# The SBHonline Community Daily > Digerati Discussions! >  >  A new phone..

## Petri

Ugh, I just ordered a new phone to replace my Nokia C5 I got in July.

 

The deal will cost 9.50 USD/month (6.90 ).

That includes the _unlocked_ phone, unlimited full HSPA+ data, and the basic monthly fee.  Voice/SMS/MMS charged like before.

24 month contract, my first ever   :Big Grin:  

Considering that I currently pay 7.60 USD/month for my basic monthly fee and 384 kbit/s unlimited data on the C5, I think the extra 1.90 USD/month is pretty decent charge for the phone and full speed.

Sorry Steve, we could have had two white iPhone 4's with fixed antenna instead but..

PS. That's a 480x800 AMOLED display in case you're wondering..

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## Petri

Ordered one for Laura as well.

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## Petri

Picked up one of the phones today..  the other phone is at the wrong post office, they've read the zip code as 00750 when it should be 00570  :Big Grin: 

Pretty good for a phone that lowers your montly bill.  I had already forgotten how touchscreen feels like.  The display is just ordinary 480x800 TFT but very good anyway, it has a 5 Mpx camera instead of the 3 Mpx Orange San Francisco has (another cheap ZTE Blade deal).  The chinese don't care about the specs that much.  The CPU is a tad slow for multitouch zooming in the browser but I don't care, even if I swap to iPhone 4S one day I'm still paying less than I was before.

There is a reason why the carriers are playing this game right now.  From spring next year the law will change and one can opt out from a 12-24 month contract much easier than today.  They want to get people on longer contract before that happens.  Even if that means dirt cheap monthly charges..  it's all about the ARPU after all.

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## BBT

I Apple iPhone 4 with IOS 4.2 gets awful battery life now if anyone sees a fix let me know. Wish I could go back to 4.1

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## JEK

Apple discussions has a lot of tips, but the number one is make sure you don't have a task running in the background. I haven't noticed any difference on my phone, but I haven't been traveling.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....3548&#12643548

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## Petri

When one looks at the Apple support forums, like:

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.j...D=1378&start=0

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.j...D=1364&start=0

one can see certain threads being read tens of thousands of times compared to the other ones.  Most of the time that means it is something Apple needs to address and fix, not an ordinary user error.

http://www.tipb.com/2010/06/30/troub...life-problems/

Disabling push notifications seem to have solved the problem for many.

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## BBT

I have tried them all. There is no question there is an issue. I have synched at least 8 times. Nothing running but the same email as I have always had and why should I disable Push, It has always been on so if that is causing it to drain faster now then there is a problem.

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## JEK

Mine has been off charge since Sunday morning and I have 87% left.

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## BBT

Count you blessings. I really don't want to do a complete wipe and reset and then load again but may have to.

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## Petri

The antenna doesn't seem to be quite Nokia / untouched iPhone quality which usually get 5+ Mbit/s but not bad for a $9/mo package that would usually cost $20/month without a phone  :Big Grin: 

A rare finnish snow leopard clip taken with the phone:

 

The camera quality isn't anything to brag about but everything else has been fine for a super-cheap phone..  looks bad for my future with the iPhone.

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## Petri

A new phone in the family..

 

One size doesn't fit all.  She wanted a decent keyboard (QWERTY or 123).  I wanted her phone to have decent specs.  HTC ChaCha was another option but the Sony-Ericsson felt better.  That's a S-E Xperia Mini Pro (not to be mixed with the old X10 model).  I have to say, it's quite nice and I got some QWERTY envy myself.


Nokia C5 just got retired to become a "traveling navigation phone", like it used to be..  Ovi Maps with it's free worldwide maps is a great excuse to keep it in the drawer.

I did play with some of the new models, HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S II, etc. and they are pretty awesome devices.  The layers Sony-Ericsson, HTC, Samsung etc have built on top of Android make the phones quite decent compared to plain Android.  

I like the fact that I don't have to give a damn about the carrier when I buy a phone :)

But I give Tim a chance and see what he comes up with.

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## Voosh

Still use my "out of contract" Nokia flip. Wife is trying to use her "smartyphone" as we're cruising. 
Guess who got a clear connection?

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## Petri

I've got a dozen not-so-smart phones (and half a dozen P&S cameras) in a box and I'm wondering what to do with them..

I was surprised how many of the old phones still have batteries in decent shape.


Part of the "homeless" project has been to get rid of all the junk accumulated over the years.  Some has gone to the local auction site, some straight to recycling.  With so-so useful computer stuff I've created a big pile and put a note on local computer enthusiast board that this and that is available for pick up, bring an Argentinian bottle of wine as a payment to open the door.  Saves me from going to the recycling center and he can do whatever he likes with the stuff -- I also tell them that the recycling center isn't too far away if he wants to dump something straight away..

A new pile of scart-, s-video-, composite-, audio-, antenna-, what-not cables is just being built.  I just need to make sure there's something included that's actually worth picking up :)

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## Voosh

Kathy wishes I would clear out some of our storage stuff more quickly. I try, kinda, try. It's always fun when I rediscover something - like that old 35mm Nikon and she shouts "Damn, that took some cool pics." First cell phone we ever got (size of a small suitcase) which we showed the grandkids and they rolled their eyes and said "no way" - "Ah, my little munchkins, that was what paved the way for your constant texting and twittering." 

Yes, I keep too much old stuff. Guess I come by it honestly - When my Dad passed it took me forever to sort through stuff and I filled my garage and three 30 yard dumpsters. I did send Eddie some photo gear and some memorable/useful things to others and charities. 

To be honest, being a packrat is wearing on me. Next big project is clearing out all this stuff, recycling for good uses when possible, convincing Kathy that she is a packrat too and living more simply without the tons of stuff we drag around. 

We mastered "carry-on only" (Thanks MikeR.) We can get this done.

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## Petri

I'm so into downshifting, replacing things with experiences.


But I have found some interesting stuff, my e-mail archives (I save almost all e-mails) from early 90's.  The e-mail archives include the developments when Russia and Estonia got connected to the Internet.  I sent the registration for .su domain but I've yet to find the e-mail..  Interesting times.

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## Voosh

:Wink:   :p  


*"*.su was assigned as the country code top-level domain for the Soviet Union on September 19, 1990. It remains in use today, even though the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, and is administered by the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN, or RosNIIROS in Russian transcription).

In 2001, the managers of the domain stated that they will commence accepting new .su registrations,[citation needed] but it is unclear whether this action is compatible with ICANN policies. ICANN has expressed intentions to terminate the .su domain[when?] and IANA states that the domain is being phased out,[1] but lobbyists stated in September 2007 that they had started negotiations with ICANN on retaining the domain.[2] In the first quarter of 2008, .su registrations increased by 45%.[3]

80829 domain names were registered by August 9, 2009.[4]

Some Russian companies having their roots in the USSR are still using this TLD.[5]*"* 




As part of our "house cleaning," I'm releasing many domain names I own and rarely use. I could sell them. But, what the heck. I just notify folks that want a particular "name." It would be more of a hassle to negotiate and try to sell those. IMHO. 

I dread "attacking" the email archives we have. Even though I'm pretty good at deleting much stuff, there's a few gig of stuff that I probably should review. 

Another day. More new tasks to do.

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## Petri

Hmmm..  a combination of history and loose memory actually does help.

I don't think I have my e-mails from 1990 left (I kept my e-mail at the university CS dept at the time and put the archives on a reel tapes, left the tapes there..).

When the dialup link was established, there were some 4000+ sites ready and waiting.  Instead of flooding all the .su traffic over the dialup link, we put the actual .su domain names on our nameservers here Finland so that mail to unknown .su addresses would bounce straight away.

During the Soviet Union coup in 1991, the dialup link was up and running more often than even though the press was saying that all telephone lines had been cut.  The dialup link was to Kurchatov Institute of Atom Energy (the place where they developed all nuclear weapons in Russia) and connections to KGB were often mentioned..  perhaps that helped.

Now that I think about it, we might actually have hosted the domain nameservers for some of the new republics as well before the first fixed links were established.  I just found a reference to having .ua for Ukraine on our machines..

"All computers on Relcom use Internet-style domain-addresses.
The network is also accessible via UUCP. There are several top-level
domains: BY, EE, GE, LT, LV, EE, UA and SU -- the last one being used
in Russia and in those ex-SU republics which don't have top-level domains
yet.  Each site has a postmaster account. Sites total approximately to 6000."  -- from early '93..   

One of my favourite quotes from those times, "Bandwidth is not the issue, after all we are
the Telco".

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## JEK

My first home email system was an Apple IIe connected to the mainframe email system at the office with a 300 baud modem. 1981.

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## Petri

'80-'81 would be the school year I used a computer for the very first time, and we had a Nokia 110/300 baud modem in the computer lab at school :-)

Our school was owned by the university (instead of the city) and a training school for teachers.  Some privileges, like access to the university mainframes.   They had a Burroughs B7800 and the university of economics had a HP 2000 Access.

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## Voosh

My first "digital device" when I was in the 4th grade. My Mom taught me Morse code and my school teacher was a "ham" and brought me up to speed.

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## Petri

Back in '81 I was on the 6th grade..  12 years old :)  Started learning swedish that year, two years of english already behind.

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## Voosh

Sigh. By the time I was in 6th grade I was on my third language (not including Morse code.) Sadly, I don't think we do that kind of, important, teaching around here anymore.

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## KevinS

By the time that I was in the 7th grade I was learning my first programming language.  By the 9th grade, my third and fourth.  They're all dead languages now.

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## Voosh

FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/1, etc.? I did really like SNOBOL. Spent most of my time with various assembler and microcoding stuff. Great times.

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## Petri

Never learnt SNOBOL but I did use the B7800 to learn the others.  Never used them anywhere, though.

At the time our school system was nine years of mandatory stuff, three years in "high school" before getting to the university (where there wasn't anything below MSc degree).  We started first foreign language on fourth grade, second (mandatory swedish) on sixth and the third foreign language on seventh grade.  Most people learnt four languages (including our own), some did five.  Some friends left to other schools as they chose french instead of english as the first foreign language.

It seems that they start a bit earlier nowadays, A1 language 3th grade, voluntary A2 5th grade, B1 language 7th grade (swedish), B2 language 8th grade.  99% learn english, 92% swedish, 35% german, 20% french, 10% spanish, 5% russian or italy.

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## JEK

41 LA Address
58 L (full word)
48 LH (halfword)

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## Voosh

48 I found useless. 41 was cool for hiding "switch bits," before extended addressing came onto the scene, in the top byte. 

SNOBOL was really cool and fun. Thanks Bell Labs.

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