Nokia Lumia 920 first impressions

Coming from a Samsung Focus running Windows Phone 7.8 background, my first impressions:

• Faster Web browsing as pages rendered quickly.  Ditto for PDFs
• No need to plug into computer to update operating system software as was necessary for WP7 and need for Zune
• Larger screen is good but expected to be able to put more Live Tiles on screen, that is, 5 small tiles across rather than 4 as with Samsung Focus.  Tiles almost look too big
• Sharpness of resolution appreciated - back to what I was used to with 4th generation iPod Touch 
• Camera is disappointing in terms of sharpness but need to test further with latest Lumia updates 
• Weight of phone is hefty but I think should be something manageable.  I notice when I think about the weight of my Focus in hand, even though it is an extremely light phone like the iPhone 5, it begins to feel weighty when you deliberately think about its weight 
• 
  

Continue with Windows Phone?

I've been using a Samsung Focus since November 2011.  I bought it used and it was already released for a year.  It was missing a front-facing camera which I didn't think of much use until I wanted to have grandpa see my son using video calling.  I came from a pairing of a Windows Mobile 6 phone plus a 4th generation iPod Touch.  In retrospect, the WM6 device was awful but I hung onto it for almost 4 years due to the initial cost of $400.

So what are the options now:  iPhone 5S, Moto X, Nokia Lumia 1020?   The iPhones prior to iPhone 5 have a screen that is just too small for reading fixed-format PDFs and the like but the iPhone 5 has a decent-sized screen and iOS 7 is intriguing.  Moto X is also interesting and has some subtleties that I probably would like; it's Leo Laporte's current phone of choice.  Lumia 1020 is too camera-centric and too expensive at this time. 

Well, I'm one to watch my budget so I'm considering the almost year-old Nokia Lumia 920.  Yes, possibly another Windows Phone. 

A good web browser makes a huge difference

Some rights reserved by elPadawan

While I was testing out the Maxthon web browser for Playbook, Origami Browser was released.  For almost all web sites tested, this excellent browser is able to render them well, browser menu usage (accessing bookmarks, going back/forward, etc.) is quick and easy, and finally text editing capabilities, as I noted as a must requirement in my previous post, is superb.  I donated to the developer of this free browser; an excellent developer for an end-of-life product deserves support. 

Text editing capabilities are built on top of Playbook functionality, which is actually very good.  This is unlike the Maxthon browser that poorly implements its own text selection, copy-paste, etc. functionality.

Maxthon browser for Playbook versus iPad Safari browser

Not having access to a laptop, I am using a Playbook.  While the default Playbook browser is less than adequate for many tasks and web sites, the free Maxthon browser performs admirably with many web sites, due to it mimicking an Android browser user agent (among others).  According to What's My User Agent?, the user agent is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; zh-cn; HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio Z715e Build/GRJ22)Maxthon AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

Compare this to the user agent of the default Playbook browser:  

Mozilla/5.0 (PlayBook; U; RIM Tablet OS 2.1.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/536.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.2.1.0 Safari/536.2+
   

Using Google Docs is a better experience than with the default Playbook browser and no Bluetooth keyboard.  Having said that, I am now typing this post using an iPad and the ease of use is noticeably higher.  The iOS copy and paste, text selection and cursor repositioning (magnifying glass), and auto spelling correction features are more intuitive than those of the Maxthon browser (Maxthon doesn't use the default Playbook OS edit features).  I used to think that the iPad is mainly a "consumption" device but it is large enough to do multi-finger touch typing with the virtual keyboard.  Combined with the excellent edit functionality, it is an worthy laptop alternative when you have a table and case/stand.

Hmmm, just noticed some weirdness with attempting to apply some labels to this post, but I think it was because I was zoomed in.

So what makes a good web browser?  Besides web pages rendering as intended by the page author, if you're going to do anything where you have to type some characters (this may include typing a URL or search term) and if you don't have a hardware keyboard, you should have good text editing capability.  That is, auto spelling correction and cursor repositioning, and for productivity:  copy-and-paste and text selection features.

[Updated August 2, 2013]

CBC Spark: Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

• Listen
• Need to realize that media out of context can be misinterpreted by others.  Need to have a conversation with those upset with us, rather than just saying they are "wrong"
• We get less international news than before from broadcasts (newspaper, newscast, etc.).  Broadcasts are giving us what we want (local news) rather than what we need.  We also curate for news that we already have an understanding of.  International news is important because we live in a globalized world.   
• Broadly, news/information comes from three channels:
• professionally curated (newspaper, newscast, etc.)
• our own searches
• social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• Despite being able to look at any web site around the world, we are still very narrow-minded
• One problem is homophily:  Our friends typically have the same view and get similar news as we do 
• Language restrictions:  Most of us have no access to the part of Web created by hundreds of millions of Chinese people due to language issues
• Bridge figures - those that know two cultures equally well and can explain one culture to those of the other culture
• Difficult to find information via serendipity because Web is programmed to provide links to things we will like with great certainty (that is, similar to things we liked before).  This is caused by the risk-adverse nature of  the Web driven by advertising

Citrix and Remote Desktop data usage - lower than expected

I had to get some work done while being on the road.  All the files were on my work computer and my personal laptop didn't have the right software.  I was very apprehensive about using Citrix Desktop and then subsequently Remote Desktop to access my workstation, due to unknown data usage. 

According to my mobile data provider (Wind Mobile), I used approximate 35.4 MB over a 1 hour period.  This was less than I expected but in line with other observations.  I was editing a document but needing to switch between other windows to collect information and do some data manipulation.  My laptop resolution is 1600 x 900 (and my Remote Desktop session was adjusted to the same).

So for getting a few things done at work while being on the road, using Citrix and Remote Desktop won't eat up your data allotment. 

Trying to let go of Firefox

For the last several months, have pondered switching my default desktop web browser from Firefox to Chrome.  The impetus came from Firefox occasionally freezing because of buggy Plugins (e.g. Adobe Acrobat or Shockwave Flash), enormous memory consumption (could be the result of me having 9+ tabs open!), or poor performance (streaming music from music.cbc.ca can be jittery).  The straw that broke the camel's back was that I could not update the Shockwave Flash plugin that was automatically disabled in Firefox due to security vulnerabilities.  While I appreciate Firefox trying to protect my computer and its data, I likely needed Administrator privileges to update the plugin and I did not have them on this client-provided workstation.   

The two main reasons I have stuck with Firefox are the Delicious and Selenium IDE Extensions.  So I thought that I could start up Firefox whenever I needed to use Selenium IDE for some script-automated web browsing.  But I still needed good Delicious integration with my web browser.  Hopeful, I sought out Delicious extensions for Chrome and tried "Delibookmarks (Delicious Bookmarks)" from yasinecky and "Delicious Bookmarks" from blog.kasunbg.org, both third-party extensions.  Unfortunately, neither were anywhere close to the functionality offered by the official Firefox Delicious extension.  Easily Bookmarking and searching saved Bookmarks across computers is essential for me and neither were usable to me. 

I briefly entertained using the Chrome Bookmarks functionality which I believe is synced across Chrome logins on different computers but the simple concept of tags was not supported out of the box.  So it appears I will soldier on with Firefox but I'm open to alternatives.