My phones query

This is my answer to a query by Marek Pawlowski.

Thanks for asking the question, which has resulted in my going back through various records to trace all my phones and their dates of purchase.

My 'phone' history goes back to 'portable' phones where portable meant you could carry it around if you were healthy ;) I believe it was a Norwegian brand, and I could even log into my PC over 300 baud.

My 'museum' contains all of the phones since then bar a Nexus One which was replaced when its power button became intermittent.And an iPhone 4 my nephew has taken over.

I won't bore you with the full list, but the first phone I considered 'smart' was the E61. A gorgeous beast of a phone which could do everything but take pictures. There were a couple of Nokia Tablets after that, and I would bet my boots Apple had a good look at those before coming with its iPhone.

However, I digress. The smartphone that was a quantum leap when I bought it was the HTC Magic. A solid little phone which still works on Android 1.5.. I tried to warn people back then in June 2009 that Android was going to take over, but few listened :(

Although you needed good eyesight, it was so much easier to use than the E61. So, my money goes on the Magic where it all started.

Chromecast Backdrop

Spent some time yesterday trying to find out why Backdrop photos were so dark on my TV. Was it the HDMI position, my photos, but no, others photos were dull too.

At least I discovered that my photos were perfectly bright when Cast directly, as were others photos. This could be seen when in the Chromecast app on the Backdrop page where one can follow the slideshow, and View Photo whenever you want to do a compare.

So I wrote a brief query on the Chromecast Community and so far received a couple of ansers that were no help. The first guy claimed his were OK, though I still wonder.

Could Backdrop be using a different path to the Chromecast device vs Casting from a device, i.e. is the latter more direct and/or of higher resolution?

Will see if this receives more answers anon.

Mobile device status

Have been 'having fun' with my various Android devices in the last few days/week (?), after keeping ajour with CyanogenMod CM12 status.

The Galaxy Nexus from Samsung is a solid workhorse, too slow on startup for me to love it, but, when CM11 nightlies started dropping off in frequency, it was clear that things were moving fast on the CM12. Actually the developer had trouble with his own GNex too..

So, when a new Beta was released for the GNex I downloaded it, with a special Gapps version, read through the experiences others were having on XDA, and set at it with gusto. Its amazing where the time goes when playing with these things, so I had a couple of late nights and early mornings during the last week or so..

The CM12 beta installed OK, but there was space trouble for the first versions of Gapps I tried. Finally, I had success with the Pico version, and the long process of restoring apps began. Finally got things the way I like, using the Google Now launcher, though startup still suffers delays which I believe is related to sorting out the Carrier (Telenor). Will try it without a SIM, and see if that helps.

Lollipop was now running on the LG G3, the Nexus 10, Nexus 7 2013, and the GNex.

This left the Galaxy S2 running very fast on Stock 4.1.2. There was really no need to upgrade this device to Lollipop other than to see how it ran, but after quite a lot of preparation I downloaded various suggestions from old GS2 YouTubes aimed at getting my Recovery to a version required for CM12 installation.

Lots of the above were great for installing some kernel to get root status, but the only one that included a very old version of CWM was the Siyah kernel I had used a year or so ago.. When I had got the GS2 into a pretty hopeless state, the Siyah saved my bacon :)

Now I had the old CWM version it was possible to Restore what I believe was CM10 from the middle of last year. This restored slowly, but it got me to a state allowing Restore of CM11 from around Christmas. I then had CWM 6.0.4.5. Enough to install the CM12 Beta from lysergic, which awaited with the same Pico Gapps.

The CM12 Beta installed with no problems, and I was able to run Nandroid after setting things up the way I like. I am really impressed by how well Lollipop runs on this very old device. Equally as well as the GNex, and with 200+ MB free ram!

There we are then, all Lollipopped :)

This by the way is written on my new N20p 13" Chromebook from Lenovo.

LG WCD-100 Qi charger purchase

I bought a ZENS charger a while back, but the high temperature compared to using microUSB has put me off using it on devices with built in batteries, as I am convinced the high temperature WILL reduce the battery's lifetime.

Today I watched some YouTube videos about the LG Orb charger, but ended up buying a WCD-100 which is designed by LG for their G3, from CD-ON for kr. 299. The orbs cost closer to 500.-, not a price I wished to pay.

I tried the G3 on the ZENS, but I think it is on the edge of providing the right level of power.

Post-Christmas present, Lenovo Chromebook N20p with touch

I have had my eye, and ears via podcasts, on Chromebooks, and at last with a price of only NOK 2.2K I ordered a Lenovo N20p 11.6" touch screen device.

It arrived, surprisingly, on the 2nd of January, and took no time to set up as the Gmail account finds everything you have previously set up on Chrome.

On the 2nd I tried out various apps I mainly use, and today I tried more advanced apps like Chrome Remote Desktop, which allowed me to control the iMac and change iTunes, there being no Remote for iTunes app, which is my essential app on various other Android devices.

Evernote on the web is not very attractive, so I can only hope Evernote stop adding features I have no use for, and get down to making the web UI useable.

Otherwise, I was happy to find Chromecast worked well with YouTube (which also has a crap UI).

That's it for now. I'll be back later when my experience is a few weeks old..

Pre-Christmas presents

I actually pre-ordered a Nexus 6, but this was an almighty delivery screw up by Google/Motorola that I changed my mind, and bought an LG G3 with one of those fun QuickCircle covers.

The latter wakes with a gentle double tap, to show a gorgeous watch, which is replaced by 5 icons on sliding to the left or right. The most useful one of these is the yellow notification icon, which shows each new notification as you slide left.

The second most useful icon starts the camera, which has an excellent auto focus, and will take a photo on saying "KIMchee". "LG" doesn't work as reliably.. photo quality is excellent.

A third icon is a third party app giving access to a bunch more icons, like calculator, messages, call log, music, torch, etc.

QuickCircle was a big deciding factor in my purchase, while the old 1/3" sensor was a negative factor in my decision to drop the Nexus 6. Sony has announced a new Exmor R IMX147LQT sensor with 1/2.3" size.

Steve Litchfield made a YouTube video about the LG G3, which he described as almost perfect. Needless to say, I agree. Lollipop should arrive soon, though 4.4.2 is perfectly OK, and LG 'stuff' is no problem.

Windows 10 Tech Preview

Thought I would have a go at this when I heard about the opportunity on Windows Weekly, knowing I could learn something under way.

If all went well I would have learnt nothing, but it didn't. I made the flash drive, but I just couldn't get it to work. After a lot of time spent looking for the answer, I wrote a post on the relevant Windows forum, and went on to try another PC, my old T91MT.

This installed with none of the Samsung's problems,  and,  though the screen resolution is lower than the prerequisites, everything else worked much faster than Windows 7..

This success led me back to the Samsung, where a couple of lucky Google searches pointed me at the Rufus flash drive builder. First efforts with this failed to install as well, but another lucky search led me to producing another Rufus build,  this time in FAT32 format. Lord knows why, but that allowed me to complete a custom install, which got rid of all the Samsung rubbish, which was so difficult to remove in 8.1.

From there it was all plain sailing :-)

Once I was happy with the status, I carried out a new Macrium Backup, very fast now! I also looked into Recovery, making Bootable flash drives  for both PCs, and custom Recovery folders with the help of reagentc and recimage.  (See Evernote)

This used up all the old flash drives, so I ordered a couple of new ones, which might arrive today.