils down to the difference in appearance. We went down to the Singtel Hello shop to take a look at both models and to have some hands on. Dear2 still couldn’t decide. So we decided to buy both the phone and decide on one eventually at home.
Now, buying at Hello shop normally isn’t a good bargain because the Singtel Shop online almost always offers a better deal. So we went online that night and ordered the E71 at an online exclusive price of $148 (it would have cost $300 something from the Hello Shop). There wasn’t any exclusive for the E66 but we waited until after 9pm to place our order because there was a 9pm~9am online discount of $30. So our final price for the E66 was $338 after discount.
Delivery was swift and we received our phones within 1 week. For the next few days, Dear2 held both phones in her hands to judge which one she would prefer. I forbade Dear2 from turning any of the phones on for trial because a brand new unused phone would fetch a higher price should we wish to sell one later. Finally, Dear2 made a choice and picked the E71 (I would have picked E71 too). Yipee!
The next thing to do was to sell off the spare E66. I went to Mobile Square website to get an understanding of the current market price for a no contract E66. It was selling at around $540. This meant that $540 was the theoretical upper limit for the selling price of the E66 (the selling price of E71 was $550, just $10 more). I advertised our E66 around and before long, we had a buyer and agreed on a price of $450.
So, to sum up, we spent a total of $138 + $338 = $476 to buy two phones from Singtel at contract prices. Then we sold off the E66 at $450. This meant that in effect, the E71 that Dear2 is using now cost just ($476 – $450) $26! Great deal. *thumbs up*
Actually, if we dun try to keep up with phone-fashions, and our phones are still in good condition and we dun need to get a new one, we can always stand to gain a few hundred dollars profit by recontracting, getting a new phone and selling it off. With the mio Home plan, the main line gets to recontract every 12 months, so let’s try to make use of it.
-Dear1
My HTC Touch 3G 27 April, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1.4 comments
Somehow, my luck with mobile phone just doesn’t seem to go too well. My first phone was a Samsung SGH600 (I think I got the model number wrong but anyway…), it served me very well. My next one was a Panasonic, can’t remember the model number, totally atrocious. Next came the SE T610. It was a good phone with a lot of features but somehow it was prone to auto shutting down. Next was back to Samsung for D510. It was a very nice slider with an executive look and it worked very well while I was using it. And the most recently phone was the Nokia 6288. Bad, slow response, random resets, unreliable reception. I got so fed up with it that I switched back to my old D510 while searching for a new mobile phone. Up until this stage, I would say that Samsung makes good reliable phones.
For my new phone, I decided on some features that I think I would need going forward. First, I think WLAN is a must becos there are so many free wireless hotspots popping up around town. And being able to log in to the Internet to check movie timings on the go is definitely convenient. I know, GPRS already allows web surfing, but it is expensive, WiFi is free.
Second feature I’m looking for is GPS. I anticipate that I might be getting a car in the future, so having a built in GPS in my mobile phone is more convenient than having to install a GPS car kit. Moreover, GPS in phone allows me to find my way even when I’m outside the car. And GPS can be useful for overseas free and easy travel too.
Next feature I want is multimedia support. There are so many media players out there like ipod, meizu, etc, but they all have one common flaw, they require the user to carry an additional gadget outdoors. In this time of technology convergence, I believe that simple music and video playing can be handled by a mobile phone. So this brings me to a few related features. One, the phone must have a powerful enough processor to handle multimedia. Two, it must have a large and bright enough screen. Three, it must support SD card expansion slots to be able to hold lots of songs and videos.
My search brings me to a near perfect candidate, the HTC Touch 3G. It has WiFi, GPS, a large screen and SD card expansion slot. Specifications wise, it is identical to the HTC Touch Diamond, Qualcomm 7225 528MHz, 192Mb RAM. Price wise, it is very attractive, about $200 cheaper than the Diamond. Features that are desirable but missing from the Touch 3G are FM radio and front camera for video calls.
After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to purchase this phone without line since this phone is a Starhub exclusive while I’m an M1 customer. I managed to find a hubber who recontracted his line to get this phone and I bought it from him at $480 early this year.
In the few months that I’ve been using this phone, I realized how a Windows Mobile operating system can really be useful. Yes, I agree that WM isn’t really that stable and fantastic, but it does have a very very wide range of applications that can be really useful in everyday life. For example, there is Youtube and Google Maps applications. And I’ve also installed an personal accounting application to track my expenses. And there are so many more applications to explore.
For the price and specifications, I would really recommend this phone to anyone who wants to give the WM operating system a try.
-Dear1
