Exxodium

Regarding the T-Mo HD7 and SD cards

• If you lack the proper Torx bit to get the plastic framework off, an H1 Allen driver will do in a pinch. Just be sure not to strip out the screws.
• The plastic bit covering the bottom 3rd of the back of the phone is actually easily removed with your fingernails. Trying to do it with anything else will likely bend the antenna contacts, and your phone becomes useless.
• The plastic framework that covers the PCB and components is very flimsy, and I could imagine it can be easily modified to allow access to the SD card without having to remove it.
• If you happened to buy the HD7 on T-Mo USA, it actually comes with 16GB of storage, not 8 as widely reported. And it’s ALL on the SD card. There’s no internal memory on the HD7 like there is on the Samsung Focus.

Take a look at the Android and iPhone subreddits at any given time. Notice something?

In the top 10 of /r/Android, you usually see a post or two about how much Apple sucks, or how Apple is doing something bad, or something generally negative about people who use Apple products or the company itself.

In the top 10 of /r/iPhone, you see people either asking for help, sharing tips, asking for advice, and generally not even talking about Android.

Says a lot about either community.

Bye, Tumblr

After all the reblog/like spam, I’ve decided to just move things over to my own controlled site so I don’t have to deal with it anymore.

This will remain here as an archive.

You can now find me at http://exxodium.net

“Until the end and back again, defiant to the last man. Till there’s nothing left to fight against, no surrender.” -VNV Nation, Defiant

I feel this is a good way to start off this post.

Since my last post on the issue, things haven’t gotten any better with the HTC Arrive. In fact, they’ve gotten worse. Allow me to enumerate the issues thus far:

1. Text messaging still capped at 160 characters. Other WP7 phones have this, even on CDMA networks (look no farther than the HTC Trophy). Only now, we have new information: This affects the 7 Pro variant on US Cellular, which absolves Sprint’s network of any blame over this issue.
2. The zune player will cease to work if you’re listening through the headphone jack, and you open or close the phone’s slider. This started happening with the official Mango update, and wasn’t present in the 7720 RTM build.
3. Battery life has been reduced in some instances. My own Arrive only lasts 8 hours with very light use, when it used to last more than 12.
4. Some of HTC’s apps in the Marketplace can no longer identify the Arrive as an HTC phone, and as such, no longer work.

I reached out to HTC over this, multiple times. I was told it would just be passed along within the company. I finally gave up and emailed them once I found out the official Mango update doesn’t fix the messaging bug, and, nothing. No information regarding any type of fix for this issue. At all. The thing that really set me off is not that the messaging bug was never fixed. It’s the fact that it wasn’t fixed and Mango further crippled the Arrive.

I’m really annoyed.

Annoyed because I bought this phone. And it was perfect. It had the little problem with not being able to send long messages. But so what? The phone got everything else right. But now, multiple issues are coming up, and using the phone is beginning to feel more annoying with each passing day. And HTC seems like it’s not willing to do anything about them.

So, I feel the only thing us Arrive users can do is band together, and collectively pressure Sprint and HTC into doing something or at least giving us a straight answer. If anything, If they’re just going to abandon us, I would like to know that much so that I may never trust them again.

Nailing Sprint/HTC to the wall

Let me start out this post with some explanation.

I have a smartphone. It has a good keyboard. I use this smartphone for pretty much everything but phone calls. I use text messaging a lot. (It comes standard with the plan, why not) I use data a lot.

I bought an HTC Arrive in July 2011, and it has been a stellar phone. However, one feature has been missing that is promised in the manual, and also every other smartphone platform (iOS, Android, BB OS) has: The ability to send messages over 160 characters.

Is this a problem? Yes. I regularly type messages in excess of 160 characters. So do my friends.

Even better yet, this feature is documented in the Arrive’s manual. The phone is supposed to split the messages automatically, as said on Page 83 of the user guide.

Bothered by this, I did some research.

First, I checked to see if WP7’s Mango update would fix the problem. It didn’t. But now, instead of stopping cold turkey at 160, it goes over, but just disables the send button. An improvement, sure; but not a significant one.

Second, I heard some whispers that Microsoft had never implemented the CDMA SMS code correctly. To check this, I went to a Verizon store and tried to type out a message on an HTC Trophy. Sure enough, it split the messages, as seen here.

I sent them to my phone, and sure enough, both of the messages arrived on my phone.

Which, unless Verizon is using some crazy magic, means that Microsoft is clear of any blame in this equation. The blame falls right on either HTC or Sprint.

To which I ask: Why can’t the Arrive send messages in excess of 160 characters? Why advertise this in the manual if the phone can’t do it? Why promise a fix that’s never coming? (As far as I know, Sprint/HTC has known of this problem for some time now.) If there are difficulties in finding a fix, why not tell us about it, instead of leaving us hanging?

Come on guys. I know you can do this. Please do something about it. Please.

EDIT: Want another dollop of pure rage, Arrive owners? Try this:

1. Plug something into the headphone jack on your Arrive. (Must be running the Mango update)
2. Play music. Ensure that you can hear the music coming through whatever you plugged into the phone.
3. Slide open (or close) the phone.
4. Music stops immediately.

Here I am, up at 4:40am, writing a post that is, in essence, bitching more about Facebook.

I wrote some time ago about how Facebook rolled out a change that caused the enter key to post a comment, rather than enter a carriage return. I called this move “user-hostile” and called Facebook out for making changes for changes’ sake, and never for user benefit.

Well, it’s time for me to do that again: Facebook has rolled out yet another change. This time, they’re changing the news feed. So now, instead of having it divided between “top news” and “most recent”, you get it all mishmashed into one news feed. With the most recommended threads being thrown up toward the top, and the most recent down toward the middle.

I don’t know who at Facebook even thought for a second that this is a good idea.

The news feed of before was fine enough as it is: All posts in chronological order, newest first. That way, we could read the most recent topics first, and as we scrolled down, the older topics. This is the way it should be. This is the way most websites, like Gizmodo, Engadget, and Daring Fireball operate. It is how the web should operate.

But Facebook believes that it has a new way of consuming your news from friends, and that it’s ideas are best for everyone.

It’s like having a company like Apple control a social networking site. However, difference being is that Apple doesn’t put out half-assed designs. And if Apple is truly wrong on a design, they’ll listen to their users and roll it back (See: Leopard’s translucent menu bar, which they introduced an option to switch it off after massive criticism). If one of Facebook’s “redesigns” meets mass disapproval, Facebook’s response is “deal with it.”

As one of my friends said: It’s not Google+ that is killing Facebook. It is Facebook that is killing Facebook.

What I would do about it

Of course, one of these bitching posts isn’t any good if I’m not going to give any insight on it. So what would I do about this?

Until I could get a version of this site design working (and by working, I mean options for the style as it is now, and one for strictly chronological ordering), I would roll it back for everybody. Tweak the layout a bit. Do a limited rollout. Gauge the reactions of those who it’s been rolled out to (all the while giving them the option to switch back to the old layout and gauging how many people are doing this.) Encourage feedback from everyone. Listen to said feedback.

But better yet, what I would do, something that might not appease those up in Facebook HQ, is adopt the rule “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Nothing was wrong with the old Facebook. Even if G+ got more features, you wouldn’t have to change the layout to maintain feature parity.

Facebook’s willingness to change, and the mentality that they need to make changes for changes’ sake is only going to kill them in the long run, and make their competitor that much stronger. If Facebook is to survive, they need to drop the stupid changes, and begin making changes for usability’s sake, not changes’ sake.

(EDIT: I really, really need a better keyboard. Damned typos.)

Fully Automatic

Thanks to a friend in the UK (If you’re reading this, you know who you are, and I love you to death), I managed to get a copy of VNV Nation’s Automatic a few hours early (or maybe days, since it seems a lot of the digital distributors in the US aren’t selling it until October 25th). I’ve been listening to it non-stop for the last day, and here are my thoughts.

(If you buy it via AmazonMP3, know that you’re getting ~200kbps VBR MP3s. For me, this is somewhat less than optimal, but I can deal with it, since I’ll be buying this album again when it comes out in CD form.)

Compared to some of VNV’s previous releases (Especially Matter + Form), Automatic may come off as a softer VNV. Like, closer to Seabound-level. Automatic only possesses one hard-hitting track, and the rest are relatively mellow (at least compared to albums like Empires and Futureperfect).

Don’t get me wrong, Automatic is a very energetic album. But it feels more refined, and nowhere near as harsh as songs like Chrome (Though Control is to Automatic what Chrome was to Matter + Form). 

As a very nice treat, VNV shows their ambient music chops with Goodbye 20th Century, which is much like As it Fades in that it’s a calming, ambient track that feels like an intermission between the two halves of the album. Personally, I love it when VNV throws in an ambient track, since they seem to kick ass at it.

And then we have Nova. Holy crap, this song is just…amazing. Harris’ vocals just shine (no pun intended) on this one, and the rhythm backs his vocals amazingly. It’s a really powerful track. One that I will shamelessly admit I have listened to over and over again. This would be the song that if you heard it live at a concert, the lighters would go up in the air.

Essentially, Automatic is a further refining of the style employed on Of Faith, Power, and Glory. If you disliked that album, there’s a decent chance you won’t like Automatic. Nonetheless, Automatic is an amazing album, and in my book, it can hold a candle to Empires.

If you’re an avid VNV Nation fan, and you loved Of Faith, Power, and Glory, I would highly recommend picking up Automatic. It is amazing. Though if you like VNV only for tracks like Chrome, you might not want to, opting just to pick up Control.

But seriously, at least give the album a listen. It’s worth it. Trust me.

Managing a unified Zune and iTunes library

So. An interesting dilemma faced me some time ago. Having gotten tired of Android, I stopped into a Sprint store and picked up an HTC Arrive, which uses the Zune software on Windows to sync media to the phone.

Seeing as I already had a 1300-large iTunes library, this became a little problematic, because I thought I would have to manage two completely separate libraries, taking up double the space. And because I have a 30GB iPod which I use quite frequently, ditching iTunes was out of the question.

So I found a solution to keep everything synced and happy.

Step 1. iTunes

Before we do anything, we need to make sure iTunes is doing it’s little library management magic. To do so, open iTunes, and go to Edit > Preferences.

Click the advanced tab. Note the location of the iTunes media folder. For me, it’s C:\Users\*username*\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media. (Of course replacing *username* with your username, leaving out the asterisks of course) Copy this address. We’ll need it later.

Meanwhile, make sure “Keep iTunes Media folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” are checked.

From here on, you will be using iTunes to add stuff to both of your libraries. When you want to add something to your unified library, drag it onto the iTunes window. The file(s) will then be automatically copied to the iTunes media folder. Safe and sound.

Step 2. Zune

Fire up the Zune software, and click “Settings”. It should drop you into the “Collection” tab. If not, click it.

If Zune is pulling music from C:\Users\username\Music already, then you should be good to go. Anything you add to iTunes will show up in Zune. However, if it’s pointing somewhere else, add the location we copied in Step 2, either as a Zune folder (scroll to the bottom of the Collection settings) or as a Windows library.

Wrap-up

So now, when you want to add a mp3 from say, your desktop into your library, you will just drag the mp3 into iTunes, which then copies the file into your iTunes media folder. You can then dispose of the mp3 cluttering your desktop, knowing that the file is safe in the iTunes media folder. Then, in a few seconds, the Zune software will pick up the library changes, and also add the file to its own library, without duplicating the file.