Nexus 7 from Multicom

I felt a bit fed up my Samsung Galaxy Nexus was not getting a swift update to Jelly Bean, and had heard only good reports of the ASUS Nexus 7, so on Saturday 25th August at 11 AM I ordered a US model from Multicom..

On Tuesday at 1:30 PM it was delivered to the door by my friendly postman :) That I call service!

I plugged it in to charge, started adding key apps, and was a little surprised to be advised that an update to 4.1.1 was ready, even if the battery level wasn't. I continued adding apps, including Evernote. That was a mistake as I have almost 5000 notes containing a number of images. It took a long time, and I don't think it did the battery much good..

When the battery level allowed, I upgraded to 4.1.1 OK, and continued adding apps. However, although I was happy with the look and feel of the Nexus 7, I was worried how slow the charging was going. Checking battery state with Spare Parts Pro I found it said the device was discharging.. WHAT!?

I tried a few things to narrow things down: swapped the Nexus USB cable with my GS2's. No change on the Nexus, but the GS2 certainly charged OK via the Nexus cable.. then I used the iPad's charger, but still the device said 'discharging', even when it was slowly moving towards 75%.

Ended up plugging it in beside my bed, and it reached 100% by the morning. Will add comments as and when I learn more. By the way, there are a number of other posts about slow Nexus 7 charging on the web.

NFC problem on Galaxy Nexus

Spent a number of hours and tried lots of apps in my search for reason why it didn't react at all. Then I remembered some connection with batteries, and realized I might have a defect (or fake) spare battery.. YES! that was it.

Swapped back what must have been the original battery and everything works OK.

Have more 1KB NFC stickers on the way which will give me more scope for experiment. The Sony Xperia Smart Tags are only 48byte capacity..

Galaxy Nexus addition

Been meaning to write a note or two about my new Nexus phone, bought via Telenor just before they ran out of stock.

At the same time I changed my Mobilbredbånd 199 plan by buying an LTE/4G ready Miniruter. This gives me 2 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s up, which is OK. The phone plan is pay as you go, to which I have added NOK 200. That should last for yonks!

During the install process there were two updates, which left me with ICS 4.0.4, a prerequisite for Jelly Bean apparently. Of course I hope to get the update to JB in the very near future, but according to a Danish contact on XDA Forums, the Scandinavian build I have is not treated well by Google :( I left queries about this on G+ and Twitter but received no replies.. No big rush, but I am looking forward to seeing JB.

Reviews about the Nexus 7 are really positive, and the price here in Norway is around NOK 2300, i.e. a no brainer... as soon as the local version is offered I'll order one.

The iPad 3 is OK, I use it mainly for reading books on the Kindle app, but I have gone off Apple. I refuse to buy overpriced products which are virtually unrepairable, and I hate Apple's patent war against anything Android.

No real Blogger app for iPad

I'm writing this with the iPhone app, but there appears to be no option to double its size like other iPhone apps.

Yesterday I had quite a session copying the Handy Safe Pro database from my iMac to the new Google Nexus.. should have been easy - 3 files only - but first I had to learn the trick of loading the Dropbox files 'offline' on the Nexus. One can do this by making them favourites! This makes the files available in a cache file, then it was a matter of moving the files to the Epocware folder, replacing the current ones. I was almost surprised that it worked after all that! It was such a finicky job moving files around with the file manager I was using.

Not too happy with Blogger! It just crapped out after I appended a new paragraph saying how happy I am with the ZTE performance vs tethering.

More learning..

One more thing I learnt this morning was how to login to the ZTE LTE/4G Mobilruter via a browser, change the admin name from 'admin', then change the miniruter password from the long weird one found under the device, to one that is easier for ordinary users to enter..

Must say I'm pretty happy wth the device's performance out here in the sticks ;) 2Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up, which is better than the speeds I get while tethering either the iPhone or Android devices. Its small enough to drop in a pocket so I have mobile data wherever I go.. only kr.199,- month, no limits.

Result of frustration with iPhone 4

On Monday I called Eplehuset to hear what could be done about the defect iPhone 4 Home Button. Getting it fixed would cost me another kr. 1800,-, this after 18 months of light use! You may imagine my frustration on hearing about "Apple being known for its quality" on Macbreak Weekly today. Grrr!

So, yesterday, after considerable thought about how I would  take care of the few apps which only exist on iOS, e.g. Mindnode Touch, Momento, and a couple of others, I ordered a Galaxy Nexus Titan Sølv 16 GB from Telenor with a Kontant Abonnement (max cash, but lowest total price)


At the same time I ordered the LTE/4G Miniruter for kr. 99,- to go with my Mobilbredbånd199 data contract. This will let me use 'free' data wherever I take it  :)


So, I expect to receive both of these items in a couple of days time. They are already on the way by Special post.


Looking forward to experiencing Jelly Bean 4.1...

Power plug hell!

And these are the ones I use..