HTC Thunderbolt: “Almost Perfect”

The ongoing advances in smartphone technology continue to amaze me. I’ve tested some very nice devices over the last several months (thank you, Verizon), including the impressive  HTC Incredible 2 and the even more impressive Samsung Droid Charge. I loved the Incredible’s responsiveness and its SenseUI interface, and I liked that it was a “world phone” with a SIM slot for operating on GSM frequencies when outside the country. But it’s a 3G phone, and it seems a shame to buy a Verizon phone that won’t work on its super-fast 4G LTE network.

The Charge had the most gorgeous display I’ve ever seen, big and bright and beautifully vivid, and its 4G Internet connection is, well, incredible. I was extremely happy with it for the first week – but then it inexplicably got a little quirky on me. Response time started to lag (not the network, the phone itself) and sometimes it would just lock up altogether and I’d have to reboot it to get it going again. This didn’t happen often – maybe once every two days – but it was frequent enough to be annoying. This might have been just something to do with the particular piece of hardware I had, as my son bought a Charge over a month ago and hasn’t had any problems with it.

At any rate, I was happy to finally get my hands on the Thunderbolt, since it combined some of the features I liked about the Incredible (HTC’s interface and way of doing things) with things I liked about the Charge (4G, larger 4.3 inch screen). I had heard horror stories about battery life, so I was prepared to run out of juice way too soon, and in fact I figured that just might be the deal breaker that would keep me from choosing the Tbolt as my own next phone.

The Specs

The Thunderbolt’s specs are pretty similar to those of the Charge:

• Android 2.2 (reportedly upgradeable to 2.3/Gingerbread
• 1 GHz processor (Qualcomm)
• 4.3  inch display (but WGA TFT, not the Super AMOLED that knocks your socks off on the Charge)
• 768 MB RAM (more than the Charge’s 512)
• 8 GB internal memory (much more than the Charge’s 2 GB)
• 32 GB preinstalled microSD card (same as the Charge)
• 8 MP rear camera, 1.3 MP front facing (same as Charge, but with fewer settings/options)

There’s no HDMI output jack, which the Charge does have, and it doesn’t have the physical hardware buttons for the standard Android controls (Home, Menu, Back and Search) that I liked on the Charge.

Why I like it

Even though in some ways the specs aren’t as impressive, I found that I liked the Thunderbolt slightly better than the Charge. Part of that is undoubtedly because of the slowdown problems that I had with the Charge, but I also liked the “feel” of it better. It’s heavier than the Charge, but I found (to my surprise) that I didn’t mind that. I liked the more solid feel of the metal body (compared to the Charge’s plastic) in my hand. I also liked the more square shape.

I’ve had the Tbolt for a month now, and I have really put it through its paces. I forwarded my calls to it and used it as my primary phone. I took it on the road (to Las Vegas for the BlackHat/Defcon security conferences). I used it in place of a tablet and ebook reader. This baby is fast. Not just the Internet – the device itself responds instantly to every touch. Sometimes it’s almost too responsive, and I find myself closing or opening an app that I hadn’t intended because my finger brushed the icon.

But most of all, I like the SenseUI interface much better – with one exception (which I’ll get to in a minute).  It’s just cleaner and more elegant. If only I could see SenseUI on that Super AMOLED screen … .

SenseUI is just more elegant and user-friendly than TouchWiz

As with the Charge, the 4G connection was blazing fast. The 17,495 Mbps downstream speed that I got in the screenshot below was pretty typical (Dallas-Fort Worth area).

4G is still fast

With both 4G phones, there were times when I would lose 4G and go all the way down to 1x, even when my 3G phone (original Incredible) was getting a strong 3G signal. The solution to this was to go into the settings and disconnect the mobile network, then reconnect it. Usually it would come back with 4G, but always at least 3G.

Unlike the Charge and other Samsung devices, the Thunderbolt didn’t come with Swype installed, which was a big disappointment to me. I’ve been using Swype for quite a while, since discovering it on my old Omnia Windows Mobile phone and I love it dearly. I tried downloading the beta from Swype’s web site (it’s not available in the Market) and installing it on the Incredible but it never worked properly. However, I installed it on the Thunderbolt and it worked flawlessly. That would be a big factor for me in deciding whether to commit to a new phone for two years.

The Thunderbolt doesn’t come with Swype, but it installed and worked fine

The camera is a fairly important component for me, as I use it quite a bit. The Charge’s camera had far more controls and options – an amazing number. The Tbolt’s controls are more basic, but the picture quality is very good. An annoyance with the Charge’s camera was that it wouldn’t focus up close unless you went into the controls and switched it to Macro mode. Then you had to switch it back to take photos at a normal distance. The Thunderbolt’s camera will focus sharply at just a few inches or infinity, without changing settings. I like that because I often use the phone’s camera to make quick copies of documents or handwritten notes.

What’s not so great

When it comes to the Thunderbolt, the big elephant in the room is the battery. The 1400 mAh battery that comes with the phone just doesn’t cut it. I got around 4-5 hours on a charge and that wasn’t an anomaly; it’s about what other Tbolt owners report.  A phone that won’t last at least through a typical 8 hour day with light/moderate usage isn’t acceptable, regardless of how awesomely fast it is. The solution is a high capacity extended battery, either the 2750 mAh battery offered by HTC or the 3200 mAh model made by Seidio. Since this was just a loaner phone I was testing, I wasn’t going to go out and buy an extra battery for it, but several Thunderbolt owners I’ve talked to were pleased with the extended batteries, reporting they at least doubled the battery life.

The problem with the extended batteries is that they don’t fit in the original case; you have to use a special cover that juts out in the back, adding quite a bit of bulk and some weight to an already-large phone. I have a 3500 mAh extended battery that I routinely use with my Incredible, and I find that I don’t mind the extra heft (in fact, it actually makes the phone easier to hold onto). However, the Incredible is a much smaller phone, and I’m not sure whether the thickness of the extended battery on the Thunderbolt would prevent it from slipping comfortably into my pocket.

Another thing I miss when going from the Samsung phones to the HTC models is the email client. Although I like most aspects of the Thunderbolt’s email app, what I don’t like at all is the way my Exchange folders are presented. I can get a folder to appear at the top of the list in the Samsung app by prefacing its folder name with an * or some other symbol. This doesn’t work with the HTC phones, and I still have to scroll through dozens of folders to get to the couple that I normally check when I’m out and about and using the phone for mail. That’s a little thing that nonetheless makes for an exasperating experience that didn’t have to be that way.

Summary

I like almost everything about the Thunderbolt, and I can live with the email issue, but the one big problem is an important one. A phone that’s dead is no use, and unless you spring for the extended battery (or stay very close to a power source for frequent charging), you’re likely to end up with a dead Thunderbolt way too often. If not for the battery problem, I would have no hesitation about naming this phone my number one choice.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

First Impressions: Samsung Droid Charge

Last Wednesday, I picked up a Samsung Droid Charge from Verizon, for testing. I was immediately infatuated. Took a look at that drop-dead-gorgeous Super AMOLED Plus screen and I felt pure lust. The blacks are sooo black, the colors are so vivid, and it’s just a delight to look at. I also liked the sleek shape, the way it tapers down into a “chin” at the bottom (and this was something that I wasn’t sure about in viewing photos of the phone, but when I held it in my hands, it felt just right).

Is there more to the Charge than just a pretty (inter)face?

But we all know that good looks and physical compatibility don’t necessarily make for a lasting relationship. Would the Charge turn out to be like that dashing, handsome young stud whose finely chiseled features aren’t quite as enthralling after a month or two of picking up his dirty underwear and listening to his tired jokes and watching him flirt with every woman he encounters? I wanted to find out what it was like to actually live with the Charge on a day-to-day basis. So I set up all my email, social networking and other accounts on it, forwarded my phone calls to its number, and set out to use it as my primary phone. And for the last few days, I’ve put it through its paces.

And OMG, it’s fast. I had already tested the Verizon LTE network via the 4G modem, which I wrote about a while back. The phone lives up to my expectations, with as much as 15 Mbps and more downstream and 8 Mbps up. That’s better than many folks’ home Internet connections (but not mine, since I have 20/20 FiOS from Verizon).  And it’s not just the Internet that’s fast. The phone is extremely responsive, too, with no lag within apps or moving between them.  I wasn’t sure it would be, since it doesn’t have a dual processor, but I needn’t have been concerned. This is a speedy machine.

Granted, the honeymoon isn’t yet over. Maybe I still have stars in my eyes, but hard as I try to find a fatal flaw, so far I have to say this is the best phone I’ve ever used. Sure, I’d prefer to have the HTC SenseUI interface rather than Samsung’s TouchWiz, but I don’t hate TW; I’m used to it on my Galaxy Tab and there are some things about it that I actually like better, such as swiping from side to side to move from one page of apps to the next, instead of up and down as you do on the HTC Android devices.

I’ve run into a couple of minor things I wish had been done differently, but nobody (and no phone) is perfect. And I think this one might just be a keeper. Read on for my detailed first impressions.

THE SPECS

Here’s the rundown on the specifications:

• Android 2.2 (reportedly to be upgradeable to Gingerbread)
• Adobe Flash 10.1
• 1 GHz Hummingbird processor
• 800 x 480 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus display
• 512 MB RAM
• 2 GB internal memory
• Preinstalled 32 GB microSD card
• HDMI out
• Mobile Hotspot and USB tethering support
• Swype
• 8 MP rear camera and 1.3 MP front-facing camera
• DivX 720p video recorder

Of course, the feature for which most people will buy this phone is its LTE/4G support. Not only does that give you those fantastic high speeds, it also gives you something CMDA users have been envying in GSM users for years: simultaneous voice and data. Another cool feature that brings home the fact that this is a cutting edge phone is the support for wireless charging. Just place it on a charging pad to replenish the battery. And speaking of the battery, while it doesn’t hold a charge like my Incredible (2-3 days on the standard battery, 7 full days on the 3500 mAH extended one), I got very decent battery life after doing some standard power usage tweaking (adjusting display brightness, installing toggle widgets to turn off GPS, wi-fi, BT, etc. quickly and easily when not using them, turning off push email). I was able to make it through a whole day, starting to use it at 6 a.m. and not calling it quits until close to midnight. The Battery Left application tells me my full battery life (standard battery that came with it) is a bit over 18 hours. I can live with that.

Battery life for the Charge averages a little more than 18 hours – after tweaking

At 5.04 oz., it’s not a super lightweight, and of course it’s not small, what with the 4.3 inch screen. But the space is used pretty well, although after seeing some new almost bezel-less TVs from Samsung, I wouldn’t mind having a phone with no black border surrounding the display at all. Maybe someday.  Meanwhile, it fits fine in the pockets of my jeans and cargo shorts, and it sits nicely in my hand.

The Charge is a big fellow, but in this case, bigger really is better

 

THE GOOD

There is so much that’s good about this phone, that I don’t know where to start. Before you even turn it on, you notice there’s something different about this one: It has physical hardware buttons for Menu/Home/Back/Search instead of capacitive ones like so many of the new smartphones have (the physical buttons were one of the things I liked about the Droid X, despite its uninspiring MotoBlur UI and its mediocre camera. Of course, that means the buttons don’t do that cool rotating thing that you get on the HTC Incredible S and 2, but that doesn’t really add any functionality. And maybe it’s just me, but I love having buttons I can feel and find without looking at them.

There’s an HDMI out connector, which is becoming more common on the new “super phones.” I like having that, for outputting videos and photos to a large monitor or TV. It’s on the right side of the screen, along with the power/display button. It’s a matter of personal preference, but I like having the power switch there instead of up on top, like the HTCs.  My thumb falls on it more naturally, making it easier to switch the display off when I’m finished using it. The 3.5mm audio jack is on the top left. The mini USB port for the charging cable is in the bottom half of the left side. That’s the same as the Incredibles, and I like that configuration better than at the bottom of the phone, where it is on the HTC Surround Windows Phone. On the back are the camera lens (slightly recessed) and flash, and a surprisingly good speaker.

Oh, did I mention the display?
In addition to the quality of the display, mentioned above, the size is nice, too. I’ve been using an HTC Incredible as my primary phone for a while, and I like it, but there’s not enough screen real estate for comfort. Web pages are just a little too small, some email messages don’t fit well onto the 3.7 inch display.  It’s sharp enough, and the colors are “good enough,” but there’s no “wow” factor.  During the time I was testing the Incredible 2, one of the things I liked best about it was the larger 4 inch screen. The Charge takes that up another notch, measuring up at 4.3 inches.  With a screen this large, I’m not reaching for my Tab nearly as often.  It’s not as big as the 4.5 incher on AT&T’s Samsung Infuse (which I’d love to get my hands on) but it’s the same as the Droid X and HTC Evo. That big screen not only makes web browsing better, but also makes it much easier to frame up your photos when you use the camera.

Smile, you’re on candid phone camera
Speaking of the camera, that has gone from being a completely unimportant feature for me to being one of the first things I look at when I’m considering purchasing a new phone.  I was a camera snob for a long time; if I couldn’t get the same quality I got with my Nikon D300, I wasn’t interested. But I have come to use my camera phone a lot, for many different purposes. Not so much to capture great pictures – although you can get a much better photo with a cam phone that’s there in your pocket and ready to go when the photo opp strikes than with a fancy piece of professional equipment that’s back home or in the bag in the car.

But mostly, I use the phone camera to document things. It’s easier to snap a photo of the price tag on a big ticket item I’m thinking of buying than to write down all the prices and specs or try to remember them as I go from one store to another. I like being able to snap a quick shot of the dogs at play, or the restaurant I’m patronizing and upload them to Facebook or email them to a friend instead of having to take a flash card out of the camera, put it into the computer’s reader, navigate to the proper folder and finally find it and send it where I want it to go. I’m the president of my homeowner’s association, and if I see a violation when I’m walking in the neighborhood, I can snap a quick picture to document it.  I even use the camera now to snap a photo of the grocery list we keep in the kitchen, rather than taking the paper list (which frequently gets lost or left in the car).

This photo of a shopping list shows the excellent close-ups you can get with the Charge’s camera (on Macro setting)

I also like the controls on the camera a lot. It gives you a great deal of control over the settings. There are several shooting modes to choose from, including single shot, continuous shot, “smile shot” (camera detects when subject is smiling), “beauty” (softens the photo to eliminate lines, wrinkles and blemishes), panorama (for super wide views), “Add me” (with which you can combine a shot of a person with a background), action shot (fast shutter speed) and cartoon (turns the photo into a cartoon image). In addition to auto focus, it has a macro setting for close-ups and face detection (where the camera focuses on the face).  You can adjust exposure settings through various Scenes, including landscape, sports, portrait, night, party/indoor, beach/snow, dawn, fireworks, sunset, fall color, text, candlelight and backlighting. That’s pretty standard on most point and shoot digital cameras, but many phone cams (such as the Incredible’s) don’t have it. Even more rare, you can adjust exposure manually, from –2 to +2 stops.

The camera on the Charge gives you an unusual degree of control over settings, comparable to a dedicated digicam

There’s a timer that you can set to 2, 5 or 10 seconds, so you can move around and get into the photo – if you can find a way to mount it so it’ll be pointed in the right place (there’s obviously not a tripod mount). Or you can take a photo of yourself with the front-facing camera, which you switch to with a simple touch. You can also take video with both cameras.

The resolution on the front facing camera is low but the photo quality is okay.

Photo resolution (for the rear camera) can be adjusted from 640 x 480 to 3264 x 2448 (8 megapixels). There are white balance settings (also lacking on many phone cameras) for daylight, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent, in addition to auto. You can also adjust the ISO manually, from 100 to 800, or let the camera do it for you (by default). You can even change the metering method, from center weighted to matrix or spot metering.  There are a handful of special effects, including negative, black and white and sepia, but I much prefer to do this in a photo editing program after the fact rather than in the camera.

Here’s an example of a photo taken with the B&W special effect turned on

There’s an anti-shake feature, auto contrast, and “blink detection,” which I guess doesn’t take the photo (or maybe discards it) if the subject blinks. There is also a setting for outdoor visibility. Image quality can be set to normal, fine or superfine, and you can manually adjust the contrast, color saturation and sharpness using sliders. At first, I was annoyed that the camera didn’t display a preview of the photo after taking it, as I’m used to with my other phones. However, I found that there’s a setting to do this; it’s just turned off by default (which does make it easier to take photos quickly, one after another).  You can select the shutter sound you want (or turn it off entirely for less conspicuous picture-taking), and you can set the camera to superimpose grid lines, which are calling “guidelines” in the settings. You can also choose to add a GPS tag to your photos.

All in all, I’m impressed with the camera. Photos are sharp and clear, as you can see in the picture of my pot roast below.

Photos are sharp and clear, detail is good and colors render nicely

I’m not going to be doing wedding photography with it, but I can use the Charge’s camera in many situations where I would not have even tried to use a phone camera in the past.

Swyping my life away
It’s one of those things you either really love, or you don’t like it at all. I adore Swype – the text entry method that lets you move your finger rapidly from one letter to another without lifting it from the keyboard. I’ve mastered it pretty well and can “type” up to 50 wpm that way – much faster than with any traditional virtual keyboard.  That’s one of the things that I like about my Galaxy Tab.

A beta of Swype for Android was downloadable (from the Swype web site, not the Market) and I installed it on my Incredible. It worked great for a while – then stopped working. I like that Swype is preinstalled on the Charge. Because it so directly affects my ability to be productive with the phone, Swype support is a big plus for me in selecting a new phone (and is one of the reasons I’m staying with Android instead of switching to Windows Phone 7, despite all the things I like about the WP7 interface).

DLNA

I know many smartphone users aren’t even aware of DLNA, which stands for Digital Living Network Alliance and is a standard used by its members to allow users to more easily share and use digital photos, music, and videos. Devices that include DLNA support can easily access the media files on other devices. My Samsung TV even has DLNA support.

Samsung calls their implementation of DLNA “AllShare” and with its app, I just connect the phone to my wi-fi network and it finds all the shared media files on all the computers that act as servers (Windows 7 media center PCs) and I can download them to phone or stream them. Very cool, and works flawlessly (unlike DLNA on my husband’s Motorola Droid Global 2, which displays the file names but then gives an error message when he tries to access them).

THE NOT-SO-GOOD

For the first few hours, the Charge seemed like the Perfect Phone. After living with it for a a few days, I do have a few nits to pick.

What’s in a name?
What kind of silly name is “Charge” for a phone, anyway? It certainly doesn’t conjure up the kind of image you get from “Thunderbolt.” I think it might have been nice if Samsung had stuck with the space theme (Galaxy) and named it the Supernova or Andromeda something like that. It’s a small thing, for sure – and it’s less bland than “Droid Global 2” or “Ally” or, heaven forbid, “Verizon Wireless XV6900” (remember those?) but names are important in marketing and branding. Perhaps what Samsung had in mind was an image of the cavalry charging in to save the day, but to me the name just reminds me that I’m going to need to charge this phone more often that my previous one. Which brings us to …

Battery could be better

Okay, compared to the Thunderbolt’s 4 or 5 hour battery life, the Charge does pretty well. With my ordinary, moderate usage, I get through a long day. But I probably wouldn’t be able to make it through a 12 or 13 hour day of heavy usage unless I brought along an extra battery (or bought an extended one). We depend on our phones for a lot these days, and if I were in a situation where I needed to be on the ‘Net a lot, download many large files, read several ebooks, etc., I’d want my phone to keep on going.

There are 3500 mAH batteries available for the Thunderbolt and even the original Incredible, which isn’t that much of a power hog. The highest capacity extended battery for the Charge is only 2600 mAH (1000 more than the factory installed battery). I’m hoping a third party such as Seidio will come out with a 3500 mAH (or more) battery for it soon.

One word: Plastics
I’m probably showing my age by quoting that line from The Graduate (a hit 1967 movie, for those who are so young you don’t even know what I’m talking about) but it adequately sums up the Charge’s shell. That doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother some people, but the HTC phones definitely feel more well-made with their metal exteriors. Now there is an advantage to the plastic case: a lighter weight that doesn’t make your pocket sag quite so badly. But I’d guess it wouldn’t survive a fall as well as an HTC would.

Driving me crazy
Yeah, yeah. I know I’m not supposed to, but I do use my phone in the car. And I like the Car Panel app on my Incredible, which I use all the time. It has big buttons for navigation, phone and voice search. I miss that on the Charge.

On the upside, it does fit nicely into the universal cup holder mount that I also use for the Incredible (it has adjustable arms that can be widened to accommodate the greater width of the Charge).  And it does have a desk dock app that’s rather nice (the Incredible 2 did away with both the car panel and the desk dock).

The Charge has a fairly nice desk dock

Initial GPS quirkiness
The GPS antenna doesn’t seem to be as good as on my HTC phones. Samsung phones have reportedly had GPS issues in the past so this came as a disappointment, but not a complete surprise. The first time I used the Runkeeper app, which tracks my walks with GPS to construct maps and record distance, time, etc., I got some quirky results. It worked okay until I stopped at the park to take a break and put the app on pause. Then after I resumed, it showed my route going off into the middle of the lake – something I assuredly did not do.

The GPS went nuts, indicating that I swam out into the middle of the lake

Since then, I’ve had no more problems with the GPS on Runkeeper, other than the fact that it takes longer to find the satellites than my on my Incredible (in the range of two minutes longer).  When I used the GPS for the Google Navigation app, I had a similar problem; it took over five minutes to lock onto a satellite. The Incredible, which was sitting about a foot away, got a signal within less than a minute. Once the GPS locked in, the Nav function worked great – and even kept working after I took it out of the car dock and put it in my bag. The GPS is something that I want to test more before I decide to get a Charge as my primary phone, though.

Mobile Hotspot? What Mobile Hotspot?
To many people, the ability to tether their laptops and tablets wirelessly or via USB to their phones is a “must have” feature. The Charge supports both, although of course you have to pay an extra monthly fee. However, Verizon advertised that tethering and Mobile Hotspot are free on the Charge until June 15th, and the feature now supports connecting up to 10 wireless devices. I can’t imagine a situation where I would want to connect that many, but it’s impressive and I was eager to try out this feature, sharing the LTE 4G network.

I’ve used the Mobile Hotspot feature on many of Verizon’s 3G phones and it’s “no brainer” simple to use: You just touch a checkbox to turn it on and it tells you the SSID and password for the wireless access point it sets up. At least, that’s how simple it had always been before. But when I tried to open the Mobile Hotspot app on the Charge, nothing happened. Okay, technically something happened – the screen flashed and then immediately returned me to the apps list. I tried to get in touch with my contact at Verizon about it, but it was the weekend and I didn’t get a response. So I decided to do some web research, and that brought me to the Verizon support forums.

It seems everyone with a Charge was having this problem, and people at the Verizon stores didn’t know what to do – but one forum user had figured it out: all you have to do to get the hotspot to work is set the date on the Charge back one month, to May. I tried it and lo, the Mobile Hotspot app opened up, I connected my tablet and laptop, and it worked beautifully. Here’s my guess as to what happened: When Verizon released the Thunderbolt, they did a promotion where the Mobile Hotspot feature was free until May 15. Then they released the Charge and extended that to June 15. But whomever was setting the restrictions in the software apparently didn’t get that memo. The software checks the date on the phone, sees that it’s after May 15, and refuses to activate the hotspot. Change the date (by unchecking the default setting to get the date manually from the network) and all is well. Interesting, after I changed the setting back to network update so my phone would put the correct date on email, etc., the hotspot still worked – so apparently you only need to do the date change in order to open it for the first time.

The 4G Mobile Hotspot worked great, after I discovered the “secret” to opening it

I wrote to my PR contact at Verizon to let her know about this, because I expect there are going to be some angry customers who buy the Charge expecting to get the free hotspot until June 15, and are going to be upset when it doesn’t work.  I hope they get this fixed soon (and it might be a good idea to extend the free feature for another couple of weeks, to make it up to those who didn’t get the full use of it). Meanwhile, the hotspot works great.

WISH LIST FOR THE CHARGE 2
So after intense usage for several days, I still like the Charge a lot. Perhaps the initial flush of excitement is over, but we have become good friends – comfortable with each other. Do I love it enough to make a long-term commitment? Maybe. There are only a couple of things holding me back:

• Uncertainty about the GPS. This is a feature I use a lot, so I need it to work reliably. More testing is in order.
• Price. At $299, it’s a good bit more expensive than most smartphones. This price will likely come down in the future, when it relinquishes its position as “latest and greatest” to something newer. Ah, but then will I want that “something newer” (and equally expensive) instead?

Of course, that whole “will the next one be the one?” is omnipresent when considering any kind of technology purchase. You can pretty much count on the fact that the next one will be better – but will also have its own flaws.  Much as I enjoyed using the Charge, there were a few features I have on the Incredible that I missed, such as the optical joystick.  Like the center-mounted speedometer on my Saturn Ion, it’s a relatively rare feature that I might not ever have again, and I’ll miss it.  What I really want is a phone that combines the Windows Phone 7 Metro tile-based interface with the power and flexibility of my Android phones, with Swype, mountable file system, and a swappable microSD card being “must haves” and an optical joystick thrown in just for fun. But that’s an impossible dream.

Presumably, if the Charge is a big hit, Samsung will come out with a new version of it soon. Whether they call it the Charge 2 or something completely different (and less goofy), here are some things I’d like to see in its successor:

• Even bigger screen. I got my hands on a Samsung Infuse for a few minutes yesterday, and I like the 4.5 inch screen. I’d like to have the choice of a screen that big from Verizon.
• Better battery life. The Charge’s battery isn’t bad in comparison to other 4G “super phones,” but it could be better. Just a few extra mAHs would help, especially with a bigger screen.
• Car Panel app. I’d really like to have this feature built into the phone.
• Better UI overlay. While I don’t really mind TouchWiz itself, I’m not crazy about the brown and orange color scheme on the Charge. I’d love it if Samsung got a little more creative (think HTC weather widget) and provided a choice of color schemes, or let you turn off TouchWiz altogether as you could do on my old Samsung Windows Mobile phones.
• Digital Ink/stylus. Okay, I’m going way out on a limb here and I know I’m more likely to see this on an HTC phone than a Samsung (think “mini Flyer”) but if you’re going to dream, might as well dream big.

SUMMARY
I’m hoping to be able to test more LTE phones in the near future, and switch to one of them for my personal phone when my contract is eligible for upgrade this summer. The Charge is definitely at the top of the list at the moment.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

The Incredible 2 is pretty incredible, too

I get to test lots of different Verizon smartphones, thanks to a great relationship with the folks at the DFW regional headquarters. They have really gone out of their ways to help me and I appreciate that a lot. Yesterday, I returned the HTC Incredible 2 that I’d been playing with for a couple of weeks, and I was a bit reluctant to see it go.

For a while now, I’ve been using the original HTC Incredible as my primary mobile phone, and I really like it a lot. The Incredible 2 promised to be a bigger and better version, and in many ways, it was. Moving from a 3.7 inch screen to a full 4 inches might not seem like much, but it made a difference, especially for things like web browsing and ebook reading. Here’s a photo of the two Incredibles side-by-side:

The Incredible 2 is only slightly larger than its predecessor but the extra screen real estate makes a difference

The Incredible 2 is on the right. As you can see, the screen is noticeably wider, and that extra width made it more usable, without making it significantly heavier or more difficult to fit into pockets, and without appreciably reducing the battery life.

Out of the box glitch
When I first got it home and fired it up, I immediately liked the display, but I soon discovered a serious problem: the phone worked fine when connected to my wi-fi network, but it wasn’t getting a 3G signal. The 3G icon would flicker on for a second and then go away, replaced by the dread 1X indicator. This was in the same location (my home) where I’ve never had a problem getting a strong, consistent 3G signal before. And my original Incredible, sitting right beside it, had a solid 4 bars on 3G. A smartphone that only gets 1X isn’t very smart. Luckily, after a factory reset and reactivation of the phone, all was well and the 3G radio worked fine.

The real-life usage experience
As usual when I’m testing a phone, I carried it everywhere with me, along with my own phone. I soon found myself reaching for the I2 in my left pocket for just about every function (other than taking a phone call).  The exception was when I was in the car. Although the I2 fit into my universal cup-holder-mount dock without a problem, I was surprised to see that the Car Panel feature had been removed. I really like that feature, which gives you quick access to navigation and voice calling. The Desk Clock app included with the original was also missing in action, although that didn’t bother me much since I rarely used it.

The Car Panel app on the original Incredible is one of the things I miss most (along with the optical joystick)

As usual with all Android phones, battery life wasn’t very good at the default settings. After I did my standard tweaking (turn off Push mail, turn down screen brightness, download toggle widgets so I could quickly and easily turn GPS, BT, etc. on and off and thus have them off when I wasn’t actually using them), I was pleased with the battery life; it was good enough to get me through a full day with my normal usage. Of course, it was nothing like the 4-5 days without a charge that I get with my original Incredible’s 3500 mAH extended battery, but it was perfectly adequate.

The good

• For those who travel outside the U.S. frequently, the Incredible 2 is a big step up from its predecessor, as this one is a “world phone,” with a SIM slot for operating on GSM frequencies.
• I thought the Incredible’s 8 MP camera was the best I’d ever used on a cell phone. Then I tried the I2. Photos were even sharper and the larger screen provides a better view finder for framing them perfectly.
• The I2 also has a front-facing camera for video calling. I didn’t use this much, but it’s good to have it available.
• 768 MB of RAM, which is more than the original Incredible (512), more than some of the top-selling and most expensive new smartphones such as the Samsung Charge, and equal to the HTC Thunderbolt.
• The processor is still 1GHz but it’s a faster 1GHz, as it’s a newer 45nm chip vs. the original’s 65nm one.
• The newer version of SenseUI (2.1) has some nice improvements, including a somewhat better keyboard. It also includes the ability to set your phone to forward calls to another phone via the web portal (that is, you don’t have to have the phone with you to this – handy if you forget and leave it at home). You can also remotely ring the ringer, even if the phone is set to silent mode, to help you find it if you misplace it.
• Supports DLNA for streaming photos, music/audio and videos wirelessly on your home network. This is a feature I like a lot, for quickly downloading songs and pictures from my Media Center PCs to the phone.

The not-so-good

• The aforementioned removal of the Car Panel and Desk Clock apps is annoying, although certainly not a deal-breaker.
• The optical joystick, which also served as a physical shutter button for the camera, is gone. Although some Incredible owners say they never use it, I find it incredibly useful for navigating on a web page on the small screen. For example, when a link or web site button is too small to properly touch with your finger without zooming way in, you can use the joystick instead to move to it and press it.
• For some reason, they moved the power button from the top left of the device to the top right. I kept feeling for it in the wrong place, and ending up completely confused as I swapped back and forth between the two. That’s a very small thing, but seemed like a case of change just for the sake of change.
• It’s a 3G device, not LTE. Of course the original Incredible isn’t LTE either, but if you’re going to plunk down a couple hundred bucks for a new phone at this point in time, you might want to go with one that can use Verizon’s super-fast 4G network. If you live in an area that doesn’t have LTE coverage, this might not matter as much, but since I’m in the DFW area, which does, it makes more sense to me to upgrade to an LTE phone. Were it not for that, the Incredible 2 would be a very serious contender for the position of my next smartphone.

Summary

The Incredible isn’t quite as incredible as the new LTE phones, but you can’t beat the value for the money, especially if you don’t live in an area with 4G or you don’t do big downloads, video streaming and other things that really need the faster transfer rates. It’s a great, solid phone that gives you a lot of bang for the buck. If you like to use your phone as a camera, it’s one of the two best phone cams I’ve come across.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

My Personal Smartphone Roadmap

Today Microsoft unveiled the next step in their smartphone roadmap: the Mango update that includes some pretty nice improvements. On the communications front, we have the ability to switch between text, Facebook chat and Live Messenger within a conversation, integration of social networking feeds into contact cards, grouping of contacts in Live Tiles, multiple email accounts in a universal inbox, and voice-to-text/text-to-voice features.  We also get multitasking, a new browser based on IE 9, better Bing search and more.  Steve Ballmer said the update includes more than 500 new features.

Am I tempted yet? Yes … but not tempted enough. I’m still not seeing the core features that I want and need: swappable microSD card, ability to mount the phone as a drive instead of going through Zune, and tethering/wi-fi hot spot. In fact, I would give up the first one if I could get the other two.

I do like that the Mango phones will have support for Office 365 and SkyDrive in the Office hub and Twitter integration in the People hub. I’m a little nervous about the conversation view for email – just hope that’s optional as I tried hard to like it in Outlook 2010 and just don’t. I heard that turn-by-turn navigation is expected to be included and that’s a biggie for me as I have started using my Android phone in place of my car GPS.

So my personal smartphone roadmap looks like this: when I upgrade from my current original Droid Incredible, I will probably get at least one more Android-based phone before I switch to Windows Phone. I’m not impressed with the Trophy, which is the only WP7 phone coming to Verizon in the immediate future, and I am impressed with the HTC Incredible 2 and the Samsung Charge (the former for its UI, camera and battery life; the latter for its gorgeous display and LTE 4G capability). I expect one of those will be my next phone.

Then maybe by the time I’m in the market for a new one, the Nokia phones will be out and they’ll have addressed my “must have” features, WinPhone will have matured a bit and will have a lot more apps available, and I can get the tight Windows integration I want, the Live Tiles interface that I like, the cool Xbox Live avatar that I built, along with the usability features that I have now with Android. Keeping my fingers crossed … .

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

No Trophy for me, either

Mary Jo Foley wrote today that after waiting for months for a Windows Phone 7 phone on Verizon, she’s probably going to wait a little longer. Me, too.

When the Samsung Focus came out on AT&T, I wanted one – but not enough to switch from Verizon. I did get to test a Windows Phone 7 device, though, and I like the OS a lot. Today, Big Red finally announced that they’re going to start selling their first WP7 phone, the HTC Trophy, on May 26th. I really like HTC’s products. I also like Microsoft; everybody knows that – so, now that the WP7/HTC/Verizon combination is available, why am I not going to rush out and plop down my $150 for one?

Some of my reasons are different from Mary Jo’s. She cites the lack of a physical keyboard on the Trophy. That actually makes it more attractive to me. Back in February there were photos circulating that purported to be the Trophy, showing it to have a Blackberry-like keyboard. That would have eaten up a lot of screen real estate. Earlier rumors gave it a slide-out keyboard, which would have made it unacceptably (to me) fat and heavy. I’m pleased that Verizon’s Trophy will have only the touchscreen keyboard, like most of today’s most popular smartphones.  I just wish it also had Swype as an option.

Mary Jo also notes that the Trophy will be 3G only. Verizon’s 4G LTE network is awesome; I’ve tested it, too. The techie in me loves its sheer speed. But in actual practice, I like my 3G phone better – because I can go for days without recharging my battery. The HTC Thunderbolt, Verizon’s first LTE phone, will only get through about half a day on a charge, with 4G turned on. For practical purposes, Verizon’s 3G is fast enough for everything I do with my phone. I admit I don’t do lots of streaming video or often use it as a mobile hotspot for my laptop, but for heavy email use, social networking, web browsing, navigation and the other apps I really use day in and day out, I’ve never really noticed things being too slow.

Which brings me to the real reason I’m not rushing to buy the new WP7 device: when it wasn’t available from my carrier, I upgraded from Windows Mobile 6.5 to an HTC Incredible – and fell in love. I’ll stand up in a 12 step meeting and confess: I’m hooked on Android. I think WP7 is lovely – slicker and prettier than the iPhone, even – but my Droid does everything I want a phone to do. Unlike both iOS and WP7, it lets me swap out micro SD cards. Unlike iOS and WP7, it lets me mount the phone as a drive to access its files from my computer, without the convoluted process of going through iTunes or Zune.  Unlike iOS and WP7, it lets me have HTC’s SenseUI interface, which I love. Unlike iOS and WP7, it lets me install Swype, with which I can “type” far faster than on any other phone keyboard, physical or virtual.

I have all my favorite Android apps, some of which are also available for iPhone and/or Windows Phone, but some of which are Android-only. I’ve invested money in paid apps, and would have to pay all over again for the WP7 versions (if they exist). I’ve invested in an extended battery that is (no pun intended) incredible: I can get a full 7 days on a charge, with moderate use.  My Incredible also has the best camera I’ve ever seen on a cell phone; it’s 8 megapixels, and the lens is sharp.  The Trophy has a 5 MP camera, and I’ve read that it’s the same as the one in the Surround, which is the WP7 phone I’ve tested. I have done side-by-side tests and its photos are not as sharp as those from the Incredible. I like that the WP7 phones have a physical camera button, but the original Incredible does, too (the optical joystick button is used as the camera button), although the Incredible 2 is missing that feature.

I do agree with Mary Jo on a couple of important points: There will be lots of new WP7 phones coming out in the next few months, and I expect many of them to be better than the Trophy.  And Verizon was too late getting a first-gen WP7 on the market. If they’d had one in October, there’s a good chance I’d have bought it to replace my WinMo phone. After experiencing the best of Android, I have higher expectations. The second generation of WP7 will have to be a lot better to win my business. I’m hoping that happens.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Follow-up: IP surveillance cams

In this week’s Win7News, in the feature article titled Using Your Windows Computer to Keep an Eye on Everything, I discussed the new D-Link DCS-930L and 932L IP cameras that I recently got to expand our home surveillance system. Here are some screenshots that show how the D-ViewCam software works:

The shot above shows the console where you can view 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 16 or 32 cameras. My old D-Link 920 also works with the software. As you can see, at this point we had three cameras set up, monitoring two areas inside the house, plus the front door.

You can right click on any of the camera views and select to disconnect, show a different camera, delete the camera, enable digital PTZ, Fix the aspect ratio, take a snapshot to save, manually turn on recording for that camera, or toggle to full screen for that camera.

Above, you can see the dialog box for setting up scheduling, which is accessed via one of the five square buttons at the bottom of the console screen. Here you see the names of each camera in the left pane. Clicking on one shows you how that camera is configured to record.

Above you can see the configuration screen for a specific camera, which you access by clicking the Configure button on the previous screen. Here you can set the camera to always record during a specified time period or to only record during that time period if triggered by the motion sensor. You can also outline a limited area within the cameras view for the motion detection. That way if, for instance, you have dogs that walk across the floor, you can define the area that’s higher so they won’t trigger a recording. The green box shows the motion detection area for this camera.

As you can see in the Settings dialog box above, you have a lot of flexibility in configuring the software. You can determine which elements will start up, where the recordings will be stored and how those files are kept, overwritten or discarded, as well as what displays in each camera’s status, auto preview settings and audio volume.

The Hotline feature (configuration tab shown above) lets you set up the camera to email you when a specific event occurs (for example, motion is detected that triggers a recording).

On the Address Book tab, you enter the contact information for the users you want to send email messages to.

There’s more to it, but these are the basics, and plenty to get you started monitoring your home or small business over the network.

 

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com

The Samsung Situation: Who’s really at fault?

Disclaimer: for the past eight years I have provided editorial content, as an independent contractor, for WXPnews and Win7News, owned by Sunbelt Software and now GFI (which recently acquired Sunbelt). I am not involved in making or selling software.

Something that we see far too seldom these days is a person or company who steps up and takes immediate responsibility for a mistake or a failure of its product. We saw that today, when Alex Eckelberry of GFI Security posted on his blog Samsung does not have a keylogger (and it was our fault).

It all started yesterday when several reputable IT webzines, including eWeek, published the “news” that Samsung had installed keylogger software on their brand new laptops, to monitor customers’ usage of the machines. The alleged keylogger was discovered by  Mohamed Hassan, a security researcher with lots of fine letters after his name that give his words credibility (MSIA, CISSP, CISA), who published his findings after Samsung first denied and then allegedly confirmed them.

The story spread like wildfire across the twitterverse, Facebook and the web, with many of us in the IT security field believing it and warning our readers who might have purchased the offending Samsung products. I didn’t write about it in my newsletters or blog, but I did retweet that initial report. I heard/read responses from a number of people who vowed to “never buy another thing from Samsung.”  I was sitting at my computer, staring at two Samsung monitors, with my 42 inch Samsung TV across the room and my Samsung Galaxy Tab on the desk beside me, and the “news” certainly gave me pause to consider whether I’d made bad choices.

Then this morning came the “updates” – it was all a terrible mistake. The VIPRE anti-virus/anti-malware program on Hassan’s computer had misidentified the Slovenian language directory for Windows Live as the StarLogger keylogger because both use the same directory path (C:\\WINDOWS\SL). Such a misidentification is called a false positive, and it’s something that happens occasionally with just about all anti-virus/anti-malware programs.

And that’s when Alex and GFI bit the corporate bullet and stood up and took responsibility for the gaffe. I commend them for that, but there’s enough blame here to go around. I’ll take a little bit of it, too, for my retweet. But does most of it belong to the researcher who took his accusations against Samsung public without conducting a thorough investigation and verifying that the files in that directory really were what VIPRE flagged them as? If this had been an ordinary user reporting the results of an AV scan, that would be one thing. But should someone who takes on the title of security researcher be held to a higher standard?

On the other hand, Mr. Hassan said that he put all his faith in VIPRE because he had never known it to misidentify an item over six years of using it. That says something good about VIPRE’s record, I think VIPRE is an excellent security solution, but should security researchers accept any AV/anti-malware program’s findings without further verification, given that false positives are a known and not uncommon phenomenon with security software? The challenge for any heuristics system is to find the right balance between false positives and false negatives. Is it better to err on the side of caution and identify a suspicious file or program as possible malware when it is, or to go the other way and risk letting real malware get through and do damage?

I can understand GFI’s side of this and I can somewhat understand Mr. Hassan’s. What I can’t figure out is the part about someone at Samsung admitting to installing a keylogger when there was no keylogger installed, and even confessing that it was done “to monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used.” That doesn’t make sense.  I’d like to hear the recording of that call.

Alex has apologized for VIPRE’S part in the whole giant misunderstanding, and GFI immediately patched VIPRE to prevent this from happening. I’m apologizing here for my part in passing on a tweet about it. Are more apologies in order? Should Mr. Hassan apologize for starting the whole thing? Should Samsung apologize for admitting to something it didn’t do? Should Microsoft apologize for using the same folder name and path that Starlogger uses? Or should we all just acknowledge that mistakes do happen and there were several made by various parties in this situation, and shut up about it?

Personally, I’m relieved that it turned out to be what it was. A false positive from an anti-malware program is not intentional wrong-doing; it’s simply a mistake. We all make them. A company installing keylogger software on the computers it sells to collect information about its customers without their permission – that would have been a Very Bad Thing.  It would have been more than merely embarrassing for Samsung; it could have irreparably damaged their reputation and business. It still could, if the news that there is no keylogger doesn’t get just as much publicity as the “news” that there was one did. It’s up to all of us who have an audience or influence in the IT media to make sure that doesn’t happen by spreading the word. If you tweeted/retweeted that first story (or even if you didn’t),  please tweet the retraction.  I have numerous Samsung products and I like them. I don’t want to see the company hurt by an unfortunate mistake.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com