Category: Reviews

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Phone Fun part 12 Return of the king.

Well now … Back to this ..
If you think about this , If you have followed this little sites quest for the one phone… Its been a long quest. Many have fallen. Much tech support bullshit was had, but to which end  each and every phone was used through and through, so In our eighth year of phone fun I figure why not.. lets visit the classic  style I had originally set as my standard for phones.
The Standard I set in the Samsung M520 post is kind of solid and holds up even to this years phones .

Even If we drop in the most recent acquisition the Nexus 6p  is reviewable with the old standards.

  • to make calls –
    Well this may be the weaker point of the review process but this is more over a fine point , If the provider selling the phone has a shitty network , most will point at the phone before the network.
  • The Phone is configurable
    This is paramount more than ever with phones, as companies try to release  phones with smaller space to save money this is where phones stand up for themselves.
  • good battery life
    Oh holy shit yes. on the most recent generation of phones battery life is in the toilet.
  • add/make ringtones
    Still a valid assumption due to some phones complicating the process needlessly. It may seem redundant but its not.
  • Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
    While technically not part of the phone review, you will find that on phones that sometimes phone applications make the phone.
  • Durable
    Yes indeed. durability … still an issue … from you farted and bent your phone in your pocket to a drop accident while taking a dump

I’ve had a few phones since the original phone fun . at a rate of one a year about.

Nexus 6p , Nexus 6 , Galaxy Note 3 , Galaxy Nexus , Nexus 4 s ,HTC Touch , M520 ,katana LX

With the Nexus line being the phones I’ve favored and when I have strayed I have been reminded why the stock experience is the way to go. My last non-stock devices were less than appealing in the long run.

 

So onwards with this review.

Again the old review process in play here lets start from the beginning..

 

To make Phone calls: The nexus 6p is very good at making phone calls , On the other hand places I’ve lived have been questionable at best for phone calls. Now the nexus 6p has the ability to hand off phone calls from WIFI to NETWORK to NETWORK flawlessly … When it works its fucking fabulous , When it does not work you wonder if the call was transferred  to a demons asshole for the weird noises it can make.. if this hand off can be straightened out it will turn a great feature into a brilliant feature.

Configurable: Being a Nexus phone give this phone advantage over most of the android phones out there.  Google give you a frame with a Warp engine and allows you to build off of It.  Rather than be stuck with provider baked in bullshit that reminds you to wipe your ass twice before swiping google trusts you enough to know how to download something.

good battery life: Unfortunately smart phones have one of a  few drawbacks… The battery life sucks and while building better and faster hardware seems to be the case of things , I can say the Nexus is not half bad. I get roughly 24 to 48 hours depending on use.

add/make ringtones:  Over the years this has become a redundant with configurable , Though it would be a subsection because who knows what the fuck developers are thinking .

Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country: While this still has importance , the shift away from a per phone store is now a marketplace.  Out of the box this phone is more or less ready to go… I think one complaint that other manufacturers should pay attention to is.. STOP FUCKING INSTALLING APPS YOU THINK I WILL USE! IF there is something I have hated with the non-nexus phones was spending an hour getting rid of app after app of completely monkey shit.  Nexus phones do not do this.. its wonderful. But, When you have a phone with a notification going off in the middle of the night to remind you to put in your store loyalty card , you bet your ass that app is going to get deleted. in the past there were many purchases i made to fix the faults of phones that is not a litter of dead apps that i don’t use .

Durable: Durability , as it stands is kind of a moot point these days.  Unfortunately when you have a phone where one side is a large piece of glass , its hard to judge durability .. Most manufactures tend to sacrifice durability for aesthetics , The problem of aesthetics is …. the only way you see how “nice” your phone is , is if you go naked. These days its saner to just put a case on your phone to make it durable.  if you look at your phone the wrong way sometimes even with gorilla glass 473487234 your phone will end up fucked by a single micron of dust.

 

Over all the Nexus 6p is a comfortable sight. Its what you expect out of a google phone rather than the aborted attempts that manufactures try to collaborate with wireless providers for.  the nexus line is about choice and its something that people do not realize they have when they are stuck in the world of samsungs that want to sniff your asshole for caloric content to sell to who knows what.

 

 

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Phone Fun DCCXXIXCCXLIX: Return of the Jedi

Time for another edition of Phone fun!

 

Last I had the Galaxy Note 3 , while it was an OK phone with many options the end game of the note 3 had many letdowns.  The phone size is on the scale of a large moon.  So after a year of dealing with this phone I decided to talk to sprint about an upgrade to which they kindly offered after a screw up.

Since I’ve always liked the nexus line of phones I went with the option of the Nexus 6.  The nexus 6 goes from large moon to Dwarf planet sized. Since I’ve owned a lot of android devices I have found that the stock android OS is among the best with CyanogenMod as second best as far as Android goes.  Stock android avoids all the bullshit of having bloatware from both the Device maker and Phone companies.  Most times with a none Nexus device I end up spending time disabling half of the shit on the phone just to stop the damn endless nagging from apps on the phone.  I understand to a point that providers and device makers want to pre-load apps but, Not everyone wants facespace and half of the other shit on the phone out of the box.  I have seen complaints that have made me twitch like “this phone sucks it does not come with facespace installed”.  Device wise if I was given the option to have an a la carte version of any phone by paying 50$ more for the base version of android with no preloaded apps/no fucking annoying UI’s / install all yourself I’d buy any phone with that option in an instant.

Yes you can have the a la cart version if you can unlock your phone. but, in some cases its not worth it to loose the warranty (see knox)

 

Onwards to the new phone! The nexus 6 retains all of the ideas of the nexus 5 but on a fucking ginormous screen.  While not the biggest phone the nexus is near the top in size.  Its a nice phone and seems to keep up with making phonecalls , I used to abhore large devices, but in time I have made my peace with them and actually welcome them now.  The nexus 6 is on the aircraft carrier size of phones.  5.5 to 6 inches is a sweet spot as far as large phones are concerned. once you go above that you might as well buy a small tablet and make calls from that.

The one complaint i have is – NO FUCKING NOTIFICATION LIGHT*! yes there is a fucking asterisk in that…. Why you say … Because the nexus 6 has a damn notification light that is disabled! What the flying monkey fuck !  If you look around you can access the notification light by rooting and installing an app, that light should of been a default option.

 

Over all I actually don’t have too many complaints about the nexus 6 . So heres to another edition of phone fun

 

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Phone fun part MMMMDCCCLXXIII (Han shot first!)

In the last edition of Phone fun I had picked up the Galaxy Note 3. Now this phone is about the size of a small moon but does not hold a dime of the planet sized Galaxy Mega. Now while in hardware the phone is good but the software side of the phone can be completely rage inducing.

die-hard-banana-phone-bruce-willis-samual-l-jacksonFor all the phones functions there are parts of the phone that are completely annoying. Having to reset every wifi password every month or so just annoys the hell out of me. For whatever reason when the phone has a poor wifi connection it decides its a good time to dump every wifi password on the phone.

There should be no reason on this earth to do this. What ever process samsung made in making this phone had to been a result of being high and saying “dude wouldn’t be funny when people had a bad connection to make all the passwords disappear!”

the_finger_atomicThe above image is the results of what happens when my phone decides to dump passwords on a weak connection. some of the passwords for wifi are more complicated than quantum theorem.

The UI of the phone is also bothersome . like they overcomplicated the whole UI to make it simpler Yet somehow made it more complicated. While annoying I simply replaced the UI it was kind of a duct taped maneuver because it did not stop the more annoying elements.  While google experience is a really simple nice UI touchwiz still attempts to rear its ugly head when you do other things.

I really do wish that phone manufacturers would allow for a stock UI …. Rather than install all the random bullshit with no options to remove.

For example.. Beep and go..  Fuck beep and go with a hand grenade, when it updates itself it decides that it shall annoy the ever living fuck out of you not matter the hour of night . I hear a notification in the middle of the night getting up thinking somethings wrong its Beep and blow… “Would you like to add cards for your shopping experience.” FUCK THAT . uninstalling bleep and fuck only updates itself again .  I don’t give a flying fuck about installing my customer loyalty cards to my phone. I don’t need Creep and GO to know what I am buying. they can go fuck themselves with a fire hydrant. Sadly enough I’d pay 50$ to buy the phone without bloatware just to not have to deal with that kind of shit.

Any app that has a push notification needs to die. I do not need to be reminded that I have not played a game in 20minutes. thats grounds for instant uninstall for me.

Things I allow notifications for.. Weather alerts/ Text messages / Emails / Missed calls. anything else is useless, including facefuckspace.

the first thing an app should ask when it has notifications is ask. if you say no . give the are you sure and never ask again function. because if you annoy me to the tiniest degree its to the shit can with your app.

People should stand up against annoying apps instead they just deal with the annoyances .

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Teva Shoes the revisit.

A shoe post! It has been ages since i’ve posted anything about shoes , the last time I did was due to a problem to which Teva/Decker shoe company where absolutely incredible helping me out with getting my shoes replaced. Since then I’ve stuck with the company and their shoes due to there reliability, My most recent pair of shoes was a pair of the TEVA Churn Watershoe.

4153-BLK_1Although most sites list these as a watershoe I can not say that they are since I’ve never tested them in water, they have been my day to day shoes for the entire summer. as far as fit , they are a seemingly good fit and remind me of the Teva X-1 Control shoe. GEARIMAGE-616_teva-x-1-controlWhy Teva ever stopped making these shoes is beyond me… If anyone out there from Teva is watching , Please bring back these shoes, those were about the best shoes I’ve owned and I had 2 pairs of those,  They weighed next to nothing and were extremely comfortable, The Churn though could be regarded as the cousin to these, while not as rugged as the X-1’s the style of the shoe is based on alike construction and weight although the major differences are in the treads of the shoes the Churns are more like road wear while the X-1 were trail wear.  But both shoes are very alike in construction and weight , they are almost like wearing socks treads . If you are on your feet all day these will stand up to the test of the day , I’ve worn shoes that you want to light on fire just to feel a bit more comfortable because the heel or other parts of your foot are in agony .

 

For the churns I’ve done a ton of walking in them and they do not wear as easy as the X-1s, If you do alot of road walking or walking in building these are the shoes for you, the no lace thing is also very nice due to the fact you can throw them on in a hurry if you are going out.

 

So my opinion for the shoes.. Awesome!

*Yes! I get to use the shoe tag!

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Phone fun ∞+1xπ, The empire strikes back.

Awhile back I had gotten the Galaxy Nexus , and the phone through and through was a pretty good phone other than needing a small nuclear power plant to keep the battery up.  While the nuclear power plant option was a little steep in price I did get a Satechi 10000 mAh Portable Energy Station, Its as close as you can get to nuclear power for a phone without the radiation hazards.  Not to mention that the nuclear power plant has some mobility disadvantages.

Funny enough after a year plus with the phone I realized it had the same problem with its predecessor the phones antenna was not up to par, there were nights I was ready to eat my phone due to the antenna dropping calls or doing other strange shit.  Alas though … the Galaxy Nexus met its end, While the phone was tough it was not tough enough when it picked a fight with a concrete floor and the floor won.  While my comment about the back battery cover feeling like your going to break the phone is only partially correct. The phone itself can take some serious abuse.

The phone I chose as its replacement was the LG nexus 5 , It improves further on the Nexus line of phones with some disadvantages. You loose the ability to some degree to replace the battery on your own, while the battery is “non user serviceable” with a few tools you can get the battery replaced on your own.   Battery life is improved a slight bit while 24 hours is still the high bar for keeping a charge on the phone with light use as I am looking at my phone now and with 38% of the battery left and 1day and 2 hours on battery.

Continue reading “Phone fun ∞+1xπ, The empire strikes back.”

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Phone fun ∞+1 Just because its been awhile.

So, As we left off way back when in phone fun MMXXIV I ended up with the Nexus S 4g, Since I’ve had that phone it was pretty smooth sailing as far as a phone goes. The phone was durable to the point of being thrown into a wall multiple times.

This edition of phone fun has ended up with a mostly positive review of things since I decided to upgrade to the Galaxy Nexus , this phone is step above the nexus s and has more bells and whistles .. namely a FUCKING NOTIFICATION LIGHT!!!!.. Holy hell do you miss those when you don’t have one.

If is there is one thing a phone must be with it has to be a notification light because you become obsessive with checking if you have missed any messages.

There are a few complaints about the Galaxy nexus….

They are minor, Yet annoying..

The back battery cover feels like you’re going to break the thing when you try to access the battery, Also with the battery is its life , You feel like you need to carry around a small nuclear power station in order not to run the battery down. Phones are progressing at an amazing rate, but the technology for batteries are not. Going 24 Hours is the high bar for newer phones, if you lock yourself in a room for a day and ignore every phone call , You might get over one day.  Even with batteries progressing at a slow rate why don’t companies at least mitigate with a small change to the the phone that would go many miles by simply putting a solar cell on the back cover. Sure it doesn’t solve anything if you live in a cave but what the hell .. Its a start.

The other minor issue is getting Google voice to work with the phone when transferring from one phone to the next, which seemingly has a strange fix. If you update your phone to the most recent version of Google voice you will have errors and the phone will never sync to it. The way around it seems to be using the stock version of Google voice which works out.

but so far this phone seems to be a win .

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Phone Fun MMXXIV – thank you sprint….(nexus S 4g)

After Much Dealings with replacing my phone more times than the amount of explosions in a Michael bay movie, Sprint has worked with me and I have gotten away from HTC..

After going back and forth with the executive customer care since my phones kept having issues. they offered to restart my contract and pick up a phone at new contract cost, which was alot better than returning phone after phone. I tried to get a brand new EVO in hope of getting a phone without issue.
It just seems sprints flagship phones from the refurbished end are TERRIBLE.

From the B spot to random reboots and bad sound…

I wondered if HTC’s release products are the same – there is no way quality control should of ever let these phones back on the market. A refurbished phone is like a repaired car, It should look and act like NEW..

Anyways I am fully done with HTC.. the only way I’d use one is if one was given to me…

well, This time i’ve gone with a Samsung… though, The second phone problem going back to Phone fun 3 was a samsung.  This time I’ve gone with a Samsung Nexus s 4g

Now in previous post I’ve had my “Requirements for my phone”.

  1. to make calls –
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Basically The nexus S is as follows.

  1. This phone makes calls and does it well with one small stipulation.. in some areas the antenna for the phone is lacking.
  2. Configuration on most android phones is your mileage may vary.. but this phone you can configure it pretty much ANY way you please… rooting is fairly simple. reflashing is simple.
  3. This point Really needs a to be explained, since any smart phone will not hold a candle to a “dumb” phone , On average a smart phone lasts about 1 day on a decent charge. The EVO on average would require charging after about 18hours. The nexus easily passes the 1 day marker and most days it gets close to 2 days before requiring to be charged.
  4. on android phones this is a dead simple process.
  5. Android Market has all kinds of applications- but, Its now not cost … but moreover privacy with apps now.
  6. While this phone feels very light its fairly durable. the EVO in comparison weighs alot more.

So far  this phone has served me extremely well .. and hopefully (knock on wood a tree or something) I will not have any issues with this.

Im leaving this post fairly short.

Hopefully I will not have to go back to this post and make phonefun MMMXXXVI

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Mini review: Racing games (agravations in racing games)

As a Semi fan of racing games I tend to pick up a racing game or a kart game now and than.  I used to pick up every need for speed game in the past but as the quality of the programming slipped into oblivion I stopped picking up those games. Need for speed was fun in the terms of you could Race your cars around Smash things and generally just play the way you wanted .. After hot pursuit 1 they tended to close alot of doors with the game.  Gone was Car editing and adding your own cars. Things really went downhill with Porsche unleashed.  Signs of bad programing and shoddy programing were starting to appear than in hot pursuit 2 it seems EA just gave up the ship and decided that shit was good enough to send out, Sure it looked like a Need for speed game but it stunk badly in ways that just piss people off to no end.

My thing with racing games is if the AI is good the game is good, with poor AI the game severely takes a hit. the AI in Hot Pursuit 2 was an abortion.  The developers seemed to never thought through the whole process and shortcutted the AI massively in some areas.  Since the game had stats at the end of each race it showed how poorly the AI was done. If you raced as an Enzo Ferrari you’d thing you’d leave a ford Fiesta in the next area code, not so much, there was a chance that fiesta would win against you – since the game once the opponent got off the mini-map would engage nothing short of the enterprises transporter and rubber band to just outside of the mini-map.  At the end of the race it would create some pretty funny statistics such as.

Enzo: top speed 202MPH – Average speed 168 MPH
Fiesta: top speed 72MPH – Average speed 142MPH

WTF? Not only has that car just broken laws of physics but it manages to do something impossible unless the car managed to actually teleport to another dimension and have Time/space/speed laws revoked, If you did not run the perfect race it would also give the computer opponent A chance to win since the AI was magically rubberbanded to behind you.  Using that kind of trick in programming a racing sim should be a HUGE NO NO. Even though that the need for speed series borders on not being a racing sim these days, More over it plays like a quarter eater you find at an arcade.

You don’t need a game that has shortcomings that affect the outcome of the game due to poor programming versus the outcome based on your driving. with the advent of consoles I know programmers are under pressure to port games to each system as fast as they can but the quality takes a tremendous hit.  The console specific games tend not to suffer as much as games that are whored around.   Most Mario karts always have a sound racing game, Gran Turismo has a sound racing game. Even Test Drive unlimited had a sound racing game since it was based around the PC than ported down to the console level, there is one exception that should be noted- burnout paradise was a “racing” game that was on every system just about without much problems but they thought round some of the issues and made the game based on fun.

As more companies take to the “Open World” concept of racing it comes to mind that the open world needs to be open. With burn-out paradise the openness just was not there, Test drive unlimited had a extremely open world but a poorly implemented system where aggravation would set in trying to find your friends in the game even though you were actually on top of there car but due to the server running multiple sessions you’d spend 20minutes trying to get into the same play area.

Originally I was going to say something about one racing game but i changed my mind to a critique rather than a one game review.

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The state of gaming.

Ever had one of those days where you look at something and say hmm.  Well, I’ve been doing that for about a few months.  For awhile Now I’ve been wanting to spread out my gaming more than just between the WII and the PC.  Both platforms in my opinion are suffering from bad development and bad companies.   Well, After long thought and wondering if I’d be better off with a Bluray Drive for my PC or Some other upgrade I finally decided against both and went with the black sheep of the decisions.

Continue reading “The state of gaming.”

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Phone Fun IV: A New hope.

In our last episode of phone fun I had got an HTC TOUCH , Well…… That didn’t work out so well. Exactly 360 or so days the HTC touch Starting having issues with the screen and Calls.  Now, from trials and tribulations with sprint I learned the last thing you want to do is call *2 on your phone.  Doing that is like crank calling the deathstar while its in orbit around your planet.  Sprint Over the phone support basically told me I had to buy a new phone. Which I don’t have money I can magically pull out of my ass.   So I did the next best thing, I headed down to a sprint corporate store.  Since I pay my phone bill locally by walking into these stores I figured I’d get a better idea of what to do. After a short talk they sent us down to Boxboro Massachusetts.  They have a repair depot up that way, anyways  after a 30minute drive and a 30 minute wait they told me the phone was shot(radio was damaged).  After a short wait they sent me on the way with another HTC Touch(#2), After getting that home with-in a few hours the audio on that phone sounded like a cat barfing in your ear.   Called *2 and sprint offered to send out yet another HTC touch(#3). They shipped it overnight which was very nice and it arrived on monday.

I had that phone no more than 48hours when the phone would just lock and gave a screen of death, Now I am fairly careful with phones and use screen protectors and such. After wasting 3 of them I was not exactly happy.  That Phone went back to sprint. To make a long story short, I’ve gone through alot of HTC touches and as Far as my last post about this phone in 2008 . How does the phone rate up?

A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Well… After a year with one phone and 1 to 2 months on 4 others.

1 The phone defiantly passes on. For a refurbished HTC-Touch that is debatable.

2. Again you can’t knock the touch on this, its extremely configurable once you figure out the interface.

3. battery life… That is actually pretty good.  Although using the GPS Or other intensive options I would recommend a car-charger.

4. You can make ringtones till you puke with this thing rather than jumping through hoops trying to convert soundfiles into strange formats.

5. As Far as applications go, you can find most of the common apps you need on the phone although I’d recommend downloading Google maps. With enough looking you can find pretty much any app you want for the phone but, this is where i’d give the Iphone or palm pre a small advantage with an “app store” for centralized buying of applications although the Iphone is more like Locked into the app store which I believe you can not install any 3rd party apps w/o jailbreaking the phone.

6. Lastly durability I seriously question, as the phone did make it One year. as Far as the refurbished HTC-Touches.. Those sucked ass.. there’s not enough swears in the English language to say what shit the HTC Touch Refurbs are. I may of run into a bad line of them but that is hard to believe that i’d of gone through that many phones.

as far as my current phone, Sprint has offered me a HTC Diamond,  Again i leave this post open till the next time I come back to phones.

As far as sprint is concerned – It seems they are OK as far as support as long as you get the right person.