The Lumia 1020 has arrived

Yesterday I walked down to Nærsnes bay, where a few boat owners were putting finishing touches to their yachts. Luckily there were still a few boats on the water, and it was a perfect Fall morning.

I had both my LX5 Compact and the 1020 with me, so I could compare photo quality.

This morning I was surprised to find an amazing panorama picture Google+ had automatically produced from two of the snaps!

I'll try and import it here. First attempt looked OK but changed later into some odd negative symbol..?

Nærsnes Bay

My experience with a Lumia 520

As I am thinking seriously about buying a Lumia 1020 I thought it would be an idea to get to know what WP8 is like, in case I hated it after paying a bomb for a 1020.

Then I saw a special price for a black one at NOK 999. Pretty good! So I ordered it and hopped over to MyTrendyPhone to pick up some coloured back covers and a spare battery.

It arrived last Saturday 17th August in a tiny box.. opened it up and immediately had finger trouble with the SIM card. Finally solved that and away it went :)

Must say the Tiles interface is quite intuitive, as is the flip to the side for the Apps drawer, one of which is Settings, which naturally got quite a bit of use on Sunday. Battery use seemed to be impressively low, until later.

I use Skydrive with my 808 Pureview, so I installed that. I use Dropbox everywhere, so I found BoxFiles for Dropbox and added that. Then I noticed a comment saying that not only did apps get installed to the Phone memory, but the App files remained there too, so it was best to use the SD card for that.

Thats when I discovered my Prime CON with the WP8 OS.. the Store only shows you SD card IF you have manually downloaded apps to your PC and dragged them across to the SD card root!!! What...

Hopefully Microsoft will resolve this in the very near future as there is an enormous number of unhappy users asking for this 'feature' ASAP.

So, I again downloaded the few apps I had already installed, deinstalled those, and after restarting the phone was able to see my manually added apps under SD in the Store window.. yes!

All was plain sailing from there on in, though I quickly learnt that adding too many apps as Tiles soon had the battery running down.

I like the phone. Readability is great. The camera is OK in daylight. Things are pretty easy to set up, Gmail works, and a Software Update to GDR2 is just around the corner...

So bring on the Lumia 1020 'camera' :)

Edit: There was a problem I forgot. After using the camera OK with the Black cover I swapped to the Red one, and when I had visitors, we discovered the Camera button did not function. All but the Red worked fine, but I must say, the covers do NOT meet Nokia Quality in my opinion. Perhaps its a Chinese issue, as all these parts are made there.

Unloadable Macbook AIR cleaned up

The MB AIR on loan to Hege & Ada was reported as being unusable , and sure enough there were only 800MB free out of the 80GB drive!

To access my account I started in Safe Mode by holding Shift during the boot process. Once there, I started looking for things to delete. Ada's Movies folder held quite a few GB, so I moved that over to my Black WD drive for a while.

Finally. I made a new Admin account, checked it worked OK before de-authorizing my iTunes account on the AIR, deleting the Music folder contents.. that got rid of a LOT, then from the new account I deleted 'gfraser' leaving the Home folder's remaining contents for the time being.

Have completed the job by making a fresh Superduper backup to Black 1 :)

Left eye operation and other findings

On the 23rd May I had the 2nd eye op. at around 10 in the morning. To me it felt like the first, i.e. lots of preparatory eye drops which sting at first, but go over fast enough, then another lot, and oh yes a tablet at the beginning to calm me down, and then quite a long actual operation. 30-45 minutes (?).

Eventually it was over, and I hobbled out with a shield over my left eye to where Susan waited.

Next day I was able to remove the shield, clean up carefully around the eye, and see clearly, and very brightly again :) Now I could compare the eyes for colour, brightness, and clarity, and the right eye clearly has a problem, which I would explain to the Doctor who carried out the operation later..

Off to Drammen again for 14:00 check up. The left eye was perfect!

I explained the problem with the right eye to the Doctor using a clip of bar code. He took me next door, where there was an Optical Coherence Tomography machine, sat me down in front of it, and ran a short test which produced an image similar to that shown on this link ( http://www.oyesenteret.no/problemer-etter-operasjon-22 ) see CME / Cystoid maculaødem.

Happily there is a good chance the Yellox eye drops he prescribed will sort out the inflammation in a few weeks, and the vision will clear up completely.

Later I heard Ted Salmon was having a cataract operation in the UK, and was amazed when he reported that his took no more than 10 to 20 minutes! What are they skimping?

Edit on 24th June: its a month since I started taking the Yellox eye drops twice a day, and I'm afraid there has been no significant improvement so far :( there is to be another check on July 2nd when I guess another OCT image will be run to show how much change there has been..

NB: I had to email this post from my iPad where I had prepared it, but for some reason it was not getting posted..?

Getting Contacts onto the 808 Pureview

This may not sound like much of a task. "Just make a new Mailbox with Nokia's Exchange ActiveSync and use your Gmail contacts." Yes, tried that many times, but there is a problem somewhere causing EAS to repeat asking for my password, and getting nowhere. Grrrr!

As my new 808 is SIMless for the time being, but has Skype installed, I needed to get my 100 odd contacts onto the phone some way or other.

Tried three different ways of Exporting Google contacts from my SG Nexus, but they all resulted in either the syncing of a single contact, or nothing at all.

Finally today, I used the Android app Contacts Backup Pro, which allowed either all contacts in a single vcf file (thats what didn't work in the earlier apps) OR all contacts in a zip file! Yes.. that sounded hopeful..

And it was. I transferred the zip file to my iMac, dragged it off Android File Transfer, and copied it to Dropbox. Then on the Samsung PC I was able to use Nokia Suite to Import all of the expanded zip's vcf files in one fell swoop :)

YES, and then it synced automatically to the 808. Nokia Suite has come a long way since the bad old E61 days...

Final test was to see if these contacts showed up in Skype on the 808, and yes, they did. So, though SIMless I can communicate out of the 808. Must try Skype messaging next to see if that is two way..

April 19th - The Right Eye Operation

Susan was kind enough to drive me to Drammen for this event, which took much longer than I expected, and sounded more like a trip to the dentist!

First there was a tablet to be taken, then a series of 5 or 6 drops, a 15 minute wait, then more drops, and finally I was positioned horizontally on the operating chair, and things began.

My eye doctor was supporting a younger guy, who may or may not have been doing his first op., encouraging him in a very positive way at every step in the process. When it was all over I was amazed when Susan told me it had taken 2 hours!

We paid NOK 300,- or so and picked up 4 boxes of Tobrasone to be dripped 5 times a day.  AND we should come back tomorrow for a check..

The next morning I was able to take off the plastic shield, and see white again for the first time in years :) And colours are quite fantastic... the checkup by a women specialist went very well, and I was impressed by my ability to make out small letters on the optical test cards.

As far as I'm concerned these doctors carry out miracles!

The left eye is to be operated on the 23rd May. After that my vision should begin to be excellent again.

Right now I can read what I'm writing quite clearly, but if I focus on individual letters directly there is a tiny visual disturbance. However, if I focus slightly above what I'm looking at, its clearly visible. Hopefully that will go away, or both eyes together will mask the disturbance..

Nexus 10 no longer rebooting

Just a quickie to report that the N10 has not rebooted since I decided to  Restore Stock Backup taken by the Franco Kernel Updater. This got me back to the original kernel, but About info didn't look right to me so I ended up using the Nexus 10 Toolkit to restore Stock JDQ39. This showed the same build info (i.e. the repeat was unnecessary) but it restored pretty well everything from the Google auto backup, since which I've kept an eye on surfaceflinger, and had no reboots.

Must say I'm surprised, and am left wondering whether my reboots were mostly a Franco problem or not. Once again, one cannot keep too many notes about what one actually does when faultfinding. Memory fades invariably, and I'm afraid my notes were not good enough to know when the Reboots began, on Stock, pre-Root, pre-Franco, or what :(

The Nexus Reboot Fiasco Continues

My previous post was about Nexus 10 reboots, but I should mention that the Nexus 7 is prone to these  too. My latest experience of this happened when I pulled the recharge cable from my N7.. happily the N7 is far more stable than the N10, though they have been virtually identical from a software point of view. Both were running the Franco until a couple of days ago when I restored them to the #1 backup taken with the Franco Updater, so both are basically 'Stock 4.2.2 + Root'

The following is a post I made in the Phandroid forums:

Nexus 10 Reboot in Safe Mode

---

I've been following as many threads as possible about Nexus 10 reboots, and an odd thing just occurred.. I came across Safe Mode earlier today, and was surfing around on the N10 (in Safe Mode) looking for SM threads.

I came across a thread on the Nexus7Nexus10 forum at Safe mode and blow me down, when I should scroll down the page my N10 froze and rebooted!

LOL

The only odd thing about the page is some flashing forum indicator which you may see for yourselves.

I am rooted on JB 4.2.2

Mvh
cintra

Really must update my signature to include GS2, SG Nexus, Nexus 7 & 10

__________________

iMacs, GS2, SG Nexus, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, & Win8

It was a laughable coincidence really, as I wasn't aware of Safe Mode until that morning. For those who are equally ignorant, it boots up with just the Google apps present. I had done a search and found  the URL hidden behind 'Safe Mode' in the post above, and as soon as I arrived on the thread and went to scroll down the page, it froze and then rebooted! Unbelievable... :)

From the lack of reboot reports while in Safe Mode I would believe this fact to be of interest to Google, particularly if it occurs again.

Nexus 10 Reboots

Many people on XDA have been experiencing odd problems with the Nexus 10, such as reboots and freezes. I have been suffering with the former only, and faultfinding a problem which occurs randomly 2 or 3 times a day is known to be difficult.

I started 3 days ago by stopping all kinds of syncing, and slowing down monitor events quite a bit. Since then I have seen no reboots :) Of course, as soon as I post this, one is likely to occur, but I was getting them fairly regularly..

Today I felt it was time for the next stage. Which of the sync events was most likely to cause trouble? Well those which happen most frequently are Google+ and GMail, so they could be a good place to start. First though I had to find where on earth auto sync is enabled. This turned out to be hidden in Data usage, click on the 3 dots and there it is :)

So, my first step was to enable auto sync and thats all for now. I have not enabled sync on any of the apps, though I believe Jottacloud has been doing its thing all along. That will do for a few hours before enabling sync on GMail and G+.

What about the ROMs matey?

ROMs I am taking my time with. Now that I have all of my Android devices happily functioning on Jelly Bean 4.2.2 stock ROM  (the GS2 is on a Samsung version), I'm hesitant to go the whole hog as they say in Wiltshire, and turn one of them into a 'brick'.

So, I went part way, attracted by the words better battery performance, the Franco-kernel Updater was next on my list. I had read nothing but good about this kernel, and the updater app made light weight of the job. It was/is well worth the NOK 30 or so it cost, divided by the three Nexus devices I have it running on.

Where battery performance is concerned, take a look at last night's..

Couldn't wish for better results than that, with wi-fi on too!

Replacing the T91MT with a Samsung

My experience rooting the GS2 on the tiny T91MT started a growing itch in the back of my mind.. how much easier it would be if I had a 15" PC. Its very difficult not to scratch at itches of this type, so for days I perused Prisguide.no, and the various ads which fell in my postbox from previous suppliers, until I settled on a Samsung  NP900X4C-A03SE, at a touch under NOK 10K. Gulp! Windows 8 too (Microsoft is not my favourite company, but neither is Apple for the time being). Komplett.no did an excellent job of getting it to me fast, before the Easter holidays, so I had something to do while everyone holidays in the mountains ;)

Thank heavens for search machines! I would have said 'for Google' but they are in my bad books for dropping Google Reader :( Windows 8 was utterly confusing at first. Swiping is not my favourite navigation method, and the Metro/Modern UI is built on this.

I fast found out that:

1.  Keyboard shortcuts are essential
2. ModernMix app from Stardock helps
3. Desktops, a tiny app from Mark Russinovich & Bryce Cogswell gives me three more virtual Desktops.

These helped curb my rage, so now I quite like the black metal panel PC.

On with the story..

I expected the Samsung to come with some 'crapware', but it turned out to not be an unreasonable amount. Norton Security stuff was the most difficult to remove, but when it had gone Windows Defender could be taken into use. I later added Malwarebytes anti-virus too. There was another package too, but it rings no bells with me now but for the word 'cyber' in its name..?

As one should do when a new machine is in a useable state, I installed Macrium Reflect, and made a clone of the 128GB SSD drive to a new 1TB WD USB 3.0 external drive. Bit of a waste of space, but it might come in useful later.

Other 'must have' apps installed were Dropbox, Evernote, Airfoil, VNC, and of course Odin, Kies, Wugfresh, and some other ROM flashing apps, plus WinRar & WinPatrol from my old days ;)

Nuff about PCs!

Rooting the Galaxy S2, the odd man out

As the Nexus Rooting euphoria gradually faded away, I was left with my unrooted Samsung GS2. Looking for a way to Root this wonderful device required much Googling, and reading of XDA threads, as I searched for a Mac way to carry out this task. This proved to go unrewarded..

So often willing helpers would point to the simple PC way of carrying this out. "Use Wugfresh", "Get Odin", "Install Kies", etc., so, in the end I thought OK I'll give it a go, not knowing what frustrations this would stimulate!

At the time I had a tiny ASUS T91MT, which invariably started with an hour or so of Microsoft updates, before one could begin the slow process of installing Kies, a large package needed just for the drivers Odin requires. (Why can't someone simplify things and put up a link to the drivers?).

Anyway, all my thanks go to Jose Farrugia aka @wiredmash who offered the clearest instructions on Rooting the GS2, using the Siyah kernel, see the video and point by point instructions at http://www.wiredmash.com/how-to-root-samsung-galaxy-s2-i9100-jelly-bean-4-1-2/ ... :)

All went well with the above, but for one hitch. The Odin UI more than filled the vertical dimensions of the tiny T91MT, so I was unable to get at the Start button! I tried everything, including a lot of very bad language, until the solution came to mind - change the screen resolution! That gave me a 5x3 inch UI with a tiny Start button I could press, and a minute or so later all was done. Dead simple as the XDA guys said..

Rooting Mania

In 22nd February's post I covered updating to Yakju build on my SG Nexus. I did a LOT of reading on XDA Forums after that until, on March 1st (Susan's birthday) I was mentally prepared to risk turning it into a 'brick'..

A senior member of XDA, efrant, had produced the guide not only for the Yakju task, but also in a paragraph E: which I had overlooked, he spelt out the next step - Rooting the phone!

Well, after almost 2 years spent compiling Gentoo I know what Root is and does, but somehow the idea of 'bricking' your favourite mobile phone is a touch off-putting. Anyway, after becoming tired, confused, and mixing things up like a true n00b on XDA, I succeeded in rooting the Nexus quite late in the evening.

YES! :)   Now I could carry out the next steps - NANDroid backup, and Titanium Backup Pro (TB). Hallowed words of Android's inner sanctum..

TB turned out to have a non-intuitive GUI, particularly where backing up to Dropbox was concerned. The documentation did not clarify how this was done, so I emailed support. They came back with a pleasant description after ca. 24 hours, by which time I had Googled my way to the answer on XDA forums.

It turns out that slowly Uploading to Dropbox is not a good solution, but having a 200GB spare partition on the iMac is, and I found several ways to transfer backups there in the coming days, as I decided on backup schedules.

Then there was the ClamXav GingerBreak Trojan issue! This turned out to be a correct false alarm, as GingerBreak is used in the root process. Moving the iMac's Downloads folder and my work folders to the 200GB partition solved that problem.

To cut a long story short, I Rooted the Nexus 7 next, and after success with that sprinted on to Root the Nexus 10. The latter used a different ClockworkMod (CWM) Recovery file, which clearly wasn't backing up apps. This gave me the opportunity to try TWRP instead of CWM.

TWRP cut out most of the manual work with Fastboot, and was a joy to use compared to pressing Power & Volume buttons, which one has to do with CWM whenever one wants to run a NANDroid backup. It also puts the latter into the 'SDcard' where TB can 'Restore an app from NANDroid', my data test.

Over the next few days I found the following excellent Root applications:

1. DiskUsage. This gives a visual overview of the files system.
2. CWMR Touch Installer. Speeds up access to Recovery.
3. X-Plore. A dual-pane file explorer.
4. Solid Explorer. This is the perfect dual-pane explorer!
5. GooManager. This installs TWRP, very easily!
6. CPU Tuner. Gives you control over power consumption.
7. USB OTG Helper (root). An aid to using USB Mass storage.
8. System Tuner Pro. Monitors everything.
9. ES File Explorer. Gives access to NAS drives..
10. Battery Monitor Widget Pro.

Mini rant about lack of Nexus 10 CPU temperature sensor

From XDA forum:

Two things spoil my feelings for the Nexus 10 a touch. 

The day after I first started using the device I woke to a dead device. Could have sworn it was switched off, but even so the battery was lifeless. Scary!

The other thing I discovered yesterday - there are no CPU temperature sensors. 

Not only did this surprise me, (my three other Android devices have them) but I was surprised by the lack of search results pointing this out. This thread has one of the results 

There are a few issues with text size on some of the apps I use, but they will be sorted out in time I feel sure.

All in all a great device, well worth the money

No more frustrating wait for an OTA Update

I came across this excellent thread at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1626895 which provided very clear instructions on changing the yakjuxw version on my Galaxy Nexus to yakju, which should make any further OTA updates available without waiting months!

One just needs to read it all through a number of times, and be sure to test each stage before doing the final update. The reading took days, while the actual update took minutes :)

So, I now have Android 4.2.2 and the YAKJU build.

This caught my eye emotionally

Captivating desolation

A really horrible week!

Tuesday this week has been on my calendar for ages. I was down for a pre-op test at the local hospital's eye clinic, and my daughter Susan was able to drive me.

Its been ages since I had a cold, but damn me an irritating cough started on the Monday morning, and kept me awake thoughout the night, so I was all for cancelling the appointment. Susan talked me out of that for which I am very glad, now.

The weather in the Oslo area has been -10C, grey and very dark for ages. Even the local street lights have been turned off, which I assume is to save power, something I have never known before in Norway..

Anyway, the eye tests went well and I was given two operation appointments with a month between them. The first on April 19th, assuming no return of the dreaded cough..

Its Thursday now and I have upped my food intake to somewhere near normal. Porridge with gorgeous honey for breakfast, and a fishy product called Lobnobs with green beans for lunch. Of course my guts 'blew a gasket' after all this, but the end is in sight. (no pun intended :)

CES 2013 week

Two things have caught my eye so far into the CES week:

Nvidia's Tegra 4, a fantastic piece of technology for 2013, and Ubuntu for Mobile Phones, which will be releasing an image for Galaxy Nexus in February.. see more info on the latter at http://goo.gl/4nZUb

The demo by Mark Shuttleworth was really most impressive, making you (me) wish it was available right now! see Engadgets YouTube at http://goo.gl/rmY43

Wondering whether to delete this post or not.. other than the above, Qualcomm and Samsung presented their latest chips, all of which will be appearing in the next quarter or two. They are all unbelievable miracles of technology, so I am amazed by the overweight of negative comments in various podcasts since the show closed.

Come on guys! Lets start reporting on positive news for once...