Technology Ramblings

One of the gifts I bought this year for my granddaughter was a GoPro Hero 3+ Silver Edition camera.  Best Buy had an excellent bundle that included an LCD Touchback and 16GB SD Card that saved me over $100 versus purchasing separately.   In addition, I also bought the 3 way arm/tripod combination.  This is one of the cooler little mounts I've ever seen and extremely light and versatile. The Hero 3+ is actually an amazing little piece of technology - and I emphasize the little.   Weighing in at only 74g and maybe 3" wide by 2" high and about an inch thick the main camera almost feels like a toy.  Even with the housing - the whole unit weights in at 134g - so about the same as my Nokia 735 smart phone.  My 8 year old granddaughter ran around with it no problem.  Combined with the 3 way arm/tripod - she can easily use it to record all sorts of activities and can easily manage the device at 8 years old. Many years ago I was one of the first to own the Olympus OM-1 SLR. 

So after some soul searching I decided that instead of getting my wife the same Nokia 735 RM-1039 that I recently purchased that I'd go ahead and get her the new iPhone 6. My primary reasons were 1. My wife is very familiar with iOS UI - she's had an iPad mini for a couple of years and is very comfortable the UI 2. With some of her activities - she uses apps that simply aren't available for Windows Phone.  Just the reality of the Windows Phone market share. 3. She needed a better camera than her 5Mp Lumia 635 - my wife really documents my granddaughters life via her phone - so having something that was easy - good flash etc... Again TMO made it easy and I purchased her a 16Gb model.   I think its kind of odd that Apple sizes go 16, 64 and 128GB.   Honestly for the hefty price of $649 I would like to have seen at least 32GB as a entry size.  TMOs iPhone comes with the nano-SIM installed - but just as with my 735 it was really easy to activate via TMOs web site. T

I recently purchased an unlocked Latin American Nokia Lumia 735 RM-1039.  It was the first of the new  735s I have seen that supported US LTE Bands and also came loaded with Denim Firmware and WP 8.1 update 1. In my previous post I noted my initial impression and now have been running it for over a week including making my normal weekly road trip into Southern California. Here is what I experienced and so far with the 735.   Data and Voice connectivity has not been a problem.  But signal strength is consistently showing about 1 bar lower. I did loose an occasional call in an elevator - but that was hit or miss with the 635 as well.    Calls were clear and speed tests around SoCal where about in the same 20 - 30Mbps down and 10 - 14Mbps up range I experience here at home.  I did experience some step downs in connection to HSPA+ and even 3G - but never lost connectivity. Also - when I do a manual network search I can see both TMO and AT&T networks fine - so it should wo

So in the last couple of posts I discussed my decision to A) replace my 4 month old Lumia 635 and B) to try the new Lumia 735 - RM-1039. I bought from B&H Photo for $299 which included an 8GB Micro SD card. So first off what surprised me was the packaging.  Which was quite compact at 5" x 5" and maybe an inch thick.  Contents were simple - the phone body, battery and a plugin charger.   The charger to me is better than what comes with the 635 in that it uses a USB connector at the plug and so that cable can also be used for charging from a laptop or any USB power source.  The 635s used a fixed cord at the plug end.   I was hoping to just pop the SIM and SD card out of my 635 and be working immediately, but the 735 uses a Nano SIM versus the Micro SIM in the 635.  So had to run off to local TMO store and get one.   I do have to say the TMO makes it really easy to switch SIMS via an app on their Web site.   My RM-1039 is actually a Central/South American unit.  Wh

So in my previous post I mentioned that after just 4 months I am looking to replace the Nokia Lumia 635s that I bought for my wife and I.    So now the question is what to get ? When MS announced the 730/735 and 830 models @ IFA in September - two things immediately came to mind.   First was would they be available in the US and second with what carriers. Well the answer has been very mixed.  Today only the 830 is available and from only 1 carrier - AT&T and is priced at $450.  When comparing the specs to the 735 I had a hard time justifying that price tag.   The 735 and 830 share the same processor and RAM. Both have the same screen resolution with Clear Black Screens - the 830 is a 5" IPS and the 735 a 4.7".   The 830 base storage is 16GB vs 8GB for the 735 - but both have SD expansion.  The 830 also has a 10Mp rear camera versus the 735 6.7Mp and both have LED Flash.  But the 735 has a 5Mp HD front camera versus a 0.9Mp for the 830.    Also from preliminary

So back in August of this year - I decided to update my Lumia 521 and my wife's even older Lumia 710 to the new Lumia 635.   Since I was already very familiar with the 521, the 635 seemed like a natural replacement and the price was right @ $129 at the MS store.    LTE support was nice uprade.  I'm on TMO and in travels to both coasts had no signal issues.   Voice quality was fine and features like WiFi calling and Visual Voicemail were supported. I expanded the base 8GB of storage via a 32GB SD card and have not had any issues with the 512MB of RAM as far as running all of my day to day applications.    However, some applications do load slowly, especially the Nokia Camera App and Good Secure Messaging - which is required for my work. Obviously moving to a 4.5" screen was also a nice upgrade in real estate from the 4" 521.  The DPI was similar to what I had the on the 521 so the clarity was fine.  I don't watch movies on my phone so the lack of HD resol