This morning I noticed some parking bays reserved for car charging in a car park at the corner of Sydney Rd and Glenlyon St in Brunswick (near Aldi). One of the parking spots was occupied by a Plug-in Prius from GoGet [1]. I didn’t even realise that you could get a plug-in Prius in Australia. The charging station is run by Charge Point [2].

The charging points are about 1.5m high and the cable is about 3cm thick (about as thick as the pipe used for filling a car with petrol), so it would charge a car much faster than could be done with a regular power point.

One big problem with the Charge Point web site is that they don’t give any information on pricing. They sell home charge points (which I guess means just an all-weather two-phase power point) but don’t give a price for that. They sell charge points that can be used by commercially but don’t give a price for them either. Also their infrastructure for billing is apparently based on companies installing charge points and setting a price for the service. Some charge points may offer free service (I guess staff car parks and some government agencies) and others will charge varying rates – none of which is available on the web site. Apparently they have an “online portal” which gives information on such things to registered users – so you have to register to discover what it costs. Of course hardly anyone is going to register before discovering the price, not even when registration is free. But while registration is free the web site demands the make and model of the electric car, so presumably one has to spend $40,000 or more on a vehicle before discovering the price and availability of charging it.

Charge Point can be used as an example of how not to design a web site that promotes a service, or at least how not to promote a service that is aimed at saving money (electricity is significantly cheaper than petrol so it’s of interest to people and organisations that want to save money). The Charge Point site seems to be better suited to showing that the concept can work than convincing people that they should sign up for it. It seems to me that the best thing that they could do would be to prominently display the average cost of all non-free charge points that are open to the public along with an explanation of the price of driving a desirable car (such as a plug-in Prius or a Nissan Leaf) with such an electricity cost.

The “contact” section on the web site only has a link for “careers”.

I don’t think it’s possible to get widespread use of electric vehicles without getting better information out there. It appears that Charge Point is relying on councils to do the work of promoting their business by installing their stations and reserving car parking as Moreland council has done in this case.

• [1] http://www.goget.com.au/
• [2] http://www.chargepoint.com.au/

In 2012 I wrote about my jeans from Rivers that fit the largest available phones (and the smaller tablets) in their pockets [1]. Those jeans are still working well for me, I can add the fact that they don’t wear out quickly to the list of positive attributes.

Recently my sister asked for advice on getting a new phone, she was considering the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (the phone I’m using now) because it apparently takes better pictures than the Nexus 4 she’s using. I’ve used both those phones and I hadn’t noticed a difference in picture quality, but there is some variation in manufacturing and it could be that I’ve got a below average Note 2 and a better than average Nexus 4 – so I’ll assume for the sake of discussion that my sister would actually get an improvement in picture quality by using a Note 2.

If you have a phone that doesn’t have the picture quality you desire then one option is to buy a phone with a better camera, but you will be limited by issues of physics. A thin phone has a short focal length which means that the lens has to be small and therefore the amount of light that gets to the sensor is small. The Nokia Lumia 1020 has some of the best camera hardware that you’ll find in a phone, but it’s still only 14.5mm thick where the camera is and that will limit the quality a lot.

Any “compact” camera should be able to beat all phone cameras in terms of picture quality in most areas. The Samsung Galaxy Camera [2] is also worth considering, it has more features than a typical compact camera and good GUI that allows novice photographers to take advantage of it. Also being able to blog your photos directly from the camera could be a useful feature. But the big down-side of a “compact” camera is that it’s not that compact. Most people won’t find it convenient to carry a compact camera with them at all times and therefore they might miss a good opportunity to take a photo. The Galaxy Note series of phones also suffer in this regard because they are larger than most phones. If your phone won’t fit in your pocket and you have it in your backpack when on the move or on a bench at home then you will probably miss some good photos.

As I was at a Rivers store recently I tested my Note 2 in the pockets of women’s jeans. Rivers scored very poorly in this regard, one pair of women’s jeans had fake pockets (this is just wrong for working clothes) and of the rest only one pair could fit a Note 2. The pair that fit a Note 2 didn’t completely enclose the phone, one corner was sticking out, this would probably give a risk of having the phone fall out of the pocket and cause some discomfort to the wearer. I have a pair of shorts with similar size pockets and find it very annoying with the Note 2 in the pocket (for about 10 months of the year I wear jeans so this isn’t a big deal). Rivers jeans only count as “geeky jeans” for male geeks. It’s disappointing that with about a dozen different styles of women’s jeans there didn’t seem to be a single one with pockets of comparable size to the men’s jeans.

I had to recommend that my sister not get a phone from the Galaxy Note series if taking pictures is a priority due to the apparent difficulty in getting it to fit in a pocket and the probability that she would miss good photos due to this.

In past discussions of phone size there have been mentions of the possibility of getting clothing altered. Does anyone have a good experience in getting clothes altered to have bigger pockets or in the case of women’s clothing to have fake pockets replaced with real ones?

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/11/17/geeky-jeans/
• [2] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/12/30/samsung-galaxy-camera/

The Nexus 5 is the latest Android phone to be endorsed by Google (and manufactured by LG). It’s getting good reviews and the price is good for the specs. I just bought one for my wife, I got her the 32G version because when I bought her a Nexus 4 at the start of the year [1] I chose the 8G version and regretted it ever since. The size of apps is always increasing (some Android games need more than 1G of storage) and higher resolution screens drives the use of high resolution video.

Appearance

Above I have pictures of the Nexus 4, the Nexus 5, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. The photo of the phone backs captures part of the sparkling pattern on the back of the Nexus 4 and it looks much better in real life (IMHO) because it shimmers as you move the phone. The Nexus 4 looks so good that there’s even a transparent case specifically designed to show off the rear panel [2]. It doesn’t seem likely that anyone will design such a transparent case for the Nexus 5, it’s a good phone to cover up IMHO.

The Note 2 isn’t the most attractive phone, but I think it has a streamlined elegance of being optimised for it’s function. The Nexus 5 has it’s camera sticking out, it would be better if they had just made the entire phone thicker and given it a bigger battery but for people who don’t want good battery life I guess it’s a way of providing a better focal length without making the phone thicker. Sticking the IMEI number on the back of the phone will be useful on rare occasions (and might be a security issue on more occasions) but it definitely makes the phone less attractive.

Full HD

The quality of the Full HD (1920*1080) display is obvious. The text is slightly clearer when viewing maps and the graphics in Ingress look nicer. Before I used the Nexus 5 I didn’t think that there would be any benefit in having such a high resolution in a phone but now I realise that I was wrong. The higher resolution is clearly better.

Chris Chavez wrote an article for Phandroid about a rumored Samsung phone with a 2560*1440 display [3]. If such a device had a 6.6″ display (IE a new version of the Galaxy Mega) then it would have the same dot-pitch as the Nexus 5. If such a device had a 5.5″ display (like the Galaxy Note 3) then it would have a 15% greater DPI than the Nexus 5.

It seems that a higher DPI provides a real benefit and this is probably the biggest reason to choose the Nexus 5 over the Nexus 4 and most other Android devices.

Comparing with the Nexus 4

The Nexus 5 has the same amount of RAM (2G), a slightly larger display (4.95″ vs 4.7″), higher resolution (a big deal), faster CPU and GPU, and optical zoom. Faster CPU isn’t usually going to be a big deal (apart from the fact that more CPU power is needed as well as more GPU power to drive the higher resolution display).

The Nexus 5 can come with 16G or 32G of storage while the Nexus 4 has options of 8G and 16G. If you want more than 16G of storage then that’s a real benefit for the Nexus 5, but if you only need 16G then it’s not an issue.

It seems that when playing Ingress on a Nexus 5 it’s more likely that running another program (such as Google Hangouts) will cause Ingress to be reloaded than it does on a Nexus 4 or a Galaxy Note 2. While I haven’t done a good comparison of the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 5 in this regard I’ve compared the Galaxy Note 2 and the Nexus 5 well. My Galaxy Note 2 (which has many daemons running) is much less likely to cause a reload of Ingress (IE have run low on memory and terminated Ingress) than the Nexus 5 my wife is using (which has very little running). So it seems that the OS build on the Nexus 5 uses more memory than the Galaxy Note 2.

The Nexus 5 has Gorilla Glass 3 vs Gorilla Glass 2 on the Nexus 4. As my older Android phones with Gorilla Glass 1 (Galaxy S and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10i) didn’t get any scratches that matter I don’t think this is a benefit for me. Maybe if I lived near a beach I’d care more about this.

I think that the most significant benefit of the Nexus 5 over the Nexus 4 is the higher resolution display. The optical zoom should provide a theoretical benefit when taking photos, whether that results in better pictures in practice would probably depend on how you hold your phone, the available light, and other factors.

I think that if it was possible to buy a Nexus 4 at a sensible price (IE something less than the $250 that Google last charged) then for most people the Nexus 4 would be a better choice than the Nexus 5. But as ebay is full of Nexus 4 phones selling for a higher prices than the Nexus 5 it seems that buying a Nexus 5 is the only option. The range of phones that Kogan sells [4] doesn’t have anything for the same price that compares on features.

Heat

The heat produced by the Nexus 5 is significant and noticable. After some light Ingress playing on a cold day my Galaxy Note 2 with a gel case (that keeps it warm) reported itself as having a battery temperature of 34C. My wife’s Nexus 5 reported a temperature of 43C. While the thermometer in the phone might not be the most accurate I don’t think there was an accuracy problem, holding my wife’s phone was unpleasant and felt like it could burn my hand if I held it tight (40C is the minimum temperature for burns).

It seems that a Nexus 5 isn’t a good choice if you want to play Ingress in a warm part of the world (EG most of Australia in summer). Also heat dissipated is directly proportional to power use which is going to be a problem for a phone that doesn’t permit replacing it’s battery.

Conclusion

I’m quite disappointed with the Nexus 5. I expected it to be at least as good as the Nexus 4 in every way and better in many ways. Instead it’s not always as good as the Nexus 4 and the ways that it is better won’t necessarily provide benefits for everyone.

The heat and power use problems are really going to hurt the use of it. But I guess we can always hope that Google release a new Android build that reduces the power use, they might even have a new build that uses less RAM too.

I would not consider getting a Nexus 5 for my own use. For my use the Note 2 is clearly more suitable, the larger screen more than compensates for the clarity that the Nexus 5 gets from it’s high resolution display. Also I REALLY like having a hardware home button. I’ll probably get a Note 3 when the price drops, I’m not interested in paying $649 for a phone and I’m also not interested in replacing a phone that’s less than a year old. So maybe I’ll get a Note 3 in the second half of next year.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/05/29/nexus-4/
• [2] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/08/13/nexus-4-ringke-fusion-case/
• [3] http://tinyurl.com/nhfkmg3
• [4] http://www.kogan.com/au/shop/phones/android/?order_by=price

I’ve just been given a set of Hive Bluetooth speakers by MobileZap (see this link for all their Bluetooth speakers) [1].

The speakers charge by a micro-USB cable so I started charging them in my car immediately after collecting them. To connect them to a phone or other Bluetooth device you just press the Bluetooth button on top and get the phone to be visible and scanning for devices, they identify themselves as “Hive”, after that they just work. My first test of using them was playing Ingress and the quality of the sound was impressive, I had thought that the Ingress recommendation to use headphones was due to the risk of annoying other people or alerting other players, but the quality of the sound was impressive and the internal speakers of a phone can’t do it justice.

After getting home I did some tests listening to music. For watching music videos it didn’t work so well as the sound was too far removed from the video, but the audio quality was very good. I listened to “Vow” by “Garbage” (a good benchmark for stereo sound) and even though the Hive speakers are only 16.5cm wide I could still notice the stereo effect when they were about 1.5m away from me. The audio quality didn’t compare well with my Bose QC-15 headphones, but for affordable and portable speakers it was quite good and an obvious improvement over the speakers that are built in to any phone I’ve used.

According to the Bluetooth Wikipedia page the range of a class 2 device is 10m and the range of a class 3 device is 1m. When my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is talking to it I get a reliable range of about 5 meters and a mostly working range of 6 or 7 meters (sound randomly drops out and gets choppy). It could be that other phones would support a longer range due to having a higher transmission power (either class 1 or being closer to the limits of class 2) and a more sensitive receiver. But it doesn’t seem likely that a 5m range is going to be a problem.

Volume and Quality

The speakers are rated at 5 Watt, when running at maximum volume (both through the phone volume setting and the volume control on the speakers) the sound is reasonably distortion free, as good as can be expected from playing an MP3 that’s not compressed with the highest quality. Sound Meter [2] reports the sound volume as almost 85dB on a Galaxy S3 and as almost 100dB on a Galaxy Note 2, that would be somewhere between the volume of a “busy street” or “alarm clock” and the volume of a “subway train” or “blow dryer” which seems like a reasonable description, I find it very unpleasant to be within a meter of the speakers at maximum volume. With the typical amount of background noise in my house I can play music on the Hive speakers at one end of my house and hear it clearly at the other end.

These speakers are more than capable of supplying the music for any party I’d want to host or attend. I’m not really into wild parties, but I think that anyone who has a one room party would be more than satisfied with the Hive speakers. Obviously the sound quality of portable speakers in a box that’s 16.5cm wide and 6cm high isn’t going to equal that of a full size set of speakers, but I think that hardly anyone who attends a party would expect better sound quality than the Hive speakers can provide. The aim of such speakers is to be portable, not really expensive, and to provide good sound quality within those constraints. I think that they meet such aims well.

Over the years there have been many occasions when I have used a Thinkpad to provide the music for a party and found it to be quite loud enough. My current Thinkpad is a T420 which can produce 75dB according to my Galaxy S3 or 85dB according to my Galaxy Note 2. So it seems that I only really need about 10dB less than the maximum volume of the Hive speakers.

Appearance

The designers obviously made an effort on the appearance of the device. They have gone with the Hive concept and used hexagons everywhere. It really looks nice.

Unfortunately when I took the photo there was some dust on it which didn’t look bad to the eye but caught the camera flash. But with a matte black device there’s always the problem of light colored dust. Even with a bit of dust it still looks great as a set of speakers, the dust just detracts from the appearance in photos.

Line In

One of the features I looked for was an audio line input so I could connect it directly to a non-Bluetooth device. I’m assuming that this feature works as it’s something that’s difficult to stuff up when designing such a product, but I haven’t got around to testing it. Once I started using the device I just found that I didn’t have a real need for that feature.

One thing that it might be useful for is PC desktop speakers that are powered by a USB port on the monitor. Currently I have a bearable (but not great) set of speakers for each PC and I don’t need to change anything. But having the option of another set of speakers is very handy in case I suddenly need to make hardware changes.

Other People’s Reviews

When I review a product I generally try and get opinions from random other people if possible. My mother and my mother-in-law were both impressed by the Hive speakers and expressed interest in owning a set. My mother-in-law was particularly interested as she uses her phone to listen to radio stations from outside Australia (I’m going to get her onto Aldi for cheap 3G data ASAP so she can listen to Internet radio when travelling).

Generally the impression that other people have of this device seems to be very positive. It seems that Bluetooth speakers aren’t just a Geek toy.

Conclusion

While I’m very impressed by this product, at this stage I’m not sure whether I would pay for this one or something cheaper if I was paying for it. MobileZap offers a range of other products that look appealing at lower price points. It really depends on how much I use it.

I’ve just got a Makerbot Replicator 3D printer working and I’ve found the Hive speakers very useful for the purpose of drowning out it’s noise. If I keep doing that sort of thing then I’ll get enough use out of the speakers to justify the price.

• [1] http://www.mobilezap.com.au/10059/stereo-speakers.htm
• [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.sira.sound

I have just bought a wireless phone charging system based on the Qi Inductive Power Standard. I bought a charging device which connects to a standard micro-USB cable and receivers for the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Samsung Galaxy S3 phones I own. Both those phones have contacts in the back of their case that are designed for wireless charging so you can install a charging device inside them. The charging devices make the case fit a little tight, and the charging device is stuck to the phone battery with contact adhesive, this makes it impractical to change the battery on a phone with such a device and makes it a little more difficult to swap out a battery case. One nice feature of the Nexus 4 is that it has Qi charging built in, that saved me $19 and was also more convenient.

I believe that the main advantage of a wireless charger is to avoid the risk of damage to the phone if it’s dropped while connected to a USB charger. This allows the phone to be charged in situations where you might need to quickly or regularly unplug it to go somewhere. One example of how I might use it is when working at an office so I could charge my phone while at my desk and then quickly take it with me if I had to go to a meeting (sadly I have worked in many offices where they have so many meetings). Another example is for sysadmin work where I have to frequently visit devices to fix them.

The wireless charging mat that I bought from Kogan connects to a standard micro-USB plug, the good thing about this is that it’s easy to find cables and it can take power from any PC. The bad thing about this is that the resistance of the USB cable is a factor that limits the power that a phone can receive, when using wireless charging you have the limit of the cable resistance as well as some power loss from the wireless transmission. After any extended period of charging the charging mat feels warm to the touch and the phone that’s been resting on it feels warmer than usual. The warmth is an indication of energy loss which means longer charging times, a longer charging time isn’t necessarily a problem as the convenience of wireless charging can allow longer charging times, but if you want to charge your phone in a hurry before you go somewhere then wireless isn’t a good choice.

In the past I’ve discovered that the battery in a Samsung Galaxy S3 can’t be charged if the phone is at 46C [1]. 46C might seem extremely hot to people in some parts of the world (EG northern Europe and Canada) but the temperature in even southern parts of mainland Australia can get that hot and it can be hotter in central and northern parts, so phone temperature can be a real issue. Currently my house is at 21C according to a digital thermometer, the Galaxy S3 and the Note 2 are being charged from USB and report temperatures of 27C and 23C respectively. While the thermometer in my house and those in the phones probably aren’t really accurate it seems reasonable to assume that the battery of a relatively idle smart-phone that’s being charged will be a few degrees warmer than the ambient temperature. The Qi charger makes things a lot worse as it even feels warm to the touch. So maybe a phone on a Qi charger would be 8 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature or more. That implies that in Australian summer weather a Qi charger won’t be useful outside or in any building that lacks air-conditioning. So I think we can give up on the idea of using Qi devices to charge phones at a BBQ.

The final problem I have is that the Qi device is quite small, I took the above picture with my phone face-down because no part of the charger is visible in normal use. With that size I can’t just dump a phone like a Note 2 on top of the charging mat and expect it to work. I have to carefully place it so that it balances and so that the wireless receptor inside the phone matches the transmitter in the mat, if the phone isn’t placed correctly then the Qi mat won’t detect it and won’t supply full power to the transmitter.

Conclusion

I’m fairly disappointed in this device. The waste heat makes it unsuitable for Australian summer conditions and slows charging. The difficulty of correctly placing the phone reduces the convenience which is one of the major features.

The price was $19 for each charging card for the Note 2 and the S3 and $29 for the charging mat to give a total of $67. I think it’s worth the money for me to cover the risk of one of my phones having it’s USB port damaged. Using a Qi charger on occasion will decrease the probability of such damage and allow the phone to be used after receiving certain types of damage.

The prices of those phones nowadays are $389 for a Galaxy S3 (Kogan price), $250 for a Nexus 4 (when it was on sale in the Google store), and probably about $500 for a Galaxy Note 2 (last time Kogan offered them). So by paying $67 for Qi charging I believe that I’m getting some degree of damage insurance for just over $1100 worth of phones. It seems likely that the Nexus 5 will ship with Qi charging support and that the Galaxy Note 3 will also support an optional Qi charging card (which will probably also be $19 or some similar price) so the charging mat should be useful for a long time.

While I’m disappointed I don’t regret buying the device. But I would be hesitant to recommend it to other people and definitely wouldn’t recommend it to someone who doesn’t have a significant interest and investment in smart phones.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/01/17/cooling-phones/

Some years ago when I first got a LG U990 Viewty (which in some ways is the best phone I ever owned) I went swimming and left my phone in my bag. My phone happened to rest on my car keys and had vibration mode enabled, after a couple of missed calls I had a nasty scratched area on the phone screen. Since then I’ve been very wary about allowing metal objects to come in contact with a phone screen.

Now I have a Samsung Galaxy S with some sort of motherboard damage (it won’t even boot and I know it’s not a software issue because it was initially intermittent). A phone that old isn’t worth repairing (they sell on ebay for as little as $50) so it seemed worth testing how hard the screen is. The screen cover is Gorilla Glass which was the hardest glass available at the time the phone was new (apparently there are better versions of Gorilla Glass available now and my more recent phones should be tougher).

My first test was with one of my favorite Japanese kitchen knives, it didn’t scratch at all. Then I chose a knife sharpening stone as an obvious item that’s harder than a knife, it scratched the screen easily. A quartz pebble also scratched the screen when I used some force, so presumably concrete and brick would also scratch it. Tests with all current Australian coins and my car keys showed that the screen is too hard to be scratched by them. I also tested hitting the phone screen with my keys, I hit it much harder than would happen if I was to run while having my phone and my keys in the same pocket and there was no damage.

My conclusion is that any metal object you are likely to carry in your pocket is unlikely to cause any problem if knocked against the screen of a modern phone.

I’ve been using Android phones for 2.5 years and for all my phones (Sony-Ericsson Xperia X10, Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S3, and LG Nexus 4) I’ve bought “gel” cases. The gel cases are made of soft rubber which allows phones to bounce rather than break if dropped and also provide better grip (both for holding the phone and for resting it on a vibrating surface such as a tray in a car or plane). The cases have cost me between $12.50 and $15, I haven’t felt inclined to pay any more because a case has always seemed like a needless expense, something that merely compensates for deficiencies in phone design.

There are some problems with the gel cases, the first one is that they are rather ugly, while I’m not really interested in decorating my phones it seems a waste to have a nice phone like the Nexus 4 which has a neat sparkling pattern on the back and then use a case that entirely covers it. The next problem is the fact that the gel cases tend to restrict access to the buttons on the outside of the case.

I have been given a Rearth Ringke Fusion case for my Nexus 4 by MobileZap (this is a link for the Nexus 4 cases they sell) [1]. The case features a transparent layer of plastic at the back which protects the phone against having the rear glass of the case break (a known risk with the Nexus 4) while still allowing the user to admire it. With good lighting the sparkling pattern on the back of the phone can still be enjoyed, unfortunately this doesn’t show up at all in my photo. It’s impossible for a photo to capture a shimmering effect although other photographers have done a better job at showing off a Nexus 4. Also the transparent back to the case gives the option of putting any form of decoration between the phone and the case, for example one could print the logo of their Ingress team and put it between the phone and the case.

One thing that is visible in the photo is the feet on the back of the case. With small feet at the corners the transparent back usually won’t touch a surface that it rests on, this should prevent unsightly scratches to the back of the case. Also the feet can get some grip on the surface that it rests on, my car has a tray suitable for resting a phone which has a pattern of dimples that catch the feet of the Ringke case and prevent it from sliding.

Finally the external buttons for power and volume control are not obstructed in any way. After using 7 phones of 4 different models with gel cases I’ve become accustomed to buttons either being difficult to press or easy to press accidentally. The Ringke case allows the buttons to be pressed easily when needed but doesn’t seem prone to accidental presses.

I’m not about to buy a new case for my Galaxy Note 2 (my main phone at the moment) because I don’t like paying to replace something that works. But next time I buy a case I’ll look for something better than a plain gel case, it’s worth paying an extra $9 to get a good case for a phone that costs $350 (the current discount rate for a Nexus 4) or more. I definitely recommend the Ringke case for a Nexus 4.

• [1] http://www.mobilezap.com.au/32387/google/nexus-4/cases.htm

A few weeks ago I bought a new Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Android phone. As I predicted in my post about Phone and Tablet Sizes [1] the Note 2 with a 5.55″ display is a bit too big for me to have an ideal single handed side grasp (I estimate that about 5.2″ would be ideal). But I can stretch a bit and move it around in my hand to touch all parts of the screen with my thumb. Although when doing that I don’t have a tight grip, with my previous phone the Samsung Galaxy S3 [2] I could properly wrap my hand around it to grip it tightly while using it with one hand. The Note 2 will be easier for me to drop or for a thief to snatch it from me.

While the big screen makes the phone difficult to use with one hand it does allow viewing more data. The ConnectBot SSH client (Play Store link) [3] (F-Droid repository link) [4] works a lot better on a larger screen – I’ve also discovered that the volume control buttons can be used to change the font size in ConnectBot which is handy as the default is really tiny. Also Klaus Weidner’s Hacker’s Keyboard (Play Store link) [5] (F-Droid repository link) [6] works a lot better with a larger screen. When I tested the Hacker’s keyboard on a smaller phone I found the 5 row layout too difficult to use, but on the Note 2 it works well. As an aside I wish I could quickly and easily toggle between 4 row mode (good for SMS) and 5 row mode (good for sysadmin work) in the Hackers’ Keyboard.

For less serious use the large screen on the Note 2 is good for watching TV. I’ve got a collection of mp4s of TV shows that I’ve been meaning to watch, now I watch them in bed on my phone.

Another advantage of the Note 2 is the battery life. When playing Ingress and doing all the usual email checks etc my Note 2 will last about as long as my wife’s Galaxy S3 with it’s power case. So without any extra batteries a Note 2 will probably last about twice as long as a Galaxy S3.

The Note 2 has more RAM than the S3 I used to use (I had the S3 with 1G of RAM) and it also apparently has a faster CPU. The CPU speed hasn’t been an issue for me but the extra RAM is a real benefit, it means that I can usually switch between Ingress and other programs without having to restart Ingress each time. As an aside I think that Google and LG should release a “Nexus Ingress 4” phone or some other device that’s optimised for Ingress, I’m sure it would sell well.

Some people make a big deal about the stylus that comes with the Note 2. It is a neat feature to have the device know when the stylus tip is hovering over the screen but it’s not very useful for me. If I was going to create art work on a phone (as some people do) then it would interest me, but I’m more interested in email and ssh for fine input and my fingers are generally good enough for those tasks. I have got thin fingers, so I think that people with thicker fingers could really benefit from the stylus. I recently bought a batch of stylus pens from Kogan which have a pen at one end and a rubber stylus tip at the other for fat fingered people I know who need to use an Android phone but can’t afford a Note or Note 2.

I also like the software build on it which is almost the same as that on the Galaxy S3. It seems that many people prefer the apparently stock features on the Nexus 4 but I like the way Samsung does things.

Conclusion

I’m very happy with my new phone. The bigger screen allows me to see things more clearly, this is good for web browsing, reading email, and now that I can use the Hackers’ Keyboard I can type more effectively. The longer battery life is really good too, although I think that Samsung could have done better – if the phone was 3mm thicker then it could have a much bigger battery and have a larger CCD for the camera.

I don’t think that the phone is really different, at least not for my use. Samsung has promoted it for artistic use and I’ve seen evidence to support their claims. But for most people it’ll just be a phone with a larger screen and a bigger battery. Some people criticise it for being too big, but it’s still smaller than the handsets on most desk phones so it’s not big by the standards of old fashioned phones.

The increased size has not only allowed me to do the same things more effectively but also allowed me to do things I hadn’t tried doing on a phone before such as watching TV. This isn’t because of the phone being particularly special in any way, it’s just that the change in size gives more possibilities for ways of using it.

The Samsung Galaxy Mega is the largest smart phone. The 5.8″ version of the Mega has a resolution of only 960*540 (less than the Note and Note 2 – not good enough IMHO) and the 6.3″ version has the same resolution as the Note 2 of 1280*720. I think that both Mega variants are too big for me, I need to be able to use a phone with one hand. So it seems that the Note 2 is probably the best phone for me right now.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/02/11/phone-tablet-sizes/
• [2] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/12/21/galaxy-s3-power-case/
• [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.connectbot
• [4] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=connect&fdid=org.connectbot
• [5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard
• [6] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=hacker&fdid=org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard