28 Oct
2013
28 Oct
'13
2:56 p.m.
So, today I dropped my fancy smart phone (HTC One S) and smashed the screen
to smithereens. I have almost (almost! but I think not quite) just had it
with the concept of cell phones, almost ready to just figure out how to
plan ahead and make use of my land line and wifi.
But I don't think I'm there -- I just rely too heavily on stuff like Google
Maps and text messaging when I travel or am otherwise out and about.
I thought I'd throw the question out there before I up and buy a new phone.
Does anybody have a 4g, T-Mobile compatible phone they'd recommend…or
perhaps one to sell?
Or… what are some good "I'm sick of dealing with cell phones" hacks these
days?
Pete
p.s. I'm (finally!) out of my TMobile contract and happily so. I am also
done with insurance plans. I want to just buy something free and clear,
something that I can unlock and potentially throw a foreign SIM into in the
future. Even if it means spending more up front. I'm sick of cell carrier
shenanigans and don't want to play their money games if I can avoid it.
28 Oct
28 Oct
3:16 p.m.
It looks like a replacement screen for your phone is somewhere in the
$80-90 range if you want to replace that. Here's one
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/htc-one-s-lcd-replacement
If your phone is out of contract, you can ask the carrier to unlock it, and
they will. Then you can put whatever SIM card in that you like.
-steve
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
--
-steve
5:37 p.m.
A decent plurality of mobile device users are fed up with carrier
shenanigans, Spynet, planned obsolescence, and other "heads they win,
tails we lose" games to extract money out of people.
This points to the need for a grassroots project to design & have
manufactured, a mobile device that's robust and fully user-serviceable,
which can also include other benefits:
= Perspex instead of glass for the touch-surface on the screen. Main
housing either aluminum or thick enough plastic to withstand drops.
("Lite" as in devices = "Lite" as in beer, "no thanks!")
= Four visible screws at the four corners of the screen module, into
brass inserts in the plastic housing: remove the screws, remove &
replace the screen in a minute or two.
= Circuit board mounted to main housing with via the same screws, with
rubber grommets to protect against drop impacts. Battery separate from
circuit board so it can be replaced by end-user.
= Hardware switches to enable selectively turning off the audio
transducers (mic and earphone), camera, and GPS, and turn off power to
the entire unit. This obvious privacy/security enhancement would add
less than $5 to the component cost of the unit.
= Data storage on micro-SD card, so you can keep your data while
changing out other components or if you ship the device back to a third
party for whatever reason. Two card slots to enable selective data
copy from A to B.
= Connectors for wired headset (bluetooth sucks & is highly insecure)
and keyboard/mouse. Nearly 30 years ago I saw a prototype IBM keyboard
that was about the size of a touchtone dial and intuitively easy to
use. Each key surface was split into four indentations such that your
fingers pressed multiple keys at once, thereby achieving "chord
keyboard" compact size without a learning curve to use it. By now the
patents have expired so this could be freely manufactured.
= Multiple SIM Card slots to enable software-selectable use of multiple
carriers. This enables direct and immediate use of competing carriers
moment-to-moment, and if it was widely adopted, might force carriers to
behave better. This would also enable keeping multiple unrelated
telephone numbers on one device (such as personal and work, for partial
pushback against the 24-hour work day).
= Secure operating system with full user control (rather than a walled
garden or equivalent, see also:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-control…
re Google's efforts to manipulate the Android ecosystem).
= And last but not least, default to G.711 audio for voice calls,
because putting up with G.729 and its pre-1935 (proof on request) audio
quality in 2013 is absurd. Less bandwidth for Spynet, more bandwidth
for speech.
That would be a mobile device that you control, that isn't subject to
yearly planned obsolescence, that doesn't spy on you everywhere you go,
and that you can repair with nothing more than a small Philips
screwdriver. At that point, I'd even get one;-)
-G.
=====
On 13-10-28-Mon 2:56 PM, Pete Forsyth wrote:
8:58 p.m.
G! I love this annotated feature list, and would gladly jump into a
Kickstarter campaign to produce one. I'm sure I can't be the only one.
Thank you, to you and the others who have repled to my request. Today I
bought, for $150, a Alcatel Fierce, brand new, which seems to be a pretty
decent phone with a mediocre screen and a mediocre camera. I believe I will
be happy with it (all things considered) and am happier with $150 of
liability in my pocket every day than $500.
I will also order the repair kit for the One S, and hope I can get it back
up and running.
Pete
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 5:37 PM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <g2g-public01(a)att.net>wrote;wrote:
10:01 p.m.
= And last but not least, default to G.711 audio for voice calls.
Just curious. Why G.711 instead of opus?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Opus_bitrate%2Blatency_comparison.svg
Jeremy
--
https://twitter.com/jwentwistle
On 2013-10-28 20:58, Pete Forsyth wrote:
11:59 p.m.
Re. Pete & Jeremy-
Kickstarter:
Hardware development can be expensive, so any Kickstarter campaign for
this is going to have to be well-planned as to cost (and then double it
from the estimate) and timeline (ditto, double it). And it's going to
have to anticipate interference from carriers and surveillance
interests. OTOH, with everyone tweaked about NSA, if there was ever a
time for this, now's the time.
$150 of fragile electronics is better than $500 of fragile electronics.
BTW, Alcatel owns some part of AT&T, possibly what was left of the
manufacturing arm, that was once known as Western Electric, maker of
near-indestructible telephones.
Opus:
I hadn't run across this one before, but it appears to be a
variable-bandwidth transmission algorithm. If that's the case, then the
upside is that it lets you download data in the middle of a phone call,
but the downside is that it lets adware, spyware, and bloatware do
likewise.
So my inclination is to give the end-user deliberate control over
bandwidth allocation, such as by clicking something to allow a bandwidth
shift. Thus you could e.g. check out a link a friend sent you without
letting adware/spyware hog your bandwidth.
G.711 is landline-grade audio. Even better is HD (high-def) audio
(Panasonic and a few others, starting with landline VOIP), so phone
calls will sound as good as FM radio (and as good as what the snoops get
when they activate your mic when you aren't looking). HD audio and
reliable connections would mean the end of "I don't like talking on the
phone (because crap audio and drop-outs are so damn frustrating)."
If Opus can do HD and can be configured as user-controllable, it should
be a selectable option. Give users a choice of voice algorithms, and
built-in crypto while we're at it.
Other:
Dirty Little Secrets Department: Skype over a mobile is almost as good
as landline audio. Skype is just proprietary VOIP (with surveillance of
course) so there's no good reason one couldn't develop a Skype-like app
with built-in voice crypto and landline-grade audio, that would use the
data connection to get the bandwidth it needs.
Something else that's needed: An anonymizer website that people can use
to access things such as Google Maps without Google surveillance. Ideal
case: the server constantly generates address-pair requests more or less
at random, so your search for the local Circle-A Cafe doesn't stick
out. Encrypted link between user and server; user's request goes into
queue with the random requests, and gets a reply in a minute or less.
Then a local app on the mobile device takes the data and provides actual
directions, rather than relaying the "turn-by-turn" stuff through Google.
Lastly: Bush's former FCC Chairman is now a lobbyist for the carrier
industry, and was just recently advocating for data caps, saying "it's
not too late for caps." (High bandwidth + data caps = boobytrap for
high monthly bills.) One more battle front to fight...
-G.
=====
Pete wrote:
G! I love this annotated feature list, and would gladly jump into a
Kickstarter campaign to produce one. I'm sure I can't be the only one.
Thank you, to you and the others who have repled to my request. Today I
bought, for $150, a Alcatel Fierce, brand new, which seems to be a
pretty decent phone with a mediocre screen and a mediocre camera. I
believe I will be happy with it (all things considered) and am happier
with $150 of liability in my pocket every day than $500.
I will also order the repair kit for the One S, and hope I can get it
back up and running.
Pete
Jeremy wrote:
29 Oct
29 Oct
8:23 a.m.
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:59 PM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <g2g-public01(a)att.net>wrote;wrote:
Agreed on all points.
Hah, interesting. The review so far: the screen is noticeably lower visual
quality than my One S, but it has yet to bother me. It's a little less
responsive as a touch screen too, which seems more likely to annoy down the
road. The screen *feels* like a synthetic of some kind, haven't looked it
up yet; I figure this means it's less likely to smash than glass
(awesome!!) and more likely to smudge (meh, maybe I'll grab some screen
protectors). And I actually like the simple, "cheap" feel -- a continual
reminder that I'm being a little less excessive. Haven't put the camera
through the paces yet. I also read it doesn't have LTE, which is one of the
benefits of TMobile service…so I'll do a speedtest with tethering when I'm
in a suitable location. Speaking of, the connectivity has always been bad
in my apartment, but is almost non-existent with this phone. But since this
phone has built-in wifi calling, I don't think that will be a practical
problem for me.
In other words: so far so good!
<snip>
I've recently been experimenting with Jitsi on my laptop. It seems buggy
and sometimes simply doesn't work, or won't allow me to find my contacts;
but when it *does* work, the sound quality is excellent. I'm told that'
partially because it's true peer-to-peer, which Skype no longer is. Any
experience with, or thoughts about, this free software?
Additionally, it seems like the scheme you describe (decisions on the local
device) would be better in areas without connectivity. Input the locations,
hop in the car, put phone in airplane mode to conserve battery..
Interesting, did data caps get outlawed somewhere in there? I (perhaps
naively) was assuming that the carriers were responding to market demand
when they lifted those...
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6 comments
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participants (4)
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GtwoG PublicOhOne -
Jeremy Entwistle -
Pete Forsyth -
Steve Berl