Keanen's Blog My personal blog.

Making payments with my phone

I used my Galaxy Nexus phone and Google Wallet application the other day to pay for my meal at McDonald's. The technology that makes this possible is near field communication (NFC). It was not a perfect experience as the first attempt failed but the second attempt went through. The guy at the counter was a little confused to what i was doing and was even more surprised when my meal was suddenly paid for

I know that some people have reservations about this technology worrying that bumping into someone can cause a charge against their credit card. The good news is that a pin is required to make payments and in the case of Google Wallet and MasterCard, they have consumer protection to address these concerns.

I look forward to using this technology which already exists at Best Buy, BP Stations, CVS, Home Depot, and McDonald's among others. There is a good chance that technology will be included in the next iPhone which will really blow up this market. It will be interesting to see how phone manufacturers and carriers handle this technology and try to capture revenue from these technologies.

A review of Verizon’s HTC Rezound

When I recently switched to Verizon I wanted the yet to be released and long delayed Samsung Galaxy Nexus to be my end state phone but started with the HTC Rezound and a 30 day exchange policy that offered flexibility for acquiring the Nexus at a later time. My two previous devices had been HTC phones, I was very happy with both my EVO and EVO 3D but had always wanted the very vibrant Samsung AMOLED screen technology. After having the Rezound and being very satisfied with it for two weeks, the Nexus finally launched and I was at Best Buy on release day to exchange for my Rezound. The lure of the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS, the screen, NFC technology, and speed of the Nexus were very nice but I was experiencing horrible battery life and the signal quality did not seem to be on par with the Rezound. So, I went back to the Rezound after only two days and have not looked back.

Build Quality
The Rezound is a solid phone as I would expect from HTC. It feels very good in my hand and is weighted nicely.

HTC Beats
I looked at the Beats headphones as a bonus item just like I did with the 3D feature on my EVO 3D. After trying them a few times, I have really grown to enjoy having them for listening to music and for conference calls. I was very impressed a few weeks ago in the airport as I was able to walk around a loud and busy concourse without having problems hearing the call because of the way that they act as ear plugs and block out the other noise. The earplug design works well on the airplane and are much more portable than my Panasonic noise cancelling headphones. I would say that the only downfall here is that the Beats equalizer only works on the default HTC music app and not third party music players such as Google Music, Pandora, or Slacker.

Performance
This phone has performed very well. I am not a big gamer but I do watch movies when traveling and this phone never misses a beat no matter what I am doing in the background. I hope that the Rezound performs well once upgraded to Android 4.0. A bonus feature on the Rezound is simultaneous 3G voice and data which will come in handy up at the lake when I need to work. From what I understand, this functionality is pretty limited on Verizon to only the Thunderbolt and Rezound.

HTC Sense
While I am not the biggest HTC Sense launcher fan and favor Launcher Pro and Go Launcher, I do like the contact linking, camera software, and overall integration that HTC Sense offers. The gallery software includes my Flickr account and I can easily browse Facebook albums. The music player has some added functionality of importing album art and offers some music shopping capabilities.

For some reason, Verizon crippled the themes and scenes downloads offered on the EVO 3D. It was fun mixing it up a bit once in a while.

Camera
The 8MP camera on the Rezound is the best that I have used on a phone and was another reason that I went back to the Rezound over the Nexus. The pictures from this device are crisp and the customization that HTC put in their camera software is great. There is a timer mode, panorama shots, full 1080P video recording, and fun effects that can be added to photographs. There is also a feature that allows auto uploading to Facebook or Flickr (for some this will be a duplicate effort when using Google+). The Galaxy Nexus does have zero lag picture taking and the Rezound is not far behind. The pictures snap much faster than either of my EVO's.

Screen
The screen is full 720P and looks beautiful. Compared to the Nexus, the colors look very natural and do not have the blue hue of the AMOLED screens. The screen can be seen in the sunlight but like any LCD screen, the brightness has to be turned up. Reading text on this device is awesome and there is no problems with pentile technology that plagues the Bionic and RAZR.

Battery Life
As I have done for all of my Android devices, I went out and purchased the extended battery for this phone. This battery is offered by Verizon at 2750 Mah which is not quite double the capacity of the original battery. It does add some bulk to the Rezound but it is a small price to pay to get me through a work day with email, SMS, phone calls, and 4G on full time.

Conclusion
All around, the Rezound it is a great phone that gets me through a day of heavy work and travel, it is reliable, and fun to use. The Beats earbuds are a bonus that I have enjoyed very much. The camera is great for capturing memories and the multimedia performance is wonderful. I really like this phone and think that it is a keeper (until the next great thing comes along).

My recent switch to Verizon Wireless

After over ten years of being a Sprint customer I have switched to Verizon. I started to sway a couple of months ago I tried out a demo line of a Motorola Droid Bionic and was very impressed with the 4G LTE coverage and speeds. Everywhere that I went that had Verizon coverage in town, I had 4G coverage. Coming from the 2.5Ghz spectrum that Sprint uses for their Wi-Max coverage and lack of building penetration, this was quite a treat.

A few weeks later, I met my brother Stan for some drinks and ran a speed test on his phone and pulled over 25Mbps down which is pretty amazing! I was struggling with the cost increase that a switch from Sprint but was very tempted with the network. Another example is at our family cabin, I have fought with poor coverage for years while this last summer I saw our neighbors making calls and streaming Slacker music on 3G without issue.

Verizon has been extremely agressive in their rollout of their LTE network and says that they will have their existing 3G coverage map completely covered with 4G LTE by the end of 2013. There is speculation that Verizon will then aggressively push for voice over LTE at that time and repurpose the 3G spectrum over time for additional LTE capacity.

This article written over a year ago shows the difference between Verizon's 4G coverage at that time versus Sprint's which has not grown much in the Twin Cities over the past year.

Shown below is the coverage growth over the last few months from early November 2011 through mid December 2011

Most of 2011...

November 17th growth

December growth - new markets in Duluth and Rochester

Verizon is not shy about showing off their coverage difference with Sprint as they have the following sign in stores

Sprint is working on their Network Vision roll out which is a great plan that leverages partners to help them build out their network. This deployment is supposed to be completed around the end of 2013. The re-purposing of the iDen spectrum will prove to be a great asset to Sprint's 4G expansion. I am very excited to see what they have to offer at that time because I love their open model and pricing. This post is to no way rip on Sprint. I feel that they are still a great carrier with a very strong pricing advantage and because of that, I will continue to recommend Sprint to people. I have multiple family members on Sprint and I would not try to convince them to switch. For a power user like myself, I found the current 4G footprint too limiting and am paying for it every month with Verizon.

SiriusXM TTR1 Internet Tabletop Radio Review

For Christmas I recieved the SiriusXM TTR1 Tabletop Internet radio. This radio can play all of SiriusXM's online content which includes music, talk, comedy, sports, play by play, etc.

Cost
We purchased the TTR1 radio on the SiriusXM site for about $75 on sale which is the lowest that I had seen this model which usually sells for around $119-149.

Sound Quality
Sound quality on this little radio is pretty good for the cost. Since I most often listen to talk radio the sound quality is not always a concern but it is nice to know that it can pump out some quality sounding tunes when I listen to music. I really enjoyed this radio in the living room with Christmas music on and more recently in the bathroom so that I can listen to Opie and Anthony and sports radio in the morning while getting ready for work instead of listening on my phone like I have for the last few years.

Setup and Features
I started setup by entering in our WPA passphrase which was not exactly fun with having to dial through the alphabet. Once I had the wireless connection configured, I was able to enter my SiriusXM credentials and all of the available channels populated in the menus. There is an option for wired Ethernet connections, a line out, and an AUX connection for when you want to use another source for audio. There are also alarm clock capabilities in the TTR1 if someone were to use this device in their bedroom.

Interface
There is a main menu that is driven through a dial that pushes in for confirmation. The dial can be a little clumsy when making choices but then again, it's not too often that I use the menu because there are ten preset buttons. The present buttons allow for quick access to ten of your favorite channels. When I power on the TTR1 powers on, connects to my wireless, and begins playing my last channel in about 10-12 seconds. The volume button is nice a big and there is a snooze button for the alarm on the top of the radio.

Online Capabilities
One really nice thing about SiriusXM online is now they offer NFL games to be streamed over the Internet and this radio can take advantage of this feature. I hope that as other sports contracts are renewed that they continue this trend as it would have been nice to listen to the Wolves this winter with Rubio and DWill creating some excitement. My Internet streaming on my phone and computer have a short timeout of about 90 minutes and the TTR1 has a much longer timeout value of a few hours (I left it on one day and it did time out after quite some time).

Summary
Overall, this is a solid product that should have a long life as it has software on the device is upgradable and SiriusXM continues to expand on its Internet radio lineup like the SportsCenter channel among others due to capacity issues through their satellite services. I look forward to using the TTR1 at home and when camping while using my new Verizon phone as a hotspot

R.I.P. Steve

As we all know Steve Jobs did great things for the technology we use today. We have lost a great visionary of technology.

My prayers go out to his family.

Review if the Seidio 4000 mAh battery for the EVO 3D

Just as I did for my EVO 4G, I have purchased Seidio's extended battery for the EVO 3D. With multiple push email accounts, phone usage, and applications updating in the background I enjoy having the extra capacity. I do not mind the extra bulk as my phone is a tool and not a fashion item.

This battery easily gets me through the busiest of days and even takes a beating on the airplane when I browse on GoGo WiFi and watch movies.

If you do not like to worry about battery swapping or having enough juice to get you through the day, this is a great purchase.

For those who like the size of the EVO 3D as is, there are other options such as Juice Defender which can double your battery life at the expense of turning off your data when the screen of the phone is off.

Rooted EVO 3D

Thanks to the Unrevoked and AlphaRev teams, I have a rooted EVO 3D! I can now take screenshots, use my phone as a hotspot, backup my data, and use custom ROM's. I used the instructions on XDA. Which were pretty painless. For those that are not very excited about messing with their phone very much there are temporary root solutions out there that will allow for backups, screen captures, and hotspot access. I found it irritating that I needed a computer to execute the root process every time that I wanted to do something requiring root on my 3D.

It's out there and available, give it a shot

EVO 3D review

I picked up my EVO 3D last Friday and have been enjoying my new device. I must say, I was not very excited about the 3D features of the phone but I have been having some fun. We went to the cabin over the weekend and I was using 3D to capture all kinds of fun pictures. Some of the pictures had some great depth to them.

As expected, the phone is faster than the EVO 4G, the screen resolution is a nice improvement and the new Sense 3.0 interface is greatly improved.

I look forward to gaining root access. HTC has said that they will unlock the bootloader on the 3D.

Pros:

• Speed - everything is faster
• New HTC Sense 3.0.
• Screen  resolution – The screen looks crisp.
• 3D is fun! Watching and recording movies in 3D, games, pictures, etc.
• Dedicated camera button - makes taking pictures so much more stable.
• 1GB of memory – I was constantly having to manage my memory on my EVO 4G, I do not have to do this anymore.
• Ability to uninstall Sprint apps - dump the bloatware!
• Weather animations are beautiful.
• The power button is larger.

Cons:

• 3D is great but if you do not have other 3D devices there is not much you can do beyond the EVO 3D.
• Not OMLED – I still have Samsung screen envy.
• Gmail does not yet support .mpo files - When I send 3D pictures to other EVO 3D friends there is no way to download the picture. It can only be "previewed" as a 2D picture. This can be resolved by configuring the HTC mail application for your account but that is not very user friendly.
• The external speaker could be a little better.
• I would prefer the micro USB connection at the bottom of the phone.
• No kickstand (without a case) - I am surprised how many times that I have went for the kickstand and was reminded that I no longer have one.

Notes

• Battery life is still much to be desired for myself as a power user. I look forward to Seidio releasing a 3,000+ mAH battery so that I can get through a day.
• Gaps between the four rows of icons/widgets. With the higher resolution a fifth row can be beneficial. I am using Launcher Pro Plus which allows me to have five rows of icons.
• Exchange support – unlike the previous HTC Sense devices, HTC has come clean about ActiveSync memory encryption for Sense 3.0. I cannot configure my EVO 3D to work with with my Exchange server that has this requirement. From what I understand, this is supported in Honeycomb 3.1 and I assume will work with Ice Cream Sandwich.
• HTC has made the 2D/3D picture taking and sharing pretty effortless. When sending 3D pictures the phone will prompt to convert to 2D or ask to share either 2D or 3D depending on which application the picture is being shared to.

In conclusion, no phone is perfect. The 3D is a nice upgrade from the EVO 4G. I only hope that HTC starts rolling out phones with OMLED AMOLED screens by the time that I am eligible for my next upgrade

Groove IP and Android allows for unlimited calling

A few of us at the office have been wondering about options for using our cell phones for calls without using minutes on our plans for conference calls, etc. When I travel, I do not have a desk phone to use so the minutes add up quickly. For those that do not have a "Fav 5" T-Mobile like feature on their cell phone plan I have found that Groove IP works pretty well. For a one time purchase of $4, calls can be made using a data connection leveraging Google's VOIP capabilities offered in Google Talk/Voice,

The application is pretty simple to setup. It is configured with your Google account credentials and then makes a connection. The application has three options for calling:

1. Intercept outbound calls being made and route them though the Groove IP application.
2. Prompt every time an outbound call is made, "Normal Call" or "Call using Groove IP".
3. Disabled.

Pictured below is the simple dialer that can be used for calls from Groove IP.

My testing of this application started with a 3G connection on my EVO 3D. My test call went downhill quickly and the person on the other end complained that they could not hear me. I hung-up and called back with 4G and had only a little complaint about echoing back to the person on the other end. I was worried about conference calls when I was told this and tested the mute functionality which stopped the echoing.

This solution is not perfect but will allow me to call into long conference calls without needing to worry about my usage. A decent solution as long as you have the bandwidth and hopefully Google's call quality improves over time.

For those with a "Fav 5" or "Calling circle" calling option, if a person adds their Google Voice number to their free calling numbers, Google Voice Callback is a great solution. It allows you to make calls where Google Voice calls you back with your Google Voice number to connect the call.