HowardChui.com: Batteries included

Posts filed under 'Phones'

Blackberry Bold Video

Here the Blackberry Bold video:

FYI, the extra ‘button’ on each side is for the cradle.

9 comments May 21st, 2008

Blackberry Bold Preview

Okay, here it is; our very brief preview of the new Blackberry Bold AKA Blackberry 9000 AKA Meteor.

Our Bold is a preproduction unit. Things might change from now till when production units are available.

Compared to the previous series the 9000 brings all the various 8000 special features like GPS, WiFi, camera and puts it all in one device. You also get HSDPA (3G), a higher resolution display, faster processor, more user storage space (1GB), 3.5mm stereo jack (standard size so you can use your iPod’s headphones), external memory card slot (not internal) along with an extra side button and a possibly iPhone inspired look (I think of the look as ‘iBerry’).

Software-wise you get the latest version Blackberry OS 4.6. The most notable features of 4.6 is a more modern looking browser, new menu skin (it has animated menu icons and is more readable text because it’s high contrast).

Here’s the tour: If you look at the edges the Bold looks just like an iPhone except instead of being chromed (shiny) it’s a matte finish. The keys are very similar to the 8800 except they’re slightly flatter and have a bit more travel to them. I also found that I was less likely to accidentally press neighboring keys on the Bold - I’m not sure why. The trackball feels about the same.

On the left side there’s a hole for the left speaker a 3.5mm headphone jack, mini USB connector, voice recognition (convenience) key and Micro SD card slot. The last ‘button’ is for the cradle.

The right side has the other speaker, the other cradle connector, camera button (convenience key) and volume buttons.

On top you get a mute button, the power button has migrated to the END key (for better or for worse, probably for better since it was kind of confusing to have 2 identical feeling buttons on top).

The bottom has the microphone and rear cover release key. I’m not sure what the other hole is for

The screen has a resolution of 480×320 which is noticably sharper than the 8800’s 320×240. Text is crisper, that sort of thing. The finish on the screen cover is more matte and doesn’t reflect as much light. It’s also noticeably brighter. It reminds of the first gen (current gen) iPhone.

The plastics used in the Bold feel a little cheaper than the 8800’s. One difference though is that the Bold will have a pleather back (or so I’ve been told - the one I have is just regular plastic). The Bold’s also slightly lighter which makes it feel less substantial. Their footprint’s are about the same, though the Bold has more curves.

Out going sound quality is terrific. Incoming doesn’t have much his but it’s slightly muddy sounding. Hopefully this will fixed in the production version.

The speaker is really loud and has reasonable fidelity.

Software wise the menu’s look has been updated. The new browser renders pages like they would on a desktop computer. Aside from those 2 changes the Bold doesn’t feel all that different.

RF wise the Bold is noticeably better than the 8800. It’s able to place and hold onto calls where the 8800 can’t. Sound quality is also noticeably better. What’s great is this Bold is a pre-production unit so RF and sound quality might get even better (who knows?).

It’s too soon to conclude much but really with the exception of the build quality (which is slightly worse) the Bold is a noticeable improvement in almost every aspect.

We’ll have some more pictures and possibly a video later so stay tuned.

25 comments May 20th, 2008

Blackberry Bold Preview coming

More pics to come.

Add comment May 20th, 2008

RIM launches new BlackBerry Bold

Here’s the BlackBerry Bold AKA the 9000. Besides a different look it has:

480×320 display
faster 624Mhz processor
1GB memory + Micro SDHC slot
Tri-band HSDPA
802.11abg WiFi
GPS
speaker independent voice dial
1500mAh battery
included Documents to Go (lets you edit Office files)
improved web browser
2 megapixel camera with flash

Rogers launches Nokia n95 8GB

The Nokia n95 8GB is a great phone. If you’re Canadian and been itching for a carrier branded version complete with carrier customizations your wait is over.

Rogers just announced that they’re going to be carrying the n95 8GB. It’s going to be 399.99 on a 3 year (not sure if that’s on a Vision plan) or 599.99 straight up. The n95 8GB will be locked to Rogers.

One of the data plans available for it is 20 bucks a month, unlimited on device browsing (using Nokia’s terrific s60 browser), 2500SMS, “100’s” of MMS (the Rogers guy’s words) and unlimited web email. If you sign up on a 3 year then you also get unlimited Vision. The $7 unlimited on device browsing plan is also available.

If you add your own apps or use the Nokia email client (for POP or iMAP) then data is billed per kb (so don’t use your Slingbox unless you have WiFi). I asked how they can differentiate between the different types of data. One guy said they use deep packet inspection (the same thing Rogers uses to throttle bittorrent).

There are the typical Rogers customizations; separate Vision app, Music store that doesn’t work with the built-in music player, that sort of thing. It also appears to come with Telenav (which you have to pay to use) - Nokia’s mapping program is also available.

While I’m not thrilled with the customizations, I’m lukewarm about the plans. The data plans are incredibly limiting but the n95 has a pretty good browser so that makes things a little easier to bear.

2 comments May 2nd, 2008

Why I’m stupider than you

So I was all set to go out when my wife noticed a funny smell. It turns out I put one of the batteries in my homemade PHS300 battery holder backwards. My batteries exploded, my man purse has a nice hole in it and now I’m looking for a place that sells the PHS300 and ships to Canada.

Remember, if you make your own battery pack, for the love of god put the batteries in the right way!

*update* I just tried plugging my PHS300 back in and it actually still works. Wow!

11 comments March 31st, 2008

Improving the CradlePoint PHS300’s battery life

I love my PHS300. Being able to go out and having internet whenever I need it is really liberating. Of course there is one drawback; I’m talking about the battery life. I’ve turned the signal on the PHS down since it’s usually close by. I’ve found that typically I get 90 to 120mins connected time before my PHS300 battery gives up. Battery life is decent but it’s not long enough that I can leave it on whenever I’m out. I have to turn it on whenever I need it and remember to turn it off when I’m done.

When I’m out I usually bring a Toshiba Libretto (a small laptop with a 7″ display) plus the PHS300 and my modem. I carry it all in my man purse.

After reading a thread at EVDO forums, I was inspired to try making an external battery pack for my PHS. Rechargeable AA batteries have a voltage of 1.2 volts. 4 AA’s connected in series would yield a voltage of 4.8 volts which is close to the PHS AC adapter’s 5 volts.

I happen to have tons of AA rechargable batteries lying around from my SLR camera gear and various video game controllers. I have two types of batteries - Sanyo 2500mAh NiMH batteries which are the regular kind that discharge if you charge them and they sit on the shelf for a while. The other kind is Sanyo’s newer ENELOOP 2000mAh NiMH batteries. These have less capacity but only lose 15% of their charge per year (so they claim). Since I’m guessing they will only last a day or two I’m going to be using my 2500mAh cells.

I recharge the batteries with a Maha C801D.

Regular alkaline AA’s have a voltage of 1.5 volts and will fit but I’m not sure if the voltage is too high. I didn’t try them.

Before you read my instructions, here’s my disclaimer. If you break your PHS300 using my instructions it’s not my fault. If somehow you manage to set your PHS300 on fire it’s not my problem but please do send me a picture.

Here’s my instructions on how to make your own external battery pack. They’re actually very simple but in the interest of helping total electrical noobs (like myself) I’m being very very verbose.

Needed:

Soldering iron
Solder
Multimeter
Heatshrink wrap
4 cell AA holder
Compatible plug
Wire stripper
AA NiMH battery
Hair dryer

Steps:

Stick AA batteries into the holder
Strip off some wire from the compatible plug. 1/4″ should do fine. Separate the wires for an inch or two.
Put some small heatshrink wrap on EACH wire from the AC adapter plug. You don’t need that much.
If you want a neater looking job, you can put a thicker piece of heatshrink wrap to cover the parts of wire that are separated.
Connect wires from the battery holder to the compatible plug. Connect the red wire from the battery pack to one of the wires on the compatible plug. Do the same with the black wire and the other wire on the compatible plug. Make sure the 2 sets of wires don’t touch.
Check polarity with the multimeter.
1. Here’s how you do it: The PHS300’s plug polarity is like this -c+ the outside is negative and the inside is positive (see the picture above).
2. Set your multimeter to measure DC voltage, you want it at a resolution that will handle around 6 volts.
3. While the batteries are in the holder and the wires are connected, place the black tip from the multimeter on the outside of the plug and place the red tip from the multimeter on the INSIDE. Make sure the red and black wires from the battery pack are not touching each other.
5. If the voltage is +5 (around there, mine read 5.2 volts) you’re good to go. If the voltage is negative, the polarity is wrong. Swap the red wire from the battery pack with the black wire from the battery pack and test again to make sure it is now positive.
Solder the red wire from the battery pack with the wire from the AC adapter. Do the same with the battery pack’s black wire.
Wait for things to cool and then move the two thin pieces of heatshrink wrap over the exposed wire.
Use the blow dryer to shrink the wrap.
If you wanted a neater job, move the thicker piece of heatshrink wrap over the two smaller wires and shrink it with the blow dryer.
Check the polarity again. Make sure the voltage isn’t higher than 6 volts.

You’re done! Please note I don’t have any heatshrink wrap in my how-to pictures. I cut the wrap off of my setup to take pictures of it.

Using the new external battery pack I found my PHS battery life went from about 120mins to almost 7hrs. An increase of around 5 hrs. Please note I’m not constantly using the PHS300. A lot of the time it’s on but I’m not. 5 hr’s isn’t bad but it’s not quite enough for a long day. I ran out, got some more supplies and connected two 4 cell AA holders in parallel. Connecting them in parallel is the same as my instructions only you do this differently:

Connect the red wire from battery pack 1 to the red wire on battery pack 2 to the correct wire on the AC adapter plug. Do the same with the black wire from the battery packs, check polarity and solder. I connected the packs using some double sided tape and some parts I had lying around the house.

Now you get the same voltage but double the run time. Now I can get close to around 12 hrs of battery life. That’s good enough for me. If it’s not enough for you to make a battery holder with D cells (D cell NiMH batteries have capacities of around 10000mAh)

Since the battery pack is not that thick I can fit it, my laptop, modem and router in my man purse no problem. Sweet huh?

Howard Chui
03.30.2008

8 comments March 30th, 2008

CradlePoint PHS300 Portable Hotspot Review

As time goes by, more and more personal devices are able to connect to the internet. Devices like your iPod, laptops, phones, etc. With the exception of phones, the connection of choice seems to be WiFi.

Now it’s cool when you’re at home where you have WiFi but when you’re out you won’t always have internet access. You also have to deal with the dilemma of which of your devices you want to pay to get on the net when you’re out. You could connect your phone to your laptop via Bluetooth but what about your iPod? If you pay for WiFi at a coffee shop what happens when you leave?

Here’s where the Cradlepoint PHS300 comes in. You connect your USB cellular modem (or certain phones) to it and then it allows you to share the connection with all of your WiFi enabled devices. It’s a brilliant idea.

It’s portable so you have to throw a battery into the mix. There’s a removable (sort of) Li Ion battery that lasts for around 90 mins if you’re using a USB modem. So you have to charge the PHS300 when you’re not using it. If you’re close to a electrical outlet then you can connect the router to the wall and won’t have to worry about battery life.

The reason I say it’s sort of removable is because it’s virtually impossible to remove without using tools. It’s just such a tight fit. To make matters worse, the battery that Cradlepoint includes doesn’t have a ‘lip’ for you to use to pry out the battery. It seems a Kyocera Model TXBAT10073 extended battery is compatible and fits plus it has a lip though in practice the lip doesn’t help. To remove the Cradlepoint battery, I had to gouge the plastic with my car keys to remove it. The Kyocera battery is a little easier. I haven’t changed batteries since.

There’s no network jack - which is fine by me since it makes the unit smaller but some may miss this.

There isn’t much to compare the PHS300 too but I thought it was acceptable as far as size goes. It’s not tiny, it’s not large. It’s similar in size to a portable notebook hard drive which means it is not an awkward shape (very important if it’s portable).

You charge the PHS300 with the included AC adapter. It’s slightly bigger than the average phone AC adapter. Since it’s a portable router it would be nice if you could also charge it using your computer’s USB port. There is also an optional cigarette lighter adapter for your car.

There are 3 status LED’s; power, phone and WiFi. If the phone LED is red there’s a problem with the connection to your phone. Try unplugging your modem or phone and plugging it back in.

I tested the PHS300 with a Novatel U720 EVDO modem. It works well but I often found that I could not get online if I left the modem plugged in when I powered the router on. I found I could get online sometimes if I’ve used the modem recently (like in the past 30 minutes) otherwise I’d have to wait till the router is on to plug the modem in. It’s not a big deal but can get annoying.

The router admin panel is pretty much exactly the same as a Dlink router’s. Option for option, page for page. Before I describe it I found it to be missing 2 important pieces of information; battery remaining and a cumulative data counter. These 2 things are pretty ‘portable EVDO router’ specific so I’m pretty disappointed they’re not included.

Otherwise you get lots of router-y options. You can find a complete map of the PHS300’s menu options after the review.

Speed wise the PHS300 is pretty transparent (it doesn’t slow your connection down). Unfortunately my U720 modem broke half way through the review so I don’t have any numbers. The PHS300 has Wipipe technology that’s supposed to speed your connection up. I suspect it’s just packet prioritization software so that if you’re downloading a number of things and try to stream something, the stream packets will get priority.

Besides wireless security (WPA/hiding the SSD/MAC address filtering) you can require users to type in a password before they can access the net.

Battery life is claimed to be 60 to 90 minutes. I didn’t get a chance to test this (since my modem broke). I will update this review when I get it replaced.

There’s a chat function that people can use to talk with other people connected to the router.

One use I didn’t really discuss is if you’re somewhere where you have very weak network signal. You can put the PHS300 where there is a strong network signal (like in another room by the window) and get service elsewhere.

While not perfect, the PHS300 is a really useful device. Probably the worst things about it are (in order): Sometimes you have to plug your modem in AFTER you’ve turned the PHS300 on. The battery life is too short plus the battery is not easy to remove (would make the battery is too short point less important). There is no battery meter and cumulative data counter info in the router control panel.

Howard Chui

Menus

Basic
1. WAN
  1. Cellular Modem PPP Settings
  2. DNS and Advanced Settings
2. LAN
  1. Lan Settings
  2. RIP
  3. IGMP
  4. DNS Relay
3. DHCP
  1. DHCP server enable
  2. DHCP settins
  3. number of dynamic DHCP clients
  4. add DHCP reservations
4. Wireless
  1. Basic wireless settings (network name, visible/invisible, 802.11b,g,b/g, auto channel select, rando channel select, super G Mode, channel, transmission rate)
  2. Wireless security mode (WEP/WPA)
  3. WPA (WPA or WPA2 or both)
Advanced
1. virtual server (aka port forwarding)
2. special applications
  1. application level gateway configuration (IPSec VPN, RTSP, FTP, SIP, Wake-on-lan)
  2. Add special applications rule
3. gaming
4. traffic shaping
5. routing
6. access control
7. web filter
8. mac address filter
9. firewall
10. inbound filter
11. advanced wireless
12. schedules
13. modem settings
Tools
1. Admin
  1. Admin password
  2. Internet access password
  3. Administration
    1. gateway name
    2. enable remote managment
    3. remote admin port
    4. remote admin inbound filter
    5. admin idle timeout
  4. UPnp
  5. Save and restore configuration
2. Time
  1. Time configuration (time zone, DST)
  2. Automatic time configuration (NTP server)
  3. Set time and date manually (set manually, copy computer’s time settings)
3. Syslog
  1. enable (enable logging, specify server to send logs to)
4. Email
  1. enable email notifications
  2. email settings (from, to, SMTP server address, enable authentication)
  3. email log when full or on schedule
5. System
  1. system commands (reboot device, restore to factory settings)
6. Firmware
  1. firmware information
  2. firmware upgrade
  3. firmware upgrade notifications options
7. Dynamic DNS
  1. enable
  2. dynamic DNS (changeip.com, DNSomatic.com, DynDNS.org, easyDNS.com, EuroDynDNS.org, no-ip.com, ods.org, OpenDNS.org, ovh.com, regfish.com, tzo.com)
Status
1. Device Info
  1. General (time/firmware version)
  2. WAN (connection type, connection up time, ip address, subnet mask, default gateway, primary and secondary DNS server)
2. Wireless
  1. Number of wireless clients
3. Routing
  1. Routing table
4. Logs
5. Statistics
  1. WAN statistics
  2. Wireless Statistics
6. Active Sessions
7. Modem Info

12 comments March 18th, 2008

Koodo Mobile is Live!

Koodo Mobile has been launched! Koodo has three ‘ready made’ plans or you can build your own.

Talk & Text Combo $25/month
Unlimited Text Messaging
Up to 100 Anytime Minutes
7pm Evenings & Weekends

Five Essentials Combo $30/month
Unlimited Nationwide Talk & Messaging to 5 Numbers
Up to 100 Anytime Minutes
Up to 50 Text Messages
7pm Evenings & Weekends

All You Need Combo $65/month
Unlimited Incoming Calls
Up to 1000 Anytime Minutes
Up to 50 Text Messages
7pm Evenings & Weekends

all combos include Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Conference Calling and Per-Second Billing

Head over the Koodo Mobile site to learn more at www.koodomobile.com or check out the Koodo Forum on HowardForums.

live_strong

4 comments March 18th, 2008

Koodo Mobile

Canada’s newest cellphone service provider is on track for a launch on March 17. Koodo Mobile with a tag line of “Good Call” will be a CDMA MVNO of Telus Mobility. According to MobileSyrup Koodo Mobile features per second billing, cheap monthly plans (starting at $15/month), and no “chubby” contracts. HowardForums member ‘celltarded’ saw three Koodo Mobile phones on display at a local Wal-Mart.

From the pictures I identified two of the phones and their prices.

Samsung u410 $74.XX
Motorola w385 $124.38

Stay tuned for a follow up article once Koodo Mobile officially launches.

live_strong

4 comments March 16th, 2008

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