Transitioning from iPhone 3GS to HTC Evo 4G (Part 1)

I know. Long time, no blog, right? I'm on "vacation," I've got some spare time, and I just got the HTC Evo 4G yesterday afternoon. I figured I'm overdue, so here it goes.

Hi. Longtime iPhone user, first time Android ponderer. Love your show...

My contract has been up with AT&T for some time now, and I had been debating "the next phone." I had been using the iPhone 3G and 3GS for some time (gave my wife the 3G when she joined AT&T and took her new phone. I know, shame on me), but I wasn't ready for the iPhone 4. I've been growing tired of the New Wave Apple Fandom. You know what I'm talking about. All the people that want Mac Book Pro's, but then end up "needing" to run a Windows Virtual Machine to do work. Not to mention, like some of your luxury cars, you pay extra for the fancy Apple badge on the computer. Never mind the irony that I'm typing this on my home iMac, but don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Don't get me wrong, Apple makes slick looking products. They are generally easy to use or figure out, and generally work well within their own universe. Shiny, pretty fast... and your user experience is controlled by Steve Stalin... I mean Jobs. That's what turned me off. I was already growing tired of those using Macs just because it was shiny, but wouldn't try to figure out how to let go of their Microsoft world. I've been annoyed by all the "Area 51" secrecy at Cupertino, creating overinflated hype and wild expectations for Apple Announcements that lead to a media frenzy, and the mild letdown when some of the rumors weren't true. I was aggravated that Apple wouldn't allow some useful mobile apps in their iTunes store, such as Google Voice. And then came the iPhone 4. With its issues, and the snarkiness of Steve Jobs when people were angry their expensive devices wouldn't work right, it was the last straw.

All that negative technical energy lead me to, "What's the alternative?" There was no way I was going to use Windows Mobile (Remember their aptly named WinCE... or Wince?). WebOS is kind of nostalgic, but sadly I think "Palm is dead." And don't get me started on Blackberry (hello "bland"). A few months ago, I wasn't sure about Android, but now I've taken the plunge. Their Android Market doesn't seem so restrictive and their OS is backed by Google. Even though Google is probably the next "Evil Big Company," I like their products. So yesterday, I went to the Sprint store (boy was it crowded) and got myself the HTC Evo 4G.

My, that's a big screen you have, Evo...

Today, I'll go through the hardware portion of the Evo 4G, and compare it to my old iPhone 3GS. I know it's comparing apples to oranges (pun not intended), but this is more intended for those that are in my boat of iPhone users that don't want iPhone users anymore.

First off, the size of the phone itself. Noticeably, the screen is bigger. The Evo has a 4.3" screen, compared to the 3GS 3.5" screen. However, the Evo (4.8 x 2.6 x .5) really isn't that much bigger than the 3GS (4.5 x 2.4 x .48). I know some people say the Evo is too big, but when you put it in that perspective, is it?

The camera(s) (8 megapixel camera with flash and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera) on the Evo is much better than the one 3 megapixel, no flash, camera on the 3GS. Granted, you'd hope so since the Evo is much newer.

I will say Apple did one thing arguably right with the iPhone. I do like the buttons and controls on my iPhone better than the Evo. The iPhone has the one magic button to return you to the main screens, as opposed to Evo's web browser-ish four buttons for navigation. Although I'm starting to get the handle of how navigation is supposed to work with the Evo/Android, I don't see my 2 year old son figuring out my Evo like he did with my iPhone. No more just handing him the cell phone to play his games when he gets fussy and not having to help him.

Also, I like the overall volume buttons on the iPhone as well. They both have the up and down volume button, but the iPhone also had the useful "change to vibrate mode" button as well. Speaking of volume, I'm disappointed that the Evo didn't come with a corded, hands-free accessory. I liked that the iPhone 3GS came with one, and it had a volume and rudimentary music/voice control on the wire.

Now comes the real unpleasant fact about the Evo. Its battery life does not compare to the iPhone. I will definitely have to keep a car charger and the USB charging cable with me at all times. It also brings me to another gripe that I also have with the iPhone. The Evo uses YAPC (Yet Another Proprietary Cable). At first glance, it looks like it uses a micro-USB cable, which would've been GREAT (hey, Blackberry uses one!). It's not. It has about the same width and shape, yet just not as "tall".

When will this diatribe end???

So far, I'm not blown away by Evo if I think about it from a pragmatic approach. The buttons, the battery life are a bit disappointing. Not to forget the fact I'm now using Sprint/Nextel, my least favorite of the wireless providers I've used in the past, doesn't get me very enthused. However, the look and feel, and the freedom from Apple's Iron Curtain is exciting and pretty cool. It's sort of like the feeling you have when you're getting into a new relationship with someone you're been really interested in from afar. Unlike most of those kinds of relationships, I hope this one will last through its annoyances and flaws.

In the next few days, I will try to post more about my experiences with Sprint service quality, usability, the main apps that I use, and if I decide to run back to AT&T before my 30 days are up.

Monkey - House: A Big F-U to GoDaddy

Heads up to those that, like me, trust their domain registrations with GoDaddy.

Monkey - House: A Big F-U to GoDaddy

It's ridiculous what they can do when your domain lapses. I guess I got distracted by their advertising.

iPhone messaging lameness

I like my iPhone, but today I discovered another behavior I'm not too thrilled about. I didn't realize that people can send email directly to your iPhone. I'm used to connecting to Gmail with the Mail client if I want to receive email. I saw in someone's post that you can email directly using someone's phone number "@txt.att.net" (ex. 5551234567@txt.att.net).

I tried it out from my Gmail account through the web browser, and sure enough, I got this SMS message.

FRM: My "From" Name
SUBJ: test
MSG: does this work?

However, all it says is that it came from some non-descript number. I was able to successfully reply to it and received it in my Gmail Inbox.

That's fine and all, but that's an odd way to get a message. Someone could change their "From" full name in their mail client and send deceiving emails, since there is no way to verify the actual sender.

Another iPhone security problem

Reported by El Reg, it appears that the "Emergency Call" feature on PIN protected iPhones are not discriminatory to certain numbers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07/iphone_passcode/

I've confirmed this on my iPhone 3G (version 2.1), and was able to dial a non-emergency number (my landline phone number). This number is also not listed as a contact in my phone either. So, word to the wise, if you lose your iPhone, people can still make unauthorized calls on it.

Who would think adding a monitor would be so hard?

I was asked today if I'd like an LCD Monitor. I was thinking, "Why not? I could extend my laptop's desktop in Windows XP to it." It's not a bad monitor either; a NEC MultiSync LCD 1970NX. Granted, it doesn't have a flashy widescreen or anything spectacular about it.

I plugged it in to my power strip and VGA port on my Lenovo T61p, and turned it on. Screen black. Oh yeah, need to change my display output settings with a couple toggles of Fn-F7. Still screen black. Huh. Looked at the Display Properties, and XP sees the other monitor and the monitor appears to get a signal. What gives?

I go to NEC's website and see there are drivers for Windows XP. Maybe Plug-and-Play doesn't work? Strange, but okay. Installed the drivers, the LCD 1970NX is detected, etc. Screen black. OK, reboot? Screen black. Went into the menu for the monitor and set it back to factory defaults. Screen still black.

OK, so I go back into Display Properties. Try to make it my default monitor. No dice. Cycle through the display out settings (Fn-F7) so that it only uses the video out. Denied. Change the resolution to something lower, like 800x600 and 16bit color. Still no video. Muck with the screen refresh rate, and change from 60 to 75 Hertz. Starting to lose my patience.

Quick search in Google doesn't yield any known issues, so I cave and ask our local desktop guy. He starts to go through the same steps I've outlined above, without any more success than I do. Then he notices something. My monitor is plugged into the VGA port on my laptop, instead of the VGA port on my port replicator/dock. Apparently, the VGA port on my laptop won't work when it's plugged into my dock, and I have to use the VGA port on it. Makes sense, but I wish XP didn't "detect" the monitor plugged in directly to the laptop, else I would have probably determined that I have to plug the monitor into the dock a lot quicker.

Sudo not included in default Solaris 10 installs

To my surprise, my "default installation" of Solaris 10 that seems to install every known package in the world (who needs Firefox on a server?!?!) does not include "sudo." Apparently, it's on the Companion DVD or available for download from

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/

There are also a couple interesting twists with the default package install. One is that the package is installed in /opt/sfw. This includes the sudoers file, which is located and read from /opt/sfw/etc/. In my opinion, this is a pain, because it doesn't put sudo or visudo in the normal default $PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin. I ended up creating symlinks for /etc/sudoers, /usr/bin/sudo, and /usr/sbin/visudo to the appropriate locations in /opt/sfw.

Another strange twist is that after the install, you need to chmod the sudo command with "chmod 4111 sudo" because Solaris doesn't inherently trust the package and it's files. This is another annoyance, since obviously anyone installing sudo had to take extra steps to do so in the first place and obviously already trusts its integrity.

Chalk up another reason why I like Linux over Solaris.

Unhappy with Red Hat

Right now, I'm not happy with Red Hat. At least not with their sales department.

My group is interested in the capabilities of Red Hat Satellite Server, so I was going to try to obtain a trial license and download it. As far as I know, we don't have any RHEL licenses in our department. I'm sure somewhere in the company we do, since we have thousands of employees, but I sincerely doubt I'll be able to track that account down, and even then, doubt I can use it for access to the Red Hat Network. So, I applied for a trial license of RHEL and was hoping through that entry into RHN, I could also get a trial of Satellite Server. I still couldn't find that as a download, so I've made a couple of attempts to submit requests through their website on how I could evaluate their Satellite Server. No response. I would think sales people would jump at the chance to talk to a warm body that offered up their contact information.

I know there's Spacewalk, and I am interested in that. Unfortunately, it's only supported on RHEL5 compatible OS's. Our standard hasn't included RHEL5 yet; and they aren't open to "exceptions".

Any suggestions? Are there other resale vendors I could talk to that would let me have a 30 day evaluation to download and run Satellite for RHEL4?